Finally a writing question that all CYStians can answer!
https://www.quora.com/In-fiction-can-my-hero-be-a-former-rapist
Discuss!
My own answer is yes, but I think a bigger challenge is to write a hero that’s a current rapist.
I've actually been toying around for awhile with the idea of a story where the protagonist is a serial killer that only kills other serial killers. (Kind of like Dexter I guess but... Dexter seemed to be doing it as more as an outlet for his own sadistic tendencies, whereas my character is motivated more by the need for complete and utter and (in her own mind) just revenge.) That said, I would like to propose a fan theory to all you Dexter Fans out there... My personal theory is that the TV show "Dexter" is actually a sequel to the old Cartoon Network kids show "Dexter's Lab". His sister Deedee (aka Debra) finally broke one too many of his inventions and the poor kid totally snapped!
Maybe he only kills black criminals.
Well, my protagonist's mindset is "Let the punishment fit the crime." So if it was a rapist or a pedophile, she probably wouldn't kill them. She'd be extremely kind and merciful and settle for just chopping off their dicks. Problem solved!
Shame on you mizal! Shame!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdM0UBOAv2Q
That sounds like a very similar concept to death note actually. Except that the protagonist in death note had a magical book from hell in which the name of any person written in it would die. He could even specify in detail about how and where the victim was supposed to die. The whole story revolved around detectives trying to catch this mysterious serial killer who left absolutely no evidence whatsoever, though he only used the book to kill criminals and such and overtime considered himself to be some sort of god or overlord, so yes, a psychotic murderer in the end.
I LOVED Death Note! L is probably my favourite anime character of all time... Yeah, that's right, I'm a weeb. Deal with it.
I really think they missed an opportunity with Light though, because I think a character in that kind of situation has the potential to be a genuine hero, and I feel like it would've been cooler if he'd started out a hero with good intentions, and then gradually got more and more evil as the show progressed... But nope. They gave him one episode where he seemed like a decent guy, and at the end of the episode, he goes, "I SHALL BECOME THE GOD OF THE NEW WORLD!!!" Like... Pretty much every other anime villain in history.
I think they just wanted to show that power corrupts anyone, no matter how noble their intentions might be.
Yeah, but that's why I think it would've been better if they'd done it gradually. Power does corrupt, but it doesn't happen over night. A decent guy doesn't win the lottery and then go "Mwahahah! I'm evil now!" as soon as the money goes in his account.
Lol, yeah exactly. I had huge expectations from Light and always hoped for him to improve, but the way he treated Misa was just... The manga/anime series sort of lost it’s flair after L’s death though, the story became very bland after that event.
RIP in peace.
"The Stars My Destination" did this. It was a surprisingly well done book and character study, for starting with an incredibly unlikeable character who rapes a woman within the first few chapters.
Wuthering Heights was a shitty book for desperate housewives written by an even more pathetic housewife, and since it's an example in what you asked us to discuss, this counts as what you asked for. Shitty, fuck awful book with no substance behind its weak attempt at a story.
I loved Wuthering Heights! ^_^
Okay, so also related: Recently was reading one of those “RPG Horror Story” sessions, and the setting was one where Nazis took over the world. One guy was playing some pansexual Jewish dude in the resistance and he would go out of his way to rape Nazis that they captured and would go into graphic detail about how he was violating them and chopping them up, etc. Generally torture/rape porn level I guess. Made the dude telling the story uncomfortable. For whatever reason, he didn’t rape Nazi women, just the men since I guess that would be “too far.” (And something about needing to emasculate the men via RAPE) Anyway, the tipping point was the character raping one of the guard dogs as part of the torture which at that point the guy fled the table and never played with them again. Now with this example, is the character still a hero? (Obviously the real person playing said character is a degenerate living out some gay power fantasy, but that’s a different subject)
Noooo! Not the puppy!
I mean, rape as many Nazis as you want and have fun... But leave the poor puppies out of it!
I don't get why rape in entertainment is so taboo.
There are plenty of attempted murder victims but nobody's pausing to show murder for their sake.
If it's done well, I guess so.
As long as the story isn't just the protagonist raping people, thinking about people they raped in the past, and rape in general.
It should be. Totally. You know how much money they could make? Make that bank, son! Open up a Patreon and profit off the sickness of the masses. Feed the children who will nourish you in turn. Use that money to donate to rape relief charity.
