Is it rude that I have the desire to do this? Not to use, but just in general. I feel like a bad person for doing that. Also the first time I got to use that guy. Poor guy.
You are a bad person. A lot of corn suffered just to satisfy your selfish desire. You can't tell me you can look at that face and be okay with murdering this guy in cold blood. Murdering vegetables is wrong. Only eat meat. Cows and pigs are guilty for murdering the corn so its okay to eat them.
To the OP: I see no double standard with being able to sympathize with a murderer while refusing to sympathize with a rapist because the acts are usually fundamentally different: A murderer doesn't usually enjoy the act. E.g. in one real life case a guy caught a pedo molesting his son. He ended up killing the pedo (from what I read, it was no longer a case of self-defense at that point, i.e. it was basically murder). I can still sympathize with the dad even though he's a killer now. Nothing indicated he enjoyed the act, but just went too far in a fit of rage. Now, while rape is mainly about power, dominance, control etc, a part of it is also tied to sexual pleasure, i.e. the rapist derives pleasure from the act of seriously hurting a defenseless person. That requires the kind of mentality I could never condone. So in that regard, I have and would include rape scenes if the story called for one, but I wouldn't attempt to make the reader sympathize with the rapist because I can't and hence refuse to depict a rapist as a fundamentally good person. The same goes for child-adult marriages: they're perfectly normal in some societies, but that doesn't mean I should view it as anything else except pedophilia and child molestation, which, again, is an irredeemable act in my eyes, so I wouldn't sympathize with a pedo regardless of how normal or common it is in some historical periods, cultures, or areas. Now, I can read books that depict rape, even some fairly graphic scenes, but I never have sympathized with the rapist because in my eyes, the distinction of deriving pleasure from the act makes the person irredeemable. The acts would only be comparable if the murderer also derived pleasure from killing their victims. That, too, falls on the irredeemable side of things, at least generally speaking. I have a personal aversion to sexual violence because I know and have known several victims of rape and sexual abuse, so I could see myself having an easier time sympathizing with e.g. a soldier/sniper who enjoys killing enemy soldiers than a rapist even though both enjoy their acts, so in that sense I see a difference between the two. If that makes me a hypocrite in that regard, I'm ok with that. That doesn't mean you couldn't write e.g. rape scenes or even attempt to make readers sympathize with the rapist, but just as you have the freedom to write that, I have the freedom to skip such stories. I'm sure there's an audience for such books, but it's impossible to please everyone, so it's best to get used to the idea that some people just don't like your writing. The stories I've written with @KaTrian have offended a couple of people already, and that's okay. While we don't specifically write to offend, we don't write for approval either. So yeah, do what you feel is best for your story. Ultimately that's all that matters.
Wait.. Are you saying that in times and places where marrying someone who's sixteen and you're well over thirty is pedophilia? I mean, I get where you'd be coming from, but at the same time can you really condemn people for doing things in a world where it isn't a bad thing? It's like demonizing other religions because they're ignorant of your prophet, who is of course the correct one, and never had a chance to even meet him. Or saying how backwards our ancestors were when they lived as best they could in a world that was the way it was.
This was the original question This topic of rape seemed to have gone off it's tracks. I was under the impression it was about identifying with a soldier character even though one of his actions was rape. Not sympathizing with someone whose primary role in the story was as a ravishing rapist. You may not like what he does but I think people are missing one of the points of reading about what was "normal" everyday life during the Dark Ages (Which really isn't a specific time but usually refers to the 1300's)
I guess it depends: if it's a 16yo willingly marrying an 18yo, of course I don't see a problem with it, but a 16yo marrying or being married to a 30yo? Hell yeah I'd have a problem with it. That is, as long as we're talking about humans/our world with kids developing at the rate human kids develop. I don't buy the whole "But she's a very mature 12yo, and he's a very immature 30yo!" I know that's used as an excuse in some places, but I don't have to agree with it. I also don't think it's the same as comparing religious beliefs about e.g. spirituality, gods, or something because here we're discussing the well-being of children (and yes, I view 16yos as children even though many 16yos have fucked, killed, born children etc; doesn't change the fact that they're still children themselves).
I'm not knowledgeable about the era, but one thing to keep in mind is to be mindful of the sources you use and what groups of people they represent the viewpoints of. Just because the soldiers viewed rape as common doesn't mean anything about how the victims or anyone else viewed it. Unless you have knowledge of how the practice was viewed by various groups of people other than the soldiers, I wouldn't assume that everyone thought it was completely acceptable. I often wonder with some historical depictions whether the authors get all of their information from a single perspective--that of the non-minority male group in power--and then duplicate that viewpoint onto everyone else without giving due thought to the idea that the perspective may be ignoring contrasting viewpoints that may be common among other groups of people. Basically, I'm be mindful not to fall prey to the adage "history is written by the victors."
