ScipioSmith
Sage
So five chapters in to my latest project, and I've come to realise something about it that might be a problem, and I'd appreciate some advice about it.
The setup is this: Dagmar, an elven girl and our protagonist, is attacked on her way home by a group of humans before being rescued by two other elves, her school-friend Laureia and a have-a-go-hero named Tiqet. The attack itself was going to be the prologue to the story, but I didn't really like it and so now the story starts with the attack and rescue done, beginning with Dagmar's nightmares about it, and the five chapters that I've written concern Tiqet and Laureia being put on trial for murdering some of the humans they saved Dagmar from.
And as I've written the trial and everything around it, I've come to realise that without that description of the attack from the prologue most readers will probably assume that Dagmar was raped, not least because the trial hinges on the question of whether Dagmar needed rescuing and the prosecution uses a lot of classic rape apologia to try and prove that she didn't (what had you done to provoke those men into following you? How rude of you to ignore them when they catcalled you from across the street. How short was your skirt that night?).
Does this matter? Should I clarify what really happened (I still don't really want to bring back the prologue, but I suppose I could) or leave it as it is, ambiguity and all?
The setup is this: Dagmar, an elven girl and our protagonist, is attacked on her way home by a group of humans before being rescued by two other elves, her school-friend Laureia and a have-a-go-hero named Tiqet. The attack itself was going to be the prologue to the story, but I didn't really like it and so now the story starts with the attack and rescue done, beginning with Dagmar's nightmares about it, and the five chapters that I've written concern Tiqet and Laureia being put on trial for murdering some of the humans they saved Dagmar from.
And as I've written the trial and everything around it, I've come to realise that without that description of the attack from the prologue most readers will probably assume that Dagmar was raped, not least because the trial hinges on the question of whether Dagmar needed rescuing and the prosecution uses a lot of classic rape apologia to try and prove that she didn't (what had you done to provoke those men into following you? How rude of you to ignore them when they catcalled you from across the street. How short was your skirt that night?).
Does this matter? Should I clarify what really happened (I still don't really want to bring back the prologue, but I suppose I could) or leave it as it is, ambiguity and all?