Switching With Darkfic: To Unto Others As You Would Not Have Done Unto You

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

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Thank you everyone for another successful Broadstairs Bacchanalia! The con was small but perfectly formed with great talks, writing exercises, and much fun and merriment all around. Please can I invite everyone to share their talks, links, notes, pics, fics etc that were produced and discussed. Posting is open to comm members!

I shall start. Slides and some short comments on the 'Switching With Darkfic: To Unto Others As You Would Not Have Done Unto You?' can be found under the cut.



The title of the talk is a reference to my personal experience with darkfic which somewhat disturbingly interestingly parallels my d/s preferences. I'll happily do all sorts of things to others but am veeeeeeeery picky about what I want done to me. That is: I am willing to, and even enjoy, writing many thinks that I really don't enjoy reading and am very unlikely to seek out.



We discussed what people thought of as darkfic with some interesting comments...



Here is what Fanlore Entry says



Explaining why I am a big wimp and do not like taking what I can dish out :D



We finished by discussing what we were happy reading...




... and writing.



Some general comments

• YMMV - some people really like darkfic for various reasons e.g. indulging in rape fantasies, enjoying the thrill of being scared by a horror story, or getting vicarious revenge by seeing a character they hate suffer


• Writing darkfic can be therapeutic, in an 'exorcising one's demons' sense


• Darkfic lines are blurry: If a story has really dark scenes, plot twists and themes, but essentially a positive/hopeful thread/ending is it still darkfic? A story can do dark things but with an underlying disapproval of them... or it can gleefully masticate in the horror of it all. What if it humanises 'evil' characters (serial killers have feelings too!)? And so on...

Thoughts, questions, links, darkfic recs? All welcome!

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