Violence! Rape! Agency! The rapiness that comes before

[Contrarius]

The horse is dead. Stop beating it and move on.

Hey -- if you're tired of the horse, stop riding (reading) it. Go find another horse you like better, and leave us to the one we're still having fun with.

[Sci-2]

How is that not censorship?

Moving on from the Terez scene, but staying on topic -> Can people tell me what they think censorship is? Because I think of it has something that has legal teeth. Everything else is just suggestions, whether of morality or artistic critique.

Now, if I buy or do not buy Windup Girl or the local PTA calls for a boycott of that orc rape book Grack mentioned - well that is free market and right to assemble.

I actually think people explaining their position on this would be great, as right now I feel like I at least have little to no idea why the word keeps coming up.

[Verboten]

They had been beating the horse for days, oblivious to the mockery of their peers or the pleas of their gods. Now it looked at the world through eyes weeping maggots and still the brutality went on, providing endless material for the bloggers of the world.

[Sci-2]

They had been beating the horse for days, oblivious to the mockery of their peers or the pleas of their gods. Now it looked at the world through eyes weeping maggots and still the brutality went on, providing endless material for the bloggers of the world.

Bakker, is that you? ;-)

[TerraPrime]

Bakker, is that you? ;-)

Not until we get alien tentacle'd rape with black seeds!

Or, at the least, some proof that dead horses are metaphysically designed in this universe to be beaten to a pulp.

Either one.

[Contrarius]

Moving on from the Terez scene, but staying on topic -> Can people tell me what they think censorship is? Because I think of it has something that has legal teeth. Everything else is just suggestions, whether of morality or artistic critique.

That's a good question -- and one for which I don't have a good answer. A tempting response would be "it's like obscenity -- I knows it when I sees it" -- but that doesn't even work well for obscenity, much less for censorship.

Lessee if I can think of something halfway sensical as a first draft of an answer. First we have to remember that the terms "censor" and "censure" are closely related, so the very concepts are entertwined and difficult to separate. So --

1. Censure in and of itself does not necessarily imply censorship. For instance: "I do not like x because of reasons y and z" does not make any attempt to censor. It's simply a personal reaction to an author's work.

2. When we start censuring with the addition of terms like "the author should change this" or "the author should make this better", we start getting perilously close to the impulse to censor. That is, we are indicating a supposed need for change in addition to describing our personal reaction.

3. So we now have this "should" idea. We want the author to change something. It seems to me that this desire to make a change can become true censorship in two steps:

3. A. Will the desired change make a material difference to the author's intent? That is -- will it alter the dramatic impact of the author's work, or the characterizations as the author has established them, or the arc of the plot, or other meaningful aspects of what the author has already written? If the desired change will not alter significant pre-existing designed elements, then IMHO it is not censorship.

3. B. Do we have the power to make the author change his work?

In the case of posters on a literary message board, obviously we don't have this power. But once we have even gone as far as step 2 -- the idea that somebody should change something -- then we are already rolling our way down that slippery slope to making him change it. Ideas about what people should do are what end up getting books burned or banned, laws changed, and all sorts of other unpleasantries. So we have to be very careful of even reaching step 2 at all.

There ya go. I'm sure to have left out important ideas and gotten things wrong, but that's a first small stab at it!

(edited 'cause I wanted to add more boldy stuff)

[Grack21]

Now, if I buy or do not buy Windup Girl or the local PTA calls for a boycott of that orc rape book Grack mentioned - well that is free market and right to assemble.

Hell yes.

It called consequences.

Write all the hateful shit you want, but don't act shocked if no one wants to buy it/publish it.

[Shryke]

You're going to have some minor characters who have no choice but to be pretty one-dimensional, sure, but that one dimensionality doesn't necessarily have to match the same one-dimensionality that other lazy writing has used for those same types of character. Simple characters needn't necessarily be stereotypes, in other words. Worse yet, every character of a different (and potentially a vulnerable) minority needn't match the same stereotypes. So you could make a grasping, swindling banker a plump, oily little man with ferrety black eyes, a hook nose and crinkly hair, but why would you when it clearly matches a shitty, offensive jewish stereotype? Worse yet, do a similar treatment for two grasping swindling bankers in the same story, who happen to be the only men with hook noses and crinkly hair.

I don't think you should necessarily be avoiding the rough shape over lazier artists have used in the past either though. I mean, one can parallel elements of a stereotype without writing a stereotype as long as you don't copy every element of that stereotype, if you get what I mean. (maybe not, it's a weird sentence) This is, after all, the practice at the heart of subversion in art. Take a stereotype and then turn part of it around and make it something new.

