Thoughts on dead dove content

[leejooheon]

I was talking about this with friends recently and it's been on my mind, so I would like to talk about it.

Small warning, in this post I will be discussing things like fictional incest, noncon, lolicon, etc. So if you find that upsetting, proceed with caution.

The other day I was talking with friends about if kinks and BDSM could be considered their own separate things. In short, the idea was that all BDSM is kink based, but having a kink does not mean BDSM necessarily. We discussed how some kinks aren't really associated with BDSM (vore, for example) but they are still largely considered to be kinks. It was a pretty interesting conversation, but I mostly want to focus on another branch of the topic. I ended up saying how, to me, a lot of the more controversial shipping/fanfiction tropes are basically kinks but explored through fiction.

So for example, consensual non consent is a result of the same type of fantasy that may prompt some noncon stories. Enjoying incest play and incest fanfiction is also not very different. After all, these are both forms of fake incest.

But what I find most interesting is the possible connection between lolicon/shotacon and age play.

I think when a lot of people hear about lolisho they have a very extreme disgust response. And while I can empathize with those sentiments, it really is no different than doing age play. When an age player roleplays a certain age, it's all fake and part of an aesthetic. In the same way, characters in lolisho works may have "ages" but these are entirely fictional. I think something people struggle to understand is the idea that fictional characters being fake by definition means their ages are also not real.

I doubt many of the people who engage with lolisho consciously think of it as age play, but in my opinion this is just a way to explore that type of fantasy through fiction, at least for some people (I also believe size kinks may be a part of it). It's just that instead of an adult playing a childish role, it's an anime girl. I think approaching the topic from this perspective might make it a little easier to stomach to some. Or not. Age play is also often mistaken for pedophilia by people who don't understand how pedophilia works.

But that's another thing I find pretty fascinating. BDSM at large has always been taboo, and despite it growing in popularity in recent years, it was never really supposed to be mainstream. A lot of people are never going to get it, and there's always been accusations of abuse thrown at the people who practice these kinks. And isn't it kind of interesting how that sort of parallels the way people into more taboo ships/fanfic are often treated in fan spaces? It's just something I think about. Am I saying dead dove fanfiction is the fandom equivalent of doing BDSM? No... but I kind of am, yeah.

Comments

[zeno]

I don't necessarily disagree with the core of the argument, but I do feel like you cannot make a 1:1 parallelism between fictional kinks explored through fanworks and IRL kinks explored in your real life, mostly because, I think, they satisfy two different appetites. That is to say, a kink that works IRL might not interest you in fiction and vice versa.

I think that CNC is the perfect example. For it to be consensual, IRL there has to be a lot of understanding and negotiating between the parties involved. And in fiction that can be repurposed in different ways: either through a scene where the kink is explored consensually between the characters, or through a scene where the rape is actually rape, so there is no mutual consent between the characters (and therefore the only thing that would make that a CNC scene is the reader's consent* in reading the fic). I think it's easy to see why not everyone who likes example A will also like example B and vice versa. They are, in fact, tropes that appeal to people for different reasons—one is more a more realistic representation of how one might explore the fantasy IRL, the other relies more on the fictional nature of the fantasy. And the second one does not necessarily have a direct connection to BDSM, because actually BDSM is not in the picture—only the fantasy is. In fact, a rape scene does not necessarily have to be sexually titillating, and at the same time the titillating aspect of it does not also necessarily take away the horrific/damning aspect. It's like, sometimes a rape scene is meant to titillate, sometimes it's meant to horrify, sometimes it's meant to be the two things at once, and that does not necessarily imply that there must be a sexual fantasy involved.

This is why I 100% agree that BDSM = kink but kink ≠ BDSM, but also a trope can be explored in so many different ways and not all of them fulfill the requirements to be kinks. (I think narrative kinks can explain that difference—the interest in something doesn't have to be sexual, but it can be deep and satisfying in a similar way.)

Also, curiously, there are some BDSM kinks that are so extremely common in fanfic and that people do not consider as such. I'm not even talking about choking or daddy kink (which I've been finding more and more in fics in the last few years), but specifically things like a certain fixation with virginity that is impossible not to read as a simil-fetish, and also a type of subtext that often conflates being penetrated with being punished/humiliated, which is also hard not to read as a kink. I think what makes these two interesting to me is how they often go untagged, like people don't even realise how they come off to readers. It's like, the kink is definitely there, but it is so "normal" (in the sense that it buys into social norms and expectations) that you cannot even see it if you don't actually look for it.

Also, if we get into the things that are considered kinky vs. the things that are considered somewhat normal, the discussion gets confusing real fast. Like, it's not uncommon to read fics with rough sex and face fucking and other acts that are definitely Not Vanilla. So it's curious to me to see where people draw the line, especially if you look at different genres. Anal sex in M/M fiction is to be expected, but in M/F fics it can be considered too hardcore, it might even be a deal-breaker. Queer relationships in and on themselves were once considered too much, to the point where many archives used to ask authors to jump on a higher rating if there was even a mention of characters being queer. So like, it's fun to think about all of this, but I also feel like it's very hard to make a generic statement to encompass how fans interact with kinky fics and what they take away from it.

(* I'm not a fan of using consent language when it comes to readers engaging with fiction, but that's a topic for another day.)

[leejooheon]

My point isn't to make a generic statement about it. I read a lot of this type of fanfiction and some of it is for kinky reasons, some of it is because I find it interesting, and other times it's because I find it really cathartic. So my point isn't "These are the exact same ALL the time" and more so that I think for a lot of people with those kinks, this is a safe way to explore it without participating in it directly.