Limitations

Ai and I were talking about our next project, and we'd returned to a subject that we'd been at loggerheads over for a little while now - "Like a Beast", an Evangelion doujinshi by enuma elish.


The point of contention is that there's a scene where, in recreating 2.0's pool visit scene, the water accidentally drains and the cast (Shinji, Asuka, Rei, Toji, and Kensuke) almost drown. Shinji, Asuka, and Rei are knocked unconscious. Toji and Kensuke, figuring that they'll never get a chance like this again, decide to have sex with Rei and Asuka while they're still insensate.

It's played somewhat for comedy, but to me, it crossed a line. I don't want to see Toji and Kensuke rape anybody, much less Rei and Asuka. So I told Ai that I felt uncomfortable translating this doujin*.

Here's the thing that got me to thinking, though - a few pages later, Mari, having snuck into the pool compound, does the same thing to an unconscious Shinji. Mid-rape, he wakes up, goes into a Unit-01-like berserk state, and becomes a sex machine, satisfying Mari (who couldn't be satisfied by Toji and Kensuke double-teaming her) and then heading on to the now-conscious Rei. I thought the scene was hilarious. I came to realize that, if the entire bit with Toji and Kensuke had been excised, I would have been perfectly fine with working on the doujin, even though the way Mari raped Shinji was initially identical to what Toji and Kensuke did to Asuka and Rei.

I started imagining the few situations that I can't enjoy and mentally semi-cataloging them, comparing them to similar situations that I can enjoy. For instance, I don't like NTR where a brute forces the protagonist to watch while he rapes his girlfriend (... of course, that's the most common kind), but if the genders were reversed, or the main couple was gay, or the 'brute' was a creepy female yandere who wanted one last 'souvenir' from the man or woman she loved, I could stand or even like some stories.

It seems that I just have a problem with male-on-female rape in my fiction. I know there's an idea that culturally we just can't process the notion of a woman holding sexual power over a man, but I found it interesting that I'm still susceptible to those notions even though I try to hold views associated with gender equality and all real-life rape is a horrible crime no matter who or how one does it.

It could also be that I have a dividing line between 'this couldn't happen in real life' and 'this does happen every day in real life'. Tentacle rape just seems goofy to me, and I'm perfectly fine with those sorts of stories, whether they be comedic or serious. Same with a story where, say, a domme futa prison warden has her way with her female prisoners. Futa don't exist, they're practically women anyway, and 'women in prison' stories are designed to attract some lizard part of our brains as stupid, harmless fantasy. The pain and the suffering of the story's victims don't come across to us, even if they're rendered in ways similar to how we imagine real-world rape to be.

My question to you all is: What sort of lines do you all have when it comes to your fiction?

*Going to take my revenge on Ai. I think I've found a doujin that HE would hate which involves Kaworu hooking Shinji and Toji up to a tentacle rape machine.