Bad Writing Masterclass: Docile pt. 2
Because the people demanded it! By which I mean I was like 90% going to do it anyway.
This post was originally going to be quite a bit longer, but unfortunately those health problems I’ve talked about before flared up and I ended up having to write less. Sorry!
(Also heads up before we start, this post gets into the rape stuff)
In part two of this series that definitely isn’t a Let’s Read, we join Elisha after he’s been purchased by Alex Bishop the third, trillionaire scion of Bishop Laboratories. Remember, Alex needs to buy a Docile because the future of the company depends on it. Somehow. No, it won’t make any more sense by the time this post is finished.
After the interview with Alex, Elisha’s case worker Carol tells him that he has multiple offers from potential patrons, of which the two most valuable are a thirty year contract from the guy who wanted him for manual labour and Alex, who’s offering to pay off his family’s debt and provide a hefty stipend in exchange for a life term.
Alex, remember, doesn’t particularly want a Docile; he had to be browbeaten into it by his father. The only other thing we know about him is that he seems to have commitment issues and keeps breaking up with his boyfriends. And yet, he’s now willing to enter into a lifetime contract with a dude he’s just met. The book just glosses over Alex’s reasons for doing this via not presenting a POV scene where he makes that decision, which is handy because it doesn’t make any sense.
Elisha, of course, rejects the mean nasty manual labour dude who mistreats his poor Dociles and instead signs up with hot, sexy Alex, who just wants to rape him.
In my last post I went on a big tangent about taking a morally judgemental approach to criticism, and I want to again carefully lay out where I’m coming from here. It’s not inherently bad—either morally or in terms of bad writing—for Alex to have this weird mindset where the slave driver is a mean nasty-head but the slave rapist is a pure beautiful uwuu husband…but we need to understand why he thinks that. If Elisha doesn’t have a clear motivation then the reader starts looking for other explanations, and they will quickly settle on non-textual ones.
A bit later Elisha says this:
Alex Bishop is exactly what I came looking for: a trillionaire who’ll use me for sex rather than dangerous labor, and is willing to pay extra for the privilege.
But is that exactly what Elisha was looking for? If it is, that fact was never communicated to the reader. Before this, Elisha acted like sex and being a Docile were inherently linked, just like the book as a whole sometimes treats the two as though they’re synonymous and sometimes doesn’t.
I’m jumping the gun a bit here, but a big part of the problem is that Elisha basically has no personality or character traits whatsoever. That’s not hyperbole; even a quarter of the way through the book I struggle to come up with any descriptors beyond that he’s kind of shy. Consequently, I can’t figure out why he does anything he does. If a character is truly three-dimensional then you should be able to drop them into any circumstance, no matter how far removed from the plot of the story they were created for, and easily figure out how they’d respond to the situation. I have no idea how Elisha would respond to anything, beyond standing off to the side and blushing.
“Yes,” Carol says anyway, “but keep in mind this is a life term. With Barth’s offer you’ll be free by your fifties. You can retire with your family.”
“On what, my nonexistent savings?”
Carol sits back; hurt creases her face.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
This is maybe bothering me more than it should, but: he didn’t snap. Elisha’s reply was extremely mild and reasonable, and it doesn’t make any sense that Carol is reacting this way to it. In the very next line she says she’s seen much worse because people tend to not be in the best mood by the time she interacts with them so why did she get so offended by Elisha’s comment?
I know this sounds like nit-picking, but it’s really not. Characters have to behave in a way that makes sense, or else they stop resembling humans and start seeming like malfunctioning androids, and the reader will get this uncanny-valley sensation that everything in the story is slightly off-kilter. A very common problem in bad writing is that characters over-react to things or behave in heightened ways that would seem eccentric or even alarming if encountered in real life.
People in brightly colored suits brush past us, not giving me a second look over their pastel ties and floral scarves.
One of the few bits of consistent setting description we get is that the hyper-riches all dress in flamboyant neon clothes, which are not explicitly stated to be baggy 90s suits like this, but I’m going to picture them like that anyway. I recommend you do the same, as it elevates the reading experience considerably.
“Call me if there are any violations of your rights.” She stands back. “I don’t usually say goodbye.”
“What’s the point?” I shrug. The driver opens the back door for me. “Most people won’t remember you anyway.”
She looks like she’s going to cry.
This is another example of the thing I was complaining about just a second ago. Carol does this all day, why is she getting so emotional over Elisha?
People rush around outside, swinging briefcases and drinking coffee from paper cups.
What image came to your mind when you read this sentence? Was it the ordinary bustle of a city centre during the morning rush hour, or a bunch of office workers all literally swinging their briefcases through the air while drinking coffee?
I’ve never understood why someone would throw away a perfectly good cup after using it once. Everything is disposable here, even people.
YOU’RE BLOWING MY FUCKING MIND ELISHA
SO DEEP
My migraines were significantly worse while writing this post compared to the last one, I don’t know if you can tell.
I watch through the window as families wait at crosswalks that look freshly painted in order to reach towering glass buildings on the piers along the harbor.
