Don't forget it's fiction

There is nothing wrong with saying you disliked a particular character in a story, that you thought they were unsympathetic, or just plain nasty. That is not the same as a personal attack on an author-which would not be cool.
Someone mentioned the SIN board. I know exactly what you mean.That one got pretty vicious,especially the board containing supposedly r/l accounts. Someone would post a piece, then someone would say that what they wrote could not possibly have been true, that it was their fantasy. Then someone would defend the veracity of the author and then the debate and flame wars would begin. Sometimes the mods would delete the entire thread when things got out of hand.
I seriously wondered about many of those accounts myself, whether they were not in fact fiction. But that was no excuse for what ensued. Recall there was one in which the writer claimed to be a 19 year old girl paddled by her mother for underage drinking. That turned into a 3 ring circus between those who didnt believe it, those who did, those who believed it and took the side of the girl, and those who thought she got what she deserved. Pages and pages until it was finally deleted.
I have not seen such here and commend everyone for their civility.

Oh dear! Now Seegee has got me thinking about the differences between fiction and fantasy. So (moderator warning) we are possibly veering off into another thread.

My first reaction to Seegee's words was "there is no difference between fiction and fantasy", but perhaps it would be better to say that fantasy is a special case of fiction? Further, sexual fantasy, the kind of fantasy that we typically deal with here, is a special case of fantasy.

About 20 years ago, science fiction, one of my favorite reading genres, became largely preempted by a rising tide of fantasy. Suddenly "science fiction" was no longer based on speculative science, but somehow got contaminated by stories full of magic, wizards, flying dragons and other things not remotely in the realm of science. It still hurts! So perhaps there really is a difference between fantasy and fiction?

Sexual fantasy is a whole different critter! I don't know about you, but my sexual fantasies are so private that I seldom share them with my closest companion and my only (in this century) sexual companion, my wonderful wife. Yes, my sexual fantasies may find expression in my stories. What you get is a "washed, dried, & ironed" version of the real fantasy, but disguised as fiction.

Does any of this make sense?

Guy

I think it is still fiction even if it is your lifelong fantasy. Even if it happened to you or someone you know it will still contain elements of fiction unless you or they are blessed with a photographic memory. In my view you cannot go beyond fiction. It is like saying you can go beyond time.

Yep, that's exactly why this is the Library of Spanking Fiction, and the reason we don't have stories that are billed as 'real life'. It's asking for trouble.

What I was trying to say is that when we read the stories here we probably should keep in mind that they are someone's fantasy and fantasies are very subjective things. What appeals to one may be completely abhorrent to someone else.
Guy, I'm a fantophile when it comes to mainstream fiction, but I think there's a place for a melding of sci-fi and fantasy in that context. But that's way off topic.
This incident/s reminds of something I saw on a message board many years ago where they posted things that purported to be real life accounts of spankings. Some obviously were and others were obviously not. Someone made a comment on one of these that the behaviour was abhorrent and abusive and the person should be reported. I believe the author came on and cleared it up with 3 simple words: 'It is fiction.'

Some of us spanking story writers have been quite hurt by people calling us perverts and worse because we don't rigidly stick to an over-18s-only policy, and nor thankfully does this site. You then get ludicrous situations like school CP being applied only to girls in the Upper Sixth who've just passed their 18th birthday. As Flopsy says it's fiction, albeit based on factual situations known to us now or (more likely) in the past.

Bit rich when bookstores are filled with a whole genre of novels vying to outdo one another as to who had the most horrific childhood with real and unremittingly gruesome brutality, as opposed to afun story about having your arse whacked when the headmaster caught you in the pub at 16.

Well, if you're talking about the genre that I think you're talking about...

Spanking stories of the kind most of us library members like to read are very different in tone and attitude than mainstream fiction. In a junky drama novel about a character surviving some grimdark childhood, the beatings/abuse/whatever are treated as an obstacle that the hero needs to overcome. The injustice is clear, the lines are drawn, and we want to see the protagonist escape the situation and - hopefully - get justice. In a spanking story, its the spankings themselves that are the attraction; the text doesn't disapprove of whatever abuses or injustices the story contains, and the point of the story is not the character's perseverance. Often, spanking stories condone and romanticize things that would be horrific if they occurred in real life; the novels you speak of portray awful events, but they certainly don't romanticize them.

I think that using edgy mainstream fiction as a "defense" for kink writing is a bad idea. Spanking stories are written by fetishists, for fetishists, with titillation in mind. The writer knows its just a fantasy, the readers (hopefully) know its just a fantasy, and we make a conscious decision to curb our moral worldviews while indulging that side of ourselves.

Kink writing is not comparable to mainstream fiction, and I think using one to defend the other is a bad idea. The fact is, we are perverts, and its only our own recognition of that fact that keeps us aware of the difference between fantasy and reality.

Sorry I disagree with the above, just because I have an interest in something that maybe only 5% of the population likes, it does not make me or any one else a pervert. I think there is a big difference in one having an interest in things and acting on them with consenting adults or in a family situation or in fictional writing, compared to doing things that others would consider harmful to others not only physically but mentally and emotionally

Perversion is defined as "Psychological sense of "disorder of sexual behavior in which satisfaction is sought through channels other than those of normal heterosexual intercourse" is from 1892, originally including homosexuality." You will notice this is written in 1892 when women did not even show their ankles, or have the vote and were regarded as property.

My question on the definition above is what or how does one define "normal"? Normal to who, what culture or class of people, etc. No one on this site with an interest in spanking is a pervert in the perceived sense of the word, they may be kinky or different but the word pervert is a negative connotation and I take offense at the word used in that way.

Are we? If you accept that anything but sex, involving what used to be called the missionary position for the purposes of procreation, is a perversion I suppose we are. Personally, and I might be alone in this, I never think of myself as a pervert. Nor do I think of spanking as sexual deviancy.

Freud thought every human being was innately perverse but no one believes in Freud anymore. I would be careful about how you use the word. You certainly don't have to admit you are a pervert to know the difference between fantasy and reality.