Game of Violence

At the outset:  this post will in no way but here refer to Game of Thrones.  The title above refers to this post, the title of which might be confusing for most of my readers.  GOTY is the acronym for "Game of the Year" - a popular discussion amongst video gamers, discussing personal opinions on the subject and analyzing winners/losers.  Just like the Game of Academy Awards, but with a lot less emphasis on the products put together by stylists.

At Historical Fiction Online, in two threads, rape and sexual violence have been under discussion, and it brought me back to the link at GOTY - which, sincerely, I can NOT recommend highly enough as a powerful and not overly long read.  It goes to unexpected places, but it's an important view of a terrible part of our world.

And that part - rape, violence, violation - is a part of history, too.  This brings me to a post I put up just now ...


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It isn't necessary to pretend rape away for it not to happen in a novel - yet the frequency of it in "World Without End" begs a lot more questions than whether the work feels authentic. Sadly, at least for me, many of those questions end up being about the author, and the context of the writing, rather than the novel itself. Why is it necessary to heap nine (I'm not being hyperbolic - I think I'm under-counting, but refuse to re-watch WWE to verify my own tally) rape scenes into ONE single episode of a miniseries? Why are the women in this work presented strictly as a) incestuous mothers, b) victims, or c) Mary Sues? What is in that author's head? Do I really want to know?

Ugh.

Realism is not a problem for me. I recently read a deeply stunning post about violence against Lara Croft in the latest Tomb Raider game, which came to brutal and incredibly affecting conclusions. As apropos to this thread, I cannot recommend reading it highly enough; though the specific issue is not rape, it looks at violence against a female character with an unblinking gaze, and ends in forgiving realism so powerful it actually triggered an abuse victim into a pretty bad state.

This said: I do not believe that a work LACKING violence (against women - sexual or otherwise) also lacks realism. My MC was no priss about breaking out an ax, but he was the son of a king who was banished by his own people for profligate behavior - and so I felt, given what primary sources did have to say about him, that rape and promiscuity (much less battery) could not be a part of his character. Perhaps if I'd written about the father - history doesn't say he was a rapist, but it would hardly be a stretch to think a king dethroned by those with a deep belief in the spiritual right and charisma of his position might have had to behave outrageously (by our view, criminally) to earn an ousting. Had I been writing that story, now that I think about it, I almost can't imagine NOT including rape in it, even multiple violations. My duty is to the story and not my personal "squicks" about what happens in it.


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The reason I'm posting here, apart from my personal axes well ground about rape culture and the war on women, is that final couple of sentences, the whole last paragraph.

We talk a lot, as authors, as readers, about how intimate the process of writing can be, or the experience of reading.  This is my intimacy.  The power for a simple chat online - albeit one about a difficult issue - to turn me to serious consideration of stories that might have been.

Stories which, perhaps, even should be.

I've never found a subject that inspired me to short form histfic, but honestly the idea of taking on Childeric's banishment suddenly fascinates me.  He appears in fragmentary form in The Ax and the Vase; it would be impossible for the father of a king like Clovis (a king who came to the throne so young) not to feel the presence of his own father, even if the character does not appear.