The Horrors of Badfic Discovery for Your 'Ship and Cam on Rape in Fanfic

[misscam]

So you're having a fairly good day, writing a bit, reading a bit, chatting a bit, idly ogling if hot men appears. And then you decide to read a little fanfic as you have the time and all, and you've been thinking about leaving some encouraging reviews ever since you posted about reviews just a few hours earlier. As you idly scan ff.net's listing of CSI fic, you are unaware of the doom about to hit you smack in the ass. Then you spot it, a fic speaking of rape in its summary. And though you sense pain even from the uncapitalised title, you click anyway (because clearly, you hate yourself and like pain).

And you find a fic with Catherine being raped by Warrick and scream as the full horror besets you. Someone has in fact mutilated your 'ship and cruelly beaten up grammar and spelling in a fell swoop. Then you hiss. Very loudly. And go on a Viking rampage.

All right. Rape appears in fanfics every so often. I've even been guilty of writing one such thing, when I was younger and wangstier. And there are ways to do it right. But rape, serious rape in serious fics,* should never just be:

Cheap ploy for (w)angst.
Just another way of getting two people together.
Way to demonize potential threat to your particular OTP.
Way to show how "eeeeeeeeeeeeeevil" a "Villain" is.
Shock!Factor.
Redemption for rapist and twu wub at the end.

Rapists sometimes seem like very nice people and quite normal. This is true. But that doesn't mean that any descent and nice guy is a potential rapist. Furthermore, rape is a trauma. No healing sex will cure it. Rape is a violation of body, but bodily scars is not all it leaves. It can take years to get over mentally, if at all.

There is freedom of speech, yes,and you may write about what you like (more or less) but that's also the freedom to sometimes be considerate, for smeg's sake.

Thus ends Cam's Viking Rampage. Return next week to see her beat up Bush with an axe's handle. (Honestly, she should really be used to such horrific discoveries after years in the LotR fandom. But she must have gone soft of late, for it truly did make her mind see giant red cloths and bulls chasing little Spaniards 'round and 'round.)

(* Cam here makes a distinction between those who attempt to write "real" rape and those who write "romanticised" rape as a particular sexual kink in fic where the characters get off on it. Most authors of that genre seem to hold that is about a domination fantasy and not about real rape, which is a horrific abuse and has nothing to do with sex. Whether or not there is such a distinction might be argued, but Cam is willing to see there might be.)

Comments

[losseniaiel.livejournal.com]

NOOOO! Your post made me think that I hadn't been to the Pit of Voles in a while. So I looked. And I found Eowyn/Faramir with Disney songs. It burnss us.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Just don't find any Faramir rapes Éowyn and make my day even more traumatic.

[losseniaiel.livejournal.com]

NOOOOOO. Bad images. Please make them go away.

[belegcuthalion.livejournal.com]

Cam here makes a distinction between those who attempt to write "real" rape and those who write "romanticised" rape as a particular sexual kink in fic where the characters get off on it.

I'm grateful to hear that. I wrote a rape-scene for one of my tales and it was one of the hardest things I ever did. And it was important for the plot, or I'd never did it.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

*nods* Sometimes, it does come into plots and as I said, it can work in certain fics. It's just that so many use it as a cheap, cheap ploy without any further thought. Gah.

[belegcuthalion.livejournal.com]

Gah indeed. Especially those of the "She-had-to-be-forced-once-to-enjoy-it"-kind.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

*mutters darkly* Those suggesting that's even remotely real infuriate me. It's *abuse*, darnit.

[lotus79.livejournal.com]

Well said!

And I forgot about the fourth one...

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Is popular in LotR fandom, for some reason.

*icon love*

[lotus79.livejournal.com]

Icon love right back atcha! Use it if you want. ;)

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Maybe I shall... *ogles Colin*

[nirix5.livejournal.com]

I think I can let my icon speak for me in this instance.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Quite. That's about my expression before the onset of rage.

[nirix5.livejournal.com]

*shakes head* You know, fanfiction is a delicate thing. Some people really don't know where to draw their lines- and rape is one of the trickiest things to write about on any level, let alone fanfiction, and shouldn't be taken lightly. Gah.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Yes. You'd think people would consider that it's a trauma and all traumas should be handled with care. But noooo, gotta have that healing sex.

Excuse me while I gag.

[ericasj.livejournal.com]

I saw that one and I was like "WTF?"

That was way out of the line.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. It was the WTF of the day. And it got good reviews! *shakes head*

Making Warrick a raping villain to hook up Cath and Griss, sheesh...

[reenjalas.livejournal.com]

...

I feel very sorry for you to have suffered the horror of that. *pats*

When I was more naive and a year younger, I constantly kept bumping into fics that did horrible things to my OTP's. Now-a-days I am more wary and my mind is horribly scarred and as twisted as a corkscrew because of fics like that.

In other words: I feel your pain.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Badfic is all the more horrid when it comes unexpected. Gah.

[silvery-lass.livejournal.com]

When I was young and new to fanfiction I used to read those, now I don't, haven't seen that many since I kind of stay at the edges of the fanfiction world.

The most bizarre I've read had the characters having sex after one of them had been gang banged.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

So much for realism...

[hadria.livejournal.com]

I was randomly perusing lj (I do that) and came across yours and gah - I think I've had the misfortune of reading that exact story. Gah. No, just...no.

Also, I think you wrote my fave G/S fic evah - if you have this exact same username on YTDAW.

Anyway, I friended you - hope that's okay (I'm not Bush).

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Yeah. There ain't enough 'no' in the world for that. Shudder.

Yes, I have this username on YTDAW as well, as in fact most places I wander. What was the fic, out of curiousity?

