Re: ... wow, Devin. [...] an author I wasn't aware was under attack [...]
So, if you weren't aware that Devin Grayson had been criticized for this scene, I'm assuming that someone else wrote those posts on your LJ, about how anyone who dislikes this scene is a stupid fanboy who's misreading Grayson's intent?
It's a dissonance. I think it's deliberate, you think it's not.
I think that Grayson fully intended it to be seen as a "questionable consent" scene - hence, her smugly coy answer about "rape" being different from "nonconsensual sex" - but the problem is that it's NOT "questionable consent," but instead, it's flat-out RAPE, and Grayson's refusal to acknowledge that fully, both in her interviews and on the page, are what people are picking up on, and responding negatively to.
And you haven't answered MY points about how Tarantula is made to look warm and inviting and gentle, and the fact that the scene pulls out from a tight shot of the two of them to a wide shot of the city as a whole actually CONTRIBUTES to my point, because it turns Tarantula into an OASIS, in the middle of an impersonal landscape.
On another note, as unbelievable as it may seem, it's possible for an author to write a sympathetic villain and not share their views.
And it's possible for a competent author to write a sympathetic villain without making it seem like the author has one hand jammed firmly down the front of their pants when they're writing about that character's sexual deeds.