| TRIGGER WARNING this article lists and discusses rape as a narrative devices. |
"By its very nature, rape displays a 'total contempt for the personal integrity and autonomy' of the victim; 'short of homicide, [it is] the 'violation of self.'" Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 597, 603 (1977). Along with other forms of sexual assault, it belongs to that class of indignities against the person that cannot ever be fully righted, and that diminishes all humanity." -- Mary M. v. City of Los Angeles, 54 Cal.3d 202,222 (1991)
Rape is one of the more difficult subjects to handle in a work of fiction, not least because (unlike, say, murder) there is a chance that one of the work's readers has experienced this crime first-hand. For the most part, the tropes that have been collected here describe less sensitive and sometimes downright backwards depictions of rape.
For obvious reasons, many of these tropes are also subtropes of Moral Event Horizon.
- By narrative function
- Rape As Backstory
- Rape As Drama
- Rape As Redemption
- Romanticized Abuse
- Rape Leads To Insanity: as a reason for a character to lose their sanity
- Double standards, with the idea that rape isn't "as bad" if it's...
- Divine On Mortal
- Female On Female
- Female On Male
- Male On Male
- A SciFi work
- Character types connected with being abusers
- All Abusers Are Male
- All Men Are Rapists
- Bastard Girlfriend
- Memetic Molester
- Murderers Are Rapists
- Pedophile Priest
- Tropes dealing with actual rape, implied rape, dubious consent
- Aliens Made Them Do It (rape by proxy)
- Anal Probing
- And Now You Must Marry Me
- Arent You Going To Ravish Me
- Attempted Rape
- Bathe Her And Bring Her To Me
- Bed Trick (someone is deceived into having sex).
- Black Comedy Rape
- But Liquor Is Quicker - see Date Rape below.
- Date Rape
- Date Rape Averted
- Droit Du Seigneur (right of the first night)
- Dude She's Like In A Coma
- Gratuitous Rape
- I Have You Now My Pretty
- It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It
- Love Potion
- Marital Rape License
- Medical Rape And Impregnate
- Mind Rape
- Near Rape Experience
- Old Man Marrying A Child
- Post Rape Taunt
- Prison Rape
- Rape And Revenge
- Rape And Switch
- Rape By Proxy
- Rape Discretion Shot
- Rape Is A Special Kind Of Evil
- Rape Pillage And Burn
- Scarpia Ultimatum
- Sex Slave
- Sexual Extortion
- You Would Make A Great Model
- Tropes that aren't always related to rape but often are
- Mate Or Die
- Netorare Genre -- often makes use of rape
- Honor Related Abuse
- Slipping A Mickey
- Auxiliary tropes
- Chastity Dagger
- Child By Rape
- Defiled Forever
- False Rape Accusation
- Fate Worse Than Death
- The Women Are Safe With Us
- You're Not My Type -- when used to imply villainous perversion in a captor speaking to the captured
