Nora Charles (
noracharles) wrote2009-07-01 06:10 pm
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Forced, arranged marriage fic written from the moral pov of the betrayers/abusers.
The fic is Little Bit of Inertia, Little Bit of Momentum by
juice817, written for the Supernatural and J-Squared Big Bang. It's an RPS AU, which means it's an m/m fic about original characters, and the characters have been "cast" with the names and likenesses of real people.
[Edited to add, June 3rd. When I first read this fic, I came across some triggering content. I was upset, and went on a long ride to clear my head. I realized why some elements of the fic had disturbed me, and I tagged my bookmark of it on delicious with betrayal.of.trust involuntarily.being.tied.up involuntarily.being.shut.in.an.enclosed.space abduction involuntarily.being.held.down noncon/dubcon emotional.manipulation because those elements can be triggering to other people than me, and I thought someone might find the tags useful. I also commented on the fic annoucements with a greyed-out warning that the fic contained betrayal.of.trust involuntarily.being.tied.up involuntarily.being.shut.in.an.enclosed.space abduction involuntarily.being.held.down, I think. I no longer have the original comment. Now that might or might not be useful to other readers with similar triggers, but the fic was still bothering me. In an attempt to get it out of my subconscious, I wrote this entry which looks only at the triggering content, and which casts everything in the fic in a different light. It is a purely emotional reaction to triggering content, and not an attempt at a critical reading as some have assumed. It is a true and genuine reaction, but not the typical reaction or the reaction the author intended their readers to have. I welcome comments and discussion, but I will not put up with anyone harassing anyone else in my journal.]
The Ackles and the Padalecki family are good friends, and they introduce their two young sons, Jensen and Jared, to each other. Jensen does not want to go, and resists passively all the way to the remote cabin where the meeting takes place. Once there, he goes along with it so as not to hurt Jared's feelings.
The boys are brought together every summer. Jared seems oblivious to the arranged relationship, but Jensen is initially willing. One day they go walking in the forest surrounding the remote cabin, and get lost. This makes it clear that the cabin is indeed, very remote.
Jensen changes his mind about the arranged relationship when he learns that Jared has a girl friend. He's in college and living alone, and he cuts off all contact with the Padaleckis, and most of the contact with his own family. He refuses to spend his vacations with them, and screens his mail and calls.
Then Jensen's trusted friend and assistant goes behind his back and conspires with his family, to let his family know what his schedule is, and to make sure no one will miss him over the summer by clearing his schedule and telling his colleagues he's going on vacation.
Jensen's mom tells him he must come to the remote cabin, and he gets one chance to go voluntarily. Jensen refuses to go.
Jensen and Jared's brothers abduct Jensen, tie him up and shut him in the covered back of a pick-up truck and transport him to the remote cabin. Jensen's mom had arranged the whole thing, and is only angry that they didn't tie him up in the cab and put a seat-belt on him.
Everyone starts emotionally manipulating Jensen, and guilt-tripping him about cutting off contact. He can't avoid spending time alone with Jared. Jared is no longer oblivious to the arranged relationship, he very much wants it. Jared very much likes seeing Jensen hold a cute baby, Jared's nephew who looks as if he were Jared's son, and Jensen's sister tells Jensen that she will surrogate for him and Jared once they are together.
Jensen gets drunk, alone in a tee-pee with Jared (I don't know how he gets drunk, I was kind of reading between my fingers at this point), and when he wakes up, woozy and confused, Jared is forcibly holding him down, using a blanket and his body weight. Jensen very clearly says "Get off me", but Jared does not. Instead he symbolically consummates the arranged relationship with a kiss.
Scary, scary stuff. I especially found the idea of Jensen's support network outside of the family betraying and manipulating him viscerally horrifying. In the fic, Jensen is living alone and has a good career as a chiropractor, so there's no reason that he couldn't escape if he really wanted to, though it would mean saying goodbye to his family forever, except of course for the obvious reason that the relationship was arranged by the author and Jensen's family and his friend have only the vaguest of reasons within the text to act the way they do.
In real life, this sort of thing happens all the time, and the young people trying to escape arranged marriages, quite apart from the constant guilt-tripping and emotional manipulation, and the knowledge that people they trust may turn against them for their own good or for the honor of their family, don't have the resources to live independently in hiding. In western countries with laws that value individual rights over society's rights they can go to the authorities, if they can get away long enough. Then they just have to hope and pray no one discovers their plans before the can arrange their escape, and live in fear for the rest of their lives.
