Victim Falls For Rapist
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Shuichi: Anyone would cry after what you did! You're a rapist, you big jerk! —Gravitation manga
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The idea that people can enjoy being raped and/or will fall in love with their rapists as a consequence of the rape. More often than not, the rapist turns out to have acted out of pure love, or winds up loving his/her victim emotionally too.
According to many sexologists, this is a common submissive fantasy for both women and men, although it certainly does NOT mean that s/he wants to get raped for real. After all, people who play paintball don't really want to shoot and kill each other. The "rape" remains a fantasy or a game.
It is a staple of published Yaoi and Slash Fic, in which a disproportionate amount used a rape scene to bring the two male characters together, but can also extend to heterosexual couples and women. Also popular in "bodice ripper" romances, in which resistant women are overwhelmed with passion as men force themselves upon them, though it should be noted that these types of stories were mostly popular in the 70s and 80s and are now, for the most part, considered a Dead Horse Music Genre in the romance novel community. The receiving end may rant, protest, push away, cry glistening tears... but before the first half of the scene is over, they'll have started cooperating and acknowledging their enjoyment, probably while blushing furiously. As a famous meme goes: "It wasn't rape, it was just surprise sex you didn't know you wanted."
Nearly all yaoi manga published in English contain some element of this. Plots have become almost frighteningly predictable too, often beginning with Mr. Seme either raping, or at least getting halfway with Mr. Uke, freaking poor Mr. Uke out and therefore leaving some room for the two to collect their thoughts, whereupon they admit their love for one another and make love consensually. A somewhat unconventional series might have Mr. Seme realize that he also needs to reach out emotionally before Mr. Uke comes to accept him, but very few yaoi series (shonen-ai ones don't count, as they don't focus on the sex) completely avoid this trope. A (short) list of yaoi manga not involving this trope can be found here. (Since 'seme' means 'attacker' and 'uke' refers to someone who receives attacks, this tendency is somewhat built into the terminology.) Some Shojo series are also taking part, with a cold and very masculine hero bullying the far more passive female protagonist into having barely consensual sex or even outright taking advantage of her, only for her to discover that she wanted this and he only did it out of uncontrollable love for her.
Whichever genre, a Victim Falls For Rapist scene is used as a convenient plot device to give the victim an arousing experience without actually soiling their innocence, because it wasn't their choice to have sex in the first place. There's something kinky in forcing a person to realize his/her love. And if the victim falls in love with the rapist, that ups the angst meter.
And if the goal isn't to bring the rapist and his victim together, it'll make the victim a walking angst magnet, perfect for being saved by his/her soulmate.
A subtrope of Stockholm Syndrome and Hollywood Sex. See also Prison Rape, Naughty Tentacles. Compare Stalking Is Love, Black Comedy Rape, Rape as Drama. Contrast Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil, "It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It". For the G-rated but no less creepy (and no less illegal) version of this trope, see Abduction Is Love. Contrast Marital Rape License, where the rape is generally portrayed as heinous although the rapist may consider the rape to be an act of love and also his husbandly right—which in some cultural contexts it actually is. Often results in an Esoteric Happy Ending.
No real life examples, please; First, this is a rape trope, and All The Tropes does not care to squick its readers. Second, this is a trope about how characters are depicted in media. Please don't use this page to smear the reputations of real people.
Anime and Manga
- An alarmingly common trope in BL manga, where the Seme will often repeatedly attempt to force an Uke to make out with or even have sex with him, much to the uke's anger and protests that he's straight (which often leads to the seme trying harder just to prove him wrong). It's considered justified in the end because it turns out the seme was right about him, which apparently invalidates any need for his consent.
- Winter Demon from Yaoi Press featured this with the titular winter demon Fuyu raping a young (male) monk before the manga begins. The monk is forced to seek Fuyu's help in the actual beginning and the pair fall in love. And then as if this counts as redemption Fuyu is also raped in the first volume.
- In Okane ga Nai, Kanou rapes Ayase in an attempt to convey his feelings, but Ayase eventually falls in love with him anyways. Then it's played for comedy in an extra by having Kanou travel back in time back to the moment of the rape and proceed to attack his past-self for what he is about to do to Ayase. Ayase also gets hit with this trope at nearly every corner, where every single straight male in this manga either falls in love with and wants to or attempts to rape Ayase. And Ayase, being the living embodiment of Too Dumb to Live and The Ingenue, only narrowly avoids said rape—when it's not Kanou—by virtue of the people around him who don't want him to get raped noticing the danger signs. Ironically, the only men who aren't interested in Ayase at all are the gay guys. Who are interested in Kanou.
- It is up to debate whether Shizuru raped Natsuki in her sleep in My-HiME, as the details are sketchy and the plot never goes back and addresses it and exactly how far she went. However, the Victim Falls For Rapist plot is used straight in the same series between Yukariko the nun and the art teacher Ishigami. Many fans Hand Wave actions done in the series as the "dark influence" of various plot devices, as most everyone is miraculously forgiven in the end.
- Mai-Otome sends the trope through a blender in one incident. Tomoe, at one point, received Shizuru as a Sex Slave through betrayal and false pretenses. Shizuru enjoyed every minute of it. Shizuru set Tomoe up to take her as a Sex Slave, so she'd be in position to break out when the fighting started, and felt nothing for Tomoe as anything more than fun while it lasted, but made Tomoe believe otherwise.
- In Kannazuki no Miko, Chikane rapes the love of her life, Himeko, as part of a Plan to destroy the Big Bad without killing Himeko Because Destiny Says So.
- A different take on this trope occurs in Gravitation: Shuichi allows himself to be gang-raped to protect his lover from defamation. It's implied that the fact that he did it out of love allowed him to recover from it pretty quickly. No emotional damage, no second thoughts, Shuichi is okay because he got raped out of love for Yuki. The more traditional version is subverted in a flashback: Eiri Uesugi kills his mentor for raping him, although his name--Yuki--does become Eiri's pen name.
- There are also some non-explicit sex scenes in Volume 2 of the Gravitation manga between Shuichi and Yuki that are borderline non-consensual with Yuki very much being the Seme; the quote at the top of the page comes from one of these scenes. In contrast, the anime implies that whatever sex occurred off-screen was consensual.
- In Saki Hiwatari's Shoujo classic Please Save My Earth The concept is used for Big Drama, as well as propelling much of the plot. The two characters end up in love and together. However what actually happened is moot as everyone is an Unreliable Narrator due to unclear memories heavily influenced by emotions. This causes the characters and readers to be uncertain about how much blame to impart and who to feel sorry for. See Please Save My Earth YMMV section for possible interpretations.
- Hot Gimmick romanticizes an abusive relationship: readers are expected to support the heroine's decision to remain with her Troubled but Cute love interest at the end—his blackmail, physical force, and coerced sexual encounters with her are supposed to be how he expresses his love for her. And then it's subverted in the novels, where Hatsumi is paired up... with Shinogu.
- Just-about-averted in Rose of Versailles, in which the male romantic lead Andre forces himself on the heroine Lady Oscar—he does come to his senses and stop short of actual rape, however, and repeatedly tells her he's sorry. The whole incident is treated as evidence of his unrequited passion for her, and doesn't stop her from falling in love with him in return by the end of the series.
- In the anime version, anyway, Andre's actions are also supposed to be evidence of his immaturity, and one of the reasons Oscar doesn't (yet) return his feelings. (The title of the episode wherein it occurs is "Andre, a Green Lemon")
- It's also an indication of the extreme stress he's been under ever since he lost his eye, and potentially going completely blind. The anime makes it very clear that he snapped and that what he did was wrong, hence why their relationship is (for a while) ruined by it.
- Nearly half of hentai mangas and animes start in this way, when guy/girl/child gets raped and likes that in the next page, then comes back for more in the end.
- In the Hentai OVA Dragon Knight IV: Wheel of Time, the warrior princess Bianca doesn't know her place in the army of good guys and is unwilling to submit to The Hero, Eto. So when she challenges him, he easily defeats her, and then rapes her to put her in her place. It works, and she enjoys it. And that's enough about hentai or this page will never stop.
- Hentai in general tends to take things even farther to the extreme (duh), with rape not just being love, but being some sort of fetish. A number of hentai involve a woman who is raped and/or degraded, and is turned into an insatiable sex addict because of it, and become willing to do almost anything for it.
- In After School Nightmare, Sou sexually assaults Mashiro twice—first forcing a kiss on him and later actually attempting to rape him. Mashiro nevertheless falls for him.
- More or less the entire plot of System Of Romance.
- One Girls Love example can be found in the manga Gokujou Drops. Moe Moe Komari gets frequently molested quite explicitly by Tall, Dark and Bishoujo Yukio despite Komari's protestations. Komari eventually admits to herself that she enjoys it and starts developing strong feelings for Yukio.
- Another such example is Blue Drop. The Arume are not above raping earth women, if only to torture the men, which they seem to dislike pretty much. A lot of women appear to enjoy this quite a bit.
- Chizuru really does love Kouta, but she tends to show it by abducting him (and that part is optional) and trying to rape him.
- One of the later chapters of Karin has her brother Ren forcing a vampire named Bridget to be bent over sticking out a window so she can be burned by the sun wearing, very revealing clothes. He's crouched over behind her holding her down in a scene that looks a lot like a rape but apparently isn't one. That is, until she calls later and announces she is now pregnant with his son, so they get married. ...kay.
- Rapeman, a superhero who punishes heartless villainesses with his legendary (nonconsensual) lovemaking prowess! It's supposed to be edgy satire.
- It was mentioned in a Non Sequitur Scene of Law and Order SVU.
- In the The Tyrant Falls in Love
AU manga Aru Hi Mori No Naka, once Ookami (Souichi) is back to health and Kuma (Morinaga) has made it through the winter, Morinaga thinks the best way to show his love for Souichi is to, you guessed it, rape him. Although, throughout the rape, Souichi believes that Morinaga is actually just trying to kill him. The next morning, after realizing what happened and also being confessed to, Souichi comments, "Are you telling me that you'd force yourself on someone you love?" - In the Asatte no Houkou manga, Amino forces Karada to give him a hand job, and clearly believes that he's doing this out of "love." He later realizes that he was very very wrong.
- In Samurai 7, the emperor makes a habit of kidnapping farm girls for his harem. One of them fawns on him so that he will leave the others alone, but eventually does come to love him anyway, much to the other women's horror. Carrying his baby has something to do with that, but it certainly leads to a complicated relationship with her actual husband when they are reunited, and he can't understand why she would have any positive feelings for the man.
- Ode to Kirihito uses this as a symptom of the rapist's madness.
- Respected as he is, Osamu Tezuka seems to have had a disturbing fondness for this trope. It also appears in MW (in which the victim spends the rest of the book pining for her sociopathic rapist without ever doing anything important) and Ayako (in which a spy exploits this trope to "ensure" the allegiance of another agent sent to kill him).
- This happens to all of the kidnapped girls in Bondage Queen Kate. After they go through their captors "special training", they soon become loving and compliant sex slaves.
- Hana Yori Dango, Tsukasa sends some boys to rape Tsukushi, who is saved by Rui. Later Tsukasa develops feelings for Tsukushi and he is shown a recording of Tsukushi talking to Rui and obviously in love with him. This causes him to go into a jealous rage and he almost forces himself on Tsukushi, but comes to his senses before finishing the deed.
