My profile says it all: I love slash, and and on the topic of slash, have no love for those that can't separate fantasy from reality. Also, as a victim of incest, I find it insulting that she uses the case of the destructiveness of real-life assaults to justify her stance. Nancy Friday has compiled several collections of women's (and men's) sexual fantasies, and incest has always appeared in them. Some of the authors use fantasy as a way of softening the pain, or otherwise find their minds eroticizing the events subconsciously. This doesn't mean that the pain and turmoil they feel is any less real, only that their way of dealing with it is different than the expected cultural norms. I haven't been able to do the same, and get grossed out at the thought of real incest, but that doesn't mean I don't read it. Fiction is NEVER to be confused with reality - doing so means that all fiction would need to be sanitized: no sex, murder, intrigue, violence, lying, etc.
Imagine Harry Potter sanitized and you get the picture. Same for my personal favorite: Watership Down. The stories wouldn't be worth reading if they didn't transport you to an emotionally engaging place. Just because some people don't like to read anything but biographies doesn't mean that fiction should be banned. Same concept. Don't like it - don't read it, and make sure you TELL PEOPLE IN ADVANCE your feelings of discomfort right off the bat. Less drama and frustration that way.
The text from my profile-linked rant on the fantasy-reality divide re: RPS applies. See below.
On the subject of RPS:One must remember that
Real
Person
Slash is still
fiction; all the characters in a story are essentially just that: characters. Unless you are close personal friends with the actors/singers/whomever involved, you don't really know them. All you know is the image projected through the media; a characterization. You don't know what they're like when no one is watching, what their deepest thoughts are, what really makes them
tick. A character is essentially an image of a person projected, it is not the One True Self. Often these images are caricatures or stereotypes; just because you know that an actor prefers coke to pepsi doesn't mean that you're best friends and know everything about them; you only know their public side, much like any character in any novel. You may know the projected self, but not the true self. This distance is what feeds RPS: the desire to
know more, to
understand more, to see more of this image that is so familiar yet so unknown. Humans have always made up stories to explain the unknown; why should unknown people be any different?
In writing about a person - whether it by Harry Potter or Dan Radcliffe - a person is trying to see deeper into the character, to examine unknown aspects of that person. What motivates them? What experiences have they had? How have they incorporated those experiences into their sense of self? How have they been affected by them?
Just because the story is about making out/fucking, doesn't mean that there hasn't been extensive character examination. Any writer must first try to understand the character's motivations and desires. Human interaction is cause and effect; this is no different in written situations. Since one doesn't have the luxury of knowing the people involved personally, decisions on character actions and interactions must be made on the basis of conjecture, using what little is known about the person. This attempt to flesh out an unknown into a known is central to any story; without it, the story loses focus and meaning. Without focus and meaning, there is no way for a writer to get an emotional response from the reader beyond, "why did I start reading this???"
Stories are meant to be felt, not just read. A fully fleshed out set of characters aides this process in storytelling; engaging the emotions of the reader. An
image of a character is flat, a
characterization is engaging.
RPS is a characterization, not biography writing. It's clearly marked as such, and should therefore not be mistaken for anything else. Just because you see these particular characters on t.v. or in the movies doesn't make them any more real; it's still just a projection of an
image, not a projection of the true self. Often this image is carefully crafted and purposely false. Thus, RPS isn't much different from FPS - both are based on unknowns and try to explain some aspect of them so as to make them known.
Fiction is fiction. Deal with it.
There are VOLUMES on the topic of sexual fantasies and how they help people deal with their inner conflicts, turmoil and needs. Provided they are personal musings and not acted upon, they are harmless to others. I dream of ruling the world with an iron fist and destroying my enemies, but I don't act on it, so it's a safe fantasy. "Acting on" does, in my definition, include fixating on a subject - any fantasy that intrudes upon daily activities in a destructive fashion should be treated as a disorder, and professional help sought.
Writing stories to the exclusion of work and family obligations would apply;
writing in your spare time does not.
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