Fiona wrote:

No stats on it either, myself, but I'm also pretty sure that my uncle, a retired Church of England clergyman who is both as strictly moral and as compassionate and gentle as they come (and who preached strict morality from the pulpit for thirty-odd years), would be more than horrified to learn that he is about to start wielding a butcher knife on the neighbours :).

Don't know the gentleman, but I think he would be equally shocked, or at least frankly amused, to learn that someone is making so much fuss about a broken leg in a SF story, when there's so much real suffering in the world around us.

My elder son pulls off arms and legs from a baby-doll and I know he does this because he is jealous of his baby brother. What good would it do if I reprimanded him or forbade him to molest the doll? I'd only cure a symptom. Instead I try to devote more time to him, to show him that I love him as much as I love his brother, etc. If he stops being nasty to the doll, I'll know I've changed something. I think the same rule applies to fiction. There is pain in our stories because there is pain in us. If you ardently try and prove to people that it is immoral and outrageous to write such stories, the pain will have to come out some other way. Some other ways may be destructive.

To transpose your emotion into a work of art, OTOH, may be constructive and healing. The emotion in a work of art differs from the emotion in real life. It is more complex, it comprises many elements, it transcends the author's personal motivation, and if a work of art is successful, the emotion will also reflect on wider issues - society, culture, human nature. Shakespeare wrote Hamlet when his father died, and we still read it today for reasons which have nothing to do with the personal pain of loss which initiated it. The paintings of Frida Callo (I'm not sure about spelling) show intense suffering, and it's small wonder they do, knowing she spent a great deal of her life in a cast. I find them extremely disturbing and I wouldn't hang them on the wall, but there's no doubt that they're real art.

If, OTOH, a story doesn't succeed in transcending this initial, irrational urge to inflict mental of physical pain, it will simply be a badly-written, unsuccessful story. In any case, to make a moral issue out of this is IMO ridiculous. It reminds me of the priests in 'The Name of the Rose', who were so pious that they even refrained from laughing, but maybe you recall the things they did 'backstage'.

Finally, I'd also like to point out that some of the loudest defences of this sort of fanfic have come from America, which, I'm sorry to say it but it has to be said, has one of the worst records in the world for attempting to impose its worldview, moral standards and values on weaker nations.

I'm not trying to defend h/c genre in particular - actually, I disliked many of the h/c B7 stories I read, because they were boring and badly written. The 'Vila-speech' I cited on the Lyst some time ago as an example of bad writing was from a h/c story. But I will defend a good work of art, even if it's wading in blood. I'm not making great distinctions between professional writing and fanfic, because the branch of literary criticism I'm practising is primarily concerned with the underlying mythical patterns of a story, with the world-view the author displays and the way in which he/she responds to the dominant culture. If the response is pain, it might tell us something about the culture.

Actually, it is a notion which was cherished in communist countries, that new art should only reflect happiness and enthusiasm, because there's no reason anyone should feel unhappy in the brave new world. Recently a literary critic in my country recalled how thrilled he was when, as a young man, he first discovered Dostoyevski, "because I realized it was OK to feel depressed."

I agree, it is as ridiculous to accuse you of promoting communist agenda as it is ridiculous to accuse me of promoting coca-colonialism. I didn't even know h/c was an American genre.

N.