A Beachport Reader's Guide

And the rest, as they say, is herstory.

On to the geography. I'm not going to give specific coordinates for Beachport; but as a general rule it can be assumed that it is located somewhere along the Southern US coast, and that it possesses both beaches and a port (duh). Climate is generally warm, as befits the fashion choices of its most famous residents.

In broad strokes, the city is centered around a sheltered bay and harbor. A large suspension bridge stretches across the mouth of the harbor, and numerous smaller bridges cross various rivers and canals scattered about the bay and city.

The overall tone of the city is one of massive centrally-planned projects, many of them now falling into decay and a shadow of their former majesty, surrounded by more organic growth. During the glory days of federally-funded expansion the city was blessed with many monumental construction projects of all kinds. Many of these are now at best run down and struggling with a fraction of their intended maintenance budgets, if not wholly or partially abandoned. But surrounding these decaying edifices are shiny new commercial or housing districts, industrial areas, as well as naturally-occurring slums.

Also, as mentioned, it's not like nothing existed on the city's site prior to its construction. Wandering the city you may occasionally encounter relics of what was here before. Small towns that have been turned into neighborhoods or independent enclaves dot the city, often with their historic architecture intact. The occasional old plantation house still stands; some turned into boutique hotels, some abandoned and reputed to be haunted, some still serving as the residence for the same family that reigned there in antebellum times. Traveling through a brand-new neighborhood you may occasionally come upon an old cemetery, or a park built around one historical landmark or another.

One notable feature of the city is its sewer system. The original master plan for the city envisioned a metropolis about three times larger. This plan was dashed by budget cuts, but the sections of the city that were built were constructed with a sewer system designed with this much larger city in mind. In addition, since the entire city's construction was something of a fake cover story, many aspects of the sewer's design were tweaked in ways that don't make much sense from a master planning point of view, because it was done to either avoid or to provide covert access to various secret buried things. Those secret things have themselves then often been abandoned. The result is that Beachport sits atop a sprawling maze of giant sewer tunnels, among many other buried passages - which since have become absolutely infested with various mutants, monsters, and assorted supervillain lairs. As you might imagine, this has done nothing to help the already endemic super-crime situation.

Unusually for a city in its region, but for similar reasons as for the sewers, Beachport does possess a robust rail and subway system. Although, just as with the sewers, several lines were built to serve planned phases that never came to fruition, such that now several routes have been wholly or virtually abandoned.

Why Do the Supers Dress Like That?

There are a number of answers to this question.

The most obvious answer is that these stories are aping the tropes of classic comic books, in which improbably revealing costumes are a long-established genre convention. Just like it often goes unexplained there, so it often goes unexplained here.

The next most obvious answer is that they're dressed like they are for fetish reasons. The built-in excuse to have improbably proportioned heroines wearing skimpy outfits at more or less all times (at least until they start coming off) is a major portion of my attraction to this genre.

Now for some folks, those two out-of-universe explanations are more than enough. But others may not be satisfied with that, and want a little more in-universe rationalization for their filthy smut. And hey, I'm *mumbles* thousand words into a guide to this same universe, so I'm hardly one to throw stones here. So, for those of you who do require more, read on.

In-universe, we can again cover this in two layers. The first is systemic and cultural, the second individual and psychological.

The systemic reason is as follows: within this universe Earth has been visited for thousands of years by the Star Wardens. The Wardens are invulnerable to any weapon a primitive human could throw at them, so what they are wearing is meaningless. To drive this point home, they wear as little as possible - a similar rationale to how ancient gods and heroes are often shown naked, in part because only a divine or superhuman being could show up on a battlefield like that and not get gutted. (But also probably because the ancients were also horny.) Since in this universe that actually happened in real life and not just art, that 'cultural memory' has been imprinted and then reinforced over and over again - such that the superheroes of the modern day instinctively know that being godlike bringers of justice means putting on a similar costume.

Now, that's the systematic reason. But of course, people don't actually think 'I am doing this because of deeply ingrained instincts implanted in my culture over the course of centuries.' So at the individual psychological level, this tends to get rationalized a bit differently. Every superhero or heroine is going to have a slightly different explanation for where their costume comes from and why they wear it. But some common ones often seen in the text are as follows:

"I'm wearing this to prove to everyone that I really am skilled enough to do so."

Or, "this will taunt those criminals that someone who looks like me still beat them up."

Or, "I want everyone to see what I fight for, so I'm going to wear it as prominently as possible!"

Or, "My father and grandfather dressed like this and I am upholding their tradition!"

And so on.

Of course, deep down there is another reason. Deep down, strutting around while people stare at them both stokes their vanity and turns them on. But, for the most part, they're never going to admit that part - including and often especially to themselves - if they can possibly help it.

The Grand Unified Theory of Superhero Inadequacy

aka "The Rarest Superpower of them All"

So, if it's not blindingly obvious, much of the roots of my story writing started off in fanfic. The following element began life as a 'fanon' thing - but, even though it no longer has direct visual evidence to pull from, since many of my stories are directly adapted over from those days, it remains a feature of the Beachport setting.

The argument, from the original fanfic context, goes like this. Your classic male superhero, as depicted in DC, Marvel, etc. generally has the following traits:

a) Wears, or at least historically spent a great deal of time wearing, a little pair of speedos, spandex, or some other outfit that is treated as skintight - to the point of depicting individual muscle groups through it.

b) Are, in the vast majority of cases, canonically straight.

c) Spend much of their time standing near women with bodies that would make bikini models jealous, and the fashion sense to match.

d) Are never ever ever depicted popping a visible boner.

I conclude from the four factors above that the vast majority of superheroes are either impotent, or are almost literally hung like mice.

I am well aware that the 'real' reason for this is almost certainly that classic comic book artists loved drawing them some T&A, but we're either not willing or not allowed to show nerds some dong. But, that does not stop me from treating my explanation as being the only one possible, based on what is explicitly depicted in the text. QED.

So long story short, even though it's not a direct adaptation anymore, the same theory holds true for the Beachport universe. The vast, vast majority of superheroes, regardless of what other cosmic powers or fighting skills they might possess, are completely and utterly lacking in the one superpower they really really wished they had. As with anything that touches on deep-seated sexual insecurities, this is widely recognized as a fact but almost never spoken about in public. At most it will be something whispered about between heroines when safely ensconced in their locker rooms, or what have you.

Why this is so is something for which there is no canonical in-universe answer, although individual stories may sometimes hint at one. Perhaps it is due to a curse, placed on the world's heroes, by a powerful villain long ago. Maybe they're all taking super-steroids that have some rather unfortunate side-effects. Or perhaps it is simple self-selection, with none of the existing hero teams wanting to let in any new hero who makes them feel inadequate. That last one might have something to do with it, because while there are rare heroes who buck this trend, they almost always end up operating alone.