that slumping sound is me, falling off my chair ~

[lookingland]

miss snark is my hero this morning ~ ! there are likewise certain things on my list that i refuse to read. what are you some of yours?

~ * ~

i wrote 0 NaNo words yesterday.

i've written 698 today (and feel like i've lost interest for now). maybe tomorrow. i have got to write Eleison as well. can i count that toward my NaNo? hahahahahaha ~

i want to take the day off, but have too much to do. thursdays are the longest.

zooks ~ it's only 9:15 a.m.

: o p

Comments

Wow, that was great

[christastrophe.livejournal.com]

I like this Miss Snark. Rock ass. And I agree with the sentiment, but on a completely different level. The things that she listed are just so easy. Aside from whatever offense you may take from it, the drama of a pedophile priest is just already sitting there. It's lazy, in addition to being unfair.

I don't do Nazis. That's my big one. When I see a swastika on stage or in a movie I'm completely gone. Just so easy and lazy. Every once in a while there's a gem (I give passes for Slaughterhouse Five and Life is Beautiful and, ok, Indiana Jones), but 9 times out of 10 I look at it as an blatantly sensationalistic shortcut to "drama" (see: American History X).

Re: Wow, that was great

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

yeah, no one does Nazi's like Indy!

: D

but i agree ~ i like that she stands on her own personal reasons (without apology!), and also that there are certain topics that are just lame and fascile (from my pov).

i once begged someone not to write something about hurricane katrina. i think i even offended them. but even from the distance of being next door, the last thing i wanted to suffer through was "art" about the horror from someone nowhere near the devastation.

that's a serious bias of mine. i just don't tolerate that sort of thing well at all.

: o p

[bachsoprano.livejournal.com]

Torturing animals.

I had a story go through Shimmer a couple months ago that was so horrific (and especially so because it was really well written) that it gave me nightmares.

I have a big list of things that I think people shouldn't write about (most of them involving elves and androids and arising directly from my experience with the slush pile) and I definitely question whether authors should write stories that capitalize directly on the pain of others when there's so many other things to write about. Besides, I'm not sure that fiction can even come close to the horrors of reality in regards to things like Hurricane Katrina and documentaries often serve such things much better.

Miss Snark rocks.

(PS You didn't say what you won't read.....*nudge nudge*)

Re: Wow, that was great

[jamiekswriter.livejournal.com]

Yeah with me it's 9-11. I think it's because I remember how frightened I was for almost a year after and how horrified and angry it made me. I didn't want to see Oliver Stone's movie nor the one about the heros that crashed their own plane in PA. It completely doesn't interest me. I never want to relive those emotions again, even in a movie. Someone once said, would they have made Oliver Stone's Kennedy movie five years after Kennedy's death? I don't think so, but then again we're a much more media involved society now.

Re: Wow, that was great

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

i totally understand ~ people nagged me forever to see certain movies, but sometimes i just refuse to. if it's not for me it's not for me.

there are very few movies i will turn off and not finish (i think i can name them on one hand), but one showed gratuitous animal abuse (and it wasn't "fake"), and the other had very explicit child rape.

thank you, no on both counts.

not ever.

no story hinges on a gratuitous scene of a little girl being raped by her stepfather that leaves nothing to our imaginations. i have a pretty strong stomach, but a closed door and a scene cut is plenty sufficient for me to get the point.

: o p

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

i once initially rejected a poem in which picking blackberries was a metaphor for child sexual abuse. i told my assistant editor that we couldn't publish it because it was so horrifying. i was so completely icked out by the subtly of it that it put me in a right fine rage.

he looked me in the eye and said, so it's a really good poem, then huh?

i published the poem.

moral of the story: sometimes we need beautiful tortured things to get our juice up ~ if the whole point is just to provoke for the sake of provoking, then i will question it and reject it. but i'm willing to see if there's more to a thing than just the surface gratuity. The End of Alice, for example, is a book that, for me, has no redemptive value. i think it's trash trash trash. i feel the same way about Bastard out of Carolina.

those books obviously work for someone (lots of someones ~ i think they are both best sellers). frankly, i'd rather read Cormac McCarthy writing about having sex with goats than ever pick up either of those books again. Or pretty much anything written by Nicholas Baker.

i think people can write about whatever they want.

