Squicks: (subsets of) Rapefic
13 Aug 2004 02:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kangeikoI originally wrote this in a slightly incoherent manner that could well be misinterpreted, so I decided to expand and explain my aversion to most kinds of rapefic.
Not all rapefic is the same
This goes without saying. But, just to be clear, in my mind there are three kinds of rapefic:
a) the character is raped by the bad guy whereby h/c usually follows,
b) the character is raped by the misguided second character, whereby h/c and forgiveness follows, and
c) the character is raped by whoever and enjoys it, whereby it becomes an issue of 'no-but-yes' rather than 'no-and-NO'.
It is the latter two that squick me. I'm going to cover category B now and category C at a later stage.
The 'forgiveness' fic
To illustrate my problem with this, I want to focus on a fic I read. This particular fic has been chosen because I am a fan of the writer's other works, because it is well-written, tightly-plotted, and still squicks me completely. It is by the far the best of those I've come across.
It is essentially a Snape-centric fic in which he is gang-raped by the Marauders (the premise of 'Snape shows X how bad the Marauders really were' was why I initially read the story, for those wondering). This is also a Lupin/Snape fic. The rape was blamed on mind-altering drugs, (a mindfuck of biblical proportions) and the focus was on what Lupin thinks of the fact that Snape is still sleeping with him, despite the rape. The characterisation of Snape left me more than a little cold, as I don't believe that he is truly so twisted as to do something like that to himself. However, it was the utter absence of Dumbledore that made me so sceptical. I do not believe that Dumbledore would allow a gang rape to occur, whoever the perpetrators were (even the sainted Marauders). Furthermore, I do not believe that you can 'spell' the damage away so that no physical proof is left -
a) Harry spends stupid amounts of time in the Hospital throughout all five books. If fixing him was as easy as waving a wand, why would he be forever in there?
b) If it is indeed possible to spell away the damage of anal rape (we're talking tearing, kidney bruising, possible internal bleeding - nothing particularly easy to fix there!) the Wizarding world would have come up with other ways to verify the occurance of such events. Veritaserum, for instance. Legilimancy. Priori incantatum, for that matter, to see what was 'spelled away'. That a student would be unable to articulate this violation I can understand; that a student as clever as James Potter would not be aware of such eventualities strikes me as unlikely.
I also had problems with the characterisation of James, Sirius and Peter as rapists (Remus was excused, do to his mind-altering whathaveyous). They were cruel and they were bullies, yes. BUT I doubt that any of them would be able to speak of a rape as anything but a rape. I have an inkling that it is Sirius' easy dismissal of the Shrieking Shack incident that resulted in the assumption that the Marauders were villains of the worst kind (or at least able to justify anything to themselves). The rhetoric of 'he deserved it', however, is not particularly convincing. Sirius is able to dismiss it as a prank gone wrong. If Snape had died, it would have been a toss-up between manslaughter and murder (depending on intent).
The only (and I mean only) rapefic whose motivation I have been able to understand in this vein is called 'Comedy' (a Red Dwarf fic), whereby a vial of 'Sex Appeal' serum is thrown over Rimmer. Who is in a prison. Full of sex-starved criminals. What follows is thus understandable. (As, for the record, are the horrified reactions of the rest of the characters)
I would like to venture that, if you must have a rape instigated by Sirius or James, it would be through a similar plot device, i.e. carelessness instead of deliberate cruelty. They might well dose Snape with a lust potion of unknown strength and lock him in the showers; they would not, under any circumstances, do the deed themselves. Because - and here we get to the crux of my problem - they are The Good Guys. They may be mean, thoughtless idiots, but they are not stupid and they are not boorish rapists either.
