fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5409 ]

[ SECRET POST #5409 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5409 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 18 secrets from Secret Submission Post #774.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What problematic media do you like, but would never recommend to anyone because of all the disclaimers you'd have to slap on the rec?

For me, it's Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson and Alpha/Omega series. Briggs is way too fond of the "rape = character development" tack, she throws in anti-choice rhetoric in weirdest places, and while I'd hoped she was moving away from the creepy underage/grooming vibes surrounding some of the characters, she's doubled down hard in the last couple of books.

Still, I'm kind of hooked. Somehow, the series holds the same trashy, kind of messed up corner of my heart that used to belong to the Earth's Children books.

I love the sci-fi genre of space colonists versus angry alien natives. There were a lot of those novels and stories from the fifties and sixties, and I love them because that is what I was allowed to read as a kid. It is pure nostalgia, but the implications of that genre in the real world...

Also Arthur C Clarke's book Dolphin Island. Because that has not aged well. At all. I think the central story conceit holds up, because it is pretty simple; kid runs away, stows away, finds themselves on an island with lots of marine science types, learns to talk to dolphins and orcas. That bit is okay, but the way Clarke uses POC and especially WOC and just women in general, in the story, that is really super not good.

Oof, yeah. Clarke is A Product of His Time sometimes in just the worst ways. Good stories if you can ignore all that, but yeah.

The tragic thing is that in some ways, even socially, he was actually one of the more progressive figures of his time. When you consider some of the monsters that have written SFF in the past. But, time and understanding marches on I guess.

Re: Kind of based on #1, and maybe that Piers Anthony secret from yesterday...

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-28 02:18 (UTC) - Expand

Online and anonymously in a 'problematic media' thread I'll happily recommend anything and everything written by Supervert.

Googled that, and wound up confused. If you're reccing, where would you start?

https://supervert.com/

PDF for my personal favorite and arguably the one Supervert is probably best known for:
https://supervert.com/necrophilia-variations/necrophilia-variations-by-supervert.pdf

The majority of CLAMP's manga series.

Aside from xxxHolic and Tusbasa (haven't read Tsubasa in a long time so I'm not entirely sure), there's a lot on age gaps especially with teenagers which are yikes - also Chobits and Miyuki Chan in Wonderland are twists on porn tropes, but have not aged well and are probably the easiest pickings if you want to go hogwild on why CLAMP is problematic. But I still love the art, characters and the stories of their works. They got me through some hard times and are just a comfort I go back to from time to time.

CLAMP is vanilla unless the people you're thinking of reccing to are already fandom puriteens, and I wouldn't recommend anything at all to those people.

Not all of their works are vanilla, so CLAMP is still a good example.

some people have problems with age gaps, especially when that age gap involves a girl under 18 years old and an adult who's about 10 years older.

The Genocyber OVAs.

Oh, and the Digital Devil Story books and OVA from the 80's.

http://ddstranslation.blogspot.com/2006/08/introduction_16.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYI_YmxBfv4

(Also, uh, Dreamwidth's CAPTCHA anti-spam question just asked me this which is funny on account of the body horror in the mentioned franchise. "The number of body parts in the list dress, eye, duck, ear and ankle is?")

Junjo Romantica.
Even though I hate the main storyline and the Junjo Terorist stories - Junjo Egoist is the one that still makes me feel emotional when rereading it, especially the part after a time skip when they have a dramatic reunion.

Unfortunately there's still the fact that in the main story Romantica and the Terorist side story: there's using rape as a way into a romantic relationship (especially in the main) and jfc the age gaps (which even the characters in the side story are going wtf because its between a 16y old and 40y old).

There's also an age gap in Egoist, but its between a 19yold and the other in his mid-20s (and aged up even further after the time skip) and its consensual.

Couldn’t agree more with all of this! I genuinely love Egoist, but Romantica and Terrorist are the very essences of everything I hate about old yaoi/BL tropes as a whole. And I hate that those tropes haven’t completely gone away since then, but at least there’s plenty of new works that don’t have them.

The Darkover series was enormously important to me as a teenager and I still find them really enjoyable books set in a fascinatingly built world/universe, but I'm not gonna be out here hawking anything Marion Zimmer Bradley related for OBVIOUS reasons. I will be keeping my Darkover novels stashed away and reading them quietly, in private. (I loathe Mists Of Avalon deeply, so I wouldn't be reccing that one regardless lmao)

Omg yes. I sometimes want to rec the Darkover books and then I REMEMBER. D:

Lots of shonen and seinen manga in my case. Also many 70's and early 80's manga and anime.

For example, I adore the movie Akira to bits, but I'm not blind to the fact that it's deliberately politically motivated to a minor extent, and lots of the characters are violent, vile, and sexist. Also, the gore/body horror factor is nightmare inducing for some.

SA

Also, Death Note. Lots of supernaturally accursed teenagers running around manipulating, torturing, and killing wide swaths of people. Fun, but bloodthirsty.

DA
I genuinely believe everyone should watch Akira from a history and culture standpoint. It was and remains incredibly influential on multiple genres of fiction and is a contender for the most technically impressive animated film of all time.

I don't really understand "politically motivated" here. Like... being politically motivated isn't intrinsically problematic? Not sure if I'm missing something

Re: Kind of based on #1, and maybe that Piers Anthony secret from yesterday...

(Anonymous) - 2021-10-28 22:14 (UTC) - Expand

Ayn Rand books. I'm a massive leftie, but I still enjoy the shit out of them, despite their many flaws. In all fairness, the political right in Canada hasn't latched onto them nearly as much as the political right in the US has, so that's part of why I can still enjoy them. But all the same, I would definitely never recommend them to, like, anyone. For numerous reasons.

Someone above already mentioned the Darkover books by Marion Zimmer Bradley... and I want to add the books by Anne Perry. I did not know who she was when I kept finding her books in thriftstores and then enjoyed reading them.

I've never read her work, but I work in a library and we have whole shelves full of her work.

I actually found out when I was shelving true crime, saw her name on a back cover, and went "huh, I guess it makes sense that a mystery writer might also contribute to a true crime anthology... wait, what the fuck?"

Every time someone checks out a pile of her books, I wonder if they know, but unless they're a regular, I don't tell them, even though I want to. I ask new coworkers if they know every time we get her stuff in.

From what I understand, the other girl did much worse for herself and didn't have the best life afterwards, so I feel a bit sorry for her.

The Anne Perry one doesn't bother me. There was clearly a psychiatric element to her crime, she was very young at the time, and she did her time without incident and became a productive member of society thereafter. I don't see the problem there.

Unlike MZB who was a paedophilic monster her whole life.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only