Not my favorite cake, but I do make it sometimes.

[essbeejay]

Absent for awhile, I know! Lots of RL stuff happening. And at least TEF ch10 got sent off to beta.

Most of you guys are here for the fic, and some of you are here because I'm a dork, but there are occasional moments where I want to take a moment to actually be kind of serious for a moment, despite what my overuse of the word “moment” in a single sentence may tell you. And if it's too serious!cakes for you, particularly since I'm choosing a really weird day to do it (the fact that it is V-Day is pure coincidence, I swear!), then I will not hold anything against you for skipping this.

But.

Because it is important, and because I know that not everybody who reads my lj is necessarily an lj user, I am taking the chance that I'm getting the occasional reader who is underage, and female, and writing fic. And, in light of a recent e-mail I was forwarded, I have something to say that I feel is especially important.

Please think twice before you write stories or fic that portray rape as love.

I don't mean to imply you're not thinking. I know you are. I know you spend a lot of time figuring out how to write the best story in the world, one that's going to get lots of glowing reviews that will fill up your inbox and inspire you to write more. I know it's important to you. But. If your story is centered around at least one pairing, is presented as a romance or has romantic aspects, and involves a character raping another to either a) get her/him to fall in love with him/her, or b) express just how much he/she loves someone, I implore you to please, please, please think about it again. And then some more. And then go have a hot chocolate or a smoothie, depending on the time of year, and then think about it some more.

This is why I am asking you to do this: rape does not equal love. =/=. Certainly not for more than one person. And I know that rape is dramatic, and passionate—all the bodice-rippers say so, after all—and you want to write a dramatic and passionate story, I know! I know you want to write a serious story, with a serious plotline and lots of angst, because it gives your story emotion and emotion is key when you're writing a dramatic and passionate love story. I know. But rape =/= love.

No girl or woman (and I say girl/woman, because the majority of the fic I see in my particular fandom that employs this type of plot always portrays girls/women being raped by boys/men) should be portrayed as falling in love with her rapist. It is extremely harmful to present rape as something done out of love, just as it is extremely harmful to present abuse as something done out of love. I'm not saying that this doesn't happen in real life—sadly, it does. But your story gains nothing by perpetuating the idea that the only way a male can express his love for a female is by sexually attacking her, and that it is okay to dismiss the physical and mental damage that being raped does to her because “he is doing it out of love.” No male can use that as an excuse, and if he does—if he rapes you, or hits you, or verbally tears you down and treats you like shit—he does not love you, no matter how much he apologizes for it later or tells you otherwise when things are “fine.”

I have tried to tiptoe around my gender in an effort to remain semi-anonymous on the interwebs (though if you've been around these parts for awhile and pay attention you already know I do a pretty bad job of it) but in babbling about this I feel it is fairly obvious that I am female and in being female I carry some baggage about rape and sexual abuse. No, I have not been raped. But I personally know two women of my generation who have been raped, and depending on your definition of rape that number may be three. That is three more than I would expect or hope to know in my lifetime. In as many as two cases the women involved absolutely could not have helped their situation. Not one of them deserved it.

The statistics are scary if you look them up, but the point is rape is a scary thing and it happens and it =/= love. It does not just happen to women, although the numbers are overwhelmingly skewed in that direction. And in all types of fiction, rape is too often used as a plot device to insert cheap drama into a story. (I acknowledge that it can be done effectively, but the stories that manage such a thing are in the minority here.)

I have never mentioned it outright, but my biggest regret about the “Skirt” series was the attempted rape scene. It was a cheap plot device I used to bring Butch and Buttercup closer together because I was young and I wanted drama and an attempted rape gave me drama and an excuse for them to love each other more. It is a different case than that which inspired my entry, but I wanted to give that as an example. You knew the characters loved each other. You knew they were close. The attempted rape scene served no other purpose than to get a rise out of my readers and make the audience want Butch and Buttercup to get together even more. It was unnecessary. And most rape in a romance fic is unnecessary.

Most of what you want to portray—be it drama, or passion, or love, or all of those things at once—can be done without resorting to writing it as rape. Rape is about one person wanting to exert power, or expressing love in a psychologically damaged way, or just being a terrible person whose kneecaps should be blown off with a shotgun at point blank range. It is an extremely complex psychological thing. And so is love, but that doesn't make them equal. Love—or, at least, the love story you want to write—is about two people who, at their core, want to be happy with each other. Rape is about one unhealthy person who can't get over him/herself, and another who has to suffer at his/her hand for it.

