Loving wives: From violence to murder-suicide

[NoTalentHack]

Nah. I just think violent revenge fantasies aren’t cool.

That's a different matter, though. "I don't like this" is one thing; "I think people are getting off to this" is different.

 

[SimonDoom]

Superman is placed in a no-win position where he either has to kill someone or let them kill someone else. I disliked most of the movie, but I haaaaated that scene in particular.

My hatred, though, wasn't simply because of the scene as written, but of the way adherents of Snyder's laughably nihilistic sensibilities defended it. "What else was he supposed to do in that situation? Let the family die?" No; he shouldn't have been written into that situation at all.

I'm surprised at your characterization of the scene as nihilistic. The use of deadly force by A against B to prevent B from killing C isn't nihilistic; it's universally recognized as being just.

I don't understand the objection to the scene. It seemed appropriate to me because it personalizes something that is in fact going on all the time in superhero movies, but usually depicted in an impersonal way: collateral damage and casualties. Superman and Zod fight in Metropolis and cause unbelievable damage to buildings that must certain result in the deaths of a lot of people. Superman has no choice to do so, however, to prevent the certainty of death to far more people if he does not fight Zod. We see this in Superhero movies all the time, but it's usually not depicted up close.

 

[KeithD]

I've observed that the longer someone writes stories here the more they move toward "more"--more extreme fetishes, more extremely applied. I've definitely seen/experienced it in my own writing. I think that's in search of the "big arousal," with what has been written so far becoming too tame, so the ante is upped and new, more extreme, fetishes and actions are explored. If this, in fact, happens with long-term writers here, I wonder if it isn't also observable in the lengthening story file here as well.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

The use of deadly force by A against B to prevent B from killing C isn't nihilistic; it's universally recognized as being just.

I wouldn't say it's universal. Sure, in this particular scene, Zod is the aggressor, the invader, the villain, and his target is a civilian family so the choice is easy in this case, even though Superman struggles with it due to his non-violent nature, but in general, things are rarely black and white.

 

[SimonDoom]

Normal, well-adjusted people simply move on with their lives after a setback. Older and wiser.

I'm not so sure about that. I think blood-lust and desire for revenge are common and normal. People want retribution. An eye for an eye.

A society like you find in modern Western countries has just enough of an established legal system that people typically do not give in to these revenge desires, but they project that desire into revenge fantasy stories, like Dirty Harry or Paul Kersey in the Death Wish movies. There's a thrill people get from them: "Wouldn't it be great if you could just gun down that annoying guy on the subway and get rid of him once and for all?" The sense of satisfaction goes up exponentially when you believe that the normal system of justice isn't working, and this overwhelmingly is a theme of revenge against the cheating wife stories. Over and over again, society is presented as favoring the cheating wife, so the man must fight back against society as much as against the cheating wife.

I see these stories as having a lot in common with the Death Wish movies. Whether the fantasy provides sexual pleasure, I'm not certain.

 

[HordHolm]

I've observed that the longer someone writes stories here the more they move toward "more"--more extreme fetishes, more extremely applied. I've definitely seen/experienced it in my own writing. I think that's in search of the "big arousal," with what has been written so far becoming too tame, so the ante is upped and new, more extreme, fetishes and actions are explored. If this, in fact, happens with long-term writers here, I wonder if it isn't also observable in the lengthening story file here as well.

I think there's a lot in what you say, but I'd also add a tedium, a frustration with repetition. Can one really get the same thrill from the thirtieth story that is little more than a redrafting of the first? I do think the Big Arousal plays a part, but I can see with myself that here and elsewhere, I'm not interested in saying the same thing again and again.

 

[lovecraft68]

None of my posts were personal attacks. Discussing the topic of sexually glorifying violence is not an attack. Explaining the difference between violence and violence for titillation in the publishing market is not an attack. 'I am not 'kink shaming" because violence is not a kink, or it shouldn't be.

But its obvious where the site stands on this, so I'll keep that in mind in the future.

