any beef with the way writers treat (BDSM) gags?

[Kumquatqueen]

It's not a thing I've noticed - if anything, anyone gagged in fiction manages to make loud "Mmmph!" noises. Or was that just Nancy Drew?

I do notice that in LitBDSM no-one ever is at risk of falling over, getting tired, losing circulation, or anything else. But then LitSeduction and LitSex aren't much better.

I tried searching for the tag 'realistic BDSM' and variants. If anything, the stories that claim to be realistic are even less so than typical Lit stories. Which does make me wonder what is going on in their authors heads. They must know how gravity works, and the basics of human bodies... Is it a fantasy that it could be 'real', like the porn of 'Readers' Wives'?

 

[dct10538]

From Brian Guevara:

There's been a lot of talk on this page about "bad gags" and no I'm not talking about Billy Crystals hosting job on last night's Oscars. (Ha, ha! I got a million of em!) No, I'm talking about those flimsy pieces of cloth tied loosely over a woman's mouth that Hollywood claims will render her completely silent. I thought it'd be great to hear what female thought of such gags. He's what a female movie critic, Eva Vandergeld, in her review of the Jennifer Lopez stinker, Gigli, said about such gags. This is from the Jabootu bad movie website:

"OK. Let’s kick off this review with one of my weird asides. The guy in the dryer is gagged with a thin rag tied loosely around his head. But he mumbles in response to Affleck’s queries like he’s got a pillow over his head or something—even though it’s pretty obvious to me he could speak quite clearly if he wanted. Or even yell for help. Hey, now there’s an idea! Yelling for help.

Now, I’ve never had reason to test this theory first hand, but it seems to me that this is indicative of many a schlockly movie playing the woman-in-distress card—a little piece of tape over the mouth and voila! a silent damsel waiting wide-eyed for rescue by the mesomorphic hero.

Well, take it from this (air raid) siren: no Hollywood gag comprised of a little strip of duct tape or rag would prevent me from pitching a fit so loud you’d hear it from orbit. Note to female characters in Seven knock-offs: from now on, no more sitting in wide-eyed silent terror. (And, while we’re at it: no more helplessly pounding the back of the abductor while being hauled off to the cave and no more threatening the villain with a too-big pistol held in a shaky hand and then the safety’s on and its not even loaded"

 

[KittyOfSteele]

My gags are simple and improvised, just like my leashes and bindings. Neckties are fun.

Next on the agenda, spy novels and hit-man movies which inaccurately portray the effectiveness of “silencers” on guns.

Or chainsaws being portrayed as the actual ineffective weapons they are in the next horror flick.

 

[dct10538]

My gags are simple and improvised...

I have found doorknobs to be interesting.

 

[countdowntolov3]

From Brian Guevara:

There's been a lot of talk on this page about "bad gags" and no I'm not talking about Billy Crystals hosting job on last night's Oscars. (Ha, ha! I got a million of em!) No, I'm talking about those flimsy pieces of cloth tied loosely over a woman's mouth that Hollywood claims will render her completely silent. I thought it'd be great to hear what female thought of such gags. He's what a female movie critic, Eva Vandergeld, in her review of the Jennifer Lopez stinker, Gigli, said about such gags. This is from the Jabootu bad movie website:

"OK. Let’s kick off this review with one of my weird asides. The guy in the dryer is gagged with a thin rag tied loosely around his head. But he mumbles in response to Affleck’s queries like he’s got a pillow over his head or something—even though it’s pretty obvious to me he could speak quite clearly if he wanted. Or even yell for help. Hey, now there’s an idea! Yelling for help.

Now, I’ve never had reason to test this theory first hand, but it seems to me that this is indicative of many a schlockly movie playing the woman-in-distress card—a little piece of tape over the mouth and voila! a silent damsel waiting wide-eyed for rescue by the mesomorphic hero.

Well, take it from this (air raid) siren: no Hollywood gag comprised of a little strip of duct tape or rag would prevent me from pitching a fit so loud you’d hear it from orbit. Note to female characters in Seven knock-offs: from now on, no more sitting in wide-eyed silent terror. (And, while we’re at it: no more helplessly pounding the back of the abductor while being hauled off to the cave and no more threatening the villain with a too-big pistol held in a shaky hand and then the safety’s on and its not even loaded"

I think what makes the gag question so weird is that... we all have the same mouth.

