One of the problems with writing romance--not just for slashers, but for all storytellers, period--is that the sexiness comes from overstepping boundaries.
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| Title: | One of the problems with writing romance--not just for slashers, but for all storytellers, period--is that the sexiness comes from overstepping boundaries. |
| Creator: | Cesperanza |
| Date(s): | December 3, 2000, then September 9, 2003 |
| Medium: | mailing list post, then LJ post |
| Fandom: | multifandom, slash |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | One of the problems with writing romance--not just for slashers, but for all storytellers, period--is that the sexiness comes from overstepping boundaries., Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
One of the problems with writing romance--not just for slashers, but for all storytellers, period--is that the sexiness comes from overstepping boundaries. is a post by Cesperanza.
Cesperanza posted it to the Prospect-L mailing list on December 3, 2000 and reposted to Live Journal on September 2003.
Some Topics Discussed
- slash, fanfiction, and fan-created obstacles
- rape as a plot device
- yaoi
The Post
One of the problems with writing romance--not just for slashers, but for all storytellers, period--is that the sexiness comes from overstepping boundaries. In the past, there were so *many* goddammed boundaries that romance was a snap.
"You can't love him! He's _______!"
- a) below you socially--he's beneath you!
- b) above you, socially--way out of your range!
- c) not your religion!
- d) not your race! or nationality!
- e) not your age!--too old! --too young!
- f) dying of a tragic disease!
- g) about to emigrate to Australia! has to stay in Casablanca! but we'll always have Paris!
- h) already married!
- i) your priest, rabbi, therapist! or President of the United States!
- j) a rogue, scoundral [sic], man with a reputation! (President of the United States! )
- k) a man! and you're a man! and I'm not that kind of guy!
- l) dead! (Though we can still do ceramics together, or travel back in time a la the Terminator, or...)
- m) other _________
Now, slash sort of turns on-- k) a man! and you're a man!-- but frankly, it's now, like most of the rest of the list, become kind of no big deal. Great--so he's a man and you're a man....yawn. Look at how the media's managing it--you've got, say, Dharma and Greg (He's conservative! And you're a hippie!) or the movie Notting Hill (She's a movie star and you're a nobody!) but face it, we're all floundering here for one damn good reason why person A *shouldn't* fuck person B. (I seem to remember some film where it turned out that the guy had killed the girl's lover some time before--but as I recall they got over that, too. Whoops! Sorry, honey!)
Anyway, all this to say that sometimes it seems to me that rape is used as a pretty blatant sort of plot device to keep two guys apart who otherwise would probably just fuck already. So you insert some huge, brutalizing sexual trauma and delay climax for 150 pages while they recover. Certainly, this sort of takes you back to romantic square zero--"Hey, normally I'd just fuck you, but now I can't stand having anyone within two feet of me. Would you please step back behind the yellow line? Thanks."--but somehow it sort of creeps me out when its this kind of blatant excuse, and I'm not sure I could even explain why. Somehow it makes the rape lose whatever integrity it has as either a dramatic trauma or as a kink.
Excerpts from the Comments (Live Journal)
[some_stars]:yes! YES! exactly! Oh my lord, that is so exactly what's been driving me insane this past--gah. year as I grow gradually more and more disaffected with fanfic. There never seems to be any REASON for all the angst and wibbling.
Original fic doesn't give me this trouble because you can concoct all sorts of exciting and plausible plot reasons, but with fanfic...there's always this hovering mist of propriety, and it just comes out of nowhere in particular and sits there, oppressing things. "I can't fuck him! I *know* him!" Eh.
although discovering a fandom set in the present day U.S. military does help with this problem!
[marycrawford]:Thanks for posting this. I never thought about it in precisely this way, but I think you're right. And I realize that I don't like rape used in this hey-let's-keep-them-apart fashion either. (And not only because there's usually a side order of feminization for the victim.)
I love your analysis of the motivations for romance. It's funny how we all seem to want to read and/or write about first times and first times only. There's a few variations that crop up again and again in fanfic:
- m) an alien! (Who only has sex once in seven years!)
- n) from a parallel world!
- o) undercover!
- p) your commanding officer! (or: your subordinate!)
- q) under a spell!
- r) your brother!
[cathexys]:Great post! Love the list (esp. the texts it evokes :-)
I've always thought of other external inequalities and impossibilities (age, subordinates, partners, enemies,...) in these terms, but you're totally right...if none of these exist (or to make things that much worse), rape is perfect. (As is the ever popular sexual childhood trauma that has laid repressed for years...)
