swan_tower: (*writing)
[personal profile] swan_tower

WARNING: this post is about rape in fiction, and considerations to bear in mind when including it.

Last week I posted some thoughts on Twitter about rape scenes in fiction — specifically, thinking about the possibility (the likelihood, sadly) that someone in your audience is a rape survivor, and contemplating what effect you want to have on that person. Those thoughts are the epiphany I arrived at while thinking through the larger issue; I want to write about that larger issue now.

If I felt like messing around with MS Paint, this would be a flowchart. It’s a sequence of questions I think you should ask yourself when you think about including rape in the story you’re telling, and points to consider depending on what answer you give. It should go without saying, but straw-man responses in the vein of “you want to ban people writing about rape!” will be summarily laughed out of the room. If I’m issuing any commands here, it’s don’t write about it blindly. Don’t make your decisions without thinking about them first.

Note: I’ll be speaking mostly of men raping women, rather than any other configuration. The rape of children is always, at least in my experience, treated as the horrific thing it is, rather than being titillating or background noise. The threat of men being raped (as opposed to the actual event) is often treated as comedy, which is appalling; some of the points below will apply to that, too. But mostly I’m talking about the problematic ways we depict men raping women.

***

Question the First: Why am I including this in my story? What purpose does it serve?

There are a lot of reasons you might have one of your characters be raped. Some of them are better than others; all of them are things you should think about.

1. I need to show that my villain is evil.

. . . okay. But why rape? Why is that your go-to method for showing he’s evil?

It’s one thing if you’re writing a mystery about a detective hunting down a serial rapist. In a story like that, the bad guy raping people is the entire point. But if your villain is a genocidal tyrant? Then I kind of give the side-eye to the notion that you need rape to convince me he’s bad. If that’s true, you haven’t done a very good job writing the “genocidal tyrant” part.

But maybe you’re writing about somebody who doesn’t look like a villain at first blush. He seems normal; then you throw in some heinous act to reverse the audience’s perceptions. I ask again: why rape? Does it have to be rape?

The recent Daredevil TV series demonstrates handily that the answer to that last question is “no.” For those who haven’t seen it: they spent a fair bit of time (several episodes, I think) building up Wilson Fisk as a person — one involved in crime, sure, but maybe not thaaaaat bad. Then somebody pisses him off . . . and he beats the guy to death, with the finale being when he smashes his victim’s head with a car door until it literally comes off his body.

No rape. In fact, Fisk is notably courteous to the women he interacts with in the show. It doesn’t make him a good person; it just shows that antagonists don’t have to be misogynists. Rapist villains exist, sure — but I’ve seen so many of them lately that Wilson Fisk not falling into that pattern made him substantially more interesting.

If you want to write about rape to show a character is evil, stop and ask yourself why. Consider whether you’re just being lazy, leaning on that crime to save yourself from having to explore how dreadful his other actions are.

2. I need to motivate one of my characters.

. . . okay. But why rape? Why is that your go-to motivation?

In one of the recent discussions of this topic online, someone in the comment thread went into detail about his plans for a book he’s working on. (I won’t name the blog or the commenter; I don’t want to start a dogpile.) This example was admittedly unusual, because the victim in the story is a boy, rather than a woman. But the gist of the commenter’s point was that he needed something really, really awful to happen to the character in backstory, to explain his actions later in life.

To which many other people in the comment thread said: “What part of him seeing his father murdered in front of him and then being sold into slavery isn’t awful enough already?”

This is the flip side of the point I raised above. There are nine and ninety ways to motivate a character; it doesn’t have to be rape. Other possibilities include, but are not limited to: kidnapping, imprisonment, enslavement, wrongful conviction of a crime, theft or destruction of an irreplaceable possession, public disgrace, physical or mental abuse, physical or mental torture, death of a loved one — and that’s before we get into the non-traumatic motivations like love, idealism, ambition, and so forth.

And yet, time and time again, we have female characters being motivated by rape, and male characters being motivated by the rape and murder of their wives/sisters/daughters.

Try harder. Think about the emotional impact of everything else this character has experienced, and what else you can use if the current material isn’t enough. Ask yourself why rape is the best answer to this question, when it’s about as fresh as having a Dark Lord with Armies of Monstrous Minions as your villain. Even people who have been raped would not necessarily point to that event as their defining moment, the thing that propelled them into action thereafter. (Unless the “action” in question is “becoming an anti-rape activist.”)