- In Aki Sora the number of girls that Sora has slept with voluntarily for the first time is one however he has had consensual sex with at least 3 of the girls after they raped him and he shows no ill effects of the rape. As a matter of fact a classmate of his that was one of the women who gang raped him at the party was angry this did not happen to her.
- Tanaka Yutaka pretty much puts this concept to the sword in Doubt (from the Virgin Night anthology). The first part shows a very unpleasant impelled sex scene which proves to be Poor Communication Kills-catalyzed (Tsutsui was making a bad assumption about Motoko's hesitancy to respond to his desire for sex as merely playing hard-to-get; she wasn't, she was just nervous about proper broaching), and leaves both Tsutsui and Motoko feeling degraded. The second part, once both participants open up about their desire for each other, is affection and pleasure distillate—and not so much as a cubic micron of anything forced (or, for that matter, hurried). Tanaka isn't really leaving any question as to which form actually fits with long-lasting love.
- The H manga Yanagida-kun to Mizuno-san plays this not quite straight, but not quite averted either. Mizuno technically started it, but Yanagida ends up going farther than she wanted. Later, when Mizuno's boyfriend starts badmouthing her to other people at their school, Mizuno sees Yanagida stand up for her (and get beat up for his trouble, naturally). Mizuno later states that it was this situation that made her think better of him, rather than anything directly related to the rape. Not a full aversion, but for an H manga, the slightest aversion to this trope is noteable.
- Zigzagged all over the place with Corsair. Canale has never began a relationship consensually, and yet distinguishes between Ayace and Sesaam's treatment of him (Rape Is Love) and everybody else (Rape as Drama/Rape as Backstory). Whether he enjoyed it or not has nothing to do with it. On top of that, there is one instance with Ayace where it is treated as rape, but the earlier sex scenes aren't, and they resume their relationship as usual afterwards.
- He tends to distinguish it as Ayase and Sesaam being gentle and caring while they have sex with him while everyone else literally tied him up and drugged him. From the age of 10. The one time that Ayase is incredibly rough with him out of jealousy is the one time he calls it rape.
- Bitter Virgin takes its plot and throws it into the face of this trope, not exactly subverting it, but definitely going against all its different types and forms. As Hinako could tell you, rape is definitely not love.
- Played straight in Sensitive Pornograph with Hitomi and Kashima, with attempts to justify. Hitomi likes Kashima, but is too insecure to say anything so instead he lets the sex do the talking. Kashima does like him as well, but is not pleasantly surprised by the sudden advances. Made worse by the fact that Hitomi takes pictures while doing it. And distributes them.
- This happens in Words Worth between Rita and the demon king Wortoshika, the latter of whom believed he needed to sire a child with a woman of the Light tribe in order to fulfill a prophecy after his son Astral's disappearance.
- This occurs in School Days between Taisuke and Kotonoha. Kotonoha had previously been stood up and cheated on by her Jerkass boyfriend Makoto, so she was in a major state of depression when Taisuke decided to proposition her. Although it's never shown, it's heavily implied that Taisuke did indeed take advantage of her. Unlike most examples though, Taisuke was under the mistaken assumption that she was actually receptive to his advances and thought the two were now in a relationship. Unfortunately, these combined events led to Kotonoha's Despair Event Horizon.
- It's especially noticeable in sub-genres such as Lolicon or Shotacon (shota/loli is especially fond of this). The character will obviously not want to have sex, but is forced into it by their apathetic associates. After it they act like they liked it, shove it off with little or no consideration that it was rape, or just continue to do it.
- A one-shot in the Yaoi collection Letters of love plays so aggressively and ironically with this trope that it deserves a detailed description here. Kazuhiro is in love with his student, Mikami, so when he catches him going through his desk for what he assumes are the answers to the up-coming test, he decides to blackmail him into having sex with him (intending to rape him if he doesn't). However, when Mikami starts to cry and beg him to stop he realises he can't do this to someone he loves, has an My God, What Have I Done? moment and tells him to go home. The next day, he tells Mikami to delete the video he'd taken of him going through his desk, that he's sorry and that he won't tell anyone about him trying to cheat. Mikami asks him why he tried to rape him and Hazuhiro tells him that he loves him but that he doesn't expect him to forgive him... cue Mikami turning on him, having recorded the entire conversation and blackmailing him into having sex with him (it turns out Mikumi's a Stalker with a Crush who was actually rifling through Kzuhiro's desk for something that he owned, was ecstatic about him blackmailing him, has been in love with him for a long time, and intends to own him. Permanently).
- Both subverted and played with in Unbalance na Netsu by Minase Masara, where the main character, Ryu's, rape is played straight as a traumatic experience that he didn't enjoy. Afterwards, however, Shinya, the rapist, starts to fall in love with him and tries to tell Ryu... who promptly beats him up for drugging and raping him. Eventually though, after taking pity on Shinya, who is younger than him and a temperamental brat, he does grow fond of him and they end up a couple. What's different is that in this manga the normal Uke and Seme stereotypes aren't present, the rape is never played as anything other than assault, and Ryu - the Uke - is the calm and collected one who is in control of the relationship while Shinya is just muddling along, trying not to fuck things up.
- Played with in Anatolia Story. When Prince Kail initially brings Yuri in to pose as his concubine, he starts trying to have his way with her, despite her fighting back and screaming to stop. When he hears her shout the name of her boyfriend, he stops and she tells him "I love [my boyfriend] and hate you!" While Yuri does eventually fall in love with Kail, it's much later, and after he starts courting her in ways that are much more like what she tells him twenty-first century dating is like.
- The hentai Magical Twilight has a scene where Liv the Black Witch, hunting for the protagonist Tsukasa in her exam quest to kill him, runs into Tsukasa's buddy who isn't taking no for an answer. She ends up enjoying it, they fall in love (or some kind of similar emotion at least) and she gives up on her quest to kill Tsukasa, so it's regarded as a happy ending.
- Ai no Kusabi has Iason Mink who kidnaps and forcibly makes Riki A Sex Slave because he sees him only as a Lust Object. Then continues to force himself on Riki after he has fallen in love with him. Riki fights him less and less as time goes by....
- Discussed in the Josei manga Rouge Noir. The female lead Ayane aknowledges that her and the male lead Kou's sexual encounter, years ago, was rape, and yet she also admits to having feelings for him when she finds him again. Later, when Kou and Ayane declare their mutual love and have consensual sex, Kou reveals that he has been feeling guilty ever since then and apologizes profusely to her. After some more hardships, they get married.
Ayane: "Six years ago, Kou violated me. (...) Even I think there's something wrong with me. (...) That sound and Kou himself, despite the calamitous past that we have, are drawing me in." |
- Yukiha falls hard for her own rapist, Masami, in The Girl in the Library: Until The Pure You Falls From Grace after being disappointed by her boyfriend's poor performance and small penis. She becomes Masami's Sex Slave of her own free will and ends up pregnant with his child. By chapter six, she's completely devoted to him and ends up as evil as he is.
- Souma Mizuno from Fire in His Fingertips has raped Ryo Fujihashi before and after she becomes his girlfriend. He is nevertheless really good at sex and aside from his perversion is still a good man and a loyal boyfriend becoming a rare justified example. They are the page image.
Ballads
- In Gil Brenton, everything's all right for the heroine after she learns that the man who raped and impregnated her is the same man who married her (and was enraged that she was pregnant until he learned he was the father.)
- In The Knight and the Shepherd's Daughter, the title daughter chases after the knight to insist that he marry her.
- In The Wylie Wife of the Hie Toun Hie, when the rapist returns several years later and sees the beautiful child his victim bore, he marries her.
Comic Books
- In Watchmen this trope is discussed and alluded to in a very interesting way. The Comedian attempted to rape Sally Jupiter (the first Silk Spectre) at the height of the Minutemen's fame; Laurie, Sally's daughter, spends her whole life hating the Comedian after she finds out about it, and is baffled and frustrated by her mother's mellower attitude. As it turns out, Laurie is the Comedian's illegitimate daughter. Some time after the failed rape attempt, the Comedian tracked Sally down and expressed genuine regret over the incident, and at some point after that, they had a consensual one night stand. Sally then realized she was pregnant and immediately married her agent. Sort of a Subverted Trope, in that even decades on, Sally's very conflicted about it, and no one's under any illusions that it redeems the Comedian. It does help to humanize him a little, though..
- The actor who played The Comedian, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, stated that he believed that Edward Blake was "completely in love" with Sally Jupiter, but was also "a screwed-up motherfucker" and didn't know how to handle his feelings for her, and so expressed it the only way he knew how at first, which was through violence.
- In post-crisis DC continuity, Hercules rapes Hippolyta (and several others Amazons as well) and is transformed into a pillar of load-bearing stone as punishment. When he's finally released, the Amazons are charmed enough by his humility to forgive him. Then he and Hippolyta have a brief romantic relationship. This is in fact more notable for its bizarre use of Greek Mythology than anything else- rape was one of the few crimes classical Hercules didn't do, and forgiveness? From the Amazons? About anything? Good luck with that.
- Recently over at DC, the decision was made to make the Son of the Bat mini-series canon again, but decided to retcon Batman and Talia Al-Ghul's consensual encounter into Talia drugging and raping Bruce in order to conceive their son, Damien. Talia still acts like Bruce was a willing participant, so in at least in her mind it was love. Bruce however isn't all that amused and all but called it rape.
- Note that his entire take on the matter is reduced to two small panels and then never dealt with again.
- In Nexus, Ursula drugs Horatio and sleeps with him while he believes that she is his girlfriend Sundra. Later, when Ursula shows up on Ylum with Scarlet and Sheena, her twin daughters by Horatio, the four of them live together as a family. It must be noted that, at first Horatio, as much as he loves his daughters, neither feels nor expresses any affection for Ursula, but he eventually does seem to warm up to her, to the point where they do make love consensually. Also, Ursula does seem to develop feelings for Horatio.
- Averted, oddly enough, by Red Sonja whom was gifted with incredible skill in battle by a goddess after her family was slaughtered by evil soldiers and she was raped and left for dead. But this blessing required Sonja to swear a holy oath to never love any man who could not beat her in fair, single combat. While some feel this would require Sonja to repeat the rape that ruined her life and put her on the warrior's path it hardly seems logical, as one writer pointed out [dead link], that a compassionate goddess would bless a woman with fighting prowess only to turn her into a trophy concubine for any well-muscled idiot with a sword.
- Indeed, the current Red Sonja series has shown the oath to be rather more nuanced. For example, she's in no way compelled to sleep with a man who defeats her—it's an option, but she doesn't have to submit if she finds him odious. (Fighting a demigod along with two allies, she was still trounced, but he had no knowledge of her oath; later, when she comes to admire him as a person, she comes to him at night.) Similarly, she can love anyone she chooses, but cannot be physically intimate with the man. It is not just a gift, but a test of Sonja's own willpower in staying true to her quest at the expense of a permanent home, family and love—one story outright said that Sonja was free to give up her skills any time she wanted, should she find a worthy man she wished to spend her life with who was not capable of besting her in battle.
- Of course, she could duck the whole thing by running off with Conan, who is openly attracted to her and whom they both know is capable of besting her.
- Conan has bested her at least once, and was expecting to bed her. She told him "I don't have to enjoy it", which convinced him to give up the attempt.
- Of course, she could duck the whole thing by running off with Conan, who is openly attracted to her and whom they both know is capable of besting her.
