[LNH] Sexuality and Assumptions

Tom Russell milos_parker at yahoo.com
Fri Sep 25 08:11:25 PDT 2009


Andrew,

You're quite right in that Frat Boy would be a bisexual.  And I think
if I had intended it to stick, if I had written the story to be
serious, I likely would have addressed that in-story or in a
subsequent adventure, perhaps even pointing out the trope that you
mention.  I think it was more that I was taking aim at The Reset
Button and regressive attitudes towards sexuality in superhero comics
in general-- and, more importantly, giving Master Blaster something to
freak out about. Ah, Master Blaster. Sometimes I miss you so much.

At any rate-- I was really surprised that the change in Frat Boy's
sexuality was taken up by others.  Not that I thought my fellow
writers would balk at it-- that's not what I'm saying-- it's just that
I never intended it to be a permanent change or A Big Story That
Changes Everything.  So, pleasantly surprised.

For the most part.  Jesse Willey wrote a story that retconned in a
previous gay lover, Hot Dog Boy or some such, which led to a lot of
sausage-phallus jokes.  Besides basically invalidating my entire story
in the first place, I found it in extremely poor taste.  And for me to
find it in bad taste-- after all, I wrote the WikiBoy Cures AIDS With
His Semen story-- well, that's saying something.

Since everyone seemed to like the gay or bisexual Frat Boy, I did
intend to marry him off and e-mailed his creator.  I never got a
reply, and so I changed the intended story around-- instead of Self-
Righteous Preacher refusing to officiate at the wedding, he just
refuses to allow Frat Boy into his congregation-- and ended up with
the Catalyst Lass vs. Self-Righteous Preacher story, the one that
introduces the Imperfect Duplicate Ray (which is something that I wish
did get used more by other authors) and the Preacher's feel-good
doppelganger, Megachurch Man.  (Not my best work, but there were some
nice bits in it.)

All this talk about bisexual superheroes reminds me, of course, of
Captain Jack Harkness.

==Tom



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