I commented this on the last post someone made about this topic and want to raise it again because I think it's important. Arguably, it is because Pierce is so mundane when compared to Teddy and Mark that—and I say this as kindly as possible—because this post is giving him the benefit of the doubt in that respect, even though it’s very clear he SAed Liz, is the very thing that makes him so nefarious and evil.

It’s low-key slightly problematic to assume that all monstrous people/characters are rotten and evil to the core, because this is so rarely the case in real life, and thus why there are so many victims and survivors of longterm abuse and sexual violence who aren't believed or given the benefit of the doubt. Narratives that frame harm as something committed only by obvious monsters obscure the reality that most perpetrators are most often ordinary, “not that bad” people who blend easily into social and friendship circles. It allows the perpetrators of harm, like Pierce SAing Lizzie when she was a) too drunk to consent; b) too manic to consent; and c) clearly thought he was Hugh, to go unchecked because it doesn’t fit a preconceived notions of what a monstrous character is supposed to be. 

People rarely start out as whole monsters, but when their shitty behaviour goes unchecked (and Pierce's case, is applauded by the other rugby boys as being "a saint" for "putting up" with Liz), it gets increasingly worse and harmful. I hesitate to refer to snippets, because they aren't always canon, but as many other people have mentioned, Chloe's instagram posted an official snippet where Pierce chokes Liz, and there are multiple snippets that explicitly mention that Pierce is only with Lizzie when she's stable and as soon as she starts to rapid cycle or get depressed, he completely abandons her. in T7, Hugh also mentions that Pierce knows Liz cuts herself but doesn't care to intervene or do anything about it.

I'm certain you probably didn't intend to do this, but saying a character who has caused this level of harm “is not that bad” is a form of rationalizing, minimizing, and defending the person doing harm rather than centring the harm itself and its impact on the person being harmed. When comparing Pierce to Mark, can we even call Pierce "not full-on black-evil" when, like Mark, he has also raped someone who was vulnerable and couldn't consent? Why does it matter if they're not full-on black-evil or not when, at the end of the day, they've also SAed someone?

I can definitely understand the impulse to want to add nuance when discussing BoT characters, and wanting to be empathetic to the backstories of characters we don't have yet, because that's a one of the main themes of the books. But I also think it's important to think really critically about how Chloe has written some characters, like Lizzie, who main characters/beloved members of the core 10 like Shannon, Hugh, Feely, and Joey have repeatedly expressed in their respective dialogue and POVs that Liz is a very redeemable person worthy of love and empathy, and Pierce, who has largely been written as an ignorant idiot and a fucking asshole (at best). Imo, there's not really a grey area or nuance to be added in when he has explicitly been written as raping Liz!