It is the 21st century, Age of the New Shit. For decades Tolkien has sat immobile on the White Throne of Middle-earth. He is master of elves by the will of Eru Illuvatar, and master of a million tropes by the might of his inexhaustible fanboys. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with the power of the Tolkien Estate and movie rights. He is the Carrion Lord for whom a thousand fanboy souls are sacrificed every day so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, Tolkien continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty fandoms battle across the miasma of the web; vast hordes of geeks give battle in his name on uncounted forums against the tides of Terry Goodkind, Joe Abercrombie, and R. Scott Bakker. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from the gritty, the dark and edgy, the rape squads–and worse.
To be a fan in such a time is to be one amongst untold millions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of intelligence and rational discourse, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark present there is only the gritty arms race to the bottom. There is no peace amongst the forums, only an eternity of flamewars and trolls, and the laughter of hack-writers.
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! Or, perhaps, rape for the rape god.
It’s trendy these days to say you’re anti-Tolkien or at least counter-Tolkien. I’m not a Tolkien fan and don’t enjoy works derived from his. Like many people, I don’t appreciate the comforts of mundane white-folk epics, the security of familiar good-and-evil binary, the tranquility of the boy’s club. I’ll take the weird, the imaginative, the morally ambiguous any time with a great preference for the inclusive.
Sometime in the last decade, though, George R. R. Martin happened. Anti-Tolkien went from Michael Moorcock to gritty grimdark, full of gore and feces and rape being pumped into otherwise standard fantasy that clings to the cis-white-male paradigm with all its bloodstained, shit-encrusted might. But okay, I told myself. Let’s not set our hopes too high. Blood? Whatever. Shit? If we really must. Sexual assault? Wait a minute.
True story: I flipped through a copy of R. Scott Bakker’s The Judging Eye at random. The first thing I found was a scene where a character is being interrogated by a demon. When he insists he doesn’t know anything, the demon proceeds to rape his wife, his son, and then rape him too. Grab a Sword of Truth book, any book. Open to… any page, really, and bam: a woman being violated, or about to be. The series’ heroine Kahlan is almost raped on a daily basis. In the third book, there is–honest to god–a pit full of rapists. The first book Wizard’s First Rule features a villain who employs rape squads.
We hated as she is violated
I’d forgotten how vile this whole thing is. Not the way she looks, but the process that went into her creation. The creature pictured is the Broodmother, a monster from Dragon Age. As you approach her, you hear a voice recounting what’s happened on the first to the ninth day, cumulating in:
Fifth day, they return and it’s another girl’s turn.
Sixth day, her screams we hear in our dreams.
Seventh day, she grew as in her mouth they spew.
Eighth day, we hated as she is violated.
Ninth day, she grins and devours her kin.
Now she does feast, as she’s become the beast.
Gross. Not as in “this is superbly written horror and it squicks me out.” This is gross like being pelted at by gobs of poo.
The trope of aliens and supernatural males kidnapping and raping women to increase their birthrate is all too common. The Lovecraft-inspired film Dagon indulges with unholy glee. Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series revolves around this idea–the protagonist is hounded for her rare potential to carry children to term–as does Laurell K. Hamilton’s Merry Gentry books. Bioware’s Broodmother disturbs me more, however: they’re like Tleilaxu females from Dune in that they lose all personhood. You get a vague idea of who the Broodmother was (a dwarf named Laryn), but she’s not sympathetic. I expected an NPC in Ironforge to inform the PC that a woman named Laryn’s gone missing in the Deep Roads and can the nice warden please see if any traces of her can be found? But no, Laryn as Broodmother is just this loathsome blob you butcher in a mess of tentacles and shit splatters. No regrets, no humanity. You can see it reflected in fan reactions; gamers exclaim how very, very disgusting she looks. It’s all anyone can focus on.
Gross.
I’ve noted while reviewing a sci-fi noir novel that male and female victimhood is treated differently: men may get hurt badly, killed, or imprisoned. But women are always more vulnerable thanks to possessing a vagina, and often broken in ways that deny recovery, survival, or retaining an agency. So it goes in DA: men can get corrupted, sure, but women get something a little extra. An exclusive offer. Hello ladies, how would you like to be sexually assaulted repeatedly then transformed into a giant throbbing vagina whose sole purpose is to pop out monsters, forever?
You want to be a pretty princess, don’t you?
Rewind a few years back. Neverwinter Nights was a badly-coded piece of crap with–even for the day–stupendously bad graphics, but it had a make-your-own kit that spawned (heh) a large modding community. One of the most popular, award-winning mods was A Dance with Rogues. This mod makes no apology and no pretense. It rips the shit off of George R. R. Martin, copying names of characters and countries verbatim, and certain bits of plot too. The author’s determined to one-up Martin, though. About five seconds into the first module, your virgin princess character (and it’s specified that she is a virgin) gets brutally raped.
The rapist becomes one of the possible romantic interests. His reason for raping her at the time? Why, he was afraid he’d fall in love with her, of course! He was one of the most popular characters in this duology. Bad boys are so charming, don’t you know. Especially the rapist ones. There were a few objections, now and again, raised over how squicky all of this was. Most of it was brushed off in the name of… realism. Gritty, dark realism. Check out the sexual encounters. It’s not sex-positive. A small fraction of these is happy fun times between consenting adults, but an overwhelming majority is a quest solution. Optional, sure, but at the beginning, there’re parts where the princess has no choice but to have sex. Throughout both the first and second parts, she often has to wear lingerie to seduce/distract enemies, and the threat of rape is a constant. When she isn’t getting forcibly stripped, and believe me that happens a lot, she’ll be wearing armor that looks like this:
That’s a suit of chainmail, just so you know. This is the author’s idea of plate armor. Gifted to you, by the way, by a character that (at the time of my playthrough) was a mindflayer in disguise. Who, if the PC agrees to become his high priestess, “mounts” her. Yeah. I’m not even sure why a Lovecraftian, thoroughly asexual monster would want to have sex with anything, let alone a human woman.