I don't know what more I can say on the subject, and as always I went all over the place and very well may have gotten away from my point. I hope I didn't. It's not my intention to be dismissive or make anybody feel bad. But it is something that is important to me, and it especially scares me when I hear about (very) young women wanting to write rape-as-love stories. On the off-chance that any of them out there are reading this right now, I hope you chose to read a little of what I had to say or, even better, can at least take a part of what I said to heart. If nothing else, good luck with your writing. And, um, well, at risk of sounding inappropriate, Happy Valentine's Day.

Comments

[alicornmoon.livejournal.com]

I don't know, it depends on the story, the tone and every little detail of a plot to me. On some level I think it is a harmless romance novel fantasy as long as it is kept a fantasy, just as much as as any other fetish writing online is (who REALLY wants to have sex with worms? Ew:P)...
As long as you don't belittle actual real rape or people that have been raped in real life (Or force them to read such scenes) I don't think viewing the idea as passionate is always bad..As long as it logical fits the characters and the world that they live in. Warping characters and their real emotional reactions just to get your PWP fic is just meaningless because you aren't really writing them anymore.
I wrote the attempted rape in my Legwarmers to actually highlight how *powerful* Bubbles actually was deep down against not only his body itself, but his very polished powers of seduction.
So many people were writing 'if Bubbles was somehow forever tied with Him she would be done for/weak against him/loose herself and become evil' stories that I wrote Legwarmers, and am now working on Gloves, to disprove that weakness idea among other things.
In many other cases I might agree than such scenes have no place, but I think certain stories need them given their very nature. Believe me, if they didn't I wouldn't touch the subject because I don't think I do it perfectly :3.
I think my pov has been formed a lot over the years because of one of my friends who since I have known her gets into relationships with guys, has sex with them 24/7 it seems like, and as soon as they break up for any reason cries rape. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. After that circus every day I now have very selective ideas of what rape actually means and what shouldn't be called it out of respect for real cases :\

[essbeejay.livejournal.com]

I know that given the context of the story, rape may actually fit or make sense. I can't speak to yours because I haven't read it yet (one of these days, though, I swear!). What worries me is the prevalence of very young teenage girls writing about rape in a romantic way.

I understand people have fetishes of every variety out there, rape being one of them, and I agree that as long as you are able to maintain the difference between fantasy and reality and, most importantly, not hurting anybody, then go ahead and like what you will. But it becomes extremely distressing to me when I see younger girls viewing rape or abuse as romantic. (This is 90% of the problem I have with Twilight.) Again, I know it's a fantasy. But minds are like sponges, particularly younger ones, and to see the younger ones sublimating these messages about love and writing it into their own stories makes my stomach turn.

As far as your friend goes, I don't know what to say (though I am pretty adept at making this face DDDDDDD8 WTF IS WRONG W/YOU) except that there certainly are people, women and men alike, who cry wolf and can do serious damage by doing so. But just because there are examples of people abusing whatever system may exist doesn't mean that something like rape shouldn't be taken seriously (this is not directed at you, by the way, I am speaking generally here), and it's especially important for young women to know that.

tl;dr version: Of course it depends on how it exists in the context of the story, but on the whole I want young girls to stop writing about rape like it's romance.

[wei-chan.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to go with you on this one, sbj. There is a lot of psychological baggage/damage that comes with being raped (not that I have - God forbid and knock on wood, seriously) and, unfortunately, even if some women manage to pick themselves up by the bootstraps post-rape, there is still a degree of insecurities in them that women - even years down the line - still feel that horrible vulnerability, whether it be subconscious or not.

I really never condoned rape as a plot device, especially in The Powerpuff Girls because, to me, it always seemed like a cheap gimmick. Now, with Alicorn's story, I can understand where she comes from, but, to be frank, most rape centered stories are not something I would agree with - especially if it's used as a plot device to further a romance between two characters. Now, if the story is to show the damage, trauma and survival of such a kind of attack, then I can understand because it's showing the more realistic side of it. But not something, as you said, to move to characters together.

Also, most sexual stories aren't really something I would condone for younger people. There is such a fascination with lemons/limes in fics that, at times, the powerful emotions that could be portrayed between two characters is diminished immeasurably by the sex that is written. Some manage to achieve both - the emotion and the actual action - and encompass it to mean something more, but most don't. And it's truly saddening when people loose the focus of the story/characters and just go for the actions.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: I concur with you. Rape =/= love.

