~~ pain. angst. woe. fictional, of course.

[reenka]

It's funny that how I forget myself, sometimes, trying to be all reasonable and "hey, I can take it". When Maya wrote that post about needing brightness in stories, needing some sort of hope, some sort of redemption, just because that's what stories are -for-, they're such potent catalysts for change, and it's almost unbearable to think of this ever-expanding fictional universe, which, unlike the "real" one will never change unless the author says so....

I wasn't sure I myself thought I needed stories to be prickled with light in that way, to inspire me, to basically function as escapism. I don't always want escapism-- I can be mesmerized by the beautiful ways one can bear the most unbearable pain, I can appreciate darkness, something like heavy drapes drawn against the world. It's an aesthetic.

The interesting thing is, that Maya wrote two of the fanfics that I'd consider most hopeless and nearly unbearable in this fandom. `Your Every Wish' and `Dark Side of Light', of course. Both of them completely drained me in their complete dessication of any sort of hope for relief. I suppose the thing that redeemed them for me was the aching presence of strong emotion, of love, of need, of passion, even though it was all misdirected and unrequited and doomed and too little too late. Even so, both of these stories were -taut- with the possibility of light, always denied. It was much more powerful because it had an awareness of what it was missing, not just implied but somehow present.

There were the threads there of how the hopeless tangle wound itself-- it didn't just come into being fully-formed before the beginning of the story. It wound itself up -within- the story, and I think I find that essential as well. If I read a fic with such a dearth of hope in it, I think I want to see it bleed. Not incidentally, but as a major part of the driving force behind the story. I want to see the emotional arc, even if it ends in despair.

Which is why I think fics which start in utter despair and end in utter despair just completely don't work for me. I wait and wait (if I keep reading) for the shift to occur, for that essential (for me) narrative change, where it doesn't matter what, but something's not the same anymore. Pain that is constant and at a high pitch throughout a story wears me out without giving me anything in return. It casts me down without illuminating me, without telling me -why- and allowing my emotions some sort of outlet, a release.


I was raised on fairy-tales, and I think I still think in that way. My ideal ending is, of course, Tolkien's eucatastrophe, where we come through darkness to be redeemed. I think this is the sort of essential light that Maya was wanting in her post-- that basic thread of hope about the human condition if nothing else. Editing that, I would hope to at least for an emotional catharsis of some sort, even if it's a dark one. I would hope to feel -cleansed- by a flood of grief. That's a release also-- the release of tears, of really mourning something. It's a dark ending for the fic, but for the reader, it might still be a strong, powerful thing, something to seize on their hearts and make them really take that necessary gulping breath of cold air.

An example of a relentlessly dark fic that released me in a way that felt right without really destroying its darkness or offering any platitudes would be weatherby's `Contrition'. It's a very painful story, but it works because the pain itself becomes a kind of bond, a catalyst that brings friends together. Grief itself has a sort of arc. It doesn't really go away, but at some point, if you have support, it eases, it transforms. You realize that you're alive and you can feel and that not everything has to hurt anymore. And that can be a revelation.

All of this is a way of explaining why amanuensis1's new fic, `And Just Plain Wrong' didn't work for me, why so many unrelentingly dark fics don't work for me. I can't even enjoy the writing because the ball of misery in me makes it a chore to -read-, even. What's the point? I get nothing from it, no pleasure, no release, no titillation, no spark of knowledge or enlightenment, no new thought. I -knew- life sucks and then you die. No fic has to tell me.

So I guess I'm with Maya, except to say that darkfic -can- work, for me anway, (as her own fics would show!) if there's passion, some guiding principle, a force at work behind it. Basically, I need an explanation that doesn't feel forced. It needs to feel natural. And in real life, there are rhythms-- torture is never endless and unbearable-- and if it is, the person tends to go mad and there is no story because their mind is a barren wasteland. Even if life completely clobbers you, the heroic ones among us go on to have a very rich life of the mind. You don't need anything except what's in there, in your brain, waiting for you. A whole world.