- Like many fantasy tropes, Phil Foglio used a similar plot in one of his XXXenophile stories. A sex-starved but battle-hungry woman is cursed by the gods (for some reason) to never be sexually satisfied until a man defeats her in battle. She assumes, because of this, that the first man to defeat her in battle will rape her afterwards. After all the men in the tavern stop coming because they're tired of being constantly beaten by her, the only man left is a mild-mannered fellow who teaches her a chess-like game and subsequently beats her at it. The curse lifts instantly because, as they both find out, the name of the game translates literally as "battle". Happy consensual sex ensues.
- Indeed, the current Red Sonja series has shown the oath to be rather more nuanced. For example, she's in no way compelled to sleep with a man who defeats her—it's an option, but she doesn't have to submit if she finds him odious. (Fighting a demigod along with two allies, she was still trounced, but he had no knowledge of her oath; later, when she comes to admire him as a person, she comes to him at night.) Similarly, she can love anyone she chooses, but cannot be physically intimate with the man. It is not just a gift, but a test of Sonja's own willpower in staying true to her quest at the expense of a permanent home, family and love—one story outright said that Sonja was free to give up her skills any time she wanted, should she find a worthy man she wished to spend her life with who was not capable of besting her in battle.
- A strip of Brazilian comic Aline had the (horny) protagonist reporting to the police: "He raped me! With my consent!"
- In Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Wonder Woman and Superman have an ongoing relationship which Wonder Woman explains has its origin in an incident where Superman "Threw me to the ground and claimed me as his rightful prize!" Now, this is a very debatable example, since that phrase could mean any number of things such as rough sex or the possibility of them having to go through some trials to get to be together (as most readers have interpreted it), but it could also be interpreted as this.
- Judith Warner from the XIII series. In the volume The Jason Fly File, she reveals that she has been raped by Dwight Rigby at age 14. She ended up loving him nevertheless, considering him as a "real man". Rigby provided her financial support for her studies and a pharmacy after the rape.
Fairy Tales
- Appears in the Arabian Nights stories (particularly "The Tale of Prince Behram and the Princess Al-Datma").
- An old Italian precursor of "Sleeping Beauty", "Sun Moon and Talia", is a particularly depressing example of this where the King rapes the princess Talia while she sleeps. She falls in love with him, he has an affair with her and the story is resolved by him executing his jealous wife.
- That's the happy variation, for a given value of "happy". In another, she wakes up after giving birth, and when she realizes what was done to her, she's so enraged she eats the babies. Not sure just what sort of social commentary that one was trying to get across.
- Some early versions of "Snow White", if necrophilia can count as rape... or love...
- An early version of Sleeping Beauty has this. The Prince, upon seeing Beauty, so overcome by her beauty, rapes her. She wakes up nine months later when she gives birth to twins, and they all live Happily Ever After.
Fan Works
- The German fanfiction community Fanfiktion.de averts this. As stated in their guidelines for authors, Rape Is Love stories are not endorsed and get consequently blocked.
- The Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfic Shinji and Asuka starts pretty normally: the two are at home alone, she is berating him again... but for some miraculous reason, he finds the courage to stand up to her. She doesn't like it of course and compares Shinji to his father. Which turns out to be a HUGE mistake as Shinji snaps and rapes Asuka on the spot Of course it happened because Gendo drugged Shinji's LCL with testosterone and confidence-boosting drugs in order to try and hook him up with Rei but it backfired because the incident caused unforeseen side-effects (boosting Shinji's confidence and breaking Asuka's ego); even though Misato got suspicious and ordered a full physical examination, revealing their secret, soon they were still having sex. Until she suffered from Mind Rape-induced amnesia courtesy of Arael, anyway (which presented another problem: she thought she still was a virgin so Shinji had to resort to subterfuge--which hurt and pissed her off, naturally).
- What starts the events in The Ruffling of Fur and Feathers, though the rape only really happens once or twice....
- the Death Note fic Poison Apple by Robbin Rocks and Narroach; first Light rapes L, then L rapes Light for revenge, Light drugs L and they have drugged "making love". . . somehow.
- Flippy from theHappy Tree Friends rapes Flaky in most stories and fanart. Or kills her.
- Sasuke rapes Naruto in almost 80% of the yaoi fics in which they appear.
- Sierra from Total Drama World Tour will do this to Cody in a lot of fanfics (and probably to a lesser extent, she'll do this to the rest of the characters)
- Celebrian, full stop. No more need be said.
- Rape-obsessed author Akenaten has written a bunch of stories for different fandoms that all have the same plot: a young, innocent woman is repeatedly raped and brutalized by a man who loves her deeply in his own way; in the end, they get married and have kids.
- In the Axis Powers Hetalia fanfic "Let Me Be Your Savior", this is Lovino's (Romano) justification for his raping of Feliciano (Italy).
- Also occurs in many fics for love/hate pairings that focus on the "hate" part a little too intensely, especially for Russia/Lithuania or Turkey/Greece. One example of these lovely gems has Turkey tying up Greece and raping him because he loves him but believes that Greece will never love him back and hence that raping him is the best way to make sure that the one he loves never forgets him.
- There's more than one Japan/China fanwork where Japan is a rapist because he was madly in love with his older brother but couldn't confess it all those centuries before 1894 because it was incestuous. Hell, there's a doujinshi called "Midare Botan" where China realizes these feelings after being slashed across the back and raped while still bleeding and asks to have reconciliation sex when their bosses reconcile some years later.
- Not even pairings that are seen as "fluffier" get free of this. There's a Germany/Italy doujinshi in which Germany had raped North Italy during the last times of World War Two (presumably the Salo Republic days), but Italy not only forgave this, but similarly to Midare botan he asked for reconciliation sex when he snuck in to check on a captured Germany who was in the hands of the Allies after his defeat. And this is despite a very remorseful Germany's initial reluctance to go through sexual therapy.
- The horrific Tenchi Muyo! fanfic Kanashii no Imi has its main character, Jeff, want this to be seen with his victim. However, her final, defiant words not only prove him wrong, it also shows how the audience thinks of him: "I--hate...you."
- Beautifully subverted in the Fate/stay night/Sekirei crossover In Flight. When Musubi tries to convince Shirou to take any measure necessary to wing Tsukiumi—who is reluctant to accept an Ashikabi--Shirou isn't so impressed and compares the process—essentially a mating ritual to the alien species—to rape. He asks Musubi whether he would have approved of her being winged by someone she didn't want as an Ashikabi, and then turns to Homura and reminds him of his own reluctance to be winged by Shirou. Both become suitably uncomfortable at this. Incidentally, it is Shirou's willingness to let her choose whether she wants to be winged that convinces Tsukiumi to let herself be winged (particularly since the story establishes her as Agoraphobic—fearful of sexual assault).
- In a Pokémon fanfiction named Captured, a 17 year old teenager named Ike is caught in a unwanted harem of female Pokémon who rape him. The harem consists of a Mightyena, a Ninetails, a Zangoose and a Lucario who were all outcasts from their clans for one reason or another and in their mating season felt lonely and found Ike wandering in the woods near his home town and captured him to make him their collective mate. The dynamic mentioned in the story is that Lucario is the dominant female. In Lucario's mind she finds Ike's refusal of her love as insulting, all she wanted was a mate but Ike simply views this as a deep-rooted psychological desire on her part to have someone who she can control. Eventually Ike befriends the Zangoose and out of regret for her earlier actions helps him escape the other Pokemon and get back home where his life finally returns to normal.
- In The Girl Who Lived series, the druid community has a ceremony for when the women come of age, which involves them performing a complicated sex ceremony with their boyfriends while said boyfriends are put under a mind-altering spell that halts their sentience temporarily. It only narrowly squeaks past this trope because the guys agree to it ahead of time, but it's still very squicky.
- In Naruto Veangance Revelaitons, Ronan essentially commits many rapes of a few different kinds, whether statutory rape (Sakura is presumably as young as she is in canon), the Dude, She's Like, in a Coma variety, and even straight-up raping a conscious and unwilling woman. The author seems to believe in this trope and "It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It", though, and the female characters do, as well.
- Nine times out of ten, any fanfiction of Kingdom Hearts involving Kairi getting raped usually ends with her falling in love with the guy who raped her... such as Pete for instance.
- Subverted/Averted with the Sherlock fic A Reliable Man. (Chapter 1 can be found here.) Mycroft is disturbing, but still sympathetic particularly when he realizes the effect that his threats have on Lestrade.
- Zig-zagged in Troop of Beasts [dead link]. While some of the girls and women Kakarot rapes (Colonel Violet, Hasky, Chi-Chi, etc.) fall in love with him before long, others (notably Bulma) don't.
Film
- The James Bond movies Goldfinger and Live and Let Die contained scenes in which Bond forces himself on the heroine, and his action is "justified" by her falling in love with him.
- The novel Goldfinger averts this, since Bond does not rely on Pussy's aid to foil Goldfinger. At the end the former lesbian crime boss succumbs to Bond's charms, saying "I never met a man before...I come from the South. You know the definition of a virgin down there? Well, it's a girl who can run faster than her brother. In my case I couldn't run as fast as my uncle. I was twelve."
- Also pretty disturbing is Thunderball, where he blackmails a health clinic employee into having sex with him after he's nearly killed when she doesn't check up on him frequently enough. She doesn't seem too put out over it, which apparently makes it okay.
- In Gone with the Wind, Scarlett and Rhett's unbelievably tumultuous relationship has reached a point where, after the birth of her first child and continuing to pine after the unattainable Ashley (who she "only thinks she loves"), she tells Rhett that she no longer wants to have sex with him. Some time later, after one of their vicious rows the drunken Rhett picks Scarlett up and carries her upstairs to the bedroom, declaring that she won't turn him away this time. Cut to Scarlett waking up (alone) in bed the next morning, looking extremely happy, indicating that she thoroughly enjoyed the experience, although Rhett soon comes in and makes an apology for his behaviour, partly blaming it on drink.
- Played quite disturbingly in Straw Dogs. As in many cases, the viewer respects the "victim" a lot less, but here, it appears quite intentional.
- Rutger Hauer's and Jennifer Jason Leigh's characters in Flesh and Blood. Here, at least, she doesn't seem to suffer this with any of her other rapists.
- Young Frankenstein features a comedic version of this with The Monster and Elizabeth. Borderline: Elizabeth is pleasantly impressed when she gets her first sight of The Monster's "very large shvanstocke"; however, the Monster doesn't seem particularly interested in her consent, and she continues to protest right up until the moment of, er, union.
Elizabeth: (singing) Oh, sweet mystery of life, at least I've found you! |
- Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann uses this with the 'going back in time to become your own grandfather' plot. The "grandmother" rapes her "grandson" at gun-point and they develop a relationship.
- In Revenge of the Nerds, Louis dons an identical Darth Vader costume as one of his Jerk Jock rivals and proceeds to have sex with the jock's girlfriend. As she's post-coitally gushing about her "boyfriend's" performance, Louis unmasks himself... On top of her. She expresses dismay at his deception, for about five seconds, before openly marveling that "a nerd" could be that good in bed, and spends the rest of the movie in heat for him. They end up married in subsequent sequels. Played for laughs, but Fridge Logic quickly turns it into Dude, Not Funny.
- Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur tries to invoke Black Comedy Rape, even though no rape actually takes place. The main character has been framed for murder, and is fleeing from the law. A woman has found out his identity, and tries to turn him in to the police, so he is forced to kidnap her. At one point, their car breaks down, and while he fiddles with the engine, another car is seen approaching them. He manages to fix the engine in time to drag her screaming into the car and drive off just as the other car stops to see what's going on. The other drivers are revealed to be an old married couple, and the wife (having witnessed a woman screaming for help and forced into a car) remarks, "They must be terribly in love." Somewhat of a Values Dissonance for modern audiences.
