Things I will not do to my characters. Ever.

I'm actually really glad to hear this and I bet I'm not alone in this!

Thank you. Well said.

I like Toby just fine as she is without her being put through that shit. Just... wtf, dude. (FTR, I've got the newest book sitting in my to-be-reads. Just got it a couple days ago and am working on one or two other books I'm reading first.)

I asked my husband about this one. His first impression was "stupid question" . Then I asked about what he though about the person who asked it and he said "Stupid". But then I pointed out that it pushes all my alarm bells because someone who thinks about "when" instead of "if" and making it a certainty has the type of twist in their head that may make the person a danger to women.

I would stay away from them. Too damned scary.

...

Times like this I really miss my "FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE" rage icon.

*clinghugs* Why are people terrible.

...."finally going to be raped."

I can't even START with the number of levels on which this is problematic. Fucking hell.

There was one year (goes off to do research -- ah, yes, I can still look up a chart on a web page) -- 1996, the second year I was reading for the Mythopoeic Awards. And there was rather a lot of rape, either equal opportunity or biased towards male rape, forget which. And I decided that, you know, if I never again read the Inevitable Rape Scene, regardless of who gets raped and who does the raping, that'll be just fine. I'm really rather tired of these scenes, especially if they are The Inevitable Blahblahrapeblah that Simply Must Happen. (Yes, sometimes, it's important enough to what the author's doing that I'm... well, let's just say that Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber is both extremely painful to read and extremely good.)

So, yes, I really and truly can deal with no rape in your books.

As for "unrealistic"... well, ignoring the really disturbing implications of that, it's like my saying, "Wait, do the numbers on Eighth Avenue go up that high?" when I'm playing Call of Cthulhu and have already accepted Deep Ones in the sewers and Dark Young smashing through Central Park. Sure, there are things that will crack my suspension of disbelief, but that really shouldn't be one of them. (Being told that the group cannot possibly take the time to send someone up in the already established working elevator to make one little cell phone call to tell the mine boss, "Hey, the dynamite vanished. All of it." does crack said suspension of disbelief, though even there, a couple of us just shook our heads and told the GM that we'd go along with this, but for the record, it was a little absurd, and then we went back to exploring the dangerously unstable mineshaft to make sure it could open on Monday morning. Alas (or just as well), it couldn't.)

Just found this post via a FB link from Bev Hale. I've never read any of your work before (I don't get out much!)... I need to fix that!

Well, looks like you've got hundreds of people in the same vein here, so I don't know how much I can add to the conversation, but I just have to voice my What The Living Fzck reaction to the conversation recounted in the original post. Seriously? People think like this?

"Rape is a forgone conclusion"?

NO WAY! No way in Pit!

I do not agree with the man who told you that - and I wan to thank you for sticking to your guns.

Just because it is 'statistical' that one in six females will be violated, does not mean every single female character has to go through the trauma and the aftermath. There aren't enough strong female characters (asside from mystery solvers), in the world, and he wants to have them all go through an event that can devistate families and destroy one's self image?

I would have to say, that "NO means NO" and even though we are physically weaker, we can get the point across without having to shoot or kill the attacker - just giving off a 'don't touch me vibe' works wonders at driving away family, friends, and total strangers. And the idiots who are dumb enough to 'mess' with them at that time, will understand why that was a bad idea.

Yeah, he didn't think. BATMAN'S DAUGHTER? Come on! Batman deals with criminals that the Gotham Police can't handle. There is no way that he won't teach his children how to protect themselves, and prepare them for a time where fighting might be the only option left. Besides, if an unscrupiouls dude tried that, he wouldn't live long - note, I said ATTEMPT! Not succeed.

I hope to be a writer one day - real novels, and short stories, but fan fics first - and rape is one thing I refuse to write. I don't like reading it, I don't like envisioning it, and I don't like how it turns women (and men, and children) into objects to be used. If rape does get metioned, it will be off screen, and (preferably), in the past - and to a minor character or a side character, no the main protagonist who already has huge struggles an battles ahead. Maybe a family member surviving would be the trigger that sets the main character's decisions and course?
At this time, I don't know.

Thank you for letting us commment (and for expresing your views so succulently and adequetly!)

Thank you! I get so frustrated with that. I HATE reading rape. I understand it has a time and place in literature. I just think it is over used. THANK YOU FOR TAKING A STAND!

So tons of people have made beautiful comments, and what i want to say has been said a hundred times by more eloquent people, but it's funny that i found this today, because i just got through writing publicly for the first time about the one minor instance i got molested, and it turned into a long rambly meditation on, among other things, this sort of bullshit. I see this sort of thing a lot: a certain stripe of author/person looks at women, subtracts everything men are/experience, and decides that what's left is all that women are. To that certain kind of person, all women really are is boobs, womb, and rape victim, and it pisses me off.

So, synchronicitous that i should be linked here today. Thank you for this.