3. It’s realistic. This kind of thing happens all the time.

True. (Unfortunately.) But are you applying the “realism” yardstick equally?

Men get raped, too. Quite often, actually, in wartime or military/prison situations. And yet — to use George R.R. Martin as a convenient example of this point — I don’t recall any instances of male/male rape in the Night’s Watch. Even though they’re an all-male military unit, many of whom are rapists already, deprived of female company, operating under increasingly lax disciplinary conditions. Martin tells us in detail about how they risk punishment to sneak away and visit prostitutes, but he doesn’t tell us about the in-house rapes that would logically be happening back at the castle. (It doesn’t matter that most of the men there “aren’t gay.” Neither are most of the men who commit this kind of rape in the real world.)

I haven’t seen any of Martin’s defenders say “his commitment to realism in sexual assault is great, but I really wish he included scenes of Jon fighting off Ser Allister Thorne’s rape attempts or coming across Pyp huddled in a corner after he’s been sexually assaulted again by some of the bullies.” You’re five books into the series before the issue really comes up, and then it’s in the context of needing to show that one villain is Super Awful Extra Bad, against the background radiation of all those guys who rape women as a matter of course.

The realism argument only holds water if you apply it fairly. Otherwise, it looks a lot like you’re actually engaging in misogyny and/or voyeuristic enjoyment, and using “realism!” as your fig leaf.

Also, consider this: there is an extent to which the realism argument contributes to normalizing rape — treating it as an inevitable occurrence we can’t really prevent. The sun rises, rain falls, and men rape women. But rape isn’t weather, and there’s something to be said for presenting worlds in which men do not rape women at the drop of a hat.

4. I have something I want to say about the causes and effects of rape.

This? Is a good reason. If you know the subject and have a thematic point to make about it, then you aren’t tacking it on for shock value or including it out of reflex. Which really ought to be true of everything you put in the story . . . but it’s especially important when you’re writing about a trauma that’s often been handled so badly in fiction.

***

If you have decided that yes, you really do need this in your story, then you proceed to . . .

***

Question the Second: Does it need to be shown onstage?

It’s entirely possible to have one of your characters be raped, without showing the event itself to the reader/viewer. Ergo, if you have answered Question the First with “yes, I need to have rape in this story,” then the next thing to ask yourself is whether you’re going to show it happening, and if so, why.

1. I need my audience to know the rape happened.

If this is your answer, then I feel confident in saying that you are doing a shitty job of writing about rape.

Why? Because if the audience has no other way to know it took place, then ipso facto, the event itself has no fallout. Nobody’s traumatized by it; nobody suffers consequences for their crime. It’s context-free. So yeah: shitty job. Try harder.

2. I need the audience to understand how awful it is.

This can be a good reason. But because the depiction of rape has gotten so problematic (see Question the Third below), showing the rape itself may not be the best way to achieve your goal. In fact, it can be counterproductive.

What you can do instead — and too many writers cheese out on this — is show the aftereffects. And no, I don’t mean the thing where the woman goes on a psychotic rampage to avenge her violation, or the manpain where the male protagonist thinks about how traumatized he is by his wife’s trauma. I mean doing research into what actually happens with rape victims after the fact, both in terms of their own response, and that of the society they live in. That gives you the horror, without the risk of titillation — and it makes sure you don’t trivialize the event by skipping the fallout.

3. There’s something which happens during the event that’s really important to the story.

Above and beyond “the character gets raped,” of course.

Again, this can be a good reason. If something particularly revelatory or transformative of character occurs, or the victim sees something plot-important while pinned to the floor — then yes, you may need to show the event itself. I know reactions to this example have differed wildly, but this approach is why I’m okay with the depiction of Lisbet Salander’s rape in the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: we need to see her walk into that situation, and see her behavior during it, so that we understand the turnaround when we find out she recorded the whole thing and is using that recording as leverage against her rapist. This makes it clear that we’re dealing with a woman who values her financial and social freedom above her body, and will cold-bloodedly sacrifice the latter in order to gain the former. It would not be as clear if we didn’t see the setup and follow-through.

