Thursday, April 11, 2013

A Special Kind of Evil

Warning: This post is about rape and how it's handled in fiction.


There, I said it. Another warning: This will be an angry post, because it's about a topic that pisses me off. It punch-the-wall pisses me off.

Now, this is, luckily, one of my more uneducated posts. I'm just stating my opinion based on observation. If any victim of rape feels offended by it, please tell me and feel free to correct me.

The Good and the Bad are both Ugly

Basically, there's two kinds of rape in fiction. I'll call them "good" and "bad" rape, depending on what kind of character commits it. The "good" kind is usually not depicted as such, and used often in romance stories. *cough* Fifty Shades *cough* While this one pisses me off too, it's a whole different topic. I'll talk about the "bad" kind, aka rape that's commited by the bad guys and also depicted as an act of evil.

A Special Kind of Evil

There's your title, lifted straight from TVTropes, which got it from somewhere else. It's also the main reason rape is used in fiction. To show that the bad guys are bad. And, well, it works. It works better than murder.
I don't know for sure why that is, but my theory is that there's shades of killing. There's life and death situations, self defense, war... you can be in a situation where you have to kill someone or be killed. Also, everybody dies, sooner or later.
All that doesn't apply to rape. Unless you're at the mercy of a crazy psychopath, you're unlikely to be forced to rape someone. Rape is not a mandatory station of life.

From a Writer's Point of View

I'll take a step back now and look at it from a more logical standpoint. Why don't I like this particular plot point?

Bad guys made easy: As I said, I can't side with a character who willingly rapes someone. Doesn't work. Never. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees it like that. So what I think is going on is that someone tries to think of a bad guy. The bad guy needs to be really, really bad. So they think about who they'd never side with, and come up with "a rapist." Yes, the guy's now really, really bad. But if you ask why he's bad, the only answer you'll ever get is "he rapes." A well-written bad guy is more than one despicable hobby they have. They have motivations, goals, character traits... but playing the rape card reduces them to just that.

"Something that happens to women:" This nice little quote is how Linkara thinks that certain comic book writers view rape. Knowing the context for this... yes, I see where that's coming from. Long story short: Bad writing of rape victims. Since I'm trying to look at this from a more logical and technical standpoint, I'll have to take a few more steps back because ARGH I want to punch something again.
So... rape as dramatic backstory for a female character. There's just so much wrong with that. First, it undermines male rape victims. Yes, they exist, yes, it's possibly for a guy to get a boner and not enjoy it. And not to mention male-on-male rape. Ow. Next, it undermines rape victims in general. I advise you to follow the link and watch the video. The story doesn't even focus on the victim. She's just... there. And raped. The story is about how the guys react to said rape. And I'm not entirely sure, but I doubt this is ever brought up again. You know, people aren't just raped and then walk away from it.
I noticed this come up frequently. This might just be my "luck," but when reading thrillers, I often stumble upon female main characters who were raped as part of their backstory. Especially detectives in crime stories. Sure, some of them are handled better than others, but still... why? It's not like I've ever seen a novel with a male rape victim.

Special Menton: The RPBA

This is the section where talk about my motivation to write this. It is, once again, a game I played. It's set in a vaguely medieval time, with magic, but no races other than humans (I think). And it's chock full of rape. No, seriously. And that's where the abbreviation comes in. It means Raping, Pillaging and Burning Asshole.

Okay, okay, we all know, the middle ages were full of rape. Still... the game starts with the protagonist's mother being raped and killed and his sister kidnapped and brought to Duke Pedo.
Later, when the protagonist talks about his time in the army, it turns out that everyone, except for him, of course, was an RPBA. In general, every soldier ever seems to be an RPBA.

I'm not sure where the developer wanted to go with this. Maybe he wanted to make his game dark and edgy, or especially mature. He failed in both cases, because the atmosphere just doesn't come up. It's a colorful and upbeat-sounding game. With tons of RPBAs.

Since there seems to be some kind of misconception, I'll make it explicit: Putting rape in your story does not make it darker, edgier or more mature. It does not add depth to your characters' backstory and personality, no matter if they're victim or perpetrator. It's iffy and cheap. And chances are that, if these are the reasons you want to add it to your story, your story, you don't have the skills to pull it off.

I will now descend from my soapbox.

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