Feminist adventures?

[Jon_Dahl]

Lot of great ideas in this thread. There is no simple solution, but for instance the idea about the boarding school was good.

This is just my 2 cents so far, after thinking about this for some days:
Feminist adventuring is of course a great idea, but the issue itself demands more education and chancing the world, not merrily killing baddies and taking their stuff. This is a superherogame, so we need supervillains, big robots and photon pistols. We don't need real world issues. I do see some fun in nailing some human traffickers, but it doesn't sound too appealing to the genre... Or me. And I do feel very apprehensive about dealing things like violence towards women in RPG. It just sounds like a bad idea. Like many of you said, maybe it's too touchy for some of the players.

In my opinion my players would be wise to let me create them surprising and fun superhero adventures that also inspire me, and not limiting me with stuff that just causes me headache... Like mixing superhero genre with defending real-world humanitarianism. Hmm...

 

[billd91]

As I'm a straight man they don't interest me either. But the protagonist of "Twilight" comes to mind. No idea what her name is.

Bella the doormat? Here's something from an interesting review in 2009:

"Then there’s the “Doormat: Still out there, waiting for you to wipe your shoes on her.”

Here’s how Wendell and Tan describe this throwback, whom they see as exemplified by Bella Swan, the American teenager who falls in love with a vampire in the first novel in the “Twilight” series:

“She’s malleable, weak, and an utter bore. She doesn’t stand up to anything, much less her own desires, and can be found swooning on the nearest sofa, or lying on the bed while she’s ravished with pleasure she so does not deserve. Might be seen swooning, wringing her hands, whining, or otherwise worrying about something. Any resistance she might mount against the hero is ineffectual, and she couldn’t find her backbone if you showed her an X-ray … “

 

[pawsplay]

Female protagonists created by and for women look quite different, and not of much interest to men, which is why you guys are not discussing them here!

An interesting concept. Let's throw a couple out there:
Paksenarrion, from the Elizabeth Moon trilogy
Alanna the Lioness, from Tamora Pierce's Lioness Rampant stories
Lythande, from Thieves World, created by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Tarma and Kethry, created by MZB, written also by Mercedes Lackey

None of them are "Bellas." I think the reason fewer female characters are being discussed is partly because women are uderrepresented as female creators in most media. Not necessarily because Bella is especially womanly; she is "feminine" only in a prescriptive cultural sense, and rather retro in any case.

 

[jonesy]

Bella the doormat? Here's something from an interesting review in 2009: -snip-

That's actually quite kind compared to some of the reviews I've seen and heard.

 

[S'mon]

I just thought of a female protagonist I've actually read - Morgaine, from CJ Cherryh's Chronicles of Morgaine. An odd one as you never get the internal aspect on her, she's observed from the perpective of her henchman Vanye. Jirel of Joiry would be another. Both are fairly obscure compared to Wonder Woman et al.

 

[Salamandyr]

I just thought of a female protagonist I've actually read - Morgaine, from CJ Cherryh's Chronicles of Morgaine. An odd one as you never get the internal aspect on her, she's observed from the perpective of her henchman Vanye. Jirel of Joiry would be another. Both are fairly obscure compared to Wonder Woman et al.

My reaction when reading Jirel of Joiry was "for a sword and sorcery heroine, she sure cries an awful damned lot."

 

[billd91]

No, the case has been made very effectively by scholarly works on erotica: many of the early images of Wonder Woman in bondage are straight out of the BDSM porn collection of her creator. And despite being Supes's equal in nearly every way, she ends up in bondage a lot.

But does she end up in bondage more often than Superman ends up messed up by Kryptonite (whether red, green, gold, or whatever color)? Does she end up in bondage as fan service for the boys or because that's the way her powers get suppressed - and suppression of powers is a common story element in comics?

 

[rogueattorney]

A couple ideas:

1. A super-powered serial killer, or group of same, whose victims are women.

2. A "pro-feminist" political candidate is marked for assassination (due to that issue or any other) and the superhero is his/her only hope. Sort of a first season of 24, but with super powers.

3. Superhero is sent to alien world/alternate reality where women are the traditionally dominant gender.

4. Superhero protects a women's shelter. Woman shows up who was involved with a super villain and is looking for protection from the guy who beat her up. Maybe it was the super villain. Or maybe it was someone else and the superhero needs to find the batterer before the super villain does. Perhaps the victim has been left in a state where she can't tell the superhero who did it to her.

5. The previously mentioned human trafficking scenarios are gold.

 

[IanB]

Does she end up in bondage as fan service for the boys or because that's the way her powers get suppressed - and suppression of powers is a common story element in comics?

This almost makes sense, until you realize that the reason that particular method suppresses her powers is the aforementioned fan service (or a specific kink of her creator, if you prefer.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But does she end up in bondage more often than Superman ends up messed up by Kryptonite (whether red, green, gold, or whatever color)? Does she end up in bondage as fan service for the boys or because that's the way her powers get suppressed - and suppression of powers is a common story element in comics?

1) I've read a lot of comics in my life, partly because I had access to comics far older than myself when gifted with collections that belonged to other relatives. My current collection- culled many times over due to factors beyond my control- still takes up a volume equivalent to a Cadillac from the 1990s. That said, IME (not based on actual research), WW wound up bound up much more often than Supes got hit by kryptonite, slightly more often than Martian Manhunter faced fire, and maybe as often as Green Lanterns faced yellow.

2) Given that some have linked actual WW bondage poses to actual pieces of BDSM porn owned by her creator, at best it's a mixed bag. Online samples run the gamut of WW in simple bondage in ropes to VERY sophisticated fetish poses involving her being nearly mummified in black leather straps, or being bound by her scantily clad Amazonian sisters asking for them to bind her tighter.

And that's without addressing the multitude of WW spanking or getting spanked by other women.