What are you thinking about right now? Topic

3571

05/03/2015 04:59 PM

I saw some tumblr post that said you should never use rape as a plot device. I get what they were saying--don't trivialize it, which a responsible writer wouldn't do anyway--but they were pretty adamant that it should never be written about under any circumstances, and they were sort of a writing "authority" on tumblr, which pissed me off. Because rape is a touchy subject is exactly why it should be written about. Writing is about understanding the world around us. Not only that, but shaming people into not writing about rape removes the cathartic effect of getting something out on the page. Rape is an awful part of the human experience, but it's a part of the human experience. It's fair game.

Red_Nova

Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D

9192

05/03/2015 05:02 PM

Don't take anything from Tumblr seriously. Even the serious stuff.

Liberty

RTP Princess

24266

05/03/2015 05:14 PM

author=Housekeeping
I saw some tumblr post that said you should never use rape as a plot device. I get what they were saying--don't trivialize it, which a responsible writer wouldn't do anyway--but they were pretty adamant that it should never be written about under any circumstances, and they were sort of a writing "authority" on tumblr, which pissed me off. Because rape is a touchy subject is exactly why it should be written about. Writing is about understanding the world around us. Not only that, but shaming people into not writing about rape removes the cathartic effect of getting something out on the page. Rape is an awful part of the human experience, but it's a part of the human experience. It's fair game.

Frankly, that so-called 'authority' is a crock. You should always experiment with your writing, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and delving into things that society says is dark or evil. Why? To explore yourself, your limits and understand the world around you (as you said.) When you understand something you can make a proper opinion of it - opinion without understanding is worth nothing when compared with an informed opinion.

Honestly, if you want to be a writer you should write the darkest shit you can sometimes, just so you can explore the dark side of the world. Suicide, murder, rape, torture - and all that lies between - should be used as your tools to examine yourself and the world around you.

Not understanding something leads to trivialising it.

For the record, feel free to write dark stuff here: http://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/17687/
I will not police the topic when it comes to written works - in fact, I will ask that you explore the darkest of ideas with-in it. Write as dark as you can, then push and write darker. Explore yourself, your limits, your ability and your understanding. Learn about the world and yourself. Push and write and learn and understand.

slash

APATHY IS FOR COWARDS

4158

05/03/2015 05:39 PM

Rape as a cheap cliche or plot device is bad and problematic, like most cliches.

But, I think preventing everyone from writing about rape is harmful. Writing about something is a way of discussing it, and not discussing rape means ignoring it - which keeps us from understanding it and keeps us from preventing it. There's something very dangerous about the fact that we talk about murder casually but only discuss rape in whispers. I think that it's also dangerous to think of rapists as illogical, inhuman demons instead of what they are - fucked up people, but not beyond our human understanding.

Liberty

RTP Princess

24266

05/03/2015 05:48 PM

Hm, I dunno. At least if they use it as a cliche or cheap plot device they're still exploring and experimenting. Some people just can't write well or don't have great ideas for plot, but they can still learn from the experience. Besides, writing is like anything else - practice helps you get better and learn. Even if you start out writing badly, you keep sinking time into it, you'll get better. I mean, if you're going to draw a line and say 'you can only write if you're good at it/have new ideas/don't adhere to cliche's and cheap devices' then a lot of people would just stop writing and never get better.

Gotta experience to grow. Life really is like a game in that aspect - grinding up certain 'stats' by using them over and again, even if you fumble the sword a lot to start with, whose to say you won't eventually learn to get better at it? Of course, there are people who become masters at the fumbling and never push past that phase to learn better, content to rest on their laurels. They equate to those bad writers known for their horribad works (and yet, it sells for some weird, unfathomable reason).

Roden

ALWAYS BE SAD

3857

05/03/2015 06:02 PM

author=Liberty
Honestly, if you want to be a writer you should write the darkest shit you can sometimes, just so you can explore the dark side of the world. Suicide, murder, rape, torture - and all that lies between - should be used as your tools to examine yourself and the world around you.

Not understanding something leads to trivialising it.

This. Definitely this. In everything really, not just writing. As a Human being you should always seek understanding, try to look for all the sides of a story, know why you have the opinions you do, understand yourself and others around you. Otherwise you'll wind up being hurtful and ignorant.

