Using an erotic art form to write about 'serious' issues

[hmpf]

This started as a reply to this post, which I found via metafandom and which happened to partly address something I've been thinking about a bit recently. It quickly turned into this rambly essay thingie I really couldn't afford to write (I should have been doing university stuff). It's still very 'off the cuff', but realistically, I don't think I'll have the time to restructure and rewrite it; I need to get a move on with some uni stuff in the next couple of days, and that's unfortunately more important than meta. So I'll post it now, unfinished as it is.

This is interesting to me because I am currently writing - for the first time in all my years of writing fanfic - something I am intensely uncomfortable with, and my discomfort is largely related to what you address here:

You are not what you write. Yes, posting some of this stuff can make you feel exposed and nearly as uncomfortable as writing it. Yes, there are people who will confuse you with what you write. Yes, it sucks. It is also wrong.

Your stories are not you. They are not measurements of your morals, ethics, values, politics, sexual preferences or your worth as a person.

Yes, and no, in my case. Or rather, what makes me so frelling uncomfortable in the case of my current writing project is that it's just close enough to my usual kinks to still kind of 'work' for me on the kink level, at least in some parts. So, on some level, yes, that fic 'is' me, although not as completely as my other fics are. It takes the essence of my kink to an extreme I am not comfortable with, but the essence of my kink *is* still the essence of my kink.

And, it's fan fiction, which is almost by definition an outlet for the author's erotic fantasies. Of course that's not a comprehensive definition of fanfic; fanfic has more sides than that - but I think nobody can deny one of the strongest motivations for writing fanfic is erotic. Nearly all of my fics are gen, but I'll be the first to admit that my gen is often intensely erotic to me - I just happen to be turned on by things that are commonly classified as gen.

So, I can't really blame anyone all that much for confusing what I write about in that particular fic with what I find sexually arousing. What's more, parts of it probably *will* be sexually arousing to me, because the kind of psychological situation that I find erotically stimulating is going to be present in it.

Plus, the fact that *somehow* I feel I need to write this fic surely says *something* about me, even if it's not as straightforward as "this is who I am" or even just "this is what turns me on." I may not be my fic, but what can be inferred from it can still make me uncomfortable.

Some details, to perhaps make my discomfort a bit more understandable:

1.) My big kink is angst - the existential type. I write relentlessly dark stuff - but not usually in the sense of 'bad stuff happening'; rather, I usually latch onto bad stuff that happened in canon and explore the emotional consequences of that. In the past I've dealt, thanks to my angst-ridden fandoms and unfortunate favourite characters, with death, suicide, rape (mental and physical), torture (mental and physical), drug abuse, insanity - you name it, I've most likely written at least a little bit about it. And none of it was my doing; it was all 'prefabricated' for me by scriptwriters etc. Which, I guess, is part of why I never felt particularly uncomfortable writing about these issues, no matter how sensitive they were. If these things are present in canon, they're practically begging for someone to explore them.

2.) So what's different now? Do I suddenly feel the need to inflict horrible harm on my protagonist without any prompting from canon? Not exactly. Rather, my protagonist is dead in canon; dead by suicide. And I've decided to let him survive - and the method of his demise, combined with some other, also entirely canonical issues, makes it extremely unlikely that he'll do so without major permanent damage of various kinds.

So I'll be dealing with (probably severe) physical disabilities and possibly/probably some degree of mental impairment in a character that - let's be open about it - I find sexually attractive (in his undamaged, and also in a *slightly* damaged state, because for a hardcore angst fan, a certain amount of damage comes with the territory). And in this case, much as I like emotional turmoil and the aftermath/fallout of horrible events, there is something deeply troubling about that to me. Especially since here, I *did* have to make a conscious choice to 'do' this to him, to let him survive like this.

The main problem here, for me, is really that it's fan fiction - the fact that the form itself is so closely tied up with eroticism. And it's not just fanfic, but fanfic about a character I find hot. The strong erotic component feels wrong here somehow; it feels dangerously close to exploitation of an issue that should be treated more 'seriously'. (I'm putting the 'seriously' in quotation marks because I actually *do* believe that fanfic is capable of dealing 'seriously' with 'serious' issues. Still, this doesn't mean that there aren't some nasty pitfalls to beware of in writing fanfic about certain issues.)

I had a similar reaction, years ago, to a fic I read which used holocaust survivor's trauma as the main cause of its angst. It was - is - a very good fic, but there, like here, I had a gut reaction of "don't mix this subject with a strongly erotic form of writing!" It was a gen fic, but, being a fan of the central character *and* of angst there was, naturally, a certain erotic slant to my reading of the story - and, given that most of us have a thing for the characters we prefer to read about, I'd say that most readers probably come to fanfic with at least a partly 'erotic gaze'. So, writing fanfic about an issue almost inevitably eroticises the issue to some degree, in some ways. (Cue tangent on how eroticising doesn't necessarily imply a lack of respect etc. - that's a discussion for another day, possibly.)

I still feel compelled to attempt to write this story - not least because throughout the entire run of the source material, there was always an implication/suggestion of physical and mental harm, and the fact that it ended up not being addressed felt like a bit of a cop-out. I have to admit that part of the initial inspiration for this fic was a slight annoyance at the fandom's tendency to inflict all kinds of damage on the protagonist *except* for the most likely ones that were practically there in canon. But a large part of my desire to write the fic is now also rooted in a sincere wish to, well, move beyond my comfort zone and try to address a difficult issue in as adequate a way as I can.

But it still feels strange to do this in the form of fanfiction.

Comments

[fandom-me.livejournal.com]

I think I understand what you're saying, and I think I agree. There's a lot here to think about, and it's not something I've considered from quite that angle, but it *feels* right. Especially with the line between erotic and sex - a lot of what I find erotic isn't sex. I think I'll still cling to my line between what I write and who I am, though. Some of those things I do, to get to the point I want or the story I feel needs to be told, just aren't me. There's some of me in there, yeah, but there's probably at least as much that isn't. Or, something.

Thank you for taking the time to post this. I'm going to be re-reading and thinking about it for days.