icarus | More violent movies from WG.

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More violent movies from WG.

WG brought home another action flick. It starred Bruce Willis and had the usual hail of bullets with hostages being killed, not so bad. I rather liked the one hostage-taker's brother (we were meant to) who got tangled up in it by mistake, and the plot was complex.

Then that character was thrown off a three-story balcony, crushed on the ground below, twitching with convulsions as his spine had been snapped while his brother helplessly cradled his head in his lap. Completely gratuitous violence. Even WG was surprised.

Okay. That's enough. I walked out.

I've been considerate. I've picked sci-fi action flicks that I know we'll both enjoy. But I've had it with him picking movies for his own enjoyment with no thought for me.

I'm now picking movies I want to see regardless of whether or not he'll like them. My taste in movies, where it doesn't intersect with his.

I have in my hand Muholland Dr, Casablanca (which I've never seen), and I want to get Gosford Park. I've wanted to see Kenneth Branaugh in Henry V but I knew WG would whinge. Tough titties now, kiddo. Also there's a cult classic version of Hamlet where "Denmark" is a corporation that I have my eye on.

Speaking of gratuitous... what is it with slash fiction that every author has to reach for rape if they want some shock value? I'm not talking about And Just Plain Wrong where the whole point of the stories is a sort of lurid fascination with rape (which I don't share). I mean the sort of situation where if your character has to have a "tragic past" where another character has "empathy" for him, a lot of authors seem to reach for rape as a standard feature and salt it in like so much hamburger helper. It's become a staple.

First, the way it's written, it often feels like feminization. I know men get raped. It happens all the time in prison and I happen to know two boys who were raped as kids. But you know what? Guys don't react the same way as girls. When a guy's been raped and he shares his story with someone (which, by the way, most guys go to the grave without telling a soul) he feels worse. He's judged. There's a sense that a woman can be the helpless female but if a guy is helpless, he doesn't get the same empathy. There's something wrong with him, he's somehow weak. If he tells a women, most react to it with a sense of smugness believe it or not. They don't say it, but there's a sense of "oho, the shoe's on the other foot now, is it?"

Which may be why rape has become (or has been) the slash staple, with women projecting their own experiences onto men. Or maybe writers are just lazy.

The response among men... well, guys just don't tell other guys. But generally men who hear of it (if it wasn't in prison) react to it with a sense of shocked disbelief. They just go blank. Because it's not supposed to happen to guys, and they don't know what to think of a man who let that happen to him. Yes, let it happen to him. People blame the rape victim when it's a woman, but it's twenty times worse with men.

So they start fishing for excuses for their friend, "Well, you were just a little kid" or "Hell, it was dark" or "That's a pretty dangerous part of town" -- but the excuses ring rather hollow because if a man is raped, he's less a man and they both know it. The excuses are as humiliating as the admission.

Not exactly the warm empathy you can expect (sometimes) as a woman who tells her story to other women, where chances are good you'll find others who've been through the same thing, or women who know someone who's been through it, or who can imagine it happening to themselves.

Second, it's a little dull. I'm sorry, it is. All the rapes are pretty much the same, and they're always done by complete or near strangers (which is unusual in the world of sexual assault). Tied up, beaten, sexually assaulted by [fill in random Death Eater/bad guy/Slytherin/Voldemort], yawn.

If you need a wounded dove for your fic, why there's a vast panoply of types of abuse available to you that can seriously fuck up your character without resorting to the same old, same old. Emotions and human relationships are complicated. Parent-child relationships can mess someone up. One can have authoritarian issues. A bad relationship with a crazy ex-boyfriend or girlfriend can do some real damage. There's neglect, unpopularity, physical problems, politics, horrific job situations, and in the wizarding world there are magical options to screw up your character as well (Ron fears spiders because the twins turns his teddy bear into a spider). Just once I'd like to see a character recovering from Imperius. Heck, we have a war on in Harry Potter. Wars are great for screwing people up.

I know, I know, this involves a greater depth of thought about your characters and is not as easy as a one-time event. It may take valuable time away from the healing process if we have to have a complicated problem as well.

I note that (despite the blame-the-victim reaction to it) rape might seem more sympathetic because it's beyond your character's control. There may be some fears that a character might not get as much empathy if some of his troubles are of his own making. But fear not. Most of us create our own problems and empathy we'll have for your character is the empathy we have for ourselves.

Well, off to school. I've a test today.

