I'm more than a little bit irritated with Lawrence Kinden for starting a thread attacking one of my comments (along with a comment from someone else) and not bothering to send me a message to make sure I knew about the thread so I could respond. Ideally, he should have contacted me to make sure he understood my intent correctly before he posted his attack. At the very least, he should have made sure I knew about the attack so I could respond in a timely manner and participate in the resulting discussion.
I also think it's unfair that he attacked small pieces of my comment without quoting the entire comment so readers could see the context of the pieces he was criticizing. By quoting some parts of my comment and leaving out others, he painted a badly distorted picture of what I wrote.
The background for the situation involves a story, "Little Maggie Baker," about an eleven-year-old boy giving a seven-year-old girl a play spanking on her bare bottom. There is an implication that the spanking games between the children are likely to continue. Some of the comments on the story seemed critical toward its subject matter. Those comments prompted me to post the following comment addressing the difference between fantasy and reality:
"I enjoyed the story. In real life, the events it depicts would be troubling because of the potential things that could go wrong somewhere along the line. But the troubling possibilities are related to indirect consequences that might or might not occur, not to harm that is an inevitable or almost inevitable consequence of the actions depicted. In real life, possibilities of adverse consequences are good reasons not to do things and to try to stop children from doing things. But in the realm of fantasy, we can choose to enjoy stories on a basis that presumes things will work out and not worry about things that might go wrong in a similar situation in real life."
Lawrence Kinden criticizes this comment in three ways. First, he criticizes my not giving examples when I raised the possibility of negative consequences if the events depicted in the story happened in real life. I view this criticism as ironic because stories involving play spankings between children, including Lawrence Kinden's own series "Child's Play," often depict the play spankings as something the children's parents do not or would not approve of . Against that backdrop, it seemed reasonable to me to view the idea that bare-bottom play spankings between children are potentially risky as common knowledge, and hence as something I did not need to provide examples to demonstrate.
Even if Lawrence Kinden had not thought about possible dangers previously, he is a good enough writer that it should not have been difficult for him to come up with his own scenarios where the events depicted in the story could lead to negative consequences sometime in the future. So why does he view my not providing examples as such a big deal?
There are also two distinct advantages I saw in not providing examples. First, any attempt to provide examples in a manner that would have done the issue justice would have made my post significantly longer and more complicated. Even without examples, my post was very definitely toward the long end of the spectrum for comments on stories. That made me reluctant to add further length and complexity. And second, the issue is far too complex for one or two examples to show more than a tiny piece of the picture. As a result, I figured that readers could understand the issue better thinking about it for themselves than if they would base their judgment on how they reacted to one or two particular examples I might have chosen.
Lawrence Kinden's second criticism is, "Furthermore, if something in the story were to "go wrong", so what? A story where things could go wrong is a story with tension, with conflict, and that's a sign of a good story." Using these words to criticize what I wrote is ridiculous because I made the point myself later in my comment that things that would raise concerns in the real world can be enjoyable in fiction. It looks to me as if he went off half-cocked, basing criticism on a preconceived idea of what he expected me to be thinking without taking the time to make sure he understood my actual point.
His third criticism greatly oversimplifies and misrepresents the last sentence of my comment..
"But in the realm of fantasy..." It's arrogant to tell an author that his/her story is all right because it isn't real. Do you think the author doesn't know his/her story is fiction? This too reads like the commenter is excusing themselves for having read and enjoyed a story that made them uncomfortable to enjoy. Even if it's not self-excusing, it's nonsensical. That's like telling Stephen King that it's all right for him to have written about an abused girl murdering her classmates because it was in the realm of fantasy. He knows already. We all know.
This criticism fails on two grounds. First,my post was reacting to other comments, not addressing the writer of the story directly. When some people post comments that appear critical of an aspect of a story, there is nothing arrogant or unreasonable about someone else responding to explain why he holds a different view.
And second, I never said that the reason why the story is alright is that it isn't real. There are stories that are not real that I would definitely not regard as alright. For example, if someone wrote a fictional story about how much a man enjoyed brutally raping an eight-year-old girl and the story was written in a way that encouraged readers to share the protagonist's enjoyment, I definitely would not regard it as alright. Some kinds of behavior are so evil that they simply do not belong in any kind of fantasy except perhaps as evils to be fought against.
The example of Steven King stories is a bad one because even though the stories depict horrors, they recognize that the horrors are horrors. That is a fundamentally different kind of thing from stories encouraging a positive view toward evil behavior.
The reason why I do not hold a negative view toward stories like "Little Maggie Baker" is that the concerns that would arise in real life involve things that could potentially happen, not things that would inevitably or almost inevitably happen. If people could engage in the behavior knowing in advance that the negative consequences that could theoretically happen will not happen, there would not be any reason to disapprove of the behavior. Since authors can guarantee whatever outcomes they want, they can frame fantasies in a way that presumes that negative outcomes will not happen, thereby negating the concerns that would arise if people engaged in similar behavior in real life. That makes it possible to enjoy things in fantasy that would be unacceptably risky in real life.
In many cases, whether or not stories are troubling depends on how readers approach them. If readers trust that the author will make sure things work out, they can read stories involving things they would not approve of in real life without being troubled by them. If other readers look at the stories from a real-world perspective without a presumption that the authors will use their magical power to protect the characters from adverse consequences, they can find the stories troubling.
"Little Maggie Baker" is such a story. I can see why readers could be troubled by it if they look at it from a real-world perspective. But because the concerns are based on possibilities rather than on certainties or near-certainties, it is not difficult to set them aside if readers presume that the author's intent is that things will work out.
That's why I wrote my comment the way I did. I acknowledged that the story raises concerns that would be legitimate in real life, but then went on to point out how people can enjoy stories based on a presumption that things will work out without worrying about real-world concerns. Maybe I didn't word the comment as well as I could have, but I don't think there was anything unreasonable about it. At worst, some of my wordings might be ambiguous, creating potential for people to view what I wrote as unreasonable if they misinterpret my intent. | 
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