Biospheres
Apr. 22nd, 2008 04:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficEach movie generates its own little biosphere and has its only little ecology and its climate, and you're attune to that more than anything else. So when people say "is there anything you wouldn't show on film?" or "would you draw back?" I say, if I do it's only because of that biosphere. What is appropriate? What works within the ecology of that movie? So in one movie sex and blood would be very up front, like in "Crash" because it's sort of the subject of the movie. But in another movie, like "The Dead Zone," it would not be appropriate. It would be disproportionate.
There's no sex really in "eXistenZ," except metaphorically. There was an opportunity to have sex scenes, and we were all willing to do that. But as the film evolved, we thought it would be wrong. It would take away from the metaphorical sex, which is all this plugging in and that sort of stuff. That's more interesting. It has more resonance than if you suddenly saw a real, naked sex scene in the middle of all that. It would unbalance all that -- almost invalidate it. So if you wait, the movie gradually tells you what it wants to be, and you have to sort of go on with it.
- David Cronenberg
Full disclosure: I'm writing on a darkfic that's dark. The premise is dark, and the story follows through on the premise. It's handled tastefully, I hope, and there's gonna be a big ol' "Warning: Rape" on the header just in case non-con comes off as a weasel word. Because this isn't one of those sexy, sexy rape fantasies so much as it's one of those sexy, sexy sick people doing sick things and good people trying to respond.
And that quote up top? That's what I feel like. Like, 99% of the time, when you click on one of my stories, you're not gonna get rape (even the oblique references version). But this is a story that really can't work if the worst that happens is a woman gets taken out for a bad night on the town ("And then he didn't give the waiter a tip!" "I will avenge you.")
So really, I think it's a bit limiting to say "I would never ever write X". Because if the story's screaming "Write X! Write X! This will be so much better if it has X in it, come on, don't be a pussy!", then you're just mis-serving yourself to write the second-best story you can write. The big concern, at least that I have, is that people will think you're just doing it for shock value or that you're just being needlessly sadistic. (Or, in my case, that people will think it's OOC for the racist, genocidial, megalomanical, evil, insane, psychotic Master to take his love of powerone fifteen steps too far).
I read a story, more on it later, that put Superman through some Hostel treatment for some hardcore h/c later on (the comfort part, that is... as in, reduced to a child-like mental state, traumatized, crippled... I think the only thing the author didn't do was give him an erectile dysfunction, because he needed that for later...). And I hated it, because I thought the story's biosphere absolutely did not support all that crap. It used to be light-hearted, fun, with moderate angst... you know, like a Superman story, not something that would send Stephen King running for his teddy bear.
There've been stories that I've wanted to write sex scenes for, but I don't think the tone was appropriate for it. To go from wacky hijinx to Barry White. Sometimes you have to be kid-friendly. Like, it's not even a fade to black, it's a fade to sorta dark can we get some lights on in here? Why, those two people are kissing! And perhaps that is all they are doing?
Oh, look, it's the next morning, they had a sleepover!
I just wish some people, instead of cramming all their species of animals into one biosphere, would make a new biosphere for the animals to frolic and play in. Babs/Dinah (at least explicit Babs/Dinah... bisexual key party FTW) wouldn't fit into The Other Wife and the hardcore h/c didn't fit into this story I read the way it would've fit into a sequel or AU of the original story. I can understand how, in a long-running fic, you can want to throw stuff against the wall to make it stick. But even when you have the BEST IDEA EVAAAAAAAR!!! you should still stop to think "hmmm... does this really fit into the story I'm trying to tell or would it be best-served if I locked it into the plotbunny drawer and came back to it later."
Then, maybe three weeks from then, you go to the plotbunny drawer and say "that idea was terrible! What I eventually did was so much better! I'm so glad that I didn't try to put a square peg into a round hole... hmmm... Square Peg/Round Hole OTP!"
