Monday, December 03, 2018

Consent is Boring - Why I left Amazon

Consent is boring
I left Amazon because consent is boring.

Make no mistake, in real life, kink needs consent.

However, power exchange is only real to the extent to which you cannot withdraw consent. Even in real life, consent gets blurry around power exchange. And, in my fantasies, hard power exchange is the point.

I want to explore the feelings and implications of, not so much non-consent as, consent-irrelevant!

I want to tell stories about male slaves, and captives and victims. Or situations where consent is retroactive, but still essentially irrelevant.

More and more, when writing for the Amazon marketplace, I found myself doing the consent dance:

He writhed in his chains. "Let me go!" 
She laughed and pinged the dong so it wobbled. "But you want me to peg you."
He blushed. "Yes."
Power exchange is only real to the extent to
which you cannot withdraw consent.
And so on.

It's like writing a war story, except it has to be a nerf gun battle,

After a while, I found my series grinding to a halt as I wrestled with keeping it visibly consensual.

Well, so much for that. There are platforms with less desire to censor freedom of imagination. I'll be popping up on one of those soon.

Find out when this happens using the Follow By Email option (top right)! I rarely post except to say when I have a book out, and I won't see your email address - Blogger handles all that.

3 comments:

Sally Bend said...

Completely understood - getting deep into the fantasy side of the power exchange does blur the lines of consent, and I (for one) find the idea of a hard power exchange very attractive.

I want to see characters pushed beyond their limits, forced to confront their fears or inhibitions. I don't want them to have the freedom to refuse because I know it'll deny us an experience that might change lives. So long as the story isn't cruel and violent, so long as there is an erotic aspect to the power exchange, fear and anxiety can be incredibly powerful emotions. There is nothing quite so arousing as being completely restrained and powerless.

Looking forward to seeing where your stories take you, and what platform you choose. I regret missing the chance to review any of your older stories, but that just means I'll have to seize the opportunity to review them in the form you always intended. :)

Anonymous said...

Can you write a war story, where the main character has to go over the top of the parapet and charge into a hail of enemy gunfire to almost certain death in an apocalyptic no man's land? I mean, there is a choice of refusing to go and being hanged as a deserter.

It seems the content restriction you describe may be a bit choosy on what situations are acceptable when dealing with non-consent.

Keep up the good work Giles, love reading your blog!

Giles English said...

The content restrictions are very much aimed at indy published erotica, and selectively/randomly applied!