Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
Because when explored lightly, it's kinda creepy, as in the example the writer of that blog gave with the little boy, and when explored as a serious plot point, it really is a cheap way to garner sympathy for whichever character it happened to, and either way it's a little insensitive. Which is not to say that it can't be used to good effect, but it takes a lot more setup than most dramatic plot devices to keep people from just disapproving of it.
What's the difference, effectively? One's more specific, but that specific sentiment ought to come through when you see people complaining about rape in fiction.
Incidentally, the little boy wasn't actually raped. There was an attempted rape, but it failed.
Still.
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with having rape in a story. However, I think it's an artificial way to raise stakes. I mean, is there any reason the hero can't rescue a girl from a mugging rather than a rape, for example?
Well, one has more lasting consequences. Not that you wouldn't want to save her from either- a mugging still sucks pretty badly.
Often (not always of course), the inclusion of rape in a work is an extension of the tendency for poor authors to assume that spending way too much time talking about sex in general makes you more mature.
But that's my point. It's an artificial way to raise the stakes. It doesn't actually make the rescue that much more heroic though.
^That too.
Man, I'm really struggling because right now one story I'm working on right now has a particularly evil psychic character and I'm trying to think of ways for him to exert his psychic misdeeds.
On the one hand I want to push forward how evil he is, on the other rape is a pretty cheap way to do that.
The difference is that the first one is wrong. Rape is not a characteristic of a work that involves bad writing. It's just something that is often the sign of bad writing. Basically, correlation doesn't equal causation.
No, but if it fails it can have more lasting consequences. And an attempted rape upon a character does have more lasting impressions on a character's psyche than an attempted mugging.
Not that I want anyone to include rape or anything.
^True enough, but with rare exception, he's not going to fail.
I would argue that any story, save for something in which the setting revolves around sexual depravity (and even then, it would be appreciated if it's at least evident that it's wrong) and rape is an unavoidable part of life, is worse off for including rape, and until such a justification is given, I can't help but go "no, why would you do that, that's bad" upon hearing that a work of fiction has it. But I don't want to stay up debating this because I probably won't change any opinions, nor will my opinion change, and in any case it'll probably become a debate on minutiae. In short, the reason I try to avoid debates around here in general.
Like I said, even an attempted rape can have consequences on the character's psyche. Not that it ever comes to anything, though.
And those rare exceptions are, well, why. Because those rare exceptions can exist, it's not completely pointless to include it.
...I really can't help but disagree with this, mostly because it involves the notion that any subject can't be written correctly. Granted, you do propose an scenario where it can happen, but it seems so narrow that I simply can't see how you can mean anything but "Rape doesn't fit stories at all"
Now, I'm not saying that rape should be in every story. Or that it isn't overused by bad writers, even. Or that there aren't stories that shouldn't have rape simply because it does not fit them (Identity Crisis comes to mind)
What I am saying is that rape happens in real life. I don't see how it being a horrible thing means that it shouldn't happen in art and fiction either.
^^Oh, I agree there. However, by and large the point of such scenes tends to be for the girl to wrap her arms around the hero and go. "Oh thank you for saving me! You're so stuh-rong!'
Yeah, most of the time it's just done dumbly and it shouldn't have happened.
And then they have sex. Which is hilarious because it involves her not being traumatized by the situation at all.
@Juan: I'll admit that my rationale mostly comes from a feeling of it being really overused, and thusly impossible as anything but a cheap plot device. But in any case, that's how I stand.
It's probably best used in abstract. I don't really recall reading a narratively effective instance of rape -- not that it couldn't be used effectively -- but it can grimdark a world reasonably well if its rate of occurrence is thought to be unusually high. Alternatively, a prominent character being raped could be an exceptionally powerful setup for future struggle; for instance, she might become pregnant while of a social standing/position/discipline that forbids pregnancy.
As has been discussed at length, though, it does tend to be annoying and unpleasant. Usually, when it comes up in a book, it just sends off warning klaxons rather than being an effective element. An interesting reversal might be a character who committed rape in the past and is repentant for it, feeling as though they obviously did the wrong thing, but sullied themselves forever the process. After all, you can't just erase something like that, be it from the psyche of the victim or a regretful perpetrator.
In fact, we generally only get the hold-them-down-while-they-struggle sort of rape in fiction when it's quite possible that many real life perpetrators don't see what they're doing as rape, or are ignorant of everything that could be considered as part of that act. Having sex with a woman who's too drunk, having sex with a woman who behaves complicit but has been forced into it via social circumstances, that kind of thing. Elements which make sexual intercourse possible without physical coercion while retain some other heavily coercive aspect. After all, the feeling of safety and security is important for consensual sex (certain fetishes notwithstanding).
Rape can be reasonably complex in a social sense, which is why it's so difficult to combat. Almost everyone is against physically forcing someone else to have sex, but plenty of people are comfortable with using other coercive factors to get what they want.
Man remember when people got angry at the Thomas Covenant books for having just one rape?