As well all know, Skald has somewhat of a habit of posting long winded hypotheticals here. I’m not here to call out those in particular (though, frankly they are convoluted and stupid. So hopefully someone will at another time.), but rather that after reading the one you posted today: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=592933, I got to thinking. What kind of person thinks up this stuff? I mean, just sitting around coming up with one thing like that is bad enough. But it occurred to me that your name and the concept of rape were vaguely connected in my brain for some reason.
Well, it turns out you are thinking about it a lot. Which might explain it.
I just assume that all of Slald the Rhymer’s posts are “research” for his “book”. Saves me a lot of time, as I don’t have to read them or respond to them.
Look - Skald posts bizarre hypos. That’s his thing. If you don’t like them, that’s your affair - though I think they’re well-written and entertaining, and it seems plenty of other Dopers do as well. Those threads often run two, three pages.
With regard to rape in particular - again, Skald just posts a lot of hypos. He posts threads on supervillains, time travel, which actresses one would like to spend time with, which Welshmen should be spared the obliteration of their country, pop culture - and so on. He’s a prolific poster. To point to a few out of of these many, many threads and claim there’s a fixation just doesn’t make sense. I could see it if most, or even a plurality, of his posts were on this topic - but that just isn’t so.
The OP is right. Skald is obsessed with rape / molestation / sexual humiliation of women. This will probably get this thread locked, since the events described happened offboard. But they lend credence to what Aqualung is saying here, and someone really needs to address the dude on this fixation.
Skald is famous for coming into a space where members of the Dopeverse are gathered, and asking for help “writing” his “stories”. For some reason (which becomes apparent), he only solicited the opinions of the women there (as in addressing them individually by name and asking if they would “help” him). And the questions were generally about female sexual abuse or humiliation. This occurred many, many times over a span of several months.
Questions included (and there were more that I don’t remember. Oh, and these might be triggering to some):
Hey, does this line in one of my stories make it sound like my character is threatening to rape his female prisoner with a dog? LOL I totally didn’t mean it that way! (This one was repeated several times, every time another women entered the conversation, until more than one person screamed at him to shut the fuck up).
Is a teenaged girl that was raped by her father still a virgin for ~magical purposes~?
Asking us to imagine ourselves as the victims of sexual assault and wanting to know if, when forced to kneel in a room full of men who want to rape us, we would kneel facing them or away from them.
Wanting to debate whether drugged rape is somehow not as bad as “violent” rape, and responding to comments that both are equally bad by saying he just wanted to be “fair”. To rapists.
I don’t know if I’m actually conveying the creepiness of what he did. He specifically addressed these question to the woman, (and only the women) without any warning that the questions will be on a topic that is upsetting to many. You’d be having a pleasant conversation and them BOOM this guy comes in and suddenly the topic is your personal feelings on rape. Only if you were a lady, though. He wasn’t interested otherwise.
This sounds pretty bad, but in the interest if fairness, are you certain that it was really Skald and not somebody spoofing his Doper handle? That’s been known to happen before.
In fairness, some of them are for his book or inspired by (the book exists; I’ve done beta-reading on it). Whether or not that makes it less disturbing is still up to debate. I like Skald, but I don’t read all his hypotheticals either (of course, I don’t post much at all lately)
If I posted all the random questions that pop in my mind about any of my stories I’m sure people would think I was disturbed as well. (My threads never seem to get the amount of traffic his do. I’m sure his persona helps in that regard.)
