cornerofmadness

So here we go, another Sunday of what to write and I think I’m finally ready for this one. It seems right after the way Whedon finally blew up over the week (though I’m still shaking my head over the fact that Ray Fisher was mostly ignored and then FIRED but the women listened to. And why is this firing NOT a bigger deal though we know gender/race is why)

I’ve been sitting on this link for over a year trying to think about it and then I was talking with a few people recently about rape tropes in stories and Spike was in this article. If you don’t read it all let me share this excerpt: Since the attempted rape in Buffy season six was to redeem Spike in preparation for a romance arc, he then ends up in a relationship with his victim. For many alienated fans, this felt like an endorsement of his rape attempt. Instead of strengthening the romance, the attempted rape tainted it. In stories, rape is an act that’s over the moral event horizon – a character should not be redeemed after that, because many audience members will never like them again.

Yep it alienated the hell out of me. I shifted to mostly writing in the Angel verse and quit watching Buffy (there was a lot of S6 & S7 I hadn’t seen and I was not happy Spike was on Angel though it worked better than I feared). I loved Spike. This made me hate him as a character for a long time. I wouldn't have disliked Spuffy so much if not for the rape attempt. Honestly my friends did far better with Spuffy as a relationship than canon ever did.

What got me thinking about writing about rape was about how badly I’ve seen it done. I don’t think it needs to disappear entirely (rape happens, recovery happens) but it really needs to be done better. As I said last week I saw the end of two of my series with book three thanks to how they handled rape. Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid (which I really liked) might get picked up again but after the titular hero was okay if a character was raped by ice giants I’m like um…. Okay? Patricia Briggs’ coyote shifter (blocked her name) was raped and her biggest concern was how it would reflect on her alpha wolf lover and his status in the pack. Nope, bye. There was one I can’t even remember title or author (I expunged it entirely apparently) faerie story set in Pittsburgh (I was excited you don’t get Pittsburgh often) where the lead was nearly raped and she wasn’t that mad at the rapist and literally called him a poopy head (no she was not a child)

I think the article does a good job but fails in two ways. 1) it didn’t address rape as a punishment or at least not as its own bullet point. That’s how I often see it done. 2) it just wanted the trope gone entirely but if that is a major point then how to address it wasn’t discussed.

I think in a way the rape trope was one of the ways I started thinking Whedon was not a good person almost 20 years ago (back when me and ELD were pilloried for saying so). There were clues in interviews with him, with others. Sarah and James had mentioned toxicity (though laid some of that at Noxon’s feet too) back then. Sarah hated season six (though this article tries to pretty up the rape so boo to that. Noxon and Whedon weren’t some genius with this trope, not at all IMO)

Amber told me and ELD at a con about being harassed over her weight and appearance. There was an article with Vincent Kartheiser about how uncomfortable he was being forced into a sex scene with Charisma (and her on the bottom), making it sound like they tried (and failed) to get out of it and he was very worried about hurting her and no one cared. (This was long before Charisma’s posts this past week about the 1 AM shoot times and her Braxon-Hicks contractions.) It’s long been debated that Whedon rewrote Connor’s arc to basically destroy Cordy (and very purposely Charisma’s career) because let’s face it, the pregnancy could have been written off as Groo’s (they were lovers around the time after all). He went out of his way to be as icky as possible.

But think about how often we saw rape as a trope on Buffy
1. Buffy and Parker (date rape is still rape)
2. Buffy and Spike (and was very triggering for me based on my own experiences)
3. Angelus and Spike very obviously raped people to show they were bad (namely Drusilla that we know of)
4. It’s hinted Faith was sexually abused growing up
5. Faith having unsuspecting Riley as a lover while looking like Buffy (addressed in the article)
6. My personal worst nightmare Andrew, Warren and Jonathan finding women to turn into sex slaves, Andrew whining about having to go second and him STILL being popular with fans
7. Even Cordy/Connor is dubious consent at best. She decides he’s 18 (somehow) so legal but do we think he even knew what sex was? That his hell fire and brimstone ‘father’ would have explained sex and if he had it would have been an 18th century idea of it.
8. Xander tried to rape Buffy, yes he’s possessed by a hyena spirit but it happened

I’m probably forgetting some. We certainly also had slut shaming from Faith to shows all but built around it (the one night and you’re instantly pregnant one for example). There is this undercurrent of rape culture and rape as power throughout (which played into my long ago conviction Whedon was not the feminist-leaning guy he proclaimed to be).


Have some links

From Betty The First Page

How to Launch a New Book Using BookBub’s Marketing Tools

Believing in Yourself as a Writer is Vital


KDSPY Review: Get an Edge in Book Sales

Five Bad Habits Writers Learn From Movies and TV

Five Ways to Make a Selfish Character Likable

Podcast 313 – Cutting Clutter

Relationship Thesaurus Entry: Exes

5 Tips for Writing Stellar Romantic Subplots

Opening Scenes: 3 Critical Elements

From around the web Worldbuilding Creating a Magic System for Superpowers I admit it. I clicked this one just because of the Darker than Black image

Marketing A Book (Beyond Social Media)

Write Your First Draft Like A Movie Script

Nine Idioms Traced To Their Origins


This is How You Find Your Readers: Book Marketing in 2021
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