: Does this premise take it too far? Some people will take offense to it. Some people will think that it was apt and appropriate. Some people will think that it is a brilliant metaphor (even

@Annie587

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Does this premise take it too far?

Some people will take offense to it. Some people will think that it was apt and appropriate. Some people will think that it is a brilliant metaphor (even if you didn't intend it to be). You can't please everyone, though that doesn't mean that you shouldn't strive to take it as seriously as you intend to.

There is precedent for treating fantasy crimes as being as heinous as rape. In David Brin's Kiln People, where the premise is that people are able to make temporary golems of themselves, it is treated as a crime on par with rape to force someone to make a golem of themselves.

There was a spell in D&D 3.5 called Mindrape that, due to the very same controversy you are worried about, was changed to Programmed Amnesia. The description of the spell was that if the caster was successful, they knew everything that the subject knew, and could rewrite their memories, beliefs, even core personality however they saw fit. It was an Evil spell, only able to be used by Evil characters. Clearly, however, enough people were upset by the comparison that the name was changed, though some of this may have been because the idea made it too real and too serious for a game.

In the context of a piece of literature, you tend to have a little more leeway to deal with the sensitive and macabre.

Also, the connection between rape and demons has a long history. That is more or less the notion of the succubus/incubus, after all. So it's not a stretch to make that connection.

How can I present it in a way that it is taken seriously?

What you have already presented as your plans sounds like you have a good start on that. Present the consequences; explore the injustice of how this person is treated so poorly from something that was already a horrific experience for them. You can go into detail about the pain, and if you are presenting the work from the point of view of the possessed, you could do a pretty good job of describing the horror of the loss of control. This is all sounding rather like a metaphor. I don't know if that was your intent, but as I said, people will read into things what they will.

One thing to consider is that you don't need to explicitly make the connection to rape. If you present the encounter as horrifying enough, and the consequences as unbearable enough, readers will do it for you. Arguably, this is the 'show, don't tell' part of writing. If you do not, and you don't get too heavy handed with allusions and euphemisms, no one could fault you for comparing rape to demonic possession because you never did. It may work out better as an allegory not to make the connection yourself, as well.

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