It’s not even avocado
I’ll pause to acknowledge Shianni, an elven woman who’s raped at the beginning of Dragon Age and who reappears later to lead the elven “alienage” against human oppression. It’s handled surprisingly well, but then again I have to ask: really? Did the rape need to be there? Couldn’t the brutal violence, attacks, and deaths have motivated her just as well? Does the sexual assault serve any purpose, have any point, beyond throwing in shock value so the grimdark quota can be fulfilled? Is there a meaningful narrative of surviving and recovering? Is there a meaningful narrative of oppression even, because “humans are bastards who oppress elves” is done and done and done, and really trotting out white, pointy-eared humans as an analogue for minorities strikes me as disingenuous.
“Anti-Tolkien,” I think, should be about upsetting the cis-white-male ghetto. It should be about subverting, breaking, and rejecting tropes that make this ghetto such a comfy cesspool to wallow in. It should open ways for specfic that isn’t about white people, doesn’t take place in an analogue of medieval Europe or future FUCK YEAH AMERICA, isn’t always about straight love stories, and is cover-to-cover about women making their own stories.
It really shouldn’t be about women getting sexually assaulted and liquid brown hitting everything in sight.
You’ve hit exactly on why I am filled with disbelief when I see that GRR Martin’s Song of Rape and Rapeyness is being made into a TV show. Any show which has to have extras playing “Rapist #27″ is TOO FUCKING RAPEY.
Well, they made the True Blood TV show… But I think it’s mostly because GRRM’s stuff fits the modus operandi of HBO perfectly, ala grittier-than-thou series like Rome. In all fairness, the people who followed in GRRM’s footsteps make ASoIaF look disneyfied by comparison. R. Scott Bakker, Richard Morgan and Terry Goodkind shower sexual assault on everybody, regularly and persistently. Bakker’s main character in THE DARKNESS THAT COMES BEFORE was raped as a kid. Richard Morgan would have you believe that hazing rituals in boys’ boarding school include gang rape (his protagonist being gay). My face was stuck in a grimace for a good long while after having read that.
I think the only thing that even comes close to anti-Tolkien is the Halfblood Chronicles by Andre Norton & Mercedes Lackey. Elves are these evil bastards whose culture combines the worst aspects of the antebellum South with the most oppressive aspects of imperial China. Just picture a whole society built around Voldemort’s blood purity bullshit, and add severe gender oppression. Oh, and it’s got Black characters who aren’t Magical Negroes!
And why, why, why did I have to click on that link for The Black Jewels trilogy?
The Black Jewels is kind of special. +++special because some people really honestly think it’s, like, feminist.
Now I don’t feel so bad about never having gotten around to reading “A Song of Ice and Fire.”
As for narratives of survival — a rape culture has no interest in narratives of survival. Only narratives of rape and the damage that it does. Because that’s the threat it holds over the vulnerable ones. “Don’t do things we don’t like, because — RAPE!”
I think it’s possible to write a narrative of survival, and do it well, but I’ve never seen any example of such within the genre. Mostly it’s played either for angst (“I can’t find any way to make my character sympathetic so… OH I KNOW, RAPE!”) or for the grimdark aspect.
Never for a moment thought that the example works were ever “anti-Tolkien” pretty much for the exact same reasons your next to last paragraph points out what they lack overall.
In fact, I think you could mildly construe Tolkien even (unintendedly?) alluding to the crime in the case of Elrond’s wife, which would make the anti-Tolkiens still Tolkiens, who scowl a lot and wear mostly black.
Startin to remind me a lot of the grim n gritty era of comics, along with the terrible character designs too.
-Ani8
“Grab a Sword of Truth book, any book. Open to… any page, really, and bam: a woman being violated, or about to be. The series’ heroine Kahlan is almost raped on a daily basis. In the third book, there is–honest to god–a pit full of rapists. The first book Wizard’s First Rule features a villain who employs rape squads.”
Back the fuck up for a second here. You telling me that shit goes down on the regular in these books? Do you have any idea how many people who have read these novels keep trying to push them on me to read them.
Excuse me for a minute, I need to go fuck some folks up.
RVC Bard, have my bail money ready.
Oh yeah, later on there are… sorceress-nuns (don’t ask) who are summoned by the Big Bad to join him. The first thing he does, to make the point that they are powerless, is to make the women submit to being gang-raped by his soldiers. They also have to walk around wearing very little clothes. Gag gag gag. The aforementioned Kahlan becomes amnesiac at one point and is captured by said Big Bad. Who threatens to rape her, of course, and keeps her in his bedroom.
Holy flip that’s toxic! Not just an avoid but a burn in my book. Should probably take the book and backhand them with it next time someone recommends it to me.
-Ani8
Wait wait wait, people are PUSHING you to read the Sword of Truth Books?
They’re pushing you to read these Ayn Randian, neo-conservative, rape everywhere, damn piles of shit AWFUL books?! Really? What did you do to them and why do they hate you so much?
