Violence, rape, and agency in the "gritty fantasies"

[Grack21]

Wow that...um....article...is....

lemme see if i can think of the correct term.....

naw all I can think of is Fucking Nuts.

I wonder sometimes. Usually the people that write these kind of things end up being huge fans of Sara Douglas or something, which has more Rape then Bakker x10. But it's ok. A woman wrote it and they're superior. No hypocrisy at all there. :/

[Larry.]

Wow that...um....article...is....

lemme see if i can think of the correct term.....

naw all I can think of is Fucking Nuts.

I wonder sometimes. Usually the people that write these kind of things end up being huge fans of Sara Douglas or something, which has more Rape then Bakker x10. But it's ok. A woman wrote it and they're superior. No hypocrisy at all there. :/

The older I get, the less taste I have for violence of any sort. Sara Douglass' epic fantasies did not appeal to me at all when I read that one trilogy of hers 10 years ago.

[Sci-2]

I wonder sometimes. Usually the people that write these kind of things end up being huge fans of Sara Douglas or something, which has more Rape then Bakker x10. But it's ok. A woman wrote it and they're superior. No hypocrisy at all there. :/

She does condemn the rape in female authored books as well actually.

[Gormenghast]

But the problem with that, at least for me, is that there was no shift (if all characters are ultimately fools/pawns, then why judge them at all?).

Well, funny that I went through the same thoughts these days while reading The Claw of the Conciliator.

[Grack21]

She does condemn the rape in female authored books as well actually.

Well, I still think shes nuts, but at least shes equally nuts.

[Grack21]

Well, funny that I went through the same thoughts these days while reading The Claw of the Conciliator.

I actually think the second is the weakest of the four, although its been a while since I read them. Have you read the other two? It's a really hard work to judge based on only half.

[Sci-2]

Well, I still think shes nuts, but at least shes equally nuts.

Why is she nuts? I can see reason to disagree with her invective against Abercrombie, but the content I think has some merit.

ETA: I'm honestly curious, as posters here pointed out stuff I missed on my first read though I still largely agree with her. Arguing whether she's "nuts" isn't as interesting as debating actual text she wrote.

The scene is written in from a male perspective. It read like a weird, guilt-free titillation of rape. Jezal doesn't know so he isn't really guilty, but the description is still clearly erotic.

The scene should have been written from Terez's view. The ending to Gloriana was changed by Moorcock after discussion with a female friend, so perhaps Ambercrombie could consider rewriting it for subsequent editions or adding a Terez viewpoint. Not necessarily saying that's my opinion, but it seems worthy of discussion somewhere.

ETA II: Terez and Ardee being hot girls for the male leads to end up with guts a good deal of the "subversive" nature of the novels IMO. I think Valente's Habitation of the Blessed is proving far more trope-breaking so far, in that that very nature of the narrative touches the mythic/epic without following Tolkien's roadmap.

[Nerdanel]

I agree with the article about Abercrombie's lesbian rape scene. Furthermore, I think Terez and her fate is only one example of the misogyny that permeates The First Law, although her case may be particularly blatant. You could write similar articles about every single female character of any consequence in the series.

And Abercrombie definitely doesn't treat male and female characters equally, even taking the local culture into account. Ferro may be a powerful fighter (thanks to her very special demonic ancestry that makes her unnaturally strong), but male characters can get to be powerful fighters AND have personalities consisting of more than one emotion. It's also revealing that Ferro is solely motivated by her past rape. Then there are the three female magic users that are all made of fail in three different ways. The comparison to male magic users is stark. Bayaz in particular is a total Villain Sue... But really, I think I should try to curtail this rant. A full treatment of the subject would take way too many words anyway, and I've written about this before.

I'm not going to say anything about the books in the first post since I've read none of them, but I'm definitely going to buy The Crippled God once it comes out.

[Grack21]

I suck at debating so bear with me.

It's not so much what shes saying as the way in which she is saying it, with the random all caps sentences accusing Ambercrombie of being a rape monster, etc. Plus the there's a snide comment down a ways about Ambercrombie fans that makes her sound like....well a bitch.

I'll be honest, I barley remember that scene. It didn't make much of an impact on me.

