Foz Meadow’s Docile Review and Insight on Fanfic Tagging

[jesse_the_k]

fozmeadows reviews Docile by K.M.Sparza. Do read the complete essay, where Foz addresses the stunning absence of American slavery in a near-future Baltimore chock full of sexual slavery, as well as the book’s conversation with E.L.Grey. and other important topics.

https://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2020/03/09/book-review-docile/

Context for this quote is why fanfic tropes feel different in a published work:

K.M. Szpara’s Docile is a complex, incredibly pacy book about which I nonetheless have mixed feelings.

Partly, this is the result of tagging, which works to reassure me that the author knows the dynamic or context they’re writing is fucked up and is exploring those themes on purpose; but mostly, it’s that fic, for me, exists at an extra level of remove from reality. A dark fic about a particular pairing isn’t the defining story of their relationship; it’s just one extrapolation among many. If it makes me uncomfortable, I don’t have to invest in it, because a plethora of other, gentler stories about the same characters coexist alongside it. And no matter how good or bad they may be, I don’t have to pass critical judgement on the themes and worldbuilding of such stories, because that’s what the canon is for: the fic is an escape from that, which means that I’m primarily here for the feelings.

[… snip …]

Though structured like a romance, with different chapters showing us the first person POVs of Elisha and Alex respectively, the ending isn’t a [happily ever after]; nonetheless, the main sexual, emotional relationship is functionally master/slave, and while that’s not the Patron/Docile terminology used in the book, that’s functionally what it is. That the vast majority of the book is spent interrogating the fuckedupedness of this relationship in particular and the nature of consent in general is certainly important – tags or no tags, Szpara understands exactly what he’s writing about, to the extent that the book itself has a trigger warning on the back cover – but even so, that doesn’t obligate anyone to be comfortable with it.

Comments

[jhameia]

I'd read the review some time back and agreed with it wholeheartedly, but re-reading it again has given me some food for thought on some of the "isekai" stories I've been reading and finding myself dissatisfied with.

On the one hand I wasn't surprised to hear about the omissions, given that DOCILE is a novella so I imagine there might have been too much to stick in, but on the other, it's still possible within the constraints of the novella form to have touched on that kind of worldbuilding, so I'll be giving it a pass for now.

[schneefink]

I especially like that first paragraph you copied, makes a lot of sense for why reading fic feels like it takes much less brainpower.