So very much this.

[seawasp]

The Mary Sue has decided not to promote Game of Thrones any more.

Short reason: for not the first time, GoT is using rape and abuse of female characters as a cheap drama trick. When that's virtually never the right direction to go, and almost always the utterly wrong way to go (which it is here, by all descriptions).


This tendency of "hmm, we're hardcore and realistic, someone's gotta get raped" is one of the most pernicious and vile concepts in so-called entertainment. I have never had a major character go through that, and offhand I don't think I ever will. I've had two close approaches (in Madeline Fathom's backstory, it's clear what the cult leader intended for her, and in Phoenix Rising, it's also equally clear what [SPOILER] intends to do to her) but in both cases it goes nowhere and those involved get exactly what they deserve.

We're writing fiction. We can choose to make our world a BETTER one than the one we live in, and we have no excuses of "realism" if we're writing fiction. We get to make the rules.

Alas, this concept is pervasive to a degree that is almost ungraspable. Witness the time someone asked Seanan McGuire when one of her female characters was going to be raped. Note, not "IF", "WHEN"; it was an assumed inevitability that such characters would eventually be raped, and some people in that linked article even argued that it was REALISTIC. I am incapable of properly expressing the level of enraged jawdropping that this assumption causes in me.

For the record, my characters (male and female) are not going to be "developed" by this vile and cheap mechanism, and I would hope that any other authors out there who read my stuff would seriously consider not going down those roads either.

Comments

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

I have stopped reading one author I have been following for her entire career because the last few books have her heroine being stalked abused, raped tortured imprisoned by the dastardly evil, and I am just tired of it as a back story trope. Lots of icky things happen to people, but, I dont want to read that in my fiction. For the icky stuff I can read forensics and other nonfic.

[seawasp]

Exactly my position. When I'm the author, I'm God, I can make a better and more just world than this one. Why shouldn't I?

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

I worship you... grin.

[rdmasters.livejournal.com]

I'll be right behind martianmooncrab in setting up the chapel.

[seawasp]

I'll need more worshippers if the donations are going to support my godly works. :)

[rdmasters.livejournal.com]

The world is plenty nasty enough without adding to it in fiction.

And one of the nice things about escapist fiction is that it is escapist. So why taint it in that sort of way? Yes, I understand that conflict is needed to create a story, but it is possible to have conflict, and even great evil, without the author having to be nasty.

Sadly, GRRM seems to only have a 'nasty' setting - something I first noticed in the Wild Cards series, and, by the time I got to the first book of a Song of Ice and Fire, it was to the level of 'I can't read this'. I recall getting about 1/4 of the way in and throwing it at the wall. One of only a handful of books I have never finished.

[xander-opal.livejournal.com]

Huh. I had been unable to put my finger on just why I couldn't bring myself to continue reading that series after I put it down. Too much grimdark and nobody can bring a flashlight.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Falling ill with dysentery and forcibly ejecting bloody stools is a realistic event that affects humans. It does not mean it is something that authors must have happen to their characters, nor is it something that I would enjoy having authors repeatedly use when they need to get the plot moving.

[q99.livejournal.com]

-
We're writing fiction. We can choose to make our world a BETTER one than the one we live in, and we have no excuses of "realism" if we're writing fiction. We get to make the rules.
-

And from what I've read, GoT is a fair bit *worse* than the historical reality.

A number of people think 'past / more medieval = bad = more sexist across the board,' but it's not that simple.



I really dislike the overuse of even the threat, let alone the inclusion. I feel our society/pop culture pretty much is trying to intimidate women with it's ubiquitousness at times.

[jessica burde (from livejournal.com)]

You and I have had this debate before. While I stand by my position that showing rape in fiction can be valuable for a number of reasons (not the least of which, as a survivor, that done well it can be incredibly affirming and healing for survivors--there was one book with rape as a central element that I bought at least four times just to be able to re-read the affirmation and support that OTHER PEOPLE HAVE BEEN HERE and HEALING IS POSSIBLE). But there is a huge difference between a well done plot element that is central to the story (book I mentioned earlier was a retelling of the fairytale DonkeySkin--no matter which version you read, the rape/assault is the damn inciting incident, that's pretty central IMO) and using rape as a cheap character development trick or taking it as a given that a female character will get raped.

And for the folks who cry "realism"...um, they why aren't they complaining about the lack male rape victims, tax fraud, and bursitis in most fiction? (That paring of ignored items in fiction is not meant in anyway to downplay or minimize the experiences of men who get raped.)

[magilla666.livejournal.com]

Hi,

You know, I never realized until this entry how much I liked the fact that neither Madeline nor Phoenix had been raped. I got pretty tired of GoT a while ago- there I knew it was the trick of making a character likable in preparation for his or her death.

Thanks for that, and thanks for waking me up to a blind spot I had about just how pervasive this issue is.

Chris