Feedback updates

Feedback. I've already gone into it, but you've no idea how nerve-wracking it can be to have someone else looking at you WIP. It can wither the nerves and castrate the soul to think of your poor draft manuscript being scrutinised by someone who you don't know. What if they dissect and vivisect the entire principle you've built the text on? What if they're too distracted by the unpolished prose to actually give you the feedback you need? It's hell, I tell you!

The feedback was generally positive, aside from one section, which very clearly highlighted what cultural differences can do to something. The scene was about one character fending off another who was being controlled by the "antagonist" of that story. Now, my story is based on Japanese culture and folklore, and that kind of innuendo-based humour is quite common there. But it's also something that the Western world will rightly not tolerate; sexual harassment.

To quote from the beta reader's email feedback to me; "My one other comment would be to say that reading the controlled guard sexually harassing the kitsune was pretty uncomfortable to read as a woman. I didn't really find that funny and while I do appreciate that this kind of comedy is often present in Jpop culture it isn't something I would like to encourage. Perhaps there could be another source of distraction for the kitsune from this controlled guard? Maybe he is mega handsome? Maybe it's a beautiful woman her who engages the kitsune in a conversation about how rubbish it is that that cop keeps staring at her and they can share a joke about him doing something weird? I dunno I leave that in your hands but I couldnt in good conscience not give my 2p on that point."

You'll be pleased to know that I never felt very comfortable with that section, but with some solid feedback I was able to rethink it. It still has the conclusion where said guard is thrown into the water by my protagonist, but the sexual element has been entirely removed. Instead, I decided to send up those interminable shonen scenes where two characters will fight each other for no other reason than....it's good to fight? I find those scenes as tiresome as the borderline or outright harassment present in anime that I was sending up previously. But with this feedback, I can improve not only this story, but my future writing. It's given me impetus to truly consider what aspects of culture I want to emulate and satirise, and what are perhaps too hot for - to quote Bleak Expectations - "these moral times".

Sort of separate from that, I hope people won't be entirely put off attempting to create stories around controversial subjects. The world needs them. Without them, we'll slide backwards in our awareness of them. Just blanking out the nastiness doesn't take it away. It makes if fester and adapt. It needs to be confronted in the open, through the best lens possible; fiction.