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So I was asked why do I depict most of the women in my comics as seemingly
masochistic?
That is a fair question and I have wondered how to show some variety
regarding this, and whether this shows some kind of personal issue I should
try to work thru, or I am just lazily adhering to cliched tropes.
One of the very first stories I ever wrote was THE TRUCE, and it, the
mechanical-bodied Brain deploys oversized dildos to have sex with Donna Troy
who complaints that she is not into being hurt by such oversized toys. And
when the Brain states that he thought bigger was better, Donna shoots that
down as nonsense, that too big is just too big. Or something like that.
But Kory was of a different mind, and that variety of preference was used to
mirror their different characterizations of Donna being a more centered,
sedate, demure person than the bombastic, wilder Kory. In contrast, Raven
had no real sex at all to reflect her repressed, ascetic personality.
That Kory, being the wilder, anything-goes-sexually hottie, would be
into extreme sex, accepting a mixture of pain with her pleasure, made sense
to me because of her unique upbringing in a more sexually-uninhibited alien
culture and her experiences both as a former Citadel sex slave and as a
warrior trained by the Warlords of Okaara.
The first and last also applies to Wonder Woman, because she was also
brought up in a highly competitive warrior culture and where sexual mores
need not be ours.
Now, the mixing of pleasure and pain which does exist in sadomasochist
fetishists here, is probably more a common accepted practice in such
societies with such tendencies, because hardcore warrior training involves
getting familiar and friendly with the concept of pain, of endurance, and
creates a mindset of seeking physical challenges and testing personal
limits. This is not theoretical, btw, I spent decades training martial
arts, and that does happen. It can be self-destructive and unhealthy, but
it is the kind of thing that makes people take up all kinds of crazy,
dangerous activities, like mma, wrestling, mountain-climbing, marriage, etc.
Of course, then we have characters like Sue Storm for whom none of the
above works. She should not be into any of that crap and in real
continuity that is likely so, but for my fics, because I wanted to explore
it from the angle of her sexual frustration with her
too-detached-too-abstracted husband, I also went for the extremist
exploration, because hey, the FF are explorers of the unknown, aren't they?
More than crime-fighters or anything, they explore. So I had Sue being the
one to explore sexual boundaries. And because of the whole contradiction
between prim, proper wife/mother/sister and wanton sexual symbol displayed
by the existence of Malice in the comics, it made sense to go into the
directions that involved domination/submission S&M elements. (See Malice in
leather and studs!) And just having her sleep with regular guys seemed to
me reductive of her and Reed's relationship. If she explores extramarital
sex it has to be alien and dangerous and wild-ranging, just like the whole
FF adventures. And that justifies Reed taking an intellectual interest in
her participation in such activities.
So that is the psychological in-narrative justification/rationalization/shameless-excuse.
The other element to consider is rather dramatic necessity for superhero
action-adventure scenarios which I seek to parallel with the sexual
shenanigans, because otherwise why even involve these characters? So we
want to have some dramatic elements to make the sex exciting and
challenging, and that is why we have the debatable-morally pairings of
heroine-villain, heroine-monster, and to emphasize the dangers in the
ethical dimensions we create physical parallels with the prowess, technique
and roughness of the sexual partners. They are not normal guys, and it is
not normal sex, and by adding the kinky aspects to the physical acts, we
reinforce that they are bad guys and that this is something risky and
dangerous and that is part of its whole appeal, if not most. And it allows
to have the sex parallel the struggle of combat which is what the heroine as
action girl excels in, and these parallels reinforce each different element
to create the narrative appeal while allowing for dramatic
groaned/shouted/moaned vocal statements that remind us that things are rough
and heavy and dangerous and there is drama involved.
Also, the physical visual elements kinda are emblematic of the genre and
it is standard to emphasize that within the narrative for visual drama, too.
Stan Lee said that a Marvel character does not just make a declarative
statement, he slams his fist on the table for emphasis. And that melodrama
and over the top nature of old fashioned superhero comics is carried over to
my depictions of sex and the melding of danger and desire.