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my writing sideblog, late20s, they/xe. icon and bg by me

[mas0chists-abstraction]

To be clear i have significantly more to say than what ive already said, I just kept it limited to just talking abt victims bc I know I can go off on a tangent easily. Cool if non-victims wanna write this shit, go for it, I just have standards

[lightnersdream-archive]

depiction isn't endorsement but not all depictions have the same merit

[lightnersdream-archive]

the more sensitive a subject is the harsher the criticism will be if you fuck it up. that's how this works

[mas0chists-abstraction]

I am beyond sick of rape victims being used as a moral cudgel for writers responsibilities when writing sexual assault. It is infantilizing and patronizing as fuck for every single person who is 'worried' abt rape in fiction affecting victims, like they're trying to protect us from the slightest reminder of our experiences when that isnt anyones responsibility but our own (we live in a world where it is very easy to look up just about any work). I say us because i am a victim. Here's the thing. 1 victims are people and we get to choose what to do with our experiences and that means BOTH being able to write the shit we've been through AND engage with content other ppl have made about things we've been through. 2 it always rings particularly hollow to me when ppl get so hung up abt fiction and protecting us that way bc in the real world, fiction is not and never will be the thing we need protection from. It rings as virtue signaling and I haven't met one person yet who defends victims from fiction who ALSO defends victims irl from actual danger or at the least stands with real victims publicly, not the strawman victim in these arguments.

Not all of us read for escapism, not all of us want comfy cozy content, and im sure you'll find there's a lot of us victims in the whump community who stay silent out of fear bc of this constant battering ram of perfect victimhood that other ppl who enjoy whump are utilizing against us. Bc thats what it is. Its reinforcing that the only true rape victims are the ones who are so scared and fragile that the mere mention of sexual assault is an attack on their wellbeing. Its infantilizing.

Additionally, it ignores some crucial shit about living with rape. Rape is dehumanizing and a vast majority of us stay silent. Fiction is easily the safest avenue for discussing rape with less of the real life consequences that occur for actually speaking up about the real rapes. You write fictional rape, you're not making accusations (dangerous), you're not subjecting yourself to retraumatization by police and investigations and court proceedings (extremely fucked up and violent), you're not subjecting yourself to the scrutiny of expressing the real rape. This is a space where you can freely say (or connect with) anything you want and that helps with living with rape, when the irl consequences are so high, from losing your loved ones to being stripped of community to total ostracization and demonization. Fiction allows you a voice in a world that Will destroy your life given the chance if you dare mention real rape. And the fact of the matter is, rape is part of life until we change the culture and even then it'll still occur. People are more than allowed to discuss, make, and engage with that content and it is no one else's responsibility to dictate what a rape victim does with their own experiences. It isnt protection to say writers shouldn't write rape because 'think of the victims and their triggers', its censorship plain and simple. You are adding to the silencing of rape culture if you take away the safest avenue for discussing this shit when we are already largely and effectively silenced in ways that do keep us firmly in harms way.

All that to say victims are people, not little rhetorical tools for silencing ppl from writing content you find uncomfortable. Have the decency to discuss the actual harms of rape before you point to fiction being the problem. Its performative af and I'd much rather we actually deal with real rape problems thank you. Its our pain, we get to do what we want with it. And sure, some people DO avoid rape content. But not all of us. Personally, I go for rape media and write it when I need comfort and connection as opposed to traditional escapism bc I find more comfort in looking the problem in the face and stuff that talks abt how it affects you than pretending it isn't real or didnt happen. To each their own and thats the point.

[victimeyez]

It’s funny to me when people will gladly write out brutal torture, and understand that fiction is not the same thing as reality, but absolutely baulk at any kind of sexual violence being included in fiction.

Like yeah I’ll write my little guy being skinned alive in agonizing detail but NONCON NUDITY???? YOU’RE A REAL SICK FUCK THAT’S TAKING IT TOO FAR. THE PANTS STAY ON FOR THE SKINNING!!!

It’s interesting to see where that line is for people. I can absolutely sympathize with feeling like sexual violence is more deeply violating in a way that’s difficult to explain. If you’re uncomfortable with reading it, that’s absolutely valid!

What’s odd to me though is how people will be fully on board in understanding that writing violence doesn’t mean you would support those actions in real life, but as soon as sex is introduced, then you’re a bad person for writing it and surely must support it in real life. There are whump writers here who go out of their way to shun noncon whump writers and protest noncon whump with everything they do, that’s how much they hate it.

