Given that the Great Ones are worshipped as deities, I'd personally put it on the Divine-on-Mortal page.
Edited by Arawn999
Since magic and other fantasy effects fall under this trope as well, maybe the title should be "Double Standard: Rape by Phlebotinum" or something that doesn't imply that it only applies to science fiction?
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Hmm, should this trope be YMMV or not?
I'm leaning towards not having it YMMV, but calibrate it to be more neutral. I made a first step towards that right now.
The problem is this: Certain situations being rape or not is hotly debated in Real Life. There are at least three fields of controversy:
- What constitutes consent?
- Under what circumstances is a person even capable of Consent?
- What actions are sexually intimate enough for consent to be required?
Thus: Taking a situation that doesn't exist in Real Life, and decide if it's really rape or not, that can be quite problematic. Extremely problematic, when it's written in a way that says "This trope is about pointing out that the author is WRONG".
However, this trope is young, and not saturated in YMMV examples. I think we an make it an objective trope. Maybe the changes I made are even enough.
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Should all kinds of love potions qualify for this trope? Narratively, there are three kinds:
- Those who definitely messes with free will, maybe even turning off freedom of choice completely.
- Those who merely work as allure/aphrodisiac, making a person more desirable.
- Those where it is left ambiguous how they work, so that some readers might interpret them as Mind Rape while others see them as more innocent.
I don't think Limiting this trope to the first kind would work, because people are bound to disagree. So, we can either go with YMMV, or add a disclaimer about Ambiguous Situation.
Another important aspect is that a core feature of rape is that the victim have a strong feeling of being violated. Lets consider these cases of Alice and Bob:
- They both had a great time. Alternatively, Bob didn't really experience anything at all. Afterwards, Bob know that Alice used some techniques that could technically be considered foul play, but he really don't mind. (Most people would probably not consider that to be rape.)
- Alice and Bob have sex, but some malicious phethebolium force Bob to feel violated afterwards.
Also, the feeling of being violated has to be considered justified for other people to accept it as rape. Lets replace shape-shifting with it's Real Life counterpart: Makeup and dressing up. Lets say that Alice make herself look good, and they have consensual sex. Then Bob feels violated when he realize what she looks like without the artificial stuff.
- Lets say Alice disguised herself as Bob's wife? Rape or not, a lot of people would be furious with A Lice.
- Lets say Alice simply looks better with makeup, and Bob feels violated because he decided to have sex with someone who didn't really live up to his standards of hotness. Many would probably consider Bob a shallow jerkass.
- What it her skin is slightly darker without her makeup, and Bob is a neo-nazi? Or if she's a Transsexual and Bob is retroactively squicked out by that?
Finally, we have the issue of intent. Here in Sweden, it's legally not rape if it's a honest & valid misunderstanding. I'm pretty sure USA and most countries treat it the same way.
Of course, most perps pretend that it was only a misunderstanding - and among the convicted, the most obviously guilty often seem to be more outraged that the court didn't believe them then those who might actually have been innocent.
There's at least one political party here who want to change the law who want to change the law so that sex without expressed consent is automatically considered rape, but they don't seem to have any good answer to how to handle the many cases of mutual rape that would pop up. Convict both participants? Always convict the man, while making same-sex relations exempt from the law? Consider the victim to be whoever is fastest to report the other?
Anyway, lets say Bob falls victim to some Applied Phethebolium, but Alice didn't intend it to violate Bob?
Mind Control rape is possible in real life, though it takes more effort then the typical fictional Vampire just saying "Vook into my eyes". Hypnosis is a real thing.
I do get annoyed at seeing merely Sci-Fi enhanced Pheromones so easily written off as Rape. Pheromones are a part of how a woman naturally always attracts a mate (Male ones least, I have no idea is they affect Lesbians).
That is a layered issues, there is probably a reason nature allows a woman to use only so much at once. And then there is the issue of if the story is even remotely accurately depicting how Pheromones work.
Uh, why are you keeping a discussion that petered out years ago alive?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Xzenu was just talking to himself above. Anyway, it's an important discussion to have.
Does the Second Buffy example count? Riley wasn't being influenced, and if Faith was being influenced by Buffy's body, she did it to herself. And it wasn't really Buffy's body at the time. Wouldn't this be closer to Bed Trick (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BedTrick)
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Riley was having sex with Faith under the belief that Faith in Buffy's body was really Buffy. That is a science-fictional circumstance that amounts to Faith raping Buffy.
When bodyswapping gets involved? Good possibility of both, if you ask me.
Thing about the Sci Fi rape thing is that all the ways it's done are pretty analogous to forms of Rape that often don't get recognized as Rape in real life. Things like a Love Potion are just Date Rape with a Sci Fi means, and done via Shape shifting or body swapping or body jumping are just the Bed Trick. Also a high percentage of them are Female on Male, and occasionally Female on Female.
And Hypnosis will get labeled as purely Sci Fi even though it does really exist.
Edited by 70.92.228.166
- The episode "Small Potatoes" of The X-Files, where a man with shape-shifting abilities poses as the husbands of several women in order to have sex with them. His charges are mentioned in the episode, and rape is not one of them.
As I recall, Agent Skinner says he's adding the man to a watch list for rape. In the end he gets committed instead of imprisoned, but they still call him a rapist.
Would Formless Oedon impregnating Arianna without consulting her in Bloodborne be this, Divine-on-Mortal, or just Rape as Drama? Oedon is a Great One with no physical form or visible/tangible presence, so there's no clearly-defined sexual act, but if Arianna is alive and at Oedon Chapel during a certain in-game event, she painfully goes through a full pregnancy in the span of a few hours before giving birth to a slug-like infant. In-game item descriptions name Oedon as the father, and Arianna's dialogue makes it clear that this is a violation.
I guess it depends on whether the Great Ones "count" as gods or Sufficiently Advanced Aliens? Nowhere in the text explicitly points out that it's rape or condemns Oedon (it just repeats what's said elsewhere about Great Ones losing their own biological children and seeking "surrogates", and that Oedon is no different in that regard), but maybe Arianna's trauma speaks for itself.
Edited by Pig_catapult Hide / Show Replies