deathtocapslock | Love potions and double standards in Harry Potter and fandom

It was mentioned on a previous thread that there is a creepy double standard in the series about how love potions are considered to be somehow OK if a witch uses them. For instance, we get Molly whom JKR wants us to love, giggling about brewing a potion that turns people into lust fuelled zombies. Did she actually slip the potion in question to someone? I really do wonder what JKR could have been thinking (if she thought at all).

The author of this fanfiction (link below) clearly adopts JKR's idea that love potions are alright for witches to use. The character Daphne Greengrass (who is only mentioned in the books, but never appears) slips Harry a love potion and then rapes him in order to curry favour with Voldemort, but bizarrely, all the characters, including Harry himself, blame Harry. What is stranger still, is that the author tries to curry sympathy for Daphne even though she had violated Harry for Voldemort. I discovered the fanfiction on the tv tropes double standards webpage.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8499608/1/Fun-with-Potions

The author actually writes in an author's note at the end of chapter 2: "I don't see why people are getting on my case for Daphne raping Harry. If anything it is just repeating how Merope Gaunt conceived Tom Riddle."

Does this series convince many that rape using love potions is not really rape?

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Eh, all the uses of love potions that I've seen in fanfiction portray them as straight-up rape potions*. I'd say the above author is the extreme exception to the rule (and thank heavens!).

*There is a ludicrous-but-fairly-common plot with Ginny dosing, or attempting to dose, Harry with love potion in order to force him into an actually-loveless marriage and Harry breaking free in order to run off with Hermione/Draco/Voldemort/partner-of-your-choice. I cannot remember seeing a SINGLE fanfiction in which this is portrayed as anything but High Villainy, unless you technically count the few in which she was actually being mind-raped into it by the Real Villain of your choice.

Edited 2014-09-14 09:55 (UTC)

All canon examples of someone actually ingesting a Love Potion (Ron—Romilda and Thomas—Merope) had been disastrous, to say the least.

In one of the conversations I'd had over here with someone else (bad David, can't even remember a name!), she/he introduced this very telling fanfic to me: Lily sees a recipe for a love potion on Witches Weekly (I've seen tips for readers' sex life on Cosmopolitan and Entertainment Weekly, but nothing about drug use like this; wizards and witches really handle next-level sh-t) and brews one for Severus, knowing about his crush. It works well. Too well in fact. It took an antidote twenty years later for Severus to realize that he ought to be over his crush a long time ago and find someone else to love and marry.

I think I was told that the fic's author was "notwolf", however I can't find this fic over on notwolf's fanfiction dot net account, so if you see this, I'd really like a direct link, because I don't think I even remembered the author's name right. Thank you.

ETA: Now that I've checked, it was a conversation I'd had with @oneandthetruth on a recent thread. If you see this, can you please give me a link?

Edited 2014-09-14 12:24 (UTC)

Well, I can't give you a link because LJ won't allow it. The story is Death Eater No More. However, please note this is part of an epic series, which is listed in order in notwolf's profile. You'll get a lot more out of it if you start at the beginning and read the novels in order. Her WIP is Father, My Father, about Abraxas as a young man. You can skip over it and go straight to The Beginnings of a Death Eater if you want to start with the Baby Boom characters.

I'm sorry it took me so long to reply to you.

Edited 2014-09-14 19:26 (UTC)

Thank you for the info. Actually just the title, author's name and site (fanfiction dot net, harrypotterfanfiction, fanfiction dot mugglenet dot net, thepetulantpoetess...) would be more than enough.

It's alright, I'm not a very swift replier either. :)

I started to read that story out of curiosity, but it was so badly written I had to quit. (There was "shawn" as the past tense of "shine," and "venerable" when she meant "vulnerable," among other glaring mistakes. The only consolation I can take is that the author's Canadian, so at least it's somebody besides an American looking like an ignorant, uneducated sicko in this case.)

I thought it was kind of funny that she strenuously objected to being called a sicko by reviewers. She whined, "Nobody calls JKR a sicko for having Merope Gaunt rape Tom Riddle." I read that and thought, "Uh, honey, you need to get out more. Look at something besides Rowling sycophant sites, and you'll find plenty of references to Rowling's mental problems."

As for your question, I think some people are just sickos, and they look for things that validate their sickness. The ability of humans to rationalize atrocious behavior is stunning to me. In the US, we're seeing a fine example of that right now. Football player Ray Rice got fired after a video surfaced of him in an elevator, punching his girlfriend in the face so hard that he knocked her out. Yet there have been several fans on TV, mostly women, no less, sporting his jersey and making excuses for his behavior: "Oh, it was just a mistake." "He's a good guy. He's being punished too harshly." And the classic whenever a black man is involved: "It's a lynching by the media!"

Never mind that, as Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out on his MSNBC show, Rice shows no reaction whatever to the sight of his girlfriend, the mother of his child, collapsing on the floor in front of him after he punches her. That clearly indicates he's done this before. Then he drags her out of the elevator like a sack of garbage. Yet she still married him, and now she's defending him, both of which indicate she's pretty messed up, too.

/Yet she still married him, and now she's defending him, both of which indicate she's pretty messed up, too./

I don’t feel comfortable blaming victims of abuse for their abuse, so I’d like to point out a few possible reasons why Rice’s wife has stayed with him.

1) Her family and/or friends blame her for Rice’s behavior and have pressured her to stay with him.

2) She may want to stay for the sake of their child by rationalizing that a messed-up father is better than no father at all (yes, I know that it’s easy for us, who are standing on the outside, to say, “*No,* no father at all is better than a dangerous one,” but she may be desperate to maintain some pretense of family).

3) Stockholm Syndrome.

4) She’s afraid of what he’ll do to her and/or their child if she leaves him. It’s common for abusers to step up their violence and/or kill their partner after they’ve broken up.

5) What was her job or financial situation before she married Rice? She may feel dependent on him because he’s a rich football player.

Yes, this, thank you. There are many reasons abused people stay with their abusers, and assuming that she must be 'messed up' because she does, without knowing her full situation, is just a shitty move. It's not her fault for being abused, ever.

Just because someone's messed up *doesn't* mean *it's their fault* they're messed up. Anyone who co-operates in their own victimization is messed up; they *need help* to get un-messed up, and out of their dangerous situation. Rice's wife needs help, obviously; I just hope she realizes this soon, seeks aid, and gets it, soon.

You beat me to this reply. @attilathepbnun. Expressing an empathic exasperation at a woman staying with an abusive spouse ("OMG that guy's a monster why are you even DEFENDING him??!!") is a far, far cry from "victim blaming".

Edited 2014-09-21 05:21 (UTC)

"The author actually writes in an author's note at the end of chapter 2: "I don't see why people are getting on my case for Daphne raping Harry. If anything it is just repeating how Merope Gaunt conceived Tom Riddle.""

So... rape's alright if someone else has done it before you? :0

I suppose if anyone writes a new Dark Lord nobody is allowed to say that he is a megalomaniac mass murderer because Voldemort already was one?

It's a real mess, o one in universe even called out that Merope raped Thomas Sr.

Edited 2014-09-21 05:19 (UTC)

Congrats, you've begotten a double-drabble.

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