I'm guessing the author of that blog is not Bakker fan huh?

Oh, her comments about GRRM at the beginning don't strike me as something from someone able to look at things objectively.

[Procrastimancer]

You do realize that she utilizes the vitriolic rage post style to entertain and rile, right? I may not agree with her or want to agree with her all the time and she may have trashed a few of my favorite authors, but her opinions and points are often right on the money. Crazy bitch? To you, I suppose. For me, she is one of the few reviewers I trust because the style she utilizes, the one that apparently makes her look crazy, allows her to be honest and not hold back.

[Arthmail]

And is that a point worth making? It seemed a bit distorted to take the worst excesses and then (to use a very real-world example) like Police Battalion 101 use the excuse that they had no agency over their decisions.

And should I, as a critic, give much weight to how much I "care" for a character? I found that particular character to be a pastiche of clichés about the charismatic torturer and the "twist" of him appearing to be exactly what he is, a torturer, did not surprise or make me react in more than a hum-drum fashion. But when I think about what was the exact target to show this presumed "shock," the marital rape through threatened torture of a lesbian lover, I found myself thinking, "Why this?" It is an excess that only serves to introduce in a strained, forced fashion certain other character conflicts, ones that could have been done more naturally without the seeming resorting to (threatened) violence for the sake of violence.

Ah, so every section of a book needs to specifically have a point that you agree is directly pertinent to the plot or overall theme, or its completely useless? Except that the situation tied in with the rest of the book in the sense that you get a notion that things do not work out for anybody. That was a main thematic element to the entire series, a complete abberation to fantasy of the last forty years.

If you think Glokta's character is actually a "twist" character than you are substantively wrong. I never, at any point, thought to myself that Glokta was more than he was, nor did i think that Abercrombie was trying to say otherwise. He is not charismatic in the traditional sense, he's a weak cripple with no teeth, nor does he make any bones about being a torturer. What he showed was the opposite end of the spectrum as is so often seen in fantasy novels - that torturers have their own motivations and are more than black robed monsters. Sure, Glokta is a monster, but no human is so simple as to be defined by one trait. Contrary to what we see in most books, the villain of the piece, in this case Glokta, had other motivations. There was a bit of humanity in him.

As for why it was needed, it completed a cycle of abusing people's notions of how a fantasy novel should end. The hidden prince has his princess, and she fucking hates him. Now, there could be some argument that Abercrombie is pretty heavy handed with his themes, but no more than Bakker, or Morgan, or even Dumas.

As to its part in a larger context, I have to say the scene with Jezal was pretty gross and read like rape fetish porn. Better to have written it from Terez's perspective.

I think my greater agreement was with the commenter Captain Falcon, who noted how ludicrous the scene comes off as when you think about the realities of courtly life.

Really, rape fetish porn? Are you fucking kidding me? Lets not sink too deep into the mire of hyperbole now. Let us remember it was a threat issued, nothing physical actually happened in the book. As for the "realities" of courtly life, by what standard are we referring to? Is the commentor referring to statistics gleaned from the time, or his own interpretations of events as read through the lens of whichever historian he holds up as his own? Considering that 1/3rd of women in the US army, as in right now, are raped the notion that something like this could never happen is simply stupid.

Part of my issue with the article is that aside from all of the slavering rage and self-agrandizing screed, she focuses on her own personal problems while ignoring everything else. She honestly reminds me of evangelicals who get up in arms about a nipple slip on live tv, but have no problem with the notion of invading another country and decimating its population while subjecting certain members of said population to hideous acts of torture while going on to create special prisons that deny people their basic human rights - or in the case of the US black sites, actively sending them to countries that have no basic understanding of the concept of human dignity. It is a false sense of outrage.

I like Abercrombie, but i've made statements against his books before. Namely that they are starting to all follow the same pattern. Another problem is in how he represents women. Ferro is a one trick pony, and that trick is pure bitch. Best Served Cold presented a far better character in terms of full on development, but i found that book really boring compared to the original series, with the Heroes being more of a return to form. Though again, he needs to change his message already. Its been made.