...I hope most of that made sense ^^;

[alicornmoon.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call my fic rape centered it's more...Well, it's just showing how the characters might act if they were pushed together and had no other choice in the matter but to stay that way. Basically, Him could have just as well ended up with the Mayor until the end of time ;3.
I dunno, I just got so bored with the idea some people had that they had nothing in common, or that even if they did Him would be some overbearing rape machine and the world would end in fire and unstoppable Evil!Bubbles rage because she would be so 'weak'.
If nothing else, I want to bring a little balance to the doom and gloom, you know? Also, in Gloves, to debunk the common theme that had sex with Him/live with Him for more than a day= unspeakably evil Bubbles who has no mind of her own.
The whole rape issue is only the tip of things, I'm trying my best to iron out a few more of these weird unspoken give ins of fandom that would be more fair to canon, and really more interesting to read, the other way around :3

[wei-chan.livejournal.com]

I probably should have put a period after I brought your story up. In no way am I calling your story a rape-center fic, Alicorn, trust me ^^;

However, you are a much more capable and mature author to handle this type of story as opposed to a fifteen-year-old teen who thinks it's cool to have a superhero get raped for the hell of it.

I'm not objecting to your story because your stories have a heck of a lot more substance than a majority of the fics I see in the PPG section. If anything, I'm objecting to the atrocious stories and authors who use rape as a plot device and a cheap gimmick. That, right there, is something disgusting. Teens nowadays need a good talking to because they apparently aren't understanding the consequences of something as horrendous as rape. Hell, they don't even understand the consequences of unprotected sex anymore, which is pretty sad, when you think about it.

-_- I fear for this generation sometimes.

[essbeejay.livejournal.com]

I do think there are some positives about younger people reading sexual stories - it does give them an opportunity to learn about or "experiment" in a way that isn't physically damaging. As for them writing it... well, 10 times out of 10, they get absolutely everything about sex wrong, including the emotional aspect of it in a romance story, so... yeah. They should just not write about sex in general, because then it enters a whole different level of painful.

[wei-chan.livejournal.com]

True on all counts!

[laleia.livejournal.com]

I think this is a perfect Valentine's Day post. I think Valentine's Day is an especially apt time to talk about love, especially as it tends to be portrayed in romance novels and fanfiction. Which, in other fandoms whose summaries I've skimmed through, both male/female and male/male fanfiction have a high frequency of rape-as-love scenarios. And really, there's a difference between rape fantasy stories (which usually fulfill a specific purpose) and rape-as-love scenarios that actually NORMALIZE rape and dubious consent in a way I find really creepy. I think this is a very important post to make, and I'm glad you made it.

[essbeejay.livejournal.com]

I really appreciate this. Thanks for saying so.

[staticage.livejournal.com]

I managed to get here after stumbling upon 'More Than Human' and loving it, and I've been lurking and reading your entries like a complete creeper for a couple of months, now, since I typically don't have much to contribute in the way of comments. But after reading this, I just wanted to say: thank you so much for saying all of this. This kind of stuff is still triggering for me, years after my own experience, and it's depressing to see so many fics in that vein. If this gets even one fic writer (or even just one fic reader, at that) to wise up, it'll have done more than a little good.

You knew the characters loved each other. You knew they were close. The attempted rape scene served no other purpose than to get a rise out of my readers and make the audience want Butch and Buttercup to get together even more. It was unnecessary. And most rape in a romance fic is unnecessary.

Thank you for writing this part, also—Skirt is the only fic of yours I disliked, and it was for that reason. It's really heartening, in a weird way, to see that you think differently about that scene, now. ♥

Aaand now I'll step off my soapbox and go back to being a creepy lurker, heh.

[essbeejay.livejournal.com]

I don't know what to say except TYSM for de-lurking to leave this comment - I'm glad this entry resonated enough to inspire you to, and really do hope it speaks to others who may be lurking, or at least gets them thinking about it. I waffled for the better part of a week on whether to post an entry like this or not. Part of me actually thought I might be taking things too seriously. But I realized that this was, in fact, something I felt too strongly about to let go.

[ms-mercurial.livejournal.com]

I have never understood how rape could be used in a fic that ends in romance. This isn't because I've been personally affected by it or even know anyone personally affected by it. It's just inherently wrong and it disturbs me that you felt the need to write this at all, that there's enough of an audience out there to receive this.

[essbeejay.livejournal.com]

IAWTCSM. Looking back, I realize that what I said about being a woman means I am more sensitive when it comes to issues of rape or sexual abuse is kind of absurd - the fact of the matter is that EVERYBODY, by virtue of being HUMAN, should be sensitive to this shit.