- Actually, a joke generally lost on modern audiences, because the woman in the car who makes the comment is Dorothy Parker, making a cameo appearance. She was famous for writing short stories, in many of which, people fail spectacularly when trying to demonstrate love, or by misperceiving some gesture by another person as indicating love.
- Not to mention the fact that Parker's own love life was a spectacular mess, and the public was generally aware of it. She was very jaded with regard to romantic love fairly early in life, and it showed in her writing.
- Lust, Caution: The heroine is supposed to become the mistress of the Big Bad in order to draw him into a trap. He rapes her, but she ends up falling in love with him anyway.
- Lara in Doctor Zhivago, though she ends up changing her mind and shooting her rapist.
- In the original book the movie was based on, she isn't even raped in the first place. She shoots the guy because she's in desperate need for money and wants to blackmail him.
- One of the many interpretations of the pitch-black David Lynch film Blue Velvet: most critics agree that, in his own depraved way, the sadistic gangster/rapist Frank is in love with Dorothy, but debate whether she feels the same way. Dennis Hopper hilariously, and disturbingly, lampshades the twisted dynamics of their relationship in a Cluster F-Bomb answer to an interviewer asking why he took the villainous role:
- In Beowulf & Grendel, the witch Sarah Poley is raped by the troll. Apparently that's what trolls usually do to witches since she then tries to protect him and their child again the arrogant Geatish hero (nothing unexpected, by the way) who wants to kill him.
- Played for laughs in Monty Python's Life of Brian, when the protagonist confronts his mother on discovering he exists because she was raped by a Roman. Her response? "Well, at first..."
- The "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife" story in the 2007 comedy The Ten does this with Prison Rape.
- Subverted a little in Guys and Dolls. At the end of their adversarial first meeting, Sky Masterson forcibly kisses Sergeant Sarah Brown, who then walks up to him with a dreamy smile on her face. Then she slaps him.
- Serves as the entire basis for the rest of the movie in the 1976 Western From Noon Till Three. A gang of outlaws attempt to rob a ranch owned by a young widow, but the leader of the group ends up falling in "love" with the widow, manages to convince his gang to let him stay alone at the ranch for three hours, and finally tries to force himself on the widow. She retaliates with a gun, which he is able to wrestle away from her. Meanwhile, the town reverend comes to the door, and the outlaw threatens to shoot the widow if she tries to escape. After sending away the reverend, she eventually decides that it would be better if she just took off her clothes and got it over with, but as if that wasn't enough, the outlaw then pushes her away and feigns depression caused by impotence to get her sympathy. It works, and they make love multiple times. (For those following along at home, that's physically violent rape combined with threats of further violence, disturbingly excessive submission, and finally topped off with psychological manipulation.) And the rest of the movie centres around how strong their love is.
- In Non ti muovere (Don't Move), Timoteo randomly and seemingly out-of-characterishly rapes Italia, and then comes back a few days later and apologizes, and they embark on a love affair. The rape is never mentioned again. Oh, and he's married.
- Sixteen Candles: Ted has sex with Caroline while she's incoherently drunk (and he's not). She wakes up the next morning admitting that she enjoyed it and that she's developing feelings for Ted. Of course here you get into the debate as to exactly how much drunkenness invalidates consent.
- In the Clint Eastwood movie High Plains Drifter, a woman insults and slaps him, so he drags her into a barn and rapes her. She screams in protest initially, but about halfway through her demeanor changes and she gives every appearance of enjoying it.
- The Russian adaptation of And Then There Were None, depending on your interpretation. Lombard rapes Vera, who still hangs around with him afterwards, albeit partially out of desperation. However, she does kill him in the end, and it's unclear whether or not she's wanted to since he forced himself on her and was just waiting for an opportunity.
- Marianna Ucria's uncle. He claimed he raped her when he was 9 out of love.
- In Wedding Crashers Jeremy is raped by Gloria. He later falls in love with her and marries her.
Literature
- Though seduction plays its part, is it cruelly subverted in Tess of D'Urbervilles. Sadly, the rapist, Alec, is the only one who can make Tess's and her family's life financially better.
- Played straight AND played for laughs in Piers Anthony's "Bio of a Space Tyrant." When Hope Hubris is carrying out his anti-piracy crusade during the course of his military career in the second book, he eventaully elects to cut a deal with one of the "nicer" pirate clans, responsible for gambling and boozing and other "victimless" crimes, but not human trafficking and spaceship hijacking. The pirate clan leader requires that Hubris marry his daughter to seal the deal. The catch? Space pirate marital ceremonies consist of the groom breaking onto the bride's ship, fighting his way to the girl's chamber, kidnapping her onto his own vessel, and then raping her into submission. Of course, since marriages are usually arranged beforehand the ship's corridors are conveniently empty... but since the bride expects to have a "real man" for a husband, she's given a knife for protection. By the time it's over Hubris has done the deed—and he's the one who needs medical attention, not her. What makes it even more hilarious is that the culture turns the women into masochists; he finds it nigh impossible to convince his new wife to consent to gentle lovemaking. And when Hubris is finally court martialed by corrupt admirals to punish him for destroying the pirate clans that had been paying them bribes, the prosecutor is stunned when Hubris' pirate bride mentions the marital rape. "He raped you?" Her contemptuous response, "like you wouldn't if you had the chance!"
- Kathleen E. Woodiwiss' acclaimed historical romance The Flame and the Flower is quite well-written but has an exceptionally disturbing rape-to-love conversion. The heroine stabs a man who is attempting to rape her and flees, believing she has killed him. The so-called "hero" has men wandering the streets looking for a prostitute to bring to him, and when they see her on the streets they grab her. She goes with them thinking they are police. The hero rapes her, dismissing her resistance as "mere coyness". She escapes and goes back to her abusive aunt, only to find out that she is pregnant. Her aunt forces her to wed her rapist... whom she eventually falls in love with, and bears the child, and they all live happily ever after. However, he never apologizes for the rape, and the novel leaves the reader with a distinct impression that because she was out on the street alone, she deserved it. Even for a novel set in the early 1800s, this seems excessively misogynistic and left a bad taste in many readers' mouths.
- In Margery Allingham's 1930s Albert Campion murder mystery The Fashion in Shrouds, one character is depressed over losing her love to a rival. Her brother recommends "a nice rape" to make her feel better.
- In V. C. Andrews' Flowers in the Attic, Chris commits Brother-Sister Incest with Cathy against her will, but Cathy later says if she really didn't want it she would have pushed him off.
- Reversal in the Mode series from Piers Anthony. The protagonist couple finally get married, but after having been raped in her past, the female lead finds herself psychologically unable to submit to sexual intercourse, even in a consensual relationship. She offers to let the male rape her to consummate their marriage. He declines.
- Averted massively in Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor: Sergeant Bothari, during a period of severe mental illness, is forced to participate in his commanding officer's rape and torture of a female POW. After she goes into a catatonic state he keeps her in his own quarters for several days, playing out a fantasy relationship with her; the experience leaves her pregnant and nearly destroyed by the mental trauma, and when they meet him again nineteen years later in The Warrior's Apprentice she promptly shoots him dead. Bothari, by this point much saner, seems to regard it as cosmic justice.
- Played with in Barrayar, too. Koudelka and Drou have an unplanned, er, encounter, on the couch; Kou then takes to avoiding Drou. When finally confronted, he miserably apologizes for raping her. She is offended both by the implication that she couldn't have fought him off—Drou being the Empress's personal bodyguard, after all—and by the realization that Kou was so caught up in his own actions he didn't even notice Drou was participating (though perhaps being cold-shouldered after the fact confused him—he didn't realize she was worried about pregnancy). She didn't enjoy the sex much, since it was her first time and neither of them were much good at it, but she absolutely wanted to be there. They eventually get things straightened out, and go on to marry, have four daughters, and live happily ever after.
- Inverted in Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy series. Phedre, the main character, is a high class masochist-courtesan, whose patron god has ordained that she be "pleased" by her own suffering, physical or mental. When she's raped by Melisande and sold into slavery to the Skaldi in the first book, and made the prisoner of a mad king in the third, she's repeatedly coerced into sex, and her body can't help but enjoy it, even as her mind is emotionally traumatized. However, Phedre's never in danger of fully falling in love with her rapists, and gets back at all of them. Using her spying and planning skills, she foils the Skaldi invasion of her home country, gets Melisande banished from the realm, and assassinates the mad king with a hairpin. All of her former rapists suffer because they mistake a physical weakness on her part for mental submission.
- Played for Squick, or at least tragedy, in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. After Lena is raped, the trauma of the experience leaves her no longer entirely sane, and she imagines herself as having been in a romantic relationship with her rapist.
- In Ken Follet's World Without End, Ralph Fitzgerald thinks that, if he rapes Annet, she will love him. Ralph, there was a reason you were called stupid behind your back. He would have been executed, if it were not for the king. Ralph makes many crossings of the Moral Event Horizon.
- In Paul Gallico's The Poseidon Adventure, Susan is searching for her brother alone in a darkened corridor, when she is brutally raped by a panicking teenage crewman, afraid to die a virgin. Not only does Susan grow to like the boy after a brief conversation, she mourns his death and hopes that she's pregnant with his child so that he'll leave a legacy.
- Variation in Jim Grimsley's Dream Boy. The rape of one of the main characters by a third party somehow causes he and his boyfriend to become closer and solve all their relationship problems. Possibly Rape as Redemption.
- In Robert A. Heinlein's novel Friday, the titular heroine eventually ends up with one of the men who raped her in the beginning of the book as part of an interrogation. This is partially justified, as (a) said rapist
was only following orders,and is willing to fall on his sword to beg forgiveness when they meet again, (b) the rape scene was meant to show that Friday herself was The Stoic, even in that situation (she's mostly annoyed while she plans to exploit Rape Is Love to her advantage), (c) as a covert agent, rape was considered a routine part of capture and interrogation so he was doing what his role demanded, (d) this specific rapist also allowed her to go to the bathroom, a kindness Friday doesn't forget and counts in the guy's favor; and (e) the real reason for the rape scene is to show how Friday (an Artificial Human) has been indoctrinated to think of herself as not human after her dehumanizing childhood. In any case, readers may still find the pairing fairly cringe-worthy.** It is made explicit throughout the novel that Friday, and indeed all Artificial Persons (genetically engineered human beings) are raised to be "indentured" (read "slaves"), with "doxy" (read "sex slave") training being part of basic schooling, and had extremely permissive and casual attitudes about all sex. As a result, since both she and her rapist were Artificial Persons (APs), not only does Friday consider being forced into sex to be pretty much a non-issue, but both undoubtedly had been in the position of being ordered to have sex in their training with other APs, and "willingness" was never an issue, while they were growing up. This makes even more sense when you realize how stupid it would be to make a sex slave who was superhumanly strong, fast, and objected to rape.- She actually did threaten to castrate Pete with her bare hands when she first met him again... until she found he was also an Artificial Person, at which point she immediately empathized with him. Apparently their common origin and sex-slave training had Friday realizing that she couldn't really hate him without also in a way hating herself... when her Character Development over most of the book is that she's slowly been learning not to do that.