 

[KeithD]

I think there's a lot in what you say, but I'd also add a tedium, a frustration with repetition. Can one really get the same thrill from the thirtieth story that is little more than a redrafting of the first? I do think the Big Arousal plays a part, but I can see with myself that here and elsewhere, I'm not interested in saying the same thing again and again.

For example, I'm finding increasingly now FTM (female-to-male) transition characters are imposing themselves into my stories--that happened with the one I'm writing now. This is a theme that wasn't in my stories a couple of years ago. Before that, for a while, the extreme fetish of sounding was intruding. In neither case did I conceive of the story having that before I sat down to write it. It's just me pushing into new areas for more Shazam! in what I'm writing--and often as I'm writing it. I am not/never was into either fetish in RL (although I tried sounding to be able to write about it. And I look at FTM vids for the same reason). I'm just pushing into new arousal areas.

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

Go ahead and 1-bomb it.

I write to LW to try changing the trend many here criticize, regardless of the ratings and comments on my stories.

Try reading my story "What Were You Thinking?" "Husband discovers his wife's deception" to see how I fell about a cheating wife and a reasonable reaction. It's rated 3.35 with over 1.2k votes, which goes to show a majority of LW readers approved of the non-violent outcome. Others just object to the consensual extra-marital sex.

Actually, I gave it a four. It was really well written.

...for a squirrel.

 

[Lifestyle66]

Actually, I gave it a four. It was really well written.

...for a squirrel.

Thank you.

But consider the position of some comments here in the forum that the readers are there "getting off with the arousal".

My story rated 3.47 in LW, which was far better than some of my other 750-word stories. Did they really get off being aroused by the squirrels? Or does that just show people READ and appreciate any story for what it is?

 

[NoTalentHack]

I'm surprised at your characterization of the scene as nihilistic. The use of deadly force by A against B to prevent B from killing C isn't nihilistic; it's universally recognized as being just.

I don't understand the objection to the scene. It seemed appropriate to me because it personalizes something that is in fact going on all the time in superhero movies, but usually depicted in an impersonal way: collateral damage and casualties. Superman and Zod fight in Metropolis and cause unbelievable damage to buildings that must certain result in the deaths of a lot of people. Superman has no choice to do so, however, to prevent the certainty of death to far more people if he does not fight Zod. We see this in Superhero movies all the time, but it's usually not depicted up close.

I didn't think the scene, specifically, was nihilistic; I think the entire treatment of Superman was.

It's like I said earlier, about the original story that got us into this discussion: the context matters. I'm a huge comics fan, so I've seen tons of different versions of "Superman," which usually aren't Superman.

Usually, though, if someone wants to explore the themes you're talking about, and more, like "imperfect Superman" or "evil Superman" or whatever, it's done through a proxy of some sort. One example is an Elseworlds story, which is a non-canon "What If" sort of story, like Red Son, where his rocket lands on a Russian commune in the 30s instead of Ma and Pa Kent's farm, which lets the writer play with the idea of "what if Superman, but Communist." Another is Speeding Bullets, where he lands on the Wayne family's estate, which is "what if Superman, but Batman's backstory;" in that one, he ends up being a lot darker and more violent, because, unlike Bruce Wayne, he actually had the power to save his parents, but he wasn't able to tap into it in time.

Mostly, though, you've got something like Invincible (realistic effects of violence in superhero universes) or Irredeemable (Superman-expy finally snaps after being rejected by Lois-expy, along with constantly hearing all the trash talk about him from the people he's saved countless times; the roots are a lot deeper than that, though, which the reader sees as time goes on). I liked all the stories I listed, but they aren't Superman stories; not really. They're not about a character named Superman, that's intended to be identified as Superman. Even the Elseworlds ones aren't canon, except that they exist somewhere out int he DC multiverse, because they affect only what's inside that story.

