Rape Is the New Dead Parents: Difference between revisions

The trope name comes from the fact that [[Parental Abandonment]] used to be the stock "tragic background" of amateur created characters. Perhaps due to a combination of dead parents becoming truly clichecliché, the fact that rape is significantly more common and personal, and the fact that it spares everything short of the character's virginity, rape has replaced the [[Conveniently an Orphan|dead parents]] for lazy tragedy.

Examples of this in amateur writing are too depressingly numerous to list and too forgettable to remember. It still occasionally makes its way into the more dubious works, however. Differentiated from [[Rape as Drama]] and [[Rape As Comedy]] in that its neither of these. It's just... there. Often related to [[Women in Refrigerators]]. Usually conflated with [[Gratuitous Rape]], although for this trope ends the gratuitous forced sexual act doesn't necessarily need to be ''shown'', only mentioned.

* Subverted with Casca in ''[[Berserk]]'', where it didn't get past the [[Attempted Rape]] stage. Griffith saved her... then handed her a knife and told her to kill the guy. She did. By the time Guts joins up with the group, she's an [[Action Girl]]. [[Chickification|Pity]] [[Faux Action Girl|what]] [[Break the Cutie|happened]] [[Go Mad Fromfrom the Revelation|next.]]

** On the other hand Guts is both an exceptexception to the [[Double Standard]] and an aversion, as ''he'' gets both dead parents ''and'' a rape as part of his backstory, and struggles with the consequences over the next nine volumes - and when he finally starts to recover, [[From Bad to Worse|well...]]