- Pete explains very specifically that his rape of Friday was not a matter of "only following orders"; he raped her, he explains, "because I wanted to. Because you are so sexy you could corrupt a Stylite. Or cause Venus to switch to Lesbos." This is, if not Rape Is Love, at least rape as compliment.
- Neone Delft and Carl Worniti's short-lived affair is a subversion of both this and Platonic Prostitution. She really didn't want to give herself to anyone before her wedding day, but settled for Carl's advances both because he paid and because the alternative was just not gonna happen. When Pentacko decides to reward Carl and Neone's loyalty to each other with pumping him with lead, this embitters Neone to the point of being slow to Marlack's advances. But, when she realizes that Marlack only wanted to be the same kind of gentleman to her that Carl was (and was about to be killed by the same band of thugs!,) she immediately leaps into danger to attempt a rescue.
- After Marsty renounces Astrabolo, and he is found severely wounded and betrayed, Verdegal refuses to let anyone keep him in jail for having raped her a long time ago. More of a roundabout; as the rape didn't lead to love. It was the fact that he was browbeaten into service to Astrabolo that led to Verdegal pitying him, which lead to love.
- Rather depressing for Philidrio to see them together though, seeing that it was his former dream girl (with whom the sex was consensual, and the one who funded his "life"-saving mechanization) that was leaving him for a former rapist. But he realizes it'd be impractical for her to stay his.
- After Marsty renounces Astrabolo, and he is found severely wounded and betrayed, Verdegal refuses to let anyone keep him in jail for having raped her a long time ago. More of a roundabout; as the rape didn't lead to love. It was the fact that he was browbeaten into service to Astrabolo that led to Verdegal pitying him, which lead to love.
- Edith Maude Hull's The Sheik, which might as well be called Values Dissonance: The Novel. Strong, independent female protagonist is kidnapped by a (ridiculously stereotyped) Arab sheik and raped pretty much daily for a month or so. She finally tries to escape because she quite rightly loathes him, but no sooner does he catch her again than she realizes she's completely in love with him and is willing to efface herself utterly to make him happy. Eventually he realizes he loves her too, which...really doesn't excuse the rest of it.
- The Ira Levin novel This Perfect Day has a very disturbing scene where, after kidnapping her to rescue her from the drug-addled conformity of The Family, Chip rapes Lilac. This is the event that finally awakens her to her true humanity, and the two are soon a couple and get married shortly thereafter.
- Anne McCaffrey examples:
- One of the more controversial moments in the Dragonriders of Pern series occurs in Dragonquest, with F'nor forcing himself on Brekke. Justified (allegedly) as "for her own good and the good of her dragon" (her queen dragon was due for her first mating flight, and Brekke's inhibitions could make for a poor flight and subsequently a clutch of eggs small in size and number) and Brekke comes to enjoy it in the end. But the fact that Brekke explicitly panics and fights F'nor once she figures out what his intentions are left a sour taste in many readers' mouths. The scene is... complicated, and a full examination is far beyond the scope of this article.
- Even earlier in the Series, F'lar's first sexual encounter with Lessa is, if not rape, not far short of it. Yet they wind up married and aparently in love. This is part of that series convention that if two dragons bonded with humans mate, the humans will have mindless sex as well. This convention almost seems designed to justify 'Victim Falls For Rapist' scenes. A particular example is Sebell and Menolly. They are already in love, or at least drifting into love, but their fire-lizards' mating makes their first time undesired rough sex.
- These are really a case of Long Runner induced Values Dissonance. Dragonquest came out in the early 70's. Bodice rippers were all the rage in romance novels. Adding in a romance plot in those days pretty much meant some form of this trope. Later titles really generally shy away from this territory because the series is still technically ongoing some 40 years later.
- The trope even gets averted later on in the series. In The Skies of Pern, F'lessan is appalled to discover that Tia's first experience with a mating flight was basically forced upon her.
- In Freedom's Landing, the heroine, Kris, helps shanghaied Catteni nobleman Zainal (temporarily) escape their mutual captors. Zainal tries to repay her help... by attempting to throw her down and have his way with her. And he's honestly baffled as to why she's not thrilled about it. It's suggested, but never really followed up on, that the Catteni view non-procreative sex as a token of favor a male gives a female. Then again, one of the nastier recurring themes in the series is that many of the women in Kris's makeshift colony were coping with rape trauma after encounters with other Catteni. It's highly doubtful all of them looked to "honor" the women.
- In an introduction Anne McCaffrey stated the initial short story was an unsuccessful attempt to cash in on the porn market. She then had a choice of leaving this in the drawer and coming up with some new ideas, or expanding on the short story.
- One of the more controversial moments in the Dragonriders of Pern series occurs in Dragonquest, with F'nor forcing himself on Brekke. Justified (allegedly) as "for her own good and the good of her dragon" (her queen dragon was due for her first mating flight, and Brekke's inhibitions could make for a poor flight and subsequently a clutch of eggs small in size and number) and Brekke comes to enjoy it in the end. But the fact that Brekke explicitly panics and fights F'nor once she figures out what his intentions are left a sour taste in many readers' mouths. The scene is... complicated, and a full examination is far beyond the scope of this article.
- In The Tale of Genji, nearly every single sexual encounter Genji has (and that's a hell of a lot) plays out like this. When Utsusemi refused to let him near her a second time, he settled for her brother.
- Sometimes appears abruptly in otherwise innocuous pre-feminist-era romance novels, ratcheting up the Squick factor by about x10000. A typical example by Victoria Holt: the "hero" abducts the heroine when he learns she's about to marry another man, and repeatedly rapes her over three days in order to spoil her for marriage for anyone else. Another example from the same author features the reluctant heroine deliberately trapped in a bedroom by the hero; when she beats out a window trying to escape, the hero is to his credit shocked to his senses, but she's left feeling all confused, since part of her wishes she'd just gone along...
- Similarly, at least one Catherine Cookson novel involves a rich young rake carelessly raping a poor young girl, who from no fault of her own has a reputation as the town tramp. She then bears his child, which she is forced to give up to him. She is eventually married to a kindly local miller... but the story downplays his selflessness in favour of an ending wherein he dies and the rake, far from being repentant, realizes he's loved her all along, and deigns to marry her. Yechhh.
- Come to that, the sheer volume of post-feminist "romance" novels that have fallen in love with this trope is... disturbing. See also: Jennifer Blake's The Storm and the Splendor. Shirlee Busbee's Gypsy Lady. At least one story called The Reluctant Bride...
- In The Storm and the Splendor the hero saves the heroine from attempted rape by the villain, marries her (more or less against her will) and then explicitly resists the urge to consummate the marriage until she is truly willing (at one point, after they've been kissing and she gets upset, he abruptly leaves the bed and stands at the window, to, uh, de-arouse himself). A better example is Royal Seduction which can only be characterized as a guilty pleasure—no matter how witty and poetic Prince Rolfe is, no matter how noble his quest to find his brother's murderer, no matter how devastatingly good-looking he is, there is no getting around the fact that he explicitly rapes Angeline! And does so repeatedly in the days to follow. Other Blake examples include Golden Fancy (Ward at least apologizes to Serena immediately afterward) and Embrace and Conquer (Morgan rapes Felicite after believing her to have conspired with her half-brother to ambush him). And as for other authors, Rosemary Rogers is notorious for this; her books in the '70s frequently have heroines who ask (half-fearfully/half-coquettishly) "Are you going to rape me?" Love Play, Sweet Savage Love... The worst example is The Insiders, a portrayal of '70s decadence at its worst—Eve ends up marrying Brant, the gajillionaire who earlier had orchestrated her gang rape. Eve is also the victim of date-rape in anal form. Both Blake and Rogers are terrific writers whose books are certainly products of their times...
- Used more as "love is rape" in Diane Pearson's Summer of the Barshinskeys, in which Ivan Barshinskey rapes the protagonist in anger out of not being able to have her beautiful sister, but she goes along with it because she loves him. It seems that it would count as rape because he is not aware of her consent, as he later apologizes and she soothes him. They later become contentedly married.
- Ayn Rand is rather notorious for (amongst other things) her very "bodice-ripper" style sex scenes. In The Fountainhead, the first sex scene between Roark and Dominique Francon is arguably an instance of this trope being played straight (although a legitimate, if not necessarily correct, case can be made for the sex being dubiously or implicitly consensual given the rather obvious flirting between Roark and Dominique that occurred beforehand). Certainly to a modern reader that considers the no-means-yes-coy courtship game to be ridiculous, the scene can plausibly be read as Victim Falls For Rapist. In Atlas Shrugged on the other hand, this trope is averted, because although the sex scenes are clearly on the rough and violent side, they are all explicitly consensual. Arguably this is a subversion since most modern readers expect an Ayn Rand sex scene to be a Victim Falls For Rapist scenario.
- Used realistically in John Ringo's Council Wars series when the Big Bad kidnaps one of the heroines (along with a bunch of other women) for his harem. All are raped repeatedly until Stockholm Syndrome sets in, at which point the heroine is horrified to realize that she actually loves him, though that doesn't stop her from killing him in a particularly nasty and gruesome fashion. Unusual in that the victim is fully aware of what has happened to her and recognizes that she's undergone a form of brainwashing. A later book shows that all of her harem-mates also suffered severe psychological trauma from the experience.
- Played fairly straight in Frank Herberts Dune series. The novels include various characters who are manipulated or forced into sexual situations and then end up in love with their partner. Of particular note are clones (called gholas) who lack the memories of their clone-parent until they are awakened through extreme trauma or awesome Jedi ninja sex. Since it is easier to awaken a clone through sex than trauma, "surprise sex" becomes the method of choice.
- In the fifth book, Heretics of Dune, a sixteen year old Duncan Idaho ghola is raped by Murbella. Murbella and her Honored Matres sisters are so good at sex that they enslave men and planets they land on by having sex with them. Somehow, Duncan is so good at sex that he and Murbella become addicted to each other.. This also has tones of Shotacon and Double Standard Rape (Female on Male) since Duncan is sixteen and Murbellla is substantially older than he is and Duncan is not ever asked if he is okay after being raped.
- Subverted in the French science fiction juggernaut (11.500+ pages without counting the sequel and spinoffs) La Compagnie des Glaces (The Ice Company): The "Rail Pirate" Kurts and his crew rape the powerful Corrupt Corporate European Femme Fatale Floa Sadon, who acts as if she was enjoying it. The subversion comes from the fact that Kurts then falls in love with Floa, but she starts to love him only once their relationship becomes consensual and she has him wrapped around her little finger. Well, since they both are Magnificent Bastards, maybe they were meant to be together...
- Another example comes from the fact that the protagonist, Lien Rag, is captured by a repulsive female mob leader who wants to have a child by him (she enjoys being pregnant, and Lien is supposed to have some specific genetic material that the mob leader would like to "implement" into her offspring). The mob leader then uses her younger and much better-looking daughter to make Lien "ready" and switch with her at the last minute. Lien Rag does not fall in love with the mob leader, but when it comes to her daughter, the fact that she was the accomplice in his rape does not bother him... or her, for that matter.
- Subverted in Atonement -- Lola marries Paul due to societal pressure, and can't bear to admit that he raped her.
- In The Illuminatus! Trilogy, this trope, specifically in Ayn Rand's work, is satirized (among other things) via the Fictional Document Telemachus Sneezed.
- Subverted in The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub. The villain Serial Killer, Dick Dart, narcissistically claims that all sex is rape, since when he does it with women, he completely owns them. It initially seems that the heroine, Nora, does develop Stockholm Syndrome with him, and genuinely starts liking him more than the other men in the book. Until later on, where she rebels and tries to kill him after he tries to force her to be his accomplice in killing a bunch of old ladies.
