I thought here we could discuss the Unfortunate Implications that often appear in fanfiction. For those who don't know what the term means, check TV tropes though I have to warn you; you'll be there for hours.

Anyway, my classic example is from my fandom, PR. In one story I read, Ashley, aka Yellow in Space Ranger, is trying to get pregnant but apparently Andros's little swimmers aren't swift enough. So one night, she's out walking about and gets raped. Now, I could write a long rant about why a ranger girl wouldn't get raped by an ordinary guy with a knife--I've done it before and I'm not ashamed to do it again--but I'll spare you. Now here's where the unfortunate implications come in: after the rape, she discovers she's pregnant, which means either she's carrying the rapist's baby, a disgusting prospect, or her getting raped magically enables Andros to concieve. I'm not sure what's more disgusting. I really wish I could find this fic and take it apart for you in New Releases but I'm too lazy, so I don't know how it turned out; just the thought makes me vomit blood.

Another unfortunate implication: all those fics in which Hermione is a Pureblood. You're basically saying that the KKK-esque cause of the Death-eaters is right and just. Don't you realize how disgusting that is?

That was the plot for a Lifetime (Television for Victims) movie -- a woman is raped while going through fertility treatments, and has to wait until she's something like four months along before she can be tested to see whether it's her husband's baby or the rapist's. I am, without watching it, absolutely certain that it ended with her taking the test but refusing to hear the results.

As to the Adopted!Hermione issue, that's one I've been bothered by for years. How can even the dimmest fanwriters fail to see that "mudblood" is the wizarding world's direct analogue to "nigger"? In one review, I compared the whole "but she's really a pureblood" trope to the movie Gentleman's Agreement, in which Gregory Peck plays a Gentile journalist who investigates anti-Semitism in postwar America by posing as Jewish. At one point his small son (Dean Stockwell in a scene-stealing performance) comes home in tears: the kids at school have been bullying him, calling him "dirty Jew" and "stinking kike". Peck's girlfriend is horrified: she puts her arms around him and hastens to assure him that it's all a horrible mistake, because he's not Jewish at all!

Only after she's said this does she realize what she's telling the boy -- that it's only wrong for the other kids to torment him because he's not Jewish, but if he were it would be okay. She's telling him, basically, that the bigots are right and that being Jewish is a bad thing. That's the message of Pureblood!Hermione stories -- that impure blood, mixed heritage, is a bad thing. That it was only wrong for Draco to call Hermione "mudblood" because she's not muggle-born at all!

Rather like a woman suddenly becoming sick is generally a sign of pregnancy (instead of the 24-hour flu bug it would be in real life), gay men developing the sniffles or pneumonia is a sure sign they have AIDS. This is less common now than it was when I first got into fandom, but it's still common enough to make me want to get stabby with the authors, since it's obvious most of them haven't done any research on AIDS at all. If they did, they would know the prevelance of AIDS amongst gay men has actually dropped in the last ten years, due to the Gay Community getting the message about not having sex without a condom, even if your partner claims they're clean, to a whole new generation of young men. Also, there are now drugs available that, while they can't cure AIDS, can help those who have it live a longer life and suffer fewer opportunistic infections.

Apparently, the memo never reached the majority of the fantwits, because I've seen gay men who haven't even had sex with anyone develop AIDS (apparently, you can catch it off a toilet seat like herpes), gay men catching it from blood transfusions (still occasionally happens, but the percentage is so small its in the single digits), and gay couples in a long-term committed relationship somehow 'catching it'. The more likely scenario, that one of them had AIDS when they first got together never seems to have occurred to the fannits, but then, these are people who don't realize it's possible to have AIDS for 20 years before it manifests any signs. You don't wake up the morning after having sex with someone who's HIV positive and develop AIDS the next week.

The only ones they get it right with is rent boys, but that's less because they're gay, and more because they tend to have multiple partners, and it's a well-known fact that Johns, no matter what their sexual orientation, don't like to use condoms.

In other words, it's used for cheap melodrama in a situation where I think that cheap melodrama should be banned by the Geneva Convention. In the old days (in what passed for 'gay literature'), gay men used to develop leukemia or other forms of cancer, God (and society's) way of telling them that you can be happy for a little while, but you're not allowed to be happy forever, you dirty faggot, when in real life, they were more likely to be beaten to death by random homophobes, an angry John/partner or a parent/friend who'd discovered they were a pervert.

Hell, they're STILL more likely to be beaten-up by some homophobic asshole than they are to contract AIDS from someone they meet in a club.

Someone write a fic where her Pureblood parents show up and offer to wisk Hermione off to a life of luxury and Hermione's like, "Uh, they changed my nappies, walked me to kindergarten and have been there for every moment of my life. Who the hell are you to decide to waltz into my life after being gone for so many years and decide to play parent?"

BTW, Rosalie, thinks for finding it. I'll weigh out whether or not to snark it but I probably won't. Though it's full of all sorts of disgusting sexual politics, I don't know if it really counts as bad enough to drag over hear. Still thanks for finding it; I don't even want to know how long it took you to track it down. You're starting to demonstrate the insane amount of fannish devotion needed to be a member of this site.

I've seen this particular plot often enough that it has made my blood boil from the unfortunate implications it makes. The plot is that a heterosexual female character from a series is raped by a male friend/family member/random stranger. After this, she declares she is no longer heterosexual and instead attaches herself immediately to the female friend who consoles her. The reason that this plot makes me angry is the implication that a girl is /turned/ into a lesbian from encounters with men rather than her sexuality being something natural. It actually implies that there is truth to some of the rhetoric I've heard from homophobic people that claims that a person can be 'cured' of with therapy for the traumatic experience that 'caused' it.

I don't read yaoi much, so I was wondering if anyone else could tell me if this is something particular to yuri or if it is used in yaoi fan fiction as well. I've seen this used especially in the Buffy fandom to explain why Willow chose Tara over Oz.

I think I've seen "guy turning gay because of rape" in original fic, but I can't remember seeing it in fanfic.