So your comment inspired ~thoughts. Hope you don't mind if I ramble a bit at you.
The author definitely should've used a content warning, but I don't think the fic necessarily needed to include established safe words, etc.
Yeah, I understand this. Because it is a fantasy, in a sense the ~safeword is the action deciding to read the story (that's the moment of consent for the reader), deciding to engage in rape fantasy. And that's why failing to include the trigger warning seems like the worst offense to me, because it removes a person's ability to decide if they want to engage or not.
I'm less comfortable with rpf simply because I haven't really read/written a lot from that genre. But it does make sense to me thinking about the characters as their public personas while writing. Though, once you take it to separating the actual person from the persona -- what is the limit on how to portray them in fiction? And I don't think one can really police that.
What if the story were about the RPF character engaging in other acts of extreme violence? What if it's a murder mystery and the RPF character is the criminal? Where does one draw the line on the ~appropriate portrayal of RPF characters? Once the precedent is made that they're personas, not the actual living person, then I think it's more firmly entered the realm of fiction. And that rationale is what makes it okay to write RPF characters engaging in NC-17 fiction.
I think educating on consent is incredibly important, but I'm not sure that fantasy fiction is the arena for that. Then again, the fantasy fiction becomes a catalyst for revealing how much misinformation and misunderstandings there are about consent exist for so many people.
And maybe some feminist meta wouldn't hurt. :P
Right, this. I think feminist meta is the answer. Offering knowledge to the fandom directly, rather than educating through the fiction by making the fiction feminist-friendly. Being able to help people see why and how it's problematic.
no subject
The author definitely should've used a content warning, but I don't think the fic necessarily needed to include established safe words, etc.
Yeah, I understand this. Because it is a fantasy, in a sense the ~safeword is the action deciding to read the story (that's the moment of consent for the reader), deciding to engage in rape fantasy. And that's why failing to include the trigger warning seems like the worst offense to me, because it removes a person's ability to decide if they want to engage or not.
I'm less comfortable with rpf simply because I haven't really read/written a lot from that genre. But it does make sense to me thinking about the characters as their public personas while writing. Though, once you take it to separating the actual person from the persona -- what is the limit on how to portray them in fiction? And I don't think one can really police that.
What if the story were about the RPF character engaging in other acts of extreme violence? What if it's a murder mystery and the RPF character is the criminal? Where does one draw the line on the ~appropriate portrayal of RPF characters? Once the precedent is made that they're personas, not the actual living person, then I think it's more firmly entered the realm of fiction. And that rationale is what makes it okay to write RPF characters engaging in NC-17 fiction.
I think educating on consent is incredibly important, but I'm not sure that fantasy fiction is the arena for that. Then again, the fantasy fiction becomes a catalyst for revealing how much misinformation and misunderstandings there are about consent exist for so many people.
And maybe some feminist meta wouldn't hurt. :P
Right, this. I think feminist meta is the answer. Offering knowledge to the fandom directly, rather than educating through the fiction by making the fiction feminist-friendly. Being able to help people see why and how it's problematic.