Morality and Morals

So, I've been trying to write this particular character's backstory. The essence of it is she made a deal with the fairies when she was a kid, and because of her failure to read the fine print, she ended up with a shitty childhood. A major part of said shitty childhood was that she was cursed to always be in an abusive family, no matter how unlikely it would seem. I don't want to blame the victim because, from a moral perspective, that could cause a crime to go unreported. Simutaneously, I still want to give the same moral: "Don't screw around with fairies," because it's a common one throughout traditional folk literature. What should I do?

I'm a little confused by this one. First, the victim there is the person cursed with abusive families?

A huge amount of this will depend on the exact nature of the curse. And I know I will be missing lots of types of curses in my summary: If the curse turns any regular family into terrible people through the magic of the curse, then we know 100%, a) the curse is evil as it messes with people's minds, and b) to be moral, the protagonist will have to avoid forming any family at all once she learns the truth, and c) there may be reason to not report domestic abuse. If the curse gives her terrible luck and forces her always end up among terrible people, then a) we can't conclusively say the magic is evil, depending on what other effects it has, and b) the protagonist has no moral obligation to avoid joining a family, and c) there is no reason to not report domestic abuse. Additional possibilities: The fairies are actively matchmaking her with terrible families. The curse tricks people into a distrustful mindset without playing with their brains. The abusive families are fairies.

Also, no one is morally responsible for not reading the fine print, especially a young person. That is all on the fairies for not offering up a contract in Good Faith.

That's the whole point. The fairies never put something up in good faith. They are actually worse than the Devil Himself when it comes to keeping and abusing contracts. She knew the risks and signed anyway.

Also, the contract specified that she would be in a happy family until she was an adult. Her happiness wasn't part of the deal. The I guess it wasn't so much fine print as it was rules lawyering.

edited 26th Jun '16 5:29:39 AM by madprophet

Technically, being "in a happy family" means that she is a part of this family and thus has to be happy for the family to be happy. There you go, rules lawyering. If you really want it to go that way then the phrasing is "with a happy family".

So whatever you decide to have, you'll probably need not fine print that allows for rules lawyering but rather something that as a whole is written in a very screwy language that can only be taken to mean what it is supposed to if you spend an eternity playing semantics with it.

But I'm probably digressing. The point is, though, that whatever you have that is supposed to screw the protagonist over in a way that wouldn't happen in a normal world (or at least that the protagonist would be able to oppose in a normal world), you probably want to include in those rules in such a screwy-language way.

Good point. Thanks for the feed back.

I'm sorry to necro, but I think that people didn't get my point. What I'm trying to get at could be found Useful Notes/Abuse. From a certain pespective, it could be seen that the character does deserve the abuse (she ignored all warning that she really should not deal with fairies), she could have prevented (she did make the deal). What I'm getting at is my issue is with propogating myths. My question is the whole scenario distant enough from reality to prevent it from falling into a category of tooo real?

Victim-blaming is victim-blaming.

The implication of this is that she deserves to be abused bcuz she knew what she was agreeing to. The only thing u can do to erase this implication is to make it more than clear that her abuse is unacceptable.

It is not even close to distant enough to avoid being problematic. Fantasy elements don't insulate from implications.

The best solution is to add some complexity here. Either the moral is outdated, or you can keep it. But if you keep it, your story has two stories in it. The story of the fairies and the story of the abusive families. You can go full out Roald Dahl on the abusive families if you want. It will probably make the story better.

Alternatively, just make it more than clear that the fairies' rules-lawyering interpretation of the deal was completely unreasonable, but the abused character had no way of contesting it. Or, make it clear that the fairies knew the abused character wouldn't understand the implications of their deal, but offered it up anyway because they're predatory assholes.

This exact situation is why age of consent laws exist.

edited 20th Jul '16 3:06:11 PM by Tungsten74

Or straight up don't understand human families and their dynamics at all. An obscure clause relating to, say, "happy families" might mean something entirely different to creatures with indeterminate lifespans and totally alien morals and priorities.

By that logic, they might also not recognise it as uncouth to manipulate a child who doesn't fully understand the implications of the deal she's made. A horrible action need not be actively malevolent, and quite often, fairies in old stories *aren't* conventionally malevolent, just... inhuman.

You know, I feel like I was being dumb. I think. I was trying to go for the classical moral (i.e. don't even try to make a deal with fairies because man, they will screw you up) while ignoring conventional morality for the sake of a novel story. It was a dumb idea to even try it.

It wasn't dumb to try, but the story does need to make sense. Which means you cannot simply ignore those parts of morality grounded in reality.

There is still plenty of room to tell this story in a modern world. It just means you have to change something. Instead of a normal story, make it a horror story. Horror stories have very loose rules when it comes to morals, for obvious reasons. Instead of the original moral. Deconstruct it. Play it out, and highlight all the wrong it implies. Or something else like one of those two suggestions.

edited 21st Jul '16 11:02:29 AM by war877

That's what I want to hear! Even the most ridiculous ideas on the planet can pull off a spectacular story. It's all about the execution, and that involves the story making sense within itself, targeting the best fit of emotions from your audience, and being willing to adjust based on feedback without trashing your idea.

Seriously - go boil down some of your favourite books to thirty words. I can guarantee you'll look at them and think, "... How the hell could this make a good anything?" For better or worse, the core idea is a teeny, tiny part of the end result.

So, don't give up, MP!

edited 21st Jul '16 12:37:29 PM by Tartra

Madprophet, I have a question: why are you writing a story with a moral message that you don't actually believe in?

I cannot grasp the logic here. Are you writing a homage, or parody? Is this a story-within-a-story, being told by a culture of victim-blaming assholes? Are you playing a literary Devil's Advocate, trying to produce a narrative as far removed from your own worldview as possible?

There's a reason these kinds of "woops, you made a deal with dark forces and now you're fucked forever, better luck next- I mean never, sucker!" stories fell out of favour. It's because blaming the victims of bullshit deals, instead of the assholes offering said deals, is fucking terrible. Or do you disagree? Please, forget what anyone else thinks is right or wrong in this situation - what do you believe?

I think that victim blaming is wrong, and that victim blamers should find some real problems to deal with, like starving. However, the moral is that you don't screw with the supernatural. No matter how good your intentions, when you try to use it for a shortcut to something you can achieve alone, it's not going to work out for you.

EDIT: Holy shit, I just thought of something. Child stars! A young age, a contract unwittingly signed, undue pressure and loss of innocence, it could be used as a parable for child stars! That's the angle I have to work!

edited 21st Jul '16 3:48:04 PM by madprophet

That edit? I love it. Happy family on the surface, darkly misplaced sense of support to be the star she never wanted to be.

Supernaturals don't exist in real life. Which... may have an impact on the moral of the story.

We call that Space Whale Aesop.