I’m quoting this to give you another taste of how dull the description is. Elisha might as well be moving through a cardboard backdrop with “City” written on it. Shortly after this Elisha is whisked through “several shops and spas”, none of which are described even though visiting multiple spas in one trip seems quite noteworthy.
When I look up from the note, I realize I am alone. The doorman’s gone. I could run. I’m free and undrugged. The only thing that can force me to follow Alex’s instructions is myself.
I step into the waiting elevator.
You know what, we might as well just talk about this now.
Last time I humerously danced around the topic (it was very funny, I’m extremely entertaining), but let’s take the gloves off and discuss the elephant in the room: this whole Docile system is very clearly a BDSM thing (or I guess specifically a D/s thing, but based on stuff that happens later it seems like it could include some BDSM as well). I don’t need to justify that any further, right? Like, it was obvious just from the synopsis I quoted back in the first post, wasn’t it? And trust me, it’s way more obvious in the actual story.
But what’s wrong with that? Do I have a problem with erotica or BDSM? No, not at all. But what I don’t like is an author pulling a Robert Jordan, which is what this book is doing.
For those of you lucky enough not to understand that reference, Robert Jordan was the author of the Wheel of Time novels and also, judging by the content of said novels, the horniest man alive, specifically when it came to bondage, power exchange and spanking. As the books go on those topics start to become almost as prevalent as the core fantasy content; spanking in particular comes up with a frequency that only makes sense if you assume it’s a core tenet of the setting the book takes place in.
But if that’s the case, it’s never explicitly stated. None of the characters openly discuss the topic, and the many instances of magically-induced bondage are never acknowledged as such. It’s like how in Disney movies the characters spontaneously break into song and dance routines, then the plot resumes afterwards as though it never happened. Jordan appears to have actually thought that no one would notice what he was doing…and amazingly, a lot of the series’ readers apparently didn’t. I don’t know whether those people (or the Goodreads reviewers breathlessly comparing Docile to The Handmaid’s Tale) are just the most innocent lambs to ever caper across God’s green earth or what, but somehow the ruse worked, at least part of the time.
Okay, but why is this actually a problem? If the author wants to get off on their writing and be coy about it, what’s the big deal? The problem is that it negatively affects the writing. In Wheel Of Time it’s merely distracting (why the fuck are these characters spanking each other every five chapters? Why does no one ever comment on it?), but in Docile it severely undermines the core conceit of the story.
As I alluded to in my last post, there is nothing about the Docile system that would inherently lead to sex or sexual behaviour; in the real world, you could picture domestic servitude or mass labour (someone I know asked why big companies aren’t bulk-buying Dociles) as being the two most common uses of Dociles, just as it was in chattel slavery systems. And sometimes, when the book isn’t being horny, this is more or less the case. But when it is feeling horny, then Dociles and their patrons are basically just subs and doms, engaging in power exchange play mixed with varying levels of sex. And like all the spanking in Wheel of Time, this is never explicitly acknowledged by the text; there’s no point—or at least there hasn’t been so far—where Elisha or anyone else lays out what exactly the parameters of the Docile system are.
This sort of thing is very common in fantasy and sci-fi because the story’s setting can be crafted to cater to the author’s fetishes in a way that it can’t be with contemporary fiction. If you’re really into the idea of people turning into sentient beach balls and then over-inflating (I have a Deviantart acount, I’ve seen some shit) then you can make a setting where magical beach-ball transformation is a common mode of transport that people use to get around. And like I’ve already said: there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. But if it starts to become intrusive, it’s a problem. I promise you, you’re not fooling as many people as you think.
So anyway, Elisha goes up into Alex’s swank rich guy penthouse and it’s all glass and marble and Elisha is wowed by it, and as usual for this book everything is flatly described and it’s incredibly uninteresting. Elisha meekly obeys Alex’s command to stay facing the window until he arrives; this isn’t necessarily a problem here, but Elisha meekly obeys a lot of commands in the further parts of the book I’ve read. If our protagonist is in captivity or some other situation of duress, we want to see them push back in some way; it gets frustrating to see someone just keep their head down and go along with what their captor wants (coughsansacough).
Long story short, there’s some flirting and some back-and-forth about rules and it turns out Alex is having a birthday party that night, at which he intends to inject Elisha with his new and improved Dociline 3.0 formula. The main conflict of this early part of the story is that Elisha refuses in front of all of Alex’s fancy guests—including his parents—which means that Alex has to find other, sexier ways to control him.
I’ve already complained about how contrived Alex being forced into buying a Docile is, and that only gets worse here. Despite it being so important, Alex doesn’t think to ask Elisha if he’s willing to take Dociline, and once Elisha refuses he doesn’t just ditch him and get a new Docile because of the vague idea that it would look bad (because remember, the future of Bishop Laboratories is somehow riding on Alex having a Docile). This creates a terrible dilemma, because now Elisha is going to act innappropriately un-Docileish in public! Which would be bad, because…reasons!