Leave Terez exactly as she is in the text, if you will, and look at Shalere, who's a much more minor character, she's very like Terez, as I recall - icy, haughty, contemptuous and scornful towards Jezal. Now imagine if she were pleasant, polite, gracious, warm towards Jezal. 'Your Majesty I can only apologise, the Queen is not herself today. Has not been well. The whole thing is so difficult. For you both. I don't know how you manage. The strain must be terrible. I will speak to her.' Jezal reflects that if only all Styrian women were so charming. Shalere's husband will be a lucky man....

Already it's a different, more varied and more interesting dynamic. The character is more real, the approach by the women towards their desperate position is more subtle and believable, the relationship between them is more believable, Terez' defence of Shalere is more believable, Glokta's use of their relationship is still more unpleasant. And you've at least got a lesbian in the text who doesn't come over as a frosty man hater. I'm not saying it's fixed by any means, but it's surprisingly much better for a minor change. Obviously you could go a lot further. Thus, for me, can small details of character ripple out to have profound effects. Which is why I think for me this is at heart more a problem of shitty characterisation than it is necessarily a problem with plot and event. Others will no doubt differ.

I'd say that would certainly be a more interesting take on the characters, even if I don't feel the original is bad to begin with.

Now invent a time machine and get on that. Don't forget to write down some lottery numbers before you go.

[Grack21]

You guys are more versed in the actualy pyscholgy of all this stuff then me. I have an honest question. How the heck does someone read Outlander and not see that scene as rape? Honestly, it baffles the hell out of me, and I'd really like to hear your opinions.

[Contrarius]

You guys are more versed in the actualy pyscholgy of all this stuff then me. I have an honest question. How the heck does someone read Outlander and not see that scene as rape? Honestly, it baffles the hell out of me, and I'd really like to hear your opinions.

I think some people over on the Outlander thread have argued that she ended up enjoying part of it, so it wasn't rape. To which I yell a loud "BS!". But there ya go.

[Grack21]

I think some people over on the Outlander thread have argued that she ended up enjoying part of it, so it wasn't rape. To which I yell a loud "BS!". But there ya go.

Yeah....'

I've tried bringing it up before and I usually get told something like LOL THATS NOT RAPE SILLY! or they seem to think the scene didn't happen and I'm making it up. This happens far more often then you'd think. It's like suppressed memories or something. It's extremely disturbing.

It happened in the romantic hero thread too, where i brought up, you know, the ideal romantic hero isn't usually a RAPIST, but, same thing.

It's nuts.

[Shryke]

Re: Shryke from last thread:

I think sex and violence are more plot-relevant only because the authors plotted to be so, and that's part of my questioning: why do many authors seem to plot a large amount of violence and sex in their novels? Is it because that's what they think grant realism to their work? Or is it for other reasons?

I think sex and violence are at the heart of most conflicts and of history. Especially if one expands those definitions to sexuality and struggle for power (often involving violence in many places).

These things are also the biggest, most obvious forms of conflict around. It's a dramatic conceit in some sense too, even as it's also an acknowledgement of the realities of life or the perceived realities of the type of life being depicted.

This is probably true for some. I'll also say that events like rape are also alluring as story elements because it's a pre-packaged deal that offers instant pathos. Hence my comparison to the sudden-loud-noise trick in horror movies. That loud noise gets the adrenaline in your audience going, without you having to spend any effort developing anything on screen. Similarly, inserting a rape scene instantly generates a pre-determined set of emotions for the characters (pity and/or empathy for the victim, loathing for the rapist) (and as a tangent, I'd give Abercrombie props for the Terez scene where our loathing was not directed at Jezal per se, but at Glotka, so I see that as success in terms of breaking the expectation). And when I feel that rape, or violence, or sex, is used in this manner, it's not handled correctly.

Right, but they generate instant pathos because these things are themselves powerful, dramatic acts. The question is how they are used. Is it just trying to generate an instant emotional response and nothing else? Or is it in support of the greater aim of the work itself? Which is, I think, more of less what you are also saying.

Violence and sex are powerful things and that's why they get used alot. They don't always get used well though.

I agree with this in general, but I'd like to point out something else. Realism is rather difficult to nail down, since we each have different experience. For instance, Lord of the Ring features many large-scale battles between the forces of good and evil. To us, they may not seem very real, but for Tolkien, who was a veteran of WWI and witnessed many battles, the scenes he wrote were probably more than real to him.

Good point. And that really comes back to what I wanted to say with it being a newer movement and with alot of the genre being based on itself. "Realism" and "Maturity" are defined in reference to the genre itself and to the author's limited knowledge of the periods in question. And also, importantly, to the author's own experiences in life and other areas and such.

It's certainly skewed in some ways, but I think there is definitely realism in there because if nothing else much of it is based on their own experiences. And things like sex are a big part of most people's lives and so "realism" would involve reflecting that fact. (violence for many I'd say more comes from an abstract understanding of life outside the standard)

Agreed that there's a clear attempt to remove some of the sexual and violent content from material aimed at the YA audience. So do authors add these elements to their work as an attempt to separate their work from YA work? Is that your take for some of the cases?

