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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 4925924" data-attributes="member: 3820">It's not always a trick, I believe. Sometimes the author just doesn't believe rape to be "that bad," for whatever reason. The Gor books come to mind, obviously enough, wherein rape is treated as something erotic and secretly desired by all women. And I've seen some authors that seem to be operating more out of just plain general cluelessness. It's sort of like racism. There's a lot of (usually older) literature out there that contains some measure of old-school racist ideologies, including a few seminal figures for the gaming field like Lovecraft and Howard (arguably even Tolkien). It's not always included as a trick to get you to dislike the main character (or even the author). Sometimes the author just doesn't really empathize with the victim much. The issue that makes rape particularly unnerving as a dramatic conceit is that there's really no way to justify it. There's no equivalent to the use of lethal force in self-defense or in times of outright war. It's just completely self-serving in a very ugly way. The thing about Vance is that he's very satirical, but I can't say that a light treatment of such subject matter really makes the books funnier to me.</blockquote>