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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13767
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This is a drama by Victor Tomas made up of parts:
- My Best Friend
- My BoyFriend
- Outed
- Payback
I'm interested in how it has been perceived. So is Victor. Each part is a very different phase in the protagonists' lives, relationships. For part four I chse to put a 'reader discretion' warning. However I didn't think twice about publshing it.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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SPOILER ALERT
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First, I am surprised that I'm the first person responding to this thread. I don't get here often, but there are a lot of regulars here. Am I the only one with a reaction?
First the good. Art is "supposed" to stir up emotion. I will remember this story for a long time, so in this respect the story succeeds. And it is a powerful demonstration of the tragedy that homophobia can spawn.
I also think it's OK if a protagonist dies tragically. In one of Mihangel Hwntw's stories here, several years ago, he abruptly ended the series with the violent death of some beloved characters. I agree with his rationale (expressed to me in an e-mail exchange) that (if my memory serves) he wanted to portray the awful consequences of jingoistic militarism. It should be noted that Mihangel's protagonists departed as heroes.
He Was My Best Friend is different: in the end, Scott became a monster. I don't think that was necessary or helpful. Yes, the murderous villains needed to die, but it could have been by their own ineptness or because of dissension within their ranks. Living in the USA, where school shootings (often by bullied kids) occur with some regularity, I worry that some readers might take the message that Scott's actions were somehow justified, even if he had to sacrifice himself to carry them out.
I have another small quibble with this story (and with many others that I have seen on gay story sites): The adults' homophobia portrayed one-dimensional. Yes, I am sure there are people like the principal, the coach, and the father, but usually their bigotry comes out in more subtle and nuanced ways. And in the real world of 2001, the ACLU (and others) were successfully holding such people to account.
One thing I thought was true to life was the principal's whitewashing of Scott's death. I also liked the final newspaper article, which provided a ray of hope that further investigation would be undertaken.
I have read one other story by Victor Thomas: Summer Competition. In contrast to the darkness of this story, that one showed the compassion and humanity of everyone involved.
[Updated on: Mon, 09 September 2024 19:15] |
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Bisexual_Guy
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Likes it here |
Location: USA Midwest
Registered: September 2015
Messages: 156
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Two or three years ago, Victor and I exchanged emails on a story or two. Since we did that, I have figured out where in the USA "Chouteau" is -- and Victor told me that someday he probably would write the much-less-than-happy events which eventually helped turn the tide in Chouteau toward a more tolerant situation. I am guessing these stories cover much of that.
Some things about the stories I did not care for. But keep in mind, this happened in KANSAS USA, one of the least LGBTQ accepting states in the USA. Unfortunately, more events like these have happened, and continue to happen, and there is an upswing of anti-LGBTQ sentiment in Kansas and most of the states surrounding it. In the county of a neighbor state to Kansas, in the county where I grew up, and in the last five years, a trans person was tortured and murdered by some older teens. As I recall, the county prosecuting attorney ended up charging most of them with "abandonment of a corpse" as the main charge, with secondary charges of torture and murder. The first charge was pursued much more vigorously than the murder charge. All part of the redneck attitude too common in my part of the country.
So, though unfortunate, this type of story is all too frequent, even quite a few years after the events of those stories. I wish it were not this way.
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Victor
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Getting started |
Location: Southwest Missoure
Registered: July 2017
Messages: 6
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I hesitated to have Scott kill himself at the end, but as I thought about it I decided I needed to. Unfortuantely, that's the sad result of homophobia in a lot of cases. Most of my previous stories have a mostly positive message about tolerance in Chouteau, as the result of several tragic events in the past. I thought I need to show how much progress has been made, not only in Kansas but in the United States as a whole in the last twenty or thirty years. I grew up in the seventies and I remember how intolerant most people were at the time. It took me into my twenties before I finally accepted myself. Our country seems to be going backwards in some areas, including gay rights, but it's still one hundred percent better than it was when I was in school. I may have gone to far in the last part with all the violence, but at the time it seemed okay. And in case anyone is wondering, i am working on something else, but it will be set in the current time and won't have any extreme violence or anything like that. And Chouteau is a real town in Southeast Kansas, I just changed the name slightly. Anyone who wanted to figure it out could just read the stories and note the other towns I mention by their real names, and get an atlas of the four state area of Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas. I actually live in Joplin Mo, which I think I mention in almost every story. Most of the places are real, and the town I describe is the way it was when I was in school back in the seventies. If you drove through it today, you'd be tempted to speed up in order to get through it quickly. Just be careful because it's kind of a speed trap.LOL It's really gone downhill in the last forty years. If anyone hasn't noticed, a lot of the characters in my stories that are set in later years as adults, are featured as high school students in this story, Brendan, the football coach, being the most used. I'm trying to think of an idea with him as the main character in his own story. We'll see what happens I guess.
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Mark
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Likes it here |
Location: Earth
Registered: April 2013
Messages: 279
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(Note: continuing on with the "spoilers" warning on both this and the author's earlier story "Secrets").
