Super, super interesting essay that explores the use of sexual violence in urban fantasy. This paragraph especially made me sit up and think:
When I look for heroines, I look for heroines who choose violence as a tool because it works for them, not because it’s thrust upon them. I want heroines who are powerful for power’s sake. Who are honestly, truly, really, scary. Not sexy-scary. Not girl-next-door-scary. But genuinely someone who you’d be terrified to bump into in a dark alley. Because they are so good and unapologetic about what they do.
It’s rare to find this type of heroine in urban fantasy, or spec fic in general. Typically, a woman who is ambitious and willing to use violence is a villainess, not a heroine. Furthermore, she often doesn’t commit violence herself, but in true femme fatale fashion, manipulates men to do bloody deeds by enticing them with her bodacious body. Death via sex, in true Salome fashion.
So a protagonist who commits violence with her own hands, feet, and teeth? One who does so not because she *has* to, but because she wants to? Definitely unusual. Definitely refreshing. Definitely something I want to see more of.
I want to see more too!
This kind of woman is so rare that by the end of the excerpt I thought its writer meant villainess and disregarded the previous mention of “heroin.”