by "kink" we're saying something different than "enjoy reading and writing", correct?
Correct. (Though humans being the complicated critters that they are, I sometime think that there's not always such a hard and fast boundary as we'd like to believe.)
My personal definition of 'dark' would be heavy angst/hopelessness/seriously dodgy ethical decisions. Like, say, Angel trying to kill Wesley after Wesley stole Connor in canon, or Buffy deciding to kill Faith to save Angel's life. But in Buffyverse fandom (and from the discussions I've seen on my flist from people in other fandoms as well) 'dark' has increasingly come to mean noncon/dubcon/D/s/slavefic/tortureporn/etc.
Although actually, I think the "dark = noncon" trend may have peaked some years back, during the time when sexymermaid was at the height of her popularity and a lot of other authors were trying to emulate her. Most of the people who were writing those stories moved on to writing original m/m erotica.
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Date: 2013-11-14 03:54 am (UTC)Correct. (Though humans being the complicated critters that they are, I sometime think that there's not always such a hard and fast boundary as we'd like to believe.)
My personal definition of 'dark' would be heavy angst/hopelessness/seriously dodgy ethical decisions. Like, say, Angel trying to kill Wesley after Wesley stole Connor in canon, or Buffy deciding to kill Faith to save Angel's life. But in Buffyverse fandom (and from the discussions I've seen on my flist from people in other fandoms as well) 'dark' has increasingly come to mean noncon/dubcon/D/s/slavefic/tortureporn/etc.
Although actually, I think the "dark = noncon" trend may have peaked some years back, during the time when sexymermaid was at the height of her popularity and a lot of other authors were trying to emulate her. Most of the people who were writing those stories moved on to writing original m/m erotica.