In some ways, I'm feeling the same way as I did with the earlier story "Secrets." A part of me wants to say that no one these days (or more specifically, folks back in the late '90s and early '00s when the storis were set) would act the way some of the characters did - not just calling someone names or throwing a few punches if you think could get away with it, but also outright assault (to the point of putting someone in the hospital, or worse!) and rape. But another part of me wants to acknowledge the very real (and thus very scary) possibility that such things could have occurred in some more conservative areas. As has been mentioned already, art is supposed to get us thinking about a wide variety of things, and sometimes those things are not always pleasant things.
I do remember a conversation here several years ago on another story, and how one person commenting was rather put out that not all stories posted here were, in their words, "innocent love stories," and a part of me feels the same. It would be nice if nothing ever bad happened to any of the characters, even in stories that ultimately have a happy ending (which, in all honesty, doesn't happen in this case even remotely). It isn't really fun to read a story where the main character is a prick (as with "Secrets") or where they feel that life is not worth living because they've lost someone dear to them and thus decide to end their own life because of it (I was hoping that Scott could have happiness with Brian, then later was hoping that he could somehow bring Ashton and the others to justice before finding love again at some point in the future). But if these stories cause us to stop and think about how we treat people (or how we allow others in our presence to be treated), then maybe they've accomplished something.
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Kitzyma
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Likes it here |
Registered: March 2012
Messages: 226
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I agree, Mark; real life isn't always good, and art mirrors that.
Even great works of literature can have a sad ending or can be unpleasant to read.
Having said that, real life nowadays is so full of horrible and unpleasant things (wars, pandemics, poverty, bigotry, homophobia, rapes, murders, cruelty to children, hostage-taking, etc, etc.) that some of us prefer to find stories that make us feel better. Yes, it is 'escapism', but is that really a bad thing? To be honest, I'm the same with all forms of entertainment: movies, TV, reading, etc. If I want to feel depressed, I can just watch the TV news.
At the end of a story (or movie, etc.), I like to feel uplifted and more hopeful. That is possible, even with stories that don't have a particularly happy ending; for example, if the protagonist(s) can be better/wiser people who can have hopes for a better future. Even with a sad ending, there can be hopes for salvation.
No matter how traumatic the experiences of the protagonists might be in the course of a story, I yearn for and hope for a happy ending. Of course, there is nothing wrong with stories that have gritty realism and that may be unpleasant to read. However, they are not my personal preference, especially if the ending leaves us without hope.
Imagine how you'd feel if you read through all of The Lord of the Rings and found that at the end Frodo and Sam are killed and that Sauron got the Ring!
It's good when there is some sort of warning about a story before I read it (as is the case regarding the warning about graphic violence in Payback). However, I realise that any such warning would be a spoiler, and it could completely ruin a story if we were told that there was no possibility of a happy ending.
[Updated on: Sun, 22 September 2024 09:57] |
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13767
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It's difficult when a story, gritty and gripping, is worthy of publication, yet has elements which some readers will find to be unpleasant.
- Should a warning be present?
- Just how detailed does any warning need to be?
I hope I got this one right. I wanted it to be obvious, yet not intrusive, so it appears both on the author index page and at the top of chapter one.
What interested me was that this tale is complete both with and without the final section, yet the final section is absolutely not an afterthought. It's written with pace and purpose, and it isn't there to tidy up loose ends in any facile manner. There are still loose ends as it closes.
While most tales here are those with happy(ish!) endings, the few without leaven what might become universal sweetness.
[Updated on: Mon, 23 September 2024 08:34]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Kitzyma
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Likes it here |
Registered: March 2012
Messages: 226
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Timmy, I don't think that it's practically possible to have a warning about an ending without spoiling the story.
The warning about graphic violence in Payback isn't a spoiler because it desn't give away the ending - it merely gives an idea of content. A story with such conrent could still have a happy ending.
As a gross oversimplification, I suggest that the majority of stories ever created, going back to before writing was invented, will have endings which are happy to some extent or other. After all, most people want to feel better after reading/hearing/seeing a story, so when a story makes them feel unhappy, they'll avoid that storyteller. Well, maybe that doesn't apply to horror stories, where we can expect someone to reach a horrible end. 
Also, maybe some parables that are intended as lessons will have an unhappy ending. But even then, when there is a bad ending for the protagonist, there is the message that the unhappy ending can be avoided by learning the lesson of the parable.
What I'm trying to say, in my usual long-winded manner, is that reading a story is like picking chocolates from a box without any menu or previous experience. Sometimes we get a deliciously unusual choc, sometimes we get one we like but have had lots of times before, and sometimes we get one that we really don't like. If we had a menu, we could avoid the ones we don't like, but maybe we'd miss out on the unusual ones that we will like.
Another possible problem with warnings about unhappy endings is that of trying to decide when it is really unhappy. Is it unhappy just because it is unsatisfactory or is too open-ended? Or is it unhappy only if something terrible happens to a protagonist we've grown to love? Is it unhappy if the two lovers are split apart by parent's moving, or only if one of the lovers dies horribly?
In summary, apart from warnings about content (e.g. graphic violence) that may be unpleasant, I don't think it's practical, or even desirable, to have warnings about endings. We just have to try the chocs from the box and hope we get a nice one. If not, we can try to avoid chocs with similar characteristics in future. The vast majority of sories that I've read to the end on this site leave me feeling happier, and I know which authors to look out for. So, I'm prepaed to take the risk of reading without needing a warning.
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