I find it very interesting and unexpected to read a fic written from the moral stand point of the betrayers/abusers, rather than the victim. The author presents it as a morally unambiguous romance:
The ending is happy, because once the relationship has been consummated and there is no escape, Jensen is "home again". The romance is "schmoopy". Someone is exhibiting "childishness" - is it Jensen for refusing to go to the cabin, both as a kid and as an adult, or is it the abduction which the brothers overdid in a childish way? I don't know, but "childishness and obliviousness too", by the way the two nouns are paired seems to indicate to me that the one who is childish is Jensen, since Jared is the one who is oblivious to his destiny for much of the fic.
I was scared and upset by the fic, though less so than I would have been had the author used canon characters or spent more time building up a relationship between Jensen and me, the reader. I firmly believe that an author should be absolutely free to write their metadata any way they please, with or without warnings, with or without details. And
juice817 did attach warnings to their fic, just representing a different, equally valid reading.
Normally, I would not have done or said anything, but after the warning debate I've been following and taking part in, I have carefully considered my reasons for considering warnings voluntary, and for not asking for warnings, and I have also carefully considered how warnings can be useful to others. Perhaps in a case such as this, where the author has no reason to consider their fic horrifying noncon but I do, it would be a service to others for me to warn them.
At first I bookmarked the fic on delicious.com, but then I also thought it might be a good idea to put a warning in a comment to the master post. Then I decided it would be more helpful in the link from the comm. I don't know. I went for a long ride to clear my mind, but the fic just kept eating at me. I hope writing this entry about it will have moved it out of my subconscious, so I don't have to deal with it emotionally or in my sleep over the next several days.
ETA June 2nd: my comment with warnings has been deleted. I don't understand why, since I had greyed them out, but perhaps they hurt the feelings of the author?
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[Edited to add, June 3rd. When I first read this fic, I came across some triggering content. I was upset, and went on a long ride to clear my head. I realized why some elements of the fic had disturbed me, and I tagged my bookmark of it on delicious with betrayal.of.trust involuntarily.being.tied.up involuntarily.being.shut.in.an.enclosed.space abduction involuntarily.being.held.down noncon/dubcon emotional.manipulation because those elements can be triggering to other people than me, and I thought someone might find the tags useful. I also commented on the fic annoucements with a greyed-out warning that the fic contained betrayal.of.trust involuntarily.being.tied.up involuntarily.being.shut.in.an.enclosed.space abduction involuntarily.being.held.down, I think. I no longer have the original comment. Now that might or might not be useful to other readers with similar triggers, but the fic was still bothering me. In an attempt to get it out of my subconscious, I wrote this entry which looks only at the triggering content, and which casts everything in the fic in a different light. It is a purely emotional reaction to triggering content, and not an attempt at a critical reading as some have assumed. It is a true and genuine reaction, but not the typical reaction or the reaction the author intended their readers to have. I welcome comments and discussion, but I will not put up with anyone harassing anyone else in my journal.]
The Ackles and the Padalecki family are good friends, and they introduce their two young sons, Jensen and Jared, to each other. Jensen does not want to go, and resists passively all the way to the remote cabin where the meeting takes place. Once there, he goes along with it so as not to hurt Jared's feelings.
The boys are brought together every summer. Jared seems oblivious to the arranged relationship, but Jensen is initially willing. One day they go walking in the forest surrounding the remote cabin, and get lost. This makes it clear that the cabin is indeed, very remote.
Jensen changes his mind about the arranged relationship when he learns that Jared has a girl friend. He's in college and living alone, and he cuts off all contact with the Padaleckis, and most of the contact with his own family. He refuses to spend his vacations with them, and screens his mail and calls.
Then Jensen's trusted friend and assistant goes behind his back and conspires with his family, to let his family know what his schedule is, and to make sure no one will miss him over the summer by clearing his schedule and telling his colleagues he's going on vacation.
Jensen's mom tells him he must come to the remote cabin, and he gets one chance to go voluntarily. Jensen refuses to go.
Jensen and Jared's brothers abduct Jensen, tie him up and shut him in the covered back of a pick-up truck and transport him to the remote cabin. Jensen's mom had arranged the whole thing, and is only angry that they didn't tie him up in the cab and put a seat-belt on him.
