(no subject)
This entry deals with a story that has been the subject of some discussion within bandslash fandom. Some of that discussion and certain comment exchanges could certainly be described as wanky. I am responding to the story, which makes this a personal response, but it is less a proscriptive response (you should warn for x, you need to warn in y manner), and more a meta discussion of fanfiction and ethics.
Now that I've made sure that no one will read this:
I've been thinking about ficsoreal's A Lifetime Commitment. [In the remainder of this paragraph, there will be spoilers.] The story is a Panic AU, Brendon/Ryan, which features a non-consensual situation. Brendon, who has pledged at a fraternity, is captured from his bedroom, blindfolded, and drugged. He is then only cursorily aware of his situation and certainly not able to consent, during which time he is kissed, fondled, and penetrated with a speculum.
The author chose to warn in her1 header, but not explicitly, and several readers objected. Here is the header, which was written in bold: "Warnings: This story has warnings that I'm not going to post but take that into consideration before you click the link. Have one of your friends read it first if you are leery."
The first commenter left a positive review; the second commenter was theaerosolkid, who wrote:It was incredibly jarring to hit upon the rape scene with absolutely no warning. I can understand that you want your stories to have an emotional punch and for the suspense to not be removed, but it's really unacceptable to include rape without warning for it. A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend -- you say to have a friend read over this fic, but that's no guarantee. What if the friend you select typically considers themselves squick-free but has a very serious problem with rape and noncon? There is a reason that phrases like "trigger warning" exist. The philosophy of the Internet is "if you don't like it, don't click it" or "you know where your back button is". That's not possible if you don't let people know what they're getting into.
This was really irresponsible. I understand your viewpoint as a writer, I really do, but this was pretty upsetting. It'd really be nice if you could edit the post to reflect the story's content.
I thought this was a fairly even-handed and very nicely articulated reaction to something that the commenter found jarring and potentially damaging.
There have been subsequent comments to the author along the same lines, some more or less kind. The author has generally responded in a way that I feel is polite, and firmly refused to change the header. (In a later post and comments she seems to be quite a bit more angry and reactionary, and I was more taken aback by her tone, but I suspect this is because of the fandom dogpile2 that resulted in the comments of her story and in the larger LJ sphere.) I think at this point that the argument with the author has been made, and that sustaining the discussion any further is pointless. There's no need to comment angrily or critically on the original story with regards to the lack of warning, and I would like to discourage you from doing so. (I wouldn't have posted the link, but I'm going to be discussing the story in some detail, and thought that you should have access to it.)
[Edit: There's a bit of a flame war going on in the comments, but hey. I would like to reiterate that I actually am not that concerned here with ficsoreal's ethical responsibility or personality. I'm self-centered in my journal; let's talk about my responsibility, hey? Yep, that's right, me me me.]
What I'm interested in doing here is working through my reaction, on a literary level -- because I actually think it's an interesting piece of work -- and then on an ethical, contextual level.
If I were analyzing this story as a literary work, I would first do a read-through and register my immediate reactions. I was enjoying the story until I reached that scene; I found it to be an unremarkable AU, but sweet, and I liked the Brendon characterization. My immediate reactions upon reaching the scene were: disbelief, hurt, rejection, and anger. The ones that I acted on were the feelings of rejection and anger; I closed the window, then opened the story back up and scrolled down to the comments to write a strongly-worded comment. (When I noticed that theaerosolkid had already commented, I refrained.)
After registering these reactions, I would probably look at certain context markers. For the purposes of this post, I'm assuming a certain fannish default: white, Western, English-fluent, female, middle-class but still somewhat dependent, most likely in the 20s or 30s, college-educated or in the process of college education, HIV negative and "able" bodied. Since I am what I would call a fit reader -- someone familiar with fannish tropes and expectations -- I think this is what a lot of the readers are assuming.3
[EDIT: ficsoreal has commented with some clarification on identity and some thoughtful commentary, which I appreciate and which you should read. I'd like to note that some of the readers would still be reading from these assumptions, however.]
