Where exactly is "the line" when it comes to non-consent?

SFCTaleSpinner

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My problem: my fanfic just got rejected because Literotica doesn't do non-con involving copyrighted characters. Need to fix.

So it'll help to know exactly what I can get away with in terms of unwanted advances.

See, my non-con scene is pivotal to the plot and characterization of my story. I've got a male character who has a perennial hard-on for my female character. But she's in a relationship and more to the point, she'll never be interested in the guy because he's a sleazebag.

As is, the male character invites himself into a sexual encounter between the woman and her boyfriend. He sticks his dick in her crack (without going full anal) and dry humps it a little. She gives him a weak little "no," as she's horny and in two minds about whether she wants to go full threesome or not. Then she makes up her mind and decides that she isn't in to it. She gives the guy a firm "No!" while pushing him off and that puts a stop to it - the guy doesn't push it any further.

The actual mechanics aren't really important. But what is important is that whatever happens needs to be really offensive to the woman and make her utterly furious with the guy. It also needs to be keeping with the theme that the guy really wants to screw her.

He's an obnoxious jerk who has long been giving the woman crap and she's kind of learned to take his tamer crap (i.e. crass innuendo, leering at her, fleeting bodily contact) in her stride. So for the 'incident' to have the impact it needs, the guy needs to take it to the next level.

As I said, it's a really pivotal scene. It occurs at the beginning and basically dictates the entire course of the story to follow.

Can someone in the know let me know what kind of leeway I have here to pass the Literotica standards? If anyone has any ideas about how to rework it, I'd be grateful! :)
 
The problem is not with your non-con. The problem is using copyrighted characters.

Fan Fiction is the glee club of literature. Write something with original characters in the same scene, and you're fine.
 
The problem is not with your non-con. The problem is using copyrighted characters.

Fan Fiction is the glee club of literature. Write something with original characters in the same scene, and you're fine.

Outside-the-box solution. Interesting. There's just a few concerns I have with this idea:

First of all, my story is peppered with references and character quirks that would make it abundantly clear to anyone who's seen the movie that my story is based on it. Several of these references, one odd character quirk in particular, play important roles in my story and would be difficult to write out.

So could I add an introductory passage explaining that the story was originally meant to be a fan fiction, without it prompting the mods to reject the story all over again?

Also, how cheeky can I be about making this story a non-fanfiction fanfiction? Could I retain all the character names? (None of the characters' surnames are ever mentioned in either the movie or my story - they are all just referred to by their common first names). If not, do you think I could at least get away with retaining my central pairing's names?

I know it's easy as pi to change names with MSWord's "Replace All" function, but for me, it just makes the story much more delicious if the main characters hooking up have the right names, to line up with my fantasies.

That's a very, very tame scene, all said and done.
My thoughts exactly. It was never inserted because I have a non-con kink, it was inserted because I needed the woman furious with the guy and his fixation with her. I thought I'd made it tame enough to not cause any problems, but obviously not.

But if you're using copyrighted characters, there are potential legal ramifications for portraying them in such a negative light (i.e. engaging in nonconsensual activities), and Lit has to protect itself.

You'd laugh if you knew what these characters get up to in the actual movie. For example, the guy we're talking about? He gets away with attempted murder in the movie! Yet here he can't get away with a little unsolicited buttfucking. :D

I know that Literotica has to set itself rules and stick to them. But the irony in this particular situation makes me laugh.
 
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You have two options. Stand firm on your artistic merit and try to find a home for your story as-is, OR rewrite it to preserve the experience you wanted to explore. There are pros and cons for each side, and nobody on this site can tell you which is more important to you .

"The frailty of genius is that it needs an audience." If all the clever easter eggs are what you want people to remember, then keep it as is. If the experience and the emotions rule, then rewrite it.
 
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You have two options. Stand firm on your artistic merit and try to find a home for your story as-is, OR rewrite it to preserve the experience you wanted to explore. There are pros and cons for each side, and nobody on this site can tell you which is more important to you .

