Random thoughts on Rape Fic

[valarltd]

By being a violation of the character--a physical invasion of his body, a mental and emotional humiliation--rape in slash takes on the role of transformative experience.

It is about breaking down the character: his attitudes, his confidence, his very sense of self so that the author can allow him reshape himself from the brittle broken thing into something whole and human. And rebuilding himself can be as heroic as rebuilding the whole world.

This is why hurt/comfort is a popular genre. The comfort is as necessary to the concept of hero as the hurt. The enduring of the hurt is a heroic act, true, but the rebuilding, the acceptance of comfort afterward is as well.

Comments

[jkb.livejournal.com]

I like what you said a lot and I mostly agree, but as far as realism goes, not everyone is looking for it. Some people don't want to be medically accurate, or have realistic recovery. Some people really aren't into the whole "comfort" part at all when it comes to abuse situations; they're happy to have the comfort be no more substantial than the kind of post-torture comfort we saw in Star Wars -- e.g. a droid wiring a new hand onto Luke's wrist in the medbay, or Luke bouncing back to his feet after the Force-lightning torture. I know, sometimes the lack of realism gets ridiculous, but some people aren't looking for realism at all.

Let me be clear, I do think there's a great deal of truth to the idea that people are often looking for the character to be transformed in a rape story; I just don't think they always expect a lot of it to happen in the "comfort" section of the story. And of course, the kind of transformation they expect to have happen sometimes has nothing at all to do with the likely effects of a real-life rape, so it's often unrealistic in that respect too. (For example, rape in fanfic often serves to get the character more in touch with his body, rather than making him feel dissociated and cut off from his body the way a real-life rape might.)

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

It's your fault i got to thinking about this anyway.

I am one of the "not big on comfort" types. but I think there must be some. And i think in the one we're working on, the recovery period is as important as the experience itself.

[jkb.livejournal.com]

My fault? *g* How so? 'cause I'm doing research on the topic or 'cause we're writing this story?

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

The story. I'm having ideas. Look for words soon.