The Squick and the Dead

A muscular and well-oiled hoplite in my phalanx of fanfic.

Fanfic has led me to learn some new words. We have had squee. We have also had squim. (I will not write an entire post on squim, though. There are limits.)

Another word I have learned about is squick.



In several previous posts, I have discussed some things that are a little bit icky. Squick is a version of icky, but squick is much milder as a term. Some things that make me go squick will not make others go squick. And the reverse. Some of us like being squicked, a little.

The Smoking Threesome makes a lot of people squick. (Yes. Some day I will drop this. But not today.)

This threesome makes some people squick, and others not. Personally, it is the Tigh/Roslin component here that makes me squick. Others squick at Tigh/Adama, or the entire package.

There is a bit in this story that makes me squick. It is the part where the violence turns into the love. Minor squick for me, because although this idea rubs me the wrong way, it is possible and totally kosher to write stories where such things happen.

Also, as aside, I am not sure whether this falls into the squick category, but I came across the best raunch sentence ever in fanfic today. "His cock [came] to a screeching halt inside her." Found here. This is otherwise a perfectly ok story. But the screeching cock really got me. I mean, I've been with men and I can tell you that has never happened in my experience. Hot damn.

Squick can be a sign that a story is doing something interesting. I squicked a little at this. The story is about Cally, and it is, at least in part, dealing with the contempt many fans (and some writers) have for that character. My squick was a squick of recognition, of the fact that Cally is interesting precisely because she gets jerked around by the story, and never gets any revenge. Cally almost wants the chief to beat her up so that she knows he loves her, Cally cannot remember if anyone helped her escape from the cylons, and Cally gets airlocked. She is easy to dislike. She is almost squick personified, and this is why there ought to be more Cally stories.

Which leads me to think that squick, in general, is a sign that the reader's buttons are being pushed. Some boundary has been crossed. This can be in a bad way, or in an interesting way, or in a funny way. I mean, in truth, Tigh and Roslin frakking in an airlock is actually fairly harmless, as a concept.

But other boundaries, like the ones about violence and love, or contempt, need to be handled with thought, or the squick merely squicks, and does not edify. This was my problem with the handling of rape or suspected rape in the story mentioned here. That story squicked me, big-time, partially because I think the squick aspect of it was not a conscious authorial decision.

But, to make up for using the word "edify" in the previous paragraph, I will now bring this post to a halt with the extremely juvenile obvservation that the phrase "Screeching PleasureCock of Ultimate Satisfaction" has just entered my head and will not leave.

Again, hot damn.