In my comics noösphere, the topic of sexual-assault as plot-device has come up again.
This weird thing about US genre fiction, where status-quo is often supreme, so that neither violence nor sexual-abuse can have long-term consequences. Retcons! Reboots! Reimaginings! Any one who is a monster can not only be reformed, but also that we must pretend that their crimes of the past never happened.
It's this last part that's weird: that authors can't insert problematic elements in the stories, because then the *continuity* of the stories is problematic. What usually happens is that an author's mandate appears to declare the problematics null and void. Mum that word.
When really, the greatest evils of sexual-abuse and systemic-violence are that they're not to be talked about. Yes,. they happen, but they're so terrible as to be beyond imagination. Even thinking about them might as well be as terrible as executing them.
There's an old joke that "reality doesn't have to make sense, but fiction does". Fiction is a deliberate act, made my individuals. There's also craft involved: words are spell-checked, phrases are chosen, symbolism is invoked, meta-textual elements abound.
When I make art, I choose to make this art. As a self-publisher, I can't even use the excuse that "I was under contract" or "the rent was due" or that "I was only following orders". I chose this.
I've been wrestling with the genre of urban-fantasy for some time now. The real world has poverty, class warfare, ethnic determinism, sexual determinism, plutocracy … all things bigger than cartoon mice.
A larger-than-life, romanticized story about late-20th century crime has elements of indulgence about it. I do worry about this gloss. Who is this story for? To share it is to invite criticism, and if I can't handle criticism than I shouldn't be sharing it. Let alone selling it.
"Too Clever By Half" is the story of people who didn't know what they wanted, they only knew that they didn't want what they had, in a world that promised them nothing and then lied about it. I hope I can get this done. I hope I do right by it.
https://youtu.be/eL2fMjSA-rs