Turn rape into love?

[Unblemished]

Sounds interesting. Got a link?

Sounds interesting. Got a link?

It was a published novel, not a story on here: The Nightmare Stacks, by Charles Stross. I'd post the bit where they discuss Stockholm Syndrome here, but IDK how Lit works with quotes beyond a paragraph or so (it's maybe a page?). Fun little alien invasion/paranormal romance tale, though its part of a wider series so I dunno if it works as a standalone. It's funny, the alien elf things are cool and it gets points for trying to explain why the sexy elf princess falls for the everyman nerd hero for once, but it ends without much wrapping up and the series' plot never really comes back to it. Also the guy starts off extremely bitter and kinda whiny, though he has good reason to be and gets a lot better over time.

Basically the FMC is this spy from a weird magical/alien world who lands on earth and blends in to pave the way for an invasion, and the guys whose job it is to stop that dangle a young and supernaturally powerful vampire boy (who is himself clueless, and just thinks he's met a nice potential girlfriend) in front of her as bait while she's lonely and confused. So she's planning to lure him in and do horrible interrogation shit to him, his bosses are planning to make her fall for him so she'll let her guard down/defect and they can interrogate her, and he just thinks/hopes he's in a standard romcom.

There's no sex, though there's a bit at the end which is such a big sex-metaphor that the FMC gets off on it. A later story where the MC's play minor roles also has the FMC offhandedly mention having an active sex life (in a situation where everything happening lately has been awful, the only thing she doesn't complain about is the time she's spent in bed with the MMC. Vampires in-setting have supernatural desire, energy and recovery speeds, by all accounts, so that's...not surprising). That one was set about a month later IIRC, by which point the MC's are all domestic and honeymoony (and extremely unhappy about life, just not with each other), so presumably they got to it the second the book was over, lol.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

The Nightmare Stacks, by Charles Stross

Oh I love Charles Stross and i think I've read that particular book! I wish he'd talked more about the elves' world though. I really go in for the world building.

 

[Unblemished]

Oh I love Charles Stross and i think I've read that particular book! I wish he'd talked more about the elves' world though. I really go in for the world building.

Yeah, it would have been interesting to see what it looked like before all the crazy stuff happened. But the book implies a good deal; for instance, when Agent First describes Leeds as huge and ugly and badly-planned, that suggests something about what her own world's cities were like.

It was a very cute story IMO, especially by Stross standards. Even though people were getting murdered, scalped and blinded by the thousand.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

It was a very cute story, especially by Stross standards. Even though people were getting murdered, scalped and blinded by the thousand.

Right, so downright cuddly by his standards. XD

 

[KeithD]

Keith, you're missing out on all of the fun. This is the Authors' Circle-Jerk Hangout.

At some point folks here realize that they aren't missing out when these circular discussions come up and they decline to participate. Just yesterday I happily turned away from a thread going the way of one person's connection to a personal reality demanding to control what everyone else could write and read in fiction here.

 

[gunhilltrain]

At some point folks here realize that they aren't missing out when these circular discussions come up and they decline to participate. Just yesterday I happily turned away from a thread going the way of one person's connection to a personal reality demanding to control what everyone else could write and read in fiction here.

I was being tongue-in-cheek. I've been on various forms of social media for years, and it can get - tiresome? - after a while with numerous (including me!) people piling in with some statement or other. The worst had to be the forums on The Internet Movie Database, which became so crazy that the site eventually removed them. I forgot the lesson, I suppose, and I mostly limited my time on AH until recent months.

 

[KeithD]

I was being tongue-in-cheek. I've been on various forms of social media for years, and it can get - tiresome? - after a while with numerous (including me!) people piling in with some statement or other. The worst had to be the forums on The Internet Movie Database, which became so crazy that the site eventually removed them. I forgot the lesson, I suppose, and I mostly limited my time on AH until recent months.

The movie discussions here are beyond me. Although I've worked on a few movies (e.g., The Deer Hunter, The Killing Fields, and Good Morning Vietnam) I've lived most of my life where new movies weren't being shown and I just haven't included many of them in my life.

 

[gunhilltrain]

The movie discussions here are beyond me. Although I've worked on a few movies (e.g., The Deer Hunter, The Killing Fields, and Good Morning Vietnam) I've lived most of my life where new movies weren't being shown and I just haven't included many of them in my life.