Take it from me- someone who's been utterly desensitized to the point of sheer stupidity- if you try to approach things with understanding and you see the good and the bad in the world, you'll wind up happier and more confident in the end. Knowing how awful things can really be only leads you to appreciating the good even more.

slash

APATHY IS FOR COWARDS

4158

05/03/2015 06:29 PM

author=Liberty
Hm, I dunno. At least if they use it as a cliche or cheap plot device they're still exploring and experimenting. Some people just can't write well or don't have great ideas for plot, but they can still learn from the experience. Besides, writing is like anything else - practice helps you get better and learn. Even if you start out writing badly, you keep sinking time into it, you'll get better. I mean, if you're going to draw a line and say 'you can only write if you're good at it/have new ideas/don't adhere to cliche's and cheap devices' then a lot of people would just stop writing and never get better.

Yea, I agree with that. I don't want to scare away new writers by saying "don't write about this until you're good enough", because a ton of creators will never think they're good enough. When new writers try and fail at writing a tricky subject, we should discuss where it went wrong, rather than saying "don't try this, ever".

I think what I mean by "cliche / plot device" is using rape as a sensational plot tool... like, because so many of us hear "rape" and hold our breath, it's really easy to throw it into a story to raise the stakes (to inspire the hero to vengeance, or to traumatize the victim) but without any meaning. Since that's so often what it's used for in stories, we start to kinda go blind to how it might actually affect a person. I dunno, I don't wanna say that a story shouldn't include rape in that manner - just that repeating a cliche too often starts to warp how we think about it in real life, and we gotta be careful, that's all.

If someone is actively and critically thinking about a subject, and is open-minded and trying to improve, then I think that's fine, and I'd rather encourage someone to learn than tell them to stop trying.

EDIT: If a budding writer is experimenting and ends up writing something kinda bad, that's okay - they're trying to learn. But I do see a problem with good writers relying on possibly harmful cliches just because they're easy to use :P

Corfaisus

"It's frustrating because - as much as Corf is otherwise an irredeemable person - his 2k/3 mapping is on point." ~ psy_wombats

7874

05/03/2015 06:42 PM

author=Liberty
Supporting rape as a sexual kink - hidden because I understand that it's a touchy subject.
Show
Honestly, I think there's a big difference between rape in a fictional setting, used for fantasy/kinks and rape in real life. Don't get me wrong, I hate rape and rapists, but I can divorce myself enough from my own emotional disgust to see that people who kink it in a fictional setting aren't going to go out and rape people. It's the same as shooting someone in a video game - doesn't mean you support people killing others or that you're more likely to go kill someone irl.

It's like any kind of sexual deviance that is expressed in the arts - it's not necessarily something that is right and correct, but it is something that people have a right to enjoy writing/reading/watching/drawing. As long as it's fictional, there is no-one being hurt - as long as proper tagging is adhered to so that people who would be affected know to stay away.

Frankly, I prefer not to kink-shame. What people think and read and write and create in a fictional setting is up to them. I've written rape. I've written torture. I've sexualised both as well as a lot of other, horrible subjects.

Pedophilia, bestiality, incest, gang bang, vore, guro - they're all kinks that people enjoy but that doesn't mean those who enjoy such things in a fictional setting are bad people. They are well within their rights to enjoy such things as long as they are not hurting people in real life.

But how far can someone push the fantasy before it becomes a problem? Does it become a problem when someone forces themselves onto one of your own characters? Or onto a fictitious depiction of you? What if they shared with you the dreams they've had where any of this is a reality? What if they're the "murder and rape the body" kind of person? When does this suddenly become "not okay"? Because logically, at some point, it should get there, even if just a fantasy.

Do these four pictures strike you as just a little bit odd? Don't worry, it's just weight gain related.

Taylor Swift 1
Taylor Swift 2
Taylor Swift 3
More of the same

I know if someone came up to me and said "I want to kill you, cut your head off, and skull fuck you", I'd personally be pretty ಠ_ಠ

author=slash
Rape as a cheap cliche or plot device is bad and problematic, like most cliches.

