can you deal with incest in fanfic?

[percival]

If you are a mature adult, yes, possibly. But if you are a child or a teenager? Will you know that it is not a good idea to have sexual relationships with your sibling? Or will repeated exposure to the idea and fantasising about the idea somehow start to make incest acceptable to you after a while?

Just a Buddhist thought:

In Buddhism, we try to be compassionate and loving in our hearts. That means that we neither dwell upon violence nor enjoy it. One of the key insights in Buddhist spirituality is that who you are and how you act is closely related to what you think. As a consequence, we need to work on our mind, our thinking. We need to make sure that our thoughts are compassionate, loving, free of clinging desire.

So, from a Buddhist perspective, actively seeking out incest fics because you get a thrill out of the dark, forbidden relationship is clearly wrong because you are indulging a desire to see people harm each other. You invite these fantasies into your mind and nourish them.

How would a Buddhist regard people who read incest fic? Well, non-judgmentally, with compassion and understanding. If they decide they need to pollute their minds, they will have a reason for doing it.

For the record, I myself continuosly pollute my mind with thoughts of anger, self hate, sarcasm, hate of others, petty jealousy. But seeing that I want to be a good Buddhist, I will need to work on that. Sigh. Revelling in anger can be such fun sometimes, just as revelling in fantasies of incest or rape can be fun for people who read those fics. But ultimately, it's nae good for you, says Uncle Gautama. And Uncle Gautama is usually not far off the mark, if you know what I mean.

Comments

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

Are you saying that the slash genre should never be approached critically?

[kitsune13.livejournal.com]

Huh? This is about incest fic, not slash. And what the hell? How are you getting "NEVER EVER SPEAK CRITICALLY OF A GENRE/TOPIC/WHATEVER" from "across-the-board generalizations and judgments about certain kinds of art, especially when those judgments are badly informed and smack of bowdlerism and wannabe moral-policing, are not conducive to the free exchange of art"? What do you mean by "critically"? Like, critically in a lit-crit sense? Because um, I'm writing my doctoral dissertation on fanfiction. Critically, in the sense of "OMG this is icky"? Well, you know, no accounting for taste: however, there's acknowledging that it's a matter of taste and living and letting live; and then there's confusing your personal taste for some kind of external immutable standard (of aesthetics, morality, etc.), and declaring those who do not share your taste to be "sad, sick individuals." Because no, I don't believe that art needs to hew to real-world standards of morality (not that it can't, but you know), because the very fact that it's art means that it isn't real life.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

How are
you getting "NEVER EVER SPEAK CRITICALLY OF A GENRE/TOPIC/WHATEVER"
from "across-the-board generalizations and judgments about certain
kinds of art, especially when those judgments are badly informed and
smack of bowdlerism and wannabe moral-policing, are not conducive to
the free exchange of art"?

I don't see what that has to do with her initial point. Nowhere did she
overgeneralise; nor did she actually say that all incest-fic was
problematic. She said specifically that

"from a Buddhist perspective, actively seeking out incest
fics because
you get a thrill out of the dark, forbidden relationship is clearly
wrong because you are indulging a desire to see people harm each other.
You invite these fantasies into your mind and nourish them."

This means, for example, that:

-  she recognises that there may be nothing wrong with such a
practise from a non-Buddhist perspective

- she is limiting her criticism to certain subsets of incest-fic
reader, notably excluding those who are working their way through
personal problems, or those who have other kinds of interest in the
genre. She has referred specifically to those who are indulging in a
desire to see other people getting hurt.



Can you clarify for me specifically what overgeneralisations,
badly-informed statements, moral-policing, etc, etc. are being made
here? I don't see them.

What do you mean by "critically"? Like,
critically in a lit-crit sense? Because um, I'm writing my doctoral
dissertation on fanfiction. Critically, in the sense of "OMG this is
icky"? Well, you know, no accounting for taste: however, there's
acknowledging
that it's a matter of taste and living and letting live; and then
there's confusing your personal taste for some kind of external
immutable standard (of aesthetics, morality, etc.), and declaring those
who do not share your taste to be "sad, sick individuals." Because no,
I don't believe that art needs to hew to real-world standards
of morality (not that it can't, but you know), because the very fact
that it's art means that it isn't real life.

Again, I  understand neither your vehemence nor the relation of
your words to the actual points made here on this journal by its
author. I have, for example, missed where she suggested that those who
did not share her taste were "sad, sick individuals".



I do feel that there has been an exhibition of reluctance by some to
recognise that there can be negative aspects to incestfic, and
negative/morally wrong ways in which incestfic can be used.



This is no different from pornography, for example, where an individual
can have a relationship to pornography that is healthy and exemplary in
the extreme, or one that is unhealthy and harmful- and therefore
arguably immoral. This seems to be pragmatically obvious, and yet in
the exchanges of attack and defense one can see errors by both sides,
as one camp refuses to acknowledge that there  can be any positive
aspects to pornography, and the other refuses to recognise that there
can be any negatives.



I am an avid gamer, and I also see similar dynamics at work in the
criticism and defense of sexually explicit or violent video games.



I am happy to discover that you are writing a doctoral dissertation on
fanfiction, as it means that you and I will certainly be able to lift
this discourse above the angry-insult level that seems so easily to
predominate when sensitive topics are discussed.