FPB's Marvels of the Natural Universe

[fpb]

Ahem! Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

Several months ago, I published a story called GAY BAR on Fiction Alley. GAY BAR was the shortest fic I'd ever written, deliberately craggy, presenting a few images of unhappiness with no comment or explanation, setting up a situation with no plain moral. The reader, you see, had - shock! horror! - to do his/her own interpreting; and the images shown were a postwar Harry Potter, unhappy, dumped by a boyfriend, drunk, and still the hero who had saved the whole magical world from a monstrous tyranny; and Draco Malfoy, married, rich, comfortable, with five children - and still a monster, hankering for tyranny and murder.

Well, the demand that readers should understand the images placed before them was clearly too much for many feeble minds. Astonishingly, people began to say that the fic was anti-gay - because I had presented a gay man as a hero and a straight married man with five children as a monster. But the worst was yet to come.

At the time, I did not know about backstabber threads; so I was not prepared for a sudden outpouring of vicious hatred, a month or so AFTER publication. Within a couple of days, some twenty hate-filled posts went up, with no interference from FA's contemptible mods, who forbade me to reply as the filth deserved. (It was then that I concluded that the FA mods are morally null, eager to root out misplaced commas, but utterly indifferent to public lies, defamation, and gang assault; and conceived a contempt for them that I have not yet seen reason to alter.) People just queued up to revel in prejudice and deliberate misconstruction. More than one post showed evidence of never having read the fic at all. I found the whole experience physically revolting, like coming into contact with excrement; and I withdrew the fic (only from FA) out of sheer disgust.

Truly, as the poet said, there is no marvel more wonderful than man. Within a few months of these events, three of the worst offenders, and one person who had insulted me in a related thread, had the unimaginable cheek to write to this LJ. I could not believe my eyes. Of course, the persons concerned were immediately banned and personally informed of the ban with short and pregnant private e-mails; and, to my everlasting astonishment, most of them showed hurt surprise, as though, after what they had done, they still imagined that civilized intercourse with me was a right of theirs.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

And supposing I do, you will then spring into action with the oldest trick in the book: you have read them, therefore you are a hypocrite.

Oh, for Pete's sake. I would do no such thing. I know you've been attacked by a lot of people here but that's no reason to be defensive and attack me, I haven't said anything intended to offend you and I'm certainly not trying to insult you. I'm pointing out that you insulted a lot of people (including me) on largely baseless grounds. I only ask that before condemning an entire genre you make sure you actually understand of what the genre consists; you've done nothing to demonstrate that you do. Your statement that you're not comparing Marauder slash to paedophiliac porn and such is not very convincing, because that's pretty much what you did do, in your articles and in response to the comments thereon.

You condemn Marauders slash as being entirely about sex but write Harry/Moody slash yourself that's apparently not about sex; if there's one slash paring that doesn't result in pornography, surely it's possible that the other slash parings might not be pornographic? But you won't even allow us that much, not even a smidgen of the potential of respectability, not even the possibility that there are Marauders slash writers who aren't writing about sex, or in any way focused on the sex. It sounds very much as though you're basing your opinion on all Marauders slash fanfiction off of one or two nasty experiences you've had with one or two writers who are hardly definitive; that's what I object to.

I don't deny that snuff and pornography are bad! I object to your assumption that that's what we're doing. That's horribly unfair, and as I said, since you've been a victim of similar misassumptions I would've thought you'd be more wary of committing them yourself. I write Marauders slash and I have never written anything remotely pornographic, nor do I read it. I'm interested in the relationship. I fail to see how that's immoral even by your standards.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

To begin with, please read what I wrote. I used snuff and pornography as extreme instances to argue that a genre can be discusses as such, independently from individual cases. I specifically said that I did not intend to draw a parallel between Marauders slash and snuff; it is you who is being "horribly unfair" here. And by the way, literary value is next best to irrelevant. Anyone who denies that good literature has been made out of pornography is either ignorant or in bad faith (Anais Nin, Pauline Reage, etc.), and I have read more than one story whose point was the death of the protagonist or of a major character, and that could therefore be characterized as snuff. (An extreme example, both in terms of horror and of literary merit, is LORD OF THE FLIES - a novel I will never read again, but indubitably great.) It does not raise the value of the genre. Literary merit, in these cases, is a mitigating circumstance.

As for barring certain strategies of argument, my "you" there was in the plural: even granting that you (thou, tu, usted, du, tu) would not take such an unfair tack, I can assure you that there are plenty of you (you, vous, ustedes, ihr, voi) who are willing and ready to. I have had this kind of discussion before... and before... and before...

To explain my deepest objection to Marauder slash, let me take a different tack. What makes incest so revolting to most of mankind? That the person in question is simply too close; that to come into sexual contact with someone with whom we have grown and on whom we depend in the most intense possible way is - to use a word I heard again and again - "gross". Sex is naturally intrusive, pressing and heated; there are contexts in which it is simply too much to bear. In the specific case of Remus, I feel very strongly that a boy who owes so much to the friendship of three specific people would react to any suggestion of sex with them in the same way. He would feel it was "gross" - sweaty, intrusive, demanding, ultimately abusive. He would also feel something like a betrayal, or at least an unwarranted use of friendship. And if I may indulge in speculative psychology, his being a werewolf would dispose him against all the physical aspects of relationships: he would live in fear of anything that releases animal energies. Again, the kind of intimacy achieved when the other three friends turned into Animagi, while rooted in physical nature, would hardly be conducive to sex. These people acquire the characteristics of incompatible animals; any sex between them would from now on be overshadowed by their animal identities (which, at least in the case of Peter and Sirius, are very significant) and have a strong overtone of cross-species - or, to use a "judgmental" term, of bestiality. Dogs do not fancy rats, and stags do not fancy dogs; at least, not healthy dogs and stags and rats.

Continued

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I had to break this answer in two, since it was too long for one entry.


In other words, I object to this genre not mainly because it is immoral, but on the same grounds (as I said time and again) as to Harry/Draco slash and redeemed-Draco fics: it is flagrantly out of keeping with the characters. If I did not want to write immoral scenes, I would not write Voldemort, would I now? Not to mention Narcissa (see HARRY POTTER AND THE ICE PRINCESS). I object to the falsification of character and relationships; and, incidentally, upon the assault to the non-sexual notion of friendship that this assault entails. Like redeemed-Draco fics, it's a sexual fantasy - and would you deny that it is a female sexual fantasy? - projected upon characters that do not bear it. I would not object to fics that present the Marauders as villains, as spoilt little so-and-sos making everyone else's life a misery in pursuit of a warped idea of fun; I would not even object (except on moral grounds) to a fic that presented this from their point of view and showed them triumphant. Likewise, I would not object to a fic presenting Sirius (or even Peter!) as a heartless seducer; I would not object to one that went in pornographic detail if the story warranted it; I would not even object, except, again, on moral grounds, to a story that showed Sirius or Peter as happy and fulfilled in their sexual predations. But I do object to scenes that seem to me to simply overturn their relationship. What you and your likes are doing wrong is imagining that sex is even compatible with friendship. In my experience, it rarely is.

Finally, I suggest you read C.S.Lewis' THE FOUR LOVES. Read it through, and pay particular attention to the chapter on Friendship. It is probably the only sensible thing written on Friendship in the last few centuries, and the only one based on actual experience instead of ideology.