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Casablanca is oh so wonderful. And so is Gosford Park. Gosford Park is so deleriously understated and just wonderful. You're making me want to watch it again. ;)

That version of Hamlet is interesting, but not something I'd really recommend. I can't quite remember if I even finished watching it. Of course there are times when I'm not in the mood for Shakespeare . . . Honestly, it's like 1 day out of the year.

Good luck with the movies. I have a tough time getting Nick to see through my artsy films, but at least we agree on the other stuff (and he'll watch the artsy stuff if he has to).

Muholland Dr, well it's kind of funny. Early on I started thinking "wow, femme-slashers would have a lot to work with here" and then the real plot unfolded. Ha. Yeah, I guess so. It bums me out when gay (and schizophrenics) characters are portrayed as criminal types, there's a lack of balance in the film industry, but the movie itself is about regret.

wildernessguru didn't like it much. *smug smile*

Icarus

Gosford Park and Kenneth's Hamlet are both wonderful.

Cool! Bring on the costume dramas. I want period pieces, realistic accents, byzantine plots....

Branagh's Henry V has battle sequences in it; it's rather grim & gritty (he removes many of the funnier bits from Shakespeare) but good. The Hamlet you're referring to stars Ethan Hawke.

Re:fanfic, a related rant is abused!Draco. Dad's a villain, so the boy must be catamite to him and his Death Eater buds. Uh-hunh. It can be done well for effect sometimes, but too many writers just follow that trope unthinkingly.

Grim and gritty is fine. I can do grim and gritty. It's the up-close slicing off of heads while the blood spatters the camera (or the kid twitches in seisure and the pool grows around him) that I find offensive. Though I know of Buddhist Lamas who watch violence deliberately to practice stabilizing the mind under all circumstances.

Dad's a villain, so the boy must be catamite to him and his Death Eater buds. Uh-hunh. It can be done well for effect sometimes, but too many writers just follow that trope unthinkingly.

Yes, it can be done well. Most cliches are cliche for good reason: they've been done very, very well at least once.

But it's obvious when the writer just unthinkingly reaches for that trope (great word). My first thought is that the writer is lazy. WG's suggestion is that perhaps the author is very young so doesn't have a lot of life experience to draw on. My third thought is that the person has read too much bad fanfic so follows the groove easily, without careful consideration.

Icarus

That, and it seems to be what too many people want to read.

No, I don't get that either.

It's the up-close slicing off of heads while the blood spatters the camera (or the kid twitches in seisure and the pool grows around him) that I find offensive.

That sounds much like my reaction to The Patriot -- I liked the movie as a drama, even if it was terribly overwrought, and I really liked Luci -- er, Colonel Tavington. OTOH, I did *not* appreciate the close-up of the cannonball taking off some guy's head, or the other cannonball rolling along and removing some other guy's leg, or the *slow-motion* scene in which the very likeable preacher is shot in the chest and blood spurts away from his body in a fountain. Thanks, but yuck.

*snorts with laughter* I had to read this description to WG and he cracked up. Uh, yeah, that's vile.

I agree when he says you don't want to prettify and soft-pedal violence, but once the second head goes flying you have to wonder why you're watching this. Even if does hav Luci--er, Colonel Tavington.

Icarus

Just tell me about it. I have sat there and watched a bloke get a poker through the neck in Troy for my boyfriend and he wouldn't even go and see Pride and Prejudice with me. There were many tantrums. Heck, that film even has Keira Knightley in it and he's got a crush on her too! *grumbles*

I agree with you about the slashing rape bit too. There's not just the bloke stuff where there are deeper issues, like the shame and it's more complex than character A saying that they feel ashamed and dirty. How are they responding to it with their behaviour. It's a show, not tell issue I think in some ways. It's just a great big let's put the person back together again and do it by the love of Snape/Harry/Ron/insert male character fest. Love alone will not heal a person.

let's put the person back together again and do it by the love of

That's the primary problem. Certainly a supportive caring makes a very big difference, but it's a carryover from the fairly tale. *sings in Snow White voice*

"Some daaaay my Priiiince will come..."

Only now it's "Some daaaay my Shriiiink will come..."

Nothing wrong with the fairy tale or myth, but it's by nature superficial and... effeminate.

Icarus

You need to rent Orlando with Tilda Swinton and Billy Zane. Then he'll be disturbed. But I think that you, however, would really enjoy it.

Sing

What's Orlando about?

Icarus

You say "about" as if you expect a movie based on a Virginia Woolf novel to make SENSE in a linear fashion.

