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]

It's true there are an awful lot of serial monogamist women in capes. Renee and Zinda are, offhand, the only two I can think of at DC who aren't, though I'm sure there are probably a few more.

Kate Kane, Kory, Grace Choi, Jess Jones (pre-Marriage) are a few I can think of. And Mia Dearden, she definitely wanted to have sex with Dodger, she brought condoms with her to visit him. (I don't know if they ever got to do anything since he cheated on her with Emma Watson.) And she hit on Connor a lot.

[bluefall]

Grace! How the hell did I forget Grace! I guess just because she's been in a committed relationship for so long?

Though she and Mia do both have that whole "past history of sexual abuse" thing going. I appreciate that the writing for both of them (so far as I know at least, I'm not a big Arrow fan) has avoided ever drawing that "promiscuous because damaged" conclusion -- Grace has a healthy and varied sex life, and also she was abused once, and these things are unrelated as far as the narrative is concerned -- but the implication is still just sitting there waiting for someone to make it, and I worry that sooner or later someone will. I mean look what happened to Shulkie. These gross sexist cliches have real traction with some writers. :/

[benicio127]

I totally agree. Mia actually really seems to have some positive attitudes towards sex just based on the fact that she hits on her crushes the amount she does. It's really, really refreshing to see not even taking into account the fact that she's a sex abuse survivor and is living with HIV.

[cuntfucius]

So basically we have girls who are queer, girls who have been abused, and aliens as the only girls who can be promiscuous in comics and it be "understandable" because of their "backgrounds" or some weird implications that I'm totally looking way too deeply into.

Which I know I am, hahaha. BUT STILL. You see less hetero-identified girls with "good" backgrounds doing this.

Ah, I fondly remember the slut shaming even Donna Troy went through...

[benicio127]

Yep! Exactly. And you have to be a type to have casual sex, you know! And because Helena is Catholic, she can't fit into this group? (Except that one of my best friends is Catholic and very happily has enjoyed lots of sex with different people! So take that stereotypes!)

[cuntfucius]

Yeah, either way I think people need to tread carefully when deciding on whether or not Helena would be the "type" of person to have casual sex, or if it's "in character" for her to do so. Especially because sexual choices are so very personal, sometimes you can be mostly monogamous and deep-connection-based your entire life, but have a tiny period where you want to try out some casual stuff to see if it's for you. I mean, I'm NOT a Winick fan at all by any means (rather the opposite), but I think in general, though he's using Helena as an annoying proxy for an exchange, he's also kind of shining a poor light on Roy here. Which was only aggravated by Gail's sniping of his "talents" in bed later on, or lack thereof. Winick's got a bad case of misogyny and liberal-proclaimed-male-feminist syndrome, so I can't give him too much of a benefit of the doubt here, buuuut I remember REALLY cringing at Gail thinking she was "sticking up" for Helena but, in fact, making Helena not seem in charge of her own bodily autonomy, taking away a bunch of her agency by attributing the sex she had to low self esteem and to a troubled period for her.

Roy gets a lot of slack for this, too. It's character memes spread around in fandom and by writers, ideas getting taken and run with and it just gets embarrassing to read because people repeat these "truths" without really trying to dissect the numbers and reality behind them. Donna Troy immediately, by glorious Kyle fangirls and boys, got branded as a slut the moment she touched Roy Harper. So did Helena. And even Kendra got bad reception for that reason. Donna also was suddenly a "slut" for ... being nice to Jason? All because she had touched Roy Harper before, which obviously WOW HOW LOW CAN YOU GO, GIRL?

So because of the treatment of a fave of mine, my eyes were VERY open and peeled to how Helena was treated after this. And it was not good. I honestly am baffled that Helena gets treated as the go-to casual sex girl in the DCU by so many fans, when her number isn't even "high." It's even more disturbing that people act as if it would be a bad thing if it was so.

[benicio127]

Yeah, either way I think people need to tread carefully when deciding on whether or not Helena would be the "type" of person to have casual sex, or if it's "in character" for her to do so. Especially because sexual choices are so very personal, sometimes you can be mostly monogamous and deep-connection-based your entire life, but have a tiny period where you want to try out some casual stuff to see if it's for you.

Exactly and this is what I was trying to say elsewhere, but you've outdone me as usual. ;)

Donna Troy immediately, by glorious Kyle fangirls and boys, got branded as a slut the moment she touched Roy Harper. So did Helena. And even Kendra got bad reception for that reason. Donna also was suddenly a "slut" for ... being nice to Jason? All because she had touched Roy Harper before, which obviously WOW HOW LOW CAN YOU GO, GIRL?

Ugh, so gross. Not only that but branded a slut because the fans also don't like the male character (ie. Jason or Roy) so she gets shat on by proxy.

[cuntfucius]

Yeah, and I think this is the problem of people being so absolutist about sex. If you involve it in a story, people immediately are on guard about its "purpose" in a story. Sometimes, people think immediately it is sleazy if there's no love involved...in particular, the readership I think is a bit behind on progressive ideals, since it's a mostly (direct market wise) shrinking one, I think? Because of this, individual character assessment on their sexuality can't ...be done in a realistic manner, usually, since most characters aren't really shown talking about it, or their preferences, or whatever. Comic relationships -- romance and sexuality, are written like...terribly, lol, often, in a way where you often get contradictory and backwards ideals projected on to characters.

It is because Roy has been more brazen and honest about his sexual desires than most that he's seen as sleazy, I guess. And then it becomes a caricature of sleaziness: He frequents strip clubs (and strip clubs are dirty, and strippers are dirty, so let's make STD jokes about Roy!), he ranked girls in bed in Rise of Arsenal during a sadistic fight...and yet, his impotence also gets made fun of. It's just like...Roy has been retconned and retroactively made into being pinned with character essentialism, where he was "doomed" to always be troubled and come from a broken lifestyle, so let's include being sexual in that "brokenness."

And, yes, any girl who touches a man THAT sleazy has to be sleazy herself, right? It's just all really backwards ideas, in general, and the sad thing is I see them projected by lolfeministbloggerslol in comic fandom just as much.

[benicio127]

Absolutely and I'm nodding my head to everything you've said here. And I really am getting the sense of just how conservative the majority of comic fans are. I mean you see more progress in TV and movies. And you know, I can recall someone mentioning there were letters sent in when comics showed Dick and Kory in a sexual relationship because they were a) 18/19 ish (even though Kory is an alien and who knows how old she really is?) and b) not married etc. etc. etc.