>>163 I don’t think the problem is that rape happens, Mimi, but that it happens so unrealistically. The fic presents itself as wholly serious while at the same time being comically exaggerated, and I think that’s a particularly triggering combination for many people. The story keeps betraying its subject; it has Heavy participate in Pyro’s rape but then casts him as the good guy without a moment’s reflection. It has Pyro being subjected to gang rape but then change his mind and really want it—yes, some people are raped and involuntary orgasm, but it’s very traumatic for them; I doubt anyone has ever asked their rapist to go harder. It keeps crossing back and forth between serious!fic and fetish!fic, indulging orgiastically in brutal rape scenes one moment, engendering the reader’s sympathy the next, and thereby creates a powerful cognitive dissonance by making the reader fetishise their own rape-by-proxy. I, for one, don’t mind non-con (the fic I’m most known for writing, ‘Addiction’, has Medic turning Scout into his personal cum-crack-whore, so yeah, I’m down with the freaky rape stuff), but I honestly couldn’t enjoy this fic. And when so many other non-con authors and readers speak up against it, it’s not because they’re all hypocrites. Whatever psychological fetish drama the writer tried to pull off, what they created instead is, judging by the response, probably the most triggering fic on the ‘chan. Done deliberately, I would’ve applauded the sheer level of mindfuckery—sadly, it’s accidental and the symptom of a fic at war with itself. Whatever else it is—fetish fuel, author catharsis—this fic is also just plain bad research, bad characterisation, and bad writing, and I’d be surprised myself if the ‘chan didn’t react to that.