[ SECRET POST #4795 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4795 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


Spoilers and CWs ahead!



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02. [SPOILERS for The Good Place]



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03. [SPOILERS for Sanditon]



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04. [SPOILERS for Guilded Age]



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05. [SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard]



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06. [WARNING for discussion of rape]

[Graceling]


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07. [WARNING for discussion of substance abuse]



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08. [WARNING for discussion of sexual assault]



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09. [WARNING for discussion of abuse/assault]



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10. [WARNING for discussion of incest/underage/etc. Not the main topic but figured it might start discussion]
























Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #686.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Can anyone who's actually read the book tell me if this is really like it sounds? This series was popular in my online friend circle a few years ago and I never got around to reading it, but my friends never said anything about the rape thing and they were the sort of people who probably would have if it were actually that terrible.

vague minor spoilers

[(Anonymous)]

I read it, and while that description is not entirely off-base, it's deliberately simplifying a complex narrative for shock value.

Fire, our heroine, is traumatized, but wasn't raped. She isn't just pretty, she has a mutation/superpower/whatever you may call it. One of the side effects is that living things are drawn to her, but not sexually – they want a piece of her, literally. Small animals try to rip her hair out or bite her to get to her blood, or just cuddle to be close, bigger animals try to maul and eat her. Humans have the same instincts, but are not as driven by them. Some weak-willed men and women wanting to have sex with her is one aspect, most just want to touch her or be near her. Most people try to avoid her because they don't want to come under her influence.

But Fire can also, to a small degree, control people's minds, and that's what really makes people fear her. There have been others like her, and they have wrecked havoc by misusing their power; the combination of being attractive and being able to bend people to their will can make for a bad combination. That's more of a topic in the book than potential rape: Fire doesn't want to be like her predecessors, doesn't want her mutation at all, but she can't get rid of it.

The whole trilogy is connected by one theme: power. All three books feature a heroine who has power and doesn't know how to use it "for good". They are born special, and society admires and fears them. The girls can't ignore their powers, they're too public for that, but so far, the powers have only ever brought them pain and problems. Their powers make it easy for the girls to hurt people or be hurt, and have no obvious benevolent use. Over the course of the book the girls figure out how to make the best of it.

In that context, the power dynamics in the second book make an interesting case, because of their place in the people's perception and because of their overwhelming presence. The heroine in the first book was an assassin, but she didn't go around killing people compulsively, she was just very good at it, and became a political weapon because of it; her conflict was about what kind of person she is if her superpower is death. Fire, the heroine in the second book, can't just ignore what makes her special, because it's constant and influences her life every second.

So yeah, there are men who want to rape her, but that's not what motivates our heroine, it's not what she fears or what traumatized her. I don't think that description is fair.

Re: vague minor spoilers

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks. It's really sad how easily people will listen to a warped, biased account of a book they haven't read and spread it around instead of using critical thinking for two seconds to decide that maybe you can't just trust any short description that sounds designed to make the book look as bad as possible.