Everyone starts emotionally manipulating Jensen, and guilt-tripping him about cutting off contact. He can't avoid spending time alone with Jared. Jared is no longer oblivious to the arranged relationship, he very much wants it. Jared very much likes seeing Jensen hold a cute baby, Jared's nephew who looks as if he were Jared's son, and Jensen's sister tells Jensen that she will surrogate for him and Jared once they are together.
Jensen gets drunk, alone in a tee-pee with Jared (I don't know how he gets drunk, I was kind of reading between my fingers at this point), and when he wakes up, woozy and confused, Jared is forcibly holding him down, using a blanket and his body weight. Jensen very clearly says "Get off me", but Jared does not. Instead he symbolically consummates the arranged relationship with a kiss.
Scary, scary stuff. I especially found the idea of Jensen's support network outside of the family betraying and manipulating him viscerally horrifying. In the fic, Jensen is living alone and has a good career as a chiropractor, so there's no reason that he couldn't escape if he really wanted to, though it would mean saying goodbye to his family forever, except of course for the obvious reason that the relationship was arranged by the author and Jensen's family and his friend have only the vaguest of reasons within the text to act the way they do.
In real life, this sort of thing happens all the time, and the young people trying to escape arranged marriages, quite apart from the constant guilt-tripping and emotional manipulation, and the knowledge that people they trust may turn against them for their own good or for the honor of their family, don't have the resources to live independently in hiding. In western countries with laws that value individual rights over society's rights they can go to the authorities, if they can get away long enough. Then they just have to hope and pray no one discovers their plans before the can arrange their escape, and live in fear for the rest of their lives.
I find it very interesting and unexpected to read a fic written from the moral stand point of the betrayers/abusers, rather than the victim. The author presents it as a morally unambiguous romance:
"Warnings/Spoilers: Schmoop. Childishness and obliviousness too.
Summary: Jensen has been avoiding his former best friend Jared for nearly ten years, but with their moms being best friends too, it couldn't last forever. When Jensen is roped into a summer in the woods, he learns that things were maybe not what he'd thought way back when. And that maybe you really can go home again."
The ending is happy, because once the relationship has been consummated and there is no escape, Jensen is "home again". The romance is "schmoopy". Someone is exhibiting "childishness" - is it Jensen for refusing to go to the cabin, both as a kid and as an adult, or is it the abduction which the brothers overdid in a childish way? I don't know, but "childishness and obliviousness too", by the way the two nouns are paired seems to indicate to me that the one who is childish is Jensen, since Jared is the one who is oblivious to his destiny for much of the fic.
I was scared and upset by the fic, though less so than I would have been had the author used canon characters or spent more time building up a relationship between Jensen and me, the reader. I firmly believe that an author should be absolutely free to write their metadata any way they please, with or without warnings, with or without details. And
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Normally, I would not have done or said anything, but after the warning debate I've been following and taking part in, I have carefully considered my reasons for considering warnings voluntary, and for not asking for warnings, and I have also carefully considered how warnings can be useful to others. Perhaps in a case such as this, where the author has no reason to consider their fic horrifying noncon but I do, it would be a service to others for me to warn them.
At first I bookmarked the fic on delicious.com, but then I also thought it might be a good idea to put a warning in a comment to the master post. Then I decided it would be more helpful in the link from the comm. I don't know. I went for a long ride to clear my mind, but the fic just kept eating at me. I hope writing this entry about it will have moved it out of my subconscious, so I don't have to deal with it emotionally or in my sleep over the next several days.
ETA June 2nd: my comment with warnings has been deleted. I don't understand why, since I had greyed them out, but perhaps they hurt the feelings of the author?
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"I would have liked the story better if it had been genderfuck, I think. Jensen being a queer fangirl but not being into Daneel sexually was just confusing."
Could you please explain why it was confusing to you that a gay man was not sexually attracted to a woman? I ... I just don't get it.
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I felt that you had written Jensen beyond gender, with many of the qualities I associate with fangirls, that is women. Not being able to help seeing Jensen as a queer woman, rather than a queer man, it kept bringing me up short when he was so clearly attracted to men only.
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I am unsure whether you mean being in an arranged marriage - that certainly is a horrible situation to be in. A friend on mine has parents who keep pressuring her to marry the guy they've picked out. She's economically independent and has many friends who don't have anything to do with her family, but it's very painful to her to know that she might be forced to choose and she might not be allowed to see her sisters any more if she chooses to not get engaged to him.
