The thing about Stockholm Syndrome as it is in real life is that it's basically the way abusers keep a hold on their victims: leaven the cruelty with kindness so that the captive is always trying to rationalize to themselves that no, it's okay, they actually do care, and if I just do x, they will be kind all the time! It seems to be a survival mechanism in the human brain to cope with otherwise untenable situations, less about hostages and captors specifically.
So a) it requires the captor to be cruel, or at least indifferent (which Marcus really isn't, in the book) part of the time, and b) I'm not sure it's really hurt/comfort, exactly? I mean, I wouldn't call a domestic abuser putting a bandaid on his victim's injuries h/c, personally.
I could potentially see some really creepy Stockholm Syndrome potential in Outcast, and Blood Feud can kind of be read that way (less creepily) for the one chapter in which the protagonist is actually a thrall. I think Randal in Knight's Fee has some of that "OMG a person is being nice to meeeee I must serve them foreverrrrrrr" going on, although in his case the people who are nice to him are (thankfully, IMO) not the ones who were cruel to him before. He's quite aware of this by the end of the book, too. Beric also has this going on in Outcast, with different characters from the one I'm thinking of who might creepily have Stockholm Syndromed him in an AU.
I am not sure how people mean Stockholm Syndrome in the fannish sense, and perhaps that's different. Certainly I'm sure slavery can fuck with the head even if the owner isn't abusive, and there are so many accounts of Romans freeing and marrying their slave girls, apparently relatively happily, that it seems quite plausible as a dynamic.
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Date: 2012-08-21 08:31 pm (UTC)So a) it requires the captor to be cruel, or at least indifferent (which Marcus really isn't, in the book) part of the time, and b) I'm not sure it's really hurt/comfort, exactly? I mean, I wouldn't call a domestic abuser putting a bandaid on his victim's injuries h/c, personally.
I could potentially see some really creepy Stockholm Syndrome potential in Outcast, and Blood Feud can kind of be read that way (less creepily) for the one chapter in which the protagonist is actually a thrall. I think Randal in Knight's Fee has some of that "OMG a person is being nice to meeeee I must serve them foreverrrrrrr" going on, although in his case the people who are nice to him are (thankfully, IMO) not the ones who were cruel to him before. He's quite aware of this by the end of the book, too. Beric also has this going on in Outcast, with different characters from the one I'm thinking of who might creepily have Stockholm Syndromed him in an AU.
I am not sure how people mean Stockholm Syndrome in the fannish sense, and perhaps that's different. Certainly I'm sure slavery can fuck with the head even if the owner isn't abusive, and there are so many accounts of Romans freeing and marrying their slave girls, apparently relatively happily, that it seems quite plausible as a dynamic.