I'm just saying that when it comes down to it, -I- will never really enjoy anyone's real pain. I can enjoy the sort of pain I know that person can tolerate-- but when a character is undergoing unbearable punishment of any sort, I can not ever enjoy it. And I'm glad, man. I'm glad. And I don't think it's because I'm so kink-free. I totally do like semi-noncon and physical domination between equals and such. It's hot. I'm into Buffy/Spike-- `Wrecked' was my favorite episode of the pairing (possibly tied with the musical, because dude-- Willow and Spike and Anya and Buffy and Giles, all singing!!). The difference there is that it was pain both of them could easily withstand. It was nothing, really. It was a game, almost.

Slytherlynx said something about enjoying fics which give Draco pain-- and I can too-- and I do-- when there's any chance that -he'll- enjoy it, if not now, then a chance that it will -lead- to his enjoyment. Pain for the sake of pain followed by more pain is just... pointless. I don't like sweetness for the sake of sweetness followed by sweetness, either. Though I realize both things are more about emotional/physical kink than philosophy, for me as well. (My kink is pain made bearable, made feral by joy or anger or passion-- some sort of living, breathing, kicking emotion).

In `And Just Plain Wrong', it was far, far from a game to Harry, and that meant I had zero chance of enjoying it. Thus I couldn't really enjoy Sara's `Control' or Weather of the Heart-- in the latter case, it was almost a travesty that it -did- turn around and become "okay"-- but I'm such a sucker for it not being awful that I -was- relieved and started to enjoy the fic more at that point. I -need- that relief simply to -breathe-, to be able to -think- about the story. I need it to be a -story-, where there's a frame, a -boundary- around suffering, which is why it's instructive, which is why you can -think- about it and look at it from different angles. Which is why it's a story and not a window onto hell. (And yes, this means I feel awful about the two rapefics I've written, because they're so pointless, and I'm not too happy about several others that were dark, that I don't feel -went- anywhere).

And I can, of course, appreciate a window onto hell also. If it had something to tell me besides "this hurts, doesn't it". Just a bit of knowledge would make it worthwhile, I think.

To me, that is.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

First-erm, love fairy tales and loved Briar Rose!

I think I see what you mean--and I don't think that's in disagreement with what spare_change is saying either. Like...I get very impatient with people who have to see things as part of a big "plan" or something. I've heard people say the stupidest things to that end. Life, imo, is fundamentally absurd in most ways. Things happen for reasons, yes, but not reasons that necessarily have a big significance. Like car accidents happen because of physical factors sure, but somebody doesn't die in order that people experience the consequences.

The good part, though, and that which is just as real is that people give meaning to their lives themselves. This is part of what I think almost gets taken away when you imbue every bit of life with a grand design. So I think one could definitely write an excellent story that dealt with the randomness of disaster--but it would start to feel unreal to me if it was kept random just for the sake of randomness with no order or cause and effect at all, as you said. Once something happens you almost can't stop people from starting to see significance in it. There's a word for it I can't remember now, that refers to human's tendency to find patterns in the past. Suddenly a random thing that happened seems like it had to have been fate because without it they wouldn't be where they are now. Well, of course they wouldn't. They'd be somewhere else that seemed equally inevitable. So I can understand the frustration of someone who wants to read a story that doesn't give in to that, like where it doesn't end on this reassuring note of, "Well, this bad thing happened but really it was all for the best!"

