{"id":3072,"date":"2022-03-30T07:50:12","date_gmt":"2022-03-30T11:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/fanworks\/?page_id=3072"},"modified":"2025-04-27T16:36:36","modified_gmt":"2025-04-27T20:36:36","slug":"autres-temps-autres-moeurs","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/fanworks\/autres-temps-autres-moeurs\/","title":{"rendered":"Autres temps, autres m\u0153urs\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-indent: .25in; margin-bottom: 0;\">It\u2019s been a minute, hasn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: .25in; margin-bottom: 0;\">In January 2001, when I began writing fan fiction, the world was a bit of a different place.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: .25in; margin-bottom: 0;\">The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were still standing. The U.S. hadn\u2019t yet had a Black President, a serious female contender for the Presidency, or\u2026 well, the less said about her opponent, the better. Cell phones were only just starting to make it into the pockets of average consumers, smart phones and tablets didn\u2019t exist, DVD was only just starting to supplant VHS, HDTV was still on the drawing board\u2026 and a \u201cfacebook\u201d was a physical book your college yearbook staff put out at the start of the year so you could see the faces of your classmates while you still had time to <s>stalk the cute ones<\/s> get to know them.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: .25in; margin-bottom: 0;\">Technology and society have changed a lot since then. A lot of things that we took for granted are gone, and a lot of the things that replaced them were completely unexpected. And a lot of social customs, and ideas of what was or wasn\u2019t acceptable, were different, too. My stories were informed by that world, for better or worse. Things that made perfect sense back then may seem strange now. Things that seemed completely normal and fine may seem\u2026 off or even (god forbid) offensive.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: .25in;\">So I thought I\u2019d talk about those changes a little here, just in case you find yourself wondering about them. And some other things that were affected by time.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: -20px;\"><b>Apprentice<\/b> &#8211; If I had any idea that, the year after I finished writing this, its title would be co-opted for a reality show starring one of my least favorite people on the <i>planet<\/i> (seriously, my dislike for the man dates back to the \u201980s)\u2026 I promise you, I would have chosen another name for it. But that\u2019s not the only issue here. There are some social constructs that come up within the story that were pretty much the norm at the time \u2014 and, while they were critiqued by some, the critiques had yet to reach critical mass \u2014 but don\u2019t cut it now. When I was preparing the manuscript for eBook format, I especially found myself thinking about the way that Jack tried to use nonverbal cues via clothes and \u201caccidental\u201d flirtatious behavior to try to make Riddick notice her and make a move\u2026 rather than just telling him how she felt. This was an extremely common trope of the period, but definitely not healthy behavior. And Riddick\u2019s concern about Jack going out \u201cdressed like that,\u201d on at least one occasion\u2026 well, that doesn\u2019t fly now either, does it? If I were writing the book today, I would definitely find other ways for them to ratchet up the tension. I also would have left out, or reworded\/rethought, one or two references to trans people that come up in the story, because the terminology that was the norm back then has definitely been discarded and replaced with better options. The story also brings up some issues about non-con and semi-non-con that I will address further down. Technology-wise\u2026 well, I\u2019m pretty sure Jack was using diskettes to save the Charybdis files she downloaded. I don\u2019t know why I thought they\u2019d still exist in ten years\u2019 time, much less several centuries from now, but\u2026 \ud83e\udd26\ud83c\udffd\u200d\u2640\ufe0f<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>Oddly enough, a recent conversation on AO3 resulted in my realization that the story, itself, got hijacked somewhat by 9\/11. I had been writing a lot of espionage angles into the story and had originally envisioned an endgame in which Riddick would probably take down\/break the Charybdis Project, and possibly even the Tribunal itself\u2026 until 9\/11 happened and suddenly a huge chunk of my readership began signaling that they really didn\u2019t want to read a story in which \u201cour\u201d (future) government was the villain. Although at the time I had thought that the writer\u2019s block I developed as I produced the final chapters of the story was due to several nasty incidents of plagiarism that occurred during that time (it can be very hard to feel inspired when you\u2019ve just caught people praising someone else for your work), I now think another factor was that I had to redirect the story into an endgame that I hadn\u2019t originally intended, and one that I think doesn\u2019t stand up as well to the passage of time as my original Riddick-as-agent-of-chaos plans for the story would have. But the work kind of institutionalized itself enough that I don\u2019t feel like I can make that fundamental a change to its plot more than two decades later. Oh well.