Why I dislike MLC

[apollinav]

Yes, I'm aware that I'm being a hipocrite.  Thank you.  I've just finished posting Ch 61 of my MLC Fic.

MLC for some girls out there is real.  There's nothing glorious about forced marriage.  A lot of MLCs romanticise them - not to knock any particular author.  MLC is fiction.  This is real life.  Big difference.  I get it.

But this still bothers me.  

And I'm not going to listen to 'cultural sensitivity issues' bullcrap - I don't care that it's a cultural practice.   According to my values, it's morally wrong.

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE5815E920090902?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&rpc=69

Comments

[miamadwyn.livejournal.com]

So are you actually saying that you've decided you don't like Marriage Law Challenge fics, or that you don't like arranged/forced marriages in RL?

[apollinav.livejournal.com]

I like most MLCs. Honestly, I do. Fantasy vs RL.

I have a big huge honking problem with FORCED marriage, which is non-con in RL. And I would have a big problem with any MLC fic that glorified a non-con relationship. Most don't, in fact I can't think of an example of one where a bride was forced by the ministry and it didn't somehow work out.

Arranged marriages can work. But usually there's a level of choice there. I'm good with that.

[miamadwyn.livejournal.com]

There have been a few anti-MLCs where people wrote with that in mind, that it shouldn't work, that to write one where it does is unrealistic to these characters and it glorifies something ugly, etc. I understand why some people wouldn't like them. I also understand why somebody are tired of them and complain that there are too many and there's nothing new and why do this again and again....

Except that there is always something new, as you proved with the magnificent Gilded Cage. And for the most part, the authors who write "another boring MLC" probably would have been writing something else boring if not the MLC, that it's about a writer's imagination getting tweaked and their ability to take you somewhere wonderful--no matter the premise.

After all, how much fiction is the same old story retold? How many movies? And yet, the same old story retold can be transcendent in the hands of somebody with a new perspective.

[apollinav.livejournal.com]

Oh sure, absolutely. It's very refreshing to read new and different - and with this creative lot, it happens often and in wonderful ways. Fiction is great. Reality sucks.