Just make sure you aren’t so focused on whatever happens during the scene that you forget to think about what happens after.

***

So you need this rape in the story, and yes, you need to show it onscreen or on the page. Now you ask yourself . . .

***

Question the Third: How am I going to depict this assault?

This is where things get difficult. The unpleasant truth is, we’ve gotten so inured to female victimization in media — especially sexualized victimization — that showing rape onstage, without it coming across as titillating, is not easily accomplished.

I can’t divide this point into a tidy list of potential answers and their pros and cons. Instead, you have to ask yourself more questions. Whose point of view are you using? Remember that point of view encourages the audience to empathize with the character whose head they’re in; if you use the villain’s pov, then you’re pushing them to empathize with the rapist and his enjoyment of the event. You’re on safer ground with the pov of the victim — and if she’s not actually a character who merits getting pov, if she’s just some random woman the villain is assaulting because it’s Thursday and why not — then there’s a high chance (though not a certain one) that the scene isn’t really worth including after all.

Ask yourself: what effect is this supposed to have, and on which characters? Are you focusing on the victim, or on someone else? The latter can work . . . but it falls verrrrrrry easily into the Manpain Trap, where we’re led to focus on how the hero is suffering because he saw/heard about someone else’s rape, instead of how the victim herself is suffering. (Cf. much of the outrage over the recent Game of Thrones scene. I will note that I haven’t seen it yet, much less subsequent episodes, so I can’t comment on that one in detail.) Think of it this way: rape is, among other things, about denying someone their agency. When you use that violation as a motivating force in someone else’s story, you are denying the victim agency again, by not allowing her to be the protagonist of her own tale.

And ask: where is my camera/language focused? Am I writing this like smut, with my attention on what the body parts are doing? Or am I looking at the psychological side, so that the reader will get the impact of the event rather than the mechanics of it? Even if you mean for the mechanics to be horrifying, some readers will not process it that way. And some of your readers will process you as being part of that aforementioned group, or at least as catering to them. It doesn’t matter whether this is fair: it is the unfortunate consequence of the fact that the rape of women has been fetishized to an appalling degree in our society. If you want to not contribute to that, you have to use different tools and approaches than the people who do.

***

It was round about this point that I had the epiphany I posted on Twitter, which is that a writer tackling this topic would be well-advised to imagine their audience includes one or more rape victims. If your audience consists of more than the half-dozen friends you’ve pressured into reading your story — and maybe even if it doesn’t — there may indeed be such a person in your audience.

How do you want them to feel, when they read this story?

When I say you shouldn’t make them feel like they’re being assaulted all over again, I don’t mean that you should soft-pedal what’s happening. I mean that there’s a difference between showing the horror in a fashion that is compassionate to those who have suffered it, and showing it in a fashion that is cruel to them all over again. But to know the difference, you have to understand what being raped is actually like, for Real Live People who have experienced it. You have to learn about when and how it happens; the ways different people process it, based on circumstances and individual psychology; and what happens afterward, physically, emotionally, and societally. Because you can’t be compassionate if you’re just making shit up.

If that sounds like hard work: then step the hell up. Or else don’t write about rape. If you screw up the realistic details of astronomy or tall-ship sailing, you’re going to annoy someone; but if you screw up the realistic details of rape, then you’re going to hurt someone. And we have enough people doing that already, thanks.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2015-06-03 07:53 pm (UTC)
landofnowhere: (Default)
From: [personal profile] landofnowhere
That was an interesting read!

I'd be interested in hearing about good stories about characters processing that people they care about have been raped (or otherwise subjected to sexual violence) that don't fall into the Manpain Trap.

Date: 2015-06-03 07:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] swan-tower.livejournal.com
Off the top of my head, none come to mind -- but I'll admit I haven't read a lot of stories of that type, period. I feel like I have read/watched some that do it right; I just can't think of any right now.

Series

Date: 2015-06-24 08:30 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ihrenglass.livejournal.com
In the Monarchies of God by Paul Kearney there are two good examples even if they only happen to minor characters. Not described put they both make some hasty decisions because of it. One is a sodomized ship boy the other a young werewolf. The case with the wife of the guard is also fairly close to rape and her comeback is really satisfying.

