We have to talk about The Fifth Sorceress.

This blog post will briefly discuss rape, fetishes, and anime; reader discretion is advised.

As writers and authors, we cannot avoid putting ourselves into our work. We must put our fears, hopes, and dreams into our stories. We also cannot avoid putting our politics into our work. However, we can become aware of what we insert into our art. This also includes some of our more intimate preferences and joys. This is a problem that the audience can spot with relative ease: I am talking about The Writers Barely Disguised Fetish.

We have to talk about The Fifth Sorceress.

The Fifth Sorceress by Robert Newcomb is a 2002 fantasy story infamous for being a terrible story for terrible people. It is also notorious for the various depictions of sex scenes that showcase a strong fetishism element.

These include but are not limited to:

1. Mind Break,

2. Gang Rape,

3. Rape,

4. BDSM,

5. Lesbianism/bisexuality,

6. Promiscuous,

7. Rapid Pregnancy,

There is a horniness that permeates the novel right from the start, from Tristen’s skinny dip in a lake that feels like something a sexually frustrated housewife would read about to the odd focus on body parts and the frequency of rape. The intense interest in bloodlines and the mix of said blood is also worth mentioning. That’s not even going into the final act, which wouldn’t feel out of place in a Hentai (not that I would know), with its rape and rapid pregnancy (gross) being a climatic action.

This is a problem that people have brought up within the creative spaces, encapsulated by the meme used in this thumbnail. Writers (knowingly or otherwise) afflicting their fetishes on the poor innocent masses who might not have consented to have softcore BDSM torture in their fantasy read.

I am not saying that we should stop people from writing; I am saying that we, as writers, need to be self-aware of what we put into our work. We must remember that putting our incest fantasies *cough* G.R.R Martin /Dan Harmon *cough* can cause a backlash.

I should stress that Martin and Harmon, who have put weird shit into their respective works, aren’t too bad as long as you are not paying attention or it hasn’t been pointed out to you. You can be blissfully unaware of the strangely positive spin on Insest.

However, with Newcromb, you have no such luck; it is a book where a simple swim has to be needlessly eroticized, or how we go from a wholesome family moment of growth to a weirdly graphic BDSM torture scene in a paragraph. It’s a book where Gangrape and Mindbreak are pivotal character growth moments, and it's not even written horrifically. Instead, it all feels uncomfortable, like I stumbled into someone’s first attempt at erotica, not good enough to be hot but not bad enough to be entertaining.

The problem with The Fifth Sorceress is that the weird softcore porn detracts from the fantasy, and the fantasy story is not interesting enough or compliments the weird fetish shit. So I have to ask why the BDSM and rape stuff is even in the story in the first place? If it wasn’t for the reader's benefit, why is it there if it won’t for a weird need from the author?

Now, I can’t say for sure that Newcromb, Martin, and Harmon have weird fetishes which they knowingly or otherwise insert into their work. Not everyone has the balls of Quinten Tarentio to admit to foot fetishism. Nevertheless, it is an aspect of Tarantino that I respect; if you are going to be a weirdo, you should at least admit it.

This rambling blog post's moral is that you must be self-aware of yourself when creating art. So if you have some weird freaky shit, please incorporate it into art in a way that isn’t too obvious Hidetaka Miyazaki, for example, with big giant women or write erotica. Or better yet, try to keep out altogether.

Not everyone needs to know that you are into BDSM or incest stuff. But, especially in non-erotic works, the consumer didn’t consent to be exposed to that stuff, like in The Fifth Sorceress.

We, as authors, write for ourselves but also have to remember that people on the other side are reading our work. They don’t expect their fantasy story to have gang rape and mind break in it. They don’t expect rapid pregnancy in their fantasy stories.

We have to consider that.

Please consider reading Black Masquerade: The third entry in the Eight Nightmares Collection, now available for pre-order at selected retailers.

Acknowledgments

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