I have literally never ever ever in my life read books as bad as the Sword of Truth novels. And I have read EPIC amounts of crap. I have read shit that should have made my eyes bleed. I have suffered books that required me to lock the windows first in case I threw either them or myself out of them to get away with their awfulness – and NONE of them were as bad as Sword of Truth
My review of the series http://www.sparkindarkness.com/2010/10/on-lighter-note-did-i-mention-that.html
for the sake of your peace of mind DO NOT READ THEM. And for the sake fo the world if you ever get your hands on a copy, BURN IT.
Hell yes Sparky. And of course my only reference was the Legend of the Seeker TV series which while the show wasn’t perfect and I knew it wasn’t close to the books, I didn’t know that the show was actually less failtastic than the books.
Being less failtastic than the books is SOOO EASY to do. I kid ye not and I have to say it again
Also the series was easy to watch because Craig Horner was contractually required to take his shirt off at least twice an episode. yes, I’m shallow. And sometimes he was tied up *cough*
Dude, for every Mord Sith ep, I was jumping up and down and cheering, “BONDAGE TIME, BONDAGE TIME!!!! WOO HOO!!!!”
Augh! I’ve had people trying to get me to read Sword of Truth books, too! I didn’t realise there was rape on nearly every page. Adding that to my Do Not Read Ever list.
I read Black Jewels Trilogy in high school and LOVED it because it was so dark and edgy of course. Reread it recently and was like, “Hwhat?”
I do cop to loving A Song of Ice and Fire. Tolkien-esque fantasy is one addiction I’m finding it very hard to give up.
This article sums up perfectly everything I dislike about George RR Martin and his ilk. I would high-five you if this were not the internet.
I will hold my hands up and admit that I liked The Steel Remains in spite of its flaws. I’ve not read any of the other authors mentioned and I steer clear of ‘dark’ fantasy. I’m definitely not going to defend Richard Morgan’s use of rape in the book, although he did seem to have actual plot reasons, however heavy handed they were, for doing so. And he dished it out to all of his characters regardless of sexuality or gender. It was still problematic but far from the worst case of rape in a fantasy novel I’ve read (which of course doesn’t excuse it).
It’s not just rape in dark-fantasy that’s the problem although certainly I’m aware there’s a prevalence of dark=rape.
There seems to be a rule that if you have a gay character in your fantasy/sci-fi book they must end up raped/sexually assaulted in some way. That holds true for the majority of gay fantasy books that I’ve read regardless of whether they’re ‘dark’ or not. Since it’s an issue that rarely comes up if the main hero is heterosexual it’s something I find difficult to fathom why it suddenly becomes so common if your hero isn’t straight.
It’s also extremely common in books with heroines (be they straight or not). There’s almost always a scene where the heroine is attacked by a man or group of men intent on raping her. Sometimes this is integral to the plot of the book, or a defining part of her character, sometimes it’s just thrown in for the sake of it.
If I never see another book with someone falling in love with their rapist it will be too soon. I just finished a trilogy where that happened and I was furious. I really wish that trope had died out along with Jirel of Joiry.
You’ve dropped a lot of links to authors and books in your last paragraph. I’d love to see that last paragraph of your article elaborated on, to be told why those authors and books are much better and what it is that they offer, to read about the good as well as the bad.
There were actually things I liked about THE STEEL REMAINS, but Morgan’s strenuous efforts to up the grimdark ante weren’t one of them. Ringil’s school rape aside (and holy shit, is that a big aside), I swear a lot, China Mieville’s characters swear a lot, but next to the cast in TSR both Mieville’s characters and I look downright Victorian. Can’t turn a page without running into some variant of “fuck.”
And yeah, Morgan was doing so well with Ringil until the rape flashback rolled around. Gay characters just can’t get a break; I’m pretty sure that on average, they’re sexually assaulted even more than women in fantasy, especially if they are male. Sarah Monette does it, R. Scott Bakker does it, Mercedes Lackey does it, it’s like authors can’t conceive of gay people being well-adjusted, happy individuals, or at least individuals whose source of trauma comes from anything other than rape.
“You’ve dropped a lot of links to authors and books in your last paragraph. I’d love to see that last paragraph of your article elaborated on, to be told why those authors and books are much better and what it is that they offer, to read about the good as well as the bad.”
Yeah, I was leery of waxing novel-length. But for a quick synopsis, Cat Valente has written a duology of fairy tale-esque interconnected stories featuring women who tell their own stories, and save themselves. They band into sisterhoods and empower each other wonderfully. There’s one instance of sexual assault, but the woman survives and gets better–it’s definitely focused on recovery and strength rather than the act. Geoff Ryman is a gay writer of sf/f and many of his characters are queer, often happily so, and not subjected to sexual assault. On top of that, he’s written some very excellent novels set in not-America featuring characters of color. THE KING’S LAST SONG is his love letter to Cambodia; he writes about the culture in a way that shows he genuinely loves and respect it, rather than appropriating it for exotic flavoring (the way Ian McDonald does, for example). AIR: OR, HAVE NOT HAVE is imo his best, and set in a fictional analogue of Kazakhstan. The protagonist is a Chinese lady and best described as someone who makes the world face her on her terms, not the other way around.
Mieville, VanderMeer and Bishop are “new weird” authors. They gear their work toward imaginative, Lovecraft-and-Peake-influenced fantasy cities full of… weird. Like scarab-headed women and spider-deities who like scissors. Mieville and VanderMeer have also included gay main characters whose identities and personalities don’t revolve around their sexuality, but whose queerness isn’t downplayed to make heteronormative readers more comfortable. Nalo Hopkinson writes sf/f in Caribbean patois; her protagonists, that I know of, are black women. One of her novels won the Gaylactic Spectrum award.
