# Sexual violence and misogyny in SF/F



## Nerds_feather (Aug 6, 2012)

this comes from the RH thread, and was something we didn't really get into. before i outline my own views, i want to ask others for theirs.

my question is: how appropriate are things like explicit rape scenes or other forms of sexual violence? is contemporary SF/F (and particularly "grimdark" fantasy) misogynistic, whether intentionally or unintentionally? where should authors draw the line and for what reasons? what constitutes "too much," if anything?


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## Colum Paget (Aug 6, 2012)

Actually, people wanting to see a discussion of this could do worse than look at a recent post on Ian's blog. I used to be pretty hard-line that 'rape was out', but I've become less and less so, and Kari Spelling's point that sometimes discussion of rape is needed in fiction, is a good one.

However, the question I guess is not "Is it there, or isn't it?". It's "What purpose is it serving?" Bearing in mind that some of your readers might have been through it, and might not want to relive the act all the time in fiction, what weight is that scene pulling to justify the cost of losing some readers?

The main objection, I think, is that it's used for by-the-numbers character motivation, to establish a revenge motive, far too much. Would others agree?


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## Colum Paget (Aug 6, 2012)

On this matter, I'm curious where people think the 'line' is drawn. Is it just a matter of actual rape, or if someone deceives someone else, proclaiming a love for them that is false, is that rape, even if the consumation isn't violent? When does a deceptive relationship become too much?


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## Brian G Turner (Aug 6, 2012)

I think the key issue is not the subject, but how the subject is handled.

The danger is that topics such as rape and sexual abuse can be used in a moment of lazy writing as nothing more than plot devices, with no corresponding depth behind the experiences. Even worse, that they can make the experience exciting, or the aggressor sympathetic.

In which case, it's the victim's experience and the consequences of this I want to see played out, not the act.

To be honest, I think sexual themes are especially handled badly with Gary Stu protagonists, not least consensual sex, because it often becomes nothing more than a physical act performed _upon _sexual objects. In doing so, it reduces the human experience and denigrates human relationships.

Overall, I think there's a tendency in sff to *avoid* being too realistic, and this is why I think writers such as George R R Martin and Joe Abercrombie are doing well - but realism can't be just about violence or societal relationships, it has to be about the ordinary human experience in an extraordinary setting.

Heck, I don't want veteran warriors to say "I'm tired of war" - I want them to have post traumatic stress and show it.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Aug 6, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> The main objection, I think, is that it's used for by-the-numbers character motivation, to establish a revenge motive, far too much. Would others agree?



What I really hate is a variation on this:  explaining why a powerful woman (whom you are supposed to hate, not sympathize with) has become so out of all bounds evil.  She was repeatedly raped as a young girl.

Why do I hate it?  Because it perpetuates the old idea that a woman who is raped becomes a "bad" woman, that she is so soiled and besmirched by the act that she takes some of the evil into herself.  

Of course it's also a lazy, clichéd way for a writer to provide motivation without thinking out all the implications.  The first time I saw it used it didn't bother me, but when I saw it used as a motivation again and again it made me angry.

I wonder how it makes women who have been victims of sexual violence themselves feel?  Maybe they have a different reaction than I do.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 6, 2012)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> What I really hate is a variation on this:  explaining why a powerful woman (whom you are supposed to hate, not sympathize with) has become so out of all bounds evil.  She was repeatedly raped as a young girl.
> 
> Why do I hate it?  Because it perpetuates the old idea that a woman who is raped becomes a "bad" woman, that she is so soiled and besmirched by the act that she takes some of the evil into herself.
> 
> ...




I must admit I've not encountered this one. It's a pretty weird motivation, that. I could understand someone becoming evil from the TEMPTATIONS OF POWER!!! But, from rape? 

Maybe I've not encountered it because I mostly read SF not F.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 6, 2012)

# I wonder how it makes women who have been victims of sexual violence themselves feel? 
# Maybe they have a different reaction than I do.

I think they would feel even worse than you, at least if rape is used for a revenge trope they get some revenge, but as you say this just tells them they're going to turn evil or something. But I do find this a weird trope for just that reason, where have you seen it?


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 6, 2012)

The title of the thread interests me as it implies sexual violence is purely against women, and whilst this is true, undoubtedly, the majority of cases, when commited against males it has a differing impact, one which strikes very centrally at the defined notions of masculinity. 

I have a male rape story arc, and went to a lot of trouble to address the damage this does, and not trivualise it. Given that I write in a fairly light fashion, it would have been easy to have it as a throwaway theme, but, whilst not fully explored in the first book (it happens fairly near the end), it forms one of the central arcs of the sequel. 

Sometimes, it seems that rape, as a subject, has been done an awful lot, but there are some excellent studies of it: Alice Sebold's Lucky is very well done. What I think is offensive is if it's a story arc that is done gratuitously, but without lasting impact. If a writer uses it, they really have to be prepared to take the consequences through and realise there is no easy solution to it.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 6, 2012)

springs said:


> The title of the thread interests me as it implies sexual violence is purely against women, and whilst this is true, undoubtedly, the majority of cases, when commited against males it has a differing impact, one which strikes very centrally at the defined notions of masculinity.
> 
> I have a male rape story arc, and went to a lot of trouble to address the damage this does, and not trivualise it. Given that I write in a fairly light fashion, it would have been easy to have it as a throwaway theme, but, whilst not fully explored in the first book (it happens fairly near the end), it forms one of the central arcs of the sequel.
> 
> Sometimes, it seems that rape, as a subject, has been done an awful lot, but there are some excellent studies of it: Alice Sebold's Lucky is very well done. What I think is offensive is if it's a story arc that is done gratuitously, but without lasting impact. If a writer uses it, they really have to be prepared to take the consequences through and realise there is no easy solution to it.



I'd be quite afraid to use rape in a story at all, whether for a male or female character, and I don't think it tends to impact on any issues that would interest me. My main obsessions are not so much about what the world does to a character, as what a character does to the world (though a lot of what I write isn't what I think I intend to write).


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## Nerds_feather (Aug 6, 2012)

springs said:


> The title of the thread interests me as it implies sexual violence is purely against women, and whilst this is true, undoubtedly, the majority of cases, when commited against males it has a differing impact, one which strikes very centrally at the defined notions of masculinity.



i think in practice, in SF/F, it's mostly male-on-female sexual violence. but this discussion does not need to be limited to that, by any means, nor was it my intention to limit it in such a way. i separated out misogyny from sexual violence on purpose. obviously sexual violence can be against males, or children, as well as women. 

EDIT: or transsexuals, of course.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 6, 2012)

How much darkness do people think is appropriate? What constitutes 'dark'? I generally write stuff that I think contains a lot of psychological darkness, but any sex is consensual. What crosses the line? What non-sexual stuff would be over the line?


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 6, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> I'd be quite afraid to use rape in a story at all, whether for a male or female character, and I don't think it tends to impact on any issues that would interest me. My main obsessions are not so much about what the world does to a character, as what a character does to the world (though a lot of what I write isn't what I think I intend to write).


 
An interesting way of viewing it, one I've never thought of, and my interest tends to be what the world does to the characters. It was a story arc I was very afraid of, but the situation the character was in, all the research I did led me to the concensus that it was very likely to happen in that scenario. that being the case, and once I accepted it (a lot of soul searching before I did) I was determined to handle it as best I could. 
My point, is that it's not a story line that should ever be explored without the commitment to open and deal with the large can of worms, not least of which is the realisation that people in real life are dealing with the aftermath of such things. But there are other story arcs, too, that should be considered with the same delicacy, it doesn't mean they should never be dealt with.

Just seen the last post - gratuitous darkness does nothing for me, but darkness that's there to enhance the story and move it on, I have a fairly good stomach for.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Aug 6, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> But I do find this a weird trope for just that reason, where have you seen it?



Not recently, so I can't remember all of them.  Maybe they aren't doing it so much these days. But one example is *Hart's Hope* by Orson Scott Card, which has a particularly vile rape scene.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 6, 2012)

springs said:


> Just seen the last post - gratuitous darkness does nothing for me, but darkness that's there to enhance the story and move it on, I have a fairly good stomach for.



I don't know if the darkness in my fiction is gratuitous or not, I do think the world is a pretty dark place. I guess I like a 'noir' sensibility, but I've never utilised rape or prostitution or anything of that nature in fiction yet, and don't think I would. Most of the 'noir' in my story is death and the preparedness of people to use one another and do harm to each other, but almost never in a sexual way. 

In my interzone story: "Invocation of the Lurker" there were some elements that gave me a lot of pause though. The protag is a female outcast who wishes to get back 'in', and calls up a morally questionable power to help her do so. It asks what she's prepared to pay to get back into her society, and some of the things it asks her if she would do are sexual, and others are violent, but all of them 'won't buy what she wants'. The entity in question feeds off emotions and experience, and she undergoes a physical assault as the price of admission to the conversation. I wanted her to go through this so she'd already paid a 'price' and would feel a greater motivation to accept the final price for what she wants when it's presented to her.

What do people make of this setup?


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## Gordian Knot (Aug 6, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> How much darkness do people think is appropriate? What constitutes 'dark'? ...... What crosses the line? What non-sexual stuff would be over the line?



These kinds of questions are always difficult for me. How does one answer when the line between acceptable and not is different for everyone. With this in mind, my thought is that the author has to be the one who feels what they have written is appropriate for them.

Readers will agree or disagree as their tastes dictate. But as long as you, the writer, has been honest to your belief structure, you have nothing to apologize for.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 6, 2012)

I'm going to pitch a rule at you, see what you make of it: Fiction isn't required to ape reality, and in some sense it ought to be 'fair'. So, if Red Sonja keeps getting 'married' to someone's horrific snake god, Conan should also get married to the occasional spider goddess. What's good for the goose, is good for the gander. What do people think of that proposal?


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## Teresa Edgerton (Aug 6, 2012)

> What do people make of this setup?



Colum, for me it would depend on how you wrote the scenes in question.   Stated baldly, it sounds "iffy" from my point of view, but (as I am sure you know) with any idea, it's the way you execute it and the actual details that matter. If I read the scene in the context of the book, I might not have a problem.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Aug 6, 2012)

> I'm going to pitch a rule at you, see what you make of it: Fiction isn't required to ape reality, and in some sense it ought to be 'fair'. So, if Red Sonja keeps getting 'married' to someone's horrific snake god, Conan should also get married to the occasional spider goddess. What's good for the goose, is good for the gander. What do people think of that proposal?



"Balanced" would be a better word than "fair," I think.

And isn't the point partly that we shouldn't be using certain plot devices so casually, no matter which gender they involve?


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## Colum Paget (Aug 6, 2012)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> Colum, for me it would depend on how you wrote the scenes in question.   Stated baldly, it sounds "iffy" from my point of view, but (as I am sure you know) with any idea, it's the way you execute it and the actual details that matter. If I read the scene in the context of the book, I might not have a problem.



I'm going to barrage you with questions because I want to bring this into focus more. I did state it very baldly on purpose, so far no-one has commented on this aspect of the story at all, and I've been very surprised at that to be honest.

Is it the violence or the sexual suggestions that are iffy? Would it be the same if I switched the protagonist's gender? Does it make a difference that the 'entity' is possessing the body of another woman while it does all this (and is itself non-gendered). Are protagonists generally required to take a degree of physical abuse, and if so is that more problematic for female protagonists, or not?


