Comments | peppermintyrose: So you'd like to see Sookie raped for years on end

peppermintyrose

So you'd like to see Sookie raped for years on end

Oct 24, 2010 08:22

If ever there was a plot device that shouldn't be used in a romance story, it's this one. Sookie, raped for years on end, and finally brought back to life by a guy - usually Eric. How wrong it is. Apart from the fact that the idea is one that should make women slightly bilious - not shrug it off as nothing - it smacks of punishment. When I first ( Read more... )

you know shit about sookie, travails of the svm fandom, the psychology of violence, intolerance and bigotry, the mythology of rape 101, eric northman the lover, rants of the fanficy flavour, happily ever afters 'n' such, bill compton - sweetheart, sookie stackhouse - 28, you think you can write

Comments 12

elbly October 24 2010, 10:30:47 UTC

I can't say yet exactly why this post is my favourite post of all times - but let's just say I may end up having to link people to it in the not overly distant future! THANK YOU!

peppermintyrose October 24 2010, 10:36:25 UTC

I am the canary in the coalmine - I read way too much fanfic. :D

Link away. :D And look - I took off the whole comment screening for registered LJ users. :D

elbly October 24 2010, 10:40:07 UTC

That was brave!

And the problem with being the canary in the coal mine is that when the miner's are rescued the canary gets left behind! :o(

peppermintyrose October 24 2010, 10:57:21 UTC

I figure if they want to say something nasty, they'll have to go to the trouble to register. Best to do harassment as an anonymous user. :D

Tell me about it. This canary predicts that there will be a lot more degrading sex for Sookie in future - the longer she doesn't comply with what readers want, they'll take out on her in fanfic. Which says something all together quite disgusting about the participants.

Thread 6

Freezing anonymous October 24 2010, 15:39:59 UTC

Again thanks, just read this, there were two incidents on the crowded tube, nothing too terrible, really mild but completely unwelcome, I froze, I wanted to bring my foot down hard on the man's foot but I didn't, I couldn't I've always been annoyed that I didn't.

You will have me reading everything again through a microscope.

Sally

Re: Freezing peppermintyrose October 24 2010, 20:38:55 UTC

Aw. Don't feel bad - you're just like a lot of women. And creeps rely on it. There's even cognitive dissonance where offenders take the "freezing in terror" as a sign that the victim likes it. It's why rapists many times don't recognise what they've done to their victim - they interpret that as wanting it. Paedophiles too have cognitive dissonance to children freezing.

Lots of women think there's something wrong with them that they don't do anything. Hollywood just loves the idea that women fight back, but it makes all the rest of us feel really bad that we didn't. It just happens to be a manifestation that all women have of the way we're raised to non-violence. It tends to be unusual to have a girl who reacts - like Sookie does. But if Sookie froze, she would have died on her second night at Fangtasia.

It takes a lot of work to reverse that training. Just taking self defence or learning how to fight doesn't really help, because it's so deep in us.

great analysis ext_337835 November 28 2010, 16:19:56 UTC

wow. i really hope a lot of people read this and think about it. (of course, probably won't be the people who could benefit from it the most). your analysis is spot on. you take what is on face a rather silly fantasy series and break it down in a way that is really enlightening. you articulate many of the issues i have with the fandom. thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Re: great analysis peppermintyrose November 28 2010, 18:55:36 UTC

Unfortunately, no, the people who really need it are likely to be confronted by thinking, and run the other way. :D

I love fantasy and horror for what it says about people - I've just never found this level of profound in romance. CH herself has won my eternal respect for not wasting a word or an opportunity to jam pack information in. A shower could just be a shower, but viewed in context, it is so much more.

So too with torture victims. There are heaps of them all over the world, and like Sookie, they don't have the benefit of stopping and sitting down and never getting up again. A week to heal, and it's out to the farm or the rice paddies. The world really only stops for the middle class and the rich to get "closure", because they have the resources to do it.

So You'd like to see Sookie raped for years on end. anonymous March 31 2011, 20:35:18 UTC

Well that explains a lot. Makes sense. I've read about this before. I think it's dawn on me with Sookie. It never dawned on me about Eric though. I guess it explains it with all vampires. Most try and look perfect.
There was one FF that I read, that all they did was take showers and baths. It didn't mean the same thing though. Surprised she wasn't a prune. LOL---- fffbone

Re: So You'd like to see Sookie raped for years on end. peppermintyrose April 1 2011, 05:35:44 UTC

Bill is the one vampire who doesn't seem to have really embedded hygiene rituals - his major trauma is not from rape.

Lol - yeah - I see it too. Most of the time it's ascribed to vanity or usual grooming, but I don't think putting on a pair of white men's socks is all about fashion.