"The frailty of genius is that it needs an audience." If all the clever easter eggs are what you want people to remember, then keep it as is. If the experience and the emotions rule, then rewrite it.

I don't mind rewriting the story. But I'm just trying to gauge how much rewriting I really need to do to make it work. Renaming the characters? No problem, if needs be.

Stripping away the tangential easter eggs? No problem.

But as I said, some of the references aren't so disposable. For example, one of the characters in the movie brings a hunting rifle along on a peaceful getaway vacation to hunt squirrels. It's a distinct character quirk - it takes a peculiar kind of character to bring a gun along on a leisure trip like this.

My story leans quite heavily on that distinct quirk, because it explains the presence of the gun, which is a major plot device in my story. So if I can't keep that character quirk, we are talking about a lot of rewriting.

I know lots of "artists", such as the porn industry, get away with their thinly-veiled parodies of famous works. They make things with titles like "Pirates Of The Cunnilingus: Starring Captain Mack Carrow", and it couldn't be more obvious what they are ripping off. I'm just wondering - could I get away with just not openly admitting that the characters in my story are based off another work, even though the likenesses would be abundantly clear to anyone familiar with the source work?
 
There is nothing new under the sun. Everything we do, in every aspect of our lives, is influenced by something else we saw, or by someone who touched us (PHRASING).

I can't speak for other authors, but many of my works are inspired by other movies, or by genre tropes. Sometimes it's more obvious than others.
 
I know lots of "artists", such as the porn industry, get away with their thinly-veiled parodies of famous works. They make things with titles like "Pirates Of The Cunnilingus: Starring Captain Mack Carrow", and it couldn't be more obvious what they are ripping off. I'm just wondering - could I get away with just not openly admitting that the characters in my story are based off another work, even though the likenesses would be abundantly clear to anyone familiar with the source work?

The line is where the submissions editor here, Laurel, draws it. It's only firm to the extent she maintains a firm line from story to story. There's nothing unpublishable somewhere in what you describe here. What is relevant for Literotica, though, is what the submissions editor thinks--and only what she thinks. And no one but Laurel can tell you whether a specific story will be above her line or not.
 
The line is where the submissions editor here, Laurel, draws it. It's only firm to the extent she maintains a firm line from story to story. There's nothing unpublishable somewhere in what you describe here. What is relevant for Literotica, though, is what the submissions editor thinks--and only what she thinks. And no one but Laurel can tell you whether a specific story will be above her line or not.

Gotcha. Sounds like there's nothing more for it now but trial and error.

I'll change the secondary character names, cut the superfluous source references and all mentions of it being a fanfic and see how I go...
 
The problem is not with your non-con. The problem is using copyrighted characters.

Fan Fiction is the glee club of literature. Write something with original characters in the same scene, and you're fine.

Seems to make sense to me.
 
But as I said, some of the references aren't so disposable. For example, one of the characters in the movie brings a hunting rifle along on a peaceful getaway vacation to hunt squirrels. It's a distinct character quirk - it takes a peculiar kind of character to bring a gun along on a leisure trip like this.

My story leans quite heavily on that distinct quirk, because it explains the presence of the gun, which is a major plot device in my story. So if I can't keep that character quirk, we are talking about a lot of rewriting.

How much are you relying on the fanfic element to do your story telling for you? If you are, that could be considered lazy writing - and only works for those readers who know the source.

If you wrote your own characters, or at least give your "borrowed"* characters a self contained back story or motivation within the confines of the story itself; a) it will force you to write better because YOU will be fleshing out the characters (not the scriptwriter who came up with the characters in the first place); and b) the story will not need the external knowledge.

If the gun is a major plot device, your story needs to explain why that is so. You shouldn't rely on your reader maybe having seen episode four, series three.

As others have said, it seems your issue here isn't the non-con, the issue is the use of someone else's characters.

* other words may apply...
 