But there was a time and place where, teenagers in our eyes, were married off to other teenagers or, more often, to older spouses. I don't think most of them were in love or even overly happy with it but it was the world they lived in and ingrained in the culture. Was that wrong of them because we now view it as backwards and awful? Maybe technically on some hindsight morality but in their world it was right and made sense. Can we blame them for being different? Won't we, our own present, be viewed as backwards and barbaric by future generations who know better or have adopted new philosophies? And I think the comparison makes sense. Certain religions damn people and other religions to their respective hells because they are "heathens" or "pagans" or whathaveyou when their religion could never have come in contact with these other people. Isn't that the same thing as us calling people bad or pedophiles because in their culture and time it was normal to marry teenagers? Morality isn't a universal thing and it isn't a constant. We may learn something old is bad but does that mean those who partook in it before learning of a different way are bad people?
I'd also have a problem with the 16 year old and the 30 year old, but I don't think that's actually paedophilia is it?
The way I see it, a philosophical disagreement about e.g. god's nature, whether it's one god or several, whether they're male or female etc. doesn't necessarily directly harm anyone. Just because some people think I go to hell when I die because I'm an atheist doesn't hurt me directly; they'd have to try to dispatch me to hell for it to become directly harmful whereas marrying a child to an adult will harm the child even if the child doesn't see it. For instance, it's not unheard of for a child to experience an orgasm while they're being molested. That doesn't make it right or any better than if their bodies didn't respond to the stimulation because we can't control our bodies that way and children can't always tell when they're being abused. Hell, I lived for over a decade without realizing that I had gone through what I would consider rape if it happened to anyone else. It took a comment from my wife until even the possibility occurred to me. Does it cease to be rape just because my subconscious didn't allow me to view myself as a victim? In hindsight, in my eyes the other person is still a rapist and did something wrong even though I didn't realize what had happened for over a decade. Likewise e.g. a child bride can live in similar ignorance simply because she doesn't know any better. Again, that doesn't mean it's right. Not that the two are comparable on the level of severity, of course, but my point is that something can be wrong even if the victim doesn't realize that they're being abused. A marriage between two children is a bit different because both kids mature at a similar pace, but it becomes bad as soon as force comes into the picture. I'm not a fan of arranged marriages in general, but at least people of similar ages are on level ground as long as all other things are equal. And yes, I do believe that not all cultures are created equal in all aspects. E.g. looking at it from a historical standpoint, Christianity has done a lot more evil in comparison to e.g. Wicca while at the same time Christian nations and people have made at least numerically more significant contributions to the development of humanity, i.e. the two religions and cultures have their pros and cons, but the pros don't necessarily justify or vindicate the cons. Also, already rational people view our past as uncivilized when e.g. black people didn't have human rights or were kept as slaves. That's objectively wrong and that fact doesn't change with time. Some cultures still practice slavery, and it's objectively wrong even if the slavers and slave owners disagree and claim it's just a part of their culture and cultural heritage. So was the slavery of black people and not allowing gay people to marry when it comes to western nations, but did that make it acceptable? Something that shouldn't be condemned? Something that's wrong only subjectively? In that regard not all moral questions are relative. That's the way I see it anyway, for what it's worth. Maybe moral relativity might deserve its own topic? @Steerpike, technically that'd be ephebophilia.
In our day and age it would be. But a few hundred years back and everyone would expect it. @T.Trian I think you're right. We see morality in a different way.
A lot of countries such as the UK have legal age of consent as 16 and i think a few US states do too. Most people would see it as odd, but no paedophillia. I think if OP doesnt benefit anything from mentioning rape then he should just leave it out, or perhaps not mention the characters specifically.
That is really not on. I was tempted to enter the discussion and offer some insight into how rape, when perpetrated by a group where rape is seen to be acceptable, could be handled. (I'm just reading a book now where that happens.) But now I think I won't bother.
Your OP says Dark Ages not Mid-Medieval ... Dark ages is a historical crap term referring to several periods where documentation of the era is missing. I'm not joking. women and men were taken as slaves in lots of wars. Many women were taken as wives / concubines / prostitutes. From THEIR point of view it was a normal part of war not an act of evil. I'm not saying it was a moral thing to do but from their ideas of war, being taken and given a chance to continue living was not evil.
But you didn't mean it when you said that if a modern audience finds that horrific, they're just ignorant about history?