A big tentpole film is different. "What if Superman-type character, but imperfect" is a fine thing to explore. "What if superheroes, but actual collateral damage" is, too. But neither of them belongs in the tentpole movie about Superman. As soon as we saw it, the other friends and I who went to see it all went, "Shit." Not because it was a bad movie, but because it was a bad Superman movie, and we knew, from experience, that what we saw in that movie was going to make its way into the larger comics/animated universe, for good or ill.

The "crystal Krypton" from the 70s movie set the pattern for what Krypton would look like for decades after, even though pre-70s movie it was more Jetsonian than anything else. Spider-Man got organic webshooters for a while, which turned into a weird mystical spider-totem thing that went on for ages, after the 2000 movie. The X-Men switched to the plain black uniforms and the team lineups fromt he movies for no reason, cutting short other stories as a result, after their 2000 movie.

Some of the changes are big, and some of them are small, but those versions are almost always A) ephemeral and B) looked back on with a bit of "what were they thinking" chagrin. It happened in the wake of Man of Steel, too; they changed the costume, which was a minor change, but the Superman in the comics after that became harsher, less kind, less committed, etc. Thank God, they've cleaned some of that up since.

"Imperfect superhero forced to kill" is not inherently nihilistic. "Imperfect Superman forced to kill" is, because that takes the core elements of the character--his boundless optimism, his inventiveness in coming up with nonviolent/nonlethal solutions, the aspirational aspects of his moral code and the way he applies them--and tosses them for a cheap no-win scenario. It's a trash take, the same way the first public domain Winnie the Pooh movie that came out was a cheapo slasher movie.

 

[SimonDoom]

"Imperfect superhero forced to kill" is not inherently nihilistic. "Imperfect Superman forced to kill" is, because that takes the core elements of the character--his boundless optimism, his inventiveness in coming up with nonviolent/nonlethal solutions, the aspirational aspects of his moral code and the way he applies them--and tosses them for a cheap no-win scenario. It's a trash take, the same way the first public domain Winnie the Pooh movie that came out was a cheapo slasher movie.

This is an interesting perspective I had not considered, but I can't agree with it. Superman in that movie "chooses" to kill Zod, although one might argue that he's compelled by duty to make that choice. But I think that's inevitable and unavoidable, and the movie is simply facing something it can't ignore. There's no way that a Superman who decides to interfere in human affairs to do right can avoid causing people's deaths, especially if he's interfering to prevent other super aliens like him from killing humans. I see that as a moral, not nihilistic feature: it's an unavoidable feature of the world if we're going to be realistic and not pollyannas about it.

If a Superman really existed, his life would be one continuous trolley car experiment. It would be exhausting, maybe to the point of driving him mad. I see it as a legitimate artistic and moral decision to recognize this problem in depicting his actions. The 1970s Superman does that when it presents Superman as having to make choices about whom to rescue during the earthquake.

 

[NoTalentHack]

This is an interesting perspective I had not considered, but I can't agree with it. Superman in that movie "chooses" to kill Zod, although one might argue that he's compelled by duty to make that choice. But I think that's inevitable and unavoidable, and the movie is simply facing something it can't ignore. There's no way that a Superman who decides to interfere in human affairs to do right can avoid causing people's deaths, especially if he's interfering to prevent other super aliens like him from killing humans. I see that as a moral, not nihilistic feature: it's an unavoidable feature of the world if we're going to be realistic and not pollyannas about it.

If a Superman really existed, his life would be one continuous trolley car experiment. It would be exhausting, maybe to the point of driving him mad. I see it as a legitimate artistic and moral decision to recognize this problem in depicting his actions. The 1970s Superman does that when it presents Superman as having to make choices about whom to rescue during the earthquake.

That's a fair take, although I don't agree with it.

