Just for the record, since some people are trying to caveat it:
(3) The story in which John Sheppard is kidnapped and made a harem slave/sex slave/man slave/cock slave/some kind of sexually exploitive slave that eroticized forced sexual intercourse. YES THERE ARE A LOT OF THESE TO FUCKING CHOOSE FROM.
That? Is what I like to call a blanket condemnation. I’ve read a lot of them — especially when recommended — and they all lead to the same thing: me feeling disgusting and drinking heavily and one memorable time, crying with my head in the toilet waiting to throw up.
As I have been one of those trying to point to what I feel is a good story, I would like to apologize for hitting a sore spot. I do realize that for some people this isn’t what they’d like to read (I myself hesitated before I did). Everybody has the right to their own opinion and feelings and this is YOUR place so: I’m sorry.
I as well, am sorry. If you want to read the explanation, here it is: I sometimes get so stirred up by what people have written, I just have to share my feelings too. Generally, I write a long winded comment and then think about what I wrote. I always delete it, because as a long time lurker to a couple of well written blogs, I know of everything that you write, but I forget that I’m nobody here. In some fit of insanity, I actually posted what I wrote yesterday. After some long deliberation and careful re-readings, I’ve decided to post this one to (hopefully) make amends. I’ll be good now, I promise!
Not to rain on anyone, here, but…
Seriously - why do you read them?
I dropped a book 20 pages in, even though it was one of the most well-received and widely read books of the year (I’m a librarian, so that’s like, a deadly sin), because I couldn’t handle the subject matter. I’ve stayed far, far away from Lolita and American Psycho for much the same reason.
But, granted, I have trouble leaving the crappy fic behind myself, because I keep telling myself - it’s got to get better. Most of the time, though? It never does. The really tricky ones are the ones that are actually written well - or just OK. The ones where i can’t even look at the grammar or spelling without my eyes hurting… those are pretty much casualties anyway.
Hey - had a good time laughing over your list of bad fics you hate and when you posted this, just wanted to say that I agree and, well, hmm, how to describe this… The view that with some types of fics, it’s not just a ‘don’t like this, this or that story but THIS one is fine’, it’s a blanket condemnation.
It’s actually worse with authors who are good enough to make rape, slavery and sexual exploitation seem ’sexy and erotic’. There are many writers in fandom who ARE good enough to do that and I’ve heard quite a few arguments brought forward - from freedom of speech and expression to ‘this is fandom and anything goes’ right down to ‘thought police’. We usually spend so much time talking about an author’s right to write anything they want in fandom that we never touch on an analysis of the story itself and what it encourages. NOT that stories like that necessarily encourage actual rape or sexual exploitation.
What I find - disturbing is that these types of fics so rarely deal with the aftermath, or recovery or anything even vaguely realistic. Rather, quite a lot of them (every incarnation I’ve seen in every fandom I’ve ever been part of) just seem to want to eroticise what amounts to one of the worse sexual crimes the modern world HAS.
Anyway - before I fill up your comments area with an already far too long comment, just wanted to say ‘agree’ =)
Sorry - just re-read the comment I made and wanted to make my own caveat (before I, argh, start an argument or something over censorship and freedom of expression): I dislike stories like that. I understand and agree that finding something hot in the abstract does not equate actually finding it hot if occuring to you or somebody else in real life. I don’t think stories that put an erotic spin on sexual exploitation and rape should be censored (unless it actually breaks laws in countries for a story like that to be published or stored - in which case I’d suggest the author warns the readers) - but I personally dislike them. I also will, always, encourage authors who write such stories to also write about the after effects to the victim because, much like bad!fic written as crack - it’s only ‘fun’ while everybody knows it’s crack. When they don’t know they’re supposed to be laughing, that’s when it goes bad.
Maybe I should start out by saying that I should have read the condamnation in the post better. As it is I saw that somebody commented about a fic I love and I wanted to support that. (I have also added a comment that is somewhat similar to what I am about to say now to that post). The story I recommended was about slavery and sexual abuse. The thing I missed in the above description and the thing that this story nerver did, was eroticize anything. The fic was about John and Rodney coping in a horrible situation and it broke my heart to see them hurt. As I said in my other post, I don’t enjoy seeing people be hurt and I didn’t “enjoy” reading the story in the sense that it made me happy, but it is very well written. I stand by my recommendation, but I will say here that it might not be for people who are sentitive to this subject as it is written from John’s and Rodney’s POV and therefore all their misperceptions and doubts carry over. It takes until the end to see all things in context and I’m sure the epilogue will set things in an even different light. I myself hesitated (for almost a month) before reading this story. I’ve seen the ones that eroticize the issue and while they don’t bother me personally and I think that people should be allowed to post them with the applicable warnings attached, I don’t enjoy them either. I really don’t regret that I did it, but it wasn’t easy to read at all. It did even push some of the same buttons as Cartography by touch for me, in the sense that we get into the character’s heads and see how they cope. The difference here is that the story actually tells what is happening to them. There is an after too, but the parts before that do descibe what is happening as far as necessary (there was never anything more explicit than John thinking about it to explain his feelings and maybe the author could have been even more obscure, but that is a quetion of preference, too). I think it all comes back to the eroticized which I think this story definitely isn’t. As I said I’ve read a few (very few) stories like that and they don’t bother me (much). I find the charctes reactions somewhat unbelievable, but I can survive as long as I hang onto the fac that their not bothered, so why should I be (that still doesn’t mean that I enjoyed those stories).
So this is a really long explanation that just goes to show that I shoul pay more attention before I write a comment and be clearer about what I mean to say.
Somehow, “it’s wrong, but it’s really hot!” doesn’t work for me. Let’s not talk about the fic where Rodney thought Samantha Carter stole credit for his research. And he needed John-cuddling to cheer up. AND THEN HE SAYS “I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE NOBEL PRIZE ‘CAUSE I HAVE JOHN.” I may have cried a bit. Why O God why.
hey, because I’ve been already kind of spamming your blog (sorry about that) I thought what is on emore question. So here it goes: Firstly this is something I was honestly wondering about, nothing else. No judgement is implied and you don’t have to answer.
What is the difference for you between dubious consent issues in fanfic and the issues in the yaoi you recced? Is it that one’s written and the other drawn or that the fic was more extreme on the choice issue? Or that the fanfic is ooc? I’m just asking because I’ve seen some mangas like that and they make me the same kind of uncomfortable that some fics do.