My other major problem was the way the problem of the rape was treated. It was not a debilitating experience for teenager-Snape. Very well - rape doesn't have to be. Learning of his sins-while-under-the-influence was not a particularly debilitating experience for Remus, either. This I had some issues with, but okay. What I really could not understand was the lack of focus on what is wrong with both Snape and Lupin. Consider that Snape is sleeping with his rapist. Explain to me how this works. No, really, I am terribly, horrifying curious. What in the seven hells could make someone not only forgive their rapist but go on to trust them enough in a sexual relationship? Exactly how many of these cases do you suppose rape crisis centres deal with each year? "I need some advice, my colleagues held me down and brutally violated me, but I feel so attracted to one of them that I shall gladly forgive him and bear his children."
I'd complain that the character was OOC, but it wasn't so much that he was out of character as the fact that no character, no human, would react that way if they were remotely mentally healthy. No one. No way in hell. Now, you could argue that accepting this limitation still allows you to write a coherent, tightly-structured et cetera. Fine. This story, however, did not consider this fact at all. Not a little bit. Not in the least. There were two concerns: 1) that the victim was sleeping with the rapist and didn't want them to break up, and 2) as the rapist had amnesia, once he remembered his act, whether the victim would break off the relationship. In other words, the rape was treated as a plot hurdle to be overcome before our characters could fall into bed, happy and sated.
I have noticed this trend in type B rapefics (bear in mind that the above fic was chosen because it is well written et cetera). The rest of the fics I have come across are even worse. Exactly how messed up are these characters supposed to be? Bear in mind that both Snape and Lupin are/have been teachers at a boarding school. Please see this essay on an extremely well-argued view on exactly how messed up a character can be and still remain believable.
This is fast turning into a rant, so let me try to salvage my argument. To summarise: I am squicked by some types of rapefics (that seem to be gaining in popularity, hence this). Personal opinion and whathaveyou, yadda yadda yadda. I also have lit. crit. objections to type B rapefics (type C will be covered later) in that many ignore the safeguards Hogwarts has (in the shape of Heads of House, the Headmaster, the ghosts, the mirrors, the wards, the castle itself). Many also ignore the sheer unfeasibility of a rape victim ending up with a rapist and some treat rape as merely a relationship setback. Please don't liken an emotional and physical violation to a lover's quarrel. It makes me queasy.
I'm not telling anyone what to write. Merely to consider whether the result of their writing efforts is the same as what they think it is.
That is all. More will come later.
Not all rapefic is the same
This goes without saying. But, just to be clear, in my mind there are three kinds of rapefic:
a) the character is raped by the bad guy whereby h/c usually follows,
b) the character is raped by the misguided second character, whereby h/c and forgiveness follows, and
c) the character is raped by whoever and enjoys it, whereby it becomes an issue of 'no-but-yes' rather than 'no-and-NO'.
It is the latter two that squick me. I'm going to cover category B now and category C at a later stage.
The 'forgiveness' fic
To illustrate my problem with this, I want to focus on a fic I read. This particular fic has been chosen because I am a fan of the writer's other works, because it is well-written, tightly-plotted, and still squicks me completely. It is by the far the best of those I've come across.
It is essentially a Snape-centric fic in which he is gang-raped by the Marauders (the premise of 'Snape shows X how bad the Marauders really were' was why I initially read the story, for those wondering). This is also a Lupin/Snape fic. The rape was blamed on mind-altering drugs, (a mindfuck of biblical proportions) and the focus was on what Lupin thinks of the fact that Snape is still sleeping with him, despite the rape. The characterisation of Snape left me more than a little cold, as I don't believe that he is truly so twisted as to do something like that to himself. However, it was the utter absence of Dumbledore that made me so sceptical. I do not believe that Dumbledore would allow a gang rape to occur, whoever the perpetrators were (even the sainted Marauders). Furthermore, I do not believe that you can 'spell' the damage away so that no physical proof is left -
a) Harry spends stupid amounts of time in the Hospital throughout all five books. If fixing him was as easy as waving a wand, why would he be forever in there?
b) If it is indeed possible to spell away the damage of anal rape (we're talking tearing, kidney bruising, possible internal bleeding - nothing particularly easy to fix there!) the Wizarding world would have come up with other ways to verify the occurance of such events. Veritaserum, for instance. Legilimancy. Priori incantatum, for that matter, to see what was 'spelled away'. That a student would be unable to articulate this violation I can understand; that a student as clever as James Potter would not be aware of such eventualities strikes me as unlikely.