It's easy to assume a lot of unrealistic tropes come from the writer's misunderstanding of a group. Maybe the writer hasn't been the receiver of anal sex, so they handle lube flippantly. Or insert any number of "man-writing-woman" tropes here.

But, like, you don't need to be getting sodomized in a dungeon every weekend to know how the human mouth works.

(For what it's worth, I don't think there's anything wrong with writing into these tropes, even if they aren't my preference as a reader. But I do find it a head-scratcher that this one exists.)

 

[dct10538]

I think what makes the gag question so weird is that... we all have the same mouth.

It's easy to assume a lot of unrealistic tropes come from the writer's misunderstanding of a group. Maybe the writer hasn't been the receiver of anal sex, so they handle lube flippantly. Or insert any number of "man-writing-woman" tropes here.

But, like, you don't need to be getting sodomized in a dungeon every weekend to know how the human mouth works.

(For what it's worth, I don't think there's anything wrong with writing into these tropes, even if they aren't my preference as a reader. But I do find it a head-scratcher that this one exists.)

I agree; it would seem to be the kind of thing you could test sitting at your desk. My sub came to me with a couple of gags from her self- bondage days. There is a wide variance of effectiveness to be sure. Consider the difference between some rag and a head harness panel gag with a mouth insert and teeth grooves. (I just realized typing that what a weird rabbit hole we've gone down.) And yet media outlets seem to treat them the same.

 

[dct10538]

In my experience understandability with a gag in is less about how big the gag is and more about where it sits in your mouth. Gags that are set far back on the tongue--because of their shape, or because of where the strap tensions--can make articulating really hard.

That being said, magic total silencing gags are an immersion breaker for me too. I can express quite a variety of opinions just using my nose and throat!

My experience from observation is the same, and it needs to be held in place deep in the mouth. The more silencing the gag, the more likely you have to remain close to the wearer for safety.

 

[filthytrancendence]

I appreciate the thoughtful response! this makes sense to me but it makes more sense if writing a kidnapped protagonist scene for basic cable, rather than the kind of thing I write around here. as others have noted, the kind of sounds that make it past a gag have their own uses in plot and dramatic tension.

But the more I think about your other, more fancy words, the more I think it's actually pointing to a more fundamental set of choices writers make, and should be aware they're making. Namely, adherence to tropes might annoy people knowledgeable about whatever your subject is, so be careful and deliberate about when you're doing it.

I've read a hundred stories on here that feature chastity and still have someone in the comments who needs to tell the author that actually, chastity locks are flimsy and really easy to remove. I always think this tedious, but it also makes me think there's clearly a segment of the audience that appreciates these kinds of tropes and their associated details being addressed without breaking them out of the story, and I strive to find that balance.

I'm trying to avoid the temptation to get in an argument with lobster in every thread, so I'm indulging a middle ground of arguing with his position in your direction instead...

There's lots of writers that would disagree with the notion that adherence to tropes ought to trump verisimilitude. You'll be shocked to learn I'm one of them. I think that sentence misunderstands the function of a trope to begin with. And the example lobster gave later on about the memory stick in Skyfall is a pretty perfect example of why that's nonsense. Would Skyfall not have been improved if someone with more infosec knowledge came up with an equally expedient but more plausible way for the MI:6 computers to become compromised? Obviously. Adherence to the trope didn't gain anything, it just irked the small portion of the audience that knew better. It was convenient. It worked for 95% of the audience. The other 5% had to actively suspend their disbelief for a while, though. And that's what we're trying to avoid wherever possible.

Now, it's literally impossible to have enough knowledge about every single thing you write for your stuff to read as plausible to everyone at every knowledge level on every topic. Everybody's got blind spots. But this is more or less the point of the truism 'write what you know.' The most critical bits of your story ought to align most closely with your personal knowledge of the world, because that is the most reliable way to make something very believable.

To bring it back to gags, I'm with you. I may or may not have admonished somebody on this very thing not long ago. I don't think it's too much to ask a writer who wants to write a BDSM scene with a gag to spend a bit of time learning how exactly it works and what it does to the wearer. If they don't do that, I think it's a cop out to fall back on 'well that's just the trope.' If somebody pointed an oversight like this out to me, my response would be 'oh damn, that's awkward. Thanks for educating me.'

