aboutnici
replied to your post “If Nick and Adalind do become a thing I might end up dying of laughter…”

Luke and Laura did it on General Hospital!

Which was also gross. Listen, I don’t care how many times it has been done (way too fucking many) or how successful it proved to be with viewers, having a rape victim fall in love with his/her rapist is fucked up in the extreme.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that possibly part of the reason this trope does have success with viewers is that like 95% of the things we’re conditioned to find romantic are part of rape culture. Sexual violence and nonconsent are endemic to heterosexual romance tropes.

That’s why people find Adalind and Nick’s behavior toward one another erotic and romantic. Not because it is in any way either, but because our cultural attitude towards sex conditions us to see violence and interpret it as passion, and to forgive/excuse/erase rapists’ crimes easily.

I also think heteronormativity comes into play in the way people ship Nick and Adalind in spite of all the very good reasons not to (and it’s not the only ship in Grimm where this is a problem, mind…just the example at hand and possibly one of the more egregious ones). Just as we’re trained to ignore sexual and romantic cues between same-sex couples and view these as exclusively platonic, we’re also trained to view all interactions between men and women in light of their romantic potential.

Intertwine heternormativity with rape culture, and we’re not trained to shut that “everything between men/women is romance or could be romance” lens off when rape becomes a part of the narrative. If anything, we’re trained to throw that right in there with all this other stuff (fighting, grabbing someone’s arm during an argument, threatening violence, enjoying causing each other pain/discomfort, etc) that should not, by any reasonable or healthy definition, be viewed as romantic.

And that. is. seriously. fucked. up.