fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6323 ]

[ SECRET POST #6323 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6323 ⌋

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

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[Agent Elvis]

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Someone here mentioned these books surprising them (positively) with how it handles the slavery/relationship stuff and I am just curious - is it only satisfying at the end?

Idk I am just desperate for braincandy type books and keep striking out and saw these at my library. But I am not generally a fan of characters falling in love with their rapist/owner/kidnapper/etc and am on the fence if I want to give these a try.

If anyone has opinions on the books I'd love to hear them! I don't care about spoilers.

I read the books a long time ago, but my recollection is that the slave/kidnapping/rape fuckery between the main characters (and the one MC's attitude about those things as a practice) is resolved roughly 3/4 of the way through the first book. It's also definitely a false claim that it's a "rape equals love" story; there is never any rape between the two love interests in any sense, not even a "this character wants to fuck but is the other's slave and therefore cannot consent" context. They do not fuck until the one dude gives up on slavery.

I adore the Captive Prince series, but— the first book is ROUGH.

Listen, I don't do noncon as a kink. Like. AT ALL. No judgement to everyone who is into it, but I am suuuper not into it. So when a romance book involves noncon, slavery, and sexual abuse elements—some of which occur between the central pairing itself—that's typically a hard dealbreaker for me.

Now that you know where I'm coming from, I will say that yes, the first book was rough. There's not a TON of noncon stuff that occurs between the leads, but there is some, and I had a very hard time imagining how the hell the narrative was going to be able to convince me the central pairing was endgame, when I basically felt like we passed the point of no return (i.e. one of the characters being too abusive for me to ever see them as a viable love interest) within the first hundred pages.

BUT WAIT, COME BACK, COME BACK!

A big part of the magic of the series is in how effectively and seamlessly it does manage to manipulate (in a good way) the reader's perspective, and develop the characters and your understanding of them. Not just in a sense of the "bad one" being "redeemed" but in a more complex, nuanced, and holistic way than that.

For me, Captive Prince doesn't feel like a "falling in love with one's captor" story at all. The vibes are completely different, the power dynamics are completely different...but it would also be technically incorrect to say that doesn't happen, sooo...yeah.

One thing I do want to note is that I don't necessarily think the series handles the systemic issue of slavery extremely well overall. It doesn't necessarily handle it badly; I was ultimately satisfied with where the story left things by the end. But the fact is that the world of CaPri is one in which sexual slavery, in one form or another, is systemically normalized and accepted, and righting that grave wrong is only peripheral to the main driving focus of the plot. It is addressed, and I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that we eventually get strong intimations of systemic change for the better. But if you're not going to be able to read a story set in a world with systemic sexual slavery and NOT have the entire focus be on ending systemic slavery, then this series may be dissatisfying to you.

Let me know if you want me to recount, in vague terms, the worst of the noncon/abuse that occurs between the leads.

ayrt - okay it sounds like we would be coming from the same place, so you saying it was a satisfying journey does intrigue me! I generally stay away from slavery fetish but it isn't an absolute no go for me.

Honestly the whole set up of the world isn't one I normally would be interested to read but I've seen so many people be like "no but wait" and say its not their thing but they loved them anyway. So I am terribly curious!

Yeah, it's totally not my usual scene either, but I'm really glad I gave it a chance. If you're anything like me, there probably will be a moment or two in book one where you're like, "I am seriously doubting all you mofos who told me to trust the process," but for real tho, trust the process. XD

And come back and tell us about it if you end up having a good time with it! (Or if you hate it, I guess. That's valid too. :P) I'm not the person who mentioned CaPri to you previously, but I was super happy when the words Captive Prince showed up in a comment header. I squee'd a little, internally, lol.

I've heard such mixed things about these books, this comment is interesting. I like dark kinks in fiction but I'm very picky about how they're handled.

I feel like most (not all, but most) of the negative reaction is coming from non-fandom people who are easily horrified by romantic or sexual content that would be bad IRL. Almost all of whom quit after or during book one, and therefore have no idea what they're talking about, despite their intense conviction that they do.

That said, as much as I'm always happy to recommend this series to new readers, I don't know if it's really the best fit if dark kinks are what you're after. Pacat likes playing with power dynamics, which can get a little twisty and dubious in places, but I don't perceive the kinks in her stories to be particularly dark. The circumstances are dark, and sometimes the characters do dark things, but the eroticism isn't violation-based. (I mean, there are a couple of scenes in book one of CaPri which are absolutely violation based, and can definitely be read as erotic if that's what you're into, but it's not the prevailing mode that the story leans into; it's the mode the story climbs up out of.)

See, that's what feels so strange about it to me. The premise is very much something I find dark, but then the eroticism doesn't lie there, and the story moves past the initial premise? And the series is romantic? Which gives me pause, since I don't like romantic or fluffy takes on dark kinks. But it's apparently not done in a straightforward "falling in love with abuser/captor" narrative way... I guess I would have to read it to find out how that all fits together, lol.

Yeah, it's definitely romantic overall. I wouldn't call it fluffy, personally. True fluff tends to bore me and I def wasn't bored. It's pretty common to hear fans of CaPri say it's a story that defies description, and yeah, it pretty much is.

I don't think there's any way I can clarify any of your quandaries about it without spoiling things, and IMO it's really better to go in without spoilers. Take the ride, you know?

It may also be helpful to know that, despite being sold as a trilogy, it's very much one story broken into three parts. Like, I get why the publishing house wanted it broken into three, but IMO it actually does the story a bit of a disservice to do it that way. It's a single, one-thousand page story where the dynamics and our understanding of them grow and shift over time.

SA - Also, for the record, I don't want to, like, oversell what you're getting here. I like it a lot, a lot. But I don't think it's like, omglifechanging. I think the people who are like, "THIS SERIES CHANGED MY LIFE" are mainly younger, and also probably also not fanfic readers. Because I feel like CaPri is good in a really similar way to how very good fanfic is good—except with the added element of original characters and a whole-ass original plot. So if you've been reading fanfic for years and years, it's a lot less likely to blow your mind, than if you're like twenty and have been surviving on bland mainstream romance dynamics.

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[ SECRET POST #6323 ]

Captive Prince

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