Celebrating Slash, Chan & Other Squicky Topics
Crossposted from my journal.
So, someone at LJ hates slash. Or maybe that's an overstatement: dislikes slash, and hates chan, incest & RPS. She wishes she had a "safe place," somewhere she could read genfic with maybe a hint of het, without running across Sam-and-Dean in bed banners and the like. (And she's got comments turned off. So presumably, she knows the screed is likely to be widely linked and commented on.)

On the one hand, I can understand a wish to avoid one's squicks, and if one's squicks include incest, then dayamn, SPN is a hard fandom to be in. And I can understand being annoyed at clicking on a no-squick-warnings story--and getting caught by a banner featuring a major squick. (Got a friend squicked by het. When she clicks on a Snape/Harry story, I'm sure she doesn't want to see a manip of nekkid Snape wrapped around nekkid Hermione.) So, umm... be polite to people; when linking, try to add ?style=mine or ?format=light to the end of the URL. (Especially if the layout is image-heavy. Be nice to dialup users even if there's no squicky images. And to the hard-of-seeing who can't read tiny grey text on a black background even if no images are involved.)

On the other, though... GAAAH! I am sick of the implication, sometimes the outright claim, that an interest in a "dark" topic (slash, chan, incest, torture, non-con, bdsm, RP, whatever) in fic is the same as promoting it in real life. That we have a sick, nasty hobby that shouldn't be allowed in the presence of Decent Folk. That Decent Folk only write fic about the worlds they wished they lived in, because by writing or seeking these ugly, painful, disgusting topics, we are somehow making life worse for everyone.

Do murder mystery authors ever face this? Ever get told they are contributing to the downfall of society for supporting an industry full of violent and immoral themes? (Ans: not that I've seen, except by extreme kooks, the kind who think piano legs need ruffles to hide their shame. Examples otherwise are welcome.)

But... murder is "clean," compared to some of the themes we deal with. Everyone understands greed or rage, and how they can get out of hand. There's sadness in a deliberately-caused death, but no confusion, no true shock. Stories about murder are often about finding out the details of who-did-what-when, not why--because we know why people kill each other.

We don't know why they rape each other. Nor why they'd torture children. Nor why sometimes, someone develops insane lust for a co-worker, and other times, in what looks like the same kind of circumstances, same kind of personalities, they just don't. We don't know why some parents seduce their children, why some siblings play sex games together, why some don't stop at playing. Why some people enjoy inflicting pain just to watch the reaction it gets. Why some can't enjoy life unless someone else is miserable. We just don't. To any reasonable person, to anyone with a shred of compassion, these are not only mysteries, but prove that the universe is much, much bigger and more complex than any of us can comprehend.

And we must at least try to comprehend it. These are baffling and frightening truths--that such people, such situations exist, is an affront to our notion of humanity. It is wrong that such things happen. And yet... they do happen. They happen more than any of us want to think about. We'd like to believe the majority are caused by ignorance of various sorts, that child rapists believe the children enjoy it, that torturers think they are "freeing" their victims from repression, that those who manipulate their colleagues into bed believe their lust is returned. And sometimes, that's probably true. Maybe even most of the time.

But sometimes, everything we can find out says it's not... that this person knew the desire was unwelcome, that she or he revelled in the very violation being comitted. And the mind recoils from that discovery.

We can't keep recoiling. We can't run away forever; we can't fix what we don't understand. We can't prevent what we don't expect, and we can't expect what's alien to us. In order to fight these horrific events... we must first learn how and why they happen. We must know what kind of person makes the mental leap from "she said no" to "she meant maybe" to "she wanted to say yes." And we must know when someone will jump straight from "she said no" to "that means she'll struggle beautifully."

These fics, these worlds we play in... they're a safe way to explore these ideas. A way to find out what rings true, what dark twists in a character might be hidden from public view. A way to to try to understand.

But, I hear objectors say, we glorify these things. We don't show the villain being destroyed; instead, he gets to keep his 11-year-old love slave. We don't show the rapist killed or castrated; we show his victim falling in love with him. We don't execute the torturer; we place him in service to the Dark Lord where he ravages to his hollow heart's corrupt version of joy.

Yes, we do. Because we have our weaknesses, our limits, as well... and having brought these monsters to life, having made them talk and think and commit atrocities... we need some kind of balance to the horror. And killing off the bad guy doesn't fix anything. Doesn't make the pain he caused go away; doesn't bring back to life his dead victims. Castrating a rapist doesn't unrape his victim.

This is the part where we move to fantasy, where we switch from "explore the concept" to "finish the story"... if there were a world wherein a father could seduce his son (whether that son will grow up to be a wizard or a demon-hunter), and it weren't a violation of basic human rights, what would that be like? What would they be like? If this weren't horrific, how else could it be?

We aren't condoning atrocities; we're splashing holy water on our demons. We're finding out what parts of the taint can be removed, and what parts remain corrupt no matter what we do with societal mores or hypothetical setting. And we're hoping... hoping that, even in the worst situations, the most terrible desecrations of the human body and spirit, that something good can come out of it. That some shred of joy is possible even in the darkest and foulest aspects of the human condition.

Because when we look to these atrocities in the real world, we will need to build our solutions on joy and hope, not on pain and fear. Because whatever the answer is, to these shadows that have always haunted us, it's not "kill them/lock them up/drug them insensible." We've tried those; they don't work.

I don't have answers. I have questions. And fiction is how I explore those questions.


DISCLAIMER: I am not meaning to imply all slash explores evil themes, nor that all fanfic on these topics is written with this focus in mind. Sometimes it's about shrugging off society's stupid ideas of right & wrong, and sometimes, it's just about Teh Hawt Secks. Someone else can write a rant for those.

Credit: Thanks to perfica for an excellent response to the original post.