Her parents or friends of them have also spread rumors about her in the Tamil community, which will serve as a foundation if they ever need to abduct her with anyone's help - they've told people that she's mentally unstable and sometimes invents things and doesn't know how to take care of herself.
As for the fic, ah well, it's only a fic. It's not actually about an arranged marriage - I thought that was apparent from what I had written, but some people had understood it as a critical reading. The fic is meant to be a piece of romantic fluff. There were certain elements in it that triggered me, and I needed to get them out of my head to deal with them. Dealt with, done ^_^
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I don't have friends who'll lay a guilt-trip on anyone for not enjoying something, but it did happen to me at work some time ago. We were invited on a wading trip, where we were supposed to wade through thigh-deep ocean water and enjoy the beautiful view. It did sound really awesome and like it would be a really beautiful experience, but I hate wading and don't have any appropriate clothes for it, so I declined the invitation, and some of my colleagues felt that I was ruining their fun by not taking part.
With this big bang, I've enjoyed a lot of the stories very much. I found this particular story pretty well-written, it just happened to trigger some stuff. I'm sorry that anyone would take that as a quality judgment or a moral judgment and be offended, because it was not my intent to offend anyone, but I'm not hurt or upset that strangers on the internet don't understand what I mean or agree with me. Perhaps I would feel differently if I had a sense of community with the big bang or Supernatural fandom, but I don't ^_^
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(Anonymous) 2009-07-02 11:48 pm (UTC)(link)The mod rightfully removed it. And, yes, I'm commenting anon because I'm friends with the author whose fic you just butchered because you didn't understand a single word of it or where it came from and I have no intention of bringing your warning-wanky attention on me.
I'm sorry for you, really, because you must live in a really, really scary world if something this schmoopy is enough to rattle you.
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(Anonymous) 2009-07-03 12:33 am (UTC)(link)You obviously didn't read the story you just critiqued, which is just rude and mean, just like all your backhanded compliments on your del.icio.us bookmarks. Slamming someone's hard work indirectly, and in a very public way where the authors can just stumble upon your comments? That's just lame. You have a problem with someone's story, you either shut up about it if you don't have anything constructive to say or you comment to them in a well-thought-out manner and then, maybe, your misguided assumptions can be put to rest.
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My comments on delicious are not intended to be backhanded compliments. The first ones I wrote were intended to be recommendations, but with in indication of what I thought of the fic, rather than just a summary which I don't find useful as a reader. This means I write both what I liked and what I didn't like.
Lately I've also started bookmarking fic with a mixture of reviews and warnings attached. Those bookmarks aren't compliments, they're just meant to be useful for readers to choose what to read.
I don't see any reason to write a well-thought-out letter of concrit to an author every time I read a fic which doesn't perfectly please me. I don't think it would help either them or me, and it certainly wouldn't help any reader on delicious looking for other people's reactions.
As for authors stumbling over reviews in public places: it's never fun getting a negative review. I have made it my own little rule to only bookmark NOT.A.RECs when a fic is either very long or very popular - "very" is a subjective judgment call, of course.
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You are kind to sympathize with my fear, but don't worry. I very rarely come across any references to people being tied up by friends and family, so it's not normally a problem for me.
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(Anonymous) 2009-07-02 11:55 pm (UTC)(link)I am completely surprised that something so fluff filled disturbed you in such a way. I'm confused as to how you assumed that spending summers together meant that they had an arranged marriage, and it's apparent to me that this misunderstanding at the beginning deeply, deeply affected the story.
It's should be obvious why the comment was removed. The warnings had nothing to do with the story whatsoever and if you had a problem with it, it is quite simple to contact the author with your concerns.
To think that you hurt the feeling of the author is rather big of you to assume that you have such power. You only confused the writer, who has made assumptions about the story.
Like the commenter said above me: You must live in a scary world where two families spending their summers together means arranged marriages.
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You are also right that my initial impression deeply affected my reading of the story. It was not the fact that they spent the summers together, or the fluff, that disturbed me. It was mostly the fact that the brothers tied Jensen up. It's sweet of you to worry for me, but you don't have to - I very rarely come across references to friends and family tying someone up.
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And yet that was basically what you were saying with your comment, that you were commenting to "say" that her warning information was wrong and you had no right whatsoever to do so. If you wanted to be least offensive, I would think the obvious route would be to message the author, since adding such warnings were completely uncalled for and were completely off the mark.
