said_scarlett | On Cannibalism and People Mistaking Authorial Intent for Just Being IC

I've been having trouble sleeping again. My damn legs have been acting up like sons of bitches all week, and I don't know why.

Last night, I actually sat down and watched all of Soylent Green, from start to finish. I'd never actually seen the movie in its entirety before. I'd seen every part of it, just not altogether and in order.

One of the things I love about that movie is the fact that even now, it still sends a shiver down my spine. cannibalism is one of the few things in fiction that still bothers me, and unwitting cannibalism even moreso. I don't even know why, there's just something about it that never fails to disturb me. To the point where it is, I believe, the only thing I've ever flat out refused to write.

I've written guro, I've written snuff, I've written all manner of intensely wrong situations...but cannibalism I shy away from. The closest I've come, I believe, is 'Now, At The Hour of Our Deaths', but I don't know if that counts as cannibalism, since it was technically a zombie/demon sort of thing. Who just happened to look human. I'll write it in original fiction, because I push a lot more of my own boundaries in original fiction.

Anyway! Picked

nijawial up! We're now bemoaning the heat and humidity together, because it's crazily humid. Which is probably why my legs have been such a mess. And! Those boxes we ordered like three weeks ago finally showed up. O.o I'd given them up for gone!

And what I was fearing actually happened. I posted 'Don't Think Vice' on FF.net, since there was nothing graphic depicted in it, and someone PMed me to rip me a new one over having Jonas Venture use the term 'oriental'.

*headdesks*

I know it's not a PC term. Jonas? Not so much, no. This fic takes place in the 60s, these characters are canonically racist and sexist, and it'd be ridiculously OOC to have them using modern day PC terminology in dialogue. I tried to capture the way in which Jonas was presented in canon - as a golden god to the other characters, but not so great a guy to the audience. That includes his less than stellar attributes. I politely responded, explaining my reasoning, and pointing out the canon instances of the original Team Venture's racism - the two most glaring examples being the flashback in 'Now Museum, Now You Don't' with Jonas' 'disguise', and the comments Horace made regarding Kano's ethnicity in 'Past Tense'.

I am not the characters I write. Their words are not my words. When characters talk, they talk as themselves. Using their words. I don't see why people can't understand this.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Because it is totally the responsibility of the fic author to make everything squeaky clean, and no no no no! Racism never existed! If we ignore that it happened, it'll go away right?

>_>

Also, re: cannibalism. Its just morbid enough that I think its funny. XD As long as it doesn't happen to me.

Yeah, exactly. Because you know, in the 1960s, two middle aged men are totally going to be saying 'Asian American'. *headdesks* It kind of reminded me of when I was reading Jason Publick's blog, and he was mentioning that the CN execs took him to task over what they considered to be unacceptable material shown in VB: having a 'good guy' smoke. WTH, people?

Hahaha, I don't know, it's one of those things that always kind of gets under my skin. In serious situations, anyway. :D

Totally are. They'll show that very modern sensitivity! And, AWESOME. 9_9 I don't smoke, but smoking does not make you ebil. Way to go CN.

XD Yeah, if something's morbid or just out there enough I tend to find it amusing. But hey, we all have our squicks.

OH YEAH, DEFINITELY! TOTEMS OF MODERN VIRTUE, THE ORIGINAL TEAM VENTURE WAS! Hahaha, yeah. They were like 'make Brock stop smoking' and since then, there hasn't been a single episode where Brock doesn't smoke. :D

Yeah, and I have very, very few squicks (AS YOU WELL KNOW!) but that's like...the only one.

YES. No can doubt their saintly souls~ Nice. Oh, that's just great. XD

Fey, the unsquicked... except for that one time. XD

Not at all! *snerks* yeah, their reasoning was...um, bullshit. Good guys can't smoke because they're role models, blah blah blah. Despite the fact that we've seen Brock like... rip a man's head off with his bare hands and urinate on the corpse, it's the smoking that's bad! (Regardless of the fact that: violent walking VD trap =/= role model anyway....)

INDEED!

XD I know I want to be a promiscuous killing machine when I grow up, yes I do. And you know what led me to that? SMOKING!

Oh sure! I mean, every time I take a drag off one of those sweet cancer sticks, I just want to beat up alligator men and screw a stripper!

Cannibalism is one of the few things that still bothers me in fiction too. (And the last fic I finished had necrophilia...) It even bothers me with zombies. Somehow I'm glad I'm not alone.

I hope the person responds to your comments. I'm not familiar with the fandom but your reasoning sounds very sound to me.

I don't know what it is about cannibalism that gets me, but it always has. Zombies it really depends on how it's handled - usually it doesn't bother me any, but that one scene in Shawn of the Dead did.

I have no idea if they will or not. The series basically spoofs/plays homage to all those popular adventure/mystery cartoons of the 60s and 70s, and Golden Age comics - Jonny Quest, most predominantly, and Marvel. Which were rife with 'good natured' racism and sexism, and so that's touched on in the series. And never presented in a good light, which I tried to keep in my fic when writing the characters. They're racist and sexist. I'm not going to write them OOCly to 'clean up their language'.

About cannibalism, I think it's disturbing because it reduces human beings down to the level of food. We don't like that association, because because of the ideas of us having souls and being above the mindless killing that animals engage in.

I heard about this somewhere on TV. It's the ultimate de-humanization. It shows that they have no regard for you as a person and all the morals we've built up in society are for nothing.

We consider ourselves above the food because of our intelligence and morals. But when something eats us, it reminds us that we're still just animals that can be killed and eaten. And when we're forced to do it, if it's necessary to survive, it makes us feel guilty because we're basically discarding everything that has been ingrained into us in order to treat other human beings as food.

I think playing Heat has totally turned me off to how terrible cannibalism is. Whoops. 8(

The weird thing is...because it bothers me, I love it.

If you write a fic OOC, you get flamed. If you write a fic IC, you get flamed D: There's just no winning.

Yeah, pretty much.

They wrote back, too, basically saying I'm promoting racism and as an author I have a duty to be sensitive to readers and 'just because it's "canon", it doesn't make it okay'. Um...what now?

DID SHE MISS THE 'OFFENSIVE DIALOGUE, ETC ETC' WARNING?!?!?

XD I don't think people read carefully anymore. I would say not read at all, but... that kind of defeats the purpose of fanficion. XP And I'd make myself look stupid.

I really, really wish people would get the fact that writers =/= the characters. D: Like you said earlier. ARGH

Neither do I. I'm just...really boggled. I mean, this is a canon that's riddled with offensive content. Of course it's going to carry over to the fics, if people are writing true to the source material!

Here. A quote for your situation, if you ever need it:

"There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is 'idiot.'"
-S.M. Stirling

On Cannibalism and People Mistaking Authorial Intent for Just Being IC

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