The way it’s framed is that Elisha won’t obey Alex’s rules as well as a Docile on dociline would, but most of the “rules” are arbitrary nonsense like Elisha not being allowed to touch his hair, which no one would know he wasn’t obeying unless Alex told them. If the book had been clearer on what the actual social role of Dociles are then maybe this would be alleviated somewhat, but as it is the culture surrounding Dociles seems to quietly shift depending on whether the book is in BDSM mode or story mode.
After the party is over we to the first sex scene, which starts like this:
Without Dociline, he’s shy, nervous. I need to build his confidence without building his ego. So, I pull him close and run my hand through his already-messed-up hair. “I enjoy looking at you,” I say, our faces only inches apart. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”
The scene continues much in the same way. The tone is downright romantic, which once again raises questions the book seems unwilling (or at least slow) to answer. Is this sort of dynamic between a Docile and their owner normal? If so, does that raise tensions between the patron and their regular partner or partners? And again, why is the supposedly commitment-averse Alex so willing to enter a lifetime contract that involves this much affection and passion?
Much of this sex scene and the bit at the party could be taken out and put into a standard BDSM-themed romance novel with very little alteration. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if maybe that was originally the case; the sci-fi angle seems to vanish like an optical illusion whenever the narrative isn’t looking directly at it.
After the sex is over Elisha refers to it in his narration as rape, then questions whether it really was since he technically “consented” to this arrangement. That’s fine, it’s totally expected that he’s think that way. My problem—and I’d be curious to hear what other people think of this—is that the way the book itself frames and describes the act really doesn’t feel like a rape scene: it’s long and detailed and clearly written as erotic. Granted, it’s mostly written from Alex’s point of view (which also feels like a strange choice) so maybe that was intentional in order to show how Alex sees it versus Elisha…except that apart from Elisha’s internal back-and-forthing he mostly seems to have regarded the sex the same way Alex did.
The topic of how and whether to depict rape in fiction has been a hot button topic for a long time, with a lot of nuanced arguments coming from different directions. I’ll be honest, it’s not something I feel like I have particularly developed opinions about, with one exception: I just don’t think you can portray or discuss the topic if you’re also trying to titillate your reader. Even if the horny stuff and the heavy stuff are kept seperate, their proximity just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It’s like how violence and sex are both okay on their own, but when you try to mix them together it gets uncomfortable very quickly.
I knew going into this book that it was considered problematic by a lot of people, but I deliberately didn’t read any other criticism of it before writing my own. I’m guessing this is probably one of the points people are focusing on.
The next day Alex takes Elisha out for some exercise, but first there’s a bit where Alex chats to his doorman and (it’s implied) makes plans to help pay for his child’s college education, so you know that Alex is one of the Good Ones. The doorman is black, because of course he is.
“You too, young man,” Tom says, though he can’t be older than fifty. Lines barely crease his dark brown skin and his hair is only beginning to recede.
Maybe it’s just the migraines confusing me, but I don’t get this bit. I don’t feel like a fifty year old calling a twenty one year old “young man” is particularly odd or noteworthy.
I could run, but I choose not to. I choose to obey the trillionaire who could probably buy my entire community out of debt with a month of his salary.
Okay, now this is obviously not realistic. In real life, super-rich people don’t just horde enough money to solve massive societal problems! Imagine if that happened? What a wild world the author has cooked up! Ha! Ha!
Anyway, Alex has Elisha go on a jog so he can get swole, and during it Elisha is approached by a woman named Eugenia who’s a member of Empower Maryland, who are basically the resistance as far as the entire system of debt slavery is concerned. The organization is interested in him because they heard he refused Dociline and Eugenia offers to help him if he asks for assistance; since Elisha is the most boring protagonist in the world, he turns the offer down and gets all offended at her for insulting Trillionaire-sempai.
There’s a particular bad writing trope I really hate, which I call Not Doing The Thing. This is where the author puts in an oppunrtunity for something interesting to happen, but then holds off on actually Doing The Thing for later. It’s even worse when the Thing is something that is clearly and obviously going to happen, but the book just puts it off for no reason.
In this case I’m not expecting Elisha to make a break for it with Eugenia (although I wouldn’t be opposed to the idea), but the way he just flatly turns her down, and seems downright hostile about it, just made me want to snap my Kindle in half. Consider this: what’s more interesting to read about, a strong-willed person forced to adopt a position of servitude or someone who was apparently grown in a vat to be the most submissive person alive acting in complete accordance with his personality?
Aaaand that’s going to have to do it for this post. Like I said, I intended this to be longer but unfortunately migraines are making that impossible. I stopped reading Docile shortly after this point because I just couldn’t bear to subject myelf to any more of it; not because it was gross or way problematic or anything, it’s just crushingly uninteresting, largely thanks to how dull Elisha is as a main character.
Oh, and remember that whole thing from last time about Elisha’s sister? Yeah, we get confirmation that the situation is exactly as awful as it seemed. I’d be really curuous to know if the book ever directly addresses this.
Did any of y’all read Docile? What did you think of it?