do you think the racism/misogynistic biases etc. actually gets better as the books go on? imo the misogyny in the first book is horrific and i dont blame people for discontinuing rr bc of it. tbh dark age has more gratuitous rape than red rising but less people seem to mind
no it never really goes away tbh. and i agree abt the first book it's honestly so crazy, even considering that its from darrows POV and he isnt the wokest by that point in his life. like you expect some of it but jesus christ.
also, i rarely see people call out how racist the books can be, maybe people just aren't woke enough but atalantia is a TEXTBOOK example of the Jezebel stereotype as well as the other black family, the valii-rath, being famously sexually aggressive (and apollonius being described like a faggot, for lack of a better term, reinforcing a stereotype of aggressive queer men, and androgyny/femininity = bad and evil to coincide with the antiblack stereotypes). trust that i know that gold society is famously sexually violent and what is considered taboo to us is not taboo to them (gold sexuality is my fav niche topic after all) but the fact that the characters who exemplify this aspect of gold society the most also contribute to racial stereotypes is ???????
as for the rape stuff - generally, i think i am a lot more lenient on depictions of rape than other people seem to be. as a victim myself i'm against the idea that sexual violence is an untouchable entity in fiction and that it can only be alluded to or happen off screen in order to be acceptable and view on screen rape as inherently fetishistic (not that this is what i think You think its just what i generally see online abt it and where i tend to differ).
that being said, there is still a level of tact that i expect that i don't find at all in the first book. and weirdly enough, i both find and don't find it in dark age. i am a fan of both scenes where atalantia rapes lysander because it is truly harrowing and from lysander's internal monologue he just seems to feel so. empty. like moving on autopilot and dissociating away from a thing that's happening to him. he says "when she is done with me". you see how he is being manipulated and taken advantage of when he himself is not really processing it in the moment. and i think a lot of people don't even recognize this as rape which is honestly not PBs fault, its because lysander is a male victim and atalantia is a female rapist.
but in the same book, darrow experiences attempted rape, and virginia is sexually assaulted by a mob, and then both of those things never come up again. i would have a lot less of a problem with these events happening if we got to see how it affected the characters but instead it happens and moves on. i know there's a lot of shit going on in these books and with these characters but why even include it if they wont actually be recognized as victims? instead it is used as a way to establish the ruthlessness of atlas and the mob respectively when there are other ways to do that, but the rape route is easy and frankly lazy. i do think that the first book is more offensive to me personally but DA is not perfect.
(also i have to recognize my own potential biases as i don't really try to hide how personal darrow as a character is to me, and the very personal feelings attributed to how i feel about the atlas rape scene, and i think one of my biggest problems is that it just feels like something that has hurt me quite a bit goes unrecognized by the narrative. it is such a difficult scene for me that i struggle to even talk about it and in actual reality its kinda just a one off thing that happens, it makes me feel really terrible.)
anyway, this is just unfortunately the territory of sci fi fantasy books written by straight white cisgender american men. but that is Nottt an excuse for some of the content... i think some people are unwilling to be critical because they like PB, and they think calling out potential biases = irredeemable horrible person, and that makes them an irredeemable horrible person by extension. not realizing that you can acknowledge all of this while still being a fan of the series, or PB himself
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