- Popped up in a Christian romance series, specifically in Marylu Tyndall's The Redemption. A main character is raped by the dashing, amoral young captain of a pirate ship, escapes, has his baby, and eventually decides that he's a Draco in Leather Pants. Note that, in previous books, he also kidnapped a woman (twice) and caused her to miscarry.
- He doesn't actually rape her, but Jacob forces himself on Bella in Eclipse. It's the forced kiss which makes Bella realize she loves him.
- In S.L. Viehl's novel StarDoc, the protagonist, a female doctor, enters an isolation chamber with someone who is a possible carrier of a plague in order to prove it's not airborne. This someone happens to be the irritating but handsome male linguist. He sexually assaults her, and she, to her own disgust, begins to enjoy it. It later turns out that the "plague" is actually sentient, and was in control of him at the time and actively trying to infect her, so her forgiveness of him is somewhat understandable. What's not so understandable is that there's obvious unresolved sexual tension between them by the second book, and they eventually fall in love.
- There are two cases in later books which could also be constituted as forced intercourse. The second time they have sex is when he is disguised as an alien. She only finds out it's him the next morning. Later on, after they're married, he throws her on the floor of a cave and orders her to do him right then and there in order to prove her love. Having a rough childhood does not justify this sort of behavior towards a loved one.
- What the "plague" wants to do is kill Cherijo, as she is immune to it (i.e. her advanced immune system kills any foreign body). The guy convinces it to let him try to infect her in a "different way". Somehow, she forgives him and doesn't mention the incident in later books.
- Wynette Hoffman's satirical pulp adventure Love & Benjamins features a protagonist who's a sociopathic KGB agent. Traumatized and betrayed by various women, he rapes his way through life until he encounters a brilliant virgin who's used as bait to attract him. He rapes her, she 'likes' it, he likes it, and they both realize how intensely (and literally) fucked up they've become. The novel weaves through several other dysfunctional and outright horrifying partnerships, too. The major redeeming force is that both the author and her characters realize and admit that things are wildly out of control... and, to quote both, "un-PC."
- In Bertolt Brecht's novelization of The Threepenny Opera, Polly Peachum is raped, but starts enjoying it almost right away. It's commentary, though, on how some people's overly lustful nature can lead to decadence and consequently a lack of understanding of the capitalist system. And on how capitalism is basically rape already, because workers in the two class system of early 1900's England had to use their body as their tool because the industrialisation had taken the traditional workplace tools and guild system from the common man.
- Subverted HARD in Richelle Mead's Dark Swan series, particularly the second novel, Thorn Queen--Eugenie is captured and drugged so that Leith, previously thought to be a Dogged Nice Guy, can force himself on her and try to impregnate her. Leith genuinely believes that he's doing it out of love, and is bewildered when Eugenie has finally escaped and is confronting him about it at gunpoint, believing that what he did "wasn't rape." So, it's ultimately incredibly satisfying when Dorian introduces him to the pointy end of his sword.
- The entire plot of the Anita Blake series seems to revolve around this. The ardeur forces her, previously a Chaste Hero to have sex with people—nonconsensual on both sides more frequently than not—and afterwards usually they're somehow in love and fanatically loyal to her. Not helped by the fact that in later books (when the ardeur is introduced) she's a Canon Sue. Not to mention in the first appearance of the ardeur, Micah finds Anita in the shower and, despite Anita repeatedly saying NO, has sex with her. From that point on apparently he's the most perfect giving forgiving partner ever, and they love each other.
- Toyed with by Roald Dahl in the short story Bitch. A woman casually consents to being 'raped' for a scientific experiment, but it's much more forceful than she expected it would be. She loves it so much she ends up stealing the experiment's components.
- In Peter Benchley's novel Jaws Brody's wife admits to having had rape fantasies in which she finds it horrible at first but really likes it "once she's...you know...into it."
- The flashback to Sedric's first encounter with Hest in Robin Hobb's Dragon Keeper is this. Hest manhandles him and kisses him roughly enough to make his lips bleed, then says that he can tell Sedric wants this and the sooner he admits that the easier it will be. Sedric stops struggling, and over the next few weeks Hest completely takes over his life. Sedric views this as a good thing, and many years later is still hopelessly in love with him.
- In Victor Pelevin's The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, Alexander Sery goes berserk and rapes A Hu-Li after her attempt to hypnotize him goes awry. This causes them to realize they're both werecreatures, and they start a relationship soon after. It doesn't last.
- The late 70's/early 80's spawned a new genre of historical romance novels which became known as 'bodice rippers'. Invariably, this was the entire plot of all of them. Our hapless heroine was raped by the hero—sometimes as the result of a 'misunderstanding' (he mistakenly thought she was a prostitute was a common excuse) but enjoyed the experience so much that she eventually fell in love with him and they rode happily into the sunset by the end of the book.
- In the novel of Mildred Pierce, Mildred and Monty are having one of their furious fights, and as they sit there fuming, he says "Damn it, what this needs is the crime of rape!" He then attempts to take her to bed and yank her clothes off, but she gets away. Several of their romantic encounters are kind of questionably ambiguous, but that is the most 'WTF' example.
- Played with in Nabakov's Lolita. Humbert believes that his relationship with Lolita is love, even though Lolita herself refers to it as rape, as does Humbert himself at the end of the book. Even ignoring how she is well below the legal age of consent in their state (twelve years old), given how she believed that he killed her mother and how terrified he was after that first night together, when she found out he drugged her, the relationship was not consensual in any way. Even at seventeen, she also has more confused and loving opinions about the man who molested her (and most likely groomed her so she'd behave like a Fille Fatale) when she was ten, and the older children (a boy and a girl) who raped her at her summer camp.
- In the wildling culture from A Song of Ice and Fire, you marry a woman by abducting and/or raping her, making it a case of Rape is Marriage.
- Unusually for the trope, the wildling women themselves find any man who can't overpower them to be weak, and unworthy of being their husband. Jon Snow finds this to be an epic case of Values Dissonance.
- Also, a song in Westeros, The Bear and the Maiden Fair, seems to be a thinly veiled reference to this.
- Dr. Mark Ahriman of False Memory has a bizarre variant of this. While he mind rapes some of his patients so he can literally rape them, he's genuinely fond of them, in his sick way. Mostly he doesn't let them remember what he does to them, but one of the protagonists in particular catches his fancy, and he's "delighted at the prospect of falling in love or in something like it". Fortunately for her, she breaks his mental hold not long before another patient shoots him for entirely unrelated reasons.
- In Peter Watts' sci-fi novel Starfish, there's a character who's a psychotic pedophile; when he's arrested and put through therapy, he claims he gropes and rapes children because "that's what you do when you love someone." The psychiatrist tells him he's heard that dozens of times from rapists, but "you're the only one I've seen who might actually believe it."
- The third book of The Cross Time Engineer series, The Radiant Warrior, has Piotr, who has been in love with Krystyana for most of his life; she pointedly does not return his feelings, and only seems to be interested in the hero of the series. He resolves this problem by becoming a knight, which in this series means that he has the absolute right to have sex with any unmarried lowborn woman, and promptly carries her off and rapes her, ignoring her pleas and protests, with a cheering crowd outside the bedroom door. But not to worry; the sex was apparently awesome, and in the morning Krystyana is all smiles and ready to get married.
- Similar to the Eclipse example, the book Hush, Hush has the love interest, Patch, repeatedly corner Nora, put his hands all over her, and kiss her, while she outright tells him to back up and give her room and that she doesn't feel safe with him (this goes to the point where she considers pulling a fire alarm to escape from him). He also metaphorically rapes her by planting fake images in her head and temporarily taking possession of her body, which she describes as being both involuntary and very frightening. In spite of all of this, Nora ends up deciding that Patch is the greatest guy ever and ends up happily dating him.
- It's also worth noting that Nora and Patch officially hook up after he ignores her protests, tricks her into staying in a single-bed motel room with him, throws her on the bed and against the wall, and kisses her.
- The narrator of Chris Lynch's Inexcusable fully believes in this trope, but he has a habit of unintentionally undermining his own arguments. This is entirely deliberate on Lynch's part.
- In Megan Barker's Black-Eyed Susan, a horribly drunk Roderick Brandon mistakes the title character for the streetwalker with whom he had been...attempting to negotiate. He rapes and impregnates her; furthermore, while pawing at her face, he claws her left eye severely enough that she loses the use of it. Later�not remembering the incident clearly�he falls in love with her. She, on the other hand, remembers every moment of it (and, more to the point, him) all too clearly, and hates his guts for it�at least, until he gives his own life to save hers at the end of the book.
- The Gor novels by John Norman. There are examples in all the books of the series, usually many examples apiece.
Live-Action TV
- Soulless vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer often have a tendency to see rape and torture by their mates as a playfully kinky sign of affection. This is epitomized by Spike and Drusilla's relationship; when they break up at one point, Spike mopes and worries about how to win her back, before cheerfully realizing that he just needs to step up, take charge and "torture her until she likes me again".
- Subverted and toyed with to the breaking point by Spike's later relationship with Buffy. Both inflict rape-like behavior on one another until Spike actually tries to rape Buffy in her house—at which point, both realize that, even for them, lines have been crossed. (They still love one another, though. Maybe. He has a soul now, so it blurs things a little)
- Relating to the Spike/Buffy example, it is interesting to point out that Spike tried to rape Buffy in an attempt to "use this very trope." He even said it outright to Buffy: He's going to force himself on her so she'll see she does loves him.
- To go with the Spike/Dru example, don't forget the Dru/Angelus- Angelus raped, tortured, killed her family, drove her insane and then turned her, and yet Dru completely loves her 'daddy'.
- Relating to the Spike/Buffy example, it is interesting to point out that Spike tried to rape Buffy in an attempt to "use this very trope." He even said it outright to Buffy: He's going to force himself on her so she'll see she does loves him.
- Subverted and toyed with to the breaking point by Spike's later relationship with Buffy. Both inflict rape-like behavior on one another until Spike actually tries to rape Buffy in her house—at which point, both realize that, even for them, lines have been crossed. (They still love one another, though. Maybe. He has a soul now, so it blurs things a little)
- Done with disturbing frequency on soaps:
- Luke and Laura of General Hospital. Despite Luke's rape of Laura while drunk, the two fell in love and eventually got married. Critics weren't too pleased with the Unfortunate Implications, but fans ate it up.
- Subverted years later when the show FINALLY dealt with the issue by having their teen-aged son Lucky find about the incident. Lucky was furious and disgusted with BOTH parents—calling his father a monster and coldly insinuating to his own mother that she had sick sexual fetishes. (It didn't help that one of his best friends had recently been raped, in a storyline that had shown the trauma in a realistic manner.) His separate confrontations with both parents was an acting tour-de-force for the young actor, Jonathan Jackson. (This being a soap opera, the subversion might itself have been subverted many times over since then—this trouper stopped watching shortly afterward.)
- At the time the original plan of the writers was for Luke to die in atonement for his crime. Then the character got too popular to kill off and the the rape was retroactively defined a seduction.
- A similar reaction happened in The Eighties with Venezuelan Soap Opera Leonela, whose titular protagonist fell in love with the man who raped her (although, to be fair, the man was in prison for many years and redeemed himself before even trying to have a second encounter with the heroine). The soap was so popular that it got a Peruvian remake fifteen years later, firing up the controversy again.