Strictly speaking, movie discussions don't really fit in with AH, but they're here anyway. Once into the second decade of this century, I've lost track of most new movies. I can't afford theater prices or streaming services anyway.

 

[Unblemished]

Right, so downright cuddly by his standards. XD

Alex + Agent First, romantically embracing at Malham: "I'm so glad to have met the cute vampire boy/beautiful fairy girl of my dreams, I love them so much!"

*Camera pans to the left, where half the population of Leeds have just been scalped, eaten, burned until only the teeth are left, afflicted with radiation poisoning, or had their eyes melted in their sockets*

As cuddly as Stross ever gets, I suppose. I kinda want a stuffed equoid plush now.

 

[SimonDoom]

What's even more absurd is that, if someone wants to depict rape realistically as part of a drama, they are not allowed to do so unless the victim "enjoys it." It's absolutely insane!

That's not accurate. It is acceptable to write a story about rape at Literotica, but not in a way that is intended to cause erotic pleasure.

For instance, one could write an erotic thriller in which a detective is hunting down a rapist, and in which the detective has erotic encounters. One could write about the rapist's crimes. But one could not present those crimes in an erotic way.

I think the reason for this distinction is fairly obvious, and it has been explained by the site owners. They don't want the site to attract readers who get erotic pleasure from suffering, torture, and death. They don't allow erotic rape, snuff, or torture. Given that concern, the requirement that nonconsent victims must "enjoy it" makes perfect sense. It's not "insane" at all. It may seem daft from a real-world point of view, but the Site owners have no obligation to conform their Site to the real world. It's the fictional universe that matters.

 

[SimonDoom]

That was obviously Ayn Rand's fantasy. Yet if something like that had really happened to Rand, I'd guess she'd try to kick the guy in the nuts. And she'd have every right to do so.

Rand is an excellent example--one of the very best examples--of someone whose fictional ideals were completely at odds with the way she actually lived. In fiction she preached romantic individualism. In practice she created a rigid, thought-controlling cult following, in which it was forbidden to disagree with her in the slightest way, on threat of being ostracized permanently from the cult, which gave itself the amusing and ironic title "The Collective." Whittaker Chambers, in his famous review of Atlas Shrugged, aptly captured a fundamentally authoritarian strain in Rand's thinking. The problem with "Objectivism," which is what she called her philosophy, is that it leaves no room for disagreement. If all values, including even matters of artistic and musical taste, are objectively derived, then you must be a bad person if you like musicians that deviate from Ayn Rand's "objective" criteria. It's intolerance in the highest degree.

For purposes of the fiction, however, it doesn't matter how nuts Rand was in real life, or how unrealistic her fiction might have been. One can still enjoy it the same way one might enjoy a book by Mickey Spillane or Robert Heinlein, mid-20th century contemporaries of hers. It has its own internal logic and aesthetic and can be appreciated on that level even if one thinks it bears no relationship to the real world.

 

[SimonDoom]

There is nothing erotic about rape or non-consensual acts unless you're a psycho. It is the act of forcing the victim to "enjoy it" that creates the illusion of "eroticism," and that is utterly absurd and sick.

That's your opinion. You're free to have it. Many disagree with you, and that's a fact. The fact is that people have rape fantasies, and if you insist that they're all sick and psycho then it's YOU who have a hard time confronting the complexity of reality.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Yes, you are talking about yourself.

When someone fails at trolling, attempts bullying, and ends up as a clown. You're done?

 

[SimonDoom]

When someone fails at trolling, attempts bullying, and ends up as a clown. You're done?

Says the contributor who proudly entitles himself, "Megalomaniac" and accuses his fellow authors as "psychos."

You aren't fooling or persuading anyone.

But you have a right to your opinion, so have at it.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

Is there a plausible way to turn a rape story into a love story? I heard something similar was done in an old TV series (General Hospital, the names were Luke and Laura), but I have never watched it, so I don't know how exactly it played out.

I once read a story where a son raped his mother, and then his mother decided she liked it and they became a happy couple just like that.

What about you? Do you have any ideas as to how to write a plausible "rape turns to love" story? Or is it too sick too pull off?

