"Date Rapes are Romantic!", or, How Screw Up can a Girl's Take on Romace Get?

[emmuzka]

I can't say that this is good fan fic meta, but it just occurred to me that SGA fic is now suffering for the illnesses of a major fandom. Add a year or two and it might start to degenerate.

Bad fics are among us. they must be tolerated, because everyone of us is young or a first timer once. And if the author continues on her bad ways? Well, they can't be all good. The whole idea of fan fic writing is that anyone can write it, so no complains here.

But. Have you noticed that there are growing number of fics that make you scream of injustice? Fics that are against your mental image of how the societies work? If I have to read one more fic of "He raped him but it's perfectly okay because really they are in love!", I have to hurt somebody. Do these writers have a screwed up view of the world or what? Are they people who think that in the real world, date rape would be romantic?

Let me give you a few examples. In Little Fishes by Anna Isabelle, John has hard sex with Rodney while Rodney is heavily drugged with the whole purpose of making him submissive. John struggles with his conscience for about two seconds before letting loose and to the issue of borderline consensual/non-consensual sex is not faced in the rest of the story. Because they are in love, right?

The other example is a more famous one:Miracles and Little Miracles by Master Elayna. In these fics john acts like a jerk against Rodney, ordering him to stop hugging other people and overall putting him sumbolically between an owen and a fist. And what does Rodney do? Does he say, at least once, "You can't order me around, I'm a grown man"? No, he doesn't.

This is a pretty good fic, a nice read, and the whole time I'm thinking that the writer is heading for the story about abusive relationship and how Rodney gets out of it. But no! The writer lets them stay like that. When she was confronted about that in the comments of her original lj-post, she just said that she thought that John ordering Rodney around was *romantic*! what kind of books has the author been reading, and can I burn them?

Where does these kind of fic come from? Who teaches girls to think that this kind of thought pattern, even in a story, would be good?

Comments

[dlasta.livejournal.com]

They do sell 'real' harlequin romance books here in Finland.

I had this horrible dilemma last year at my grandma's because I'd read all the books I'd brought with me and all that was left was someone's old (late 80's) harlequins.
And since I *had* to read something...

OH, they were *horrible*.
Stalkers potrayed as 'just in love', kidnapping, stuff that reads pretty much rape...*Hell*.
Kinda like the best of fanfiction.net.
:D

[cimness.livejournal.com]

i actually saw some, in a prisma or giant grocery store i think! it looked to me like they were translated from english, and there weren't too many of them, but the cover was unmistakeable.

[twindouble.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I have read a lot of those stupid romance "novels". I mean A LOT. They used to be horrible in this poit, but are getting better. Heroes are still overly handsom, rich and powerful, but heroines are getting much more independent and powerful in their own right. And heroes have mental problems and need to be taken care of, and what not. A modern romance novel would be sexually explicit material back in the 80´s...

Of course there are this growing number of "sheik Ali Hassan" -books, where heroines are strong and independent, and then fall in love and end up living in a near prison environment with those ah so romantic eastern guys. Uch! I really really don't read those anymore!

I really hope that those that get translated to Finnish are the better ones, since the translations are crap, and make the books even worse than they are. They are better in English and even in Swedish. I think the Finnish ones get translated first to Swedish and then to Finnish...

Feel free to ask me why I read those, if you want to. Emmuzka has asked it countles times. ;-)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

hahahha, actually, i read them too! it's more because my mom collected them, i didn't buy them myself, but when i was growing up she had two or three bookshelves full of them and she's always trading them and getting new ones! i've read tons of them over the years. i agree, the heroines are getting stronger; i think the pop culture image of women is changing somewhat, if you look at the ones in popular prime time tv shows and stuff.

[dlasta.livejournal.com]

Yep, right next to the cash register, more often than not. For some reason.:d

The golden years of harlequins seem to be gone. I remember there being a lot more of them available (everywhere!) over ten years ago...even some originally finnish ones.:D

Did we develope a taste for 'finer' things or has the recycling method worked against the industry, I wonder.

[twindouble.livejournal.com]

You just don't know where they are located. There is still a lot of them, and even the original Finnish ones... (I don't know if they are good or not, I don't read those, because it would be too near the real world. Uch!)

[dlasta.livejournal.com]

Really?
Damn, I had my hopes up for a seedy underground trading business. :(

(I don't know if they are good or not, I don't read those, because it would be too near the real world. Uch!)

Just like reading slash in finnish...Yikes.:D

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

They just moved away from the cash registers and to the magasine shelf?

[dlasta.livejournal.com]

I think that depends on the store, the bigger markets have romantic soft covers on a separate shelf and smaller ones have them on a spindly thing near the cash register. Hum.
Why do I have so clear idea about this? Seriously.:D
My subconscious is clearly perverted.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

maybe more of the romance reading market has been diverted to those, you know, Young Romances or whatever they're called - bestseller type ones like the devil wears prada and that type of thing?

[dlasta.livejournal.com]

Young romances? OMG, they're making that crap for kids now????

I'm starting to feel I should make a study trip to the nearest super market to see what's what. :D

[cimness.livejournal.com]

hahahah! i think they're more aimed at teenagers/women in their early 20s. :) although you can definitely find "teen" romances too which are aimed at kind of younger kids (i think), like middle-school age, such as the princess diaries. those are more innocent though.

[dlasta.livejournal.com]

.....actually my comment was way hypocritical...since I was about 15 when I read harlequins the last time voluntarily. :)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

ahahha! oh, do you count that as childhood?

[dlasta.livejournal.com]

NOW I do.:D

(Don't ask me at what age I read my first bodice ripper...it's just criminal. It's a small wonder I didn't grew up more 'crooked'.:)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

XD i wonder if i read slash now because of being perverted by bodice-rippers at a tender age... i still remember my first experiences with their awful sex scenes and thinking "what does that mean? o.O"

[dlasta.livejournal.com]

Do bodice rippers lead to slash?
We *so* need to poll this.:D

i still remember my first experiences with their awful sex scenes and thinking "what does that mean? o.O"

OH, isn't internet great? In the olden days (eighties:) you were supposed to deduct the meaning all by yourself or die from embarrasment and ask someone older.:)