Which is not to say I don't adore stories with a more fairy tale structure where things have a deeper meaning, because fairy tales are about truth as well. So maybe what you're really saying is that for something to be real it can't ever feel like the author is pulling puppet strings for good or bad. Random badness and goodness both occur but in fiction especially they have to be used sparing. There's a lot of true stories that would come across completely unbelieveably in fiction. That's the funny thing about fiction--people say they want it "real" but by real they never mean the equivalent of watching a video of a stranger's day--that's boring. You want to the story to be saying something, and the random cruelty of life is as worthy a topic as any. If you feel an author isn't really saying anything about it you're not going to be any more interested than an author not saying anything about life being wonderful. (Leaving aside the whole personal taste issue of what somebody might want to read for themselves.)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Yeah... that's what I meant (I think)-- balance. The sense that in reality, nothing is unrelenting, and if it is, it starts to feel unreal. Back when I had that awful example where I invoked the Holocaust (note to self: never invoke Nazis on pain of DEATH), I also meant to say just that even in the midst of unspeakable horror, life went on, people survived, they weren't all slitting their wrists continuously, and that's also important to remember along with everything else. But I shouldn't have used such an extreme example. Anyway... a story about numbness is perhaps much more realistic as in-- it happens a lot more commonly-- but yeah, even if it's true, it doesn't quite feel `real'.

I guess what I was saying is-- you could have genres, of course-- where one aspect of things or the other is emphasized and talked about to the exclusion of others. But if that "life is wonderful" thing is -completely- absent even from -memory-, it feels like an endless nightmare which isn't really my thing-- I don't read any horror for that reason, I suppose. Darkness is one thing-- horror is as hard to believe as Harlequin romances (and not as pleasant).

The question of a Grand Design.....
I wasn't really wanting -that-. I mean, I -appreciate- grand symbolic structure perhaps a bit too much (my ill-fated affection for IP a case in point), but it's not necessary. All I want is an arc-- where you start at point A and move to point B, possibly becoming a bit of a different person in the process, or learning something, or realizing life sucks or that you're a vampire soul-sucking demon or that Malfoy Is Really Hot. Something to make me go "ohhh!" or "siiiiigh" or "meeble!"

I think of it as an emotional center. Something driving the story. Something that it's -about-. I dunno. Something more than "this sucks", even if it's detail on why and how and for how long. I dunno.

For instance, I rather enjoy well-done PWP porn-type fics... in the best ones, you have a very simple arc, though. Arousal-- tension-- teasing-- higher arousal-- peaking-- explosion-- afterglow. It may not have told you anything about the human condition, but it's got a certain emotional satisfaction (or it -can-), for me.

I don't think the idea of me wanting a Grand Design even -applies- to my response to Amanuensis' fic. It was more a linear procession of inter-related events-- a segment of a flat line, basically, rather than a circle or an arc or an arrow.

I don't think life -is- a flat line, even temporally speaking, so it doesn't ring true, especially when I'm not anchored to that particular segment by its emotional weight or importance. I was struggling through the series of similar events (all versions of sexual abuse), waiting for the pay-off, for some... I don't know... anomaly, some -difference-, just for contrast. It didn't come. It was flatline all the way, monochromal.

It's almost like I think that an anomaly would provide the equivalent of meaning simply because the reader would -find- it, being human. It would be ...a depth rather than a breadth factor, maybe? I probably don't know what I'm talking about~:)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I suspected you weren't into the whole "It's all God's plan!" idea, but figured I'd throw it out there as an example of people sometimes trying to put a happy spin on things. Really, I figured you meant more what you said--it's like, why am I reading this story? There has to be some kind of transformation even if it's a small one.

It's weird because of course the Holocaust is a huge weight to drop into any conversation but this post made me think of this movie I just loved that was a documentary about these two guys, one of which was in a Communist labor camp after having escaped to England in WW2. The other guy had spent his adolescence in Auschwitz. I just loved this second guy. He was like...he was just so great. Anyway, he would always make these comments on life being absurd that could be cynical maybe but they totally weren't because he obviously saw all this potential in the absurdity. Like he was showing the cameras these train tracks nearby what used to be a labor camp. He had been in the camp before he was sent to Auschwitz and he was proudly saying, "This is my work! I made these tracks!"

