Huntress and Arsenal. 1 page from outsiders volume 3 issue 12

[requiem2adream]

I have a question about Huntress and Arsenal's one night stand so of course I turn to the lovely ladies and gents of scans_daily to hopefully find the answer.

The first I heard of it was in BoP: Dinah, Babs and Helena are meeting in a park to discuss whether or not they can work together as a team and the subject of Helena's one night stands with Dick and Roy comes up and Helena has the brilliant line 'Archers... they pull a mighty bow but they're quick to let fly'. Which of course pisses Dinah off royally and nearly ends the team before it even begins.

I went back and read the Outsiders issues where Helena takes Roy's place on the team while he recovers from being shot, thinking that would be where I could find the Huntress/Arsenal stuff (I'm a massive Huntress fan and I've been trying to track down and read pretty much everything she's been in because yes I am obsessive) but apart from the kiss at the end




there's not really any interaction between the two and certainly no sexy times going on between the pair.

So folks my question is this: is this the first time it's ever referenced or is does the Helena/Roy stuff happen in different issues to the ones I've been reading? 

Comments

[benicio127]

Word. And not only that... so Helena slept with Roy. What is the Big Fucking Deal. The amount of men Helena has slept with canonically is far fewer than the majority of my IRL girlfriends' "lists."

[requiem2adream]

Oh I don't think it's a big deal and yeah, I'm confused as to how Helena got the bike of the DCU label when she really hasn't been linked with all that many men.

Mostly I just want to see the setup. Something really interesting could have been done with Helena helping out Roy after he got shot since, you know, she knows exactly what he's going through. But no. We get a crappy handwavey kind of aside that it happened and that's it.

And it's not like they didn't have time to show it either because the previous issue spends four or five pages dealing with Roy paying a booty call to Grace.

Poor story telling IMO that suggests Huntress/Arsenal was just added in to get that exchange between the boys.

[benicio127]

I'm confused as to how Helena got the bike of the DCU label when she really hasn't been linked with all that many men.

I have no idea, either, and I actually wish there were more female characters who engaged in casual sex.

Mostly I just want to see the setup. Something really interesting could have been done with Helena helping out Roy after he got shot since, you know, she knows exactly what he's going through. But no. We get a crappy handwavey kind of aside that it happened and that's it.

But how would you have envisioned it happening? I mean, I personally am not all that keen on the artist portrayal rather than the actual story portrayal. (crotch shot as she walks away)

[jaybee3]

"Poor story telling IMO that suggests Huntress/Arsenal was just added in to get that exchange between the boys."

I've always thought that was the WHOLE POINT of this storyline. Which is why I personally dislike it so much. Winick having Huntress act OOC (at this point in her characterization) was basically just so Dick and Roy could josh about it. Not about her. At all. He could have inserted basically any other super-heroine - that's how little she means to the story. And THAT is insulting (and it's from this scene that she get the rep amongst DC writers and some readers as the kind of girl who'll sleep with anything) which is even MORE insulting.

All so Judd Winick could write a joke.

[requiem2adream]

*nods* Point taken.

Yeah, I think you've got it bang on the nose there. I guess I was just hoping that there was more to it than that, hence why I wanted to know if I was missing something.

Thanks.

[strannik01]

Oh I don't think it's a big deal and yeah, I'm confused as to how Helena got the bike of the DCU label when she really hasn't been linked with all that many men.

Same reason as why Oliver Queen is considered a ladies' man, in spite of the fact that, until his first death, he was largely loyal to Dinah. Some writer took a bit of information about the character without understanding the context, and other writers picked up on it.

Also, fans are often an immature, puerile lot.

[icon_uk]

I don't think there is any real commentaty on Helena here, Dick comments on Roy's proclivities, not Helena's.

[benicio127]

No, but there has been fan commentary on it.

[jaybee3]

Yes it's Huntress who has suffered from this story (which is ALL about the boys) not Roy. Readers and writers seem to have no problems with man-whores (look how they write Ollie after his return-including Winick with Joanna Pierce - after how he had been through).

[benicio127]

She suffered because people in fandom went around calling the character a slut based on their own judgments and perceptions and ideas that women should only have sex in these acceptable sets of boxes.

[jaybee3]

I agree and it's not fair. I still can't defend THIS story though becuase I believe it does Huntress a disservice. She's basically used a sexual prop for a joke between Roy and Dick. She has no interaction with Roy prior to this and none afterwards. Any other super-heroine could have been inserted and the dialogue could have remained the same. Compare with it with the Josh storyline in BoP, which even though I didn't like it (more so I didn't like Josh and the way he treated Helena) was a story about HER. Some readers however will bunch the two together (and judging by the TV Tropes entry already have).

[arysteia]

Thing is, I don't find this scene offensive. By pure coincidence I just read it for the first time at the weekend, and I thought, 'That's it? That's what all the fuss was about? No, must be more somewhere else.' While I take your point about it being about the boys and not Helena, that's the case every time a character visits another character's book. They help advance the star's plot/characterisation, not their own. But the actual scene is okay, for me. She and Roy are clearly on good enough terms that she'll help him out when he needs it, he's genuinely grateful, they kiss goodbye in what seems like genuine affection, and Dick then makes fun of Roy, not Helena. I call shame, and a lot of it, on readers for taking it, running with it, and being dicks about it, not the characters or the writers.

[whitesycamore]

This was exactly my reaction as well. I can sort-of see people's annoyance because Helena just popped up randomly so Roy could drop this revelation... But I can't really understand why it attracts such visceral hatred. The hook-up seems casual enough not to really affect the status quo of Helena's character. And I don't see that it's much worse than a reference to Roy and Helena playing Scrabble, singing songs, or skipping rope together.

I think that in order to get really annoyed by this scene one would have to accept that there's something uniquely awful about a woman engaging in casual sex. And I just don't.

[arysteia]

I think that in order to get really annoyed by this scene one would have to accept that there's something uniquely awful about a woman engaging in casual sex. And I just don't.

This is what I find truly ironic. That the people most outraged on Helena's behalf appear actually to be the ones judging her behaviour.

[icon_uk]

People so the same with Dick, when his bedding average in very low indeed.

Liu (retconned in in the past 5 years)
Kory
Babs
Helena (one night stand)
Tarantula (don't even get me started on that one)
Cheyenne (Very briefly)

and I think that's it, in 70 years, well 42 years if you want to count from confirmation that he was 18....

[whitesycamore]

Yes. Some people say that Dick and Roy are "joking" about both bedding Helena, but I don't see that at all.

The only thing I see is faint eye-rolling disapproval on Dick's part. I definitely don't see how it's intended to make Roy look like the man.