Brain better.

[gement]

So it's not left hanging, my previous upset over my reading is mostly past now, thanks to hours and hours of processing time with a variety of people, very good advice from more than one friend, and a cathartic date with meowse Monday night.

I got 10 hours sleep last night and wanted more.

I still feel like ranting a bit, but a lot of that settled out when I actually posted a comment to the author's LJ. (Not bitching her out, just... saying this was my reaction, these were elements that bothered me in the not-good way, and suggesting she talk to the publishers a little more strenuously about packaging, as that was in large part what blind-sided me. But entirely framed as my reaction, not her responsibility or anything, and congratulating her on writing something that felt very emotionally true and affecting.)

I'll be reading the rest of the book on Friday to get it out of my system, and letting my reaction lie fallow until then.

So this is that "trigger" thing people are always talking about... It's really never happened to me before. That was very strange and upsetting, and the fact that it was so upsetting was one of the upsetting parts. I have not had to cope with that vehemence of reaction before, not on that time scale at that intensity.

Brains are funny ducks.

In other news, pics next post.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think triggering stuff and fiction seem to be going around lately. I also have rarely had this sort of experience and it galls me when I do have it, as I am not that sort of person I tell myself. Not fragile, not wanting the world to be safe, but really! Sometimes!

What's fascinating to me is that you came to that fic Kali and I are doing to get it out of your system, but we've been simultaneously having an email discussion with someone who feel the fics represent an abusive relationship.

Who knows what happens in the gaps between fictional truth, authorial translation and reader experience.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Ha! Jack the Thoughtless as abuser? Sorry, Ianto can take care of himself, and you've worked very hard to make that clear. But there's that reader experience step.

Officially the guy who I'm feeling abuse-sympathy for came to the situation as an adult and had every opportunity to get out. (Never mind the overwhelming social pressure and the fact that, different cultural expectations of age notwithstanding, when you take a person away from his family at 16 and tell him "here's your new life, it's so noble, suck it up and deal or get out of the pack," that's taking permanent advantage of youthful vulnerability.) But by the authors' lights, they had free consent. And, in the society they've written, that's probably about as much consent as could be had.

My writing will almost certainly trigger anyone who's been in bad 24/7. "OMG, he threw away his job and his entire life to go be a housepet and he can't even leave because of the voodoo in his head and you think this is SEXY? EEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW!" Which is why I had trouble writing it down in the first place. I see redeeming factors (most particularly that the top did not set out to manipulate or install voodoo, would set him loose if he could, and does his best not to take advantage), and I acknowledge that it's not my idea of full consent either, but in the end, it's hot for me, and it's been hot for some other people, and I'm allowed to be excited by things that aren't good in real life.

Wow. Digression.

Jack as incredibly clever emotional manipulator, maybe. But not in your story. He's stumbling over himself horribly, and not predicting Ianto well enough to manipulate effectively, even if he were trying. It's great.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Ha! Jack the Thoughtless as abuser? Sorry, Ianto can take care of himself, and you've worked very hard to make that clear. But there's that reader experience step.

Ah, see, there's the rub. She feels Ianto is being the abuser. I can see how one gets there after the first piece despite Ianto's distress. And I totally see how there are things taken out of context in the third one that could be used to support the assertion, but I don't think it's actually in the text, even if the text can be used to make the argument.

I believe she's planning to write a meta about this in the fic and some others, with quotes from our emails on the subject, so I might have more to direct you to soon. But it is a seriously strange experience, especially for all the time Kali and I have spent wanting to have both Jack and Ianto playing with both sides of the power dynamic and fucking it up but being able to move through that anyway.

Jack as incredibly clever emotional manipulator, maybe. But not in your story. He's stumbling over himself horribly, and not predicting Ianto well enough to manipulate effectively, even if he were trying. It's great.

And thank you. Kali and I don't write by divying up the characters, but Jack's definitely the character I think of as mine in this (I only really understand Ianto through a lens of desire; if my brain has ever worked like his, it's been a loooong time).

I'm allowed to be excited by things that aren't good in real life.

Yes. This. I mean. How can we even evaluate some of the things we read and write when there is no actual way to truly fathom the experience?

But truth in advertising is very much your friend. I'll be curious to see the response you get as regards the book.