Date: 2015-06-04 05:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gelsey.livejournal.com

Very good points. I like this very much. I got very upset a few years ago when several historical romances in a row had what was blatant rape in it. I finally threw a book across the room.


Though oddly enough one of my more favorite books pretty much opens with a rape - but imo it fits all your criteria. The two books couldn't exist without what happened to her.

Date: 2015-06-04 08:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gelsey.livejournal.com

The King's Peace and its sequel by Jo Walton.

Date: 2015-06-04 08:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] xahra99.livejournal.com
Thanks. I've liked some of Walton's other books, so will check out. I know it's not a rec thread, but was intrigued.

Date: 2015-06-04 08:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gelsey.livejournal.com

I'm always happy to give a book rec,and the two books are some of my standbys when I need something I know is good.

Date: 2015-06-04 08:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] swan-tower.livejournal.com
I feel like that illustrates the point. The problem here is less "there's too much rape in fiction," more "there's too much casual and badly-depicted rape in fiction." The stuff that gets depicted right isn't nearly so offensive.

Date: 2015-06-04 08:17 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gelsey.livejournal.com

Exactly. And I have a lot of trouble with the romance trope of "oh he raped me or threatened to but now I love him so everything is wonderful." Gag.

Date: 2015-06-04 08:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] xahra99.livejournal.com
There's a book called Passion Play that features a rape I read a while back. It's the first book of a three book series.After I read the whole series I found a lot of criticism of the book online but also learned the author was a rape survivor. I found the depiction depressingly realistic but found the character's response and her road to recovery incredibly satisfying.

Date: 2015-06-04 10:29 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] n3m3sis43.livejournal.com
Thanks for mentioning this book. I'm a survivor and I write about rape and sexual assault and I am always terrified I'm Doing It Wrong or don't have enough good reasons. And I am going to go find this book now.

Date: 2015-06-04 02:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mosinging1986.livejournal.com
(Here via Home Page)

If someone doesn't want to read about rape, don't read about it. Problem solved.

Date: 2015-06-04 04:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] swan-tower.livejournal.com
Except that doesn't actually solve anything, because it perpetuates bad depictions for everybody who isn't bothered enough to stop reading. And those bad depictions will shape how they view rape in the real world: how they talk about the subject, how they respond to actual rape survivors, etc.

Date: 2015-06-05 03:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mosinging1986.livejournal.com
I'm sorry, I guess I don't really understand what you're getting at here.

I can't imagine why a writer would go into detail in a written rape scene in the first place. I guess it might have something to do with a story.

Most fics (as well as published books) give readers a general idea of what they are about. If a reader chooses to read it, that's their business. I've often skipped portions of fics/stories. And if it was continuing, then I'd stop reading it.

Date: 2015-06-05 05:18 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] swan-tower.livejournal.com
You can't see the problem with depicting something badly, in a way that is hurtful to the people with personal experience of that thing?

The fact that you can skip it doesn't actually fix anything. You can step over a missing stair, too -- but wouldn't it to be better to have a staircase that isn't broken?

Date: 2015-06-05 03:13 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mosinging1986.livejournal.com
You can't see the problem with depicting something badly, in a way that is hurtful to the people with personal experience of that thing?

Depicting something badly in fiction is one thing. "in a way that is hurtful" makes little sense.

How can words on a screen/paper, by people who are strangers to you, words that are not about you or directed towards you or anyone you know/love, and especially, words that no one is making you read - how can that be "hurtful"?

It's each person's responsibility to make their reading choices. Why would anyone continue to read something that they find distasteful or disturbing in some way?

I'm a huge Gillian Anderson fan, and I wish I could watch 'Hannibal'. But I tried watching a bit and it was way too bloody and gory and violent for me. Therefore, I had to choose to stop watching it.

Date: 2015-06-05 06:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] swan-tower.livejournal.com
How can words on a screen/paper, by people who are strangers to you, words that are not about you or directed towards you or anyone you know/love, and especially, words that no one is making you read - how can that be "hurtful"?

It's hurtful when people assume the rape you experienced was like the (unrealistic) ones they've encountered in fiction.

It's hurtful when people expect you to react to your rape like the (unrealistic) characters they've encountered in fiction.

It's hurtful when people's response to you is like the (unrealistic) ones they've seen in fiction -- and then they don't understand why their Helpful Comments aren't actually helpful.