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## Colum Paget (Aug 6, 2012)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> "Balanced" would be a better word than "fair," I think.
> 
> And isn't the point partly that we shouldn't be using certain plot devices so casually, no matter which gender they involve?



Ah, but I don't know what the point is, that's what I'm trying to find out through discussion! You are probably right, I think, that some things are verboten, but let's run with the idea a bit. Would people be more comfortable about rape if it occurred in fiction as much towards male characters as female ones?

While we're on the topic, are there any other treatments of female characters that you find bothersome? I'll start on that one, I dislike seeing female characters who are gruesomely killed off to provide tragedy, although this can be done well, I felt it was well done in 'The Prestige'. Apart from anything else, I feel this trope is both misogynistic and misandrenous, as it 'uses' the woman as a disposable plot-point, but implies the death of a man would be less 'tragic'?


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 6, 2012)

For what it's worth, I think the sex of the character, in each case, is largely irrelevant. It's about how well we paint them, and if we have a well drawn character that the reader buys into, it should be tragic irrlevant of sex. If we don't, it might read gratuitously, again irrelevant of sex. We should be drawing the best characters we can and utilising their story arc in the best way we can - which may be to make an important point, it may be to entertain, it may be to make pathos - but the sex, to my mind, shouldn't especially matter.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 6, 2012)

springs said:


> For what it's worth, I think the sex of the character, in each case, is largely irrelevant. It's about how well we paint them, and if we have a well drawn character that the reader buys into, it should be tragic irrlevant of sex. If we don't, it might read gratuitously, again irrelevant of sex. We should be drawing the best characters we can and utilising their story arc in the best way we can - which may be to make an important point, it may be to entertain, it may be to make pathos - but the sex, to my mind, shouldn't especially matter.



I mostly agree, but if one sex is always getting something negative happen to them, and the other isn't, then something feels not right to me. If female characters in 'Wing Commander' scenarios are very well drawn and likeable, but are always getting tragically killed in the final battle, and the main male protagonist always manages to squeak through, then I feel there's something... not right about that, not fair.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Aug 6, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> Is it the violence or the sexual suggestions that are iffy? Would it be the same if I switched the protagonist's gender? Does it make a difference that the 'entity' is possessing the body of another woman while it does all this (and is itself non-gendered). Are protagonists generally required to take a degree of physical abuse, and if so is that more problematic for female protagonists, or not?



If the violence is sexual violence that would be the part I found "iffy."  Or if the violence was graphic and extended.  What would decide me is not the gender of the character, but whether the violence was gratuitous.  (I just finished reading a novel by ... um ... someone not unknown on this forum, and there was extended violence, including sexual violence, but because of the treatment and the importance to the story I decided it was justified).  I feel that it is often used as the simplest way to create a dramatic situation, to make a story seem more important and realistic than it really is.   "Dark" is somehow considered more realistic than "light" though both exist in the world, both are real, and I think that some writers get away with poor plotting and bad characterization because all the death and destruction lends a spurious appearance of "authenticity" in terms of the story's representation of the human experience.

No, I don't think that a degree of physical abuse is required for a protagonist.  And I am going to draw a wide red line between pain and physical discomfort (which are indeed inescapable) and abuse by another individual.

Because of the history of violence against women, I _would _feel more uncomfortable reading about a female being beaten to a pulp than a man suffering the same fate.  That is, I would be more likely to question whether it was a necessary part of the story, although the answer I might arrive at could still be "yes." *



> If female characters in 'Wing Commander' scenarios are very well drawn and likeable, but are always getting tragically killed in the final battle, and the main male protagonist always manages to squeak through, then I feel there's something... not right about that, not fair.



This would matter to me most if it were all happening in one series, or in books from the same writer.  But if there seemed to be a whole sub-genre in which the females always die, yes, I would feel there was something wrong, some unpleasant subtext at work perhaps.


_____


*It occurs to me that the gender of the writer might come into it as well.  If a female writer seemed to be taking a salacious delight (that is, if they seemed to be getting or trying to produce  a sexual thrill) in mistreating a male character, whether the violence itself were sexual, or a male writer doing the same with a female character, then I would feel doubly uncomfortable.


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## Nerds_feather (Aug 7, 2012)

A lot of interesting points here. I'm going to weigh in with my perspective now.

Rape and Sexual Violence

I don't mind that rape occurs in stories and books. It occurs in real life. What I do mind are two things:

1. Gratuitous, pornographic depictions of rape and sexual violence, that seem to take pleasure in describing it or do so in order to attain some modicum of "shock value." This is what RH, Elizabeth Bear and others refer to pejoratively as "grimdark." While I like dark fiction, this reminds me too much of the over-the-top violence and cruelty that was in vogue in 1990s US independent cinema. I don't like it, at all. 

2. Rape as a hamfisted mechanism to describe someone's motivations, either "she's angry because she was raped" (I think it was Teresa Edgerton who pointed this out in the RH thread), or "he's a dark and twisted soul because he'll rape someone without a second thought"...especially when these are combined with, respectively, "we should hate her because she's a bitch" and "we should really like him because he's badass."

The latter is part of my beef with RSB and *Prince of Nothing*. 

So what would constitute "appropriate" depictions of rape? This is hard to say. I can't say I'll ever enjoy reading about it, but I think theoretically it can be done in such a way as not to fall into one of these two traps. 

For me, I'd say having it happen off-scene would be the first thing I'd suggest, and then--and this is the most important part for me--making sure the depiction of the aftermath highlights and underscores the horror of the act _in its effects_. I don't really ever want to read another character who rapes but we're supposed to like him. I would, however, feel that a story of book that detailed the way an act like rape can shatter someone, and then look at their attempt to pick up the pieces, would be compelling.

This makes me think of Irving Welsh's novel *Maribou Stork Nightmares*, which is borderline spec-fic. I read it a good 15 years ago, so forgive me if my memory has faded, but if I remember correctly, a rape plays a central role in the story, and WElsh makes it very clear how destructive an act it is.


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## J-WO (Aug 7, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> How much darkness do people think is appropriate? What constitutes 'dark'? I generally write stuff that I think contains a lot of psychological darkness, but any sex is consensual. What crosses the line? What non-sexual stuff would be over the line?



Personally, I think darkness in fiction should work like darkness in Rembrandt paintings. It's there to bring focus to the light and make it stand out.


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## Brian G Turner (Aug 7, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> So what would constitute "appropriate" depictions of rape? This is hard to say. I can't say I'll ever enjoy reading about it, but I think theoretically it can be done in such a way as not to fall into one of these two traps.



Have just started reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo today. I vaguely know that violence against women will play some key part in this story. Not comfortable in knowing that's coming, but does not appear from accounts of friends who have read it to be gratuitous. Just hope that's borne out.


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## Nerds_feather (Aug 7, 2012)

I said:


> Have just started reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo today. I vaguely know that violence against women will play some key part in this story. Not comfortable in knowing that's coming, but does not appear from accounts of friends who have read it to be gratuitous. Just hope that's borne out.



a warning: it's very graphic at times...but written in the context of a book whose primary theme is how messed up violence by men against women is. actually the book's title in Swedish is *Män Som Hatar Kvinnor* (Men Who Hate Women).


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## Anne Lyle (Aug 7, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> Are protagonists generally required to take a degree of physical abuse, and if so is that more problematic for female protagonists, or not?



No, I don't think protagonists are required to take physical abuse - that would depend very much on the kind of story you are writing. Sure, if you're writing a warrior character (of either sex) and/or a story with a lot of combat, physical abuse is inevitable, but that's far from the only kind of story there is.

Secondly, I have no problem with female protagonists being on the receiving end of violence _that they chose to engage in_. If a heroine goes into situations all guns blazing, sure, I'm going to expect her to get the **** kicked out of her once in a while. It's female=victim that I have a problem with.

One of the things that bugs me about the whole "rapey fantasy" trope is that sexual assault is so often the principal, even the only, danger for the female characters. It seems to be a knee-jerk reaction by some (mainly male) writers that if they want to put their female character in peril, their go-to scenario is rape. It's like they can only conceptualise their female characters in the context of sex.

The other thing, and this is mainly from reading ASOIAF, is when rape is mentioned with wearying regularity, in just enough detail to be unpleasant but with callous disregard for the victims. I've basically given up reading ASOIAF because of this recurrent "look, aren't my characters all despicable, they've gang-raped another virgin" trope.

ETA: I didn't know Chrons had a bad language filter. I swear I didn't type those asterisks!


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## Teresa Edgerton (Aug 7, 2012)

J-WO said:


> Personally, I think darkness in fiction should work like darkness in Rembrandt paintings. It's there to bring focus to the light and make it stand out.



"Great deeds shine brighter in a dark world."  (Or something to that effect.)

But I think there has to be light as well as dark _in the story_ for that to work.  I don't believe that it brings focus to the light outside. 



			
				Anne Lyle said:
			
		

> It seems to be a knee-jerk reaction by some (mainly male) writers that if they want to put their female character in peril, their go-to scenario is rape. It's like they can only conceptualise their female characters in the context of sex.



Good point!



> I didn't know Chrons had a bad language filter.



Sometimes it works to unintentionally hilarious effect.  Like finding the dirty word in the middle of a perfectly innocent one.

In this case, it makes it look like you used a naughtier word than you probably did.


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## Kylara (Aug 7, 2012)

The Night's Dawn Trilogy covers the whole issue of drakness and violence rather well imo. It happens to everyone, that comes up against the "bad guys" and gives background on the one whose PoV you see from as you progress, so you see where he is coming from too - still a nasty character, but you can understand him...there are also variations in there on how to get the soul in (trying to avoid spoilers here...) and the rebellions of the possessed. It doesn't just go with male on female rape either, there is all sorts of diabolical stuff happening, but understanding of here and why they happen are also given...with a rather horrible twist that the body is better afterwards (again spoiler avoiding). It can get very dark, but it is mirrorred by a lighter set of "heroes". You get pretty much every side's viewpoint and reasoning and I do think that Hamilton manages very well with it, making the reader just uncomfortable enough every so often, yet creating a very believable reasoning behind it and bringing in some wonderful moral issues, alongside the poverty, darkness, sexual exploitation et al...well worth a look.


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## J-WO (Aug 7, 2012)

(Slight derail that plays back to thread this thread came from- Had Twitter chat with Requires Hate. I had a go at identifying her and she (nervously?) laughed it off.

Tellingly, she re-tweeted everything I tweeted except the one where I suggested she could be funnier.

Anyway, carry on...)


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

Perhaps in saying 'is the protagonist required to take abuse' I'm overstating it, but they do say that you should make life as difficult for your protagonist.

I have noticed a tendency to violence between women in my fiction, but then I tend to mostly use female characters, so the one thing is likely to grow from the other. In "Imaginary Enemies" (over at Daily Science Fiction) the story concerned two people living in one body, and the fact that this was viewed as a 'treatable' disease by society, and so one of the two was scheduled to be 'erased'. I wanted someone to make the case for the reality of the 'other' person (who cannot appear in the story themselves, because of the viewpoint) and didn't feel that words alone were enough. In "Invocation of the Lurker" the violence is there to push the protag to make a certain choice: You've already paid the price, you might as well go all the way. 'Pink Ice in the Jovian Rings' is a piece set during the "Warring Moons Period" when young women are used as "coffin dodgers" (a form of fighter pilot) because of their better brain/mass ratio for space combat (it's pretty grim, but only in the sense of "All quiet on the western front", I think). 'Love in a time of Bio-mal' features some violence towards a female character who has an eye removed (though it happens offstage, and it's later put back in), but on the other hand it features extended and quite graphic violence by the same female character on the male lead. 

