(no subject)

[feotakahari]

So, this whole push to reclaim darkfic as something that’s okay and healthy . . . How does that interact with all those posts various people make about “that creepy guy in my writing class”? What distinguishes the author whose dark themes are acceptable from the author whose dark themes make him a “creepy guy?” Because I have the strong suspicion the answer is gender. (Well, that and autism.) 

Comments

[sigmaleph]

gender, sexuality/more generic queerness, race probably, occasionally neurotype (that one can work in either direction, depending).

[lb_lee]

I dunno, I've known VERY creepy writers of all genders. (And been one.) For me the creepiness isn't the content itself, but when I get the feeling that what I'm reading isn't actually fiction, but how the writer sees the world (or wants YOU to see it), and the "fiction" part is purely for plausible deniability. That kind of creepiness transcends the work's content--the creep factor comes from the boundary between reality and fiction being blurred, not any particular "darkness".

Probably an obvious situation people have blundered into is reading a book where the author has a very transparent fetish and doesn't seem aware of it--Laurell K. Hamilton has a VERY specific type of hair she likes on her men, for instance, and Piers Anthony ALWAYS writes at least ONE underaged girl getting with a much older man in every single one of his series. (And Marion Zimmer Bradley apparently had some pretty blatant subtext in her work that made a lot of people go, "oh nooooooo" once the child molestation accusations came out about her.)

But there are other variations than just sexual creepery. Recruitment propaganda for instance--even if someone shares political beliefs with you, it's often very uncomfortable when you're reading full-blooded propoganda and KNOW that the writer either truly believes it, or wants YOU to. (Because the natural next question in the latter case is, "what do they have to gain from you believing this?") God knows, I've read fanfiction and played computer games that was pretty clearly the creator's true metaphysical beliefs, covered with a paper-thin fictional gloss for the purpose of luring people who go into it thinking they're just having fun, not realizing the creator is trying to influence them. You'd be amazed what some folks will say under cover of fiction!

For that reason, I cringe at reading some of my older work, just because my own damage seems so transparently obvious to me. ESPECIALLY when I was a kid, I used to revel in writing very straightforwardly what was happening to me and resting assured that nobody would call me on it, or even ask. So I wrote some HELLISH shit in school, and it was probably pretty off-putting to anyone who read it--it certainly was for my older self. Because in fiction, I could afford to be honest, because nobody believed it was true.