I could go on, but really let me just say: people who have experienced this have said "oh my god, this is a problem." Actual rape survivors, dealing with the actual fallout of actual bad depictions. If you can't understand that, fine -- but you still need to accept that they have first-hand experience, and therefore can judge the problem better than you can.

Date: 2015-06-09 04:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mosinging1986.livejournal.com
Nonsense. People have the responsibility to monitor their own reading. If they don't like something, they can choose not to read it.

Words on a piece of paper don't "hurt" anyone - especially when no one is making you read them.

That's where all this nonsense about "trigger warnings" came about!
Edited Date: 2015-06-09 04:30 pm (UTC)

(frozen)

Date: 2015-06-09 06:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] swan-tower.livejournal.com
Actual Rape Victims: "This has created genuine harm in my life."

You: "Nonsense."

We've had a couple of rounds of debating this, and it hasn't gone anywhere useful. I'm done.

Are you a writer?

Date: 2015-06-15 10:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rsheslin.livejournal.com
If not, it's quite possible that you are not the intended audience for this article.

What I mean by "writer" in this context is "someone who crafts stories for the express purpose of engaging a reader." If you're just writing for yourself in your private journal, that's great. Go crazy. Do whatever you like.

But if you want your words to touch someone else's life, why *wouldn't* you want to take your readers' reactions into consideration?

Re: Are you a writer?

Date: 2015-06-16 11:44 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mosinging1986.livejournal.com
But if you want your words to touch someone else's life, why *wouldn't* you want to take your readers' reactions into consideration?

Whether it's a novel, a news item, a blog post, or a diary that will never see the sun, you should strive for accuracy. (Although I realize there differing standards for all these things.) But still, you should do so. There's hardly anyone reading on my LJ anymore, but I'm still careful in that regard in case someone does.

But the thing is, you cannot control the reactions of others. Even if you wanted to, even if you tried, you can't get inside someone's mind and soul and control what they think or feel. It's simply not a thing that is possible for one human being to do to another.

That's why the responsibility is on the individual to make their own choices about what they read.
Edited Date: 2015-06-16 11:54 am (UTC)

Re: Are you a writer?

Date: 2015-06-16 05:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] swan-tower.livejournal.com
You say you strive for accuracy, and yet you resist when I tell you that part of the problem with bad depictions of rape is, they create inaccurate real-life expectations in the minds of readers.

And while it is true that you cannot control the reactions of others -- not to a perfect degree -- the art of writing is about improving your mastery of exactly that process. I can say "I want my readers to be sad here," and craft my words for the maximum chance of evoking sadness. I can say "I want this to be exciting," and consider what things I might type to get their hearts racing. We're not just hurling words randomly at the wall and hoping some of them will stick; at every turn, we're asking ourselves what effect we want to achieve, and how best to make that happen.

Yet when it comes to rape, you seem to think those questions go out the window.

Date: 2015-06-04 05:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] derangedstray.livejournal.com
You've said it better and it's made me understand more, you need to question as why adding rape to your story is really necessary

Date: 2015-06-04 06:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] swan-tower.livejournal.com
I'm glad it helped.

Date: 2015-06-04 05:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] immemor.livejournal.com
Part of the problem is that writers and editors think of rape scenes as “sex” scenes instead of thinking of them as assault scenes.

I agree that one of the problems with rape in fiction, besides the pain it may cause for victims in the audience, is that it has become a lazy writer’s way to show the development of female characters. Oh she was raped but look how she dealt with it… so heroic… she smokes Virginia Slims now. Again, back to your question, why did it need to be rape that she had to overcome? Why couldn’t she face off against her evil father in the cloud city of Bespin? Or fight Oddjob in the basement of Fort Knox? Or some other obstacle that male heroes encounter?

US military statistics are that one in five women are victims of rape while one in one hundred men are victims of rape. Plus the percentage of male rape victims who remain silent is even higher than that of women. In fact, the only time I’ve encounter the inclusion of male rape victims in the discussion are in this post and in the documentary “The Invisible War.” Unfortunately, this makes male rape victims an “out of sight out of mind” issue for most people who have not experienced it. It’s not something that’s discussed which, no doubt, increases the sense of shame and isolation for many of the victims. Plus, from keeping my ear to the ground about these sorts of things, male on male rape still seems to be the subject of uncontested punch lines – usually of the “he was in prison and got what he deserved” variety.

