The Blanketfort (crying and throwing up) - The Official Solas Thread [Spoilers]

You probably saw it in the tags. A Solavellan author got called out for writing "50 Shades of Grey"-style BDSM in their fic, by someone who is a BDSM practitioner. Apparently, it is unsafe and unhealthy to spread badly-researched porn to people who are dumb and think fanfiction is a useful tool for learning about that particular hobby/lifestyle.

To me, it's infantilizing to be told you don't know how to handle your trashy romance habit, and cannot make informed choices without tons of research into something that, which, at least for me is just entertainment. Then again, I am in a stable monogamous relationship with little to no interest in BDSM at all, other than some light femdom in fanfic. 

I can see that practitioners of it might not want to see their kink portrayed poorly and unsafely, and abusive partners romanticized, but I have to wonder if they even approached the author and talked to them before castigating them and their work publicly like that. I don't particularly care for the fic myself, since their Solas is really, really skeevy and unlikable in it and Cullen is given a lobotomy. It seems really cruel and unnecessary to call them out, at least to me. I just do not care for the way the tumblr fandom police operate. At least serve them a warrant.  

Awww really?! That sucks. I saw a tumblr post by
on BDSM and I was wondering if it was pertaining to a certain Solavellan fic, and gosh it makes me sad to hear that she was talking about Gorillainthemist's fic.

I love reading Yes, Fen'Harel and Gorillainthemist is such a nice person. And I love reading stories too, but yeah she occasionally makes posts that make me feel bad because they're sometimes on things I enjoy. (Like Yes, Fen'Harel) And at one point, she even made a post (but it's now deleted) on how garbage Sarah J. Maas' book A Court of Thorns and Roses was because it romanticized "abusive" romances. I haven't finished reading it, but I'm enjoying it so far... I guess her opinions on it and Yes, Fen'Harel shouldn't really matter to me if I like them or not? (Her posts still made me feel like crap for liking them though.... )

Any time there's a call-out on tumblr, I feel like there's an agenda behind it. Sometimes it's jealousy, sometimes it's "protect the childrens"(despite tumblr being full of unambiguously hardcore pornographic images), sometimes its cultural or generational differences, sometimes it's actual harmful racism, bigotry, or abuse. If readers want a certain type of tropey romance fic, though, authors are going to write it, end of story. I just wonder why they decided to do this now, instead of months ago as the fic isn't exactly new.

As far as abusive portrayals in fanfic, Solavellan gets it particularly bad, I think, because Solas, by the end of the game, is an unambiguous antagonist whether you love him or not. It's easy to end up slotting him into a lot of abusive, yet popular alphahole het romance protagonist stereotypes.

I don't think you should feel bad about liking the fic, Sunny. Even if it's not a portrayal of a healthy relationship, what I read of it had a coherent narrative that pulls the reader along. Sadly, it's hard to find consistently updated longfic for Solavellan that doesn't get bogged down with side plots or OCs. 

You probably saw it in the tags. A Solavellan author got called out for writing "50 Shades of Grey"-style BDSM in their fic, by someone who is a BDSM practitioner. Apparently, it is unsafe and unhealthy to spread badly-researched porn to people who are dumb and think fanfiction is a useful tool for learning about that particular hobby/lifestyle.

To me, it's infantilizing to be told you don't know how to handle your trashy romance habit, and cannot make informed choices without tons of research into something that, which, at least for me is just entertainment. Then again, I am in a stable monogamous relationship with little to no interest in BDSM at all, other than some light femdom in fanfic. 

I can see that practitioners of it might not want to see their kink portrayed poorly and unsafely, and abusive partners romanticized, but I have to wonder if they even approached the author and talked to them before castigating them and their work publicly like that. I don't particularly care for the fic myself, since their Solas is really, really skeevy and unlikable in it and Cullen is given a lobotomy. It seems really cruel and unnecessary to call them out, at least to me. I just do not care for the way the tumblr fandom police operate. At least serve them a warrant.  

I feel like the tendency to twist Solas into that archetype isn't the fault of canon so much as it is the fault of one of the first popular Solavellan fanfics (I don't know if I'm allowed to name names, so I won't.) since it was written shortly after the game was made, updated frequently, and had a portrayal of Solas that, in my opinion, was not only ridiculously OOC but also pointlessly dark and dominant and "edgy." Unfortunately, due to that fic's popularity and early arrival, it appears to given a lot of other writers the idea that's what Solas is really like, even when canon clearly states otherwise.

Also she might have only recently discovered the fic.

I'll admit that I have been reading "Yes, Fen'Harel" myself. I have no interest in BDSM whatsoever and have never read 50 Shades of Grey (when I first heard the title of that book I thought it was a gothic novel about ghosts of the Grey family ), so I'm not a fair judge of its depiction of BDSM. I started reading the fic out of morbid curiosity and after weeks of none of my fave fics updating. The smut isn't really my cup of tea, but the narrative has kept me interested anyhow. It doesn't really feel like authentic Sollavellan to me, but GorillaInTheMist has set up some interesting tension and character chemistry.

Here's my take on the controversy. I'm soooo glad that I don't use Tumblr. That place seems to be packed with people looking to jump on other people's backs about anything they can. People can write and read whatever kind of fan fic they like. Impressionable youths shouldn't be reading rated E fan fic anyway, and adults don't need a nanny making sure they have a proper understanding of REAL BDSM. If you don't like a fic, then don't read it. Simple as that. Oddly enough no one seems to be critiquing the inaccurate depiction of graduate programs or university faculty interaction in all those grad school AU fics (even though those might mislead some kids into thinking university is all about flirting with professors and hanging out at bars). No one should expect fan fic to be as well researched as a published novel or checked for factual accuracy by a professional editor. I wish people should save their criticism for something that really matters...like I don't know...child slavery in Myanmar or lead tainted water in American cities.