Meditation on the Ethics of NC-17 HP FanFic

[rhetoretician]

This may be a little provocative...

First, two personal notes:  (1)  I have no objection to reading erotica generally (no matter how explicit), although (a) I think that Porn Without Plot is generally a waste of time, and (b) brutality and cruelty is always a turn-off for me.  (2) I probably never will write anything NC-17 myself, in any genre,

Comments

[bandcandy]

This is about my latest chapter, isn't it?

I also was not aware that she'd made this stipulation; it makes me feel even more self-conscious about writing the scenes that I have than I did before (although they're a far cry from NC-17 I do think they're firmly planted in R territory). Given the things that I was reading at 12 (The Mists of Avalon being the first of many novels with sexually explicit or implied scenes) with my parents' encouragement and approval I guess I have a more liberal view of what's "appropriate for children" than most folks. My parents' philosophy and the one I will use with Meg is basically that if you're mature enough to understand the concepts in context, you're probably mature enough to be reading the material (of course barring deviant sexual behavior descriptions, which are a whole other kettle of fish).

I can certainly tell from JKR's writing where she considers the line to be, and I know that I've crossed it with my fanfiction. I'm not really sure how to feel about that, in the context of what you've brought up. I respect Rowling as an author and as a creator of this wonderful universe in which we all play, but I'm not sure that it's disrespectful to write things with her characters that go beyond what she herself is comfortable with. What I ask myself when writing something is, does it contribute to the story and what I'm trying to convey? Since the main theme of my story, if it could be said to have one, is the growing intimacy between Harry and Ginny and what that means in terms of "the power the Dark Lord knows not," I feel that when you've got a 16-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy who are becoming more and more intimate emotionally that sexual activity is an integral part of that, regardless of what the morality police would like us to think.

I feel that if you're going to deviate very much from canon in your portrayal of characters then you should just write original fiction - what's the point of calling your character "Harry" if he doesn't talk, act, or think anything like the Harry we've come to know over the course of six books? My feelings about "adult" material in the Harry Potter universe are pretty similar - as long as it's a natural extension of the characters' canon behavior I don't think it's disrespectful. I saw a Harry/Ron explicit comic by Really Corking the other day, and despite the fact that I really like her art I was pretty annoyed by it because I felt that what she had the two characters doing was not in line with anything we know about either of them. Her depictions of Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione, on the other hand, despite their being just as graphic, don't bother me at all because they're in line with what Jo has told us about those relationships and it's logical to deduce that they would engage in that sort of behavior eventually even if it's not something Jo herself would tell us about.

[bandcandy]

Darn it - I had fake HTML tags jokingly labeling that first statement as paranoid ego but apparently LJ interprets anything inside that sort of bracket as valid HTML and discards it if it's not. So please consider that first line tongue-in-cheek.

[rhetoretician]

*Smacks forehead* I sometimes astonish even myself with my own stupidity. Get this: At the same time I was feeling guilty about writing this entry rather than doing my beta-work on your chapter, I was also sending an e-mail to someone else reassuring him that the entry wasn't a personal attack. And I didn't put the two together. But I do see your comment below about the remark's being tongue-in-cheek, and of course you know that the whole time we were IM-talking about the sex aspect of the chapter I didn't once raise this issue, so it'd be pretty low of me to bring it up here.

I think your response is very perceptive and thoughtful. That is, saying that the original author's wishes are entitled to respect doesn't end the inquiry, because we still have to work out what "respect" means in this context.

If this were a simpler case, the arguments would be simpler. Let's say Joia owns a truck, and I ask her whether I can borrow it for a few weeks. She says yes, because we're pals, but she also reminds me that she's a conservative Republican and hopes that I won't use her truck to help any liberal Democrats. While I'm using the truck, one of my favorite candidates (way past merely "liberal," let's say) needs someone to haul leaflets for his campaign, and I volunteer to use the truck to do so. To me that case seems very clear: I was offered something in friendship, and in friendship asked to restrain my use of it because of the personal beliefs of my friend. To flout those wishes is, to some extent, a betrayal of the friendship. (You may ask, was it friendly of Joia, knowing how far left I am, to make that request in the first place? Maybe not. But once she made the request it seems to me I had the option of giving back the truck, knowing how she felt about it.)

The difficulty when what you're doing is an artistic project is that it's impossible to do it without deviating from what the original "owner" would want. If you believed and felt exactly as JKR believes and feels, you'd be writing exactly what she writes. Since you are different, your work is different. How can I write fanfiction at all without departing from what JKR would do? And once I start writing it, doesn't integrity demand that I take it where it leads me?