Seems like there's a lot of places a story like that could go.
Why not!
Is it a moral quandary? I like to draw picture on mspaint of anime character murdering each other and vaping during lectures, and I've never taken up the lifestyle of a murdering vapist. People do it all the time in fanfiction. It's an entire kink. They could make money off of this! Oh my God! They should become a crappy light novel author and profit off of a really niche genre involving sympathetic non-con and make that bank. We should follow in example.
Well some people had a BIG argument in Mizal's Discord about writing rape in a story and if it was bad or not.
Axiom said it was bad, but said you could go ahead and do it. Malk sided with her.
Coins was pro-rape and stuck to his guns about currently writing his pro-rape story. Looking forward to reading it.
Since I didn't bother back reading, I'm not sure if Steve weighed in on this topic, but the general consensus was that he'd argue with Axiom and be a douchebag whether he was actually pro-rape or not.
Also defined tasteful rape as writing rape in such a way that its important to the plot/story and not for shock value. Mizal's Date Rape story is the best example of this.
What was anyone's reason for not writing about rape?
Axiom said something about it being unnecessary and exploitative and ultimately you shouldn’t write anything deliberately triggering unless you’re attempting to explore a deeper meaning behind it rather than writing “RAPE LOL.” I think she also said something about it being a lazy way of making bad guys seem even worse and something about a lot of female readers that are going to find it off putting. She also went into some feminist stuff along with media violence being bad in general. Oh and it makes you look like an edgelord. Or if you are going to write that sort of thing, you should just say “I don’t give a shit who I offend. RAPE LOL.” and be done with it.
Which is ultimately what coins should have just said when he was writing his pro-rape story in the first place.
Ugh, that's retarded. By that standard, why write about characters who torture or abused? It's offensive to those who've been through that. You might as well just bar off any immoral actions being portrayed and waste the majority of literature because you think that something becomes unnecessary just because it's a dark and disturbing topic.
I'm clearly not saying that you have to rely on rape. But if the bad guy is capable of doing anything that causes harm to anyone, or anything that could offend something or be unnecessary, you're severely limiting the medium.
I'll tear out your womb and feed it to you, you bitch.
Just to be clear; this story has rape in it but is not "pro-rape" in any way.
As long as it adds to the story, it should be fine. It's not something I would personally put in a story.
I meant to bring this up when he died, but this rape thread seems like a good place to do it since it has something to do with womyn and aggressive breeding practices. If you’re familiar with A Boy and His Dog, its basically a post apocalyptic story about a protagonist going about trying to survive with his telepathic dog. Along the way he also isn’t above trying to rape women in the process. He’s not exactly a villain protagonist, but he’s definitely not a hero. In any case, he encounters a woman that he’s trying to get some sex from and gets into a whole wacky adventure with her since she leads him to some fucked up underground society where they want to milk his man juices to create more babies. (They hook him up to a machine rather than the old fashioned fun way) Eventually he escapes with the girl who has a change of heart and makes it back to the surface. Though his dog has been waiting faithfully on the surface is starving to death and he needs food. The protagonist, not wishing to have his dog die he kills the girl and feeds her to the dog.
Now in the book the last bit has the protagonist reflecting on his hard choice and wondering about his fee fees and he’s remembering her earlier question “Do you know what love is?” and the answer is “A boy loves his dog.” Yes, yes, very thoughtful. Of course in the movie, they went for a joke instead, and while the protagonist is talking to his dog about how it wasn’t his fault that the girl fell in love with him and then the dog says something like she had good judgement, but not particularly good taste. And then they laugh while walking into the sunset. Yes, yes, very amusing. Cheap bad jokes aside, the author Harlan Ellison HATED this change in dialogue, which he ended up calling hateful, moronic and chauvinistic. Um, what? Okay I get as a writer, him getting pissed about any changes to his original vision, that’s natural, but apparently other than that line he didn’t mind the movie. What I never understood is why he got so pissy about the last jokey line being "hateful towards women" when this was a guy who wrote about a protagonist that had no problems with sexual assault to get his rocks off and ultimately killed a woman to feed his dog. How the fuck was the story NOT sexist to begin with if we’re going by the whole “progressive” mindset? In any case Harlan was routinely an asshole towards women (well everyone really), so just never understood his stance on that minor thing.