This means that the author's writing with a certain amount of social privilege, which also means that she's writing with a certain amount of ignorance. (In order to own my own privileges: I am female, but also white, Western, openly queer, able-bodied, HIV negative, middle-class, young, slim, and grad-educated. I have oppressed most of you at some point; sorry about that.) However, in writing about a young, able-bodied, (assumed) HIV-negative, middle-class queer4 white male, the author is not exceeding the boundaries of her knowledge by a whole lot.
However, she's writing about an experience that will probably be familiar to her, and certainly will be familiar or will have been directly experienced by her readership. Fandom is largely made up of biowomen. Women as a rule are taught about rape, issues of consent, and are expected (society puts the burden on them) to be particularly sensitive about it. Women are generally more likely to be raped, according to reportage. Fandom as a generally feminist community can be very sensitive about consent issues. This alters her audience reception.
ficsoreal noted in one of her first responses that she didn't feel that she could post this story to any communities, because of the dubious consent issues; therefore her initial readership was self-selecting, a community that already knew her writing. After that, the spread of the story was through links and posts about it, meaning that the author either was recommending the story (with warnings or without) or denouncing it. The initial reading group were going in "fresh" but friendly, with impressions of the author's other work and impressions from the journal layout/associated friends/etc. The secondary group were going in with various different kinds of foreknowledge and prejudice.
[Edit: I have been corrected on this score; ficsoreal posted the story to bandslashmania without a header warning. Hilariously enough, I now think that that was where I came across the story. I have a really terrible memory (why I am such a fan of LJ).]
One thing that's shared between us, no matter how we reached the story, is that we know who the story is about. The RPS aspect even means that we have a sense of this person as existing independently in the world. The fannish aspect means that we love the character, identify with him, and to varying degrees desire him. He's a very loaded figure. In this story, I identified with Brendon, since he is the main POV, and he was likeable.
Some of the reaction to the story might be because of this aspect. Could it be that the dangerous and invasive desire of the characters that use Brendon sexually without his consent are eerily close to our position as readers and writers of real person fanfiction? Certainly our detractors would want to draw parallels. I would be willing to allow that some of my hurt feelings are related to that. I draw a distinction between the representations and the real people, but I am using someone's image without asking them first, which has long been an area of debate in American law. (See: character, and associated legal wrangling over libel and slander.)
This admission led me to a realization: losing control of the story in that way -- that is, having the author change up what I expected to happen, having the predictable AU spin in a different direction -- made me remember, first of all, that I am not in control as the reader. Second, it reminded me that we as fan writers are in control of characters who are fair to exact analogs to real people, and that we are representing their bodies engaged in sexual acts without their explicit consent. I think that's where the hurt came from.
The disbelief, though, that's stylistic. I was actually most impressed by the structure of the story. I've already alluded to this; she began the story in a predictable way, then changed it. It was a fairly standard college AU, with fairly standard Brendon characterization. She chose not to build suspense in the story, and gave no warning or foreshadowing for the rape scene. When the shift came, I didn't believe it at first. I scrolled down, skimmed over the rest of the story, and then scrolled back up and looked at the break point. This is the disbelief: the author took the standard fandom narrative and changed it.
As fans, then, we have something of an agreement with one another; if you start a story in a particular style, or operate according to one of our established patterns, you should continue in that pattern. (It's why we have fads in types of stories, and why fandoms sometimes get "stale," where everyone writes the same.) Because I am used to college AUs of a certain type, I thought nothing of Brendon being bound and gagged, and assumed it was a shock scene that would lead to a funny conclusion. I had actually overlooked the warning.
If you look at the reactions the structure caused me -- disbelief, hurt, avoidance, anger -- they're all similar emotions (if profoundly lessened in intensity) as someone who's been through a traumatic event goes through. That's actually a really thought-provoking and worthwhile characteristic of the story: it takes advantage of our formal, stylistic, and structural expectations in order to produce in the reader an over-identification with the main character. The horror of the story is that we feel as Brendon feel. When I re-encountered the other characters after the rape scene, I felt the same sense of unreality. I thought these people were one thing, now I know they're something else, I need to go reread and see if there was something I should have seen.
As a literary scholar, I think that is SO cool.
[Edit: I would like to note that "so cool" for a literary scholar does not equal "good." It equals "what the fuuuuuuuuck?! DUDE." I would call this story structure interesting, effective, and deeply problematic. I would not call it "good." However, if you do want to call it "good" (too vague a term for me), I'd point out that you're using the intersection of reader and character experience as the conditions for your aesthetic hierarchy, which is really interesting. Can a book you don't connect with then be "bad"?]