And of course I don't mind. I friended you back. I'll take you on your word that you're not Bush ;)

[hadria.livejournal.com]

If I was Bush, I don't think this would be comprehensible or grammatically correct. :P Maybe I'm Darth Cheney.

I think it's Afterthoughts and Forethoughts and the Northern Wind. I'm bad with titles. I cried at several points. You know when something just hurts so good? And then bawled openly by the time I got to the 'intoxicating life' line.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Cheney has a secret fetish for GSR? Sweeet! Maybe I can use that against him... :P

Ah yeah, that one. Another example of my slight tendency to stick Norwegian ideas into my writing, in this case the slightly romantacised idea of the northern wind. I'm glad you liked :) And yeah, I know what you mean.

[ressie-noldo.livejournal.com]

I thnk the icon roughly sums up my reaction.

Heck, I saw CSI for about ten minutes in the middle of lunch or something, and even I know that Warrick raping Catherine is pretty bloody unlikely.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it wouldn't take to long to figure that out. Grrr. Very appropriate icon.

A response from the known rapefic writer on the flist . . .

[maureenlycaon.livejournal.com]

Hmm. One reason I've taken so long to reply is, well . . . what you're saying here is awfully vague in places, so that I'm not positive what you mean.

I do agree that that's the absolute shitlist of Rapefics That Simply Shouldn't Be Written. Rape is a very powerful, emotionally explosive subject. I think it shouldn't be used lightly -- out of respect for real-life rape victims, and most of all out of respect for the fact that real-life rape is not only a crime, but a particularly horrible act because it uses sex as a tool of nonconsensual domination, violence and hatred -- in short, as a tool of Evil. (There's also the issue of respect for your readers' feelings, but that depends a lot on your target reader. The Grey Archive audience, for example, obviously doesn't give a flying fuck.)

I think it shows contempt for real-life rape survivors when you portray rape as "romantic". It shows contempt when you show is as something the victim can get over with one session of Teh Healing ButtSexx. It shows contempt when you use it as a plot device to give your Mary-Sure a Tortured Past or to ratchet up the angst. (The latter also shows you don't really know how to generate angst, so you're using rape as shorthand for "My character is suffering! Feel for him/her!")

Is that hypocritical, coming from someone who does write rapefic and angstfic that uses rape and does sometimes get off on fictional descriptions of rape? I know some people will think that. But I don't think so.

I do not write rapefics in which the rape is depicted as romantic. This is a MAJOR beef I have with many allegedly "romantic" scenes in which the male character forces his kisses on the female character and holds her and won't let her get away, until she stops fighting and starts enjoying it. alt.sex.stories.moderated has a code for this, "reluc" for "reluctant", but in the FAQ it's still basically considered rape. What scares and enrages the hell out of me is "mainstream" movies and fiction that do not admit that this is rape, that actually show this as romantic. No it isn't! It is rape, and it is morally poisonous to show this as romantic, and show women loving it! Think about what you've just seen! (Or what you've just written.)

The opposite side of the coin of this, of course, is the argument that a male rape victim could not possibly have been raped, because he got hard and even orgasmed during it. (There, folks. Now do you see the evil, now that the gender is changed?)

There. That's by far my biggest pet peeve with other people's rapefic -- the notion that people want to be raped and if they can be made to enjoy it, it's not really rape. Grrr. And no, I do not write that kind of rapefic. Even in perhaps my diciest series, "Sworn", where Lord Michael genuinely believes his victim is better off under his care than living in freedom, it's pretty obvious that he's wrong, that the writer doesn't share his views. (This, by the way, is called the "unreliable narrator" technique. It can be damned interesting and fun to use, but to pull it off you actually need to do some characterization.)

I also have never written rapefic in which the victim is portrayed as having somehow "deserved it". I do not have issues with resenting other women for having sexuality and being possible sexual competitors; I look down on other women and girls who think that way, the same way I look down on Klansmen and Rush Limbaugh fans and women who swoon over Ted Bundy or Richard Ramirez.

Yes, I realize that it's a common meme, in alt.sex.stories and other places, to portray the victim as deserving it so that the reader doesn't have his pleasure spoiled by feeling compassion for the victim. I can see the function of that in a rapefic PWP, where characterization is basically optional anyway . . . but I've never written a PWP rapefic and am a little dubious of their morality.

I'm a bit less nervous about this meme when a male rape victim is portrayed as a homophobe, I will admit. Yes, here I will admit I'm somewhat hypocritical. But let's face it, we do not have a widespread social attitude that homophobic men deserve to be raped that makes it hard to prosecute homosexual rapists.

Damn character limit . . .

[maureenlycaon.livejournal.com]

One reason crapfic writers do use this shit is that they share a lot of widely-held attitudes toward real-life rape, unfortunately. And they are going to continue doing it as long as these attitudes remain widespread and are treated by other people as opinions deserving of any respect.

The reasons that many crapfic writers use rape as a plot device is different, I think. Like many of us, they've probably read fiction or even seen movies in which rape, torture or other very, very heavy subjects were used in an angsty story, and used very well, and they were affected by them. They understood that the story had a powerful emotional wallop, and they understood that the rape was part and parcel of that story, but because they don't really know how to pick apart someone else's work and see how it's constructed and how it does what it does, they don't understand how to duplicate the effect. They come to a foggy notion that having Frodo or their Mary-Sue raped will give their stories the same impact on their readers. I suppose they're genuinely bewildered when readers instead are offended and leave nasty reviews. If they ever improve as writers, they may come to understand it . . . but in most cases, since they aren't doing this because they enjoy writing, they probably never will.

[autobadgirl.livejournal.com]

WORD! *stands behind you with my Viking axe ready to slay some Voles*