[Alexia]

Continuing to read blog reviews with interest. I nearly died laughing at her review of the Sookie Stackhouse books -- I like those books, and I still agree with every word she had to say about Sookie's personality and character.

:lol:

[Larry.]

Last night in another thread, there emerged a discussion about the issue of lesbian rape and the lack of female agency in works such as Joe Abercrombie's The Last Argument of Kings. Shortly, posts from that thread will be ported over here, but I think it might behoove us to not just focus on that particular novel, but also consider the issue of violence and the often-associated lack of agency, particularly with females and homosexual characters, that often occur in the so-called "gritty" fantasies.

Since some in the discussion last night were reacting strongly to the comments made over at the Requires Hate blog, it bears keeping in mind that the quickest way to lose any sort of ground in a debate is to attack the person rather than counterpoint his or her arguments.

With this in mind, what I found interesting about the Requires Hate comments is the underlying belief that beneath the violent, profanity-laced narratives lurks a rather conservative, misogynistic mindset where the rapes and degradations of groups traditionally removed from power (women, homosexuals of all genders) are portrayed in an almost lurid fashion in several of these novels because it is assumed that because repression occurred in various human societies over different periods of time. This leaves aside, according to the argument presented in several other comments over there, that portraying only the worst elements unadulterated by the complexities of human interactions in which there was no steady, heavy oppression inevitably distorts the very real issues of agency/hegemony to the point where it is easy to assume that there was no agency of actions among these groups. The violence that is a hallmark of such stories (the battles, the rapes, the tortures, the intimidations, etc.) to some, like that reviewer quoted, represents not human nature but the distortion of it in service of downplaying the roles that the often-disenfranchised did play when direct access to power was denied.

Hopefully, pro and contra statements on the above paragraph will be the focus of this discussion and not the personal qualities of those forwarding or critiquing these arguments.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Larry,

Would discussion of the method and manner of the "Requires Hate" blogger be out of bounds?

[Larry.]

I'd be very careful about it. I think it might be better to focus on the general issues and not refer too much to a particular point of view, as some might look at the means of delivery and overlook what is being delivered.

[Xray the Enforcer]

Larry,

Would discussion of the method and manner of the "Requires Hate" blogger be out of bounds?

[mod] Yes, it would. We have a rule -- one that has been around since before we had Goodkind threads -- on these boards: do not bring your problems with other boards/blogs into this space. Further, anyone we find who goes to the blog in question with the intention of trolling it (and what constitutes trolling is up to our discretion, not yours, so think twice before you decide you want to head over there to engage the blogger) will be banned from this site. Thank you. [/mod]

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Xray,

Understood. I will refrain.

[Sci-2]

Really, rape fetish porn? Are you fucking kidding me? Lets not sink too deep into the mire of hyperbole now.

No, I am not kidding you. That was my perception. Jerzal gets a guilt free rape, and through his character as narrative vehicle we are told about Terez's sexualized body. Why not write the scene from Terez's perspective?

As for hyperbole, I would say I think the jump to compare her to people who advocate war and torture is more in line with the definition of that term.

Best for us to not question what the other person is "kidding" about, and examine texts in question.

As to the reason it isn't realistic, the poster Captain Falcon brought up two points:

1. Terez had her entire life to realize she'd be a chess piece in politics, specifically as a wife to someone or other. So this idea that she can't deal with her situation is silly.

2. Neither Terez nor the Countess have allies? A countess can just be whisked off into a dungeon and no one cares? That seems like shoddy writing.

At the very least, you don't think Terez - after hiding her homosexuality for years - is capable of the minimal intrigue necessary to have Glokta accused on kidnapping the Countness because he is a crazy rapist? I mean I just thought of that after morning tea and I'm less than fully awake.

[Happy Ent]

No, I am not kidding you. That was my perception.

You really think these scenes were written to arouse? My perception was the opposite.

[Sci-2]

Not intentionally. Just to be clear, not trying to say Abercrombie had a hard on when he wrote the scene.

The problem is Terez's perspective is lost, and the text is problematic due to that it can be arousing to the wrong person. As Nukelavee showed us via a linked article I'll try to find, rapists think everyone is a rapist and look for things to support that notion.