I'm not saying you can't do a realistic take on superheroes. The problem, I think, is that to do that in the way that Snyder and Goyer see as "realistic," you have to kind of chop out the bits that make superheroes great, especially ones like Superman. I agree that his life is one continuous trolley car experiment; there's a great story about a Superman-expy called the Samaritan in Astro City, an anthology series by Kurt Busiek, that looks at it. Here's a synopsis from Herocopia:

The story begins with a man--Samaritan--flying naked and joyful among the clouds. The flight, a dream, is interrupted by the noise of Samaritan's emergency alert transmitter pointing him to a situation in the Philippines. As he dresses to fly toward the danger, Samaritan reflects on the fact that he simply has no time to enjoy the flight there (and a related theme runs throughout the story--namely that Samaritan's dedication to his work, to try and be on hand to help with as much as he physically can, to the point of exhaustion, prevents him from enjoying, or even having, a life beyond that work).

After stopping the massive tidal wave that threatens a city in the Philippines with his empyrean web (and, Samaritan notes, venting the volcano whose eruption cause it and dealing with the aftermath of his empyrean web's shock wave), Samaritan deals with other threats as he races to make it to work on time in his civilian identity, Asa Martin, fact-checker for Astro City's Current magazine. As he disappears into his office, Martin's coworkers reflect on his near-tardiness.

Samaritan prepares his zyxometer to complete Martin's work (allowing for an acceptable number of mistakes to resemble human performance) and to follow global news sources to learn of assorted threats (including a runaway bus in New York, Dr. Saturday in Denver, and a disaster at Fox-Broome University's bio labs). Then, Samaritan flies off to deal with them before making a quick lunchtime appearance at work as Martin, seemingly blowing off his coworkers for "appointments" that are, of course, more Samaritan duties--this time a meeting of Honor Guard. (Martin's coworkers, meanwhile, reflect on his standoffishness.)

After helping his teammates with a bank robbery attempt by the Menagerie Gang, Samaritan rushes back to Martin's office just in time to avoid being fired, handing a completed piece on the First Family to his boss, Ms. Cavendish. In exchange, she hands him a feature on the city's most beautiful women. Martin ruminates on the irony that, while such women would likely love to meet and pursue a relationship with Samaritan, he simply can't spare the time.

His emergency alert transmitter goes off, and Samaritan is back to work for the afternoon dealing with various situations, such as a jailbreak at Biro Island, raising the 17th c. wreck of the Sea Blaze off the Florida Coast, and retrieving a cat for a young girl. During this last event, he slows down so that the girl can see him clearly and be relieved, and that time spent with the girl almost causes Samaritan to miss saving a man in Boston from being crushed by a building.

In the evening, Samaritan makes an appearance at a dinner held by the Astro City Firefighter's Association, who honor him with an award. During dinner, Samaritan tries to stress to the firefighters that _they_ are the true heroes, and he excuses himself twice to deal with assorted crises.

After dinner, Samaritan takes a step "sideways" into a pocket dimension to store his award (with all the others he has received) before he is attacked by the Living Nightmare, which beats him up and down the street. Samaritan manages to maneuver the Nightmare above him, at which point he flies it into space and hurls it into the sun (although, he notes, it will cease existing once it is removed from the emotions powering it).

Samaritan returns home, utterly exhausted, and falls onto his bed, asleep before he reaches the pillow. As he sleeps, his dreams return him to the sunny skies, where he flies happily once more.

There's a later story where he and the Wonder Woman expy of the book go on a date; they each are still on edge during the date, as much as they enjoy it, because literally every other major superhero has to take up the slack for them while they're busy. Both stories are charming takes on "real life" superheroes, but they're done with affection towards the genre instead of disdain. It's "how would this work" instead of, "this would never work."

If you ever want to read some of the best superhero stories of all time, I recommend Astro City wholeheartedly. It's stories about people that have superpowers, instead of superheroes, and it's great. There are dark stories in there, and dark moments, but they're dark because they're earned, not because they're cynical and easy. I'd put "The Nearness of You," a story about a normal, everyday man who can't stop dreaming about a woman who doesn't exist (anymore) as one of the best I've ever read in any medium.

