rape and other "OOC" things

[lotesse]

silverbookworm has a post up about things that bug her in fanfic, and one of them is when authors have Ron or Harry rape Hermione. And I don't think that this, as a peeve, belongs asides discrete/discreet.

Because one of the primary purposes of fanfic is to play "What if?" with canon. To explore dark corners, twist just a little, and come up with something that has an obvious relation to the original text while being a completely different take on it. And often, darker portrayals have strong roots in canon.

Harry can be an asshat sometimes. He's got anger issues up the wazoo, and yes, that anger is directed at the other members of the Trio. Sure, he's not a rapist right now, but would I like to read a well-written fic detailing how the path that he's on takes him there? You bet I would. And Ron and Hermione...well, either they're "bickering" or they're "at each other's throats," depending on how you read it. both are viable readings, and both can lead down interested threads of story. Maybe it's UST, maybe it's years of bottled-up hatred. I don't mean to make a case for Harry or Ron as a rapist, though, just to say that it's not an automatic fictual sin to write them as such.

I guess that what it comes down to is the premise that any story can be worth reading and worth telling. There are no forbidden or inferior themes, only clumsy writers. I mean, yes, by all means let's do away with the fics that use rapist!Ron as just an excuse to get Hermione in bed with Harry, or vice versa. But any portrayal of a character can be interesting, and canon can be twisted in more directions than I think we give it credit for.

(Actually, mirabellawotr did this in her story "Trinity" http://theguestroom.houseofhobbits.com/hp/Trinity.html , turning the relationships between the Trio into something hateful and dark and supressed and hidden, and it's one of the greatest things I've ever read.)