He starts talking about how train tracks are so wonderful because they make him so happy. The other guy walks buy and says with great conviction, "They mean freedom," (because he got away on a train, of course). He agrees that yes, they're freedom, but it's more like this possibility that you are here now but you could be somewhere else, that there are other places in the world to go on them that could be better etc. They remind you there's always someplace other than where you are. And when he finishes the interviewer says, "Where do the tracks go?"

And he smiles and says, "They go to Auschwitz." Then he adds what he usually says to explain his musings, "I am one stupid Jew."

You can see why this guy was like my hero. He was just always seeing life as chaos and people making order in the chaos and his universe kept turning out exactly the opposite of a way that would be described as just that just made it all the more great for him.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Wow, the weird thing is that I think that's a really great story. I love it when life is a series of surprises, man. That's really the point. Even if they're dark surprises, at least they're surprises. WHich I suppose is a way of distancing yourself, possibly, but it still makes it more enjoyable.

Maybe part of what bothers me about darkfic of a certain sort (as well as fluff) is merely the predictability. It's like... even if meaning is fragile and continuously in flux, that in itself is a sort of meaning. That's what's so cool. That it -does- change-- I mean, I never meant I wanted any of it to be -static-. The fun thing is when life is constantly twisting and showing different aspecs of itself and how it's all connected to each other, and there's never sadness without laughter and vice versa. And just how ridiculous it all is. That in itself is meaning, I guess-- laughing at it or crying at it-- responding to it. That creates meaning in the best way.

I'd love it if one of those "epilogue slash" stories were like this-- that love was just one of those ridiculously unexpected twists, and somehow it -worked- because like... you can reallign the colors and suddenly everything's different, like a Rubic's Cube or something~:)

That would be hard to pull off, though.
But I like the idea ~:)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Wow, the weird thing is that I think that's a really great story. I love it when life is a series of surprises, man. That's really the point. Even if they're dark surprises, at least they're surprises. WHich I suppose is a way of distancing yourself, possibly, but it still makes it more enjoyable.


Oh it totally was a great story! And part of what made it so cool was that like when he would say he was stupid it was clear he was really smarter than everyone else, but he never tried to say exactly what he'd discovered or anything like that. He just left you with this great possibility, like, "Isn't that fabulous?" These crazy things would happen and even when they were negative it was just part of the weirdness that was life.

[spare-change.livejournal.com]

I guess for me -- and I'm speaking from personal experience here -- the meaningless of catastrophe often seems to be the only conclusion one can draw from from an accident. The senselessness; the utter gratuity of the loss. And this isn't a pleasant realization. But if that's what you've discovered, then that's what you've discovered: that the very search for significance, for hope, for redemption has limits which your experience has shattered.

I think a story like this is just as valid and just as important to tell.

And I do think there is something disturbing about being so eager to find those glimmers of hope in an experience so utterly catastrophic as the Holocaust. I mean, these are pretty much the only stories most folks consume (Schindler's List and the ilk), and as such, they're historically imbalanced.

Primo Levi's "The Drowned and the Saved" is a beautiful, awful, philosophically important and disturbing book about the irrelevance of trying to find anything redemptive or meaningful in the Holocaust. Those who were the most noble were usually the ones to die first. Most survivors did so at the cost of someone else. Many people were pulled straight off the train and into the showers. Worst of all, the camp created a huge moral gray zone by requiring prisoners to guard other prisoners, and forcing certain prisoners to man the crematoria. This logic of forced complicity with the system is much more painful to examine, but I find it much truer to the spirit of what was experienced at the death camps than stories that seek to find evidence of goodness and humanity. Because the death camps were designed to strip humanity from the prisoners. There was even a category at the camps to describe those who were no longer human but still living: Muslims. (No, this has nothing to do with Islam ... it was a reference to something else that I'm not remembering now, unfortunately.) And the people who weren't able to escape the camps (either literally or metaphorically) are just as important as those who did. And their stories equally deserving of being told.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree. This was one of the things I personally found really annoying about the concept of the movie Life is Beautiful. It just seemed to me that Nazis were specifically skilled at destroying exactly the kind of spirit the main character had. I thought he'd probably just be dead in five minutes. In fact, my own "favorite" Holocaust movie is probably Sophie's Choice which, imo, comes to the conclusion that there was nothing redemptive about the Holocaust.

