#i'm not planning on watching any more house on the prairie though; it gives me a bit of a headache

[winged-cries]

[cw child abuse in the form of corporal punishment/spanking]

Fanworks are endlessly fascinating to me. For some reason, I started watching Little House on the Prairie at breakfast — mostly as background noise as I slowly come out of my sleepy haze. Out of curiosity and habit, I looked it up on AO3 to see what kind of fanfic it has inspired. One thing I found and did not expect (though perhaps I should've) was a relatively popular series of shorts depicting some of the male characters spanking their children. Mind you, this is a T-rated series, and I don't think there's anything sexual in the text. I didn't read the fics because I think they would make me uncomfortable, but I read some of the comments and it seems people enjoy the parent/child dynamic in a situation of wrongdoing and punishment (physical, but never crossing the line into cruelty). There were mentions of "guilt release" for the child, as well as the father feeling guilty over the spanking. People talked about the care and love the fathers demonstrate after the punishment, the general mix of comfort, love and control. I think the appeal is the father's demonstration of power over the child, the restrained physical violence, and the notion that punishment is a form of love.

Of course it makes complete sense. LHOTP is the TV equivalent to sentimental literature, where this kind of dynamic isn't uncommon. It reminded me of The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature by Marianne Nobles, specifically the section about Elsie Dinsmore, and Philip Greven's Spare the Child (Nobles includes quotes from Greven's book and a father's account of his masochistic daughters, who ask him to physically punish them as proof of his love, as taught to them in a Protestant school).

Anyway, I wanted to find out if LHOTP actually depicted any spanking, because it seemed that at least some of the fics were depicting missing scenes — situations where corporal punishment was implied but not depicted. I'm not completely sure, but I think there was never an explicit depiction, which is why the fanworks exist.

There isn't any point to this post, I just find the whole thing fascinating, especially the general reactions to the fics. Fans seemed to find them comforting and sweet, and I think they were invested in the aftercare as much as the punishment itself — not very unlike sadomasochistic sexual play.