It also reminds me of the reason why I study literature, and why I find it so fascinating. In the hands of a 'good' author, I feel what the main character is feeling. I, to use my favorite 19th century term, engage in a kind of sensibility, feeling for the character to an almost extravagant degree. (It's definitely a luxury, feeling for someone, much like wittering on in a hoity-toit way about fanfiction is. What what, privilege!) What is the ethical responsibility of the author in this situation? Ostensibly the reader has willingly entered into a contract with the author, but a contract implies a certain amount of trust, which asks the author to have a certain amount of ethical responsibility. This is especially true when the author is creating the emotions associated with rape, which is, as almost all of the commenters noted, potentially triggering.
I see the damn word tossed around all the time without any explanation, so let me clarify: trauma creates a response in a human being that Freud defines as latency. I don't agree with Freud on a whole lot of things, but I agree with this characterization. Trauma is a repetitive, irrational (there's no good reason), associative (the weirdest things set you off), and long-term experience. The effect of the trauma recurs or echoes in the traumatized person's life.
As a less power-loaded example, I was hit by a car a while ago. I had a panic attack while I was walking down the street a few weeks later, because I glanced over at the street and saw a pick-up truck (what hit me) among the cars on the street. Associative, irrational (I wasn't in danger, it wasn't the same truck, I wasn't feeling weird), a repetition of the original fear, and delayed (or latent). Essentially the memory resurfaced. It felt a little like someone suddenly surfacing right next to you when you're floating out on a lake -- calm, silent, quiet, and then the water's disturbed and there's noise and you're flailing around and gasping.
So when people say that something with a depiction of rape could be triggering, they mean that someone who has been raped could read the story and re-experience their trauma. This can be from something as light as discomfort, feeling upset, getting a little blue, to reliving the incident. That can be an intense thing to put on an author, and why the question of responsibility -- what theaerosolkid brought up in her comment -- is so intense and worth thinking about.
I haven't drawn any conclusions yet. To put some tentative thoughts and questions out there, we talk about specific warnings, but does that alter the writer's responsibility? Divest them of it? Is there anything to be gained from putting all of the responsibility onto the reader? How is fan writing different from published novels, which might not include a warning for the same kind of structure? (I suspect this has something to do with the kind of feminist community fandom is, and how we use LJ to build networks.)
Okay, I've talked enough; this still sounds wooden, since I was thinking it through as I typed it, but I'm not going to go back and finesse it right now. Your thoughts are, of course, appreciated.
1 - I am using feminine gender pronouns, but if asked to, will change them immediately.
2 - Fandom dogpile: when someone does something that we (as a fannish community) can agree is unequivocally "wrong" (i.e. racist, sexist, &c), fans, like many other groups of people, tend to pile on the original poster. I've noticed that there's often a fad around denouncing someone who has perpetrated something offensive -- yes, I've taken part in this, too -- when the denunciation actually does not have any effect other than putting the denouncer on the side of the right.
3 - The internet is supposed to be faceless, but I think in a lot of ways it just shows even more what we think of as the default characteristics when we talk about another human being, and what are "aberrations."
4 - I'm discussing Brendon as the character established in her story, rather than the RL person.
---
[EDIT: Well, I don't have internet at home. When I left last night, there were about four comments, and now there's... too many. I've screened anonymous comments; I do not like anonymous comments. I have discussed this in the past. I find them weak and often ethically unsound. If you do not have an LJ account, please note that in your comment and I will unscreen it.
What I will say here, and what I will say in response to comments, is that while I appreciate conversations about an individual author's responsibility, this post was not meant for the continuation of hostilities. It is not concerned with what the author said in a space I was not privy to; I was concerned with the particular story as a literary example, and was thinking carefully about what it meant about our community, and particularly for myself. To reiterate: the conversation with the individual author may be worthwhile, but it is not what this post is concerned with. I am interested on your thoughts with regards to fanfiction and ethics.]
[EDITOR, I HARDLY KNOW HER: Follow-up post. I was linked on metafandom -- I have truly arrived! -- but I've put myself on a email response ban for the rest of the night, due to my shoulders having finally reached the tops of my ears. I'm excited to come in tomorrow with a slightly more relaxed perspective.]
