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Like yeah I’ll write my little guy being skinned alive in agonizing detail but NONCON NUDITY???? YOU’RE A REAL SICK FUCK THAT’S TAKING IT TOO FAR. THE PANTS STAY ON FOR THE SKINNING!!!

It’s interesting to see where that line is for people. I can absolutely sympathize with feeling like sexual violence is more deeply violating in a way that’s difficult to explain. If you’re uncomfortable with reading it, that’s absolutely valid!

What’s odd to me though is how people will be fully on board in understanding that writing violence doesn’t mean you would support those actions in real life, but as soon as sex is introduced, then you’re a bad person for writing it and surely must support it in real life. There are whump writers here who go out of their way to shun noncon whump writers and protest noncon whump with everything they do, that’s how much they hate it.

A lot of those same people like all the chapters of my noncon whump as they read it. They keep their likes private so no one notices, and often unlike it once they are done reading. People who are very publicly against noncon whump without anyone’s prompting, even people who base their entire presence in the whump community as morally objectionable to any noncon whump. Why do they do this to themselves?

Where is the line of acceptability? Why does that line symbolize a crossover into pure moral objectivity? What explanations and defenses for enjoying whump exist that can’t be applied in the exact same way to noncon whump? Why is this fiction okay, but this other fiction isn’t?

I think back on a bit from The Body of Christopher Creed where the main character puzzles over the depictions of Jesus being crucified. Here is a horrific image, of a body left on display after being tortured to death in a way that many criminals were. Normalized in art, in jewelry, in stained glass, in statues too numerous to begin counting. It’s deemed appropriate to see this violence on display in public all around the world where Christianity has invaded.

Typically, you can see the wounds in his hands and his feet. And the stab wound under his breast. And the crown of thorns on his head. Sometimes, depending on the detail, the lines in his back from where he was whipped. But you know what? Jesus, as well as all the other criminals subjected to crucifixion, was crucified naked. Yet the depictions of him, time and time again, show his genitals covered - by loincloth, leaves, or smoothed over like a Ken doll.

Why is violence more acceptable to depict than nudity? Normal, nonsexual nudity. Everyone has some form of genitalia. Not everyone has a mortal wound. Violence is more appropriate to be displayed in public and in church, than natural human anatomy. Why is that? I know it seems a long extrapolation from being against noncon whump, but the concept I’m pressing on here is how depictions of grievous violence can be considered appropriate while nudity and sex are deemed inappropriate.

There’s a funny line that humans draw there. Is there a real moral reasoning behind it? Or is it based on feelings? Where do people in the whump community stand on the political censorship of sexual content, consensual or not, as a wave of online censorship comes down the pipeline in so many countries? Should whump be censored? Should noncon whump be censored? How can someone justify censorship of noncon whump, but not other violent whump?

But I also feel like the issue with noncon whump specifically isn't always just about what’s being written, but how it’s presented- like yeah I like noncon scenes too, sometimes as a dark literary exercise or to explore control/power dynamics in fiction – but I’m also really aware that a lot of media (especially dark romance or young adult stuff) has a really disturbing trend of romanticising or even normalising abuse, especially noncon. and that can get messy, especially when it’s not tagged clearly or when it’s portrayed as like “he hurt her because he loves her” which… yeah - not great.

And if someone’s got a big following or a lot of influence, I think there’s a bit of responsibility that comes with that? like even if you’re writing dark stuff, you can still be mindful of the framing. -Because no matter how much we might read noncon whump with a full understanding that it’s fiction and not real, there might be younger people reading it too – people who haven’t developed that critical lens yet. -like I wouldn’t want my younger cousins or my juniors in college reading something I wrote and thinking “oh, this is normal” just because I didn’t frame it clearly or tag it properly. no one’s doing that on purpose obviously, but it happens unconsciously a lot more than people realise.

Also I think another part of it is just the reality of how many people in the world go through sexual assault or harassment daily. like if you look at the stats (you can literally pick any country and the numbers are horrific), sexual violence is everywhere. most of us probably know someone who’s gone through it. and for a lot of people, fiction is a safe space – something they use to escape the stuff they’re dealing with in real life. so when they come across noncon stuff (even when it's tagged), it can feel like a punch to the gut because it's not just “fiction” for them – it's way too real.

Like for me personally, I find it really hard to write female whumpees in general (not just in the case of noncon) because I come from a cultural background where abuse against women is so normalised that it stops feeling like fiction. like I know too many women – aunties, classmates, domestic workers – who’ve been through some version of what I’d be writing. so when I do write whump, I end up writing mostly male characters because that extra distance helps me separate reality from fiction. writing a female whumpee feels like I’m writing someone's lived experience and that just hits way too close to home.

So like – skinning someone alive? as gruesome as that is, most of us don’t know anyone who’s actually experienced that. but sexual assault? most of us do know someone. or we are that someone. and I think that changes how we interact with certain types of fiction.

That said, I’m not really a fan of censorship either. I think people should be allowed to write what they want – but with appropriate trigger warnings, clear tagging, and an awareness of context. like it doesn’t mean you can’t explore dark stuff, but just be mindful of the impact. people can choose what they want to read – but only if they know what they’re walking into.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.