There's no sex really in "eXistenZ," except metaphorically. There was an opportunity to have sex scenes, and we were all willing to do that. But as the film evolved, we thought it would be wrong. It would take away from the metaphorical sex, which is all this plugging in and that sort of stuff. That's more interesting. It has more resonance than if you suddenly saw a real, naked sex scene in the middle of all that. It would unbalance all that -- almost invalidate it. So if you wait, the movie gradually tells you what it wants to be, and you have to sort of go on with it.
- David Cronenberg
Full disclosure: I'm writing on a darkfic that's dark. The premise is dark, and the story follows through on the premise. It's handled tastefully, I hope, and there's gonna be a big ol' "Warning: Rape" on the header just in case non-con comes off as a weasel word. Because this isn't one of those sexy, sexy rape fantasies so much as it's one of those sexy, sexy sick people doing sick things and good people trying to respond.
And that quote up top? That's what I feel like. Like, 99% of the time, when you click on one of my stories, you're not gonna get rape (even the oblique references version). But this is a story that really can't work if the worst that happens is a woman gets taken out for a bad night on the town ("And then he didn't give the waiter a tip!" "I will avenge you.")
So really, I think it's a bit limiting to say "I would never ever write X". Because if the story's screaming "Write X! Write X! This will be so much better if it has X in it, come on, don't be a pussy!", then you're just mis-serving yourself to write the second-best story you can write. The big concern, at least that I have, is that people will think you're just doing it for shock value or that you're just being needlessly sadistic. (Or, in my case, that people will think it's OOC for the racist, genocidial, megalomanical, evil, insane, psychotic Master to take his love of power
I read a story, more on it later, that put Superman through some Hostel treatment for some hardcore h/c later on (the comfort part, that is... as in, reduced to a child-like mental state, traumatized, crippled... I think the only thing the author didn't do was give him an erectile dysfunction, because he needed that for later...). And I hated it, because I thought the story's biosphere absolutely did not support all that crap. It used to be light-hearted, fun, with moderate angst... you know, like a Superman story, not something that would send Stephen King running for his teddy bear.
There've been stories that I've wanted to write sex scenes for, but I don't think the tone was appropriate for it. To go from wacky hijinx to Barry White. Sometimes you have to be kid-friendly. Like, it's not even a fade to black, it's a fade to sorta dark can we get some lights on in here? Why, those two people are kissing! And perhaps that is all they are doing?
Oh, look, it's the next morning, they had a sleepover!
I just wish some people, instead of cramming all their species of animals into one biosphere, would make a new biosphere for the animals to frolic and play in. Babs/Dinah (at least explicit Babs/Dinah... bisexual key party FTW) wouldn't fit into The Other Wife and the hardcore h/c didn't fit into this story I read the way it would've fit into a sequel or AU of the original story. I can understand how, in a long-running fic, you can want to throw stuff against the wall to make it stick. But even when you have the BEST IDEA EVAAAAAAAR!!! you should still stop to think "hmmm... does this really fit into the story I'm trying to tell or would it be best-served if I locked it into the plotbunny drawer and came back to it later."
Then, maybe three weeks from then, you go to the plotbunny drawer and say "that idea was terrible! What I eventually did was so much better! I'm so glad that I didn't try to put a square peg into a round hole... hmmm... Square Peg/Round Hole OTP!"
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-22 10:32 am (UTC)By contrast, on the rare occasions that I go dark or emo, I try to recognize the need to limit my focus. In one NuWho fic, I had the Tenth Doctor visit modern-day Sarah Jane, after Martha had left, and basically just vent his guilt all over her, until she slapped him, held him while he cried, and reminded him that he could still fix some of his mistakes. It ended with Ten and Sarah Jane going to bed together, but as much as got shown was an embrace and a kiss, even though I'd still very much like to write a Ten/MILF!Sarah Jane sex scene. Likewise, I had a Simm!Master/MILF!Sarah Jane non-con story (what is it about poor Sarah Jane that makes me want to put her through this sort of stuff?) that ended with Sarah Jane telling her story to Jack afterwards, while they were in bed together, and even though Jack and Sarah Jane didn't engage in sex "onscreen," part of me still felt like the scene was a bit too much. The main reason I included it to begin with was to give Sarah Jane a happier ending, since writing Simm!Master in character meant that he was absolute bastard to her.