A lot of those same people like all the chapters of my noncon whump as they read it. They keep their likes private so no one notices, and often unlike it once they are done reading. People who are very publicly against noncon whump without anyone’s prompting, even people who base their entire presence in the whump community as morally objectionable to any noncon whump. Why do they do this to themselves?

Where is the line of acceptability? Why does that line symbolize a crossover into pure moral objectivity? What explanations and defenses for enjoying whump exist that can’t be applied in the exact same way to noncon whump? Why is this fiction okay, but this other fiction isn’t?

I think back on a bit from The Body of Christopher Creed where the main character puzzles over the depictions of Jesus being crucified. Here is a horrific image, of a body left on display after being tortured to death in a way that many criminals were. Normalized in art, in jewelry, in stained glass, in statues too numerous to begin counting. It’s deemed appropriate to see this violence on display in public all around the world where Christianity has invaded.

Typically, you can see the wounds in his hands and his feet. And the stab wound under his breast. And the crown of thorns on his head. Sometimes, depending on the detail, the lines in his back from where he was whipped. But you know what? Jesus, as well as all the other criminals subjected to crucifixion, was crucified naked. Yet the depictions of him, time and time again, show his genitals covered - by loincloth, leaves, or smoothed over like a Ken doll.

Why is violence more acceptable to depict than nudity? Normal, nonsexual nudity. Everyone has some form of genitalia. Not everyone has a mortal wound. Violence is more appropriate to be displayed in public and in church, than natural human anatomy. Why is that? I know it seems a long extrapolation from being against noncon whump, but the concept I’m pressing on here is how depictions of grievous violence can be considered appropriate while nudity and sex are deemed inappropriate.

There’s a funny line that humans draw there. Is there a real moral reasoning behind it? Or is it based on feelings? Where do people in the whump community stand on the political censorship of sexual content, consensual or not, as a wave of online censorship comes down the pipeline in so many countries? Should whump be censored? Should noncon whump be censored? How can someone justify censorship of noncon whump, but not other violent whump?

I don’t know. Just musing. Thoughts welcome, but if you’re just going to try to tell me off, save yourself the effort. I don’t feel a need to defend myself, I just think it’s interesting how divided the community is on it, for one taboo subject vs another.

[yourhonortortureiscool]

Yeah so I get what you’re saying, and honestly I agree with a lot of it – especially the part about how weird it is that people will cheerfully consume extreme gore and torture and not bat an eye, but freak out the moment sex or nudity comes into the picture. The Jesus example was actually really spot on, like people have been desensitised to public displays of violence but not to even normal non-sexual nudity.

But I also feel like the issue with noncon whump specifically isn't always just about what’s being written, but how it’s presented- like yeah I like noncon scenes too, sometimes as a dark literary exercise or to explore control/power dynamics in fiction – but I’m also really aware that a lot of media (especially dark romance or young adult stuff) has a really disturbing trend of romanticising or even normalising abuse, especially noncon. and that can get messy, especially when it’s not tagged clearly or when it’s portrayed as like “he hurt her because he loves her” which… yeah - not great.

And if someone’s got a big following or a lot of influence, I think there’s a bit of responsibility that comes with that? like even if you’re writing dark stuff, you can still be mindful of the framing. -Because no matter how much we might read noncon whump with a full understanding that it’s fiction and not real, there might be younger people reading it too – people who haven’t developed that critical lens yet. -like I wouldn’t want my younger cousins or my juniors in college reading something I wrote and thinking “oh, this is normal” just because I didn’t frame it clearly or tag it properly. no one’s doing that on purpose obviously, but it happens unconsciously a lot more than people realise.

Also I think another part of it is just the reality of how many people in the world go through sexual assault or harassment daily. like if you look at the stats (you can literally pick any country and the numbers are horrific), sexual violence is everywhere. most of us probably know someone who’s gone through it. and for a lot of people, fiction is a safe space – something they use to escape the stuff they’re dealing with in real life. so when they come across noncon stuff (even when it's tagged), it can feel like a punch to the gut because it's not just “fiction” for them – it's way too real.

Like for me personally, I find it really hard to write female whumpees in general (not just in the case of noncon) because I come from a cultural background where abuse against women is so normalised that it stops feeling like fiction. like I know too many women – aunties, classmates, domestic workers – who’ve been through some version of what I’d be writing. so when I do write whump, I end up writing mostly male characters because that extra distance helps me separate reality from fiction. writing a female whumpee feels like I’m writing someone's lived experience and that just hits way too close to home.

