Why Mircea isn’t your average rapist
This post is to highlight how drawing parallels with a book scene and real world situations doesn’t generally work because it’s a false equivalence. Tl;dr main stuff in bold as usual. Warning: includes some consent / rape discussion.
I. The background of the consent topic and double standards: So, going back for quite some time, there has been this impression in some parts of the fandom that M coerced C to have sex with him and it was technically noncon/dubcon because she couldn’t consent theoretically. At the time, I thought the concern for C’s consent was coming from a good place - after the defensive outrage and insistence on propagating that narrative despite my debunking posts and the author’s own words, it seems to be a bit more complicated. Especially since dubious consent only seems to be an issue with Mircea, never with Cassie or Pritkin who did factually commit more violations of it, and if we are claiming that C’s consent is invalid, then so is P’s consent and C’s consent in most of their scenes which are under the threat of death, and without comfy ideal other options Tomas can’t be blamed for his actions either, and M didn’t technically consent to sex either, so as we can see it just gets ridiculously out of hand if we apply the same standards evenly, but it’s just disingenous if we cherry-pick only Mircea to complain about. It’s all or nothing, can’t have it both ways is all I’m saying.
But you know, I do get it to some extent - it is probably easy to look at the TtD scene as draw parallels with consent discourse and real life rape situations. However, that’s a simplistic jump to a conclusion, and upon actual inspection, that’s not what’s going on in the book at all - just like Cassie slapping Pritkin twice when she disagrees with his actions isn’t an actual example of domestic violence and nobody wrote outrage posts about that.
II. The consent topic as a false equivalence rather than a parallel: So the new angle I’m trying to highlight here in the hopes of brining enlightenment to the topic, lol, is that it may be tempting to draw a shortcut from the book to other situations in the real world, but it’s not even remotely the same thing so any conclusion will be based on a flawed premise. For example nobody says ‘Madame President, you need to choose a White House employee to lay with, because the safety of the free world requires the powers unlocked by your magic hooha, powers which you may also find useful for your personal goals.’ Lol 1) First of all, I don’t think any of us have magical vajayjays that have the ability to qualify for a job that could save the community. 2) On that note, real women aren’t the equivalent of Jesus Christ, equipped with divine power to effect a change and save the world from the bad guys. 3) Rapists don’t usually ask their victims who they would prefer to have sex with. 4) And rapists most generally do not violate women for the good of the community.
So nonconsensual sex is usually done for the benefit (usually sexual gratification) of the aggressor, against the interests (safety and freedom) of the victim. On the other hand, the sex in TtD was in Cassie’s interest for avoiding getting killed by Myra and getting incarcerated/assassinated by the Circle, and in a large community’s interest by saving LC, Radu, prevent a war with Rasputin, etc, not because Mircea wanted his itch scratched at the expense of Cassie’s comfort. So there is scarle little to tie the books to real life dubcon/noncon issues, other than that the Pythian ritual happened to involve sex too.
III. That consent is unnecessarily projected into a misrepresented scene: Not to mention the earlier points already articulated by KC in the Read for Pixels video chat, which were that 1) Cassie’s issue was getting the Pyhian power, not sex with Mircea - the sex was just the conduct because old magic was often sex magic 2) Mircea didn’t have to force Cassie because he knew Cassie would agree with doing the best thing for herself, which was to accept the power - again the sex was just the bonus button that made that possible 3) That Cassie chooses to have sex with Tomas for the same reasons even after time to think about it - she had a bad day which is why Mircea had to spell it out for her in TtD 4) The threat to Cassie wasn’t of Mircea’s making, her life was in danger because of Myra already, he was just pointing out her options. All of these are KC’s points which everybody can check in the video btw, and I have them somewhere among my posts too.
So basically, we have a case of good old cost-benefit analysis here. Cons of becoming eligible for the Pythian power (incidentally by having sex) on the one side: a) I don’t really want to be Pythia I guess. Pros of becoming eligible for the Pythian power (incidentally by having sex) on the other side: a) I get to help my dad b) I get to avoid getting killed by crazy sybil c) I avoid being handed over to the Circle who want me dead d) I improve my power position against the vamp senate by becoming Pythia e) I can save people, if sympathy factors in at all f) I get to ride this hot guy I’ve had a crush on for years. And Cassie chooses the option that servers her interests most.
Alternatively, I suggested earlier to maybe look at the TtD dilemma as a non-sexual button labeled ‘become Pythia’ that Mircea argued Cassie should push for the best of everybody involved - as the sex was in the ‘bonus benefit’ column for Cassie - maybe that view might help avoid confusing the issue. Or like this post, just to highlight that there is nothing in common with the concept of dubious consent or real life non-consensual sexual acts and C+M getting it on in TtD. So the TtD sex was coerced, or dub-con, or Mircea is a rapey creep or whatever narrative clearly doesn’t hold up - especially when as I mentioned applying consent issues only to this case doesn’t work, and would invalidate the majority of the books including most of C+P interactions that never get doubted.
And as the usual note, there’s nothing wrong with anti-Mircea posts, only posts that are based on misunderstandings/misrepresentations/false facts - this isn’t about people’s opinions, it’s about cherry-picking consent issues based on fan attitudes rather than equal standards. So as always, if I got anything wrong, anybody can feel free to correct me, as I do this in the spirit of modearte viewpoints and fair representations that I think the books deserve.