The one story I have with robot prot/ant-agonists (Interview with a Robot Hereisarch) features an extended and graphic fight between the two. So it could just be that protagonists in my fiction are often going to get into physical situations.

On the other hand, someone reading one of these stories might feel that violent conflict involving females in it was problematic, where they wouldn't feel that for male characters (or robots) and they might not read any more of my fiction. In this regard, it might be the smart move for the author to generally keep female characters in... well, 'traditional' roles where they're out of harm's way? 

I'm changing the question a bit here, I'm not asking about what we *should* do, because everyone would say that we should break female characters out of their traditional roles, I'm asking what is it *tactically smart* for a  writer to do, as regards their readership? 

We as writers might all agree that we should see female characters in less 'stay-at-home' roles, but if this means exposing them to violence (and I think in many styles of story it will) and the readership reacts badly to that, is the smart move for the writer to stick to male characters (or robots) in stories containing violent conflict?


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

J-WO said:


> (Slight derail that plays back to thread this thread came from- Had Twitter chat with Requires Hate. I had a go at identifying her and she (nervously?) laughed it off.
> 
> Tellingly, she re-tweeted everything I tweeted except the one where I suggested she could be funnier.
> 
> Anyway, carry on...)



These days I have some suspicions about who it is, but I don't think it's actually useful to know any more. I kinda don't want to know the answer. I would feel very betrayed and upset if someone I knew had attacked me as they did (I don't think it's someone I've personally met, but I'd rather not know one way or the others).


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

Kylara said:


> The Night's Dawn Trilogy covers the whole issue of drakness and violence rather well imo.



Drakness is a whole other kettle of snakes! Don't get me started on drakness!


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> If the violence is sexual violence that would be the part I found "iffy."  Or if the violence was graphic and extended.  What would decide me is not the gender of the character, but whether the violence was gratuitous.  (I just finished reading a novel by ... um ... someone not unknown on this forum, and there was extended violence, including sexual violence, but because of the treatment and the importance to the story I decided it was justified).  I feel that it is often used as the simplest way to create a dramatic situation, to make a story seem more important and realistic than it really is.   "Dark" is somehow considered more realistic than "light" though both exist in the world, both are real, and I think that some writers get away with poor plotting and bad characterization because all the death and destruction lends a spurious appearance of "authenticity" in terms of the story's representation of the human experience.
> 
> No, I don't think that a degree of physical abuse is required for a protagonist.  And I am going to draw a wide red line between pain and physical discomfort (which are indeed inescapable) and abuse by another individual.
> 
> ...





When is violence gratuitous? I'm going to take a stab (no pun intended) at this myself, as just asking questions isn't helpfull: I think that it's gratuitous if it's unimportant to the story, if it serves no real purpose. In the cases of my stories that I've outlined above, I felt it did serve a purpose, but how do I tell if I'm right or wrong in that regard? How should be approach violence in our fiction (not just violence to women, all violence?) 

As regards a salacious delight in mistreating characters (which I suspect you might almost require to be an author!), do you have any feeling for what would tip you off that you were seeing salacious delight? Does it have any common aspects that one can point to?


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## Kylara (Aug 7, 2012)

If the violence adds nothing to the part you are writing, then it is gratuitous...eg someone gets beaten up, you show a couple of blows, a bloody nose, falling on the floor curled up in a ball...all fine, but when you start to avidly describe every moment of this, taking special care to give all the details of the violence it becomes gratuitous, I know what happens when someone is beaten up, you don't have to give an incredibly detailed account, unless it actually helps the story...it's all in the language - "fist connected with their nose, and a sharp cry of pain followed, blood started dripping from the now broken nose", compared with "fist connected with a sickening crunch, hot wet blood, sloshed weakly from the cartilage hanging limply from the swollen, bruised, shattered remains of the once whole nose; an impassioned cry of intense pain, smothered by the blood clogging their throat burst from them" the first is fine, the second (apologies for that) is just gratuitous and unneccessary, unless this is an important point for the story...


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## Anne Lyle (Aug 7, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> We as writers might all agree that we should see female characters in less 'stay-at-home' roles, but if this means exposing them to violence (and I think in many styles of story it will) and the readership reacts badly to that, is the smart move for the writer to stick to male characters (or robots) in stories containing violent conflict?



No, absolutely not. It's not about the violence per se, but about how it's handled. Are the women always victims, and the men always the dominant inflicters of violence? Is the violence gratuitous, as discussed above, or sexualised/objectifying? If the answer to these is no, you're probably OK.

Sounds to me like RH has got you so rattled, you're trying to avoid the subject altogether. I recommend you get yourself some female beta-readers who are a bit less thin-skinned (and a lot less aggressive!) than her but still sensitive to misogynist undertones 

@Kylara - gratuitousness isn't just about the detail. It's about whether the event really adds to the story at all. A lot of GRRM's rape scenes and other examples of abuse aren't described in graphic detail - it's the frequency, and the callousness of those reporting them, that's sickening.


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## Kylara (Aug 7, 2012)

Hmm I suppose, however I think callousness comes with its own commentary on the subject...I agree gratuitousness isn't all in the details, but it was the best example I could come up with that was short and kind of showed my point...if there is no need for person X to even get beaten up, then why bother putting it in at all? 

I was aiming for how language itself can be gratuitous...unconscious things maybe seen in a first draft: your character is crying - you say snivelling - negative assumption based on the word, same sort of action, - or weeping - almost certainly a female or a feminine man, comes with great emotional attachment, still technically crying. Some ways of using language can be gratuitous, which is what I was trying to get across; the second example didn't need to have that much detail unless it was specifically needed for plot/motive etc, but then again, if the violence isn't really need at all for the plot, it is just somehting that happens to happen in the scene that has no impact on anything else then it is definitely gratuitous.


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## The Judge (Aug 7, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> I have noticed a tendency to violence between women in my fiction, but then I tend to mostly use female characters, so the one thing is likely to grow from the other.


Then perhaps you ought to be asking yourself why you are inflicting violence on anyone, and why you are deliberately writing women into these stories.  While each story may in itself be unobjectionable, taken cumulatively they may be saying something that is best addressed. 



> In this regard, it might be the smart move for the author to generally keep female characters in... well, 'traditional' roles where they're out of harm's way?


Not unless you really want to come over as a sexist jerk... 



> I'm asking what is it *tactically smart* for a  writer to do, as regards their readership?


Cut down on the violence against anyone, perhaps -- unless you are catering for a demographic that likes to read about violence, in which case ask yourself why you're doing that.  If you're writing about women in the military or other occupations where violence is inevitable, you should be wary of women-only situations just as much as you should beware of men-only.  


While I'm here, incidentally, you might not have realised that it isn't necessary to quote an entire post if you want to respond to someone, and we'd usually prefer you didn't.  It's enough to quote the snippet that's important, or to refer to the poster by name when replying.  We also prefer that members don't post consecutively -- if you want to reply to different posters, it's perfectly acceptable to do so in one long post (another reason not to quote the posts in full) using the multi-quote option if necessary.


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## Ursa major (Aug 7, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> As regards a salacious delight in mistreating characters (which I suspect you might almost require to be an author!), do you have any feeling for what would tip you off that you were seeing salacious delight? Does it have any common aspects that one can point to?


I'm not sure about the author's position on the matter (no pun intended), but I've noted a couple of Iain Banks novels where alien species seem to take delight in mistreating their offspring.

(Don't quote me on this, but I think the species are the Affront, in _Excession_, and the Dwellers, in _The Algebraist_.)


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

Kylara said:


> If the violence adds nothing to the part you are writing, then it is gratuitous...eg someone gets beaten up, you show a couple of blows, a bloody nose, falling on the floor curled up in a ball...all fine, but when you start to avidly describe every moment of this, taking special care to give all the details of the violence it becomes gratuitous, I know what happens when someone is beaten up, you don't have to give an incredibly detailed account, unless it actually helps the story...it's all in the language - "fist connected with their nose, and a sharp cry of pain followed, blood started dripping from the now broken nose", compared with "fist connected with a sickening crunch, hot wet blood, sloshed weakly from the cartilage hanging limply from the swollen, bruised, shattered remains of the once whole nose; an impassioned cry of intense pain, smothered by the blood clogging their throat burst from them" the first is fine, the second (apologies for that) is just gratuitous and unneccessary, unless this is an important point for the story...



I've copied the whole quote into this one, because I feel that this is a very good illustration of the point in question. Thanks for posting this.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

Anne Lyle said:


> No, absolutely not. It's not about the violence per se, but about how it's handled. Are the women always victims, and the men always the dominant inflicters of violence? Is the violence gratuitous, as discussed above, or sexualised/objectifying? If the answer to these is no, you're probably OK.



In this regard "I'm okay", as I've never depicted violence from a man towards a woman, that I can remember. It's mostly been woman-to-woman violence (and this has generally not been that long-term serious, though I can think of one case when it was).  

I've done a lot of violence from women to men though, (one dropped in a black-hole, one pushed from a tall building, one shot through the leg and subsequently tortured, one shredded by a 'razor swarm' in a space battle where most of the combatants were female, etc, etc) Perhaps I should take a long, hard look at myself, and ask if I'm misandrenous ;-) 



Anne Lyle said:


> Sounds to me like RH has got you so rattled, you're trying to avoid the subject altogether. I recommend you get yourself some female beta-readers who are a bit less thin-skinned (and a lot less aggressive!) than her but still sensitive to misogynist undertones



I wouldn't be in this thread if I wanted to avoid the subject! I'm here because I want to discuss it. Then again, I'll discuss anything, but this was the subject that was proposed.

Perhaps I should point something out, I'm leading the conversation here because last night this thread seemed dead-at-birth, no-one was saying anything. If we're going to get a conversation going, then someone has to stand up and start saying things, and saying things that will encourage responses. (Some have claimed this is what RH is actually doing, but I'm being very careful about my tone here: if the thread becomes a fight then no useful purpose is served). 

Some of what I'm saying is a little disingenuous, I'm presenting my own fiction in rather a black light. I think we need to do this a bit if we're going to look seriously at our own work (though it's dangerous, perhaps, to do it in a public forum, because I'm 'priming' people to view my work a certain way. But, ho-hum).

Don't think that everything I'm saying is what I think. If we're going to discuss this, then someone has to play devil's advocate some of time.

As for female beta-readers, I have those, both in my writers group and elsewhere. None of them have ever raised any of the issues about my work that I'm raising, and the only person I remember doing so, even slightly, was male. However, I don't feel this means I've got a "pass" or anything, it's always worth looking at ones work and seeing what one can find in it. It can even be educational to find things that aren't there!

I should also point something else out, RH has never really critiqued my work, it's been my blog-posts and conversations with her. 

But let's not keep coming back to RH, they are not the topic of this thread, we seem obsessed with them.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

The Judge said:


> While I'm here, incidentally, you might not have realised that it isn't necessary to quote an entire post if you want to respond to someone, and we'd usually prefer you didn't.  It's enough to quote the snippet that's important,



Sorry, I'm new here and I got lazy.


