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On whorefic
Men do not fall in love with whores because of the sex. They fall in love with women who happen to be whores, and they fall in love with the idea of whores. They DO NOT fall in love with whores because of the sex. Men who frequent whores are looking for commitment-free sexual gratification. Most require nothing more than a warm, willing body and occasionally a sympathetic ear. Of course there are niches for whores who specialize in various kinds of kinkplay, or offer companionship in addition to sex, but those are niches, with very few people working them.
Most whores don't have a good home they could go home to, nor do they have ready alternatives to an industry which is ultimately degrading, debilitating and extremely unhealthy. It's not now, nor has it ever been a romantic occupation. Whores work until they die, too young, looking old.
I'm really tired of whorefic. Especially slash whorefic. See, I get that it's escapism, really I do. I'm writing about children's books and mediocre television shows too - I get escapism. However, there are very few writers who take hold of the idea and can own it in a reasonable way. Even in escapist fiction, reason is important because it's essential to the dramatic integrity of the story. If, as a writer, you can't establish the settup in a reasonable way, you need to take a harsh look at your skills.
There are about a million slashy whorefics in which our male hero runs away for some suitably suburban-angsty reason and turns to tricking. There are about ten slashy whorefics that do this in a way which is not laughable. The thing that most of us seem to forget is that um, most straight guys would not leap to trickng as way of earning their daily bread. It's just not something that would enter their head because straight boys tend not to have learned to use their sexuality in the same ways that girls and some homosexual boys do. As a straight boy, their sexuality is tied up in getting girls. Not in being had. So right from the get go, writing a slashy whorefic is many times more difficult than a het fic. It only gets worse from there.
Obstacle the second? How does a kid like Harry or Clark even find work in the sex industry, let alone become a leather and silk-wearing sex god? It's not like you can just walk down some random street, show some skin, pick up a John and *BANG* you're superwhore. Like any industry, you have to learn the market. What sex acts cost how much and what are appropriate markups during the holidays. Then there are concerns particular to the sex industry - what protection is necessary for what sex acts, how do you ensure your safety, where are all the free clinics and who are the cops who go easy on whores? How do you live through the next day?
I mean, fuck. Why not go wait tables, sell drugs, roll old women for their purses? How does a kid like Harry or Clark come to the conclusion that sucking cock for lunch is a good idea when there are so many alternatives, even for a runaway?
Harry is a relatively intelligent kid, who's shown flashes of ruthlessness and cunning. He's never been comfortable living with the Dursleys and has actively fought back with the meager weapons at his disposal. He's magically powerful and resourceful.
Clark has superpowers. Super. Powers.
Just about every other male hero out there has something to fall back on, even if it's only enough arrogance to ensure that they'd rather snatch purses than get on their knees for a paunchy, middle-aged man, sweating through his cheap suit and grunting as he comes.
Fast forward. We're now at the part where the John falls in love with the whore. Snape and Harry, or Lex and Clark have been fucking regularly, and perhaps even have a live-in arrangement. Snape/Lex is so very smitten with Harry/Clark's cock-sucking skills that he bathes the boy, clothes him, angsts over him and eventually takes him away from it all.
What the hell kind of moron falls in love with an untrustworthy, dirty, street urchin, with big eyes and a bigger mouth, simply after coming really hard? I mean, great sex is great sex, but it sure isn't worth house-training a street whore over. There's a reason that rich men who want live-in lovers prefer expensive callgirls/boys. They're clean! Neither of these characters are complete fools and there is no reason to suspect that they'd be so gulible as to wear their wallets on their sleeves.
Even if - and this is a big if - the couples got to the point where actual pleasantries were exchanged, and they began to view each other as people and not sexual organs on legs, both of them would have to be seriously emotionally troubled to put themselves at risk by caring for a john or a whore. Both are at risk of losing money. Both are at risk of losing their lives. It's in no ones best interest for it to become emotional or personal.
The thing about Pretty Woman, the thing that made it so charming, is that it's an impossible love story that works because the Richard Gere and Julia Roberts characters sparkle together and are both fundamentally honest and likeable. There is almost a purity to the relationship, entirely dependent on how little they know of each other, and how very much they're risking. That they're willing to take the risk, hell, that they're even capable of it, is astonishing. Most people could never inhabit those roles. Harry and Clark couldn't. Snape and Lex most definitely couldn't.
To suggest otherwise is, in 99% of cases, Teh Dumb.
Thank you, drive through.