Also there is, perhaps, the fear that if one wrote about male rape victims that the artist would face accusations of ignoring the fact that more women are raped. This was the reaction to Michael Crichton’s “Disclosure” since many more women are sexually harassed in the workplace than men. The backlash was “Why is this being made about men?”

Great post.

Date: 2015-06-04 06:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] swan-tower.livejournal.com
The balance point on that latter issue is hard to find, yeah: assault on men is a thing we need to talk about, too, but not at the cost of talking about assault on women. I suspect the problem more often lies in how things get received. Write a novel about men suffering workplace harassment? Everybody talks about it. Write a novel about women suffering workplace harassment? Nobody pays any attention. Things don't get viewed as problems until men are subject to them, too.

But yes, men who have been raped are almost completely invisible right now. That makes it even harder for them.

Date: 2015-06-04 06:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tracyburke1028.livejournal.com
I enjoyed this. I often struggle as a reader with Authors who put rape into their books like it was something that happened... IE

"What did you do today?"

"Oh, you know, the same ole thing. I got up, ate breakfast, took the kids to school, stopped by the supermarket, got raped, came home, folded laundry, picked the kids up from school."


I hate that crap to be honest. People who have gone through and survived rape don't look at it like it was just something that happened while you were out and about in your every day life. It changes the way they look at the world, it changes who they are as a person, it changes their needs and wants in life...

You just can't gloss over it and then see this character later on in the book having sexual intercourse with their "boyfriend or girlfriend" like its a night in the monkey cage at the zoo. I think people who gloss over it like that and it has no impact on the character what so ever has never really met anyone that is a survivor of sexual assault.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it should be taken to the extreme where an Author writes out very detailed scenes with it. I'm just saying that if a character was raped, don't be writing about the character having "wild monkey sex" five chapters later because realistically, they probably won't be doing that.

Date: 2015-06-04 06:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] swan-tower.livejournal.com
I wonder sometimes if the (subconscious) chain of reasoning is "I don't want this to drag the whole book down!"

. . . then don't put it in there to begin with. Worse than not discussing something is dismissing it as trivial.

Date: 2015-06-04 08:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] waitingonsunday.livejournal.com
I'm also here via the homepage and kind of just wanting to break into applause at this entire post. I'm tempted to bookmark it so I can point people in this direction when the situation calls for it. The discussion on my Facebook wall after the Game of Thrones episode you mentioned basically devolved into a handful of men saying, "You shouldn't take fiction so seriously! People aren't gonna go raping anyone because they saw it on Game of Thrones, so you're completely wrong about how TV can influence people negatively about rape! You should stfu and just not watch Game of Thrones and then there won't be a problem!"

Anyway! So. Great post.

Date: 2015-06-05 05:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] swan-tower.livejournal.com
It drives me up the wall when people make the "it's just fiction; it doesn't matter" argument. Stories are one of the fundamental things that make us human.

Date: 2015-06-04 10:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] calico-reaction.livejournal.com
Bravo. Thank you so, so much for posting this. Well said, and I hope if you do see the recent GoT scene and the fallout, that you put up a follow up post discussing it and how it relates to your advice. I'd love to hear your take.

Date: 2015-06-05 05:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] swan-tower.livejournal.com
I'm intending to, yeah.

Date: 2015-06-04 11:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sidhe-uaine42.livejournal.com
This post reminds me of two poorly depicted rape "stories" and one that, iirc a rather nicely portrayed book that had a rape as an important part of the story.

The poorly portrayed story lines were 1) Luke and Laura on _General Hospital_ back in the mid 1980s and 2) the movie _I Spit On Your Grave_ and the fairly portrayed on was a romance by Charlotte Lamb where she didn't go into detail about the assault but showed the repercussions on the victim and those around her (wish I could remember the title, but it has been more than two decades since I read it.)

One more thing about the "Luke and Laura" story: other "daytime dramas" copied the same sh!t on their shows.

Date: 2015-06-05 05:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] swan-tower.livejournal.com
Yes, one person does something shockingly transgressive, and then it becomes trendy.

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