Can someone in the know let me know what kind of leeway I have here to pass the Literotica standards?

Just file the serial numbers off, honestly. It doesn't matter if the characters are recognizably similar if you're not using the actual copyrighted characters.
 
How much are you relying on the fanfic element to do your story telling for you? If you are, that could be considered lazy writing - and only works for those readers who know the source.

If you wrote your own characters, or at least give your "borrowed"* characters a self contained back story or motivation within the confines of the story itself; a) it will force you to write better because YOU will be fleshing out the characters (not the scriptwriter who came up with the characters in the first place); and b) the story will not need the external knowledge.

If the gun is a major plot device, your story needs to explain why that is so. You shouldn't rely on your reader maybe having seen episode four, series three.

As others have said, it seems your issue here isn't the non-con, the issue is the use of someone else's characters.

* other words may apply...

You don't need to know the movie to be able to understand my story. Everything that's going on is explained within the story.

My concern wasn't that readers wouldn't be able to understand the story, it was that they would read through the story and end up saying, "Hang on... Five college students vacationing in remote woods? One of them's a trigger-happy asshole wandering around hunting squirrels? This scenario's taken right out of that movie I saw..."

When you take the set-up and characters from another work and actually acknowledge that it's a fanfiction, nobody judges because you are being honest. But when you do it without acknowledging that you've based the story on that other work, it might come across as being shifty and rub the reader the wrong way.

As for the character who brings the gun... well, even the movie doesn't go into the gritty Freudian details about why he does what he does. Even the other characters seem to be perpetually asking, "WTF is wrong with you?"

My story handles him in very much the same way, because he is just a secondary character. He brings a gun along on his vacation to hunt squirrels because he's an immature asshole - simple as that.

It might sound like a cheap and shallow approach to the situation, but that's only because my story revolves around different characters. My story wasn't meant to be about exploring why the asshole is an asshole, it was meant to be about exploring how my principal characters respond to the upsetting things the asshole does. In that regard, there is a great deal of depth to the story, IMHO.
 
When you take the set-up and characters from another work and actually acknowledge that it's a fanfiction, nobody judges because you are being honest. But when you do it without acknowledging that you've based the story on that other work, it might come across as being shifty and rub the reader the wrong way.

You can still shout out the original if you really feel you must without using the actual copyrighted characters or worrying excessively about the degree of similarity to them. I maintain that you are way overthinking this.
 
My concern wasn't that readers wouldn't be able to understand the story, it was that they would read through the story and end up saying, "Hang on... Five college students vacationing in remote woods? One of them's a trigger-happy asshole wandering around hunting squirrels? This scenario's taken right out of that movie I saw..."

I think that's a legitimate concern. I think that including slug at the top of the story to the effect of "this story is a takeoff on xxx" might cover it for both Laurel and the readers.
 
More likely, identifying the inspiration at the beginning is going to cause it to get slated into the Celeb and Fanfic category, which brings everything back to square 1, since only the lightest reluctance will pass muster there, and nothing that sticks a toe over the line into noncon.

If there are elements of the source material that you can't remove, which you think will cause readers to say, "Wait a minute..." and the noncon is necessary to the story you want to tell, Lit may not be the right venue for the tale.

You can always try if you think you can tweak it to settle in another category, as there's no penalty for rejection. Unlike some other sites, breaking content rules doesn't result in other penalties, such as banning. The story gets rejected and that's the end of it.

There may very well be a point where you decide the changes necessary to pass muster here result in the story not being the one you wanted to tell, though. If that happens, its time to explore other options for this particular story.

I do think, as others have suggested, that you're overestimating how much the readers are going to care about recognizing the inspiring source material. Other than the hyper-nitpicky categories like Loving Wives, you get as many comments that are positive in this regard as negative. People like to feel smart when they recognize that inspiration. Unless you're appropriating a lot of the source material, which it doesn't sound like you are, I wouldn't worry so much about it.
 
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