Er. It's about a gender-changing immortal. And lots of costumes. And near-paralyzing prettiness.

Won Sandy Powell her first Oscar for costume design (she's racked up at least two more, I think, for Shakespeare in Love and The Aviator) and she deserved it. Wow.

You say "about" as if you expect a movie based on a Virginia Woolf novel to make SENSE in a linear fashion.

I noticed from comment below that this criticism of rape in fanfic hit a nerve, but regardless, please don't be rude. I asked for more information about a movie of which I'd only been given a title and didn't deserve this tone.

Icarus

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound rude at all. If I was being snarky, it was far more about Virginia Woolf (who I find nigh unreadable) than about your lack of knowledge of the movie.

It's one of my favorite movies ever, but I don't find it easy to say what it's "about," because it's a little short on plot. It's structured as a series of interludes. Most of which are about romance, but not entirely.

It's gorgeous. Please forgive the snark.

Ah. Yeah, I'm no fan of Virginia Woolf either. Sometimes I suspect that she became popular just because everyone was sick of linear trite stories. Without the backdrop of her time she's just another "Artiste."

Icarus

Very true. But it was still a very cool story. The most basicbasic gist of the storyline is that Queen Elizabeth tells this young lord, Orlando, that she will give him great wealth and lands if he never grows old. So he doesn't. And about half way through between then and now, he becomes a woman.

I like the film mostly because everything that happens can have several different moral lessons depending on who you are or how many times you've seen it. I figure out a different allusion every time I watch it.

And the cinematography is incredible, the costumes well made, the acting superb, and well, it is very pretty.

The mystery of Billy Zane's character is some of the best, I think. I've never read the book and I suppose I probably should do one day so I can get some hints as to what his character really is.

Eh, just go rent it. It's a classic.

Mrs Yoder :D

I read a book once about a teenage boy who was raped; I think that any slash writer who's considering writing m/m rape should have to read this book before they write it. The author did a really good job with a lot of factors that I would never have thought of but that seemed realistic; for example, the boy was sixteen, tall, and strong, so there's the unspoken thought that he should have been powerful enough to fight off the guys who tried to rape him. (They pulled up along the sidewalk to supposedly ask for directions, and when he came over to help them they threw him in the back of the car and tied him up.) He also starts questioning his sexual orientation and feels like no one could ever find him attractive again, and he doesn't know if he even wants them to.

I would have given up on the gratuitous violence movie too.

On an entirely different note, I'm going to re-proofread In A Time Of Uncertainty and send it to you for the Percy archive. :)

Do you recall the name of the book? Because the friend of mine who was raped as a kid went through a lot of the same issues, and he didn't have his first real relationship until he was in his early 30s.

I'm going to re-proofread In A Time Of Uncertainty and send it to you for the Percy archive. :)

Oh fantastic. You don't have to be too anal: it's currently the only Percy archive so I want it to be comprehensive so no one's digging out the fine-toothed comb. However, the fic that spelled every instance of the word "come" "cum" got a polite note to fix it.

Icarus

It's called Target, it's a young-adult book (I read YA queer-themed books or things that relate to gay topics because I think the more popular ones tend to influence the younger generation of slashers), and the Amazon link is here (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0761319328/qid=1130979977/sr=8-10/ref=pd_bbs_10/104-2951316-1808711?v=glance&s=books&n=507846). It has some definite flaws, but it gets a person thinking.

"Cum" is one of my pet peeves.

Oh thank you!

I agree with you 100% about the slash rape. Then again, I don't do hurt/comfort. *shrugs* But it is a common occurance in the fandom and dare I say turning into a cliche? Maybe it's the only way the author can make sense of making a particular character gay; most men would also feel that a man who had been raped by another man has homosexual tendencies, although that is definitely not true (the opposite, really). I would much prefer that the characters are gay not because of something that happened to them in the past, maybe not that they're really gay except highly attracted to a particular man. I hope that makes sense.

:)

I find most writers who have rape as a theme (rather than a kink which is a different motive) add that to create tragedy and drama. The characters are generally already gay or bi, so they're not attempting to explain homosexuality.

Actually, it could be just cheap made-for-tv melodramatics, on the level of yelling "fire!" to create artificial excitement in your fic because you haven't developed your villains enough to make them genuinely scary.

Icarus

Gosford Park and Hamlet are wonderful- perfect for rainy days and nights an dplenty of hot tea or chocolate.