All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison is another I'd recommend that looks at Superman in the light of that kind of generous optimism, too, but which still admits that there are places where he'll fail; the entire thing starts with him learning that he's going to die, and him trying to squeeze in as much as he can as both Clark and Superman before that happens.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

This is an interesting perspective I had not considered, but I can't agree with it. Superman in that movie "chooses" to kill Zod, although one might argue that he's compelled by duty to make that choice. But I think that's inevitable and unavoidable, and the movie is simply facing something it can't ignore. There's no way that a Superman who decides to interfere in human affairs to do right can avoid causing people's deaths, especially if he's interfering to prevent other super aliens like him from killing humans. I see that as a moral, not nihilistic feature: it's an unavoidable feature of the world if we're going to be realistic and not pollyannas about it.

If a Superman really existed, his life would be one continuous trolley car experiment. It would be exhausting, maybe to the point of driving him mad. I see it as a legitimate artistic and moral decision to recognize this problem in depicting his actions. The 1970s Superman does that when it presents Superman as having to make choices about whom to rescue during the earthquake.

Since you mentioned that A, B, C scenario as universal, I am curious to hear your thoughts on this extreme example. C is a person who raped and killed a girl but got away due to the prosecution fuck up. He is a free man. B is the mother of the girl and when C gets released and becomes a free man again she pulls a gun at him. You are A, a cop who is witnessing the scene and you are reaching for your gun. What do you do?
The rules of conduct say that you must prevent a murder from happening even if it means using deadly force. The mother doesn't intend to drop her gun and is cocking the trigger. It is obvious she is going to shoot C...
You are not Clint Eastwood, so you can't hope to hit her gun-hand, or the gun itself. You :

1) Shoot her in the chest because only deadly force can stop her from firing her gun and killing C, the now free and innocent civilian.

2) Shoot her in the leg hoping to disbalance her.

3) Keep asking her to drop the gun, even if you are sure she will fire.

4) Run away, calling for your mommy.

5) Something else?

This example is extreme, of course, but I would say that there would be many cases somewhere in between the Superman example and this example. It's not clear what is the right thing to do and it's certainly not universal, IMO.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I've observed that the longer someone writes stories here the more they move toward "more"--more extreme fetishes, more extremely applied. I've definitely seen/experienced it in my own writing. I think that's in search of the "big arousal," with what has been written so far becoming too tame, so the ante is upped and new, more extreme, fetishes and actions are explored. If this, in fact, happens with long-term writers here, I wonder if it isn't also observable in the lengthening story file here as well.

I wrote a little about this in Loving Loving Wives. You can definitely see a shift towards “more” in the stories in a lot of categories. It’s starkly obvious in something like Interracial; a lot of the early stories there would probably go into Romance if you posted them today.

 

[SimonDoom]

Since you mentioned that A, B, C scenario as universal, I am curious to hear your thoughts on this extreme example. C is a person who raped and killed a girl but got away due to the prosecution fuck up. He is a free man. B is the mother of the girl and when C gets released and becomes a free man again she pulls a gun at him. You are A, a cop who is witnessing the scene and you are reaching for your gun. What do you do?
The rules of conduct say that you must prevent a murder from happening even if it means using deadly force. The mother doesn't intend to drop her gun and is cocking the trigger. It is obvious she is going to shoot C...
You are not Clint Eastwood, so you can't hope to hit her gun-hand, or the gun itself. You :

1) Shoot her in the chest because only deadly force can stop her from firing her gun and killing C, the now free and innocent civilian.

2) Shoot her in the leg hoping to disbalance her.

3) Keep asking her to drop the gun, even if you are sure she will fire.

4) Run away, calling for your mommy.

5) Something else?

This example is extreme, of course, but I would say that there would be many cases somewhere in between the Superman example and this example. It's not clear what is the right thing to do and it's certainly not universal, IMO.