These things are not mutually exclusive. There are normal parts of war that people still agree are horrible. I think it is a huge leap to make this kind of statement unless you have some kind of contemporaneous documentation from the victims of such treatment, from that time period, proving that they had the subjective opinion you're offering here. Without that, you're just making assumptions to fit your argument, but you're not really basing those assumptions on anything. So the question is what evidence there is on how the victims of this behavior felt at the time?
Because I'm not interested in this conversation of history, I am going to address the original concern: Realism vs. Reader Engagement It's a valid concern because THE READER IS NOT OBLIGATED. That's a thing I feel like many writers seem to forget. The reader is absolutely free, at any time, at any point, for any reason, to stop reading and say "fuck this book". I have. More than once. I'm not saying to pander to the reader. I'm not. I - AM - NOT - SAYING - THAT. But if you write something and think to yourself, "I know most people won't be able to stomach this, but fuck it, I feel like including it because I like it", that's all well and good. Enjoy your party for one, because that's what it may well be. And clearly that's where the concern is coming from in the OP. There is a huge difference between alluding to the fact that this does happen in this world, mentioning it, talking about it, vs. making the reader experience a rape through the engagement of the MC (or any character we are meant to be sympathetic towards) actually committing the rape. If you do that, the way the reader engages the message you are trying to write is not a thing that is under your control. Example: And I've mentioned this book a bunch of times so I'm sure people are sick of hearing me talk about it, but in this discussion the example couldn't be better. I tried reading Lord Foul's Bane a few months ago. Thomas, the MC of the book, is a very unlikeable MC, which I'm cool with. I can read a book about a mean little bastard of a dude. I'm ready for that. The book is a bit of a portal fantasy in that he gets whisked off to a magic alternate world called The Land. Upon arrival he has a run-in with a couple of magic baddies and when that's over he gets found by the de rigueur Fantasy Hot Chick. She's the nicest girl you've ever met (or not met, depending on your experience). She takes care of him, she heals his wounds, she takes him to her family's house. The family is super nice and welcoming and feed him and are nothing but nice-nice-nicety-nice to him. Okay so far? Right after dinner Thomas and the hot chick walk out to the river and right next to this super pretty stone bridge, Thomas proceeds to rape the girl in the shallows of the river bank. And there's no doubt about what happens. It is clearly and explicitly non-consensual. He rapes her. Period. No one in the book or in the book's fandom argues this fact. Thomas pretty much shrugs off what he did. At this point this just makes me despise this dude. He is disgusting. But at this point my feeling about Thomas is only about Thomas, so I'm thinking I'm meant to feel this way about him as a pretext of things to come. It gets worse. Thomas sets out on his quest, not with the hot chick, but with the hot chick's mother. Quest-quest-questity-quest. It's really long and drawn out and boring so I'm feeling like I've been taken for a ride and there's no reason for me to have experienced that rape with the MC. I feel like the writer is fucking with me at this point. Along the quest, Thomas and the mother (can't remember her name) realize that someone is stalking them. Turns out it's a friend of the young woman who was raped and he is seriously mothafuq'n pissed off. He is there to end Thomas. Period. And I'm like, finally, the writer is dealing with this! The guy who is there to end Thomas lets it be known why he's there to kill him. What does the mother do? She tells the dude to chill the fuck out and go home. Thomas rapes a girl and shrugs it off. The only person who is reacting in a way that is at all real gets told to chill the fuck out and go home by the MOTHER of the rape victim. I no longer give a fuck about Thomas or how I'm meant to feel about him. My attention has shifted to the author. And I am not happy. At this point the message I am getting - from the author, through the characters - is that rape is no big deal and overreacting to it makes you a douche. I am skeeved the fuck out at this point. This is where I stop reading because this is where I feel like I got suckered into participating in someone else's sick fantasy. I feel like someone has tied me to a chair, taped my eyes open and forced me to watch violent kiddy-porn. I am angry and disappointed at MYSELF for not having chucked the book in the bin sooner. I have given this description of how I engaged this book before and others have explained that they read it differently, which is not only their right, but natural. No two people are going to engage a book the same way or take from it the same things. But my engagement of that story was the aforementioned, and just like I don't get to control how other people see that book, they have fuck-all to say about how I engage that book. I can't excuse away the incident by being told that from Thomas' POV all of this is just some prolonged hallucination because my feeling is not based on just this very probable fact; it's based on the amalgamation of everything else the writer does (or does not do) as regards addressing the incident. The writer may have never meant to send that message to me, but if the author is still alive, you couldn't pay me to stand in the same room as him. Whatever the internal reality of the story in question was meant to be, my reader engagement is what I described above.
