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2020-11-05
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Character respect in NC fanfics a contradiction?

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An essay

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Character respect in NC fanfics, a contradiction?
by JR

 

Some of the very first erotic fanfics I found on the  Internet were stories dealing with Non Consensual Sex,  a phenomenom I have discussed elesewhere. And being  a pervert, I enjoyed reading them, finding them often arousing. Yet many I also found annoying. Certain cliches found in many stories began to bother me more and more, despite my overpowering pervert nature.

Thus, I decided to write NC fanfics myself.

Not meaning to offend other authors of this subgenre, since I too delve into it fueled by my own perversity, and everyone has his own parameters of acceptable perversion and good taste (or lack thereof), I must say that I decided  to write this sort of thing not only as a kind of self-exorcism,  but also as a complaint against the common thing that  thematically bothers me most about the typical stories of this kind: Lack of respect for the characters.

One of Volpone's rules for fanfic writing focuses on  respect for the characetrs and their continuity.

It makes sense. Why do you bother to fantasize with this particular imaginary character? Why go to the trouble of writing about it/her/him? Because we find such character appealing. And by golly, we want to see her/him get laid!

But what happens when the adapted character no longer behaves like the model she/he was based on? We could be writing about anyone else instead.

As I read most of the stories of the NC subgenre, my thoughs turned not on how arousing or how disgusting the events were. My thoughts became: these are not really those characters I know. My hero/heroine would NEVER  react like THAT!

And I am not talking about denial of sexuality. We are shown so little of the sexuality of comic book characters that for all we know, Superman may be a hermaphrodite. All Kryptonians may have been. That may even be John Byrne's next idea for a retcon!

What I mean is that I have an understanding of the characters that (biased as it may be, being a typically anal-retentive fanboy) does not correspond to the vacuous stereotypes of arrogant frigidness depicted in these stories. That is not how I understand the characters.

To me they are HEROES, that is, they rise up to the challenges and triumph against all odds, or even in failure, fall with nobility. That, I think, should also be reflected in their sexuality.

To me, the sex should be equally HEROIC. Operatic even in magnitude and scope. Why limit fantasy to our lowly base reality?

Thus, this understanding of the superheroic ideal and the knowledge we have of each character's particular traits and personality should color all their behavior, and be then particularly prominent in sexual behavior, even if the writer's particular preferences lead to NC situations.

Do we really think that a character who can stand up against chaos in all its forms will be "enslaved" or subjugated by sex? Not MY heroes.

They may be imaginary characters, but it is those characteristics of heroism that make they appealing, dear to us, and equally interesting as partaking of sexuality.

Now, I understand that to many, the hero/heroine role is used intentionally to portray a stereotype of foolish arrogance, mostly from the goody-two-shoes shallow caracterizations shown in the TV series incarnations, to illustrate scenarios of power leveling. That is, the "bringing down to our level" those who haughtily act above us. That works for many, ok. It does not work for me. To me,
these are power fantasies, more than sex fantasies. And I prefer to focus on the sex.

Also, since the characters are merely superficially similar to the ones I care about, I do not find the context motivating. Those characters used are not real to me, and thus I find little interest in both stories and sexual acts.

I am interested in sexual interpretations of THE characters, in whatever fashion it may be. If a writer wants to use NC scenarios, he should provide a rationale as to why it may (or not) work on the characters. And it should make sense character-wise. Otherwise it is meaningless name-calling.

And even better, we should have a story that is either fueled by the sexual situations or goes along with them consistently. Stupidly falling into trap after trap is not my idea of a story. A good story should both entertain and enrich our understanding of teh characters, be erotic or not. In fact, the two last chapters of THE TRUCE feature sex that is in my opinion not to be taken as erotic, yet is open to interpretation as per each one's particular preferences. From my point of view, it was a shocking scene, of very graphic nature, meant to burst the bubble of tension I meant to create. Others may find it arousing, or unacceptably disgusting. Yet, I thought it made sense within the narrative context.

Now, if you notice, the story itself, in the two first intallments featuring Donna and Kory, makes a point of not featuring the sort of sexual abuse featured in the typical stories, and in fact the sexual act itself is less relevant than the "hard choice" situation. The story is about the making of the choices less than the acts themselves. The character is never deprived of choice, but is given  restricted (and unpleasant) options, which create a dilema between conventional morality and the good of others. The villains themselves, not without a generous helping of self-delusive hypocrisy, state themselves morally against what they call uncivilized behavior, hiding their amorality behind the shlied of formal courtesy.

Even we, as readers, realize we are subject to prejudices. By featuring an initial captivity and bondage situation and leading to a scenario when a heroine is led to have sex with a villain not through love or true desire, our moral conditioning inmediately considers it of the same nature as the typical forced coitus, and the "normal" reader thus becomes repelled, while we perverts become tintillated. And that very atittude is what the story seeks to explore while indulging simultaneously in the basic perverse scenario. (Have the cake and eat it too. Take postures of intellectual detachment while wanking off unashadmedly) ) We, like the character, must ask whether situational blackmail is less of a "force" than physical violence.

What I wanted in this, and other stories I plan to write, (and which are not all necessarily in this same orientation) is to explore the characters and their assumed sexuality through subjecting them to harsh moral dilemas that must be addressed as realistically as possible once the basic farfetched premise is accepted, keeping beahavior within what we understand as real characterization. Am I successful at this? I doubt it. I am not that good a writer. But it is fun to try. Mostly it all  was an excuse to work in my particular beauty and the beast obsessions. :)

I have discussed the "limits of bad taste" with friends who enjoy the romance stories only, and others who enjoy both, and very rarely can we fix common boundaries.

Our tolerances are a funny thing. A friend told me that he was repelled by the scene between Koriand'r (an alien) and Mallah (a fully intelligent sentient) because he could not get past the notion that it was basically bestiality, since we knew that Mallah was an animal given intelligence. Yet he admited, well aware of the double-thinking involved, that if it had been an human brain in a gorilla body (ala the Ultra-Humanite) he possibly would not have felt such disgust.

I think that, despite the cosmetic physical appearance, Kory is much more removed from humanity than Mallah, since it seems she is feline-evolved instead of primate evolved, yet our how can be ignore what our gut tells us?

In The Truce, I sought to look at this kind of thing by contrasting the quite different outlooks of Donna and Kory. Donna was thus, as disgusted by the act she was coerced into, as Kory actually revelled in it. Each one had a different axiological stance, and each one interpreted the same situation in quite a different fashion. I originally even wrote a more R-rated version focusing only in the decision taking and skipping the actual depiction of most of the sex, and it worked quite well, but since I am writing porn, why be shy about it? Going hardcore allowed me to have fun ridiculing the stereotypes of size=pleasure in most fanfics, and showing how the villains were slowly deprived of control of thesexual situations they instigated, to their growing embarrassment, being equally victims of their own hang-ups.  

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