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 7, 2012)

Perhaps I should point something out, I'm leading the conversation here because last night this thread seemed dead-at-birth, no-one was saying anything. If we're going to get a conversation going, then someone has to stand up and start saying things, and saying things that will encourage responses. (Some have claimed this is what RH is actually doing, but I'm being very careful about my tone here: if the thread becomes a fight then no useful purpose is served). 

Well, that's odd since I seem to remember both myself and Teresa posting quite a lot on it last night. There tends to be a lull during UK overnight on the threads - although I always enjoy waking up to what's been being picked up overnight - but this has been a pretty lively thread. 
And it won't become a fight, because it'll be locked if it does. And because, mostly, we're pretty civilised in our disagreements. 



But let's not keep coming back to RH, they are not the topic of this thread, we seem obsessed with them.

Well, most of us aren't - most of us have dismissed her as a ranter (That seemed to be the majority view on the other thread, anyhow.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

The Judge said:


> Then perhaps you ought to be asking yourself why you are inflicting violence on anyone, and why you are deliberately writing women into these stories.  While each story may in itself be unobjectionable, taken cumulatively they may be saying something that is best addressed.



These are good questions. Violence often comes up in my fiction because... hmm, I do feel fiction is often about conflict. Now, it can be verbal conflict, but when I write those stories I get crits and rejections saying "More action!" (I have a liking for talky stories, but talky stories don't sell). 

There are times when I want someone to express and extreme emotion, and I feel that words can't often do that, because fiction is words all the time. In "Imaginary Enemies" Sandra suffers a type of MPD, and thus shares her body with Ingrid. Sandra is going to undergo medical treatment that will 'cure' her MPD. We never directly see Ingrid, because Sandra is the viewpoint, so it's easy for us to think that Ingrid isn't "read". Thus I introduced Caroline, Ingrid's lover, for whom Ingrid is very real, and the most important person in her life. I didn't feel that Caroline could just make an impassioned plea to save Ingrid, I felt she had to show it, hence she ambushes Sandra (physically) and threatens to kill her if she goes through with the treatment.

Given the somewhat dire setup of the story, do people feel that Caroline's assault (which involves a kick and a punch, and then threatening with a knife, it's not some kind of sustained torture) is justified? When is violence justified in fiction, and what justifies it? When is it not?

I'm using examples from my own fiction here because the purpose of this thread was to discuss how we can improve our treatment of these issues, and if we all just spend our time castigating Joe Abercromie and Neal Asher for things they've written, and don't look at our own works, well, I feel that's dishonest (though looking at other authors may have a place in the discussion too, but you have to look hard at yourself first and formost).


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

springs said:


> Well, that's odd since I seem to remember both myself and Teresa posting quite a lot on it last night. There tends to be a lull during UK overnight on the threads - although I always enjoy waking up to what's been being picked up overnight - but this has been a pretty lively thread.



It may be a matter of perception on my part, I was up late and hitting 'refresh, refresh, refresh' and nothing was happening, so I figured I should start saying stuff to encourage things a bit.

I suppose in a bit I'm going to go back to work, and everyone will think "Why has he gone quiet?", so yes, it's probably just my impatience with online conversations. I want them to happen when it' convenient for me, you know?


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## allmywires (Aug 7, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> Perhaps I should point something out, I'm leading the conversation here because last night this thread seemed dead-at-birth, no-one was saying anything. If we're going to get a conversation going, then someone has to stand up and start saying things, and saying things that will encourage responses. (Some have claimed this is what RH is actually doing, but I'm being very careful about my tone here: if the thread becomes a fight then no useful purpose is served).



Hi Colum,

I stayed out of this thread until now because the RH thread wore me out a little bit, and I have a feeling this is another one of those circuitous discussions where nobody has the right answer. However, I would say, give the thread a little time, sometimes it takes a few days to kick into life.

Another reason I haven't posted yet is that I'm not quite sure what you're asking - you're shooting from all sorts of different directions, and it's hard to condense into one response. So I'm going to answer what I think is the most important question here:



Colum Paget said:


> How should be approach violence in our fiction (not just violence to women, all violence?)



I'm very uncomfortable with sexual violence, because when not handled properly it seems to always give an air of fetishisation. I know springs has posted in here about her male rape storyline, and IMO that's when it is handled well - all too often the long-term psychological distress of sexual assault is ignored in SFF. I would say that is for two reasons: one, it is set in a society where women do not have as many rights as modern day, so it's expected that they suck it up (they have little to no protection from the law, etc) and two, SFF is often more plot-driven than regular fiction, so the psychology of the characters is not fully explored. Now, I'm not saying that somebody should write a SFF novel based solely on the aftermath of a rape, but I think a lot of authors believe they don't have to deal with this because of these two reasons listed above.

I write a lot of violence in my novels, some of it graphic. My poor MC goes through the wringer in book 1, and my other POV character is a torture victim. I'm working on exploring more of his backstory right now, and the impact of torture that leaves physical scars. Like I said above, since SFF is rarely as character driven as other works of fiction, this is often glossed over, or made into something overly simplified: as Teresa said earlier, the horrible 'rape-victim-becomes-evil or in a male case, usually violence makes them stronger and better - aloof hero. It's a complicated issue, there's no mistake, but I strongly believe violence is a good literary tool - it can be used to break down your characters (in terms of psychology) and demonstrate the mental strength (or lack thereof) of the perpetrators. 

What's the difference between a character who is a cold-blooded murderer, or one who kills for mercy, or in self-defence? Technically they are the same crime, but they offer a wealth of possibilities to explore characterisation. Odds on your cold-blooded murderer is going to have a completely different psychological outlook than the man who killed to save his (or someone else's) life.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

#  Perhaps I should take a long, hard look at myself, and ask if I'm misandrenous ;-)

I said this with a wink at the end, but if anyone wants to take it a little seriously and ask if the treatment of male characters in my work might indicate a fear of women, or a hatred of men, or self-hate, or something, feel free!

But, I notice no-one else is really putting forth things they've been doing in their own work, except in a very veiled manner?


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

# Another reason I haven't posted yet is that I'm not quite sure what you're asking

Nor am I, I'm just trying to get a discussion going. Who knows where it will lead?


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 7, 2012)

I think it's the summer too, there's a lot on holiday. 

On the other note, i think it's important not to confine this sort of thread only to our own work as, despite my attempt to have half the Chrons community read mine, I have not yet taken over the world...  and therefore it becomes an exercise in self gratification. Instead, I think it's important to look at the issues critically and use these as a mirror into our own work. 

Some of the things mentioned have been very useful for me to consider - I have a few dark storylines in mine, and am juggling how to handle that against a couple of the characters in the book, and I can see that I am handling the male and female characters differently. That's partly because of how comfortable I am as a writer within the boundaries and partly how I expect something to be received. 

With violence - and associated themes, we've touched on rape, women to women, but there's other stuff out there - we have to recognise if we choose to present it in our books it will alienate some readers. There are lots of gore fests out there that sell very well - so there's evidently a market for it - but if we choose to become that sort of writer, we will inevitably open ourselves up to being seen as gratuitous. 

Also, sometimes the implied is scarier than the explicit, and this is something that the really good writers do to great effect. (Stephen King, for instance in Salem's lot - there is very little real violence in it - plenty of blood sucking, okay - but he ratchets up the horror by our implied fear.)

But, if you choose to write a lot of female on female violence, then it is perhaps becoming a theme, and if so I'd kind of like to know either why the theme is so interesting to that author or what answers it gives me about a view on life. If the answer is it seemed cool and none(which I'm not saying it is in your case), that moves to gratuitous to me.


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## Kylara (Aug 7, 2012)

Any writing is a comment on fiction itself and also on society as whole, so a theme may be picked up by someone and they use it in all their works, commenting either purposefully on that theme in greater society, fiction, their life etc, or accidentally by giving an unintentional view into how they perceive things, both are helpful to us (studyers/critics).
A very good look at female subjugation can be found in The Handmaid's Tale by Atwood, there are some issues in there that are covered well and non gratuitously.


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## Ursa major (Aug 7, 2012)

Just to simultaneously step aside from the particular topic AND agree, in part, with Kylara AND mention my own work (kind of), if only to please Colum....

* excuse me while I fall over, legs entwined *

I've noticed one or two things recurring in my writing, including a structural one that, while unplanned and not necessarily good in itself, feeds strongly into one of the underlying plot strands of my frame story. (Yay subconscious!)


Whether these are evidence of laziness, or a subconscious desire, it's hard to know. I'm pleased to say, though, that sexual violence plays no part in any of them. What may be a problem, though - and however innocuous these idées fixe are - is that the reader picks up on them and sees it as evidence of one or more of:

lack of imagination;
obsession;
the author hammering home some point or other without the necessary subtlety.


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## Mouse (Aug 7, 2012)

Robin Hobb has male/male rape in her Liveships books which is handled very well. Springs also handles it very well.

I've written from the PoV of a rapist before now _and_ managed to make the character likeable (at least, people told me they liked him!).


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## Anne Lyle (Aug 7, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> But, I notice no-one else is really putting forth things they've been doing in their own work, except in a very veiled manner?



Well, since I don't have much in the way of sexual violence or violence by or towards women in my books, I didn't feel any need to 'fess up 

I think the sum total for the first book is:

* Gay character acts like a jerk towards girl-disguised-as-boy, including trying to kiss "him" non-consensually (his reasons for behaving like this are complicated, and are eventually revealed by the end of the book)

* The same character is assumed to be a potential rapist by a servant girl, in a scene from his PoV in which it's clear he's not the slightest bit interested

* The girl-disguised-as-a-boy is initially a bit nervous about being alone with the hero, whom she's only just met, because she's been warned that some men have an unwholesome interest in boys

There's a fair amount of non-sexual violence between men, but that's pretty much expected for a swashbuckling spy thriller set in a more brutal era than our own.


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## Nerds_feather (Aug 7, 2012)

allmywires said:


> I'm very uncomfortable with sexual violence, because when not handled properly it seems to always give an air of fetishisation. I know springs has posted in here about her male rape storyline, and IMO that's when it is handled well - all too often the long-term psychological distress of sexual assault is ignored in SFF. I would say that is for two reasons: one, it is set in a society where women do not have as many rights as modern day, so it's expected that they suck it up (they have little to no protection from the law, etc) and two, SFF is often more plot-driven than regular fiction, so the psychology of the characters is not fully explored. Now, I'm not saying that somebody should write a SFF novel based solely on the aftermath of a rape, but I think a lot of authors believe they don't have to deal with this because of these two reasons listed above.



THIS.

As I said back on page 2, the interesting thing about sexual violence _is not the act itself_. It's the aftereffects. It's the inevitable, massive and variegated ways in which being the victim of sexual violence can affect one's life, health and psychology for the rest of one's life. There can also be interesting explorations of what happens to people who observe sexual violence. Do they become desensitized, like child soldiers or gang members who are often forced to watch (or participate in) rape as part of indoctrination? Do they instead become remorseful, guilt-ridden and so on? How could they try to atone for what they did, and is it ever possible to do so? 

