And not only are the distances too far, I can tell you from personal experience that a lot of those roads are somewhat twisty and heavily forested; not really safe to go walking or biking down. #I have been to Forks #my mom actually has a tourist shop poem poster that begins #When twilight descends upon Forks #which I still find completely hysterical given what their fandom was like #descends upon Forks indeed #(the town's economy boomed for the like two years at the peak of the craze) #(it was amazing)
"Extremely mild dubcon, tee-hee!" *completely unambiguous rape scene* I always want to contact the author when they do this, but I never have, because I don't know how to make it not sound like I'm trying to start shit, y'know? But I feel super bad about it, because fuck if that isn't a potentially dangerous misconception right there. Anyway auugh.
Certainly not in the dark or the rain, or at speed. And definitely not alone if you can avoid it. Ergh. I feel you there, yeah. Most I can figure for what to do is dropping a comment along the lines of "um, I don't know if your betas caught this, but [that scene] doesn't really read like 'mild dubcon', it reads like very unambiguous non-con. Considering the warnings you put up, I don't think that was your intent? But I thought you ought to know that you might want to either change the warnings or revise that scene, since I don't think it's coming across the way you meant it to." Which still risks starting shit, if the author decides to go "how dare, I am so offend, how could you possibly read it wrong", but you've made a good faith effort of trying to go "look, I don't think you meant to write a rape scene, considering that you tagged it as mild dubcon, but uh - it's reading like a rape scene, you may wish to do something about that".
Spoiler: TW rapey stuff ... Like, I dunno, "victim spat in his face and he went ahead anyway" seems pretty unambiguous to me. I think they're getting caught up on the idea that it doesn't count if the victim ended up enjoying it, but. No. Augh.
Wasting words on shit we already know. It's most obvious in fantasy/furry fiction where there seems to be an epidemic of authors feeling the need to specify the species of the character's genitals, and I've seen one or two where the author also specified where said genitals were located on the body, as if anyone old enough to be reading this kind of fic didn't already know. As I said on an f-list profile, if a rat has an elephant dick and it's coming out of his ear, THEN you need to tell me.
There's also stuff of a "you don't need to tell me things I know from canon" nature. You don't need to explain this character's entire backstory/tell us in encyclopedic detail what the outfit they always wear looks like, because we watched the show too.
There's times when the viewpoint character would comment on it or go "Oh yeah, right, [X fact]," but if the narrative stops to explain to the reader who every character who shows up is, I go >:::|||
Oh yeah what I mean is like. Thinking about crossovers and having one character give a lovingly detailed explanation of some backstory to someone from the other universe.
And once again we get to the weird epithets issue. My favourite cases are still ones like "the Gryffindor" used in a scene where Harry is talking to Dennis Creevey; i.e. ones which defeat the purpose of an epithet.
I actually wish more fanfic authors would do that because i want to see the other characters reactions. Its usually either skipped over or turned into " oh you have tragic past, huh? Well mines even more tragic" It kinda sucks cause when im peseverating on a character or world really hard i want every little thing to go on forever and repeat as much as possible which doesnt really work for storytelling -_-
Y'all can disagree, but I'm not interested in fighting about it. I had this discussion already in another thread it didn't belong in and I have come to the conclusion that we're arguing more about words than about anything else. I don't think they have an abusive relationship. This does not mean that I think everything Edward does is OKAY. *shrug* I think a lot of it is very not-okay, but what I am okay about is the fact that when Bella stands up for herself, he does back down, and he is able to admit he is wrong and actually mean it, which has not been a part of my personal experiences of abusive relationships. He also does not seem to escalate, but rather the opposite, although IDK how obvious that is if you only read the first book, or if you didn't finish the first book. *shrug*
Spoiler: what is dubious consent anyway? tw rape talk Well, to be fair, 10 years ago we called that dubious consent in fic, which was not meant to imply that it was ever OK, but rather to differentiate from the ones where the victim did not enjoy it at all, which were non-con. The idea was that if you labelled the bodice-rippers the same thing as outright realistic rape, people who were into one but not the other would be unhappy.
I think there's really only one good use for epithets and that's when your POV character doesn't know who the other person is or you want it to be a surprise*. Otherwise, why not just use their names? This is one of the reasons people HAVE names. *...and that second one's probably not the case if you tagged the main pairing, LOL.
I've got mixed feelings on this, but I think it sort of depends on the kind of fic you're writing/reading. When I'm writing or reading long fic, I like to give important characters introductions in the story, because that's what you would do if they were your OCs in a novel. I think the problem is it's very often handled poorly and has massive, clunky exposition for things that don't really fit in the narrative.
If the characters use epithets for each other in-universe you kinda CAN use them but not to a greater extent than they do. Same as any name, really. It's odd to call them something that they 're not called in-universe.
Spoiler: more rape discussion ... That's exactly what makes it bad. People don't want to be getting off on rape, so they decide what they wrote isn't rape. That doesn't keep it from being rape, that just makes those people liars. The bodice rippers might be fantasy rape, but they're still rape. I'm fine with people getting off on fictional rape. I'm not fine with people redefining the word "rape" so they can pretend their brain didn't touch something icky.
At the same time, we do need the ability to distinguish between those two cases. Declaring one to be slightly more consenting than the other is not the way though!
i tag stuff dubious if and only if the character in question is unsure themselves if they consented or not, and most of the time that gets the 'noncon' tag too because in almost all cases, the answer is 'nope, you didn't consent'
dubcon more fits the times a character consents but was under pressure, or they were drunk or equivalent, things like that. Consent but not consent obtained cleanly. Times that the person doesn't honestly know if they consented or not.
