Consentfest Pimping

[fleete]

Suits fandom has grown up enough to have badfic.  Which is fine, of course.  You have to practice writing in order to get better at it.  The problem is that Suits fandom is very, very big on power issues, possessiveness, BDSM, h/c, and those things in combination with new or less aware writers means lots of triggery consent issues.  I just read/

Comments

[mskatej]

You have to practice writing in order to get better at it.

LOL. I don't know why that sentence made me laugh but it did.

I've gotten to the point where I avoid all H/C in Suits fandom on principle, unless I trust the author. Although that's less about the consent issue and more about having lost all interest in seeing Mike suffer horribly just so Harvey can heal him with his magical penis. Why is that such a popular theme in this fandom??

I think the problem with a lot of bdsm in this fandom is that it's being written by authors who don't know anything about it other than what they've 'learned' from other fanfic writers. So it doesn't surprise me that the consent issue isn't properly understood by those authors. I just wish more writers would ask about this stuff, or, I guess, *care* about it at all. Research is not your enemy, authors! I really enjoy stories that address consent issues in interesting ways (I'm a big fan of dubcon, and I enjoy noncon occasionally too), but only when the author is aware of exactly what they're doing.

The story I'm writing at the moment has a discipline scene in it that could possibly be read as dubcon (which I'm fine with in this case! ;)), and although I'm a long way from finishing/posting, I'm already thinking about the best way to warn readers about it: on the one hand I don't want to trigger anyone and on the other I don't want to spoil anyone - so I'm leaning towards putting the warning in a note at the end of the story. :)

[fleete]

Mike suffers horribly just so Harvey can heal him with his magical penis

You're so right. I mean, h/c is always a popular trope, especially in canons with power imbalances (I'm thinking of Merlin, for instance: lots of it.), but it's somehow especially prevalent in Suits fandom. *shrugs* I wondered if it was just Mike's precious, woobie face, but I think it has at least as much to do with natural Dom component of Harvey's character. Hmmm...

And yeah, research is key. Maybe it seems daunting to people to find credible outside resources on BDSM, but it's so necessary! And the wonderful thing is that that greater level of detail tends to come across in the form of better writing and more sympathetic characters. Or at least, that's been my experience in reading those kind of fics.

Also, that seems like a great way to deal with an in-between kind of dub-con situation: do a warning at the end, and have a note at the top that says something like, "Click for an end note about spoilery but mild warnings" or something similar. Everybody's happy!