I’ll admit to liking A Song of Ice and Fire, but from bits of it I can remember after a dew years of not having read it, it does seem to embody the worst ways in which fantasy is going in terms of ‘grimification’ I mean at certain points it just gets a bit much, and what I liked about ASOIAF was the matter of fact way it dealt with the world it created, but that’s hardly anti-Tolkien, that’s just a way of writing.
Hmmm.
Okay – don’t like grim dark stuff. Got that.
Why the hang up on sexual assault? Yes. Sexual assaults are evil, nasty, horrific things. So is child murder. So is torture. So are lots of things.
Is the author condoning the inclusion of all of these other things but just expects rape to be left out? Well, I suppose that might work in a book about intelligent insects or something, but as long as we’re talking humans in an milieu in which there are atrocities you have to SUCK IT UP. Sexual assaults happen. They have always happened. They will continue to happen. It’s part of the human condition and as nice as it might be to wish it would go away – grow the hell up.
If you want to write about Carebears all being nice, hey, wonderful. Do that. If you write about humans and there are atrocities and you want to talk about any of them – then sexual assault has a seat at the table or you are crocking your story for the sake of political correctness.
Newspeak is fail. Don’t bother trying.
Instead, why not try dealing with the RESULTS of a sexual assault in a mature, rational, realistic way? If you want to make a point about how bad it is and how hard it is to live with then WRITE THAT.
It’s far better than whining that you’d really prefer that no one talk about it – which seems to be what the author is advocating.
*blink*
*blink*
*blink*
O . . . K . . .
*twitch* Must… not feed… or carebare stare… *twitch* thank you mike, for your complete missing of what the subject and discussion is talking about
-Ani8
It’s okay, Mike. I used to think just like you when I was fourteen, all grim and dark and edgy.
Imagine this, the majority of fantasy books regardless of their setting, regardless of their character’s capabilities, includes a white heterosexual male getting raped. Now this is a special crime, dished out to just him and is written about in graphic detail (and sometimes even for the titilation of readers).
Or maybe it’s a case of the majority of fantasy books consists of stories about his genitals being mutilated, just because he is a white heterosexual male. And he deserves it, you know, secretly it serves him right. How dare he be a white heterosexual male in a fantasy world.
When someone points out the prevalence of this you’re told suck it up. This is grim-dark. It happens. Heterosexual men get their dicks and balls ripped off. It’s part of the human condition. They get raped all the time, just for existing. They get mutilated in these special ways, made just for them, while their companions get off free.
And it doesn’t just happen in grim-dark. No it happens everywhere.
Fantasy. The clue’s in the name. You can have magic. You can have worlds where women rule. You can have worlds without prejudice. You can have races that aren’t even humans. But can you have a world without rape? No, of course not.
BULLSHIT!!!
I love your comment so much.
Curses, your comment now means I have absolutely nothing to add!
Thank you SO much for touching on one of the topics that has always made me uncomfortable and angry. As a cis-gendered, straight woman of color, the invisibility of POC and the lack of fully-realized and complex female characters is totally unacceptable, but the world of fantasy (Tolkien-esque and “anti-Tolkien” works) is constructed in a way that makes the invisibility seem natural and normal.
I’ve loved fantasy novels and films ever since I was a kid, but I really got into the genre when the LOTR films came out at the beginning of the decade. It always troubled me, though, that LOTR was basically one big quest story for white dudes, where the ultimate evil came from the “exotic and dangerous East” (inhabited, of course, by creatures that are inhuman and cruel), and where women served marginal roles (even Eowyn, who was tweaked to be brought in line with the “strong female” character… but who spends most of her time in the film pining over Aragorn and wanting to jump his bones).
You bring up the video game Dragon Age: Origins, which has actually become one of my favorite games since it was released last year. What I find more interesting than the questionable content of the game, however, is how fans have taken the game and “remixed” it, if you will, in their own work. The DA:O fandom is particularly active in terms of fan fiction, art, and other fan-generated creations, and many of the participants are women, people of color, LGBTQ folk, and others who are traditionally left out of the boys’ club that fantasy usually includes. There are a number of women (including rape survivors) who have really looked critically at the issues surrounding gender, misogyny, and violence against women, and tried to write about it in ways that are complex and sincere.
Anyway, just some thoughts that I thought I would share. Thanks again for a great post, and for voicing many of the issues, thoughts, and feelings that I’ve had over the years.
I rolled my eyes at the gang rape at the school scene. I think I can see where he was going with it, grimdark grimdark expose the hypocrisy of an institution that would embrace the sort of culture where rape in schools is accepted but consensual sex isn’t. Give Ringil a reason to hate his family and to feel even more alienated from that society. But Richard Morgan failed miserably there. Still it’s a fantasy book with characters of colour, gay characters, and female characters who do more than simper at their men.
The rape was less WTF than a lot of scenes I’d read in other books though which served no purpose at all (but still doesn’t make it right).
I went through my Goodreads List, the one that’s just Queer Fantasy with a splash of sci-fi and historicals thrown in, discounting the short story collections, half the books had characters who had at some point been raped or sexually assaulted. Actually I gave up counting when I hit 80 books but it was coming out as pretty much half and half. Now that might be saying more about the sort of books I read than anything else but I deliberately try to avoid reading dark books.
Thanks for waxing on in more detail. I’m always on the lookout for more good books to read.
Thank you for this. It’s an excellent summation of something I haven’t been able to verbalize each time it’s come up. The broodmother thing in particular really put me off Dragon Age. (And that was before I found some other really awful lines when playing as a female PC)
Bioware’s approach to this sort of thing tends to be tellingly consistent.