Oh by the way, recently realized I pretty much have at least one rape scene or implication of rape in all but one of my stories.
So I figure I'm doing something right.
Sadly, I will never excel in the animal cruelty department so I have to make up all my edgelord points with all the other stuff instead.
I've played Necromancer and Death Song and don't remember rape in either one.
Those ones are more on the "mentioned in passing" scale.
Death Song has a scene where some demons just got finished raping and killing some folks and talking about it before the bard stumbles on them when he's fleeing the first major conflict at Aftermath.
In Necromancer, well that's sort of how his father met his mother. He just fucked up and fell in love. I mean I've gotten a direct complaint about that one in the comment section (Right up there with lesbians complaining about the rug munching reference).
Not to mention it's mentioned that before he met her, his Chimera Company was a whole lot worse with the whole pillaging and raping bit.
In any case I'm counting them since at least a few members labor under the belief that I'm gleefully writing stories with rape scene after rape scene. I'd hate to ruin such an image.
what about counter-rape? if someone is raping you, and you jiu jitsu yourself out of it, and then you start raping them in retaliation, is that illegal? is it immoral?
It's hot
It is in fact illegal.
Since we've all agreed that a hero can be a former rapist (or even a current one) Next up, can a hero be a racist?
My own answer is yes of course.
If anything it's easier to write a racist hero than a rapey one.
Yes. As long as it isn't acted, racism is not somehow worse than other flaws. My neighbor is not somehow worse than I am just because she has some racist beliefs. Everyone has flaws, and if an opinion is bad enough to make a character a villain, he should be expected to have perfect behavior too.
I've seen this done well in Mass Effect (but Ashley's only racist against aliens, so I don't know if that counts.)
LMAO. Funnily enough, one of the main 2 reasons I came back is because of exactly this. I asked a similar question to the staff at CoG and the answer was pretty much, "If we think it has artistic merit, then we will defend it, but from what I have seen in the Lawless Ones, my expectation is that you will not be able to write this content in a way that we'd be willing to publish. So if this is essential to your story, then you should find another outlet for the story." ... And the question wasn't even "Can a character be a former rapist?" It was much, MUCH tamer than that. It was... ... ... Well, I can't really say. Spoilers.
Umm... Let's just say, it doesn't break the HG rules of "it mustn't be grossly offensive or glorify rape" But... Even so, I can still understand why they would be reluctant to publish it. (Obviously GooglePlay and the AppStore can pull a game if they don't think it's suitable... And this may very well be the case with mine.)
For fuck's sake, these are the same faggots that defend plagiarism. They wouldn't know fucking "artistic merit" if it raped them in the face.
To answer the question though... I've seen a movie called The Woodsman that is actually about a former pedophile right after he is released from prison. The story is about his rehabilitation and poses the question to the audience, "Can an evil person change?" Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7SjEfXP-gQ
Personally, I think this film is absolutely amazing and I think there should be more like it. I absolutely hated the character at points, but I found that, more often than not, I was very sympathetic towards him. The character understood that what he'd done was completely evil and unforgivable, and was doing everything he could to make sure that he never did anything like that again. I think the world needs films like this because, sadly, there are former rapists on the streets, and we probably walk past them every day. People like that need to know (and be actively encouraged) that they CAN and SHOULD do everything in their power to change.
Weird film, that one. They even had an active molestor as the villain.
Yeah, I like the bit where the ex-pedo beats the shit out of the current pedo... Still, couldn't stand the bit before that where the guy finds out the little girl he's perving on is pretty much being molested by her father, and in the super climatic, heroic turning of the tide ending, the guy decides not to molest the little girl and instead tells her to go home... You know... Home... To her father... Who we have just established is a massive pedo... Dude? WTF is wrong with you? Call the fucking police! >.<
There's sort of a theory bounced around that some of that stuff might have been going on in his head. Like a whole "inner struggle" thing and those people like the little girl, the other pedo, and even the black officer didn't really exist.
I don't really buy into the theory though I guess its another way to look at the movie.
As a side note, sort of amusing that the pedo villain was into little boys because the only thing worse than a straight pedo is obviously a GAY pedo. Lol.
Just realized, coins still hasn't written his pro-rape story yet.
