The Snowflake Challenge; Day 14

[scripsi]

Day 14

In your own space, share your love for something fannish: a trope, cliché, kink, motif, theme, format, or fandom.

Well, I guess anyone who has read more than a few of my fanfics can spot that a lot of what I have written lean towards fic with darker themes. And over the years I have been called “sick” and “twisted” and someone who must be an awful person or hate other women. It doesn’t hurt me, because I know I’m a fairly nice person. I have a good life with a great family, loyal friends, a loving partner and a child who is harmonic and happy. I doubt I would have all this if I had been this horrible person some people think I am. But I get a little frustrated, because I find it frustrating with people who can’t look beyond what they feel are the best and think they have the right to be judgemental towards those who doesn’t do it the same way.

So why then, do I feel the need to write darkfic?

Because it cathartic. Shakespeare wouldn’t have written his tragedies if people hadn’t enjoyed them. A sad ending can give you a good cry, and a good cry relieved the body of built up stress. But a sad ending in a story doesn’t impact your life in the same way as when something sad happens in your life. In a story you can get the good cry and then leave it behind.

Because it’s healing. I have been raped and I have been in a psychologically abusing relationship. I dealt (badly) with this for many years with pushing all those memories away. When I started to write fanfic it all started to pour out of me and I’m convinced I would never have been able to deal and leave those things behind me without writing. I write about rape because it’s a way to turn around what it did to me and do something creative instead. I have the power over what I write, not anyone else. And I’m afraid of a certain type of men, those who use and abuse the people around them with manipulations and mind games. So I write about such people in an effort to understand them. Not so I can excuse them, but because it gives me room to explore ways to not be used again.

Of course I understand that this is not true for everyone and that many people don’t want to read such things. That’s why I’m a bit paranoid about warnings because I really don’t want to give someone a triggering experience. But for me writing, and reading, darkfic has been a great help.

Comments

[the_rck]

I write dark stuff, too, sometimes. Nobody's given me a hard time about it, though (probably mostly because my posted dark stuff is all in a now obscure anime fandom that always had a fairly dark fandom). For me, a big part of it is that I spend most of my time wrestling with anxiety, very diffuse anxiety. Writing dark stuff lets me come up with things that actually justify that anxiety.

I also... There are a lot of times when people really are stuck in situations with no good way forward. I want to see what characters do when everything goes to hell. I'm interested in seeing how they cope in terms of getting through it, even at points when it doesn't seem likely to end, and surviving to the point that recovery, afterward, seems possible.

[scripsi]

I'm glad you never had any bad times over it! Looking over all the time I have written fanfics, I have had very litle of it, really, but some of them were really nasty.

There are a lot of times when people really are stuck in situations with no good way forward. I want to see what characters do when everything goes to hell. I'm interested in seeing how they cope in terms of getting through it, even at points when it doesn't seem likely to end, and surviving to the point that recovery, afterward, seems possible.

Yes, I agree! :)I spend a lot of time thinking of how characters would behave in the situations I put them in.