In Mass Effect 2 (spoilers follow), there’s a sidequest that involves a situation where women under a mind-altering effect (that made them ‘childlike’ and ‘innocent’) were raped by other crew members. Not only did the inclusion of such a thing strike me as incredibly out of place given the tone of the rest of the game, but there’s no in-game way to express anything like the anger that I felt. Only one NPC seems legitimately angry about the whole thing, and Renegade/Dark Side Shepard can actually profess an opinion of it as a “tempting” situation. Like, that’s where you want to set the bar for your ‘antihero’ meter, Bioware? Really?
I’ll second the comment above that likened it to the grimdark era of comics. :/ And then there are people who seriously complain about fantasy games being “too PC” because they let you play as female.
The rape-as-drama-catalyst (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RapeAsBackstory) is an old trick for Bioware, going back at least as far as Baldur’s Gate 2, in which Viconia, a black-skinned, cave-dwelling evil elf woman, explains her mistrust of surface-dwelling creatures by recounting a story about being held captive and gang-raped. Bioware has a general problem with this sort of thing, since it loves including “romances” in its games but the length of said games are never such that the development of a relationship can be mimicked. So they learned early on that a quick shortcut in creating a facsimile of interpersonal connection is to give the non-player character a crippling trauma or self-esteem issue to overcome and give the player character the sole means of getting that NPC over the hump. This dynamic’s been replicated in every single Bioware game from BG2 onward. Rape is an easily identifiable and visceral trauma that they’ve used a lot, with Viconia in BG2, your example in DA:O (plus in DLC for the game it is heavily implied that the character of Leliana, a possible love interest for the player character, is raped), and in Mass Effect 2, in which the character of Jack is open and seemingly dismissive about her long history of sexual abuse (her attitude masks a deeply wounded psyche, natch).
So yeah, I’m glad somebody else noticed. DA2 is almost sure to include more of the same. Fuckin’ David Gaider.
Thanks for the great blog post!
Oh also, just an addendum, I noticed some weirdly exploitative stuff going on around rape in the new Obsidian Entertainment game Fallout: New Vegas. It’s heavily implied in some cases (sites of recent battle sometimes include clothes-less female corpses amongst clothed male corpses) and made explicit in other cases – the evil faction in the game, Caesar’s Legion, enslaves all the women it comes across and keeps them as concubines and laborers. Plus there’s a questline where you come across a lesbian soldier who was raped, kill her rapist, and then put her mind to some degree with a simple line of dialog. It’s odd, since in some respects (particularly the portrayal of queer identities) FO:NV could be called exemplary.
You know how a lot of people suspected Irenicus probably raped Imoen? Ugh. I don’t think he did, but there’s an awful lot of traumatized, victimized women in BG2 (also hi the dryads in Irenicus’ dungeons).
Jack is just, errrrgh. There could’ve been good, interesting things done with her character. But no, instead we get “seemingly tough woman hiding severe trauma behind her FUCK SHIT FUCK BITCH FUCK.”
“(plus in DLC for the game it is heavily implied that the character of Leliana, a possible love interest for the player character, is raped)”
Oh for fuck’s sake, her too?
I kind of like GRRM’s stuff, even if it does go a bit far sometimes. Watchmen had a near-rape scene, and I’ve never seen anyone complain about that.
There are a great number of articles on the web complaining about the rape in Watchmen. I’ve neither watched the movie nor read the graphic novel so I can’t comment on it.
The first page of results brought up http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/03/watchmen-triggering.html which seems as good an article as any.
These posts are really terribly confusing. Stories that take place in worlds where strife and violence are the order of the day, main characters aren’t given plot armor and children are murdered on a regular basis, but as soon as sexual assault comes up it becomes unacceptable? A poster above said that you can create a fantasy world without rape – that’s true. But you can’t make a “realistic” fantasy world without rape that has violence as well. Rape is another dark, animalistic feature of the human psyche that is pretty heartily connected with violence and social power struggles. Without removing all violence in your dream fantasy worlds, you’re doing no good.
As for the rapeyness mentioned in A Song of Ice And Fire… it’s really not bad in that, but I avoided Sword of Truth and shit because it seemed geared more towards the “I WANNA READ A DARK FANTASY” caste. ASIAF’s rape takes place off screen, usually in the past and isn’t a major plot point in any main character’s story. And as for it having rape in the first place, the entire world is a mimicry of the European dark ages. Sexual oppression, rape and female abuse were par for the course in society then. To ignore that would be doing a disservice to an attempted reproduction of that era.
This NWN module looks awful, too. Woowwee.
It is fully possible to create a realistic fantasy world that does contain violence and does not contain rape.
The whole idea that rape=realism and that by adding rape to a story makes it more realistic is a fallacy. Rape is often handled in an extremely unrealistic manner and serves little purpose. Just adding rape for rape’s sake does not do a story any good.
@John, you don’t put her mind at ease with a single line of dialogue. Unless there’s something I’m missing, the quest revolves around convincing her to seek counseling from a qualified therapist, Dr. Usanagi. I thought that in that respect it was a lot more realistic, since the decision to seek help is itself a huge deal with a lot of rape victims. IMO it doesn’t come off as exploitative. It’s somewhat shallow but that’s just a consequence of the medium.
