Writing meta for today: Things Are Different Here

[amanuensis1]

It seems that there's hardly enough time to to write fiction, let alone posts about writing; complicating that, I don't like to talk details about the story I'm working on because that reduces the pressure to write the story. Not productive. But sometimes I'm bursting with discussion needs, and I'm going to try to let them out more often.

Why I Write Fantasy Settings

I can't say for sure why all my original smut falls into the category of "vaguely medieval historical setting where swords, princes, and dragons could all emerge," but since that's what pushes my buttons, that's what I write. In the story I'm working on now, I could have easily had the Character of Dubious Ethics walk into the protagonist's house, open the fridge, and take out a beer. If I'd found that somewhere I'd have shut the book and walked away. There is absolutely no sexy in that for me; this is why he had to cross to the table and pick up a flask of wine instead, even if I wasn't interested in painting the setting to greater detail just at that moment.

One theory for this is that a lot of my non-con fantasies center around a concept that I call Things Are Different Here.

Things Are Different Here relies upon outraging the sensibilities of the person having the fantasy (or reading the story). Things Are Different Here says, in this country, or in the neighboring one or what have you, concepts that would make us say WHAAAAAAT are the norm. Concepts like the ever-present sexual slave auctions. Or unmarried maidens required to go about bare-breasted. Males disciplined in a harsh matriarchal society. Bestiality rituals at puberty. I'm not even telling you my favorites, so that they don't go stale in the reveal.

And that WHAAAAAAT of outrage is necessary. I want--and I want the reader--to feel the unfairness of this, the terrible injustice of a world that would go against all humane instincts. And of course, I get to channel that sense of outrage into my victim/protagonist if they didn't come from that country in the first place.

Could I root that in a realistic setting? Well, maybe I can't suspend my disbelief for it. Maybe, just as importantly, I don't want to think of all the historical (and current) atrocities my own world is capable of, dreadfully unsexy. Maybe I only want my nice safe fantastical ones--like the tradition that all new brides are required to be f**ked by all the members of their new husband's household--and I need that "vaguely medieval historical setting" to make it all come to filthy yummy fruition.

Comments

[daigranon.livejournal.com]

My settings seem to be fantasy-related too when I try to write original, even though I never intend it..

Take a leap forward, see what your characters would do if they lived in your town xD

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

They would hang around and BORE ME. I can't believe they'd keep slaves in their bedroom. I wouldn't want to believe it!

[daigranon.livejournal.com]

Haha ^_^ Maybe you can add a time-machine/spell into your story and have fun with that concept..

[son-of-darkness.livejournal.com]

I like fantasy settings, too, but I also absolutely ADORE when fantasy and RL settings are intertwined. Like in Harry Potter. There's this whole other world that exists within and beside our one that nobody knows about. The building right next to you could be a wizarding building and you would never know. It's just the old abandoned house that nobody has lived in for centuries. But secretly, the Death Eaters are having gang rape orgies in there every night. >:)

I'm writing an original vampire story at the moment, and it's set in the 18th century, but still very much in the real world. I'm using real locations and street names and buildings, but because they're vampires, they have this whole world going on that the humans don't have any idea about. It's awesome fun. :D

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

It's just the old abandoned house that nobody has lived in for centuries. But secretly, the Death Eaters are having gang rape orgies in there every night.
There you go! That's why it's such a divine kink. It's no longer our world, exactly, but it sits parallel to ours and it transforms it by virtue of that.

[pauraque]

Yep, I agree totally. In fact, I don't think I've written any pron that wasn't in a fantasy or SF setting, if you count Harry Potter as fantasy (I do). It's a suspension of disbelief thing. I don't want to spend time explaining why my own fantasies should be plausible in real life -- they're not, they're *fantasies*. It's a drag to try to turn them into anything else.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I definitely count HP as fantasy. If you set vampires into our world, that's fantasy, for example, by my definitions. I guess that's why the distinction of "urban fantasy" came into play. It's our world, plus a bit of the supernatural. I don't look to urban fantasy much myself simply because I don't prefer to write magic or the supernatural in my original fiction. Swords, yes; princes, hell yes; dragons, ghosts, or magic...eh, not so much.