Like allmywires, I think this is largely missing from SF/F treatments of sexual violence. Instead we get rapes that seem to only exist to establish certain characters as "ruthless," as a device to say "these times are really bad" and as part of a general tendency, in fantasy these days, to be graphic and gory.

That I don't care for. Or I'm sick of. Or both.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Aug 7, 2012)

No sexual violence actually depicted in any of my stories.  In _The Green Lion_ books there is a mental rape of a sexual nature, but it occurs off stage.  The victim is damaged by it and has to deal with that through a large part in a trilogy of sequels.  There is also some rough sex by two over-wrought people, but that occurs off stage, too.  

In _The Queen's Necklace_ one of the important characters is a young girl with a history of repeated rapes (consent, or be thrown out on the street and suffer a worse fate pressure to have sex) but that's before the story begins.  In the course of the story, people around her seem quite comfortable with the idea that she's been offered by her uncle as a sort of sex toy for an an insane old man, though she's still in her teens.  They look at her disreputable past, and they figure it's OK. But she's become neither wicked nor promiscuous.  To a large extent, she's retreated into a fantasy world which makes it easier for her to deal with her life.

So, off-stage stuff, and the consequences shown, though probably not as realistic as they should be.

What I've been doing in my present work (_The Rune of Unmaking_ trilogy, written under the name Madeline Howard) is putting the characters through a lot of pain as a result of the arduous nature of the journey. There is a certain amount of combat, but nature is beating up on the characters as often as people are.

But in the final book of the series, I find I've put myself in a situation where I have to inflict significant and vicious harm (not sexual) on two of my male characters.  This amount of cruelty is unusual for me.  The characters are both male because they happen to be the ones whose story lines sort of backed me into a corner, and I realized it was going to have to happen.  (Actually, the abuse of one of the characters started in the previous book, but it wasn't at all graphic.)  I don't like doing it at all, which I _hope_ means it's honestly inescapable and not gratuitous.

I do knock Francis Skelbrooke around a fair bit in _Goblin Moon_ and the sequel, but the violence is brief, and a lot of his suffering happens when he's twice forced to go through withdrawal from a drug he's addicted to.  

Colum, since this is a forum with members from all over the world, there are  parts of the day when there tend to be long lulls in the discussion.  It's frustrating for those of us who are awake and eager to converse when most members are asleep, but there's nothing to be done about that.  There is a time when there are only a handful of Americans, Australians, and insomniac Brits (and the Australians are sneaking online at work), when it's very slow.


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 7, 2012)

I think it's worth just saying - since it's been mentioned a couple of times(and thanks mouse and amw who've read the stuff dealing with the extensive fall out of bk 1) - that the scene in question happens off scene( I had it as a 3rd pov at one stage but chose to remove that and go for a more subtle reveal) and whilst there is other stuff on stage I have tried my best to make it about the effects not the cause, whilst also addressing that the reader has to know enough to know the effects are not based on a unrealistic level of stress vs the effects) it's not a slasher (I hope) but it won't be everyone's cup of tea, either.


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## Anne Lyle (Aug 7, 2012)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> But in the final book of the series, I find I've put myself in a situation where I have to inflict significant and vicious harm (not sexual) on two of my male characters.



Funny you should mention that. Before I started on the _Night's Masque_ trilogy I always thought I'd never write a torture scene, because in general I don't like reading them, but my protagonist is a spy and torture was used frequently in the 16th century (albeit less often in England than on the Continent) so the topic is somewhat hard to avoid. 

I hope it's not gratuitous - I only include it when it would be unrealistic not to - and I don't go into graphic detail. I think one of the most chilling things I've ever seen is Guy Fawkes' signature before and after his interrogation - the difference speaks volumes about the wretched, pain-racked state he was reduced to.


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## HareBrain (Aug 7, 2012)

Anne Lyle said:


> I think one of the most chilling things I've ever seen is Guy Fawkes' signature before and after his interrogation - the difference speaks volumes about the wretched, pain-racked state he was reduced to.


 
Good example. The suggested or hinted at can be far more horrific than the explicit, as well as being less likely to attract charges of being gratuitous or salacious.


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## Anne Lyle (Aug 7, 2012)

What really sickens me is that people are making "art" of it:

http://www.myartprints.co.uk/a/englishschool-1/signatureofguyfawkes1570-.html

Just imagine if someone did the same with images from Gitmo...


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

Ursa major said:


> Just to simultaneously step aside from the particular topic AND agree, in part, with Kylara AND mention my own work (kind of), if only to please Colum....
> 
> * excuse me while I fall over, legs entwined *



Oh Bravo! Very nicely done sir. The triple-pliee-tumble is the ultimate expression of the art.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

allmywires said:


> I have a feeling this is another one of those circuitous discussions where nobody has the right answer.



I'm getting quite a bit out of it, to be honest. I've never really had a chance to discuss these issues before, because it's not the kind of thing you can propose to your writers group "Hey, why don't we discuss sexual violence in the genre?"

I might be having a slightly different discussion to everyone else though, as none of the violence in my fiction is sexual. But the question of 'why use violence at all?' is not one I've ever heard asked before. Fiction normally involves conflict, and conflict often means violence within certain genres, but I can think of good stories that I've read that didn't involve any violence at all, so it's not *required*.

I found Kylara's illustration of salacious enjoyment of violence really useful, because it distinguishes the idea from gratuitous, which just means 'unnecessary'. I'd say that violence in horror fiction is salacious, but not gratuitous, because it's a required aspect of some forms of that genre. The genre itself, overall, may be gratuitous, but if you're going to do horror, then you're committed to providing the salacious thrill of gore and grue that I think many horror readers are seeking.


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 7, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> I'm getting quite a bit out of it, to be honest. I've never really had a chance to discuss these issues before, because it's not the kind of thing you can propose to your writers group "Hey, why don't we discuss sexual violence in the genre?"
> 
> No? If you're writing it, it should be able to be discussed. Either that or my group deserve medals. (actually, they probably do...)
> 
> ...


 
Not always. Horror, like humour, is incredibly hard to write, and the best written horror is often not the gratuitous sort, but the implied. The haunting of Hill House (still sends shivers down me) has nothing salacious or gratuitous in it. Many of King's don't, either - take Shawshank, which is horrific in what it implies, not what it does - even the Stand(which is, I believe, the one he'll be remembered for), which is true, spill chilling keep you awake at night horror - the classic horror scenes aren't what have the impact, it's the fleeing in the night from the unseen horror, the waking up in a dead american town, that have the real impact. Slasher horror is a different beast and tends, imho, to exist more cinematically than it does in literature.


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## Anne Lyle (Aug 7, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> I'm getting quite a bit out of it, to be honest. I've never really had a chance to discuss these issues before, because it's not the kind of thing you can propose to your writers group "Hey, why don't we discuss sexual violence in the genre?"



Maybe you need a better writers' group? 

Perhaps it's just because (by chance) mine is all female, but they would so be up for this kind of debate...


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

springs said:


> On the other note, i think it's important not to confine this sort of thread only to our own work as, despite my attempt to have half the Chrons community read mine, I have not yet taken over the world...  and therefore it becomes an exercise in self gratification. Instead, I think it's important to look at the issues critically and use these as a mirror into our own work.



I felt we needed some illustrations, so the conversation wasn't "fuzzy and abrstract", but given the nature of the topic, I was a little uncomfortable to start illustrating using anyone else's work.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

Anne Lyle said:


> Maybe you need a better writers' group?
> 
> Perhaps it's just because (by chance) mine is all female, but they would so be up for this kind of debate...



I do think my writer's group are pretty awesome, but I agree that it would be much easier to discuss in a single-sex group, but then you'd also perhaps lose a lot of the insight that would come from the 'missing' group (whichever one it was). It's all swings and roundabouts, you have to seize discussion whereever you find someone willing to do it.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

@springs hmm, now that you mention it I can't think of any graphic violence that I've read in horror...

I do remember reading some clive barker that I felt was pretty graphic, but I don't remember what any of the content was now


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

springs said:


> But, if you choose to write a lot of female on female violence, then it is perhaps becoming a theme, and if so I'd kind of like to know either why the theme is so interesting to that author or what answers it gives me about a view on life. If the answer is it seemed cool and none(which I'm not saying it is in your case), that moves to gratuitous to me.



In the two cases mentioned I had very good reasons for doing it, and I do think that if you use female prot/ant-agonists, then you'll have violence between them, so in some ways my questions were intended to provoke. However, there is one unpublished story of mine where I think the accusations stand. It has pirates in it, and unlike the published works there's no deep reason for their to be violence between two of the characters, except to show they're bad pirates. This is exactly the kind of thing that people say is lazy, but on the other hand... they're pirates. I feel we need to see something that demonstrates that they're people you'd want to avoid, but I'm not sure how that might be done.


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## Anne Lyle (Aug 7, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> In the two cases mentioned I had very good reasons for doing it, and I do think that if you use female prot/ant-agonists, then you'll have violence between them



In a combat setting, maybe - but anywhere else...? Women don't tend to solve their conflicts with violence.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

## In this regard, it might be the smart move for the author to generally keep female characters in... 
## well, 'traditional' roles where they're out of harm's way? 

# Not unless you really want to come over as a sexist jerk...

I was being provocative here, and I think maybe it didn't work, as I feel the question's gotten shorter shrift than it deserves. I'll elaborate on something that I think is important.

I've got a concept that I call the 'chivalry shield', which is a tendency that I perceive in fiction (mostly movies/tv) to not allow female characters to put themselves in harms way, and not allow the male characters to let this happen. However, the chivalry shield is no friend to female characters, because while the protag is not allowed to let a female decide her own fate, the antagonist is generally allowed to do anything, so she tends to wind up stuffed in a fridge.

The best example I've seen of this is in Danny Boyle's 'Sunshine'. Now, I really liked the movie, but there's a point when someone has to stay behind on a doomed derelict spacecraft to operate the thingy that will allow the others to get away to the main ship. The obvious candidate for this is Michele Youh's biologist character, who is redundant among the crew after they lost the main ship's 'oxygen garden' to fire. Furthermore, as the derelict has a surviving oxygen garden, it would have provided a poetic heroes death for Youh's character if she'd been allowed to stay behind and spent her last hours in the oxygen garden. However, one of the males did this job, and Youh's character was later stalked and slashed (offscreen) by a serial killer lose on the main ship. In fact, both female characters on the ship die victim's deaths instead of heroes deaths. 

Now maybe you can see why I'm a little nervous of using examples from other people's work, because if you've not seen 'Sunshine' this synopsis doesn't sound good, does it? But it's actually a pretty good film. (And I'm sure I'm well under Danny Boyle's radar).

Anyways, I think audiences expect the 'male establishment' in the movie to protect the female characters, but are fine with the transgressive antagonist breaking this protection, as he's the bad guy, right?

I'm against the chivalry shield, myself, but that means I'll write fiction where women will be allowed to put themselves in harms way by the plot and the other characters in it. I'm not sure audiences are comfortable with that, given the widespread prevelance of 'Chivalry shield' phenomena (it should also be noted that the 'Chivalry shield' implies males are more 'disposable', because it's okay to send them on suicide missions etc). I think it's an aspect of traditional morality that women shouldn't be allowed into danger, but that if the monster gets them, then that's okay, because the whole point is that the monster is supposed to be transgressive. If I'm right about that, then are there any dangers to breaking these taboos in your fiction?