But, I think preventing everyone from writing about rape is harmful. Writing about something is a way of discussing it, and not discussing rape means ignoring it - which keeps us from understanding it and keeps us from preventing it. There's something very dangerous about the fact that we talk about murder casually but only discuss rape in whispers. I think that it's also dangerous to think of rapists as illogical, inhuman demons instead of what they are - fucked up people, but not beyond our human understanding.

Or people could change the channel from their Fox News and their preachy wholesome worship programming to watch documentaries on real people who have had to suffer real problems and how they're really trying to cope (most times unsuccessfully). I've seen some shit, the most recent of which being stuff like hundreds of post-Holocaust body burials* (literally nothing but skin and bone) and a member of ISIS walking along a ditch filled with captives and shooting them in the head like a sport, followed by a clip of bodies being dumped into a river off of a blood-soaked dock (you could only see blood, but logically there was a platform underneath it).

We don't need people making easy masturbation material out of violent/dehumanizing crimes like rape to know the world can be a pretty shitty place sometimes.

*"Memory of the Camps" if you want to look it up yourself.

LockeZ

I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.

5958

05/03/2015 08:02 PM

Are you implying that Taylor Swift is a real person?

Liberty

RTP Princess

24266

05/04/2015 01:04 AM

author=Corfaisus
But how far can someone push the fantasy before it becomes a problem? Does it become a problem when someone forces themselves onto one of your own characters? Or onto a fictitious depiction of you? What if they shared with you the dreams they've had where any of this is a reality? What if they're the "murder and rape the body" kind of person? When does this suddenly become "not okay"? Because logically, at some point, it should get there, even if just a fantasy.

Frankly, as long as they're not shoving it in your face, a fictional character is just that - fictional. Authors all over the world have to deal with the dreaded 'fanfiction' and that includes self-inserts getting giggity with their creations. People want to connect with your character in some way and if they can only see themselves doing so in a morally bankrupt way, that's up to them. Allowing people to freely interact with your characters means there's going to be people who 'misuse' them. You can't say 'oh, I don't mind you writing fanfic about my character but x, y or z is out'. It's either no fan-anything or all of it. There's no inbetween.

Honestly, as long as it's kept to fiction, I don't see an issue. I mean, obviously, as long as they're not shoving it in your face and telling you to go read the story they wrote about skull-fucking your character as they lay in a pool of their own blood and vomit or whatever. :shrug:

I know if someone came up to me and said "I want to kill you, cut your head off, and skull fuck you", I'd personally be pretty ಠ_ಠ

Now, see, that's completely different though. That's not a fictional character, but a real life person, and they're pushing their thoughts on to you. That'd be like going up to Benecumple Catchabit and saying 'I dream of fucking your face off all night, every night'. Really creepy. But if they wrote a fanfic where they fell into London and did the giggity with Sherlock, as long as they're not sending links to it to BC, it's fine.

I've seen real life person fanfic before. Frankly, I think it's creepy to write that but I'm not going to say people shouldn't - if they feel a connection to that person, it's creepy as fuck but it's their right to express and explore their ideas in a world of fiction where they do get to do the frick-frack with a famous star.
:shrug:
Besides, who didn't daydream about makkin' it with someone famous at least once or twice? This is just a physical formation of those daydreams, I guess, and it's easy to tell that it's not true. As long as the writer isn't throwing it in the face of the person (who, essentially becomes a fictional character since it's hard to actually know all aspects of a person when you've never met them/only met them in passing before.)

kentona

Bunnyhug

21027

05/04/2015 02:27 AM

guys this is all a ploy by libby to get this topic to 1000 pages sooner.

Roden

ALWAYS BE SAD

3857

05/04/2015 02:30 AM

author=kentona
guys this is all a ploy by libby to get this topic to 1000 pages sooner.

Holy fuck, I didn't even notice that we're on 989 already!

slash

APATHY IS FOR COWARDS

4158

05/04/2015 02:37 AM

Thank you, kentona, I had forgotten how bad the 2k3 facesets were

LockeZ

I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.

5958

05/04/2015 02:58 AM

Kentona I need you to make me a mod, for the sake of this topic. It will be impossible to go to battle with Liberty with my current power levels. I need to ascend to my final form.

Liberty

RTP Princess

24266

05/04/2015 03:06 AM