Are stories with child abuse in the background necessarily, or generally, exploitative of human suffering?

[Skald the Rhymer]

If yes, why?

If not, why not?

If it depends, on what?

(I'd go into more detail I weren't triple tasking and will say more after work.)

[Zuul]

Generally, yes. Necessarily, no.

In most cases, stories involving child abuse backgrounds (or a character getting raped, for that matter) seem to come from either a voyeuristic place or one of pandering for an easy emotional reaction. If a particular author seems to really delight in repeatedly using rape/abuse backgrounds (or as a fun twist for something for the otherwise strong heroine to "overcome") I usually mentally put that author in the exploitative hack category.

Can it be done well? I think, in theory, anything can be handled well in literature, but it all comes down to how it's handled. The runaway whose dad used to hit him but that's just one part of the larger tapestry of his life and that thread is woven into the whole of it and makes sense as part of the pattern? Sure, that can work. The girl who comes from the upper middle-class family who out of nowhere is one day raped by her step-father and then suddenly becomes a street walker because her shame is too great to ever face her mother again, but then she ends up falling in love with a man thirty years her senior and it's all romantic and stuff? Uh, no.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Generally, yes. Necessarily, no.

In most cases, stories involving child abuse backgrounds (or a character getting raped, for that matter) seem to come from either a voyeuristic place or one of pandering for an easy emotional reaction. If a particular author seems to really delight in repeatedly using rape/abuse backgrounds (or as a fun twist for something for the otherwise strong heroine to "overcome") I usually mentally put that author in the exploitative hack category.

Can it be done well? I think, in theory, anything can be handled well in literature, but it all comes down to how it's handled. The runaway whose dad used to hit him but that's just one part of the larger tapestry of his life and that thread is woven into the whole of it and makes sense as part of the pattern? Sure, that can work. The girl who comes from the upper middle-class family who out of nowhere is one day raped by her step-father and then suddenly becomes a street walker because her shame is too great to ever face her mother again, but then she ends up falling in love with a man thirty years her senior and it's all romantic and stuff? Uh, no.

You've actually seen a story like that published?

[OtakuLoki]

I think it can be done and done well, without being exploitative. As an example, I'd suggest Jane Lindskold's first novel: Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls. Was it necessary for the plot? I don't think so. Was it effective within the story? I think that it was.

But I'm with Zuul that it's more often handled poorly. Of course part of that is that I'm a comics reader, so I'm well familiar with the "Girl in a Fridge" trope: where assault on a generally powerless character is used simply as a motivator for the REAL characters.

[Zuul]

You've actually seen a story like that published?

Piers Anthony novel. And Eternity.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Piers Anthony novel. And Eternity.

Damn it! Now I have to neuralize myself again!

Note to everyone: DO NOT TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS IN PIERS ANTHONY NOVELS! It undoes the memory-wipe. Are y'all TRYING to give me brain cancer?

[Glazer]

Note to everyone: DO NOT TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS IN PIERS ANTHONY NOVELS! It undoes the memory-wipe. Are y'all TRYING to give me brain cancer?

Well you see there was this veil between Phase and Proton...

[Zuul]

Oh Glazer.

[Glazer]

Oh Glazer.

What?

[Skald the Rhymer]

Well you see there was this veil between Phase and Proton...

You all saw it! Glazer's practically BEGGING for a flying monkey attack!

But I shall demur. The first three Apprentice Adept books, clumsily written as they are, nonetheless precede Anthony's descent into muttering incoherence.