See, I like action flicks,and i like to see things go 'BOOM', but sometimes I get more than a little tired of ethnic slurs and loving closeups of people being torn apart.

agreed with you on rape and fanfic.

I'm really looking forward to both. Tonight: Casablanca!

Icarus

You know, reading this rant-thing made me realize just how much good writing is lacking in most fics. I know that when I first started writing, and probably still now, my characters are affected by the other fics I've read, which influences my characters. In the end, only the rare few constantly write stories all their own. And more often than not, the writers are women who don't understand the male attitude. I feel like a lot of people just assume that 'gay guy' is the same as 'woman.'

I don't expect a lot of good writing in fanfic, come to think of it. Most of us are just learning how to write. I find the fanon links to be an interesting cultural phenomenon, one story builds on another. I've actually noticed traits picked up from some of my more popular stories, and then other aspects picked up from those stories and so on. Fanon snowballs.

And more often than not, the writers are women who don't understand the male attitude.

Exactly. It's the same problem that exists with feminizing men's attitudes about penetration, where women think only penetration equals sex and don't get it: gay men consider blow jobs to be sex. Frottage to be sex. All kinds of things are sex. (Let's not even mention the impossible positions.)

Women also project feminine attitudes onto the male rape victim, and worse yet, the rescuer. The male lover/rescuer invariably has the calm warmth and understanding you could expect from a professional women's health rape clinic.

The reality is, the reason guys freak out a little about gay sex because they immediately visualize "tab A into slot B." They don't think "warm loving relationship," they think "specific sex act." So when the idea of male rape comes up, they instantly visualize the "tab A into slot B" with themselves as the victim -- and they freak.

Once they've calmed down a bit they're able to make soothing noises, but this tendency to be visual about sex makes a guy a lot less able to help his friend or lover.

Icarus

Fanon snowballs.

That is so true. I see it happening a lot. I think that's how all these tiresome 'rape' backstories along with the others, come from this snowballing. It's hard to replace a character in your head with the one you read so often. Which is why Percy is so easy to write, because it's easier to write what we read in fandom than what we read in the books.

Hi sweetie!
It was great seeing you today, too bad our encounter was cut short. I hope we get to meet some time again soon and talk some more :) I miss your intelligence!
Also, I am sorry for making your head spin, and if I violated you in any way I am sorry for that too. Next time I will ask for your permission first :) But I was just so excited to see you!!! <3<3<3<3
Love. Vica.

Hi! No, it was hilarious and fun. (If dizzying ;) I was still cracking up several minutes later.

It was so great to see you! When are your classes again? My first class is at 11am. I was thinking of poking my head in at the Students Against War meeting at 2:30 tomorrow, if I don't have a presentation to attend for my Communications class.

I have a 11:00 am as well, and free after that, except for Wednesdays. Too bad I didn't make it to a meeting today. Where is ur 11:00 o'clock? I will come meet you.

Huh. I don't think I did that for Tragic Past. The parental violence I can even cite as canonical, given the Pensieve scene... and the Lucius/Severus chan, while it could have been PROSECUTED as rape, was presented more in the light of "I was a child, I was in love, it was wrong and you knew it" rather than any sense of violence.

And if you ask Severus, even now, he'll insist that although of course it was wrong of Malfoy to do it, he wanted it, dammit.

Because that makes him feel like it was at least slightly under his control.

I tried, you see.

*peers at you, puzzled* What story are you referring to?

Icarus

"Immortal Beloved," which lives at

vlvteenthestral. Severus lives in my head so clearly that I forget when I'm blathering about him that mostly people haven't read it. Severus's (nonsexually) abusive (step)father was largely offstage, and the Lucius/Severus chan bits were non-explicit, fading up and down just after and before naughty things happened.

So while I hit a lot of cliches in the story, at least I avoided the violent stranger rape, I guess.

Oh, don't use this to clobber your own writing.

I suspect the people who really need to hear it don't examine their plots enough to recognize their story here. Else they'd have come up with something deeper in the first place.

Icarus

I don't read Lucius/Snape so I haven't read your story. I don't know if this applies. I've written rape in a story as well, in Beg Me For It. So obviously I'm not against rape in fanfic but rather against those who use it almost... casually... for the sake of shock value in place of a real plot.

Haven't you noticed how often writers need a "tragic event" rely on a cardboard offside (or on-camera) rape? Instead of being shocked or sympathetic I find myself rolling my eyes.

Icarus

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