All of this reminds me; now that I'm caught up a bit more on some of my other writing, I STILL need to write Donna Noble/Luke Smith sexfic.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-22 10:38 am (UTC)I think I'm going to have to write something happy about the Doctor taking Sarah Jane back to have a threesome with her younger self, just to get over the agonizing crackiness of it all.
it's a hell of a lot easier to get away with throwing every sexual kink up to and including the kitchen sink into the story, as long as it's lighthearted, affectionate and doesn't take itself too seriously.
Yeah, I think I may have taken it too far with a lactation scene in an otherwise serious, "straight-minded" fic. But in my defense, how many times in your life do you get to write pregnancy fic?
Unless there was Pregnant!Barda/Scott fic. ...weirdly hot? Hotly weird? Scott'd probably have some mother issues, but not going there...
no subject
Date: 2008-04-24 08:37 am (UTC)That's not an invalid interpretation, especially in light of NuWho's portrayals of the characters, but if you go all the way back to Pertwee and Delgado, you'll see that the Master has always had a bit of a fixation with wanting to break the Doctor's toys.
I suppose I chose Sarah Jane in part because, aside from the characters of the Master and the Doctor himself, she's the most tangible tie to the original series, and in a sense, that actually gives her and the Master something in common, because until the Brigadier returns for a guest appearance, they're the only characters who have appeared on NuWho to date who actually knew the Doctor before the Time War.
Of course, the other part of my choice, which I suppose is indicative of my original series memories, is because Elisabeth Sladen has always been so adorably heartbreaking, whenever she's portrayed Sarah Jane's sadness, to the degree that, as a little boy, I used to fantasize about hugging her and kissing away her tears whenever she cried.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-22 07:26 pm (UTC)As an example, I took someone's amnesia prompt ( always fun, if physically unlikely ) and had an amnesiac Captain America being brainwashed by Baron Zemo into working for him on a number of levels. The plot allows lots of sexual details to be included with a built-in plot excuse. Inherently non-con or dub-con, already a good dom/sub dynamic, sadism optional but fun ( this taking place in Helmut's younger days, when he still had that vengeance thing going on ), all without it requiring the characters to have kinky proclivities themselves.
On the other hand, I wrote a fic ( well, half-wrote before I dropped it ) featuring Cassandra Nova's take over of the X-mansion in a cruder light, but stopped when I realized the sex scenes were just getting too ridiculous and I was obviously just using a plot device to generate porn.
So angst has a place too, it just needs careful management.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-22 07:46 pm (UTC)What, you mean there's something wrong with the annual Paradise Island coast-to-coast daisy chain?
no subject
Date: 2008-04-23 06:18 pm (UTC)You know, it helps if there's someone involved on the writing end that saw Sarah Jane the first time around.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-24 08:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-22 06:32 pm (UTC)(I think I know which Superman fic you mean, and I had to stop reading during that arc. I haven't been able to come back, either.)
no subject
Date: 2008-04-22 07:15 pm (UTC)It's kinda tragic how before that story arc, I would recommend it whole-heartedly, but now I'd have to think really hard whether it's worth it to read the good bits knowing that it's going to quite literally degenerate into all this rape and murder and torture. It was like the author went into a fugue state and instead of resolving the problem she introduced, introduced this whole new set of problems... like a rom-com that had the star couple split up at the beginning of the third act and instead of getting them back together, suddenly aliens attacked and shit.(And what was with all the phlegm and mucus and vomit? Ick.)
no subject
Date: 2008-04-22 07:36 pm (UTC)I'd enjoy having someone deconstruct my epic (I know it's filled with problems) but privately. :D
And if you have a Planet membership, it works on br.c as well, I think.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-22 07:51 pm (UTC)