Even if it's true that the magic silencing gag is a common trope (and I'm not convinced that's the case), all that means is that it's common for writers to write the thing badly. A trope isn't some magic formula. It's just a thing that gets done a lot. Usually there's a reason for that. Sometimes, as in this case, that reason is ignorance. Of all the reasons to keep using a trope, that's about the worst one there is.

 

[TheLobster]

I'm trying to avoid the temptation to get in an argument with lobster in every thread, (...)

Aww, how thoughtful Let's just call it productive discussion then, shall we?

Would Skyfall not have been improved if someone with more infosec knowledge came up with an equally expedient but more plausible way for the MI:6 computers to become compromised? Obviously.

Would it? I think that's quite subjective. A more realistic way would involve much more complexity and a bunch of events happening off-screen that could only really be hinted at without bogging down the narrative with a bunch of technical details. It wouldn't fit the style of the movie as a whole, because, let's face it, Bond flicks aren't exactly the height of cerebral entertainment.

But that's just one example; I'm happy to accept that there is a way not to make the few thousand geeks cringe when we see it. The issue here is broader.

Now, it's literally impossible to have enough knowledge about every single thing you write for your stuff to read as plausible to everyone at every knowledge level on every topic.

Yes, but even more importantly: there is simply not enough space and time. In any non-trivial narrative, especially set in a complex setting such as the fullness of the contemporary world, you just can't realistically deal with pertinent details of even the important plot points. You have to take shortcuts and offend that 5% of the audience; and it's usually fine because it's a different 5% every time, meaning no one, or very few people, have their disbelief seriously damaged for any prolonged stretch of the narrative.

This is why we have tropes: because writing without tropes simply doesn't scale. You can say that using them might be a sight of ignorance of the real world, but at the same time it is equally a sign of savvy. Of genre savvy, that is: knowing what you can get away with it without losing a significant chunk of your audience along the way.

 

[jsmiam]

Every time I see this thread I hope it’s about something like “the naked gun” and/or “airplane” movies and their gags.

Priscilla Presley in latex, with a zipper style gag covering her mouth. Leslie Nielsen in leather.

Leslie: “Do you have any beef with this gag?”

Priscilla: (unzipping the gag to speak). “No, I had liver. I ate it with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

That sort of thing. i think it would help!

Incidentally I randomly happened across this: folklore says that famous line from silence of the lambs is also a medical joke, since psychiatric patients taking maoi meds are supposed to avoid liver, beans, and alcohol, so it’s not just creepy, it’s Hannibal Lecter saying “I’m obviously not taking my meds!”

 

[Britva415]

Since BDSM is play, the gagging is consensual, and the stakes are zero, the situation here is very different from when a crime story or spy story gets the realism wrong.

 

[Britva415]

this was inspired by a story that claimed a bit gag prevented all "audible" noises, and I feel like a grump complaining about it at all but I wondered if similarly minded folk also noticed this while reading

ONE story?

Y'know what, yeah, that actually is pretty grumpy.

 

[dct10538]

ONE story?

Y'know what, yeah, that actually is pretty grumpy.

There is nothing wrong with a little grumpiness.

 

[Britva415]

There is nothing wrong with a little grumpiness.

I'm sure it's a majorly enjoyable kink for some!

But, just saying out loud that "that's scat" isn't yucking someone else's yum.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Sorry, my ball gag is too tight, and the cuffs are so close together, I can't say or type a thing.

 

[dct10538]

Sorry, my ball gag is too tight, and the cuffs are so close together, I can't say or type a thing.

A person after my own heart.

 

[FrancesScott]

curious if anyone wants to join my campaign to get writers to treat gags differently. very few gags prevent significant noise/screaming, and a great many people can speak while gagged in a mostly understandable way. this was inspired by a story that claimed a bit gag prevented all "audible" noises, and I feel like a grump complaining about it at all but I wondered if similarly minded folk also noticed this while reading.

Ball gags make it pretty difficult to recite Shakespearean sonnets. It’s hard to stick to the iambic pentameter. But a rag stretched across the oral commissures? Yeah you could pretty much talk with something like that in place.