More than one person have told me that the men in my stories often are quite unpleasant characters, rather cruel and generally not very nice. I so wonder why that is. To be honest, I don't think it is completely true, there are some that are quite nice but I agree that there are some quite horrible people there.
I have thought a lot about this and have no really good explanation. I have some ideas though. One thing that springs to mind is that I use the first person narrative quite often and when I don't, I still identify with the one being spanked. That is not always true but most often. This is about fantasies and it is about being on a strange journey, experience something that is unusual, out of the ordinary, something shocking but also exciting and arousing. That is the nature of my fantasies, the very reason for them to be there. And if I, as the one having the fantasy and writing a story with it in, if I side with the one being on this journey, I am selfish enough to think of me, how I feel, how shocked I am, how aroused I am and how much it hurts. I don't want to be concerned with the other. I relinquish control and I don't want to be responsible for the other, the one doing this to me. I think they may become quite anonymous and perhaps a little dark for that reason. They have a role to play, the role of being cruel and unkind, because that is what they are supposed to be. They are not real characters in real stories about believable people. They are actors in a fantasy.
Another explanation has to do, perhaps, with something I have very mixed feelings about. It is about love and relationships. We all know that a good relationship should include love, mutuality, equality and friendship. Not trying to be exhaustive here...smiles. Of course spankings can be combined with that as long as you love and care for each other. It is not that. It is more about something that happens in my head. When I think of really good relationships; fantasise about people falling in love, there is a certain sweetness and care and tenderness that I think of. In my head I do have a hard time combining that with smacking someone's bottom in order to cause pain.
This is just me. I know that most people have no problems with this and can see the sweetness in the spankings or just think of it as something fun. There are so many ways you can get this together and I am fine with that, rather impressed really. What I am saying is that when I fantasise I have a hard time combining the sweetness with the harshness of spankings. I have written stories where I try to do that but it is never simple.
So, I live in a relationship that is based on love and equality and a lot of good things. There is sweetness and care. Maybe it is why I go to the extreme in my fantasies, that I allow myself the cruelty and harshness of spankings, of wanting it to hurt. As a contrast to the sweetness that is in love.
My thought is that the spankers in my fantasies are a bit dark and cruel and unpleasant because they are doing that which is painful and mean, because that is how I want it in my fantasies. I go somewhere else for the sweetness. That is just one thought.
It doesn't explain, however, as someone pointed out, why the women are so much nicer, even if they are spanking, in my fantasies. So maybe this was just a lot of rubbish.
In my defence, I can only say, that if there is somewhere where it should be ok to be contradictory and weird, it should be in your very own fantasy land.
7 comments:
Janice, an author spreads out her wares on a table, as a chef makes a buffet.
The guests enter, some like everything, they are hungry for what the chef has to offer, or, maybe they are gourmand kidding themselves that they are gourmet.
Some only like spicy food, some only bland, others only sweet.
Others may come and see nothing that they fancy.
The chef produces what she is capable of producing, what her creative imaginings drives her to produce.
For those of us who do not have this gift to ask for explanations of how and why all the chef can say, is pinch of this, a smidgen of that and soupçon of salt and pepper.
Janice you explain very well, but your work stands on it's merits and you shouldn't have to.
Warm hugs,
Paul
Janice, I don't take issue with your male characters and I think that is because I feel the story from the place it is written, through her eyes. Often your female characters do not dislike or feel animosity towards the men in the situations they find themselves (place themselves?) so as a reader I too do not feel they are nasty or harsh. It seems to me they are as they are meant to be in that space of time.
I do, however, enjoy it when you do a story through the man's eyes and feel those conflicts of loving someone yet wanting to hurt them too. It will always be a fascinating conflict to me just as loving a man and wanting him to hurt me is a conflict.
We are complex creatures indeed.
Hugs
Mina
A thought-provoking post.
I have sensed that some -- no, not all -- of the dominant males in your stories despise, and even dislike, hate (or perhaps fear) the female, or should I say, the Female.
I sometimes refer to the magic mirror of d/s dyads: a complementary relationship, symbiosis. It can be difficult for me to see the predator as part of a dyad. In this sense, I think of your narrators as looking, not into a magic mirror, but into an abyss.
But that is the beauty of fantasy -- and especially yours. You are free to confront even the worst we men have to offer -- to examine it (almost) dispassionately -- like watching a viper though a screen.
Dear Paul, you describe this almost poetically and I like the image you paint. I think there is a place for rants like this, still, to mention my thoughts on reactions I get from you, my dear Readers.
Dear Mina, that is something of the things I wanted to say. That the men are seen through the eyes of the heroine and they play a part in the whole event. Unless, of course, as you say, they are the main character.
Dear Wystan, your thoughts always make me think and wonder. Thing is, I don't see the hate you describe. I see that they are there to do a job and the heroines tend to accept that. I don't know if you are right about the abyss but I would want you to be wrong. But as always, my intentions with writing something is not always what matters for the reader and that is part of the beauty of writing and reading.
Hugs
Janice
Janice, I think you get your male characters just about right. The stories wouldn’t work if they were anything other than ‘a bit dark and cruel and unpleasant’. And they’re never more cruel and unpleasant than they have to be to perform the tasks that you, the author, assign them, tasks which usually fulfil the wishes of the female characters (i.e. the relationships between your men and women are clearly symbiotic). As Wilhelmina says, the men ‘are as they are meant to be in that space of time’.
Like you, Janice, I don't see the hate that Wystan describes; nor can I see the abyss – but maybe that’s because I long ago tumbled into it.
But, most importantly, Paul is right: you don't have to justify anything because you write a fantasy blog, not a guide to social etiquette.
Michael
This is interesting, and I suppose I had subconciously picked up on it when I wrote the first follow up to "Waiting" from the viewpoint of the male character.
He was just doing his job, which in this instance was an abusive one.
As the writer you made him who he is, and as you say these fantasies are about the victim's feelings, not the oppressor's.
When one tries to write about what the oppressor is thinking it becomes more clichéed the more extreme the action becomes.
It is interesting that the majority of such writing is from the viewpoint of the victim.
Perhaps it is felt to be OK to be aroused by being abused, but not to be aroused by abusing.
Dear Michael, thanks for your words. I do think all interpretations are allowed. I am not arguing against a certain way of seeing it, just that those remarks made me think. I do hope I am not trying to justify my stories. That was not what I meant.
Dear Ollie, I think your question is a very interesting one and I wouldn't mind hearing from you Readers what you think about that. In my view, I think, you have put your finger on one possible solution. You are without guilt if you are the victim and that is easy, in a way, although you have to admit you enjoy being humiliated which is not that nice.
Hugs
Janice
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