Still writing all the time
Apr. 29th, 2022 09:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotAfter I finished writing the JaneAustensWorld blog post on Regency dueling, I had the concepts stuck in my head and couldn't stop applying them to HP, so over the last few days I wrote and posted Back for Seconds: A Handbook to the Wizarding Duel, some fictional non-fiction. Lots of footnotes! It was fun to write.
I'm also ~joining the whump community~ on Tumblr and so posted the first two chapters of what if Captive Prince but girls?, unbeta'd and it shows, plus something quite dark, Mother of the Regiment.
The Tumblr whump community fascinates me. The fiction is often functionally identical to BDSM erotica but with nothing explicitly sexual, and I've seen people deny that there's a sexual component at reading/writing it at all. Villains will take inordinate glee in dehumanizing and physically torturing their victims, but never sexually assault them, or do assault them but only off-page and as a kind of afterthought. But the writing about being hurt, touched, humiliated, taunted, spoken about is all so erotic!
Even when there is sex/sexual touching it's described so vaguely in comparison to the torture. There is an entire shared universe of stories where humans are kept as pets, some of them explicitly said to be for sexual purposes (referred to as "romantics", which may be clever commentary on in-universe people or may be more avoidance of the issue), but I have yet to see a story focused on the sexual aspect. There are also stories (in and out of this shared universe) that are almost entirely about someone being rescued and recovering from the abuse, and likewise they sometimes vaguely mention past sexual abuse while dealing with the victim's intense conditioning (to the point where a popular trope is the victim being unable to accept help, food, bedding, etc., because they assume it's a trick and they will be punished for accepting), but there's definitely a) no sexual conditioning and b) no sex with the rescuer at some future point in time.
It really is the pinnacle of Tumblr's weird sex issues! And it reminds me a lot of whatrachelmanijabrown was saying about The Bright Sessions. Non-consensual sex is seen as unacceptable as a subject for fantasizing - you sicko, why would you want to imagine that being done to your OC? - and it's also so bad or so unnecessary in-universe that even the most despicable villains rarely resort to it.
Anyway, like I said, fascinating. I was going to say that I wasn't sure if I wanted to dig in and openly write sex or if I should not rock the boat, but errrrrrm if you look at Mother of the Regiment you can see I've already made my choice.
There are also all kinds of other things that I want to write, but I don't seem to be actually writing them. Which is probably because I'm also feeling like working on typesetting ... I would like to finish theafter_the_rain one-shots I was preparing! I haven't bound anything in ages.
---
If the Nissan dealership is telling me I need way more things done to my car than Monro Muffler, is it because Monro is more honest or because Monro has been letting situations get worse because I haven't asked specifically for them to check e.g. drive belts and now the dealership is cleaning up their mess? Much to ponder.
I'm also ~joining the whump community~ on Tumblr and so posted the first two chapters of what if Captive Prince but girls?, unbeta'd and it shows, plus something quite dark, Mother of the Regiment.
The Tumblr whump community fascinates me. The fiction is often functionally identical to BDSM erotica but with nothing explicitly sexual, and I've seen people deny that there's a sexual component at reading/writing it at all. Villains will take inordinate glee in dehumanizing and physically torturing their victims, but never sexually assault them, or do assault them but only off-page and as a kind of afterthought. But the writing about being hurt, touched, humiliated, taunted, spoken about is all so erotic!
Even when there is sex/sexual touching it's described so vaguely in comparison to the torture. There is an entire shared universe of stories where humans are kept as pets, some of them explicitly said to be for sexual purposes (referred to as "romantics", which may be clever commentary on in-universe people or may be more avoidance of the issue), but I have yet to see a story focused on the sexual aspect. There are also stories (in and out of this shared universe) that are almost entirely about someone being rescued and recovering from the abuse, and likewise they sometimes vaguely mention past sexual abuse while dealing with the victim's intense conditioning (to the point where a popular trope is the victim being unable to accept help, food, bedding, etc., because they assume it's a trick and they will be punished for accepting), but there's definitely a) no sexual conditioning and b) no sex with the rescuer at some future point in time.
It really is the pinnacle of Tumblr's weird sex issues! And it reminds me a lot of what
rachelmanijabrown was saying about The Bright Sessions. Non-consensual sex is seen as unacceptable as a subject for fantasizing - you sicko, why would you want to imagine that being done to your OC? - and it's also so bad or so unnecessary in-universe that even the most despicable villains rarely resort to it.Anyway, like I said, fascinating. I was going to say that I wasn't sure if I wanted to dig in and openly write sex or if I should not rock the boat, but errrrrrm if you look at Mother of the Regiment you can see I've already made my choice.
There are also all kinds of other things that I want to write, but I don't seem to be actually writing them. Which is probably because I'm also feeling like working on typesetting ... I would like to finish the
after_the_rain one-shots I was preparing! I haven't bound anything in ages.---
If the Nissan dealership is telling me I need way more things done to my car than Monro Muffler, is it because Monro is more honest or because Monro has been letting situations get worse because I haven't asked specifically for them to check e.g. drive belts and now the dealership is cleaning up their mess? Much to ponder.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-01 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-02 12:34 am (UTC)So fandom tends to categorize fiction/fanfiction by type of story rather than by genre. Romance, casefic (something that imitates the case-of-the-week style of the canon), various tropes. One major trope category is hurt/comfort, fics where the focus is on one character being physically or emotionally hurt and then recovering, which can range from really light "had a bad dream, other character holds them and helps them go back to sleep" to really heavy "tortured, other character deals with their mental and physical recovery". I think most of us who love it know that it fills some sort of psychological need for us, a desire to be rescued or taken care of. Whump is related to h/c, a much more intense form with extreme physical or emotional abuse, and when there's comfort it's usually more like an in-the-moment comfort rather than a full recovery. (I kind of mentioned above, some people focus on a sub-subgenre where the whumped character is being taken care of by someone who wants to help them but they literally cannot process that they're being helped, so it combines the comfort aspect as part of the torture.)
There's a large group of people on Tumblr with sideblogs exclusively for whump, who write VERY VERY ENTHUSIASTICALLY about torturing their characters and post regular updates to their ongoing works in progress, which are typically just continuing episodes of hurt or comfort rather than, like, a plotted out story with a character arc, rising action, climax, etc. Some people write completely disconnected short episodes with no character names, just labeling them Whumpee, Whumper, etc. There are whump writers in every fandom, probably, and some fandoms seem to attract them more than others, but the Tumblr whump ecosystem seems to be wholly based on original fiction.
I am anthropologically fascinated! Edit: I'm dishonestly making myself sound very dispassionate. I love beating up my own characters but am kind of too inhibited to write them being beaten up to the same extent and with the same relish as these folks, which is a major reason I'm trying to get involved with them (that is, to lose some of my inhibitions). I love writing comfort as well and my motto/theory is that the bigger the hurt the better the comfort. Last week I read nearly everything this writer has written.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-03 02:42 am (UTC)That sounds like a very interesting relationship dynamic. I can see why people would want to explore it and take it to extremes.
I love hearing about your writing process! It can be difficult to stretch those creative boundaries.