So like – skinning someone alive? as gruesome as that is, most of us don’t know anyone who’s actually experienced that. but sexual assault? most of us do know someone. or we are that someone. and I think that changes how we interact with certain types of fiction.

That said, I’m not really a fan of censorship either. I think people should be allowed to write what they want – but with appropriate trigger warnings, clear tagging, and an awareness of context. like it doesn’t mean you can’t explore dark stuff, but just be mindful of the impact. people can choose what they want to read – but only if they know what they’re walking into.

So yeah – I don’t think there’s one right answer here, and I appreciate you opening up the space to actually talk about it. these convos are messy and uncomfortable but I think they’re important.

[victimeyez]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. There’s some ways that I think we still disagree, and here is a ramble about some more thoughts I had on some of your and others points.

I’m well aware of the statistics for sexual assault. I’m also well aware of how vastly underreported it is; an enormous extra pool of people of which I am part. Does that mean that people shouldn’t be allowed to write about it, because it’s a real problem? That is censorship. And it’s a tough subject, but ultimately I do not believe that people should not be able to explore real life problems, no matter how sensitive, in their fiction. I think we largely agree on this.

I’m not sure what you’re suggesting when it comes to age restrictions and framing. You’re not the first person I’ve heard suggest these things, but it seems to me that it comes down to a belief that writers have a responsibility for how people interpret their work. I don’t think that is a reasonable expectation, and believe that readers have a personal responsibility for their opinions and actions.

What constitutes a large following? As soon as we start talking about requirements, it gets complicated. I get the sentiment of what you’re saying, but if people have more or less responsibility depending on their following, there has to be an exact number chosen for where it tips over, and I don’t think that’s practical in this situation. This is especially hard since you can’t know exactly how many people read it, only how many people like or comment.

I tag my works, both in tumblr tags and at the top of my chapters to help steer people from reading content that I know could be upsetting. I think offering content warnings on sensitive media is a nice thing to do, but I do not believe that it should be required.

My big questions is, why should readers be immune to any form of personal responsibility? I think it’s part of a larger problem with the way cancel culture has evolved. There is a big difference behind boycotting films with Woody Allen, well known sexual abuser, and #canceling an author that wrote about content that you find icky. But there’s a culture of people who claim they are being victimized just by being exposed to dark content that they chose to engage with.

It is not uncommon for me to come across content that makes me uncomfortable or upsets me. Ironically, I’m a very sensitive person. And it is my personal responsibility to make good choices about what I watch and read. No one else’s. No one has to check with me to see if I’m personally okay with something before they put it in a book or a movie.

You can stop reading at any time. Yeah, you’ll be surprised by things that can be upsetting or triggering sometimes. Even on tagged and CW’d works, there could be content that isn’t tagged that could bother you for one reason or another. There is simply no way to ensure that you will never come across upsetting content, and frankly, I don’t think it would be good to wall yourself off from anything that could be sensitive. Part of personal responsibility is to make good decisions for yourself, even when faced with challenging content.

Suggesting that creators take the responsibility for any and all interpretations of their work is ludicrous. I think we need to stop entertaining it. It’s impossible to safeguard against any possible bad faith readings, and why should you have to? Should every book and program start with a disclaimer that morally objectionable things will happen in the story? Every story has some form of conflict. Not everything has to be kid friendly! A big part of the censorship movement insists that all things should be!

It is not the writers responsibility if someone misinterprets a character’s choices to be good when they were intended to explore the character’s bad decisions. I understand where you’re coming from with this, because I personally hate 50 Shades of Grey for the romanticization of an abusive relationship. But I also don’t think that a writer 1. Has to be an expert on healthy relationships and 2. Has a responsibility to only depict them. If a man abused a woman the way Christian Grey does because he read it in the book, that doesn’t mean that the author is responsible for his actions. He is.

I think people also tend to hold tiny indie writers to way higher standards than they would ever hold popular media. For example, James Bond is a very popular film franchise, seen by millions. In Casino Royale, La Chiffre tortures James Bond by tying him naked to a chair with the seat cut out and whipping his balls. Millions of people have seen this movie! Does that mean the people who made the movie should be held responsible if someone decided to reenact this and hurt someone? If that’s an easy no, then why should small indie writers be held to far higher standards?

