Yeah, unfortunately, this is part of that sexual fetish where the man has to be seen as weak and a piece of shit so that the fiends will want the wife to abuse and humiliate him. It is weak writing and a bit of a cop-out from an otherwise fantastic writer. It relies too heavily on the porn stereotype.
I think the fact that Ethan can stand up to Natalie and kick her out is why that scene is so impactful and why I enjoy it so much. He does take control and says that is it!
While I agree that it leans on the porn stereotype, I wouldn't be so quick to call it weak writing. I get that you don't like that humiliation aspect, but some people do.
What you write about matters less than
how you write about it.
And I agree that most people who write stories involving this fetish do a terrible job. They don't build the characters correctly, they go from 0-100, and they definitely don't know what nuanced writing actually looks like.
However, I don't define the quality of writing based on how closely the characters and events relates to what you might expect from reality. Unless that is the specific goal of the writer, to write about your average joe in the most realistic way possible.
And even then I would argue that the world has no shortage of Irrational, self-unaware, perverse, narcissistic, weak-minded people in it, and the story could be about one of them. And they are very much part of the real world, even if it may seem far-fetched at first glance when reading about such a character in a fictional story. You can make any character work, as long as you set them up correctly and give them their due.
And even if you've just dipped your toe into psychology, you'd find that people's behavior, motivation and reasoning for why they do certain things can be impossible to dissect. Turns out people can be complicated.
And I would also argue that if you write every character equipped with a rock solid rationality, and a moral purity that would make jesus himself blush, a character who always does the right thing and is the first to admit when they are wrong, someone completely aware of their own biases and contradictions.
Selfless to the core, someone who would never lie or stray from the righteous path...yeah sounds realistic doesn't it...also sounds like a character I would forget in 2 seconds.
Btw, im not saying that you are advocating for this. I am simply saying.
And I too think it's good that you have the option to take a stand and kick Nat out, if that is the path you wanna play. And if you want to play Ethan as a spineless beta, you can do that too. Weak writing has nothing to do with that choice of direction, what determines good/bad writing is
how he decides to write it.
