Just read a fic that had themes pertaining to sexual extortion in a strip club. There was a side character who was being coerced into sex for coke, and because of this, she lied about one of the strippers in the club to protect herself. However, rather than exploring the nuances of that decision, the story just treated her like a plain ol antagonist. There was a portion of the story where she apologizes and said she was clean, too, so she clearly recovered. While the MC or anyone around them doesn’t have to forgive her for her actions, I feel like the author shouldn’t have written as a villain. Irl, in these situations, women are also victims, and “imperfect” victim’s cases should be treated with just as much respect and dignity as “perfect” victim’s cases. The MC gets assaulted as well, but because she doesn’t do anything “bad” in the story, her assault is treated with more respect. I just thought that was really shitty. Being coerced into sex in order to obtain something is assault, and there’s another layer of malice when it’s using somebody’s addiction against them. It didn’t feel rewarding to see her be rejected by the MC and lose her job. I felt bad. She was clearly struggling and then made the effort to recover and then try and support the MC, and then that happened. Tbh, even if she hadn’t recovered, she’d still deserve just as much respect I see this in a lot of fics where another women will be written as some other evil doer when the MC is just amazing and perfect and amazing, and- It’s just pitting women against each other, even in fics where there’s already pretty obvious evils in the story

wow this is a genre of fic that i've never come across before. but yes agreed, people are deeply unsympathetic when fictional and real women are imperfect victims. i hope this isn't too real and serious for a blog like this, but i've actually been thinking about this a lot recently because of some of the more fucked up takes i've seen about hayden panettiere's death. don't get me wrong, everything…