Shelly Craven

NAME: Shelly Craven

AGE: 24

OCCUPATION: Fetish Stripper and Criminal Informant

CANON: Abyss

I don’t go around advertising my sexual fetishes to everyone, but just this one time, I’ll make an exception. The reason I even have to make an exception is because my sexual appetites are, how shall I say this in a nice way…fucking weird! Well, they’re weird to the people who actually know about them. I have three different sexual fetishes: bondage, feet, and diapers (without bodily functions except orgasms).

If you feel like turning around and running away with your arms flailing in the air, I can’t really say I blame you. But if you actually have an open mind and would like to hear about Miss Shelly Craven, you can stay. Be warned: this blog post isn’t rated G. Or PG (unless there’s an I in the middle). Or even PG-13. Abyss, the canon Shelly was a part of, was rated R for, surprise, surprise, sexual content.

Before I was even dimly aware of how bigoted objectification was, I wrote a movie in 2007 called Abyss, where the main character was a 30-year-old man with a baby’s mind and a love for playing with toys. The main character, Angel, is on the run from police after he kills his father over a broken toy. Angel has no idea where the hell he’s going, so he absentmindedly pays a visit to Shelly Craven.

Shelly is the embodiment of all three of my sexual fetishes. When performing onstage for horny strangers, she puts duct tape on her own mouth, she wears a diaper (again, without bodily functions), and she massages oil into her bare feet. Seeing her perform is a very strange experience, I agree. But it’s also one you’re going to have in your spank bank for a long, long time. Admit it, you like her. You know who doesn’t like her, though? Angel. In fact, seeing as how he has the mind of a baby, he’s confused and overwhelmed by her performance.

What Angel doesn’t know is that Shelly, in addition to being the sexy lady of every man’s dreams, is also a snitch for the local police. She was warned ahead of time by Detective Jon Ball that a big man-child might be coming her way. So what does she do? Keep him “occupied” with her dance. Big mistake. Big, big mistake. Not only does Angel get away, but he inspires bouncers to attack him and kills them as well as his father. So now there’s a monster on the loose and Shelly is powerless to capture him.

And now here’s what I would have done differently with Shelly’s character if I was writing Abyss today in 2015 (or at least when this blog post was being written). Over the years, I’ve learned that although women are beautiful in nature, putting them in sexual situations can be the equivalent of making black characters eat watermelon or making Jewish characters greedy. In other words, it’s bigoted and it’s disgusting. It would be the same if somebody made a movie about a schizophrenic kid and turned him into a Complete Monster serial killer. As someone with a mental illness, that would offend me and I’d want to kick the shit out of the writer of that movie.

That’s not to say female characters can’t be attractive. They can retain their sexuality, but only if the audience sees that they’re more than just objects. They’re people with real emotions, real traumas, and real stories. Originally in the Abyss script, Shelly Craven was doing her fetish stripping as a way to keep her head above water. She had bills to pay ranging from basic rent to alimony to her deadbeat husband.

What I would do differently is make her into a character who rises above such adversity in an independent and tough-minded fashion. Maybe she wants retribution against Angel, so she grabs a shotgun and blasts his nuts off. Maybe she collects a reward on the monster’s head and uses that to not only pay her bills, but move into a better place. Yeah, Shelly Craven is sexy as hell, but if you mess with her, you’re one dead motherfucker. She’s a fetish stripper and a male fantasy second and a badass first. Angel, nobody’s going to take away your toys, just your right to live.

Three-dimensionality can exist within any character in any canon. It’s all a matter of being open-minded enough to want it and actually putting in the time to develop these even minor characters. If your Mexican character is running around in a giant nacho hat, he’d better have some fucking personality or you’re in deep shit. Shelly’s going to have personality and that will suffice.

　

***JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What does Anonymous think of Kim Kardashian breaking the internet?

A: They don’t give a Fawkes.