This is an ambiguous situation. Assuming that I have all of the knowledge that your scenario suggests (it's not realistic but let's assume it for the sake of argument), I might opt for 3) which I realize will result in her killing him, and then arrest her after the fact.

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

We now have two people in here who say they believe that people are getting off on non-sexualized violence in these types of stories. They both write often/primarily in Incest, which (I assume) means it's one of their kinks. Of the more mainstream kinks, it's also one of the more recent to become relatively mainstream and is still kind of edge-case, i.e., that there's mainstream porn targeting it (albeit only in "step" form) openly as opposed to the stuff that's still too taboo for that, because it's seen as wholly unhealthy/dangerous/disgusting, even as fantasy: zoophilia, underage, etc.

Do you think there's a link there? Again, I am being wholly serious here, because I think... I can kinda see it from your point of view, if that's the case.

As an incest author (Yes, I actually published two books under this nickname, even if they aren't on Literotica), I still have to disagree. If I can even call it a disagreement since you're just asking a question.

The thing is, I started writing to deal with all the shit I've seen on the job. That contains A LOT of incest. A lot more than people seem to think. And, in my time, I also dealt with sadists. Not those guys who like to be called Sir/Daddy/Master by a tied-up girl they're spanking while she's hanging upside-down from the ceiling, I mean actual sadists. And, I have to tell you, the stuff you see in LW? The stuff Lovecraft continuously complains about? That just isn't it.

Yes, there are sadistic stories being posted to LW. Regularly. But, if I see those, I report them, and they're usually pulled within minutes of me hitting that report button. Laurel does a damn good job curating her site, despite what some people claim. What's then left are stories that, no matter how hard I look for it, simply don't show any sexual connotations.

I would accept that there are people who get a form of satisfaction from BTB stories. In my mind, these are people who have been through a messy divorce or experienced being cheated on, and now use those stories as some form of outlet for their violent fantasies. But getting sexual satisfaction out of them? No way. I don't see it. And I have yet to see even an attempt at explaining how that could work beyond "well, it's a sexual category, so it HAS to be sexual". That's like saying "Well, these kids like to play ego shooters, so they HAVE to be fantasizing about shooting up a school".

 

[AwkwardlySet]

This is an ambiguous situation. Assuming that I have all of the knowledge that your scenario suggests (it's not realistic but let's assume it for the sake of argument), I might opt for 3) which I realize will result in her killing him, and then arrest her after the fact.

Which confirms it's not universal. Interesting choice. I believe I would have taken option 2, shooting her somewhere where it wouldn't kill her or cause any severe damage, assuming I was that sure of my aim. It would still give some chance to C to survive the ordeal.

 

[SimonDoom]

Which confirms it's not universal. Interesting choice. I believe I would have taken option 2, shooting her somewhere where it wouldn't kill her or cause any severe damage, assuming I was that sure of my aim. It would still give some chance to C to survive the ordeal.

Well, two things. Number 1, your hypothetical introduced a lot of nuance into the situation. Superman killing Zod to save an innocent family is not nuanced. The overwhelming majority of people would concur that Superman's use of deadly force is appropriate in that case. It's possible to have a universal rule but believe that it might have to be modified in specific situations to suit the circumstances.

Number 2, though, you're right. It's not universal. Gandhi would not agree with me, and other hard-core pacifists like him would not agree with me. His is very much a minority view, but it's a significant minority.

 

[SimonDoom]

Which confirms it's not universal. Interesting choice. I believe I would have taken option 2, shooting her somewhere where it wouldn't kill her or cause any severe damage, assuming I was that sure of my aim. It would still give some chance to C to survive the ordeal.

To extend this sort of thinking to cheating wife situations: I can't think of a situation involving a cheating wife where I would ever think it's appropriate to engage in criminal conduct against her as a form of revenge, except in one possible scenario, which wouldn't involve the cheating itself: the welfare of the children. I might engage in extreme conduct if I believed it was necessary to protect my children. But the wife being a cheater doesn't by itself put the children in danger.