[naltariel.livejournal.com]

Yup. I share your feeling about fantasy setting. Another nice setting to play with in relatively "real world" is historical settings such as male prostitution and slavery in Ancient Greek and Roman Empire.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Yes, when you can find snippets of the historical world that fit the mould you want, you can go and play there. Except when someone calls you out on a detail or when you discover you're violating the timeline, which is why I delight in all the pseudo-Europe tropes we're starting to see (like in Carey's Kushiel books, for example). You know it's Italy and I know it's Italy except we're calling it something else and so we can mess with it any way we please.

[naltariel.livejournal.com]

That's true!

[oceaxe.livejournal.com]

I completely understand this. I don't write enough to comment on my preferred settings, but when it comes to my masturbation fantasies, I prefer to keep them to myself. I don't want to share them with my partner, I don't want to act them out. They're in my head, where they belong and where they'll stay- my own private world of kink where everything gross and horrible makes a certain kind of awesome sense.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

And once you reveal the fantasy, it loses some of its power as fantasy, doesn't it? I find that once sure-fire fantasies are starting to get a little old, that's the perfect time to turn them into written-down stories. You get that last surge of power from them, and a story-in-text that'll last forever, besides!

[melusinahp.livejournal.com]

Fantasy settings give you more freedom in how you imagine the setting and culture. That totally makes sense.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I don't want to have to say, "Oh, come on," every ten seconds, thinking about how this person could just pick up a cell phone and call the police. I need a world where there are no cell phones and no authorities who care to help my victim.

[snegurochka_lee]

Oh, this is so fascinating! I've never really thought about it this way, but yes, yes, yes. I love your reasoning about fantasy settings, especially in terms of not having to explain why certain things used as erotica devices are actually legal, or socially sanctioned, etc. ♥

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

And I won't say that I can't enjoy real-world settings, but particularly for non-con I don't want to have to be thinking, "But no one would go ALONG with that," every time I envision something outrageous. And I like envisioning the outrageous things!

[julieannette.livejournal.com]

Yes this makes sense. I love the sense of freedom that comes with fantasy settings.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Fantasies themselves should be freedoms, shouldn't they? And yet we still have to work a little bit to make it so. ^_^

[fabularasa.livejournal.com]

I've been meditating on this one. Because for me, the opposite is true: in my writing, I need to know that Things Are The Same Here, before I can get energized in any sense of that word. Your description of how it would be destroyed for you if a character walks in and pops a beer, that made me think, wow! I know what happens next! I want to write it!

Being landed in the familiar everyday world challenges me to find the difference in my characters, int he people rather than in the setting, and it makes those people just that much more actual to me. To me, that's the fun of having dress-up dolls, is being able to take them places and do things with them -- being able to take them everywhere with me, actually.

Anyway, that fundamental difference in how we find out creative energy is probably what makes you such a good reader of my work, and me (I hope) of yours. And you are probably going to say that TATSH doesn't apply to my current project, but I would argue that it does, and that's what underlies all the careful research I'm doing - it has to be genuine or it isn't real, and if it isn't real, then they aren't real. In other words, I need the chair that Cal sits on to be as probable as Cal himself; more so, in fact, because the chair's probability is what gives Cal his.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

(Hey, what's that in your icon? Coffee? Tobacco?)

Being landed in the familiar everyday world challenges me to find the difference in my characters, int he people rather than in the setting,

What I think happens to me is that I want the characters to do such outlandish things that it triggers my "Okay that would never happen in a million years" disbelief sensors, and I have to create a whole new world with a whole new set of rules that would, you know, actually let people do these outlandish things.

And of course TATSH applies greatly to what you are working on! You are doing all you can to root these people in real history. It rolls off the page; I can even smell the damn cigarettes and am trying to get the smell out of my clothing here, that's how real it is. Oh, yes.

[fer-de-lance.livejournal.com]

...Reading this, I actually somehow skipped the word "non-con" but found that it very much worked for me. I love my consensual fantasies to have the edge of Things Are Different Here (For Each Of Us!) -- hence my ridiculously long collection of fandoms where interspecies/intercultural smut romances are possible. (I actually ran out and bought a book series because I found a commenter on the internet saying that the interspecies pairing squicked her!)