I think, as above, that it's added back in as an attempt to reflect a more real picture of human experience, as seen by them. We shield kids from overt sexuality and such, but it's very much a part of human nature.

Violence, especially in some cultures, is a different issue. We generally show violence, but not it's effect to children. (kinda fucked up imo, but that's a bit of a tangent) And so maturity in this sense involves more showing the consequence of violence and the visceral nastiness of it. I mean, for example Spiderman fighting some super-villain is certainly violent, but it's not really visceral or gritty or any of the things people associate with "realism" in spec-fic.

Which, now that I think about it, is not too different from sex in YA stuff. It's often sanitized in that "they love each other" or something, but the characters don't usually strip and have sweaty, squelchy, visceral fucking. And yet that's very much what sex is.

So I guess I'd say maturity and realism are often linked together in the sense that we tend to shield children from the gritty dirty parts of sex and violence. Which is also the thing you tend to see in the more fairy-tale-esque work that preceded the more recent "gritty" trend. And because of that, a move towards showing those things is more mature and more real.

If this is true, that part of the reason for the apparent prevalence now is that it's a new toy that authors get to play with, then will we, in 10 or 20 years' time, see less of it in the genre?

I think we may more see other things join it. Sex and violence have had like permanent staying power in entertainment/art and I don't see spec-fic breaking that trend. We may just see other elements also become part of trend (10 years from now, "gritty fantasy" will only apply to books that acknowledge the lack of hygiene in pre-modern society :P)

On the other hand though, spec-fic is all about worlds that are largely made up by the author without alot of reference to the current world, so alot of times elements that aren't directly important to the story the author wants to tell are ignored or never even thought of in the first place.

Which kinda gets back to the first point that it's a move towards better drama as much as it's a move towards more realism.

Summing it up, I'd say it's almost like the "gritty realism" movement is about expanding the potential dramatic space of the spec-fic genre to include things that are very much a part of life but were usually not dealt with before, in order to tell better stories or more types of stories.

[Shryke]

You guys are more versed in the actualy pyscholgy of all this stuff then me. I have an honest question. How the heck does someone read Outlander and not see that scene as rape? Honestly, it baffles the hell out of me, and I'd really like to hear your opinions.

What scene specifically? I know alot of Outlander fans, I'll see if I can run it by them over the holidays. (tactfully of course, not "So, isn't the book series you really like about a rapist and his stockholm-syndrome suffering victim?")

[Contrarius]

What scene specifically? I know alot of Outlander fans, I'll see if I can run it by them over the holidays. (tactfully of course, not "So, isn't the book series you really like about a rapist and his stockholm-syndrome suffering victim?")

I quoted it at length in the other thread, along with a coupla other scenes. Post #292.

[Sci-2]

Which, now that I think about it, is not too different from sex in YA stuff. It's often sanitized in that "they love each other" or something, but the characters don't usually strip and have sweaty, squelchy, visceral fucking. And yet that's very much what sex is.

Not exactly YA, but I remember the first episode of Veronica Mars had her stating she was drugged and raped at a party and it was revealed by her stating something like:

"Who did I lose my virginity to? I wish I knew."

Later they gutted this to an extent by revealing who she had sex with (IIRC a guy who was also drugged and was her love or something) but I thought this was pretty powerful.

[Grack21]

For the love of fuck. Spoiler tags. God knows I'm guilty of it myself.

[Sci-2]

sorry, it literally is the beginning of the series.

ETA: oh, got ya. tagged.

[Shryke]

Not exactly YA, but I remember the first episode of Veronica Mars had her stating she was drugged and raped at a party and it was revealed by her stating something like:

"Who did I lose my virginity to? I wish I knew."

Later they gutted this to an extent by revealing who she had sex with (IIRC a guy who was also drugged and was her love or something) but I thought this was pretty powerful.

But really, I wouldn't describe Veronica Mars as YA really.

Also, watch Veronica Mars. I am glaring at you till you do.

[Grack21]

I forgive you. :P

And I think I'm going to call Outlander the book about a rapist and his stockholm-syndrome suffering victim from now on.

Edit I have all of Veronica Mars sitting here on DVD. Which is almost as massive as my TBR pile. I'm like years behind on everything.

[sologdin]

Can people tell me what they think censorship is? Because I think of it has something that has legal teeth. Everything else is just suggestions, whether of morality or artistic critique.

legal teeth or some other institutional custodial capacity to restrict, limit or decrease publication of information. critique that incorporates and furthers awareness of a novel, say, propagates, reproduces, and increases publication of the original information and adds new information to the mass of publications.

the suggestion that critique is similar to censorship is therefore manifestly orwellian.