I think the pointlessness of tragedy is definitely just as important a conclusion to draw from a story as anything else. I suppose, too, it depends on where the character/reader is coming from to begin with. Some people start out with a strong belief that everything has this hopeful element so they are likely to feel more betrayed by the realization that this isn't true. Like the kind of people who when they discover they or a loved one has a terminal illness can't understand how this could happen to them when they're a good person. Or another person I was speaking to recently who had survived cancer and had to suffer through people who kept insisting that he look at his illness as some kind of positive spiritual challenge.

Once a character accepts that their situation isn't redemptive or uplifting but just hellish and cruel there's plenty of ways they can deal with that that could make for a powerful story.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Hmm... it seems like there's some crucial difference here in delineating whether one is talking about stories and the desire for certain structures in them (as you said) and reality and the cases for and against finding structure in -that-.

Mostly, my desire for a certain arc comes in terms of fiction rather than reality.
Also, there seems to be the need for another separation between accidental things and mass-scale tragedies and things like war and hostile occupation and so on-- I mean, in that case, people die and/or suffer, but it's part of a definite trend.

Yet another division between the randomness and futility of finding "meaning" in death itself and the definite ways in which people -do- interpret their own lives, do have reasons/sources for their emotional development. And then there's portraying that emoitional development in stories vs. portraying the stark reality, the events themselves.

I wasn't really-- would never-- claim some authority in saying this story -should- be told and this -shouldn't-. It was merely a question of my own reader-response. That whole Nazi thread was severely under-thought on my part. Generally, I would say -all- stories deserve to be told....

The idea of needing to find glimmers of hope in catastrophe.....

Is again divided between the lines of literature and actual response to real events, to me. I can see how these are related, but it feels weird to me to utterly mix them. I mean... okay, take `And Just Plain Wrong'. If I imagined I was -there-, that it was a series of real events, for instance.....

First of all, if I was telling of it, this isn't the story I would think needs to be told, because basically it's just a semi-repetitive description of the actual sex acts without much detail in terms of the resistance, the emotional fall-out, the larger picture, the changes in the characters' relationships, etcetc. All this is is a snap-shot that tells me little in terms of knowing the history implied. Which is what I suppose we're talking about, in terms of commemorating real events, right? It would be about being unflinchingly true to the spirit of that history.

Which is why I'm exceedingly sorry I brought up the Holocaust in connection to any of this. I was trying to make that stupid point about it being natural to have a range of emotions, a balance... I dunno. I didn't express it very well. I find `hope' in the very condition of change. I mean, people -die- and it -hurts- and it's -not okay-, but.... It doesn't go on forever. I dunno. It's not a flat line. And you don't need to really talk about some future time when Harry smiles again in any particular fic or anything... All I really wanted in narrative terms was a change of any sort. Which is just me and my personal emotional preference.

Not that (unfiltered) tragedy is less important than redeemed tragedy, far from it. Even so, the semi-disconnected serial nature of real-life events doesn't translate entirely well into short story format for me, not when you just have a sort of succession of similar events that don't end up anywhere as the result. It was sort of like....
When I was writing `As Good As He Got', Sara asked for more. And indeed, I could see a similar situation repeating itself over and over in my head, with small amounts of variation (ie, they could meet again, things would be weird, Harry would lose it and fuck him again-- I could see it). It wouldn't be very meaningful, but that's not the point-- it was static, that's what bothered me. If it -moved-, there would be enough meaning for me, because already it's an arc of sorts. So if I did write that story, it'd get long, 'cause immediately I'd need to show repercussions-- how did Draco deal with being raped? What did Harry feel the next day? How did it feel when he caught himself about to do it again, and stopped? How could he face Malfoy again? What if Malfoy told? etc.