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

Anne Lyle said:


> In a combat setting, maybe - but anywhere else...? Women don't tend to solve their conflicts with violence.



In truth nor do men. But in fiction we're often dealing with more extreme situations, and more extreme characters. We are rarely in high-stakes or life-and-death situations in daily life, but fiction features these all the time.


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## Anne Lyle (Aug 7, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> In truth nor do men. But in fiction we're often dealing with more extreme situations, and more extreme characters. We are rarely in high-stakes or life-and-death situations in daily life, but fiction features these all the time.



It's very culture-dependent - but in most historical cultures, men are more likely to have been brought up to believe that conflict can be solved through violence (whether or not they go through with it), whereas women have not. If you don't "get" this, I'm not sure you have a firm grasp on the female psyche.


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 7, 2012)

Anne Lyle said:


> It's very culture-dependent - but in most historical cultures, men are more likely to have been brought up to believe that conflict can be solved through violence (whether or not they go through with it), whereas women have not. If you don't "get" this, I'm not sure you have a firm grasp on the female psyche.


 
Lawrence's Sons and Lovers deals with this very well, with a male protagonist who isn't in the least "of the fist" and is very willing to walk away, even knowing it's not a male attribute to do so. I think there is a tendency in modern literature to assume the sexes are equal in that they think and do the same, and in my experience, that simply isn't the case. We are different, biologically, and in our psychological makeup. We deal with things different, have different bodies and brain structures eg. women absorb alcohol quicker, that's physiological, and a proven fact, and to pretend we're all the same is an anti equality argument. 

If you put a male and female protagonist in the same situation they should deal with it differently- for the reasons above and because of their upbringing, beliefs, raison d'etre - and if that's not accepted then I'm not sure it's realistic.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

Kylara said:


> I was aiming for how language itself can be gratuitous...unconscious things maybe seen in a first draft: your character is crying - you say snivelling - negative assumption based on the word, same sort of action, - or weeping - almost certainly a female or a feminine man, comes with great emotional attachment, still technically crying.



Interesting point. The 'you say snivelling' here makes me realise that I never use narrators with an emotional viewpoint (in the sense of having an opinion about the characters). It might be interesting to try that.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

Anne Lyle said:


> It's very culture-dependent - but in most historical cultures, men are more likely to have been brought up to believe that conflict can be solved through violence (whether or not they go through with it), whereas women have not. If you don't "get" this, I'm not sure you have a firm grasp on the female psyche.



I'm a little wary of there being a 'female psyche', as you say yourself it's a culture dependent thing, and will change from person-to-person. I'd be very... uncomfortable with people judging me in terms of a 'male psyche', because I think the picture they'd have in their heads wouldn't be me, it would be a lowest-common-demoninator aggregate. However, if there is a female psyche, then I guess I'd be unlikely to have a firm grasp on it, as it wouldn't be my psyche.

That said, I wouldn't claim to have a firm grasp of the male psyche, either. I wouldn't really say that was my psyche, just because I'm male.

Hmmm. I do feel there's a clear indication coming out of this discussion that I should move away from female protagonists, at least for stories with a lot of sturm and drang in them. I'll need to think about that.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

springs said:


> If you put a male and female protagonist in the same situation they should deal with it differently- for the reasons above and because of their upbringing, beliefs, raison d'etre - and if that's not accepted then I'm not sure it's realistic.



That's true, but then I do have to start asking if female characters are suited to the stories I want to tell, which I've never questioned before. That's a tough call. This does mean I should be making my female characters more conventionally feminine, I think. I really need to think about that, I'm not entirely happy with that idea, because it *does* now mean they've got to be pushed back more and more to standard gender roles (or I change the stories I'm telling, or something). Hmmm...

I don't know. Men in fiction don't behave like men anyway. I don't know any men who behave like the ones I generally read/see in fiction, not even close to be honest. Then again, I've no way of knowing if the men I encounter are very representive, in fact I know they're not.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 7, 2012)

Mouse said:


> I've written from the PoV of a rapist before now _and_ managed to make the character likeable (at least, people told me they liked him!).



I'd be *very* nervous about doing that.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 8, 2012)

Anne Lyle said:


> Funny you should mention that. Before I started on the _Night's Masque_ trilogy I always thought I'd never write a torture scene, because in general I don't like reading them, but my protagonist is a spy and torture was used frequently in the 16th century (albeit less often in England than on the Continent) so the topic is somewhat hard to avoid.



Well, this is somewhat the thing I'm saying, if one is going to write spy fiction or crime fiction, or whatever, then there's got to be a degree of violence. On the other hand one can ask whether we should be aiming for realism, or not (with historical fiction, as you've got here, I think the call to realism is stronger than in, say SF/F). Just because people are tortured in real life, doesn't mean they have to be in fiction, maybe?

A question here though is "Would you have been more uncomfortable casting a female character in this role?" (if we allow that there were female spies in the 16th century, which I'd be there were, but I don't know). Do you think your audience would be less comfortable with a female character? If so does that make a female character a less good choice for the role?


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## Colum Paget (Aug 8, 2012)

Anne Lyle said:


> Well, since I don't have much in the way of sexual violence or violence by or towards women in my books, I didn't feel any need to 'fess up



I was mostly feeling guilty about hogging all the analysis to be honest.

Speaking of which, I just got a warning for consecutive posting. I didn't understand the bit at the end of the moderators post earlier, I thought he meant I could use multipost to clip individual bits out of a post, rather than editing the post to get the bits I wanted, but when I clicked multipost it just went red and nothing happened.

But multipost is to respond to multiple other people, right?


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## Colum Paget (Aug 8, 2012)

# Colum, since this is a forum with members from all over the world, there are parts 
# of the day when there tend to be long lulls in the discussion.

Yeah, it's kinda all so obvious now, and I guess I lot of people dropped off as the thread was being opened, because the closing of one thread and the opening of another is a natural break-point, right?


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 8, 2012)

multi quoting - hit the button beside quote, it'll go red, hit the quote for all the messages you want to quote from, hit quote and they should all appear. Chop to the bit that you want. 
the bit about males and females responding differently - this doesn't mean we can't use females in violent/nasty scenes, but we should consider how they'd respond. And in the same way as with men it can be in a range of ways because they're a person first. 
I think this is why rape is used so often, maybe - it is almost an accepted face of female torture, it's used so much, but if you look at the history of torture there were devices devised purely for use on women, so it obviously happened. But, we read torture scenes about men, less about women, so if it's something you're writing about I think you have to take it on the chin that it's going to be at least a bit controversial. /and do lots of research about the effects of physical torture on females and the kind of thing that's most effective.  I haven't done so, but I suspect if I did I'd find a different approach was generally applied because  the outcome on women's mental (and physical) make up might differ.


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## Mouse (Aug 8, 2012)

Yeah, seven consecutive posts is a bit mad, it's hard to keep up!



Colum Paget said:


> I'd be *very* nervous about doing that.



When it comes to characterisation I have confidence in spades. (It's description where I worry!) Besides, he wasn't a _predatory _rapist. He did it once, when he was hammered, and the guilt drove him insane. So his story was never about the act, but about the effect it had on him. 

Not all rape is violent or predatory.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 8, 2012)

Anne Lyle said:


> There's a fair amount of non-sexual violence between men, but that's pretty much expected for a swashbuckling spy thriller set in a more brutal era than our own.



Okay, playing the devil's advocate again: Given that it's been said previously in the thread that there's no need for violence at all, why have you included the swashbuckling stuff? Why set the story in a 'brutal era'? What's the attraction, eh, eh?  Why even write spy stories, given that they are so violent?

I know others have said in this thread that violence is an important literary tool, but I want to unpack that and see why, because I take the point that it doesn't *need* to be in a story, but I feel a lot of stories would be diminished without it (depending on the type of story they were, of course).


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## HareBrain (Aug 8, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> Okay, playing the devil's advocate again: Given that it's been said previously in the thread that there's no need for violence at all, why have you included the swashbuckling stuff? Why set the story in a 'brutal era'? What's the attraction, eh, eh?  Why even write spy stories, given that they are so violent?
> 
> I know others have said in this thread that violence is an important literary tool, but I want to unpack that and see why, because I take the point that it doesn't *need* to be in a story, but I feel a lot of stories would be diminished without it (depending on the type of story they were, of course).


 
Isn't it simply that a threat to a character the reader cares about makes for a more exciting story, and the threat of physical violence is immediate and easy to relate to? And if it's written well enough, there's the reader's simple adrenaline rush at feeling immersed in a situation which, in real life, would be very exciting.

Plus, you know, there's always the suppressed primeval struggling to escape from the smothering duvet of socialisation.


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## Kylara (Aug 8, 2012)

It's not that it isn't _needed_, it is more that it can be _unnecessary_. For example: you have a couple walking together in the evening in a park. Now you as a writer, write in a vicious mugging. What you have to think is: is the mugging relevant to the story or have I just put it in because people will enjoy reading it or I will enjoy writing it? If the story you are writing has these two as turning into vigilantes, then yes, put it in; if it is the reason your couple part ways, then no, there are much better ways of having them split (especially as they are likely to become closer due to the shared fear - strange psych stuff) and you are being gratuitous with your totally unwarranted mugging. 
What does it bring to your story?
Why is it important to the plot?
Is there a better way to reach the same goal?
Don't go cutting violence out of your work just for the sake of cutting violence out, there can be good reason for it, but then, don't put it in just because you can.


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## Anne Lyle (Aug 8, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> This does mean I should be making my female characters more conventionally feminine, I think.



That depends what you mean by "conventionally feminine". For ****'s sake don't turn them into girly stereotypes as a reaction to what we've been saying here! It's about taking a slightly different, less confrontational approach to problem-solving, not about falling back on gender binaries.

For example, I'm not what you'd call "conventionally feminine" - like a lot of geek girls, I'm good with computers, useless with babies, uninterested in stilettos* and handbags...but at the same time I'm petite, unathletic and generally unaggressive. Humans are complicated creatures! (Actually, I'm a lot like Kaylee from _Firefly_, only without the hideous taste in party dresses!)


(* unless we're talking about narrow-bladed Italian daggers)



Colum Paget said:


> Okay, playing the devil's advocate again: Given that it's been said previously in the thread that there's no need for violence at all, why have you included the swashbuckling stuff? Why set the story in a 'brutal era'? What's the attraction, eh, eh?  Why even write spy stories, given that they are so violent?



I never said I didn't want to write violence, only that it's not the only possible form of conflict in a story 

There are lots of other things I love about the Elizabethan era - the plays, the gorgeous clothes, the richness of the language - but yes, I love writing action scenes: chases, fights, etc. I grew up on the swashbuckling Hollywood movies of the 1950s, so that's the kind of thing I like to write. Except with more of a 15 certificate 

P.S. This time I typed the asterisks. I usually only swear that strongly in my fiction!


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## nightdreamer (Aug 9, 2012)

If you've read any of John Norman's *Gor *books, you'll probably come to believe, as I did, that they are primarily disturbed sexual fantasies.  I recall enjoying them quite a bit when I was young, but now I find the whole thing distasteful.  Although it's been a long time, I can't recall any of it having to do much with the plot, though it probably played a significant role in world-building.

