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

[candika.livejournal.com]

I think you've raised a number of interesting issues here.

When I first started reading these they distressed me. After all most women are very conscious of the possibility and are prepared to curtail their activity in order to minimise the risk. Many of us have experienced it first hand and no matter how transformative it's always really, really tough. We empathise when a character is raped. Obviously in this genre the character is male and I find that interesting. I think maybe it gives us some distance so we can think about it without feeling threatened ourselves.

It gives us the chance to portray the pain and courage of the victim, the comfort offered him by his friends and , as you say, the possibility of change and transformation. These are dark subjects but vitally important to many women.