- A similar but more ambiguous example occurred on Days of Our Lives, when E.J. Wells agreed to save the life of Sami Brady's boyfriend in exchange for sex. While Sami insists that he raped her, there has been much sexual tension between the two since, and they eventually got married, albeit out of convenience.
- Another Days of Our Lives example, much much earlier. Bill Horton raped Laura Horton, his brother Mickey's wife. She confided in their father, and they agreed it was best to keep it a secret. She became pregnant from the rape and passed the child off as her husband's, but eventually the true paternity was revealed. She ended up divorced from Mickey and married to Bill.
- Deconstructed in the late eighties when Jack forced himself on his wife Kayla, who married him only because he was dying and her actual boyfriend (Jack's long lost brother) pushed her to marry him so that he could be happy in his final days. Of course, Jack survived his illness and his crazy-ass father was secretly trying to kill Kayla (forcing her to spend more time with Jack's brother in order to protect her). For a long time, Jack justified his rape as saying that as Kayla's legal husband, that he had a right to force himself upon her. A defense he used to successfully avoid jail time when Kayla filed charges against him. Cut to a few years later and Jack (now a good guy after falling in love with the spunky Purity Sue Jennifer Horton), finds out that Jennifer ended up marrying a crazy rich guy named Lawrence, while pretending to be his intended arranged marriage bride to be. Oh and that Lawrence, upon finding out that Jennifer is not the woman his parents intended him to marry right before the ceremony, went through with the wedding simply so that he could confront Jennifer after the wedding with the truth and violently rape her and then tells her that no judge in the world would convict him of rape since they were legally married when he assaulted him. Jennifer ultimately goes through a slow boil breakdown which culminated in her calling Jack a rapist to his face right before she confessed to him about what happened between her and Lawrence. For added humiliation and evil lulz, Jack is called as a witness by Lawrence's lawyer and forced to read from his previous spousal rape trial transcript in order to make Lawrence's case that he had every right to rape Jack's beloved. This leads to Jack's Crowning Moment of Awesome, where he yells at Lawrence that his claim is bullshit and FINALLY owns up to what he did to Kayla and admits that he raped her.
- The head writer of the soap One Life to Live originally planned on pairing up Marty with the leader of her gang-rape, Todd. Both actors so vehemently protested the story that it never got off the ground. However, both characters have been recast since then and Todd himself has fallen victim to rape himself as penance so who knows what's going to happen next.
- At present, Marty is again being played by the original actress. The character has amnesia and Todd is manipulating her into falling in love with him. Todd remains one of the show's most popular characters, possibly because those offended by his continued presence and supposed "redemption" have stopped watching.
- Frequently seen as the motive behind many of soaps Double Standard Rape (Female on Male) storylines—the woman is often desperately in love with the man whom she gets into bed via drugs and/or alcohol and hopes that the sex or resulting pregnancy will make him reciprocate the feelings.
- On Another World, Jake raped Marley when she tried to end their relationship. Fast-forward a few years and not only is Jake engaged to Marley's sister Vicky, Marley is insanely jealous and gushing and fawning over Jake to the point where HE seems genuinely disturbed by this.
- Luke and Laura of General Hospital. Despite Luke's rape of Laura while drunk, the two fell in love and eventually got married. Critics weren't too pleased with the Unfortunate Implications, but fans ate it up.
- The Tribe: Lex tries to rape Zandra. She responds, on the advice of the advice of the group's new Granola Girl, by proposing to him. And in case this wasn't weird and uncomfortable enough, they're both 14.
- Scott attempts to do this in Higher Ground by writing love letters to his sexually abusive stepmother.
Scott: I thought that if I loved her, it would make what was going on okay. |
- Rescue Me. Take your pick, people. We have drugged, drunk, physical, mental, verbal...the list just keeps going. And nobody seems to care.
- The Mighty Boosh somehow managed to play this trope for laughs when Bob Fossil's plot to get two pandas to mate goes haywire. Vince dresses up like a panda and has a romantic dinner with the female to make the male jealous, but proves too sexy for even a panda to resist, and gets raped by the female. But after the rape, Vince continues the ruse, seeming to have developed a meaningful romantic/sexual relationship with the panda.
- At the end of 2002, in it's Year End Issue, Soap Opera Digest listed the Worst Trend as 'Romanticizing Rape", citing two infamous soap storylines. One, on Guiding Light, in which a man nearly raped his girlfriend upon learning that she had cheated on him. The girl not only forgave him because he stopped before actually raping her, she blamed herself for the incident because of her infidelity. The second storyline was on The Young and The Restless, where Paul, who had cheated on his wife Christine and left her for the other woman was so incensed and distraught at the news of Christine's engagement that he showed up at her apartment to half-demand, half-beg that she not marry the other man, eventually telling her that he still loved her and beginning to make advances to her. Although she initially responded, when he began removing his clothes, she shifted gears and stated, "Wait, wait, this is wrong. I want you to leave." He grabbed her and threw her on the bed. Writers split hairs by pointing out that Christine never said the word "no", and completely ignored the fact that she made it explicitly clear that she wanted Paul to leave. In both cases, the assaults were presented as the result of a man's unbridled lust and passion, not the violent act it truly was.
- Which is interesting because Guiding Light did a deconstruction of this in 1979, with Roger and Holly. Holly had been cheating on Roger with Ed. When Roger found out, he raped her, in his mind, to prevent her from leaving him. Holly, needless to say, did not see it that way, and filed charges against him. Look it up on Google or Yahoo.
- Inverted in Penn & Teller: Bullshit! in their war on porn episode. One of their guests suggested that porn will dehumanize women and thus make men think rape won't hurt them. This was met with an angry rebuttal by Penn saying (yelling) "Rapists fucking know they're hurting their victims! Hurting is the fucking idea, fucking isn't the fucking idea! You're trying to take away our porn by telling us that rapists are sensitive lovers who are simply misled by fiction?! No! No! No! No! Rapists are violent criminals who must be stopped."
- In the television version of Pretty Little Liars, Jenna had been forcing Toby to have sex with her, but she insisted that they were in love, and that there was nothing wrong with it.
- In Being Human (UK), Saul tries to invoke something like this on Annie, after the voices of the dead secretly egg him on through the TV. She doesn't fall for it, and teleports out. This was all a Kansas City Shuffle on the part of the dead, who planned on it leading to Saul drinking, having a car accident, and nearly dragging Annie into the afterlife.
- In the Criminal Minds episode "The Slave of Duty", the Unsub's second victim does this. However, it was merely a ploy in the hope he would let her go and, unfortunately, it didn't work.
Music
- Songs about rape or stalking or general "Ha ha we'll subvert Intercourse with You!" themes from the point of view of the rapist, stalker etc. are so common that they are a common go to interpretation for some people. Hence this cracked article.
- "Gimme The Night" by eurobeat alias Dave McCloud sounds like Crowning Music of Awesome at first, but listen to the lyrics closely and you get creepy lines like "Like a nice empty shell / Such a beautiful girl" and "You're my beautiful toy".
- Katy Perry's E.T. has received some flack for its "Stockholm Syndrome" like lyrics such as "Wanna be a victim, Ready for abduction" not helped by Kanye West's additional lyrics of "I'mma disrobe you, Then I'mma probe you, See, I abducted you, So I tell you what to do."
- The Decemberists' song "We Both Go Down Together", a Romeo-and-Juliet-esque story of love and tragedy, reveals in the lines "I laid you down in the grass of a clearing/You wept, but your soul was willing" that their love initially begins when the narrator of the story rapes Miranda, and she likes it.
Mythology
- The Rape of the Sabine Women (part of Rome's origin story) is actually closer to the Abduction Is Love trope than this, though there are some similarities. Due to language drift and the issues of Latin-English translation, "Rape" means more "Kidnap and Run Away With" in context rather than actual sexual assault, and sources do explicitly state that no actual rape was involved. Shortly after founding the city, Romulus finds that his new population doesn't have enough women, so he kidnaps seven hundred virgins from the neighboring Sabine tribes and gives them to his own men as wives. When the Sabine men show up with an army to bring their women home, the women declare that they don't actually want to be rescued. Following this proclamation, the Sabine tribes agree to peace offerings, the cultures merge, and Rome doubles in strength. Plutarch's stance is that they simply fell in love with their Roman husbands after being taken by force, and adds that Romulus planned on this from the beginning.
Professional Wrestling
- On one episode of WWE Monday Night Raw, Vince McMahon's daughter Stephanie was all set to marry Test live in the arena, until Triple H interrupted, played a video showing that he had roofied Stephanie the night before and then married her at a drive-through chapel in Vegas while she was drugged, and then taunted Vince by claiming to have raped her afterwards ("It's not if, but how many times we consummated the marriage!") At the next Pay-Per-View, Test fought Triple H to defend Stephanie's honor... until Steph had a Face Heel Turn and joined up with Trips, both out of newfound love and just to piss her daddy off.
Theatre
- The original version of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues features an extremely controversial section about a teenage girl who is given massive amounts of booze by an adult woman, who then takes advantage of her while she's drunk. The character in question finds herself enjoying the experience, and closes the monologue with the line, "If it was rape, it was a good rape." Later versions of the script attempt to rectify it by making the girl sixteen and removing the good rape line... but still portraying a Victim Falls For Rapist scenario.
- The titular character in David Mamet's Edmond seems in the final scene to have developed a strangely close bond with the Scary Black Man who raped him just two scenes earlier. Of course, this case is... well, not justified per se, but... well, part of something altogether bizarre anyway.
- In the original play of Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind, Melchior rapes Wendla in the hayloft of his family's barn. In subsequent scenes, Wendla doesn't appear to be too troubled by the experience, but Melchior angsts over it, worried that Wendla will be angry with him.
- In Phantom of the Opera, there has been much speculation about what happens between Christine and the Phantom when the lights go out after "Music of the Night". If there * was* sex, it was rape, as Christine was alternately unconscious/in a trance the entire time, but the lyrics of "Music of the Night" make it very obvious that the Phantom intends this a seduction, not an assault. In fact, the way the Phantom lovingly tucks her in and steps away after she falls unconscious was probably intended to show that he was not going to violate her. The film takes this a step further by showing her asleep from the Phantom's point of view with a curtain coming down between them.
- The original script called for the Phantom to get into bed with her as the song ended and for the scene to fade out as he drew the curtain around them, leaving little doubt as to his intentions. Probably changed as it would have been hard to continue presenting him as a romantic hero after such a blatant violation.
- In Ayn Rand's early play Night of January 16th, Karen Andre is raped by and falls in love with Bjorn Faulkner in essentially the same way as Dominique Francon.
- Greek/Roman comedy often centred on the plight of a guy who had knocked up the girl next door, whom he loved deeply, before he'd got parental consent (whose he needed varied with the situation) to marry her. This wouldn't be too uncomfortable with modern audiences- however, the contemporary audience would have been extremely uncomfortable with a guy continuing to want any woman who consented to premarital sex... so the plot was almost invariably that the guy had got drunk at a festival, come home and committed this trope. (The girlfriend/victim would usually be The Unseen). Sort of overlap with Black Comedy Rape, though more a case of Rape Baby As Comedy rather than the attack itself.
- Aida: In at least two scenes before she willingly goes to bed with him, Radames hints at forcing himself on the title character, even though by the time of the second scene, it's obvious that he's attracted to her.