Most whores don't have a good home they could go home to, nor do they have ready alternatives to an industry which is ultimately degrading, debilitating and extremely unhealthy. It's not now, nor has it ever been a romantic occupation. Whores work until they die, too young, looking old.
I'm really tired of whorefic. Especially slash whorefic. See, I get that it's escapism, really I do. I'm writing about children's books and mediocre television shows too - I get escapism. However, there are very few writers who take hold of the idea and can own it in a reasonable way. Even in escapist fiction, reason is important because it's essential to the dramatic integrity of the story. If, as a writer, you can't establish the settup in a reasonable way, you need to take a harsh look at your skills.
There are about a million slashy whorefics in which our male hero runs away for some suitably suburban-angsty reason and turns to tricking. There are about ten slashy whorefics that do this in a way which is not laughable. The thing that most of us seem to forget is that um, most straight guys would not leap to trickng as way of earning their daily bread. It's just not something that would enter their head because straight boys tend not to have learned to use their sexuality in the same ways that girls and some homosexual boys do. As a straight boy, their sexuality is tied up in getting girls. Not in being had. So right from the get go, writing a slashy whorefic is many times more difficult than a het fic. It only gets worse from there.
Obstacle the second? How does a kid like Harry or Clark even find work in the sex industry, let alone become a leather and silk-wearing sex god? It's not like you can just walk down some random street, show some skin, pick up a John and *BANG* you're superwhore. Like any industry, you have to learn the market. What sex acts cost how much and what are appropriate markups during the holidays. Then there are concerns particular to the sex industry - what protection is necessary for what sex acts, how do you ensure your safety, where are all the free clinics and who are the cops who go easy on whores? How do you live through the next day?
I mean, fuck. Why not go wait tables, sell drugs, roll old women for their purses? How does a kid like Harry or Clark come to the conclusion that sucking cock for lunch is a good idea when there are so many alternatives, even for a runaway?
Harry is a relatively intelligent kid, who's shown flashes of ruthlessness and cunning. He's never been comfortable living with the Dursleys and has actively fought back with the meager weapons at his disposal. He's magically powerful and resourceful.
Clark has superpowers. Super. Powers.
Just about every other male hero out there has something to fall back on, even if it's only enough arrogance to ensure that they'd rather snatch purses than get on their knees for a paunchy, middle-aged man, sweating through his cheap suit and grunting as he comes.
Fast forward. We're now at the part where the John falls in love with the whore. Snape and Harry, or Lex and Clark have been fucking regularly, and perhaps even have a live-in arrangement. Snape/Lex is so very smitten with Harry/Clark's cock-sucking skills that he bathes the boy, clothes him, angsts over him and eventually takes him away from it all.
What the hell kind of moron falls in love with an untrustworthy, dirty, street urchin, with big eyes and a bigger mouth, simply after coming really hard? I mean, great sex is great sex, but it sure isn't worth house-training a street whore over. There's a reason that rich men who want live-in lovers prefer expensive callgirls/boys. They're clean! Neither of these characters are complete fools and there is no reason to suspect that they'd be so gulible as to wear their wallets on their sleeves.
Even if - and this is a big if - the couples got to the point where actual pleasantries were exchanged, and they began to view each other as people and not sexual organs on legs, both of them would have to be seriously emotionally troubled to put themselves at risk by caring for a john or a whore. Both are at risk of losing money. Both are at risk of losing their lives. It's in no ones best interest for it to become emotional or personal.
The thing about Pretty Woman, the thing that made it so charming, is that it's an impossible love story that works because the Richard Gere and Julia Roberts characters sparkle together and are both fundamentally honest and likeable. There is almost a purity to the relationship, entirely dependent on how little they know of each other, and how very much they're risking. That they're willing to take the risk, hell, that they're even capable of it, is astonishing. Most people could never inhabit those roles. Harry and Clark couldn't. Snape and Lex most definitely couldn't.
To suggest otherwise is, in 99% of cases, Teh Dumb.
Thank you, drive through.
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Rescue complex, I say. Aw lookit the poor little whore, I can save it, and take care of it, and love it and pet it and call it george. Same reason people fall in love with death row prisoners.
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Amen
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People used to ask me when I was going to turn the tables and make Logan a whore. And I would just boggle.
*boggles*
Because that would NEVER happen. Ever.
As you point out, as long as a male has other skills, he will use them to earn his living. Cage fighting, monster killing, stealing, killing people for money, the armed forces ferchrissakes, the circus, McDonald's.... most women will probably try all of these things as well, until they've only got the one thing left to sell, and it's more likely they'll receive the come ons in other positions that would make an explicit sex-for-money exchange possible and, in some cases, easier to rationalize.