Also it’s worth noting, I think, that women of color and queer writers have a lot more success in science fiction than fantasy because Science Fiction doesn’t have a model narrative like Tolkien hanging over it. Science Fiction is allowed to be diverse whereas fantasy is always defined in terms of Tolkien. Either you’re with him or against him. You either love Tolkien or you hate him and latch onto Peake and Moorcock and Mieville. IMO it’s a problem that’s on the verge of solving itself. Peake-influenced Urban/Modern Fantasy often outsells Tolkien-style fantasy. While it’s definitely got its problems (No one could accuse Butcher or Meyer of being especially enlightened, and even authors like Mieville and Gaiman come off as being kinda patronizing in their depiction of queers/women/people of colour) it’s at least largely free of the kind of racially charged pseudo-Volkisch bullshit that is basically Tolkien’s legacy.
That’s a very fine point–people can call Dune the LOTR of sci-fi until they’re blue in the face, but that’s not especially true; even Asimov, Dick et al never defined science fiction quite the way Tolkien shaped fantasy as we know it today.
I’ve given up on Gaiman. Not because he’s particularly offensive, but IMO he’s just not that good and seems to be stuck telling the same story over and over and over.
I believe that what some posters seem unable to understand is that the problem is not the presence of rape, but the fact that the people using it as a narrative device (plot, setting, or what have you) don’t know the first fucking thing about it. Considering that you are more likely to have a personal relationship with someone who’s experienced sexual assault than someone who’s killed people, if including rape in a story is so fucking necessary, it would be decent of you not to treat it as a cheap way to say how dark and gritty the story is. At least film and TV has the decency to sort of warn you about that shit so you don’t wind up getting inadvertently traumatized because some fucking asshole believes that rape is really goddamn entertaining.
Just a reminder: I welcome differing viewpoints, but this is a progressive blog, so if you want to participate without somebody calling you on your shit, it would behoove you to act like you got some home training. Granted, you already know that, but I just want to reiterate.
Remember: BINGO is for losers.
as long as i have the option to execute the rapists. love dark fantasy and am especially delighted and make a point of killing rapists and sexual blackmailers in the likes of DAO. i think it helps me let go of some of my own negative experiences.
hate the plot device thing though.
all the rape and shit being thrown around like rice at a wedding is exactly why i can’t stand this dark fantasy stuff. death to bioware
I’m reading Robin McKinley’s Deerskin, and so far it’s been pretty great about how it treats the aftermath of traumatic events like rape and abuse. What I also like is how it still centers everything on the protagonist’s POV and shows her agency in the midst of all that.
Super. I’ve always meant to read McKinley (have heard good things about Deerskin and Sunshine); this is as good a motivation as any.
Seconding the rec on Deerskin. It is a brutal, brutal book, but it stands up to multiple readings, largely because, as RVCBard said, McKinley makes it all about Lissar’s POV and agency.
On the SF side, Karin Lowachee’s Warchild trilogy is probably worth a look. Child rape plays a role in the first book (though it’s handled rather deftly IMO), and forced prostitution is a big issue in the third one, but like McKinley, Lowachee’s really good about contextualizing the events within the characters.
What about when rape is done to emphasize that the villain is scum? Also I know rape is horrible but isn’t it a double standard to talk about rape while having no problem with people being brutally murdered and tortured? How many people bring up the scene in black ops where a guy is tortured by having his mouth filled with gas and then punched?
MOD NOTE: It has been mentioned several times that this casual use of rape as a way to make a point about a fictional character is insulting and demeaning to anyone who has real-life experience with it. This is your final warning.
You’re this close to having your comment deleted, but since I’m not the blog owner I’m not going to make that decision but let me warn you: you’re being a dipshit. You don’t fucking get it. Shut up.
Uh. No. And consider yourself strongly warned.
Did you seriously just try to mansplain to women why rape isn’t a problematic trope?
Seriously dude?
Seriously?
Please get your 101 on, because you are failing something fierce.
Attacking somebody in such an aggressive way just because he disagrees with you is immature. There is a difference between “casual” use of rape and rape scenes that encourage emotional involvement and compassion, which is what I believe Ryan was referring to. In some of my favourite books, like G.G. Kay’s “Lions of Al-Rassan” and L. M. Bujold’s series there are a few rape or almost rape scenes, but they are not there “just because there is a woman” (women characters are very strong otherwise), they are there to move you, to encourage compassion, to get involved. The situation with Shianni in Dragon Age, even if rape wasn’t shown, just implied, involved me and made me empathize with the elves much more than some other type of violence would.
Rape is one of the ultimate cruelty acts, and even if I hate reading about it, I can’t demand other people to never mention it. If you disagree with me, please show your home training and answer reasonably instead of aggressively.
Ohhhh, I get it! You’re being ironic!
How about you show your home training and read what the fuck is going on here before commenting because I do recall making the tone argument about people calling out bigotry is a big no-no around these parts.
awwwwww you so edgy bb
I was hoping I was talking to reasonable mature people able to tolerate disagreement and consider other people’s point of view.
I did read everything else on this page before answering. Twice. Thank you for asking.
I agree with most of the points in previous posts, but I don’t have to agree with everything, especially not with childish aggressive communication.
I would myself prefer not to read about rape – but I don’t think every rape in literature is “punishing women for being women” or being offensive to rape victims. Simply, man-to-woman rape is by far most common, so I can understand that most rape scenes in literature would mention that type of rape. (Please note that I’m not saying they SHOULD focus on that.) Quite a few times, rape in literature shows rapists as cruel cowards which they are, and I don’t think this is “cheap” use of rape. The way Martin throws rape around, that is cheap, and I was the only one complaining about it on another site.
I totally agree that it would be much nicer if at least some fantasy books were without rape, but I can also understand why some people think that it cannot be expected all the time. From this kind of aggressive reactions, though, it appears that some people here can’t tolerate even a slight disagreement.