Video Games
- In Crescendo, this looks like it's played straight in Ayame's path, but it actually winds up being a rather gut wrenching, traumatic inversion. Your hero has a MAJOR Heroic BSOD on discovering he adopted, and find out his stepsister purposely B Sed him for years into believing otherwise sends his already depressed psychological state over the edge, and proceeds to rape her, or so it appears and looks like. In truth, she had feelings for you, and her massive lack of resistance was this combined with her guilt for lying to you, so it not entirely nonconsensual. It's still traumatic and messed up, but it eventually gets resolved in the good ending, where they both acknowledge their feelings, and you both manage to overcome the trauma together.
- Not quite rape, but sexual harassment—If you allow Ocelot to grab Snake from behind during the final battle in Metal Gear Solid 4, Ocelot moans 'Snake...' and gives him a tender kiss. It restores Snake's Psyche. Considering Snake's weird romantic issues, this makes sense.
- Snake can also be on the molesty end of the equation if the player decides to pat down a FROG and touches their breasts or crotch. They hate it--unless he looks young.
- In the Touhou Project Hentai-Doujinshi Love-Reign, Alice's love for her doll Shanghai is portrayed in this manner. To quote one of Alice's most disturbing lines ever (said when she as forcing a soul into Shanghai):
"Your gestures of fright, pained behaviour, even your lovely voice are all so superb. Well, it's natural to expect it from something I've made with love. |
- In Ningyou Kakumei, Alice tricks the naive Medicine Melancholy into helping her with her research in making self-reliant dolls with a little help from a special drug made by Eirin.
- In Fragile Prismatic Colors, Alice decides the only way she can get Reimu to accept her love is by using a spell that controls her like a puppet... Seriously? What's with all these authors turning Alice into a disgusting creep who can only get love if she rapes someone?
- One of the long-running plots in Touhou Enchantresses Dance is of Yukari messing around a lot, until there comes a point that she impregnates Reimu after a session with tentacles. She wakes up after a long nap to find Reimu a mother, mistaking her daughter for the Miko.
- The Scarlet Sisters are also portrayed in H-doujin doing This and That to various characters, including Sakuya and Meiling. On one occasion in Pedoria Kakeru, Flandre gets hold of Chen and asks Remilia if she could keep the poor Catgirl (The answer was "no", but she was allowed to play with Chen until she gets bored). She then plays with the shikigami.
- Can occur in the Bastard of Kosigan series, but only with Diane using a high-Charisma character. Every other rape scene is played more realistically (i.e. she uses the opportunity to pull a Groin Attack, she calls the city guards on you, she pulls a Groin Attack forcing you to drop your weapon then turning back into her natural form and attacks you...)
- If the player romances Vico in A Dance With Rogues, it is as a result of this trope. Especially given how the initial scene of the romance plays out.
- Shiki's dreams in Tsukihime in the sense that it becomes consensual during the process. Of course, it's not really that bad since it's Double Standard Rape (Female on Male).
- Also subverted, in that it's 1. Literally all a fantasy, 2. A very bad idea by Aruceid, and 3. Is coming a good portion from Shiki's own head. Also overlaps with 'Black Comedy Rape', and 'Be careful what you wish for'.
- There is also a later seen where Shiki catches a glimpse in Arcueid's Gold Eyes as she kills some undead. The Line "I just...want her..." Results in his Nanaya persona forcing himself upon her. Afterwards, she is apologetic, as A) She's starting to fall for Shiki by that point and B) her Gold Eyes have hypnotic properties. That is to say, she thinks she accidentally hypnotized him into having sex with her, which would make her the rapist. They both feel horribly guilty for a good deal after the event.
- Ridiculously common in both yaoi and otome h-games (that is, Japanese porn games for women). Possibly due to a taboo about women being forward about sex, or even admitting they enjoy it, in some otome games sex is always forced upon the heroine by her love interests. All of them.
- Many, if not most, h-games do this. To quote an above editor: "And that's enough about hentai or this page will never stop."
- In Project Origin, Alma apparently believes this. However, that fact is one of the most horrifying moments in the game.
- Considering what she's been through, her being screwed up enough to believe this is a bit of a Tear Jerker. She seems genuinely surprised and confused that Beckett is rejecting her. Her solution is to make herself look beautiful, instead of a rotten corpse.
- Firmly entrenched in Sengoku Rance. Rance will have sex with you if you're a cute girl, willing or not. And eventually, you will fall in love with him. Any other rapist is horribly evil, though.
- Rance plays with this trope in unusual ways in that he very clearly believes that it applies in-universe, so much so that when Kenshin falls for him the normal way he has no idea how to handle it. And yet various comments scattered throughout the game make it clear that Rance has no evil in his heart, and honestly doesn't understand that rape is harmful, at least not when he does it.
- Rance, while he doesn't comprehend that rape is wrong, believes that regardless of the situation, both parties should be at least physically satisfied at the end of it. Hence why when he found out a character was raped in order to traumatize them, he was enraged beyond imagination.
- Subverted in RapeLay, by ILLUSION, a game which is about stalking and raping women. The entire game is actually an affirmation of the this trope, where the player trains the victims into loving his attacks.
- Embric of Wulfhammers Castle has the Duchess of Elstwhere raped by Carmina, a dark elf sorceress, in an elaborate Nightmare Fuel ritual surrounded by skeletons and dark-elf attendants. Since it happens in a dream, Carmina is a woman and the Duchess is a lesbian, and Duchess describes the encounter in detail to titillate her maid, Carmina is easily forgiven, and the two fall in love; they're the only couple that gets a truly "happily ever after" ending.
- In Alice: Madness Returns, Angus Bumby was infatuated with Alice's sister Lizzie. Lizzie however hated Bumby since she could see that he was Obviously Evil. Believing that she was playing hard to get, he then sneaks into her room, rapes her and then burns down the Liddel household in order to cover his tracks.
Web Comics
- Dominic Deegan: Oracle For Hire. Adolescent Stonewater (Noble Savage orc) leapt in to save the outlawed Melna (Noble Savage orc) from being butchered along with her parents by a tribe of Exclusively Evil orcs. He invoked the ancient traditions or whatever to claim her as his wife and thus ineligible for butchery; they insisted with sharp pointy things that said traditions require knowing one's wife in the hot & heavy Biblical sense; she was too catatonic for a by-your-leave (and the tribe wouldn't have let him anyway). She knocked him out cold and legged it afterwards. Sparks fly when they meet up as adults and have to fight evil together, but Stonewater's grown up to be a hero with the power of nature and of Positive Discrimination. Through her disgust Melna realizes that she's fallen in love with him. Her reaction involves violence and alcohol. A honest attempt to depict very sensitive issues? Crossing a line that just shouldn't be crossed? A ham-fisted attempt to be "deep" and "edgy?" Opinions vary, but "orc rape!" has still become associated with Dominic Deegan.
- Later revisited, where Melna admits that it wasn't Stonewater himself she was falling for, but the way he's grown into a Orc much like her father.
- This finally got a more satisfying conclusion in the Rebirth Of Maltak arc.
- It's also made clear that "Dirty Business" doesn't even begin to describe Stonewater's feelings about that day, which softens the Unfortunate Implications of this trope a bit.
- Viciously averted in the Tally Road story arc Darkest Before The Dawn where Finn practices his Black and Gray Morality by raping 'Eight' with hefty doses of BDSM expertise to break her spirit and sell her into prostitution for money. Finn can and will cause her to respond sexually by patience and technique, but his final act of violation is explicitly demanding her consent on the grounds that the rape will go faster and be over sooner, to which she assents, in despair. He causes her to just about explode with orgasm, setting up the trope perfectly- then takes a level in badass by reverting to his spirit-breaking mode and scorning her wordlessly, with the intended result. 'Eight' is depicted as way too smart not to figure out what is happening, and plainly does not fall in love. Of course, the trope is twisted further when Finn lets her leave forever but reveals he's gone all softhearted over her anyhow... perhaps an ur-example of a Trope Backfire?
- Penny and Aggie had insecure Karen assault her boyfriend Marshall in the shower. She completely blew off a philosophical chat to grope him. All of which was portrayed as okay because she's insecure, because men are not victims, and because Marshall is portrayed as too insecure to have sex because of his nymphomaniac mother. This is still fiercely debated in the fandom.
- Subverted in the comic All Roses Have Thorns. The vampire protagonist gets attracted to a human, then turns him into a vampire and rapes him repeatedly after killing his entire family. Needless to say the poor guy became a miserable terrified shell for quite a few years and retreated into himself, and after a few centuries now only silently hates his master.
- Arguably Deconstructed in Something*Positive with Ollie, who was raised and repeatedly molested by his cruel, abusive uncle Avogadro. Though it's familial rather than romantic, he honestly does seem to be the only person who cares about his uncle or wants to honor his memory now that he's dead; apparently Ollie was beaten by his own parents constantly before Avogadro took him in, and so he continues to view his uncle as a "savior" despite the years of sexual and verbal abuse. This is presented as being a sign of Ollie's instability, however; Avogadro himself even noted once that when his nephew finally had a nervous breakdown, it would be "his greatest artistic achievement."
- In a Date Rape Averted example, taking the Love Chart into consideration, Augustus had this in mind for Daisy.
- Peter of Niels firmly believes in this trope, and says that he loves everyone even if they don't love him.
- Ghastly's Ghastly Comic had a short 'arc' wherein a hentai schoolgirl is raped at the bus stop by an (apparently) passing tentacle monster. The succeeding strips show the unforeseen consequences when his watch gets left inside of her and culminate in her berating him for this and him buying her flowers to apologize, revealing their boyfriend/girlfriend relationship.
Web Original
- Occurs in the Whateley Universe at least twice in the Second Book of Jobe.
- Inverted in this Onion video where the reporter characterizes a mostly-happy 10 year marriage as if the husband was holding the wife hostage.
- Relationships between humans and Pokegirls tend to start this way, due to the mechanics of the setting. Property of Love is the best possible outcome. It's not the only one, though . . .
- Played for intentionally creepy laughs with The Nostalgia Critic and Spoony, with the Critic acting like a Tsundere; one minute he'll be trying to kill Insano and actually being glad that Spoony's in there, being so traumatized he can't speak at the actual rape, or making him review an awful game as punishment - the next he'll be masturbating over the prospect of the Spocker again, lovingly daydreaming about how giving Spoony was, or having drunk sex with the guy again.
Western Animation
- In the second Futurama movie: Yivo, the titular Beast With A Billion Backs does this with the entire universe.
- Starchaser: The Legend of Orin features one of the protagonists kidnapping a "fembot" working as a secretary (just because the opportunity presents itself), and after fumbling about with her back for a while, eventually reprograms her by opening her butt and poking around in it with a large metal tool, causing her to fall instantly in love with him. Again, this is one of the heroes, and he does this in preparation to sell her to a slave trader.
- Moral Orel got cancelled because of an episode centering on a woman who lured a rapist to lose her virginity, fell in love with him, and recently learned he committed suicide in prison. This is followed by a masturbation session that gets pretty goddamn surreal.
- Mr. Garrison believes that his father does not love him because he never molested him as a child. For some reason his mother thinks the same way and is shocked to find out that it never happened.
"That is a lie! Your father loved you! Often!" |
- Robot Chicken has a skit called 'the morning-after phone call', where a tentacle monster contacts the schoolgirl he raped the previous night to ask her to a movie. (She says no and hangs up.)
- ↑ Source:Episode 1 and 8 of Fire in His Fingertips