All Comments on 'LW Notes: The Amityville Whorer'
by bruce1971
- 14 Comments
An interesting take on the topic B71, thanks for writing. If nothing else millennials & Zs may go watch the AH classic!
Very thoughtful piece. The only thing missing is many of the loving wives cadre have experienced infidelity, the stories allow revenge or redemption through fiction. Setting the world back on the correct axis.
Interesting dissection of the LW storylines. After reading this, I have to agree that nearly everything I have written fits your formulations quite well. I've tried to come up with some new twists but with the help of your essay, I can see, at best, I managed a variation of the same old themes. - Not that it will deter me from writing another formulated LW tale-LOL! Thanks for your insights, B71!
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The key point here is that, as the traditional tools of order in a functional society are not available to the protagonist, he effectively becomes a person outside the law.
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This sounds perhaps like a different genre entirely. In LW stories, the horror is marriage itself which makes men vulnerable, and the enemy is the conditions of life (jobs, exes, casual sex, Martian slut ray) which threaten the marriage. The man is vulnerable because he cares about the marriage more than himself, so if the wife defects, he has been made a sucker by parasites.
Thanks for drawing back the curtain. I'm sure this will spawn quite a bit of conversation, and I'm looking forward to coming back and reading the comments here.
It perhaps wasn't relevant to the points you were trying to make, but I noticed you didn't spend time on the various outcomes of LW stories. I.e. BTB, RAAC, and the various in-between permutations. Maybe a future essay.
I'ma go set something on fire now.
I think it's less of the "fragile male ego" cliche you claim and more of the adrenaline rush, just like why many people watch horror and action movies. These movies are intended to influence us in a specific way. Unlike the movies that critics understand, that specific impact is on the adrenal gland rather than the heart or brain. Likewise, LW stories aim for the adrenal gland rather than the erogenous zones. Many of the husbands in LW stories could probably relate to John McClain or a victim in the movie Saw. What are you willing to do to survive? What are you willing to do to protect your family?
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As mentioned in a comment below, others read Loving Wives for cathartic purposes. Perhaps they have already been through it (which once again kicks your "insecurities" comment to the curb) and wish they had handled it differently. Maybe they want to escape to the fantasy where they came out on top in the divorce or didn't cave and reconcile.
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The bottom line is that the reason that people read Loving Wives stories is less important than what Loving Wives stories they read. Sure, a lot of the comment drama could be reduced by moving the RAAC stories to the Fetish or Interracial categories where they tend to be a better fit, but you'll never actually rid the category of the trolls from either side. Therein lies the true horror of the Loving Wives category...
Excellent.
Wonderful.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts - you seem to have invested quite some time into those.
May be this might trigger some new stories, built on a new, future oriented, role model of women and men as opposed to characters which are based on Neandertal- instinct-driven members of the homo sapiens tribe (no reference to ANY political supporters in ANY country intended - we all bare this heritage in our genes).
And I am not talking about the ‘new female lead relationships’, which mostly switch stoneage gender behaviour (resulting in brutal woman and weak men).
I am looking forward to well writțen where women and men take on new roles and understandings of partnership - including the potential horrors (thank you Bruce for pointing this out) which can result from this.
I am really fed up with all the cuck stories which recently threaten to drown the loving wives category (yes, we should definitively have a separate category for this).
We need new impulses.
So thank you very much again for your analysis and let us hope that it triggers many new and good stories!
Oh, so much to say!
The observation that "LW is Horror stories for men" is what drove me to write "Coulrophobia," which is NOT listed in LW, but in "Erotic Horror." That's my LEAST well-received story here, and for good reason; I made it as "horror-ble" as I could. The more squeamish I got writing it, the more determined I was to make things even worse. The result was that my commentators said "That was not at all enjoyable, but very well written.... Five stars for a story I didn't like. My brain hurts," "Wasn't prepared for that. I'm not going to rate it, liked it and hated it at the same time." and "Guess I will be forced to read what category the story falls in rather than just blindly following (the) author."
That was my goal- I wanted to create a trainwreck you couldn't look away from. I can't help but imagine that "Coulrophobia" would be much wider read and higher rated if it was in LW. There are plenty of stories that bad, and worse, in that category.
As much as I've written about "February Sucks," that's the one that really drove "horror story for men" home for me. Jim was effectively surrounded by Zombies. The vulnerability, the hopelessness, the unrelenting pressure from every angle, too, not just the direct threat, but the situational alienation and isolation from any support... all that was on display. The thing about that story, though, is that GeorgeAnderson got the REST of the horror trope wrong. There was no plucky traumatized survivor somehow crawling out of the wreckage at the end. There was no last desperate gambit, no options to be improvised, no possibility of salvation AT ALL. Jim was deprived of AGENCY, as you put it, and instead became merely the object that all the hurt was inflicted upon. That's why it's so desperately unsatisfying... so much that GA inspired legions of us to rewrite the ending.
Thank you for these insightful observations, and please put this essay in the series with your other "LW notes" postings.
Man, you always write the best essays. I remember us kicking around the various things the stories can be: fairytales, urban legends, etc. "Horror story" is definitely the best encapsulation of all the stuff you'd talked about, though. Well done!
Compelling logic in this essay, especially when coupled with this author’s previous writing. I’d like to see this author write an essay on why a high percentage of the LW stories involve the voluntary cuckolding fetish.