Still, there is something to rape fic, to the torturing of your favorite character, the humiliating and the complete stripping of their emotional and psychological defenses that seems to work on a kink level that goes even beyond what you've described (esp. when we get the rape/sexual abuse/sexual torture in long and explicit details...)
[forked]:Still, there is something to rape fic, to the torturing of your favorite character, the humiliating and the complete stripping of their emotional and psychological defenses that seems to work on a kink level that goes even beyond what you've described (esp. when we get the rape/sexual abuse/sexual torture in long and explicit details...)
Yep, this is a big kink of mine (depending on how it's done), and I think it often falls outside of the more typical 'rape fic used as a basis for h/c', which focuses on the 'comfort' end of things and where rape is used as the 'thing' that comes between the OTP. I'm not overly fond of h/c or the romance genre, but I love what I think of as 'hurt until you bleed/hurt some more/suck it up and overcome because you are a complete and utter freak incapable of breaking even if you wanted to'.
That's really a qualitatively different use of rape and I see it used more as an exploration of the character than an impediment to true love. Kitty Fisher's Freak is a nice example in Smallville and there were quite a few of these in X-Files (my favorite being the 'Fox and Hound' series, which didn't include rape, just sadistic torture). I think this use of rape is more rare than the typical h/c and it may or may not handle the issue of rape any better, but it's got a very different feel to it.
[yahtzee63]:IMHO, while overstepping boundaries certainly is one way to create sexiness, it's not the only way. And when we are finally in a cultural place where there are virtually no boundaries -- certainly, in fanfic, I cannot think of ANY sexual pairing, grouping or act that doesn't have its fans, and if there is one, don't tell me -- it's time to start looking at other ways of creating sexiness.
Rape is a created boundary, as you say, and while there are apparently those who really get off on seeing a character be humiliated and broken-down, there are those who are not. Also, it seems to me, that rape victims in fic generally live out the worst-case scenario of reactions to rape; not every human being who suffers through this reacts the same way, but you wouldn't know it from fic. (I remember reading an essay by a woman who had been raped and later was dumped by her boyfriend. Why? He felt she wasn't troubled enough. Because she could cope with the pain, he was convinced something was wrong with her.) I feel like it tends to hypervictimize people and more or less ignore the idea of individual endurance. Why? Because your woobie's love can't make you all better, not if you can do it yourself.
The best fictional boundaries are the ones that are between people as individuals, because of who they are, not what was done to them. In the book I consider the prototype of modern romance, Pride and Prejudice, there is a minor social gap between Darcy and Elizabeth, one that makes their marriage unlikely but not -- even in the eyes of snobbish Darcy -- impossible. But the boundary, and the sexiness, arises from the fact that they are such different individuals, that they have different opinions, different ways of thinking and different ways of communicating. They are more divided after he's proposed to her than before.
But, again -- why boundaries? Is there really no sexual or emotional connection worth considering besides the first time? Is there no way to write the stories of people who are together as lovers but have edge as human beings? Popular culture seems to say no, but I think popular culture is wrong, and I am tired beyond exhaustion of the way that fanfic tries to describe itself as "countercultural" and then slavishly copies the dictates of pop culture, over and over and over.
But then, you knew all this.
{{Quotation2|[executrix]: In the immortal words of Samuel Goldwyn, "There's only one story...a delayed fuck," but I agree that it's inappropriate to use something as serious as rape in such a trivial manner. Another useful movie adage is that you should never have the leads fuck in the first reel, because then the story has no place to go.
Oh, and BTW not everybody insists on or even likes First Time stories--I'm much more interested in stories about (in my case, a rather ill-assorted) couple trying to keep it together.
[littlesammy]: My theory? It's partly the curse of anime fandom and the unusual amount of young writers yaoi / shonen ai attracts. A lot of the images lately used in fanfic I have seen in manga and anime before - the blood, the sweat, intense looks, and rape, finally (sadly a very common thing in said genre).
- [basking_lizard]: I tend to avoid yaoi for exactly that reason. I find it all about the torture, which is the same thing that often turned me off about XF fic - a lot of it seemed to be all about character torture, which is fine in small amounts but gets awful very quickly if poorly done.
- [littlesammy]: I tend to avoid yaoi for exactly that reason.
- Me, too, though I have a few reasons more why I don't get into it. There's the girlish-looking guys (which can be fun once in a while, but hey, if I want to lust after a man, I want a *man*!) and - most important - the total lack of anything subtle. Every image (in the literal and the descriptive way) gives us exactly what the author wants us to see. There's no good ol' UST except for what is planned by the author, and that will eventually lead up to a *destructive* relationship. Naaaaw, fiction for that just holds no interest for me. I need the looks, the touches, the subtleties that even the actors aren't aware of themselves. That, I can work with. ;)