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Thoughts on Sam and rape; and a list about John and Sam
In my (glacier-slow) quest of catching up with fic in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
lifein1973 (another thing I do when I'm at work *g*) I got to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amy_wolf's "No" today. It's an interesting fic that makes the argument that Joni actually raped Sam. I'm not sure I agree, but this is tricky terrain, so I don't think I should be too sure of my own responses. I do have some arguments for my - tentative - view that it probably wasn't rape, though:
- Sam doesn't seem traumatised enough; his later interactions with Joni show anger and disappointment, but not of the level that I would expect after such an intimate violation. Sure, he's aware that she was under a lot of pressure herself, and Sam can be sympathetic to a fault - but if he felt raped, I'd expect something a bit more irrational to break through there, even if only for a moment.
- Sam seems *surprised* to find out he was drugged. This suggests to me that up to that point, it seemed not that unimaginable to him that he may have had a certain amount of conscious involvement in having sex with Joni. This is also supported by the fact that they had sex on the bed, whereas we saw him trying to go to sleep in the armchair. *Somehow* he had to get from there to the bed, and I doubt that Joni carried, or forcibly dragged him there. Yes, he was drugged and hence more suggestible - but even under the influence of LSD, I don't think you can make a person do something they feel very strongly against. I also felt that the dinner scene preceding the sex scene was not completely devoid of sexual tension, and that Sam's 'disinterest' was mainly founded on his ideas of propriety and not so much on not being attracted to Joni. I can well imagine him acting on some latent attraction once the drug had removed his rational inhibitions. This would explain how he got from the chair to the bed.
- This is also supported by an admittedly unreliable witness, the Test Card Girl. She says, during the LSD hallucinations, "There's nothing to be ashamed of, Sam. You can't be lonely all the time." This suggests to me that, as the voice of Sam's subconscious, Test Card Girl is trying to convince Sam that it's okay to give in to his 'improper' urges.
Ultimately, I don't think we can judge if Sam was raped or not unless we see how the actual sex started - how he got into that bed. But I think there is fairly strong evidence for the 'not rape' theory.
Opinions?
(I haven't given feedback on this story yet, but I will once I've thought about this some more.)
***
Now, with John Crichton from Farscape it's very obvious that he was raped. There's chemical influence involved right from the start, and afterwards John has the expected reaction - compulsive washing, curling up... and nearly an entire season later, when he talks to Grayza again, he explicitly compares her sudden loss of political/military power and control to being raped, and there's a very definite undercurrent of "see, this is what it feels like" in his words. (Of course, he's also been mindraped by Scorpius, the Scarrans, the Ancients, Maldis - did I forget anyone? He really does speak from experience.)
***
So... here's a short list of the main parallels between John and Sam, just because, well, there *are* so many!
- Both have (sort of) travelled in time.
- Both are displaced, desperately lost, looking for a way home.
- Both make pop culture references nobody in their surroundings gets.
- Both find themselves frequently clad in leather in their new lives.
- Both have creepy, semi-regular hallucinations.
- Both have pointed guns at their fathers.
- Both have a bit too much sexual tension with their mothers. ;-)
- Both have had involuntary or near-involuntary sex under the influence of drugs.
- Both have contemplated suicide.
Substantial differences between the two of them are a bit more difficult to find. Mainly there's the fact that Sam's a police officer whereas John is, more or less, a terrorist. Oh, and Sam's a cat person whereas John's a dog person. *g*
lifein1973 (another thing I do when I'm at work *g*) I got to amy_wolf's "No" today. It's an interesting fic that makes the argument that Joni actually raped Sam. I'm not sure I agree, but this is tricky terrain, so I don't think I should be too sure of my own responses. I do have some arguments for my - tentative - view that it probably wasn't rape, though:- Sam doesn't seem traumatised enough; his later interactions with Joni show anger and disappointment, but not of the level that I would expect after such an intimate violation. Sure, he's aware that she was under a lot of pressure herself, and Sam can be sympathetic to a fault - but if he felt raped, I'd expect something a bit more irrational to break through there, even if only for a moment.