Yoga for Anger Management.
Now that I've made sure that no one will read this:
I've been thinking about ficsoreal's A Lifetime Commitment. [In the remainder of this paragraph, there will be spoilers.] The story is a Panic AU, Brendon/Ryan, which features a non-consensual situation. Brendon, who has pledged at a fraternity, is captured from his bedroom, blindfolded, and drugged. He is then only cursorily aware of his situation and certainly not able to consent, during which time he is kissed, fondled, and penetrated with a speculum.
The author chose to warn in her1 header, but not explicitly, and several readers objected. Here is the header, which was written in bold: "Warnings: This story has warnings that I'm not going to post but take that into consideration before you click the link. Have one of your friends read it first if you are leery."
The first commenter left a positive review; the second commenter was theaerosolkid, who wrote:It was incredibly jarring to hit upon the rape scene with absolutely no warning. I can understand that you want your stories to have an emotional punch and for the suspense to not be removed, but it's really unacceptable to include rape without warning for it. A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend -- you say to have a friend read over this fic, but that's no guarantee. What if the friend you select typically considers themselves squick-free but has a very serious problem with rape and noncon? There is a reason that phrases like "trigger warning" exist. The philosophy of the Internet is "if you don't like it, don't click it" or "you know where your back button is". That's not possible if you don't let people know what they're getting into.
This was really irresponsible. I understand your viewpoint as a writer, I really do, but this was pretty upsetting. It'd really be nice if you could edit the post to reflect the story's content.
I thought this was a fairly even-handed and very nicely articulated reaction to something that the commenter found jarring and potentially damaging.
There have been subsequent comments to the author along the same lines, some more or less kind. The author has generally responded in a way that I feel is polite, and firmly refused to change the header. (In a later post and comments she seems to be quite a bit more angry and reactionary, and I was more taken aback by her tone, but I suspect this is because of the fandom dogpile2 that resulted in the comments of her story and in the larger LJ sphere.) I think at this point that the argument with the author has been made, and that sustaining the discussion any further is pointless. There's no need to comment angrily or critically on the original story with regards to the lack of warning, and I would like to discourage you from doing so. (I wouldn't have posted the link, but I'm going to be discussing the story in some detail, and thought that you should have access to it.)
[Edit: There's a bit of a flame war going on in the comments, but hey. I would like to reiterate that I actually am not that concerned here with ficsoreal's ethical responsibility or personality. I'm self-centered in my journal; let's talk about my responsibility, hey? Yep, that's right, me me me.]
What I'm interested in doing here is working through my reaction, on a literary level -- because I actually think it's an interesting piece of work -- and then on an ethical, contextual level.
If I were analyzing this story as a literary work, I would first do a read-through and register my immediate reactions. I was enjoying the story until I reached that scene; I found it to be an unremarkable AU, but sweet, and I liked the Brendon characterization. My immediate reactions upon reaching the scene were: disbelief, hurt, rejection, and anger. The ones that I acted on were the feelings of rejection and anger; I closed the window, then opened the story back up and scrolled down to the comments to write a strongly-worded comment. (When I noticed that theaerosolkid had already commented, I refrained.)
After registering these reactions, I would probably look at certain context markers. For the purposes of this post, I'm assuming a certain fannish default: white, Western, English-fluent, female, middle-class but still somewhat dependent, most likely in the 20s or 30s, college-educated or in the process of college education, HIV negative and "able" bodied. Since I am what I would call a fit reader -- someone familiar with fannish tropes and expectations -- I think this is what a lot of the readers are assuming.3
[EDIT: ficsoreal has commented with some clarification on identity and some thoughtful commentary, which I appreciate and which you should read. I'd like to note that some of the readers would still be reading from these assumptions, however.]
This means that the author's writing with a certain amount of social privilege, which also means that she's writing with a certain amount of ignorance. (In order to own my own privileges: I am female, but also white, Western, openly queer, able-bodied, HIV negative, middle-class, young, slim, and grad-educated. I have oppressed most of you at some point; sorry about that.) However, in writing about a young, able-bodied, (assumed) HIV-negative, middle-class queer4 white male, the author is not exceeding the boundaries of her knowledge by a whole lot.
