World explaining Wednesday – The Dominatrix Matrix

Remember in the Matrix when Neo sees the cat walk by twice and says “Deja vu?”  That makes no sense to me.  Seeing the same thing twice isn’t déjà vu, déjà vu is when you get into your car to go to work and a song comes on the radio and suddenly that moment seems exactly like one you’ve already lived.  If I saw two black cats I’d just assume there were two of them.  Which would still be weird enough to comment on but I wouldn’t say déjà vu.

Maybe they’ll explain that in Matrix 4. 

For a tenth of a second today I thought I saw my girlfriend’s cat in my house.  Brains and vision are wacky huh?  According to an episode of the X-files from 25 years ago “they” still don’t know how a two dimensional retinal image is translated into our 3 dimensional vision. 

According to the hugely popular podcast about this massively successful blog, people were confused by the presence of the woman in the catsuit in the “job interview” posts.  Since I am bad at describing things (which is a great attribute to have both for writing and running RPGs, two of my favorite things) people thought that was the same woman from the fight in the “apartment” closet.  It was not.   

I thought about posting some pictures but ultimately didn’t.  10% because I don’t understand how giving people credit for things works.  90% because I assume tons of kids read this and they don’t need to see that.  “But Jeremy, you talk about how this is not appropriate for all audiences all the time”.  Sure, but reading is harmless.  Seeing things?  That has impact. 

Anyway here’s a character breakdown or whatever of those two separate and unique people.

Let’s start with the apartment lady.  I envision her looking like Catwoman from the 1992 movie Batman Returns only without the cat ears and more straps and buckles.  Kind of like that weird Edward Scissorhands leather suit maybe.  Hence in Ela’s eyes she looked like a dominatrix.  Would the average person in the 1970s know what a dominatrix was?  No clue.  Write what you know, they say.  Nah, I say back.   

A rebellious girl from not the best home, Susan Draper quickly learned the easiest path to excitement and the finer things in life was to attach herself to men who lived dangerous lifestyles, feeding off the thrills and money of those relationships.  She was the “main squeeze” of a gang leader in Basin City when she decided that it would be a real thrill to cheat on such a violent and dangerous man.  Which it was until he found out.   

Rather than kill her, said boyfriend went the time-honored comic book route of selling her into the clutches of unscrupulous scientists for experimentation – in this case the much-maligned Pecos Republic super soldier program.  The Pecos facility at Lone Star is known far and wide for its dismal success rate at creating viable super soldiers and its great success rate at creating corpses unrecognizable as having once been human.   

Given this reputation, Susan was grateful when she was turned loose without any visible effects as a “zero”.  A few months later she developed empathic powers, which is kind of lame, but a few months after that she developed the ability to manipulate the pain and pleasure centers of the brain as well – which is really something.  A few months later she developed enhanced agility which was nice.  A few months after that she developed the ability to inject people with ink from her fingers to create tattoos which is just silly.  If Ela hadn’t thrown her through a wall to her death, who knows what additional powers she would have gained.  How long would that have gone on?  New powers every few months?  That sounds like a great idea for a comic! 

Susan eventually grew bored of seducing and betraying various low-level villains and joined up with some fellow female crime people that came to Madripoor to recruit for some “big time” criminal undertakings.  It didn’t work out great for Suze.  But in Ela’s defense, she threw the first kick. 

Now the job applicant.  Wealthy socialite Marina Elizabeth Sieber has no innate superpowers but she was bequeathed a magic panther skin suit by her uncle, you all know how that goes.  He told her that it came from “African witch doctors” but it’s actually a Mesoamerican artifact related to the necklace that Ela took off Serpentina.  It’s part of a panoply of enchanted items that, if assembled completely, would give you all kinds of powers!  No one knows that except for an evil archeologist in Britain by the name of Sutter Cane.  And you better believe he’s looking for them!  He’s just not very good at it.   

Point is, when Marina wears the skinsuit, it grants her increased strength and speed (but doesn’t do anything to protect her legs obviously) which she uses to fight crime sometimes.  As a wealthy socialite, saving lives and beating up supervillains is more of a hobby than an obsession like with some super people.  She is known to have captured the dastardly Ace of Spades, a serial killer dubbed the Subway Slayer, and one of the several dozen villains with the moniker of the Vulture.   

She has a vacation home in Madripoor that she maintains when she wants to get away from the tedium of being a wealthy socialite part-time crime fighter with a magic panther suit.  She heard about a chance to do some freelance superheroing and thought, why not?  And you know how that turned out.   

I envision her looking more like 1993 purple suit Catwoman from the comics.  You know the one I mean.  The one that captured small satellites in the gravity well of her chest.

See, 1992 movie Catwoman and 1993 comic book Catwoman, completely different.  I don’t know how you didn’t get that from my highly detailed and richly descriptive passages.