as a reader, however, i really don't want to read gratuitous sexual violence against children. God knows I write enough about horrid things like that (i drown three children in Figfield alone, and it's heavily alluded, though never explicitly stated, that the protagonist has been sexually abused as a child). i think authors can do this sort of thing tactfully and with sensitivity within a framework of a story that's not just one torturous encounter to another.

gads, i'm blithering completely ~ but i'm gonna post anyway ~ not sure i haven't just contradicted myself 100 ways.

hahahahaha ~

: o p

[bachsoprano.livejournal.com]

Not blithering! I just realized that I was expressing myself poorly, and had to stop and think about what I really meant, which is probably what I should have done prior to posting :D

Like you said, people can write whatever they'd like. What I choose to read is another matter, and that's what I really meant but didn't really say. Bad me! :)

I also think sensitivity is the key, and I find that all too often that writers draw on real life tragedies in the hope of capitalizing on the emotion that often accompanies those tragedies rather than relying on the strength of their own writing to elicit the same response - sort of a vicarious thing, I guess. Not that both can't happen at the same time, but I guess what I mean (and I'm probably expressing this horribly again) is that in less skilled or less sensitive hands, a tragedy becomes nothing more than a device to shock. Which I suppose is the same thing as gratituous. Heh.

And, being a purveyor of dark, nasty things myself, I should be a little more careful where I fling darts...

As an aside, there's a little poem by Goethe that Schubert set called "Heidenroslein" which has a subtle overtone of child abuse, if one cares to look, and the irony is that it also happens to be the song that singing teachers assign little girls as their first assignment in the German repertoire. Creepy....

[geckobird.livejournal.com]

Hey, that was impressive! I like Miss Snark.

Abuse in general tends to bother me, but it is sexual abuse that can turn me off from a story ~ especially if it's vividly portrayed. Is that really necessary? It's painful enough as it is ~ it'd be too much to experience that with the character.

And honestly. Pedophile priests. They are so yesterday. I also have a major issue with such books ~ why do the priests have to be sexually messed up? Why can't a book have a priest who tries hard to live Christ's love? Honestly, they do exist. It's shocking isn't it?

Okay, well, sarcasm kinda took over there. But really, such topics frustrate me to death. I can understand someone writing about it, if they've gone through it, for the therapeutic experience, but beyond that, no. As for reading any book with such topics, it'd be a no as well. I have a weak stomach, and books (movies, music) have a tendency to capture me and pull me inside the characters' heads. But some stories hold scenes that are just too painful to endure with the character. For my own peace of mind (and heart) those books I avoid.

I think that's what this comes down to ~ if a book upsets the peace in your mind and heart, then you'll have to spend time healing from that blow. Is it worth the read to endure that suffering? Especially if it could have been avoided? It's not like we don't know these terrible things happen; I'm sure you and I both are very much aware of it and very much against it. Those that say books can't damage one's heart has it wrong ~ for books can especially vivid and well-written ones. Words have a lot more power over us that some would like to believe.

No NaNo yesterday? Well, you're not the only one, Heh. I didn't write anything yesterday either. Maybe I'll surprise myself today. ^_^

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

yeeks about the repetoire ~ !

hahahahaha ~

yeah, i totally understand what you mean (and i'm glad i made some semblance of sense up there).

i think you nailed it with the idea that in the hands of less adroit writers, a tragedy can get sentimentalized, take on voyueristic qualities, or just come off as out-and-out capitalism. i'm going to try to assume no one does this sort of thing on purpose unless they are writing for tabloids.

but it does happen and it's always hard to stomach.

: o p

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

i've got mixed feelings about sexual subject matter, but the way it's handled will always determine whether i will continue to read.

I find I explore this area a lot because much of my own work touches on sensitive sexual issues (the nature of masculinity, post-traumatic stress after rape, religious chastity, etc.). and i want to be very very very careful not to play with stereotypes or hash old themes. i took a lot of flak for writing a gay priest character (he was immediately judged on all sorts of levels). i haven't had the confidence to return to that story yet because i feel i don't have a firm enough grasp on what it was i was trying to say with the character in the first place ~ and i figger i have no business tampering in that arena until i do.

ultimately i agree with you ~ if some piece of writing is just going to cause me a kind of suffering that has no redemptive core, then there's no point putting up with it.

now go write ~ !!!!

: D