I’m continuously surprised that the whump community clutches pearls the same way helicopter parents did when some teens try to carjack someone and blamed it on playing Grand Theft Auto. I think people get abstract ideas about the morality without comparing it to real life situations that help ground these conversations in reality.

How many disclaimers is someone required to give before they can write about sensitive topics? My story has zero healthy relationships, and I think that I make it obvious that they’re bad, but I can’t guarantee that everyone who could read it would understand that. It is a tricky conversation because I do think that people can carry responsibility for the messages they put out, but it does not seem reasonable to place all of the responsibility on them.

[mas0chists-abstraction]

Well at least I can calm down now that I know ive been struggling to write for the last year and a half for mostly medical and fucked life situation reasons. I am hopeful that once I go off my antipsychotics, manage my 2 dysautonomias, get thru the worst of the traumaversary season, and get my bonegraft surgery done, I'll feel much better emotionally and physically. Idk how to manage the bipolar but the way ive been treating it is clearly not the solution. The family deaths are behind me, my partner is much better since their near death experience, and the current problems are manageable to a degree. I've gotten a lot of medical shit either managed or starting to be managed

I honestly was thinking i was exaggerating my pain for the last year and a half and assuming I just wasnt trying hard enough, not that I was severely sick. I was also far more focused on my partner than myself. Now the issue is the serotonin enforced depression (ive taken enough psych meds now to know for a fact anything that acts on serotonin makes me very anhedonic and much worse emotionally) and trying to manage my ptsd for the next few months of traumaversary season doing one of my lifelong worst fears simultaneously (the bonegraft redo) and managing 2021s shit (and i cant plan for it this year bc the fucker died so idk how those weeks will affect me now)

[mas0chists-abstraction]

Im really upset. I keep getting scene ideas but I cant expand them more than a single sentence rn

[mas0chists-abstraction]

Making that one tiny decision cleared so much gunk out of my brain, esp the pressure to capitulate to an audience and taste i do not respect. The story functions now bc i decided fuck it, this character would not say a goddamn word and idc that ppl dislike 'lack of communication' plots when it is the only thing that makes sense here and this isn't contrived, it is so character and context dependent in both directions and drives the entire damn conflict. Which is Always about conflicting traumas and how they navigate it, not relationship drama for the sake of it.

[twoboyarmyy]

gul dukat's fetishization of bajoran women and constant sexual harassment of kira has to be one of the smartest and realest but also most disturbing plot elements in all of ds9

[mas0chists-abstraction]

With all of the big name cases of known abusers and rapists getting off the hook and their victims getting dragged through the mud, I have got to stop doubting this project bc I started writing this before any of these happened.

[mortalityplays]

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

[teaandcrowns]

Preserving previous' tags because firelxdykatara also makes excellent additions in them

[loumandivorce]

there will be a show with two guys in a fucked up power dynamic that is the core of their relationship and all the posts will be like "i love them but i hate the power dynamic" and all the fic is like "what if there was no power dynamic" or "what if the power dynamic was switched". like okay actually i think the imbalance is fun and awesome. anyone else

[chronicallydragons]

Anyone else with chronic pain ever get really absorbed in a project and dissociate from your body while you're working but then you finish and you come back to your body and you're just like AAAAAAAHHH! WHAT'S WRONG?? oh yeah. The horrors. Never mind

[mas0chists-abstraction]

I figured out the anxiety. It is a combo btwn conflicting thought processes as an audhd person + impostor syndrome + fears of being misunderstood (built by years of being misunderstood no matter the medium and feeling like im misunderstood purely bc its me). Also I realized that this is actually in a way using far more poetry structure and devices than normal prose, like THATS what the plot structure actually is. Mirrors and contrasts, not anything else.

[adamtotscomix]

[simonsays-no]

Junji Ito vibes in the plot

[lthrboy]

Might wanna check your garden. That thing must've been growing for A While. Now would be a great time to call the roto rooter.

[oceancentury]

Figure (1970) by Nancy Grossman.

[mas0chists-abstraction]

Im definitely going thru a thing of second guessing my understanding of what my characters are going thru bc my experiences are just different enough (as was the goal and necessary to pull this off) to make me feel like a fraud. Like yeah I know abuse but like... not These Exact Flavors (bc some is impossible). It is the trying to translate and mesh that mix of real and fictional experiences and perspectives together seamlessly that is sticking me up.

[valtsv]

real sadists understand that you can torture The Character simply by forcing them to live with themself