Not just a few states, but most have 16 as their age of consent. Though that says nothing about cultural acceptance.
Sure it wasn't evil from their point of view. The Aztecs certainly didn't think ripping out the hearts of human sacrifices, immolation the sacrifices, flaying the sacrifices (and these included children) and in some cases wearing their skin was evil. But the part of the post Tenderiser highlighted suggested modern audiences were ignorant if they were horrified things that were considered normal for a culture. On the contrary, I'm horrified by such things because I know about them, and how normal they were considered.
I dealt with both rape and what would be pedophilia in my 1st century WIP, but I hope I handled them appropriately. None of my readers complained. My female MC, Chinese girl of Roman descent, was taken, along with others from her town, to be trained as translators for the Gan Ying expedition to Rome... they were bilingual in Latin and Chinese, descendants of Roman soldiers taken to Liqian as mercenaries. She was 12 at the time, and taken by a mid-level court official as concubine and rather insensitively deflowered. This is back story, the book picks up 10 years later. She is still his concubine, he is verbally and physically abusive (usually) and his approach to sex with her has not improved over time. That is handled third person limited, how she feels about it, in the one encounter I needed to establish their relationship. Something happens to make this relationship take a brief turn for the better, and she is hopeful that at least it may become bearable... but it doesn't last. Those encounters are mentioned as their making love, not unpleasant for her for a change, but no detailed description beyond that. Hopefulness, to be followed by disappointment. Marcia forms a friendship, and later becomes lover, then wife, to a Roman soldier who was part of the return mission to China, for whom she was also translator... After they become lovers she relates briefly her first de facto rape by Wang Ming, not a lot of details, but enough to establish sensitivity for her, and understand however abused and constrained she had been, she became internally powerful through her ability to endure this, which shapes her evolution. Early in their relationship, the subject of pregnancy comes up. They are "on the run" out of China, with years on the road ahead of them and a newborn passenger is out of the question. She explains to him that at certain times, they must refrain, and would he understand? He does, and then the lightning bolt hits him. Internal monologue: All his life his women had been whores or sluts and the consequences of sex, while understood, never occurred to him. Earlier he had an encounter with a prostitute in Taprobane, in town that was destroyed by the king after left. Had she survived? Could he have gotten her pregnant, and what would have happened to that child or the many others he might have fathered? This is totally new to him. Then he remembers his own introduction to sex, as a 17 year old soldier gang-raping a captive woman with some older soldiers. When they were done, the squad leader said "all right, we're done with you... you can go now." It shocked him, her face and eyes, and as he rose to leadership, he let his soldiers know the innovative things he could to them with his centurion's hickory stick if they raped captives. OK, maybe he was the exception, but he was a very good man at heart. All this in the epiphany of being in a relationship where for the first time, a child could someday be a welcome addition. And finally I have another female MC, a Xiongnu woman about same age as Marcia (22) who lost her family and encampment (nomadic group of about 10,000) burned out by Chinese when she was 12. She finds another clan, chooses to join a group of 12 year old boys being trained as fighters... has to convince several that she is there to fight not fuck. Has her first combat along with her comrades at 14, and kills three.... finds that strangely traumatic, remembering their faces as they died. Her commander sits to talk with her about it and later that night, they make love and become lovers. His age is early 20s. He subsequently dies violently. She relates this story to a later lover, the first she has allowed in the past 8 years. Not that she was celibate! With about as many details one would relate to a new lover, basically that it happened and not much else. This was at a very early age, but both fighting and sex happened much earlier then... 14 was a young adult.
@Wreybies before going on to agree, I should mention that Thomas Covenant doesn't strike me as a good example of the "party of one" you described. People magazine did an interview with Donaldson in 1982, five years after the first book was published (yes, he was doing well enough People wanted to interview him; I don't know how many fantasy writers they have interviewed, but I'm guessing not many). By that time the first book alone had sold 700,000 copies and Donaldson was living in the "comfortable six figures" from the series. That's in early 80s dollars. So more than a cautionary tale about a party of one, it seems to me to be a demonstration that you can have a horrible, unsympathetic character and if you do your job well you will still find readers. On the broader point, I'm the same way in terms of throwing books aside. I'm not one to feel like I have to finish a book just because I started it. I'll set it aside at any time, and it doesn't take a whole lot. There are too many other books to read. Even if I have a book that opens wonderfully and I'm enthralled, if it stalls in the middle and bores me, to the used bookstore it goes and I'm not so likely to buy the author's next work.