I personally don't draw the line anywhere as there is a need for writers who will challenge our comfort zones.  However, I do expect the content to be relevant to the plot, theme, and premise and not be thrown in gratuitously.  One of the classic examples, which I'm pretty sure was alluded to in another thread, is Pier Anthony's *Firefly*.  Therein, a five-year-old girl enthusiastically describes her sexual encounters with a 35-year-old man.  I don't object to the content as it did have relevance to the story (weird as it was), but the degree of graphic detail makes it come out like pornography.  That was totally unnecessary.


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## Ursa major (Aug 9, 2012)

There's something similarly nasty - in concept, though not in description, I'm pleased to say - in one of those dreadful sequels to Clarke's _Rendezvous with Rama _written by Gentry Lee (though approved and "edited" by Clarke, which apparently makes them co-authors of this three-book pile-up). And when added to the overall "explanation" revealed in the third and last of those sequels, _Rama Revealed_, the whole thing morphs into something even more unpleasant**.



** - I found it unpleasant, even though I'm probably not the sort of person who would naturally find the implications of the ending added to that earlier "incident" objectionable. I'm trying not to give spoilers, although I can't see why I'm bothering: anything that would stop innocent readers from having to read through all that drivel is a Public Service. (I'm also being a bit vague because I've done my best to expunge my reading of those books - driven by a desire to find out what was going on - from my memory.)


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## Brian G Turner (Aug 9, 2012)

I think *violence* in general needs handling with a certain sensitivity and consideration for moral concerns.

For example, I'd just started work on my fantasy WiP and plotted generic "evil creatures" in it. Then I saw the film Starship Troopers. I was shocked at the byline that human arrogance could extend to the massacre of other sentient species. 

I resolved then I would never write about ""evil hordes" which could be killed with no moral concerns. Suffice to say, the story has evolved massively since then and is more focused on political intrigue and conflicting factions. No lilly-white fascist states masquerading as "lawful good" societies for me.


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## Karn Maeshalanadae (Aug 9, 2012)

I said:


> I think *violence* in general needs handling with a certain sensitivity and consideration for moral concerns.
> 
> For example, I'd just started work on my fantasy WiP and plotted generic "evil creatures" in it. Then I saw the film Starship Troopers. I was shocked at the byline that human arrogance could extend to the massacre of other sentient species.
> 
> I resolved then I would never write about ""evil hordes" which could be killed with no moral concerns. Suffice to say, the story has evolved massively since then and is more focused on political intrigue and conflicting factions. No lilly-white fascist states masquerading as "lawful good" societies for me.




You can still have action violence and large-scale battles without going down the route of Starship Troopers. (Which, by the way, can be simply described as awful. I hated that film.) After all, it happens time after time after time throughout human history. It's no more shocking than a textbook.


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## Brian G Turner (Aug 10, 2012)

Karn Maeshalanadae said:


> It's no more shocking than a textbook.



That is _exactly _the problem, and one I mean to rectify.


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## J-WO (Aug 10, 2012)

I said:


> I resolved then I would never write about ""evil hordes" which could be killed with no moral concerns. Suffice to say, the story has evolved massively since then and is more focused on political intrigue and conflicting factions. No lilly-white fascist states masquerading as "lawful good" societies for me.



In SST's defense, I'd say the whole thing is a piece of propaganda for a regime that doesn't exist. I mean- they've got Doogie Hauser walking around in an SS uniform and most of the actors seem to be chosen because they can't really act. Or they're acting like they can't act. It's an intelligent film posing as dumb, made purposefully to have no nuance to it.

The trouble is, we're so used to Hollywood pap it's easy to miss that, I think. It only really sank in on my second viewing.


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## Brian G Turner (Aug 10, 2012)

Oh, I got the message and enjoyed that part of it.


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## Karn Maeshalanadae (Aug 10, 2012)

J-WO said:


> In SST's defense, I'd say the whole thing is a piece of propaganda for a regime that doesn't exist. I mean- they've got Doogie Hauser walking around in an SS uniform and most of the actors seem to be chosen because they can't really act. Or they're acting like they can't act. It's an intelligent film posing as dumb, made purposefully to have no nuance to it.




If that's the case, then they did too well. I know what they were going for, but it was cheesier than fondue. I wouldn't say it was as bad as the Matrix, but the Matrix was bad for different reasons. I guess also by the time I had gotten around to watching it I didn't care for 90s camera tech and the tint was off to me. It's a pet peeve of mine. I hate the orangish tint that films from between the 60s-early 90s seemed to have had.

The Evil Dead series, at least #2 and Army of Darkness, got in through my tolerance level because they fell under the "so-bad-it's-good" category. SST fell far short of that to me.


I must say that red-headed girl was pretty hot though. I gave the movie a single star for the tent scene with her.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 10, 2012)

Anne Lyle said:


> That depends what you mean by "conventionally feminine". For ****'s sake don't turn them into girly stereotypes as a reaction to what we've been saying here! It's about taking a slightly different, less confrontational approach to problem-solving, not about falling back on gender binaries.



Don't worry, I wasn't talking of doing that. When I said making them more 'conventionally feminine' I didn't so much mean how they dressed, spoke, or what they thought but rather how they would act, and that I should only deploy them in certain roles (which doesn't change how they speak or think, etc, etc,) I was thinking that female characters would be unsuitable for certain roles, partially because I was really rattled by what you said about 'not having a grasp on the female psyche'. How could I? How could I ever really claim to have? No matter how much evidence I might gather, someone could always tell me that I didn't know what was happening in the black box, and it would be true? (Note, this is true from any person to another, no matter how well you think you know someone, you could still be very wrong).

So, it seemed to me that the only way to write believable female characters would be to stay within the boundaries laid out by others, which would mean making them more 'conventionally feminine'.

But then I asked myself 'Do I have a grasp on the male psyche?' and the answer was 'No'. The men I encounter are far too varied to fit into one definition, and we all know that people we think we know  really well still manage to frequently surprise us.

However, this doesn't mean there isn't a female psyche. As society has traditionally allowed men a far greater range of behaviors (from scholar to solider) than women, it might be that the male psyche is a wide, diffuse thing, but the female psyche is clearly defined by the limited roles imposed on their gender.

But this brings us to another point, which is that the female psyche is (largely, I admit probably not entirely) the internalization of the gender roles that society imposes. Most men do not want to be seen acting in a feminine manner, and most women don't want to appear 'too masculine'. Thus both groups try to fit to the expectations of the society they live in, and this is 90% of what the 'psyche' is, I think. In which case, should we be promoting that? If we limit female characters to their traditional behaviors.... well, it's not something I can quite put into words, but I'm not sure it's a good thing. One of the reasons why female characters are so often victims in literature might be that they are ruled out for many other roles because it's not considered realistic if female characters act in certain ways.

And then I realised that fiction isn't supposed to be realistic. It's fiction. People in fiction don't act like real people, for one thing fiction has to make sense, whereas a lot that happens in real life is just down to chaos. How often do you see people making stupid mistakes in fiction? Not often, because making a stupid mistake is rarely a satisfying plot point (though it can be if the mistake grows out of who the character is, say it's down to inherent prejudices within them). But how often have you seen people make stupid mistakes in the real world? Mistakes that don't come from anything meaningful, other than that someone was thinking about what they were going to have for tea, when they should have been focused on driving?

Also there is the matter that sometimes an act of violence is the only suitable way of depicting something. In the story I mentioned I needed someone to stick up for a character that others are claiming doesn't exist, is nothing more than a delusion. I needed the reader to see that this person is just as real to those who know her as the MC is to the reader (the reader can never see both). How to do this? Well, Caroline can make an impassioned speech, or burst into tears, or any number of those things, but when she crosses the line to using violence (and even making threats with a knife) you know she's serious. I honestly don't think there's anything else that she could have done that would have the same degree of earnestness. I even think that, if we take the point that women less often use violence, well, this only makes the case stronger, as the higher the bar is set for a character before they will turn to violence, the more important to them the issue must be that throws them over it.

And if there's a scene that requires the use of violence, but all the other scenes perhaps are better suited to a female character (if there are scenes that don't suit them, then there must be scenes that do) then the 'lesser evil' is to use a character who fits most scenes, and have them act a little 'out of expectations' in one scene. 

Finally there's the matter that the 'female psyche', even if we agree it exists, is going to vary very much from an 19 year old to an 82 year old, or from a woman from one country or era, to a woman from another country or era. The psyche of Freya Stark or Emelia Erhart, for instance, is likely to be rather different from that of the average housewife in their respective eras. Does this mean that Stark and Erhart are in some way abberations? I'd be uncomfortable with that reading. There's also a flipside to saying that violence isn't part of the feminine psyche, as it implies that the male psyche is uniquely dark and violent. Obviously, I'm somewhat uncomfortable with that idea too, I think everyone's psyche has darkness and light within it, but some of us get to express that more than others, for a host of reasons. It's far easier for someone in a comfortable economic position to express the compassionate side of their nature, for instance, than someone who is desperate. For this reason it's much more meaningful when a desperate person is compassionate, although that in no way undermines the value of the comfortable person being compassionate too.

By the end of all this my brain felt like it needed a bigger heatsink, and I decided that you can either write, or you can worry, you can't do both. So I think that for now I'll keep my female characters as they are, but maybe keep a more watchful eye on them than previously.

Despite all this though, it's still worth asking how often I use violence in my fiction, whether I use it to easily, whether violence in fiction is really such a bad thing, or whether it's only certain types of violence, or 'lazy' violence, etc, etc, etc. These are things I've never really had cause to think about before, and I can see cases in my fiction where I have too readily, perhaps, thrown some violence into the story (though I'm not sure that, as you put it, 'swashbuckling violence is so bad, and I think female characters should be allowed to buckle a swash too. After all, I think some people might read fiction to see 'themselves' doing some stuff that life/society/circumstance wouldn't allow them to do).



Anne Lyle said:


> For example, I'm not what you'd call "conventionally feminine" - like a lot of geek girls, I'm good with computers, useless with babies, uninterested in stilettos* and handbags



I was more talking about roles than characters, although it is an interesting question "If you change the role, does that change the character too?" After all, character is expressed through the things they do.

I felt, from what you'd said, that female characters would be unbelievable in certain roles. However, most of the male characters we see in fiction are pretty unbelievable when you look at them honestly (Sherlock Holmes, Captain Kirk, Gilgamesh, etc, etc) , so why should females be held to a higher standard?



Anne Lyle said:


> (* unless we're talking about narrow-bladed Italian daggers)



Madam, it seems to me that you have an unhealthy interest in implements of death! You should probably be on a police register or something!*




Anne Lyle said:


> I never said I didn't want to write violence, only that it's not the only possible form of conflict in a story
> 
> There are lots of other things I love about the Elizabethan era - the plays, the gorgeous clothes, the richness of the language - but yes, I love writing action scenes: chases, fights, etc. I grew up on the swashbuckling Hollywood movies of the 1950s, so that's the kind of thing I like to write. Except with more of a 15 certificate



I agree it's not the only type of conflict one can have, but I want to try and see when violence in fiction is 'okay' and when it's not. Violence occurs more often in fiction than in most people's lives, I feel (though, obviously this depends on when/where you live and whether there's a war on). Why is this, and is it justified? I'm also wondering when a writer should 'substitute' a violent scene for something else, and why? Could it be that we release some of our violent urges in fiction (don't say you don't have them, we all get furious from time to time) and that this helps us to live with our fellow human beings without murdering them, or could it be that in reading/writing violence, we are exercising the violent aspects of our nature, and that interaction with fictional violence might make us more violent, or is this something that varies so much from person to person that it's meaningless to ask such questions? 