I’m a woman and I experienced attempted rape twice. Still I don’t think you can expect all fantasy books to never mention rape. It would be nice, yes, but nobody can demand it.
And your problem is you’re showing months later arguing the points that we’ve already debunked, making tone arguments and accusing people of being aggressive because you don’t like their tone. Which obviously we’re not being too aggressive because you’re still here.
Not only does that seem disingenuous but also borderline trolling. So the thing that you need to do is re-read the rules and policies (assuming you even bothered reading the first time), check your entitlement and understand how this blog operates. And if it’s not for you, you do have the option to NOT READ and much less NOT COMMENT.
loooooool tone argument
Still I don’t think you can expect all fantasy books to never mention rape. It would be nice, yes, but nobody can demand it.
so who was demanding this bb
or is your reading comprehension just as broken as it looks
in hindsight, i can understand why what i said was tasteless. I was not trying to say that rape should be thrown it at every opportunity or that it should be used as drama, and I am sorry if I offended anyone.
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Tolkien’s critics need to be aware that he grew up and lived in early and middle 20th century Britain, not late 20th century America, so the dominance of white men in his books can be excused much better than for contemporary American authors.
Tolkien’s characters strongly appreciate more “feminine” qualities like gentleness, sensitivity, introspection and compassion – while a lot of modern fantasy (and media in general) is full of the “must… prove… masculinity” crap. In Martin’s books, especially the latest, most male characters refer to compassion and sensitivity, even to responsibility and common sense, as “are you a pussy?” and abundant swearwords are almost all women-related. Women (except a few main characters) are mostly referred to in terms of being “fucked”, usually without consent. One particularly irritating scene is when a woman is not in mood for sex, says “no” to her part-time lover, is raped by him and gets all wet and excited about it. That might make sense to a stupid teenage violent video games fan, but not to an adult person.
One of the most interesting female character, Arya, is perceived as strong mainly because she has mostly “masculine” qualities and attitude: she is very physical-oriented and ready to kill without much thought. Her sister Sansa, an example of extreme femininity, is portrayed as a helpless, naive, passive victim who is just dragged around at others’ whim.
That said, I must defend Dragon Age 1, even if I might be a bit subjective about it. There are a couple of rape cases, but they are clearly shown as criminal acts by evil creatures or low-life humans, not as something that most men, if given opportunity, would do for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as in Martin’s books. Martin’s characters do it as something normal, and/or to prove their masculinity. That is much more worrying than those unpleasant episodes in Dragon Age. In Dragon Age, women have equal rights as men (why is it so rare in fantasy books?), there are many strong women and sexual scenes with main characters are gentle and loving, without a trace of pornography.
And Tolkien apologists should also remember that Hitler was a product of his time so that presentism argument is already DOA.
And so was Sauron.
PRODUCT OF HIS TIME Tolkien apologia got old, like, eons ago.
Tolkien’s critics need to be aware that he grew up and lived in early and middle 20th century Britain, not late 20th century America, so the dominance of white men in his books can be excused much better than for contemporary American authors.
Are you, like, not very bright? Because chances are good that if Tolkien were writing today he’d still have churned out exactly the same straight white boys’ adventure claptrap.
women have equal rights as men (why is it so rare in fantasy books?)
It’s not, though.
But even apart from everything else DA’s writing is shit. :’) And, even though I don’t particularly care to defend Martin, it’s pretty lulzy that you are trying so hard to present in-character reasoning as different–the rape of Shianwhatsherface is done for exactly the same reason as Martin’s characters: to prove masculinity. Martin is a creepy old neckbeard, but then so is just about every talentless hack Bioware employs to write.
“PRODUCT OF HIS TIME Tolkien apologia got old, like, eons ago.”
It doesn’t mean that it’s not valid simply because it was mentioned before. The comparison with Hitler by Neo-Prodigy is out of place. Tolkien talks about different species, not different human races, and, while he implies that elves posses special powers and deeper wisdom than other species, he doesn’t imply that other species are unworthy, quite the opposite. He makes hobbits the main characters – who are definitely a minority, and one of the least powerful minorities, as well – and often repeats that “the small can make as great things, or bigger, as the powerful ones” (or something like that.)
“Are you, like, not very bright?”
I am. Very. Thanks for asking. But you apparently didn’t yet learn that personal insults show lack of arguments and show you in a not very flattering light.
“chances are good that if Tolkien were writing today he’d still have churned out exactly the same straight white boys’ adventure claptrap.”
Perhaps yes, perhaps no. You can’t be sure. Perhaps more women or other human races would be included, like many contemporary British authors do. But why wouldn’t people appreciate the quality of his work even if he – gasp – writes about what is familiar to him and what he identifies with? And again, hobbits were main characters, not even humans.
Yes, he mentions physical characteristics often: black hair, grey eyes, blonde hair etc. So do most other books. I remember only a few in which the main female character wasn’t beautiful or at least pretty. It doesn’t mean that I will proclaim them to be crap just based on a few things I think could be more sensitive. He talks about ancestry and lineage, because he’s fascinated with history and apparently thinks it gives exotic “patina” to characters – and again, his lead characters, hobbits, do not have any of that.
Most people write about what they can easily identify with. Most people write novels about their own countries and culture. I don’t expect American writers to write about non-American cultures or men to write from a woman’s point of view. I appreciate when they do, especially when they do it well, but I don’t expect that they should do it. Women can write about female perspective much more easily, homosexuals about their perspective and so on, and by all means they should do it (and that’s why I prefer to read books written by women). I don’t expect authors to tap-dance around to include everybody’s sensitivities, though, especially not authors of books written 60 years ago. I am a woman and in America I would be a minority. So what. I appreciate a well-written book.