In the Potterverse, there's not one character- not ONE- I can see turning tricks, because hello? Trained wizards and witches. Even Remus, the most likely possibility (and oh, the badfic that's produced), has skills and an education, and while most of them don't even exist as far as the Muggle world is concerned, there are thousands of illegal immigrants who work under the table and make a hand-to-mouth living. So if people think Harry or Remus or Snape or whoever couldn't or wouldn't take a job picking fruit (or the British equivalent) over selling his ass, they're just... not thinking clearly.
Unless, of course, they create a whole AU where being a courtesan is a respectable profession or they're chosen at a young age as catamites (see Firefly, some of Elizabeth Hand's fiction etc.), but I wouldn't trust many writers to pull that off- god knows, Joss Whedon didn't quite pull it off in the few episodes of Firefly we got, and most fan writers aren't at his skill level.
Sorry for rambling. I have a definite fascination with fictional whores and the difficulties in making a story about one work.
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I never mind rambling. ;)
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*snicker*
whore!Logan just doesn't work.
No, he's got too many other skills to sell.
Would you link me to your Rogue and Scott fics? I'd like to see what you did with the characters.
The complete Hooker!Rogue AU is here: Off the Corner (http://unfitforsociety.net/musesfool/offthecorner.htm) - it is somewhat romanticized, but I did try to deal with at least some of the realities.
The one with Rogue and Scott is also AU, and I never finished it - I've been posting it in installments in my LJ. It's here (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=musesfool&keyword=Consumption&filter=all).
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This despite the fact that all you say rings very true, and I keep thinking that there must still be more dignity in having a job where you say, "Would you like fries with that?" rather than, "Hello, sailor." May I never have to find out! ^_^
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Just taking a moment to point out that MPreg fic in the Harry Potter universe actually makes a hell of a lot of sense, where as rentboy fic, in the Harry Potter universe, makes a lot of non-sense especially.
- Andrea.
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Rentboyfic happens to be one of my bullet-proof kinks...which certainly doesn't mean that I find these stories realistic or even want them to be...much like most chan's not a realistic depiction of child abuse/incest or curtainfic rarely accurately describes realistic cohabitation between gay men. (I still reel from what seemed to be an endless supply of Mulder/Krycek/Skinner stories in which the three bought a house in the burbs and lived a dd/bdsm lifestyle with lots of grocery and furniture shopping on the side :-)
I always am somewhat embarrassed to link to my own stuff, but I think I tried to address some of these issues about realism and kink and how the twain rarely meet and what happens if they do, here (http://www.livejournal.com/community/virgule/15511.html)...though I'm still working through a lot of it...(also a small caveat to A.--the post was spawned by discussions about JPW, so if you cannot bear to hear another word about it, I just wanna warn you)
So, everything you say about how incredibly unreal and ridiculous the scenarios are is true...but that's not really the point for its readers, I think (and yes A., I loved yours :-)
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I have actually been pretty intrigued by the discussion generated by AJPW, though I stay away from anything that's just "I didn't like it" response. I'm no glutton for punishment. But yeah, it does come down to the kink, sometimes. I can think of numerous stories that were so good that I read them and loved them despite a lack of any kinky satisfaction, and mediocre (or worse) stories that held me just because they catered to kink. And I'm not ashamed. Well, not much.
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I have been incredibly intrigued by the AJPW discussions, b/c I think people were reacting to a lot of things they couldn't really verbalize. That's in a way what I was trying to think through in that virgule post...
As for the kink issue...I can't believe the type of fics I'll read (i.e., what poor quality) if they'll hit my kink :-) And I just recently discovered a kink I have (conduit fics), and there are so many fics I totally fell for in various fandoms and now I'm realizing *that*s what it was. LOL. I don't think we should be ashamed of our kinks...but we shouldn't mistake it for quality (as in reccing our kink as good fic) or mistake our squicks for bad fic (as, I think, happened a lot with AJPW!).
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(Actually, if you're interested...there's a voyeurism followup here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/cathexys/61845.html))
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http://www.dennishensley.com/PrettyWomanExerpt.htm
I remember that someone once called that film a 'recruiting film for prostitution' and don't think that's exactly inaccurate. The only whore!fic stories that tend to work for me are the ones that realise how basically cheesy they are and how unlikely it is that a character will actually ever be forced into prostitution. The ones that romanticise it or make it seem like an inevitable progression are the ones that scare me.
-brodie
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Write more often, please.
That is astoundedly all.