I also had problems with the characterisation of James, Sirius and Peter as rapists (Remus was excused, do to his mind-altering whathaveyous). They were cruel and they were bullies, yes. BUT I doubt that any of them would be able to speak of a rape as anything but a rape. I have an inkling that it is Sirius' easy dismissal of the Shrieking Shack incident that resulted in the assumption that the Marauders were villains of the worst kind (or at least able to justify anything to themselves). The rhetoric of 'he deserved it', however, is not particularly convincing. Sirius is able to dismiss it as a prank gone wrong. If Snape had died, it would have been a toss-up between manslaughter and murder (depending on intent).
The only (and I mean only) rapefic whose motivation I have been able to understand in this vein is called 'Comedy' (a Red Dwarf fic), whereby a vial of 'Sex Appeal' serum is thrown over Rimmer. Who is in a prison. Full of sex-starved criminals. What follows is thus understandable. (As, for the record, are the horrified reactions of the rest of the characters)
I would like to venture that, if you must have a rape instigated by Sirius or James, it would be through a similar plot device, i.e. carelessness instead of deliberate cruelty. They might well dose Snape with a lust potion of unknown strength and lock him in the showers; they would not, under any circumstances, do the deed themselves. Because - and here we get to the crux of my problem - they are The Good Guys. They may be mean, thoughtless idiots, but they are not stupid and they are not boorish rapists either.
My other major problem was the way the problem of the rape was treated. It was not a debilitating experience for teenager-Snape. Very well - rape doesn't have to be. Learning of his sins-while-under-the-influence was not a particularly debilitating experience for Remus, either. This I had some issues with, but okay. What I really could not understand was the lack of focus on what is wrong with both Snape and Lupin. Consider that Snape is sleeping with his rapist. Explain to me how this works. No, really, I am terribly, horrifying curious. What in the seven hells could make someone not only forgive their rapist but go on to trust them enough in a sexual relationship? Exactly how many of these cases do you suppose rape crisis centres deal with each year? "I need some advice, my colleagues held me down and brutally violated me, but I feel so attracted to one of them that I shall gladly forgive him and bear his children."
I'd complain that the character was OOC, but it wasn't so much that he was out of character as the fact that no character, no human, would react that way if they were remotely mentally healthy. No one. No way in hell. Now, you could argue that accepting this limitation still allows you to write a coherent, tightly-structured et cetera. Fine. This story, however, did not consider this fact at all. Not a little bit. Not in the least. There were two concerns: 1) that the victim was sleeping with the rapist and didn't want them to break up, and 2) as the rapist had amnesia, once he remembered his act, whether the victim would break off the relationship. In other words, the rape was treated as a plot hurdle to be overcome before our characters could fall into bed, happy and sated.
I have noticed this trend in type B rapefics (bear in mind that the above fic was chosen because it is well written et cetera). The rest of the fics I have come across are even worse. Exactly how messed up are these characters supposed to be? Bear in mind that both Snape and Lupin are/have been teachers at a boarding school. Please see this essay on an extremely well-argued view on exactly how messed up a character can be and still remain believable.
This is fast turning into a rant, so let me try to salvage my argument. To summarise: I am squicked by some types of rapefics (that seem to be gaining in popularity, hence this). Personal opinion and whathaveyou, yadda yadda yadda. I also have lit. crit. objections to type B rapefics (type C will be covered later) in that many ignore the safeguards Hogwarts has (in the shape of Heads of House, the Headmaster, the ghosts, the mirrors, the wards, the castle itself). Many also ignore the sheer unfeasibility of a rape victim ending up with a rapist and some treat rape as merely a relationship setback. Please don't liken an emotional and physical violation to a lover's quarrel. It makes me queasy.
I'm not telling anyone what to write. Merely to consider whether the result of their writing efforts is the same as what they think it is.
That is all. More will come later.
