(no subject)

[erda]

I want to preface this by saying that I'm a big girl now, and I'm not blaming anyone for this, just trying to work out in my own head how I feel and why I feel that way.



I’ve read a lot of stuff on lj that I didn’t really get (fisting?) but this is the first time I can honestly say a story squicked me, and I know it’s my own fault for not using my back button, but here’s the thing. When I see a slavery story recced by someone I respect, I’m expecting one of two things. Either the story is written as an erotic fantasy, in which case I would assume that the author knows that real slavery is not erotic and that what they are writing is just a fantasy, or the author intends to address issues about institutional slavery and how it affects both the enslaved and the enslaver.

I’ve read both kinds of stories on lj, and some stories that combined elements of both, and while they aren’t really my favorites, I certainly don’t have a problem with them, and some of them I’ve gotten a lot out of reading.

But recently I came across a story from which I could have removed all references to slavery and just with a couple of small edits, the story would have remained intact. It was a “My heart is frozen due to something bad in my past but now my true love has helped me work through it and we can live happily ever after” story. And that’s usually an okay story idea that I have no problem with. Back when I used to read mainstream romances I occasionally read stories where slavery was used as a background for the romance in this way, and it didn’t bother me much. I was coming at those stories from a mind set that the author of a mainstream romance is not thinking deeply about slavery, or power or anything like that, and so those stories didn’t shock or bewilder me when they glossed over slavery like it was not important.

But when I read something on lj, especially something recced by smart people, I expect more out of a story. I was honestly shocked and disturbed, and yeah, I should have just stopped reading it, but I kept thinking that soon now we will see this house of cards begin to crumble and these underlying issues will be pulled into the foreground and addressed. But they weren’t. They weren’t acknowledged, they didn’t appear to be recognized, and for the first time since I’ve been on lj, I was well and truly shocked. It made my realize that my standards have gone up dramatically now that I mostly read fanfiction.

*flinch*

Comments

[danceswithgary]

I can sympathize. I have one author I beta for, but not for her slavery fics - and she's cool with that and the fact that I don't read them. Everyone has their preferences (and dislikes).

[keefaq.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have no problem with people liking different things. I guess I'm trying to say that my degree of squickitude is related more closely to my expectations than to the exact nature of the story.

[salixbabylon.livejournal.com]

It's funny how in many ways we expect *more* from fanfic, higher quality, better writing, more sensitivity, than in mainstream publishing. I have had similar thoughts to the ones you expressed about about many common themes in fanfic - notably the many varieties of hurt/comfort. They do nothing for me at all unless the author investigates the dynamic on a deep level.

[keefaq.livejournal.com]

Yeah, again while hurt/comfort is not my favorite thing, I have no problem with it. It's more about an assumption that the author recognizes some of the ick factor and either addresses it or consciously rejects it in order to pursue a fantasy that is important to them. It's the apparent lack of awareness that weirds me out.

[dodificus.livejournal.com]

*tries to remember if I'm the one that recced this*

*really hopes it wasn't me*

[keefaq.livejournal.com]

Haha! Didn't mean to make anyone paranoid, but I also wanted to speak in general about how the squick for me was not in the story so much as the mismatch between the story and my expectation of it, rather than getting bogged down in a particular example.

The summary of the story should have been enough to tell me it wouldn't interest me, but I just had it in my head that there was going to be more there than it seemed on the surface. I like that our community worries about warning the reader, but I don't really think it would be fair to expect the reccer also to issue warnings.

Anyway, I am quite unharmed by the experience, and it made me think more about warnings.

Late to the party

[chanel_5]

I really understand what you're saying here, for me it's a different but similar track, Dom/Sub stories. I love experimentation in stories, and I definitely get the attraction of the different roles etc (a life less ordinary, wolfsharks fics...), but I can't abide stories where the society has d/s relationships as the norm. Where one is either Dom or Sub and happy with it and no in between. I remember reading the beginning of a story, I think it was called 'the general and Dr sheppard'? a very long McShep, well recommended. But I just couldn't read it. I just could not make myself read the words without wondering when the characters were going to 'wake up'. I get the same sensation when I read fiction for women written in the 1800's, where I keep waiting for the women to become more indepedent and grow out of their pitiful existences, and then you realise that that is the entirety of the lives, finding a suitable husband etc, and they actually are happy that way. Just... no.

Re: Late to the party

[erda]

hmm, those are interesting points. I want to step back and say that I really believe in individual writers finding ways to express themselves, particularly in terms of erotic fantasies that they may not be allowed to voice out in society. I recall the author of the story you mention really experiencing a lot of negative reactions. I think I ought to also say that it is every author's right to talk about whatever they want to, in whatever way they like. My shock in this particular situation was that I seemed to have a different view of this story than all the individuals who recommended it to me (which if I had known from the beginning would have changed my experience considerably). That said, you make really interesting and thought-provoking points here, which are worthy of entire posts of their own. Your point about 19th c. fiction particularly resonates with me, having grown up on a lot of those texts.