Tying Jensen up is what disturbed you? Many readers found the situation funny and I myself read the passage and was amused by it as well, as I found no indication whatsoever that it was a "betraying of trust". I highly doubt Jensen believed that being kidnapped by his family members who were concerned and wanting to speak to him would happen again in the future.
Have you ever read the Twilight book series or at least heard summaries of it? The story is written by a love-struck character and exclusively shows her own thoughts and contemplation.
While many readers find her POV as showing this girl has low self-esteem, etc, the author was very right in saying that it's a skewed perspective and not an entirely accurate interpretation of how the other characters are because it's her point of view and how she interprets things.
For example, her love interest, a vampire named Edward, is written as this perfect, wonderful character, yet this is not how Edward actually is, just Bella's view on her "true love".
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I don't think her warning was "wrong". I think her metadata did not in any way signal that the fic dealt with tying someone up. I think that the author has no interest in people who are upset by characters being tied up reading her fic. I think that if the author had chosen to indicate in the metadata that the fic contained scenes of tying someone up, that would have given a lot of weight to it, and skewed people's perceptions of the fic, and this might not be what the author desired. By writing my additional warnings in a comment, I thought the author could choose to modify her metadata or choose to ignore it as she pleased, but readers concerned about the possibility of characters being tied up could go through the comments and be forewarned.
I don't doubt that most people would find the passage amusing or cute. I for example like dogs, and often find them amusing and cute, but that doesn't mean some people aren't scared of dogs. The fact that I am scared of people tying friends and family up against their will does not mean that I think people who aren't scared of that are uncool or boring. I'm not trying to start a fashion trend, and I'm not going to mock anyone for not feeling the same.
I have not read the Twilight books, but some of my friends read the first one. They found it very entertaining, and quoted many passages of it for me. I've also seen an Edward/Buffy fanvid, and read a Supernatural/Twilight cross-over.
I like books where the author plays with character pov, and tells a bigger story than the pov character is aware of narrating. I really loved this aspect of the Harry Potter books, for instance.
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The majority of people reading this story do not have such triggers and rarely do I find slash fans "triggered" by being tied up in sexual encounters, which I find more serious than simply being forced to talk to your family.
I'm very sorry for you then that you seem to have gone through some trauma in your past that would instill such a fear or have has someone you cared about go through a similar situation. Perhaps you should've stopped reading if you were so frightened/disturbed by the content, as much of the slash out there contains light bondage (they are guys after all). I shudder to think how you would've felt if Jensen were a girl, as more people would find that situation more offensive.
I guess this means you shouldn't read the story that I'm writing!
May I suggest in the future that maybe you should stay away from slash and RPS until you familiarize yourself with fandom and most especially fandom etiquette.
All in all, to put it bluntly, I strongly suggest you move on and perhaps avoid fic from now on, as any material you find objectionable seems to bother you so much. If something as small as this situation frightens you so much… well good lord, how do you make it through Supernatural episodes? Sam tied up during Bad Day at Black Rock. Dean tied up in Hunted, not to mention Sam thrown in a cage in The Benders. Alistair being tortured in On the Head of a Pin…
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I don't know anything about how many people do or do not find it triggering to read about characters being tied up against their will by people they trust. I only know that I do.
Thank you for your sympathy and kind thoughts about my trauma and feelings. Unfortunately stopping cannot make me unread something I've already read. Thank you for warning me about your own fic, I will be sure to not read it.
Consensual bondage, whether sexual or not, is not triggering for me, and I have no problem reading about it. It's not only guys who enjoy bondage, but girls too.
You raise an interesting point about how I would have reacted if Jensen were a girl. I think you are right, that would have horrified me more, because it would have hit closer to home.
I am not bothered this much by all material I find objectionable. Some material merely annoys me, or turns me off, or offends me. My reaction to this fic was fear and horror.
I think the reason I did not respond the same way to the final episodes of season 4 is that the moral pov was different. Dean acted the way he did out of desperation, and he felt awful about it, and it turned out not to be a solution. I know that's not a satisfying explanation, but emotions aren't logical or 100% predictable.
You need not be so concerned about my mental health. I find that my joy of being in fandom and reading fic outweighs the unpleasant surprises.