However, she's writing about an experience that will probably be familiar to her, and certainly will be familiar or will have been directly experienced by her readership. Fandom is largely made up of biowomen. Women as a rule are taught about rape, issues of consent, and are expected (society puts the burden on them) to be particularly sensitive about it. Women are generally more likely to be raped, according to reportage. Fandom as a generally feminist community can be very sensitive about consent issues. This alters her audience reception.
ficsoreal noted in one of her first responses that she didn't feel that she could post this story to any communities, because of the dubious consent issues; therefore her initial readership was self-selecting, a community that already knew her writing. After that, the spread of the story was through links and posts about it, meaning that the author either was recommending the story (with warnings or without) or denouncing it. The initial reading group were going in "fresh" but friendly, with impressions of the author's other work and impressions from the journal layout/associated friends/etc. The secondary group were going in with various different kinds of foreknowledge and prejudice.
[Edit: I have been corrected on this score; ficsoreal posted the story to bandslashmania without a header warning. Hilariously enough, I now think that that was where I came across the story. I have a really terrible memory (why I am such a fan of LJ).]
One thing that's shared between us, no matter how we reached the story, is that we know who the story is about. The RPS aspect even means that we have a sense of this person as existing independently in the world. The fannish aspect means that we love the character, identify with him, and to varying degrees desire him. He's a very loaded figure. In this story, I identified with Brendon, since he is the main POV, and he was likeable.
Some of the reaction to the story might be because of this aspect. Could it be that the dangerous and invasive desire of the characters that use Brendon sexually without his consent are eerily close to our position as readers and writers of real person fanfiction? Certainly our detractors would want to draw parallels. I would be willing to allow that some of my hurt feelings are related to that. I draw a distinction between the representations and the real people, but I am using someone's image without asking them first, which has long been an area of debate in American law. (See: character, and associated legal wrangling over libel and slander.)
This admission led me to a realization: losing control of the story in that way -- that is, having the author change up what I expected to happen, having the predictable AU spin in a different direction -- made me remember, first of all, that I am not in control as the reader. Second, it reminded me that we as fan writers are in control of characters who are fair to exact analogs to real people, and that we are representing their bodies engaged in sexual acts without their explicit consent. I think that's where the hurt came from.
The disbelief, though, that's stylistic. I was actually most impressed by the structure of the story. I've already alluded to this; she began the story in a predictable way, then changed it. It was a fairly standard college AU, with fairly standard Brendon characterization. She chose not to build suspense in the story, and gave no warning or foreshadowing for the rape scene. When the shift came, I didn't believe it at first. I scrolled down, skimmed over the rest of the story, and then scrolled back up and looked at the break point. This is the disbelief: the author took the standard fandom narrative and changed it.
As fans, then, we have something of an agreement with one another; if you start a story in a particular style, or operate according to one of our established patterns, you should continue in that pattern. (It's why we have fads in types of stories, and why fandoms sometimes get "stale," where everyone writes the same.) Because I am used to college AUs of a certain type, I thought nothing of Brendon being bound and gagged, and assumed it was a shock scene that would lead to a funny conclusion. I had actually overlooked the warning.
If you look at the reactions the structure caused me -- disbelief, hurt, avoidance, anger -- they're all similar emotions (if profoundly lessened in intensity) as someone who's been through a traumatic event goes through. That's actually a really thought-provoking and worthwhile characteristic of the story: it takes advantage of our formal, stylistic, and structural expectations in order to produce in the reader an over-identification with the main character. The horror of the story is that we feel as Brendon feel. When I re-encountered the other characters after the rape scene, I felt the same sense of unreality. I thought these people were one thing, now I know they're something else, I need to go reread and see if there was something I should have seen.
As a literary scholar, I think that is SO cool.
[Edit: I would like to note that "so cool" for a literary scholar does not equal "good." It equals "what the fuuuuuuuuck?! DUDE." I would call this story structure interesting, effective, and deeply problematic. I would not call it "good." However, if you do want to call it "good" (too vague a term for me), I'd point out that you're using the intersection of reader and character experience as the conditions for your aesthetic hierarchy, which is really interesting. Can a book you don't connect with then be "bad"?]