I'm allowed to be excited by things that aren't good in real life.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

By all reports, life on a battlefield is not a good thing, but I definitely wish(or even need) to read about it.
I think this is somewhat analogous.
A good horror or ghost story is even more analogous.
Nothing every profound to add here.

Re: I'm allowed to be excited by things that aren't good in real life.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

*nothing very profound

[artdreams1.livejournal.com]

I hope you mind my reading this with the viewpoint of the way minds work.

One man's meat, and all that.

There's so much erotica out there, I tend to stick with short story so if it's badly written or just doesn't do anything for me (except maybe turn my stomach and/or bore me), I can move on without much effort.

I already told you of one of things that unexpectedly squicked me, American Werewolf in London, a movie I loved but gave me unexpected nightmares the first viewing. Two others, Play Misty For Me and, interestingly, a passage in the book (or the movie, didn't matter, graphic is as graphic does) Catch 22 where a war scene described a man turning his living comrade over and his insides stay where they are. Forgot about that until I read your write and that was at least 30 yrs ago.

On the other hand, your nana told me she liked Clan of the Cave Bear except for the "force situation," as she put it.

D was terrified by the Exorcist, I laughed my way through it.

Ducks are also funny ducks :-D

[artdreams1.livejournal.com]

opps.

Add a "don't" to first sentence, as in, hope you DON'T mind

ducks. Silly creatures, really

[gement.livejournal.com]

The idea of Nana reading Clan of the Cave Bear cracks me up. I need to call her again; she's just full of surprises.

I'm about to read Catch 22, so thanks for the heads-up.

Re: dept. of little surprises

[gement.livejournal.com]

Heheh. Yes, I was fairly surprised and flattered to be friended back, and then surprised and flattered again to actually be read and commented upon.

But we turn out to have some entertaining things in common, and I'm glad the election brought this very interesting human being onto my radar. (I've mostly gotten over the "eee, celebrity reading my journal" twitch. Celebrity is a strange commodity on LJ, and mostly seems to be based in really enjoying reading and commenting on LJ, so your chances of actual interaction go *up*, not down. Neat, huh?)

How to format LJ user-names

[gement.livejournal.com]

That's odd. The formatting should work the same in both places. Using angle brackets instead of square:

[lj user="elgordo42"] makes your name, either in an entry or a comment.

[lj-cut text="Here's the long version"] only works in an entry, because it's to snug things up or conceal optional information in the Friends or Journal quick-scanning view, so it wouldn't make sense in a comment.

For a long time I kept mixing up which one had the dash. I wish they'd thought to make them consistent, but hindsight and all that.

Re: How to format LJ user-names

[gramina.livejournal.com]

I believe the issue is that only two "words" can come before the "=" -- thus, "lj user=" is fine, but "lj cut text=" would be too many words; I expect which pair got hyphenated was random (they could have done "lj cut-text" or the one they did do, "lj-cut text").

I could be wrong, but it seems to be a pattern so far as I can tell.

Re: How to format LJ user-names

[gement.livejournal.com]

That's correct, only one word can bind to an =. But that word could have been "cut" since "text" is the only variable you can add to the cut is a text field. So the syntax could have been [lj cut="Blah"] and if no variable is provided [lj cut] use the default. Or something.

Alternately, [lj-user name="Blah"] would have made it consistent. But mostly I'm just rattling on.

[meowse.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, they couldn't have used "[lj cut]"; I'm pretty sure that to be properly formed XML, an attribute has to have a value. But, then, I wasn't aware that you could use "[lj-cut]" without a "text" attribute.

[meowse.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The first "word" is the "html tag"...like (using gement's syntax above) "[h1]" or "[br]" or even "[html]" itself. The second "word" is called an "attribute", and a single tag can have multiple attributs--even multiple attributes at the same time. For example, to make a link, you say "[a href='http://url.goes.here.com/']My Link[/a]", where "a" is the tag and "href" is one of the possible attributes of the tag. The most common example I can think of for a tag with muliple simultaneous attributes is the "img" tag, where you often see the "src" attribute for the source of the image combined with the "alt" attribute to provide alternate text for people using text-only browsers: "[img src='http://some.server.com/my/picture/of.someone.cute.jpg' alt='My picture of someone very, very cute']"

I suppose I can see the reasoning behind having separate "lj" and "lj-cut" tags, but...meh. I still would've done with "[lj-user name='gement']" rather than just having a plain "lj" tag. But one can argue it either way.