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First, the warnings you listed do not apply in any way to the story I wrote. I'm frankly confused as to what story you read, because I do not recognize the fluffy love story I created in the tale of terror and subjugation you describe above. Clearly my understanding of the English language vastly differs from yours. (As a side note, I find it interesting that you would say here I firmly believe that an author should be absolutely free to write their metadata any way they please, with or without warnings, with or without details and yet you tried to add warnings to my story without any attempt to contact me first to discuss it.)
Second, I have the right to warn or not warn on my own story as I see fit. In addition, it is the policy of the mods of
Clearly, I cannot stop you from posting your completely skewed misinterpretation of my story in your own journal, nor can I prevent you from attaching erroneous and misleading tags to it on del.icio.us. But I can and will stop you from attaching those same misconceptions to the story itself, or any posts I make in any community about it.
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I am firmly in the warnings optional camp. I think asking you to add warnings in your metadata would be an unreasonable imposition given that warnings are optional in the comm. That's why I wrote my own warnings.
For those who haven't read my deleted comment, I did not warn that your fic had reminded me of forced, arranged marriages. That association would indeed not apply to your fic for anyone but me. I put the same warnings on it as I have put on the tags on delicious.
CRITICAL READING: YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG
Extrapolating feminist ideals from a homosexual romance story is not remotely a new concept, yet I can't help thinking that you probably should have bothered to actually read the text as presented first before making erroneous conclusions.
As one of the people who participated in the writing and beta process of this story as a sounding board and pseudo therapist, I'm still not sure you and I are even talking about the same story. As was pointed out above, the story is told exclusively from Jensen's point of view, and in your (radically incorrect) interpretaion, Jensen is the "victim" rather than the abuser. In addition, the part you specifically isolate as "scary, scary stuff" was incorrectly referenced, missing large chunks of context (Jensen had a few beers too many and went to Jared's tee pee on his own, where he drunkenly admitted his feelings before passing out. The following morning, Jared first checked that Jensen wasn't hungover - he wasn't - and then pinned him down to keep him from running and asked him to repeat what he had said the night before. It wasn't until after Jensen admitted his feelings that Jared kissed him, an action that was both consensual and welcome on Jensen's part.). The very context you so conveniently missed while you were supposedly reading through your fingers proves your statements false.
And, honestly, if you thought it was so horrifying, why on Earth did you keep reading?
But then again, you are entitled to your own interpretation of the story as you see fit, just as the author is entitled to present the story as she deems appropriate, without your ham-handed attempts to impose inappropriate warnings. Don't lay the horrors of your early childhood playdates/arranged marriage attempts by Machiavellian parental figures at the feet of this story, because they really do NOT belong there. If you're going to make a long critique on a story where you have taken something wildly different from the obviously intended message, you must support your statements with quotations not only from the story, but with reputable outside sources as well. Otherwise you accomplish little more than blowing hot air.
Re: CRITICAL READING: YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG
I have perhaps not made the purpose of my above post perfectly clear. It is not a critical reading of the text. I'll quote from above: "the fic just kept eating at me. I hope writing this entry about it will have moved it out of my subconscious, so I don't have to deal with it emotionally or in my sleep over the next several days."
Writing this horror version of the fic was my way of moving my subconscious associations out into the open, where I could deal analytically with them. And it helped, you'll perhaps be pleased to know.
You and I are not talking about the same story, except very tangentially. You are talking about the story the author wrote and which you helped betaread. I am talking about the scary and horrifying associations reading about Jensen's assistant going behind his back, Jensen and Jared's brother tying him up and putting him in the back of the pick-up, and Jared holding Jensen down raised in me. Turning them into a coherent story and seeing the original fic through a distorted mirror was my way of dealing analytically with the horror.
I kept reading the fic because I was hoping for resolution for the tension between Jensen and the others, and wondering how Jared would explain the "wedding invitation". I had already been upset, and judged that there wasn't very likely to be anything further of the same sort of triggering material.
I am unsure if I attempted to "impose" my warnings on the fic, or am "laying" my horrors "at the feet" of this fic. What does that mean, precisely?
I did write additional warnings, and I did comment on the fic entry with them, but that was in an attempt to provide the warnings to those that might find them useful without imposing them on the author. I suppose I can understand that my above entry has caused some confusion and raised eyebrows, being a purely emotional reaction written in a style as if it were a critical reading, but I'm afraid I still don't understand why the warnings I attached were seen as inaccurate.
Was it the word noncon? Because the going behind someone's back, being tied up, and being put in the back of the pick-up is addressed by the characters in the fic as problematical.