That's a big nope from me.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I know a megalomaniac who didn't persuade or fool many, but ended up as a god.

Mister T?

 

[SimonDoom]

I know a megalomaniac who didn't persuade or fool many, but ended up as a god.

I read "I, Claudius" as well. It didn't end well for Caligula.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Claudius's end wasn't all that wonderful, either. In the real world at least.

 

[HordHolm]

Claudius's end wasn't all that wonderful, either. In the real world at least.

Or in the book. Agrippina did him in with poisoned mushrooms. His son Britannicus, who features briefly, was then murdered by Nero and his daughter Claudia Octavia had to sit there pretending it wasn't happening as her brother succumbed to the poison in front of her. She was married to Nero at this point, but it didn't save her. Once Nero decided he wanted someone else she was banished on trumped up charges of adultery and moral decadence (a supreme irony as she was renowned as the most virtuous woman in Rome), and once out of the way she was done in. The Julio-Claudians, everyone, the most morally depraved family in Rome until the Severans rocked up 150 years later, and they really were the next level as a piece of work.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Nero was the last Ceaser, though they retrained it a title—quite the family they had. Filled with murders, adulterers, rapists, incestuous relationships, greed, and uncontrolled power. And they all won man or woman of the year all the time.

Or in the book. Agrippina did him in with poisoned mushrooms. His son Britannicus, who features briefly, was then murdered by Nero and his daughter Claudia Octavia had to sit there pretending it wasn't happening as her brother succumbed to the poison in front of her. She was married to Nero at this point, but it didn't save her. Once Nero decided he wanted someone else she was banished on trumped up charges of adultery and moral decadence (a supreme irony as she was renowned as the most virtuous woman in Rome), and once out of the way she was done in. The Julio-Claudians, everyone, the most morally depraved family in Rome until the Severans rocked up 150 years later, and they really were the next level as a piece of work.

 

[CyranoJ]

Is there a plausible way to turn a rape story into a love story?

Romances that start with abduction, rape or some form of forcible seduction are really not that uncommon as a trope. ("Forced seduction" is basically the romance genre-acceptable format for non-con fantasy. And no, it is not particularly clear what differentiates it from rape.) You don't have to go far in the erotic romance genre to find bestselling stories that are basically about rape leading to romance, or various forms of abuse comprising the romance. This is the basis of the whole Fifty Shades series and of romance classics like Johanna Lindsey's Secret Fire (which has a crazy sex scene with the heroine kidnapped and drugged out on Spanish fly, and which I discovered as a kid on my prim and proper mother's bookshelf).

Obviously a case can be made that a lot of this is promoting specific and unhealthy rape-culture ideologies. But the fundamentals of noncon fantasy aren't likely to be going anywhere anytime soon, and there are tons of examples to draw from just in mainstream fiction and movies, let alone in porn and erotica.

Another route to take is to incorporate non-con roleplay into a romantic relationship. This is a much less common trope in mainstream fiction, but it's fundamentally how people think of (say) Fifty Shades and what helped make it acceptable reading material for housewives. The actual relationships in those books arguably don't really support the roleplay angle, but there's no reason it couldn't be done better.

 

[policywank]

There is a classic novel (which one is escaping me now) wherein during a time of substantial turmoil a man basically claims a woman as his own. It isn't so much a violent rape as we imagine in a dark alley, but he did just take her and fuck her against her will. She basically accepted that she had been claimed and became his supportive wife. The setting was sort of rough and tumble times when/where the world was a hostile place and this is just the way it was.

 

[MillieDynamite]

There is a classic novel (which one is escaping me now) wherein during a time of substantial turmoil a man basically claims a woman as his own. It isn't so much a violent rape as we imagine in a dark alley, but he did just take her and fuck her against her will. She basically accepted that she had been claimed and became his supportive wife. The setting was sort of rough and tumble times when/where the world was a hostile place and this is just the way it was.

Did all the men have heavy brows, big noses, and protruding upper jaws? Were the men ruggedly handsome in a neanderthal sort of way?

 

[policywank]

Did all the men have heavy brows, big noses, and protruding upper jaws? Were the men ruggedly handsome in a neanderthal sort of way?

Not quite but not too far off as I recall.

 

[MillieDynamite]