I already loved your work, but this is the first thing of yours that's not fiction that i've read, and it's made me respect you so much. I'm linking this six ways to Sunday.

I wrote up a scene based on something similar to this. It was a diatribe on what life was like before women got the vote and the liberty to lead their own lives as they saw fit, rather than as second-class citizens. "You gave us only three choices in life on what we were allowed to do: to be a servant, to be a wife and mother, or to be a prostitute. Well, I have news for you. I am not your slave, I am not your brood-mare, and I am not your whore. There is far more potential in you than those three things, and there is far more in me as well. Do not try to limit me just because of your own ignorance or fear." (I've since modified it slightly and put it into a book where the heroine knows both her own strengths and weaknesses, her flaws and her capabilities.)

We are, all of us, more than just a three-trick pony.

~Lotm

No one is ever obliged to tell a type of story they don't want to. Statistically, one or more of your characters are also likely at some point in their lives to have heart attacks. Doesn't mean you have to tell that story. And when it comes to a subject like this...no. Rape should never be a foregone conclusion for anyone, and if we want to live in a world where it's not, we have to start behaving like it's not. Bravo, love. ::tight hugs::

Speaking as a fellow author...a) you took the words outta my mouth, and b) I'm with you. These are your characters. These stories are your vision. These choices are yours to make. Authors can feel pressured by their readers to do something (i.e. the "make Ron & Hermione kiss!!" syndrome, even when it's clear from the characterization that the characters themselves aren't leaning that way), but we don't have to do it.

The only recourse this reader has regarding your refusal to include his/her suggestion in the next story is to just stop reading your books. And I will support him/her in that decision if he/she chooses to boycott your books, just as I will support you in yours to not write about rape. However, I will not support crossing the line with unreasoning demands. Nor would I support him/her demanding that everyone stop reading your books just because you're not writing what one reader wants to read, and what you do not want to write.

To be perfectly honest? I don't think any author needs a reader like that. I'm sure there are authors out there who do write that sort of thing, and that particular reader would undoubtedly be his/her number one fan...but in the end, they're only fans watching from afar. They aren't doing any of the work.

The Litle Red Hen says that, as the fox and the goose and the dog and the cat did come not help her to till the soil, sow the seed, weed the field, harvest the grain, grind it into flour, or turn it into bread and bake it in the oven...they do not get to eat the bread. If this reader wants to see that sort of thing happen, then he/she should come up with their own characters and story setting and plot twists, and go write original fiction to his/her heart's content. Sow their own seed, harvest their own grain, make their own bread. That's the only way they are going to get to read exactly what they want to read.

...I wrote into a recent story a scene where the hero & heroine make it to the inner sanctum of their goal, expecting to find the bad guys there and ready to steal away the macguffin...and...the bad guys weren't actually there. They didn't show up at all during the entire claiming-the-macguffin scene, and I wrote into the story that the hero and heroine were relieved. Because that is realistic. There are far more chances that the Big Bad Terrible Thing will not happen than the number of chances that it will. (That, and the bad guys were busy trying to avoid being trampled by an enraged elephant some distance away--yay for comedic relief--but I digress.)

Write the story YOU want to write. Make it the best story you yourself possibly can, with your own ideas of how it should go, what will happen, and who or what will win in the end. The rest of your readers will be perfectly happy to read whatever you choose to create, when you do.

I'm with you in this,
~Lotm

Thank you for writing this. (I was sent over by rhoda_rants.) If some people are thinking that rape-free books are unrealistic, then clearly we need to set a new standard here. :)

I linked this in my Tumblr last night as a bunch of my followers are interested in this sort of issue. When I logged on today I had well over 200 notes and climbing. I'm sorry this has likely led to you being flooded by strangers, but I'm also getting a bunch of folks saying they need to go buy your books now, so I hope that makes up for the related blog comments explosion.

What the bloody blue hell. Not only to insist but to offer little prefab fantasies of how this happens ? I am disgusted.

For the love of gods and little fishes, Sarah would melt the brain of anyone fool enough to think it, and no way would she not sense that kind of focused intent. Toby is a knight! The Price family fights cryptids so a human male attacker? Male characters aren't expected to be rape victims, and neither should female characters.

THANK YOU. I will be reading your works with even more delight, secure in the knowledge you're not going to do this.

Awesome.

The end.

There is not enough rage in the universe.

You are a very classy lady for being able to string together a coherent response at all, mine was three minutes of straight swearing and my vision actually blinking out with anger for a minute there.

As many have said before me, Fuck. That. Shit.

As a survivor, I thank you.

I can't even begin to understand why some people think that kind of stupidity is in any way reasonable.

The only thing I can even compare in my life is from a little over a year ago, when someone I considered dating committed to print these words: "It's tough out there, and women should expect it" (being raped, that is). I tried to explain three times why rape is not just "inconvenient sex", and offered just as many opportunities for retraction/"that's not what I meant", then decided that I was better off un-including the guy from my dating pool.