The cop in Crash was more of an example of a racist hero than a rapey one since he only groped the light skinned chick for giggles while he was generally a jerk towards the black folks all the time.
He's Racipey! ^_^
Yeah, I sure as hell never warmed to the rapey cop. Even at the end, where he saves the woman he molested, I was like... Nope. Not good enough
I think in a fantasy setting though, a guy like this could be easy to sympathize with. Like in the article... Say it was set in a Game of Thrones type world, and the protagonist was a soldier who fought in some epic battle and was a celebrated war hero. During the war, he burned houses to the ground, killed every man, woman and child that got in his way, and raped a woman after the battle because... You know... "All my friends were doing it!"
30 years later, the soldier is retired, married with 3 children and trying to live a good life and be a good man. But even after all those years, his mind is plagued with guilt for the woman he raped, and he thinks about it every single day. He feels as though this moment in his life defines who he is as a human being and nothing he does in the future will ever make up for it... Now that's a kind of character I can see an audience having sympathy for. ^_^
Makes sense to me, I mean... When you're a soldier, you do have to kill people, so all of the innocent people he killed could be put down to, "It was my duty. I was just following orders." But then, I'm pretty sure that rape isn't in the soldier's job description. It's the only thing he wouldn't be able to justify.
I dunno, enacting an “aggressive breeding” program to better assimilate the existing population/culture might be part of a conqueror's plans.
Indiana Jones was a statutory rapist that routinely fought the Nazis (and savage Indian cults) and he's a hero.
From the movie:
"I was a child! I was in love! It was wrong and you knew it!" - Metoo Marion
"You knew what you were doing." Indiana Jailbait Enthusiast
In any case, it is true that Indy is the exception, but he's still a former rapist hero.
I mean Marion is exaggerating that she was a “child” given that she was a teenager rather than a prepubescent and yeah she had to have SOME idea of what she was doing, but given that Indy was like in his late 20s along with being a professor, it’s pretty apparent he was taking advantage of the situation. Again though this doesn’t really sour my perception of Indy, I still like the character.
I mean, Indie doesn't disagree that she was a child or she was young, he's just like "You made a choice". It's hardly like he disagrees with the facts, more he considers her to have been old enough.
Coins, you still haven't written that pro-rape story of yours and there are two contest going on where you might have a shot at actually placing.
Currently busy with midterm papers and tests. Not sure when I will able to have time for writing.
Getting the impression Coins is never going to write his pro-rape story.
Didn't you already write a few of your own?
Contrary to popular belief, I've never written anything pro-rape.
Upon rewatching Deep Space 9, Captain Benjamin Sisko is another technical rapist hero.
He fucks mirrorverse Jadzia without her realizing it's not her Ben she's fucking. Granted prime Ben had to do what he had to do to fit in. Not fucking her when she clearly was insisting would have aroused suspicion and blew his cover. I imagine though in this day and age he's still considered a rapey rape rapist. (Rape by deception or something)
In any case there's some lols that the black dude is the rapist captain, but it doesn't lower my opinion of him.
Update: Coins has still failed to produce his pro-rape story.
https://chooseyourstory.com/story/officer-dick-gristle-
Yeah I just realized that like half the people in this thread are dead.
But there's a brand new generation now that can give their input if they so desire!
I think Coins better get to work
Yes, 100%. I don't think we should shy away from a potentially good story because it's not a morally good one. While rapists shouldn't be taken lightly, I don't think we should just sweep the topic under the rug. I would say, as long as it isn't promoting people to rape others (or if it is, but is understood as fiction), why not have a former rapist as a protagonist?
Only if the rape scenes are vividly described with no less than one thousand words, or there's no reason to even include them.
Though for an actual answer, I see no moral quandary with it. Especially so if it's being used for a good reason, like a character arc or to establish the way of the world. A Song of Ice and Fire is a good example of this.
The only issue is that sexual violence for no other reason than having sexual violence tends to make a story cringeworthy.
People can write whatever they want; whether or not I'll read it is another issue.
People can write about a psychopathic killer who murders everyone who says the words "Baja Blast" and that's fine, it's what they wanna write. Someone out there will read it.
Now, if they changed it to where the murderer destroyed everyone who made direct eye contact with them, which is less ridiculous, I'd be more willing to read it.
People can write whatever they want, though. Unless it's Warrior Cats.