I don't know what my point is anymore, man. I suppose I like a sort of temporality to these things, a sense of flow. Life goes on, even as tragic events echo and reverbrate. That sort of thing.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

First of all, if I was telling of it, this isn't the story I would think needs to be told, because basically it's just a semi-repetitive description of the actual sex acts without much detail in terms of the resistance, the emotional fall-out, the larger picture, the changes in the characters' relationships, etcetc. All this is is a snap-shot that tells me little in terms of knowing the history implied. Which is what I suppose we're talking about, in terms of commemorating real events, right? It would be about being unflinchingly true to the spirit of that history.

Sorry to quote at such length here, but I'm wondering if that isn't getting to the heart of what I was trying to say.

It is the relentless descriptions of sex as torture without any redeeming or uplifting moments...

Then again, I'm a big fan of texts that force the reader to feel like the characters (one of the reasons I actualy like Bret Easton Ellis) and maybe this horrendous ambiguity toward sex, the sexual torture as the one constant that overshadows and erases all else *is* the ultimate "meaning"/"message"???

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess um... I decided that my problem (which is a problem, possibly, but not one I can help), is that my mind just needs something to latch onto. I can appreciate the message of "well, this is how it is" with depictions of horrific events, because my own emotional response and pain might be exactly what the author is meaning to evoke, except, as you said, in that particular story, the sex was deeply gratuitous and I didn't feel an emotional connection, particularly, either. A lot of horror stories begin and end in fear and despair. There's a sort of aesthetic to that, but if nothing other than this flatline of pain occurs, then the fic isn't going to have much more impact than a nightmare. i.e., it was ends up being something that passes through you without you understanding it, necessarily.

I think the traditional narrative arc is helpful to lodge things in one's brain on a more conscious level, to help the story unfold. But in this particular case, I felt even the suffering lacked a sort of basic dignity because it was so... unbelievably pointless and without beginning, middle and end. People always have human stories, even if they're villains. So nevermind Snape & Draco & Lucius being inhuman, it was from Harry's pov. Harry wasn't very human either, because he was constantly repressing his emotions to get through his torture more intact.

That on top of all the sex (and I also had this weird discomfort because it was in the language of noncon that's meant to be enjoyed) made me confused as to what the story was trying to accomplish. In the end, I was simply sick at heart and eventually I just forgot it until you reminded me.

There's not much I can say about the Holocaust because my knowledge of and (deleted) references to it is almost entirely anecdotal and based on the personal experience of my family and the very few documentaries/movies I've seen. I haven't even read Anne Frank. It's all personal-account based, for me, and my family were rather resistant-- most Russians were, the siege of Leningrad being just one example. That's where -I'm- coming from. Russians got killed by the millions, but the spirit remained: FUCK THEM ALL, or something like it. Insane, but it's a ...cultural thing -.-

I think of Harry as a "fuck them all" kind of guy, incidentally. Honorary Russian, I guess~:)

I don't tend to like reading/thinking about stories I can't enjoy on some level, even if it's an enjoyment of thought or feeling or some sense of the greatness of the work.
No matter the subject-matter, if the writing is good enough, I'll "enjoy" anything. Amanuensis's writing isn't good -enough-, to me.

And I can appreciate feeling like the characters, if I felt there was something to be -gained- from it, and in this case I find there's nothing except pure depression. I mean, I can feel depressed all by myself, you know?
But it's a combination of the sex being anti-pleasurable in any possible way, the despair being 100% relentless (any narrative-- ANY narrative-- can use a little relief on that front) and me not being able to empathize, really. Descriptions of depression are almost like descriptions of happiness-- they need happiness, a before-and-after, some memory of need or joy or -spirit-, in order to make them -stand out-, be relevant; the contrast is necessary to see the detail. For me, anyway. Happy fic with no sadness is just flat, but so is sad fic with no happiness.

Then again, I'm very picky in what works for me sometimes~:)