Which is not to say that non-con where Things Are Different There isn't also awesome, a lot of the time. :D

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

(I actually ran out and bought a book series because I found a commenter on the internet saying that the interspecies pairing squicked her!)

*cracks up* I actually found my favorite romance novelist author because she got a negative review in a newspaper. "There's kinky sex in a dungeon in this! Ew ew ew!" Me two hours later in a Barnes and Noble: "Excuse me, do you have Hellion by Bertrice Small?"

[atalantapendrag.livejournal.com]

*following the link from your new post*

Re-reading this makes me want Darkover porn. Like one of the official Darkover anthologies, but with all the stories being smut.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Even if I haven't read the Darkover books, I think this is a marvelous idea. :D

[atalantapendrag.livejournal.com]

You should! I think STORMQUEEN would be a good place for you to start. Want ebooks?

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I never say no to an eBook! If one gets me eager, then it'll encourage me to buy others.

[atalantapendrag.livejournal.com]

Here is a whole mess of Darkover ebooks. I still suggest you try Stormqueen first, but there's a chronology list as well.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! I will try them and if I like them I will go buy them. ^_^

[sor-bet.livejournal.com]

Maybe, just as importantly, I don't want to think of all the historical (and current) atrocities my own world is capable of, dreadfully unsexy.

Ooh, you got that right.

BTW, I'm biding my time waiting for each new chapter of yours by reading the other fics. Quite a wide range of writing skills there (ranging from "did they even have a beta" up to, well, you). :D

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, call me silly if I don't find "Girl followed home to her first-story New York apartment by thug who breaks in after her and assaults her!" very much of a turn-on. Brrr.

(also, am laughing, am very pleased, and will not make any comments that might criticize fellow authors)

[oishii-tokoro.livejournal.com]

* pooking around at the tail end of this old post to:

1. Thank you for reviewing my Ganky story ("Choices" of the Albert and Franz brothel visit)
2. Tell you how very much I adore that Lucius icon. So very VERY much. I have saved it to my comp just so that i can take it out and pet it once in a while.
3. Say that I also understand your fantasy setting bias - partly because men with long long hair just DO it for me. (Even if they're badly drawn :p).
4. On a related note, I cannot recommend Yamane Ayano's Crimson Spell manga enough. Fantasy yaoi romance. Yes, there's magic - long silver haired biseinen is one of the mains - but here are swords. And thieves ... and flagons of wine.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

*laughs like mad over icon* Mmm, sexy pose!

Whoo, long long hair, YES. In fact, I know I got into Harry Potter fanfiction because of Jason Isaacs' Lucius. I've always had a thing for elegant bastards with long white hair, and I nearly died when Lucius walked on-screen.

Yamane Ayano, ooh! Yes, I love Y.A.'s manga to pieces; I will check out Crimson Spell ASAP, thank you!

[oishii-tokoro.livejournal.com]

Um, yes, EBwLWH, or "The Sephiroth Effect", has imprinted many of us, hasn't it? (Plus, His Lusciousness has a PMV (Panty-Melting Voice) to completely seal the deal, nu? I am a sucker for PMVs even more than Extreme Hair, so when the two are combined I short circuit.)

(goes to the happy place for a few moments)

Anyhow ... If you're in a place that can get them, two volumes of Crimson Spell have been released in English (up to chapter 13). Kitty Media supposedly will publish volume 3 this year * gnashes teeth with impatience *

For chapters not yet published in English, there are scanslations following pretty closely on the Japanese Chara releases (which is at chapter 29 now I think). ~

The Yamane Ayano LJ has info on non-English licensing and scanslations.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Everyone talks about this dude Sephiroth when I mention EBwLWH! I'll have to check out his source. Final Fantasy, right? I wish FF were a film and not a game. I can't make time to slog through games these days!

[oishii-tokoro.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Primarily FF VII think. There are probably a gazillion YouTube vids of the game cutscenes he's in. (I've never played it either.)

er, and in a bit'o'selfpimp, I am doing mostly Crimson Spell fics for KB this year. The first 4 are on FF.net (http://www.fanfiction.net/u/579079/Silverr)