Scott Allie

[rogin]

Turns out he was just the miserable scumbag I always thought he was.

https://twitter.com/ShawnaGore/status/1275921105773969410

ETA: But on the bright side, Darkhorse fired him, decades too late, but they fired him!

Comments

[shadowkat]

I wrote an essay about this several years ago that is on Ao3 now - From Clarissa to Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Sexual Violence in Fictional Narratives Written for and often (not always) by Women

I've mixed feelings. Diana Galabadon's best-selling Outlander series features rape as a major plot device. She uses it in every single novel, and every single lead character is raped at a certain point, in increasingly graphic and brutal manner. The series, show-runned by Ron Moore, is graphically depicting the rapes. I stopped reading and watching after the first book - because I don't have the stomach for sexual violence. (I know she does this and Moore did it in the show via reviews from those who read and watched. On reviewer noted that Galabadon has a thing about rape, once or twice makes sense, but every single lead character in the series gets raped to further plot and character? Really?)
And..there is a video game that was making the rounds in Asia during the early 00s where you could play the rapist. It was illegal in the US. I found out about it via an article in a metro newspaper. And was horrified.
And...I remember having a rather disturbing discussion with two video store clerks about the film Irreversible - which features a graphic and rather long rape sequence in a tunnel - so bad that people walked out on it. (I didn't see the film, they did.) And one of the two men, a young guy in his late teens early twenties had been turned on by that gang rape in the tunnel. I remember the hairs on the back of my neck standing up and how I backed up slowly, the other guy saw my reaction and tried to shift the conversation. Most likely worried he'd just lost a customer.

OTOH..sometimes the book is cathartic or a means of lessening the impact of the rape. Finding a way to handle it emotionally.

I don't know. I did examine it in some depth in that essay, if you are interested.

[rogin]

I didn't really mean the plots that are actually about rape. Although Allies total obliviousness towards the lack of agency in the space rape scene was staggering.

I meant the romantizition of unrequitted love. Lovesick guy lusting after often younger and inexperienced woman. In fiction he is often quite disempowered by his love (see Spike). Old predatory men often playact this disempowerment to flatter the younger woman or to guilt her into sex (as Allie apparently did with the woman he harrased), but in reality they are just acting on their whims and disregarding the other person and their agency completely.

[shadowkat]

Again mixed feelings. I think you need to see it as a reaction to what exists. Have you ever desperately loved someone who didn't love you back? Have you ever realized you won't find anyone who you are attracted to and is attracted to you as well - have you felt that despair? If you haven't, it may be impossible to understand the trope and why it is comforting to see Spike obtain Buffy's love, even after he screws up royally.

I mean it is complicated. Love is, romance is.

We feel pain and we express it through our art. I don't think you can blame fiction for what happens outside of it. Also, I think it is a kind of chicken before the egg argument? Emotion gives birth to fiction. Often in fiction we express our darkest desires, dreams, pain, and uncertainty.

It's not that simple.

Also there's a huge difference between Spike and Warren Mears...one who struggles with unrequited love, the other who sees women as objects to satisfy him.

Anyhow, I said most of this in that essay. I'll leave it at that.

[rogin]

Oddly enough I cannot really say that I ever felt dispair when I was in love with someone who did not love me back. I usually felt quite elated even if I was not loved back and I only felt real despair when people who I loved and had loved me back turned away from me.

But anyway I did not want to say that I don't understand the plot of desperate love. It is immensely attractive and as you know I am a huge Spuffy fan. It's just that I found the idea is less harmless than I thought. I thought people could distinguish between fantasy and reality and usually in reality if you really do not want a relationship with someone, you mean it and it is not strange supernatural obstacles and past murder attempts that keep you appart despite your attraction but actual "do not want".

And I have seen a lot of Warren Mears men, playact the Spike to get there, even though they have a complete and utter disregard for the object of their "affections".