* Joke! Joke! Okay?


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## Colum Paget (Aug 10, 2012)

Ugh! Sorry Everyone, I should have multi-quoted this!

I'm having trouble getting used to the way these forums work, you know?




I said:


> I think *violence* in general needs handling with a certain sensitivity and consideration for moral concerns.
> 
> For example, I'd just started work on my fantasy WiP and plotted generic "evil creatures" in it. Then I saw the film Starship Troopers. I was shocked at the byline that human arrogance could extend to the massacre of other sentient species.
> 
> I resolved then I would never write about ""evil hordes" which could be killed with no moral concerns. Suffice to say, the story has evolved massively since then and is more focused on political intrigue and conflicting factions. No lilly-white fascist states masquerading as "lawful good" societies for me.




This touches on some of my favorite hobby-horses. SF & F are the last bastions of what I call the 'theory of essential evil'. This is basically a worldview that says evil is an adjective, that there are 'good people' and 'bad people'. I think evil is a verb, almost anyone can do it (though it is habit forming, and this is what makes it look like it's an adjective).

AIs and insectoid species are consistently portrayed as 'essentially evil' in SF, and I think that's a big problem because even though fiction is... well, fictional, and people know that AIs don't  (currently) exist, it's still the case that if you depict them as always evil and unworthy of life, then you are saying that there are classes of people who are unworthy of life. It's the same thing as when a child watching star-trek sees Kirk sit in the captain's chair, s/he knows there's no starship enterprize, but at the same time s/he knows they're seeing a male character performing and (traditionally) male role (that of command). (I'm not saying it's a bad thing to have male characters in command positions, but if all (competent) commanders are always male, then maybe it is?).

But, I suspect this is a whole other thread, you know?


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## allmywires (Aug 10, 2012)

Not to be flippant about it, Colum, but unless your books become studied like textbooks in secondary schools, odds on not one of your readers are going to be analysing your characters this far. In my opinion, you should write what you feel is right, and try and put yourself in your character's shoes as deeply as possible. There's no character we as writers shouldn't be able to write - male, female, straight, gay, murderer, abuser, etc... - because what we have on our side is imagination and empathy. Those are the two most important things. If you can imagine yourself in your character's shoes and empathise with them, you've done your job.

Sometimes I think we on Chrons (rightly or wrongly...) think far too much about analysis of writing. Your average Joe doesn't even comprehend this stuff.


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## Anne Lyle (Aug 12, 2012)

Colum Paget said:


> I agree it's not the only type of conflict one can have, but I want to try and see when violence in fiction is 'okay' and when it's not. Violence occurs more often in fiction than in most people's lives, I feel (though, obviously this depends on when/where you live and whether there's a war on). Why is this, and is it justified? I'm also wondering when a writer should 'substitute' a violent scene for something else, and why?



It's "okay" when it fits the characters, rather than being shoehorned in to make the story more exciting. If you set out to create violent characters or scenarios, it's your choice and you have to take responsibility for that.

For example, early-ish in my first novel I have a confrontation in a city street between the hero and a couple of young nobles jealous of his sudden rise to prominence at court. I could have turned that scene into an exciting rapier duel a la _Romeo & Juliet_, but the truth is that, as in Shakespeare's play, such an incident would have almost certainly ended in the death of one of the participants. My hero's bright enough to know that, and so he avoiding starting a serious fight.

(It would also have meant the abrupt end of the novel - if my hero were the survivor, he would have been arrested for murder, or had to flee the country, which would have totally derailed the plot.)

On the other hand, when an armed assassin attacks the ambassador the hero is guarding, he kills the man without compunction because that's his job.

I chose to set my books in a violent (but not entirely lawless) era, and therefore some violence is inevitable. The fact that fantasy readers expect and enjoy a certain amount of violence makes it a commercial decision as well, I freely admit.



Colum Paget said:


> Could it be that we release some of our violent urges in fiction (don't say you don't have them, we all get furious from time to time) and that this helps us to live with our fellow human beings without murdering them



Absolutely. We understand (unless we are psychopaths) that rules are necessary for a functioning society, but there are enough jerks in the world causing us stress in everyday life that it's very cathartic to see one of them taken apart, if only in fiction. That's really the whole purpose of crime fiction - to bring a little order and justice to the reader's mental universe, because frankly there's way too much injustice in the real world.

I think violent fiction only begets violence when the consequences are trivialised, or when it is presented as the only way your characters solve problems. Make the deaths matter, and vary the level of conflict in your fiction, and I don't think you need have any qualms.



Colum Paget said:


> * Joke! Joke! Okay?



I may occasionally take things a little too literally, but I do have a sense of humour


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## Toby Frost (Aug 13, 2012)

It makes me think that writing is often about making things sound realistic by amplifying experiences you've already had in such a way that, although they have left your immediate level of experience, they're still convincing.

To give an example, I have been to hot countries and know a teeny bit about judo-type stuff. So, I reckon that I could write a scuffle between two people in a sweltering street pretty convincingly. I'd be comfortable pushing that further and making them two skilled fighters in the freezing cold, too. What I wouldn't be comfortable with is writing about the emotions of sexual violence, because, thank goodness, I don't have the right knowledge. There is simply too much going on for me to convincingly portray "from the outside" without huge amounts of work and research. Further, were I to get it wrong, I'd feel that I was wrongly depicting rape, and hence slighting all its victims, rather than just that one character.

Which is why, when I wrote the Great Unpublished Fantasy Novel, I made the main character, a confidence trickster, scarred so as to no longer be able to pull confidence tricks, which triggered a sort of moral crisis in her and hence began the story. I think I was able to stretch my own thoughts, with some research, to be able to convincingly depict that, which I couldn't have done had she been raped (and it would have been kind've nasty to do it, anyhow).

As an aside (and they don't say this in the writing guides!) if you, the writer, do have some sort of sexual "speciality" or just a really pervading interest in something not obviously related to the story, readers will start noticing if you keep mentioning it*. I've seen this happen with several fantasy writers, who didn't set out to write porn or anything like that (and in one case, for a writer to be accused of getting off on the stuff he was purporting to condemn). Your sins will find you out, if you're not careful!

*This isn't just a sex thing: I've got a book on my shelf by an author who is also a goth, in which all the goth characters are far more daring, wise, sensitive, intelligent etc than the non-goth ones. It's pretty boring and not terribly realistic.


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## Colum Paget (Aug 26, 2012)

Look, my first multiquote!



allmywires said:


> Not to be flippant about it, Colum, but unless your books become studied like textbooks in secondary schools, odds on not one of your readers are going to be analysing your characters this far. In my opinion, you should write what you feel is right, and try and put yourself in your character's shoes as deeply as possible.
> 
> Sometimes I think we on Chrons (rightly or wrongly...) think far too much about analysis of writing. Your average Joe doesn't even comprehend this stuff.



I quite agree, but *I* want to do the analysis for my own reasons. I don't generally think when I write, I just write. I'm envious of those writers who know why they do things, who make choices instead of just 'flying by the seat of their pants' (someone in my writer's group is a very analytical writer). If I'm going to get any better at it then I think I need to understand what I'm doing more and make more conscious choices.

I recently had cause to think about the gender of the characters I was using in a story, the first time I've done that. After some days of thinking I eventually came to decision to stick with my first choice, but the difference was that now I knew why it was a good choice, and I think I was better off for that.



Anne Lyle said:


> It's "okay" when it fits the characters, rather than being shoehorned in to make the story more exciting. If you set out to create violent characters or scenarios, it's your choice and you have to take responsibility for that.
> 
> I chose to set my books in a violent (but not entirely lawless) era, and therefore some violence is inevitable. The fact that fantasy readers expect and enjoy a certain amount of violence makes it a commercial decision as well, I freely admit.
> 
> I think violent fiction only begets violence when the consequences are trivialised, or when it is presented as the only way your characters solve problems. Make the deaths matter, and vary the level of conflict in your fiction, and I don't think you need have any qualms.



I agree that it shouldn't just be put in to make the story 'exciting' (though this does get problematic with horror fiction, which I do feel is a genre where the excitement of a degree of violence, or at least transgression, is pretty much the whole point). I'm not so sure that there's a clearly defined line between violent and non-violent characters though. I think most people have a point where, if violence is available to them, they might use it. The difference is that this line is drawn in different places for different people, but as a lot of fiction pushes characters to extreme places, I would expect violence to be more common in fiction in general, for almost all characters.

I agree that 'guilt free' violence is problematic, particularly where it appears most, in children's cartoons. 'Tom and Jerry' is one of the most violent things I ever saw, but there's never any consequences to it.



Toby Frost said:


> It makes me think that writing is often about making things sound realistic by amplifying experiences you've already had in such a way that, although they have left your immediate level of experience, they're still convincing.



Yeah, write what you know, but push it to places it's never been before. That's a good solution to the 'how can you write spec fic if you only write what you know?' dilemma.



Toby Frost said:


> Which is why, when I wrote the Great Unpublished Fantasy Novel, I made the main character, a confidence trickster, scarred so as to no longer be able to pull confidence tricks, which triggered a sort of moral crisis in her and hence began the story.



That's an interesting angle, but would scarring really stop people from pulling con-tricks, wouldn't they just have to change the 'angle' of the con to fit their new situation? Wouldn't laying a curse on them that caused them to feel an overwhelming sense of conscience be a more effective block?



Toby Frost said:


> As an aside (and they don't say this in the writing guides!) if you, the writer, do have some sort of sexual "speciality" or just a really pervading interest in something not obviously related to the story, readers will start noticing if you keep mentioning it*. I've seen this happen with several fantasy writers, who didn't set out to write porn or anything like that (and in one case, for a writer to be accused of getting off on the stuff he was purporting to condemn). Your sins will find you out, if you're not careful!



What, so people will discover that I like bad women with their own interstellar battle cruiser and two helmets?! I fear that cat departed its bag a long, long time ago.


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## kshRox (Aug 26, 2012)

I think what crosses the line depends on the individual author and individual readers.

EDIT: As I closed this post, I thought of an example that crosses the line for me. The last book by G.R.R. Martin, ADwD (again - for me). Originally I could go with the inclusion of misgyny and even the violence against children as brutally depicted in the first novel as symptomatic of this "world". Part of the background which provides context for the personalities, actions and attitudes of the people who populate this "world".

But these elements now coupled with some of the truly sick and twisted violence (to me) which includes forced group sex (rape? - anyone who read the book undoubtedly knows the passage I'm thinking of), voyeurism, sadistic debasement and graphic torture plus the continued misgyny just became too much. When a particulary ugly gender slur against women went beyond shock value to bored disgust I realized I was probably done with the series.

Now, that said, G.R.R. Martin is incredibly popular with leagues of devoted fans willing to wait years for the next installment. These darker elements of his book(s) are accepted by masses of fans within the context and confines of this story.

Hence, my postulation that this "line" is internal and specific to each of us as individual authors and individual readers, not generic groups of "we".

I took the time to respond because something in the original wording of the question raised a flag. When do *"we"* etc. etc.

Just struck me reading that as if a generic "we" is being invoked to create a standard to be imposed upon the generic "them".


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