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bart_calendar July 31 2012, 12:35:54 UTC
The thing is with rape story lines is that they have their place and are probably needed if they make sense in the world the author has created.

Given the brutality of the world that Game Of Thrones is set in, and the way women are regarded in that world, it would be bizarre if rape wasn't brought up.

That said if you suddenly inserted a rape into The Hunger Games (a society that is fucked up in many ways, but does seem to have a certain equality for women and absence of rape culture) then it would be gratuitous and jarring.

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andrewducker July 31 2012, 12:38:40 UTC
Yeah. The thing about writing about rape is that it's going to be difficult to deal with for some readers, so make sure it's being done for a good reason, and being done well.

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bart_calendar July 31 2012, 12:45:51 UTC
Also, I'd be a fan of putting trigger warnings on some books.

I know several friends (who I didn't think to warn because I didn't think they'd ever read it) who freaked the fuck out after reading "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" - because there is not even a vague clue on the dust jacket that it's going to contain multiple involved realistic rapes.

What disturbs me about Game Of Thrones is that in the book Dannarys first night with Drogo isn't rape - but for some reason HBO made it into a rape scene in the show - making that storyline really problematic, because it becomes a story about her falling in love with her rapist, which is not what happened in the book AT ALL.

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meaningrequired July 31 2012, 12:51:23 UTC
IAWTC!

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firecat July 31 2012, 20:31:40 UTC
If the US publishers hadn't changed the original title of TGWtDT (which translates to "Men Who Hate Women" and as far as I can tell is the title used in almost every other translation) people might have had a clue it involved rapes.

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