Cyberweasel89

So much rape. I can't tell what purpose all the rape serves, either. Atwater can't decide if he wants the rape to be for drama, humor, or fetish, because he uses it for all three. He also has characters routinely mock each other for having been raped and this is treated as completely normal human interaction in a way that I can't chock up to worldbuilding. Like, I'm a rape victim, and no friend of mine has ever casually mocked me for it, so I don't get why Atwater seems to believe this is something people do, unless he's an introvert who doesn't have experience hanging out with groups of friends. Speaking of my status as a rape survivor, one of the scenes in which the protagonist is raped (after spending most of the book mocking others who are supposed to be his friend for being raped) gave me a panic attack. There is no warning that this book will have hardcore rape scenes in it. It's not advertised as erotica. Most people see anime on the cover and have no idea they're walking head-first into graphically violent sexual assault scenes. I tried asking the author what purpose all the tonally inconsitent rape served and why he doesn't warn people about it, and he proceeded to get extremely defensive. The biggest defense he could think of was that he seemed to believe he was immune to criticism for having effectively baited any readers into eating his many rape scenes because he'd gotten hate from "Karens" on Twitter, which... apparently makes all the rape he writes okay? Some of his fans' defenses for all the rape were... strange. In response to the protagonist mocking others for being raped, one said "characters are allowed to be bad people," but... the protagonist isn't a bad person. Like, he's repeatedly described as nice and he shows a lot of consideration for others, yet somehow he has zero sympathy for rape victims of all things and this is NOT framed as a flaw of any kind. When faced with a rape victim and fan of his asking about all the rape in his book in good faith, Atwater's response was to hurl insults and huff with immature arrogance, then block his customer and fan on all his social media. I write, and when someone finds a flaw in my writing, my response is to listen to them, consider their reasoning and feelings on the matter, and humbly accept that I messed up or made a poor choice. I don't know how old Atwater is, but he seems to have a lot of maturing he needs to do...