- Sam seems *surprised* to find out he was drugged. This suggests to me that up to that point, it seemed not that unimaginable to him that he may have had a certain amount of conscious involvement in having sex with Joni. This is also supported by the fact that they had sex on the bed, whereas we saw him trying to go to sleep in the armchair. *Somehow* he had to get from there to the bed, and I doubt that Joni carried, or forcibly dragged him there. Yes, he was drugged and hence more suggestible - but even under the influence of LSD, I don't think you can make a person do something they feel very strongly against. I also felt that the dinner scene preceding the sex scene was not completely devoid of sexual tension, and that Sam's 'disinterest' was mainly founded on his ideas of propriety and not so much on not being attracted to Joni. I can well imagine him acting on some latent attraction once the drug had removed his rational inhibitions. This would explain how he got from the chair to the bed.
- This is also supported by an admittedly unreliable witness, the Test Card Girl. She says, during the LSD hallucinations, "There's nothing to be ashamed of, Sam. You can't be lonely all the time." This suggests to me that, as the voice of Sam's subconscious, Test Card Girl is trying to convince Sam that it's okay to give in to his 'improper' urges.
Ultimately, I don't think we can judge if Sam was raped or not unless we see how the actual sex started - how he got into that bed. But I think there is fairly strong evidence for the 'not rape' theory.
Opinions?
(I haven't given feedback on this story yet, but I will once I've thought about this some more.)
***
Now, with John Crichton from Farscape it's very obvious that he was raped. There's chemical influence involved right from the start, and afterwards John has the expected reaction - compulsive washing, curling up... and nearly an entire season later, when he talks to Grayza again, he explicitly compares her sudden loss of political/military power and control to being raped, and there's a very definite undercurrent of "see, this is what it feels like" in his words. (Of course, he's also been mindraped by Scorpius, the Scarrans, the Ancients, Maldis - did I forget anyone? He really does speak from experience.)
***
So... here's a short list of the main parallels between John and Sam, just because, well, there *are* so many!
- Both have (sort of) travelled in time.
- Both are displaced, desperately lost, looking for a way home.
- Both make pop culture references nobody in their surroundings gets.
- Both find themselves frequently clad in leather in their new lives.
- Both have creepy, semi-regular hallucinations.
- Both have pointed guns at their fathers.
- Both have a bit too much sexual tension with their mothers. ;-)
- Both have had involuntary or near-involuntary sex under the influence of drugs.
- Both have contemplated suicide.
Substantial differences between the two of them are a bit more difficult to find. Mainly there's the fact that Sam's a police officer whereas John is, more or less, a terrorist. Oh, and Sam's a cat person whereas John's a dog person. *g*
I think I see what you mean... (or maybe I don't, hah...)
I don't think I've ever read a story that makes me re-evaluate canon. I see all fan fic as alternative interpretation. So that's where that initial confusion comes from. I will occasionally say, "I believe this is canon", but I always mean "personal canon".
(Well, there may be infinite minor variations, but there will be a limited number of 'main lines' of possible interpretations.)
That's what I believe too. I generally try to stick as close to canon as possible (no Gene Hunt wingfic from me, despite the fact this icon's got the keywords 'Gene's an angel'.) Sometimes I deviate, but I generally acknowledge that that is what I'm doing.
And it's fun to play, isn't it? I love telling stories that I think could 'slot in', but I also rather like asking questions like, 'hey, what if Sam was actually a raving psychokiller?', 'hey, what if Sam's "life" started resetting?', 'hey, what if Gene refused to die a graceful death and annoyed Sam during rigor mortis?' They're all extrapolations of things we do know, but they were never, actually, going to happen in any way.
Re: I think I see what you mean... (or maybe I don't, hah...)
Yes, but sometimes interpretation points out something really essential, and then you (or I, anyway *g*) need to question what you've been believing. I had a real "did I see this all wrong, all the time?" moment there. It passed, but I needed to hash it out here to trust my own reaction again.
>Gene Hunt wingfic
Oh damn you, you broke my brain! And it was fairly broken to begin with, today. (Didn't sleep well, etc.)
>And it's fun to play, isn't it?
See my AU manifesto of a few days ago. ;-)
I'm here for the playing. But I need to be sure of my canon before I play. I need to have a fairly firm picture of "what is" before I can begin to play with "what could be" - need to know what there is before I can *react*. And yeah, parts of that picture are individual, personal - but a lot is based on a common understanding, too, and I wasn't quite sure, for a while today, if I diverged from that common understanding in yet another important aspect (apart from the 2.08 heresy, that is. *g*)