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: -20px;\"><b>Brave<\/b> \u2014 just making a note here that this was written eight years before the Pixar film of the same name came out. Seriously, this is the danger of one-word titles.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: -20px;\"><b>Come With Me<\/b> \u2014 So here\u2019s where the whole issue of non-con and semi-non-con hits hardest, because when I wrote this, I was a subscriber to several PB\/VD mailing lists and message boards where Riddick was viewed as \u201cthe Ultimate Dom\u201d and stories about him being rather\u2026 forceful\u2026 with his partners were fairly normal to run across. So a story in which, instead of rebelling and forcing Riddick to go back to get Imam and Jack, Fry caves and lets him make her into his erotic plaything\u2026 well, it was a pretty big hit with a lot of those groups. But it <i>is<\/i> a pretty dark situation. An underlying issue is that, within the BDSM world, many of the consensual scenarios that people play out are deliberately crafted to simulate <i>non<\/i>-consensual scenarios (which is why safe-words are needed, so that \u201cno!\u201d and \u201cstop!\u201d can be freed up for dramatic rather than literal usage), and so stories about those scenarios are very popular. Neither the readers or the writers of those stories would actually condone a real-life non-con scenario\u2026 but there\u2019s always the danger that someone who doesn\u2019t understand that context and its rules will misinterpret what they\u2019re reading.\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Later in 2001, we would actually see this on one site. Another writer, Kes94, posted a work called \u201cGhosts of the Past,\u201d in which a genuinely evil Riddick was abusing and tormenting Jack\u2026 and a lot of the readers were saying things like \u201che can sneak through my window any time!\u201d because they were so accustomed to portrayals of eroticized non-con that they saw a story about <i>actual abuse<\/i> through that lens. That sobered a lot of us up about how the subject matter was being handled. Cultural paradigm shifts like \u201centhusiastic consent\u201d and the \u201cMe, Too\u201d movement were years away still, but even a few months after I\u2019d written this, I think I would have conceived of the whole thing very differently.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: -20px;\"><b>Even Lions Have Their Pride<\/b> \u2014 Technology went in a different direction than I expected, tbh. I was watching computer laptops get smaller and smaller, and was kind of anticipating the arrival of the netbooks that would briefly dominate stores in the late \u201900s before the iPad came along and killed them <i>dead<\/i>\u2026 and so I gave Jack a \u201cpalmtop,\u201d essentially a mini-netbook because I just wasn\u2019t envisioning smartphones or tablets at <i>all.<\/i> But who knows? It could still happen. \ud83d\ude06<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: -20px;\"><b>Forbidden Gifts<\/b> \u2014 There are more than a few <i>Harry Potter<\/i> references embedded in the story and woven into the narrative. I was a huge fan at the time. Less so now, though, given the way that JKR came out as a raging TERF (among other things). I\u2019m leaving the references alone for now, but there definitely won\u2019t be any more in future chapters.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: -20px;\"><b>Frozen<\/b> \u2014 OMFG I am <i>never<\/i> using one-word titles again! Again, this was eight years before Disney took it over\u2026 \ud83e\udd37\ud83c\udffd\u200d\u2640\ufe0f<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: -20px;\"><b>Surprise Present<\/b> \u2014 Riddick has a videotape. A <i>videotape.<\/i> I mean, they were still common when I was writing this and all, but\u2026 ignoring the fact that physical media are on their way out altogether, I couldn\u2019t even give him a <i>disc?<\/i> \ud83d\ude44<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-indent: .25in; margin-bottom: 0;\">Those were the big things that struck me as I was preparing my stories for the re-launch. In all likelihood, there are more that you will spot along the way. Just remember\u2026 many of these stories are old enough to drive, vote, or even drink. The world has changed, I\u2019ve changed, and probably you have changed since then, in ways we\u2019d never have guessed at the time. One of the axioms that my film and lit professors drilled into my head is that no story is truly about the time in which it is set; all stories are about the times in which they are written. So remember to glance at the \u201cFirst Posted \/ Last Updated\u201d dates on a story and bear in mind that you\u2019re going to be looking at the world of the story through the lens of that time.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: .25in; margin-bottom: 0;\">But if anything feels too egregious, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/contact-me\/\">please do let me know<\/a>. I\u2019m absolutely willing to revise away things that have morphed, over the years, from harmless to offensive. I want these stories to entertain, not alienate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s been a minute, hasn\u2019t it? In January 2001, when I began writing fan fiction, the world was a bit of a different place. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were still standing. The U.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"bgseo_title":"Ardath Rekha: Autres temps, autres moeurs\u2026","bgseo_description":"It\u2019s been a minute, hasn\u2019t it? 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