Pain and Suffering at the Hand of Slash Authors

Meta
Title:	Pain and Suffering at the Hands of Slash Authors (table of contents title), Extreme Angst in Slash (title on essay itself)
Creator:	Jane
Date(s):	2001
Medium:	online
Fandom:
Topic:
External Links:	online here; WebCite
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Pain and Suffering at the Hands of Slash Authors is an essay posted to Citizens Against Bad Slash by Jane.

It has the summary: "Who knew there were so many damaged characters?"

Excerpts

I have to admit that when I realized how many writers out there are writing slash containing rape and violence, and the intensity of what they are writing, I was a little uneasy. I'm not exactly sure why. I read a lot of fiction for pleasure that contains unspeakable deeds like rape, murder and torture, but it has never bothered me. Don't ask me why it bothers me that it's in the fan fiction community. Actually, I wouldn't say "bother" is the right word. I don't really have a problem with it. But it's something that I've turned over in my head a million times. What drives the writers to imagine such things, and what drives us to read it?

Slash is all about an alternate universe. The fun part about imagining characters together is that, in "reality" (or the closest variant of it), there is little chance that it will ever happen. If it does, there is little chance that we'll ever get to see it. So we twist the characters into the image that we create for them. Since it's an alternate universe, there's little repercussion for what the stories contain. Everyone knows it's make believe and no one is going to march into your office and show it to your boss. I think angst fiction may be a way of examining the horrors of real life, in all their bloody and tear-stained glory, while keeping it at arm's length. We can examine our thoughts and fears through the characters, reaching into the darkest parts of our imagination to think about how horrible it would be if it really happened while knowing that it's all pretend. I think it's a venting mechanism, in a way.

It does bother me, though, when I see rape being treated in an even remotely romantic way. You must know what I'm talking about. I've read stories that feature the aggressor in the relationship forcing sex on the submissive one as foreplay to an ongoing sexual relationship. I have also read stories where a character is raped and in the same beat, another character is lusting after him. We all know by now that rape has nothing to do with lust, or love, or even sex, really. Write like you know it and I won't have a problem with it. I think that if you're writing a story like this, you have more responsibility for its content than the average slash story. More than any fanfic, it requires reading it over carefully and judging its content by the rigid standards of not just you, but of a friend who will be brutally honest with you. Despite what the Jerry Falwells of the world will tell you, sex is not that disturbing. True, if you're 10 years old and come across a story with your favorite characters from Buffy The Vampire Slayer bumping uglies, it might confuse the hell out of you and have you asking your mother questions she never dreamed you would. But sex is natural and most of us have done it (and done it again, and done it again....). Rape, on the other hand, is a loose cannon. There could be survivors on your mailing list - people who have suffered the same acts that you're writing for thrills. The psyche of a survivor can be fragile, and the emotions he or she is feeling as easy to tip as a Weeble in the wind. You never know who these people are, and who is not disclosing the really huge shit that they're going through.

I also think that our writing has the potential to be more powerful than we believe it to be. Certain words suggest certain things. Mentioning two things within a few paragraphs of each other will make the mind unconsciously connect them. I think putting anything overtly lusty and sexual in the same story as an explicit rape and/or torture scene should be done with the utmost care. Otherwise it could come across as tasteless in the best case scenario, and damaging in the worst.