It also reminds me of the reason why I study literature, and why I find it so fascinating. In the hands of a 'good' author, I feel what the main character is feeling. I, to use my favorite 19th century term, engage in a kind of sensibility, feeling for the character to an almost extravagant degree. (It's definitely a luxury, feeling for someone, much like wittering on in a hoity-toit way about fanfiction is. What what, privilege!) What is the ethical responsibility of the author in this situation? Ostensibly the reader has willingly entered into a contract with the author, but a contract implies a certain amount of trust, which asks the author to have a certain amount of ethical responsibility. This is especially true when the author is creating the emotions associated with rape, which is, as almost all of the commenters noted, potentially triggering.
I see the damn word tossed around all the time without any explanation, so let me clarify: trauma creates a response in a human being that Freud defines as latency. I don't agree with Freud on a whole lot of things, but I agree with this characterization. Trauma is a repetitive, irrational (there's no good reason), associative (the weirdest things set you off), and long-term experience. The effect of the trauma recurs or echoes in the traumatized person's life.
As a less power-loaded example, I was hit by a car a while ago. I had a panic attack while I was walking down the street a few weeks later, because I glanced over at the street and saw a pick-up truck (what hit me) among the cars on the street. Associative, irrational (I wasn't in danger, it wasn't the same truck, I wasn't feeling weird), a repetition of the original fear, and delayed (or latent). Essentially the memory resurfaced. It felt a little like someone suddenly surfacing right next to you when you're floating out on a lake -- calm, silent, quiet, and then the water's disturbed and there's noise and you're flailing around and gasping.
So when people say that something with a depiction of rape could be triggering, they mean that someone who has been raped could read the story and re-experience their trauma. This can be from something as light as discomfort, feeling upset, getting a little blue, to reliving the incident. That can be an intense thing to put on an author, and why the question of responsibility -- what theaerosolkid brought up in her comment -- is so intense and worth thinking about.
I haven't drawn any conclusions yet. To put some tentative thoughts and questions out there, we talk about specific warnings, but does that alter the writer's responsibility? Divest them of it? Is there anything to be gained from putting all of the responsibility onto the reader? How is fan writing different from published novels, which might not include a warning for the same kind of structure? (I suspect this has something to do with the kind of feminist community fandom is, and how we use LJ to build networks.)
Okay, I've talked enough; this still sounds wooden, since I was thinking it through as I typed it, but I'm not going to go back and finesse it right now. Your thoughts are, of course, appreciated.
1 - I am using feminine gender pronouns, but if asked to, will change them immediately.
2 - Fandom dogpile: when someone does something that we (as a fannish community) can agree is unequivocally "wrong" (i.e. racist, sexist, &c), fans, like many other groups of people, tend to pile on the original poster. I've noticed that there's often a fad around denouncing someone who has perpetrated something offensive -- yes, I've taken part in this, too -- when the denunciation actually does not have any effect other than putting the denouncer on the side of the right.
3 - The internet is supposed to be faceless, but I think in a lot of ways it just shows even more what we think of as the default characteristics when we talk about another human being, and what are "aberrations."
4 - I'm discussing Brendon as the character established in her story, rather than the RL person.
---
[EDIT: Well, I don't have internet at home. When I left last night, there were about four comments, and now there's... too many. I've screened anonymous comments; I do not like anonymous comments. I have discussed this in the past. I find them weak and often ethically unsound. If you do not have an LJ account, please note that in your comment and I will unscreen it.
What I will say here, and what I will say in response to comments, is that while I appreciate conversations about an individual author's responsibility, this post was not meant for the continuation of hostilities. It is not concerned with what the author said in a space I was not privy to; I was concerned with the particular story as a literary example, and was thinking carefully about what it meant about our community, and particularly for myself. To reiterate: the conversation with the individual author may be worthwhile, but it is not what this post is concerned with. I am interested on your thoughts with regards to fanfiction and ethics.]
[EDITOR, I HARDLY KNOW HER: Follow-up post. I was linked on metafandom -- I have truly arrived! -- but I've put myself on a email response ban for the rest of the night, due to my shoulders having finally reached the tops of my ears. I'm excited to come in tomorrow with a slightly more relaxed perspective.]
Yoga for Anger Management.