When Consent Fails: Affirmative Consent, Acquaintance Rape, and Survivor Guilt in Rachel Smythe's Webtoon Lore Olympus

• Published in: Feminist formations Vol. 37; no. 1; pp. 158 - 177
• Main Author: Matthews, Corinne
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Johns Hopkins University Press 01.03.2025
• ISSN: 2151-7363; 2151-7371; 2151-7371
• DOI: 10.1353/ff.2025.a962234

Scholars across disciplines have grown increasingly dissatisfied with consent as a framework for ethical sexual interaction. Rachel Smythe's Webtoon Lore Olympus , a retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth, reveals some of the inadequacies of affirmative consent as a solution to sexual assault using the tools of narrative in conjunction with a visual, multimodal format. Through her depiction of Apollo's sexual assault of Persephone, Smythe demonstrates both the complications specific to acquaintance rape and the limitations of verbal affirmative consent as the standard by which consent should be judged. This article argues that Smythe uses a visual medium to effectively disrupt the "real rape script," or stranger in a dark alley scenario, and highlight the difficulties of acquaintance rape, in which the survivor knows her rapist. Through that disruption, Smythe emphasizes the limitations of verbal affirmative consent by demonstrating the guilt and self-recrimination this ideology can prompt for survivors. The comments section of this Webtoon allows additional insight into how readers interpret and interact with the ideas about consent, sexual assault, and trauma that Smythe presents in the narrative. Ultimately, Smythe's nuanced engagement with consent, rape, and rape culture restores necessary complexity to conceptions of consent for a public audience.