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misscamSo 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.)
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.)
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Damn character limit . . .
Date: 2005-03-09 08:50 pm (UTC)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.