As for laying my horrors at the feet of this fic. I don't understand what you mean by that. I don't blame the fic for giving me any phobias or triggers - I had those before I read the fic. I don't blame the fic or author for mentioning things that are triggering to me, how would they have known? And even if they had known, why should they care? I do know that some people have the same triggers, and given that this fic does deal with being tied up etc. I don't think it's unreasonable for me to mention that it does.
Lastly, thank you for not being anonymous. I'm not at the computer all the time, but if I see anyone harassing you, I will delete their comments. I don't want any kind of harassment in my journal.
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I've got no problem with you being anti-warnings, that is your right, but to use
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I think when and how to warn is an author's own business. Warnings can be very useful for identifying fic to avoid, but ultimately no one can warn for every possible thing in every possible format. The author has to draw the line somewhere, and there is no obvious or natural choice of where to draw it. An author must do what she or he finds most reasonable, weighing both the hypothetical cost to the reader of not warning, and the cost to herself of warning - a cost which we the readers cannot know, and do not have the right to dismiss.
Some pro-warning people have advocated drawing the line at warning for dubcon/noncon, violent death and child abuse. One of their premises is that those three things are very likely to trigger at least one reader, given that they are common triggers. Another of their premises has been explicitly or implicitly stating that all other possible triggers are uncommon, irrelevant, inflated squicks or mentioning them are attempts at trolling or derailing with a slippery slope argument.
I think that is very unfortunate and counter-productive. Because many people are well-meaning enough to want to make a token effort to protect people with triggers, but don't care enough to educate themselves and make a real effort to warn where it might be needed. They fiercely cling to the false idea that warning for noncon/dubcon, violent death and child abuse is all that is reasonable, and that identifying noncon/dubcon, violent death and child abuse is simple and clear-cut.
The reality is that what constitutes noncon/dubcon is a large, fuzzy area, and one person's fluffy schmoop can be another person's horrifying noncon/dubcon.
Personally I believe that when someone says "no", that means they do not consent. When someone says nothing, that does not mean they consent, you will have to consider their actions and attitude to get a clue, and when in doubt, ask. When someone says "yes" under duress, that means they do not consent.
A violation does not have to be sexual to be a violation. Torture and mind-reading can also be violations. Rape is not about sex, it's about power. Medical and psychiatric treatment, as necessary as they might be for the person's own good, can also make a person feel utter helplessness and terror.
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I tried to watch "Runaway Bride," and only made it through a half hour of it because I was so disturbed by the way Julia Roberts's family and friends sold her out to Richard Gere, who they knew was there to write humiliating things about her. I got so upset about her being betrayed by her family that way, I started crying and ranting at the TV. My girlfriend offered to turn it off, but I went out to the kitchen to wash dishes so she could keep watching it.
It's a light, fluffy movie, right? That's what everybody says. But's like merangue on a slice of betrayal. Most people only see the merangue, and those of us who see the betrayal look a little nuts when we react to it.
And don't even get me started on "You've Got Mail." *g*
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I enjoy fiction where the main character learns a lesson about herself or about life, but that's not really what's going on in movies and books like that. I used to read a lot of cheap romance novels when I lived far from a library and had to read what my friend could lend me, and I noticed that the narration would often tell the reader that the heroine was brave, smart, independent and confident, but would show her to be intimidated, dumb, dependent and unsure of herself. She would normally turn away the advances of the romantic prospect, and no matter how sensible her reasons, this decision would be portrayed as bitchy, haughty, prejudiced or obsessed with a false image as a super-woman. Then the heroine would be humiliated either by the plot or the romantic prospect or both, and suitably humbled would gratefully give in to his advances, or even go begging him to forgive her and take her back.
In modern romantic movies, and maybe romance novels (I don't read them very often anymore) the role of humbling the heroine is taken over by friends and/or family who directly intervene to teach her a lesson, rather than her finding herself in a plot situation to show her that having a partner is useful. And telling the viewer that she is brave, smart, independent and confident has been de-emphasized, often making her straight up unlikeable in the script, though a charming and charismatic actress like Julia Roberts or Meg Ryan can soften this.
I wonder if this is supposed to appeal to women who don't identify with the heroine, but view her as competition for the romantic prospect?
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Lemon curd = more delicious than betrayal.
Meringue: best whipped with vinegar or corn starch? Cream of tartar is not an option.
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(Got here via-via while reading what I could find on warning-wank)
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