Chapters 163-166: Betrayal
For next week — 167-169
167. Beached
168. Hollow
169. The No Sleep Club
Cakoluchiam’s stellar Character Sheet
Steven’s Predictions – Everything is a Clue
Worth the Candle can be read at AO3 or RoyalRoad.
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Several points:
– The comments on RoyalRoad fall into the sadly predictable “why didn’t he scream louder” camp – except for one person, who commented “this is the most realistic depiction of what being raped is like that I’ve seen in fiction.” Yeah…
– Rape is bad for many reasons, one being that it does psychological damage. But I think that trying to match Joon’s post-rape reactions into a trauma pattern is also misleading. If I say “no, I don’t want this” until he/she puts it in and five seconds later I have hearts in my eyes, plead for more, and start following this person around for the rest of my days like a puppy, then that was still rape. Trauma is a common but not *necessary* part of the violation. Even saying “their body wants it” runs the risk of contributing to the dissociation trauma – even if *they, their mind* want it after a while, it’s still rape. People should not need to perform damage for their violation to be taken seriously, but sadly that’s often the case.
– I think the saddest thing is that this was not really Bethel being a psycho to me, this was Bethel trying to human in a new way, and making a really bad mistake in the way she humans, in a way that’s directly caused by her earlier psychopathic behavior. She’s in effect, narratively, being punished for diverging from her pattern and trying to be more of a person, which if you think about it is kind of creepy in a DM way too.
– I don’t think it was coincidence either that this happened *after* Mome Rath.
– Unrelatedly, I’m catching up! I listen to ~25 minutes of podcast on my way to work each morning, which gives me 2.25 hours per week. I get a few more minutes here and there, but in sum I listen only slightly faster than you put those out. Sooon.
Thanks for the comments! :)