All I’m saying is that things are not so black and white. But many people expect other people to be perfect to them, while rarely considering if they are so perfect to others. That shows very nicely in some of the answers in these comments.
As for your last paragraph – you’re reading in things in that I didn’t say. I was talking about the way authors approach the topic, not the character’s “reasons” for rape. Martin seems to encourage or at least quite easily accept the proving of masculinity issue, DA does not.
And before some people start twisting my words or making comments about my character, intelligence, ancestry, mental health, education etc., I’ll just ask them to consider if they really apply the same criteria to themselves.
You’ve been insulting people from the jump. You butted into a conversation where an individual got called out on his mansplaining and said individual even apologized for his fuckups.
Your arguments have already been dismantled in the OP and the comments and yet you keep arguing the same crap like you’re stating something new or factual.
You make offensive comments (defending rape) and when you get called on them, you want to cry about people being aggressive and hurting your fee fees.
The rules clearly state what this blog is about and how we operate.
Once again, if this post or this site isn’t your cup of tea, you do have the option to NOT READ.
Stop replying and keep it moving.
I strongly suggest you read the links at the top of the page that talk about who and what Ars Marginal is for before commenting any further. This is your warning, and your comments are now being screened before approval.
The comparison with Hitler by Neo-Prodigy is out of place. Tolkien talks about different species, not different human races, and, while he implies that elves posses special powers and deeper wisdom than other species, he doesn’t imply that other species are unworthy, quite the opposite.
are you just that stupid or
hint hint, unclever little apologist, all of Tolkien’s races are white
But why wouldn’t people appreciate the quality of his work even if he – gasp – writes about what is familiar to him and what he identifies with? And again, hobbits were main characters, not even humans.
I think his works are banal, shit, boring and entirely worthless. Next?
He talks about ancestry and lineage, because he’s fascinated with history and apparently thinks it gives exotic “patina” to characters – and again, his lead characters, hobbits, do not have any of that.
lol, your overall ignorance. All of his major hobbits characters barring Sam are landed gentry; Tolkien’s works are incredibly classist and essentialist. Next!
All I’m saying is that things are not so black and white. But many people expect other people to be perfect to them, while rarely considering if they are so perfect to others. That shows very nicely in some of the answers in these comments.
Oh look, it’s a cult of nice fuckwad.
one element that struck me as surprising is that in one of his articles tolkein said that the elves were largely reponsible for all the bad shit that happens in the books. Sauron got the knowledge of the rings and how to make them from the elves, and the only reason he was able to fool them was because they wanted to keep things stagnant rather then maturely accepting that things needed to change. In essence, the elves selfishness and immaturity is what caused every single bad thing to happen.
And saying that time period irrelevant is dishonest. From personal experience my own great grandmother was horrifically racist against blacks and jews, yet her own children and grand children managed to avoid falling into that trap.
And saying that time period irrelevant is dishonest. From personal experience my own great grandmother was horrifically racist against blacks and jews, yet her own children and grand children managed to avoid falling into that trap.
You do realize that this is incredibly demeaning, don’t you?
And saying that time period irrelevant is dishonest. From personal experience my own great grandmother was horrifically racist against blacks and jews, yet her own children and grand children managed to avoid falling into that trap.
You do know there’s a reason I banned you from requireshate, right, Ryan? (Well, that and the “Karen Traviss raping Halo” comment from way back when–not like Halo is a franchise of great integrity to start with but, really?)
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“Considering that you are more likely to have a personal relationship with someone who’s experienced sexual assault than someone who’s killed people, if including rape in a story is so fucking necessary, it would be decent of you not to treat it as a cheap way to say how dark and gritty the story is. At least film and TV has the decency to sort of warn you about that shit so you don’t wind up getting inadvertently traumatized because some fucking asshole believes that rape is really goddamn entertaining.”
Wow. Thanks for this. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to articulate my separation of sexual assault in SFF and general violence.
James Marsters (Spike from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) has this to say about what it’s like to see or participate in rape as entertainment:
“I have turned roles down because they are rapists,” he confessed. “It’s something I don’t even want to watch. If I even click on it on TV, I have to click it off or I’ll put my foot through the screen… What you see on that screen is just my terror at having to do that scene. There’s not really any acting going on and I haven’t watched the scene. I’ve seen little clips. You know, ‘previously on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”‘ They show it sometimes and I’m always like, ‘Oh, God.’ I hope that since Spike has a soul he’s not capable anymore of doing anything like that. That’s what I really hope. That they won’t bring him back in that state of mind… The writers are fabulous, but when I showed up on set that day I told them: ‘Sometimes you guys just don’t know what you do. You just do not know what you’re asking us…’ I’m proud of it artistically, but as a human being I never, never, never want to do a scene like that again and I will always refuse because I know what it does to me.”
Note: The point of this quote is not, “See? Rape hurts men too!” No, no, no, no, no! It’s saying that using rape as entertainment or as a plot device is NOT FUCKING COOL because it hurts real people.
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Well, now I’m curious. Is there a PROPER way to put rape scenes into stories without making it pointless or have unfortunate implications, or should it be avoided at all costs? After all, rape is something that happens in real life, so is there a correct way as to how it should be treated in writing?
Sure. I’d say Robin McKinley, even if I think little of her writing, did it right in Deerskin: by making it about the person who’s been raped, and how she deals with it/survives/heals, instead of making it all about the shock value or about people other than the victim.