This is why for me, personally, these stories cannot have the appeal of other revenge stories, because the wrongful act isn't sufficient to justify criminal revenge. Some obviously disagree.

 

[NoTalentHack]

To extend this sort of thinking to cheating wife situations: I can't think of a situation involving a cheating wife where I would ever think it's appropriate to engage in criminal conduct against her as a form of revenge, except in one possible scenario, which wouldn't involve the cheating itself: the welfare of the children. I might engage in extreme conduct if I believed it was necessary to protect my children. But the wife being a cheater doesn't by itself put the children in danger.

This is why for me, personally, these stories cannot have the appeal of other revenge stories, because the wrongful act isn't sufficient to justify criminal revenge. Some obviously disagree.

I tend to agree. For a story I write to go from “what a shitty situation, time to figure out what to do next” to “someone has to pay,” there has to be… like, a lot more going on. And I mean a LOT more: longstanding cruelty, a person who’s ruined other people’s lives and will again, etc.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

To extend this sort of thinking to cheating wife situations: I can't think of a situation involving a cheating wife where I would ever think it's appropriate to engage in criminal conduct against her as a form of revenge, except in one possible scenario, which wouldn't involve the cheating itself: the welfare of the children. I might engage in extreme conduct if I believed it was necessary to protect my children. But the wife being a cheater doesn't by itself put the children in danger.

This is why for me, personally, these stories cannot have the appeal of other revenge stories, because the wrongful act isn't sufficient to justify criminal revenge. Some obviously disagree.

This one is easy to agree with.

 

[SimonDoom]

I tend to agree. For a story I write to go from “what a shitty situation, time to figure out what to do next” to “someone has to pay,” there has to be… like, a lot more going on. And I mean a LOT more: longstanding cruelty, a person who’s ruined other people’s lives and will again, etc.

It would work as long as you present the cheated revenge-seeking husband as a morally ambiguous character. It's perfectly OK to write stories about people making bad or morally ambiguous choices. Clint Eastwood's movies can be like this. His characters are often anti-heroes, but there is a thrilling tingle to seeing him get away with his revenge.


But these stories tend to be morality plays where there's no ambiguity at all about the righteousness of the man's actions.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Normal, well-adjusted people simply move on with their lives after a setback. Older and wiser.

If most human beings were normal and well-adjusted, history would be pretty boring, wouldn't it?

 

[NoTalentHack]

But these stories tend to be morality plays where there's no ambiguity at all about the righteousness of the man's actions.

I think part of that is a weakness of the form. Most of these stories are written in first person or third person close; the narrator IS righteous, or at least self-righteous, because otherwise he'd have to acknowledge the wrongness of his actions. I've got two stories that end in a murder published right now ("Her Master's Voice" and "Philanthropic") and two more on the way... eventually. Of the two, one is about a classics professor who was put into a no-win situation 20-odd years before the main part of the story by a billionaire with... interesting ideas about improving humanity (Hi, Elon!) and his eventual revenge. I'm currently planning to tell it as FP POV with the wronged husband as the POV character, so I'm sure it'll suffer somewhat from this.

But another, I'm still doing as FP POV, but the POV character is a newcomer to the situation, a young Black man sutck in a holding cell with the husband. Tentatively titled "Immurement," it's a tribute to Poe and Southern Gothics that I'm planning to put out for Hammered.

The husband has done something truly terrible, and the wife was involved in it, but the wife was also just another tool of the corrupt small town it takes place in. The younger man hears from the husband about what he did and "why," and he knows the town is awful (former sundown town that relies on speed traps and civil asset forfeiture on out-of-state drivers as its way to maintain itself), but what the husband did is still awful. But is it too awful? And is it in service to a greater good, even if the husband mostly used that to justify his actions?

I expect it will score poorly, as it's easy to read it as anti-police and anti-military, plus the Black character explicitly calls out the racism, including institutional racism, he sees in the story. We'll see, though; maybe the readers will surprise me.