[ SECRET POST #3678 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3678 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #526.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not even in this fandom, stuff like that just bothers me

[(Anonymous)]

It's not about opinions or preferences, this character is straight, period. There's no canon reason to believe that he's attracted to men.

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt but earlier bisexual anon cutting in to say, if you're saying he's straight it's not on him to prove he's attracted to guys, but to prove beyond a doubt that he is not and would never be attracted to guys.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

I have no horse in this race either, but

prove beyond a doubt that he is not and would never be attracted to guys

How would anyone, character or real life, do this?

[(Anonymous)]

pretty easy

just throw a line of dialogue in there, you know, something like "I've had sex with loads of guys and to be honest I've never enjoyed it"

[(Anonymous)]

ThefuckImreading.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

a joke

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Sadly, that still doesn't prove never would.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly.

Which is why it seems useless and self-serving (no matter who your horse is, so to speak) to make hard claims on a character's sexuality. In real life, we know there's a sizable portion of people who are more fluid than even they anticipated. I mean, hell, I knew a guy who used to say he was straight and "he could appreciate other guys being attractive but had zero sexual interest in them".. and turns out, he gets drunk and fucks guys.

Point being, virtually any character has room for sexual fluidity (especially when most characters don't have huge arcs exploring their sexuality combined with their innermost thoughts and personal developments), and what is fandom if it isn't coming up with theories and reading in between the lines and shipping whoever does it for you.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Nice anecdote but that doesn't actually prove anything other than that one guy is bi? I'm bi myself but insisting every character could in theory canonically be bisexual is kinda ridiculous.

Especially when you apply it to characters who are gay, because if it works one way, it's gotta work the other way too.

You might say character sexualities are up in the air and up for interpretation, sure. If someone interprets this guy as bi, more power to them, but saying "this character could be canonically bisexual, you cannot deny it" is just as hard a claim as saying they're straight.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

You might say character sexualities are up in the air and up for interpretation, sure. If someone interprets this guy as bi, more power to them, but saying "this character could be canonically bisexual, you cannot deny it" is just as hard a claim as saying they're straight.

But - it seems to me - the context of this argument is that OP is not justified in saying that the character is canonically definitely straight.

So.... yeah I think that the point you're making here is pretty much also the point that we're trying to make.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I don't know if that's the anon I'm replying to.

But they said

Point being, virtually any character has room for sexual fluidity

And no, I disagree with this. People can headcanon all they want but saying there's always room for canon fluidity is basically "everyone could be canonically bi unless proven without a doubt, somehow, magically, that they aren't" and that's too far a reach for me.

[(Anonymous)]

It's absolutely not ridiculous. You don't know someone isn't bi until you know for certain they aren't attracted to a particular gender, and before you know that, saying a character is 100% straight (or gay) is making an assumption that isn't canonically supported.

Yes, it works for characters who only demonstrate same-sex attraction, too.

And no, your third paragraph doesn't make sense. There's a difference between saying a character IS bisexual, and a character COULD be bisexual. You could say, the character SEEMS to be heterosexual due to what I infer to be a lack of interest in the same sex. But you can't say they are definitely heterosexual until there's evidence that that is the case. Since we don't know, in the vast majority of characters, if it's impossible that they might have same-sex attraction, you can't preclude the possibility that they might be bisexual.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

But.

But you can't say they are definitely heterosexual until there's evidence that that is the case.

Could you give me an example of what this evidence might be? Especially as the anecdote given was a guy saying outright that he was straight then sleeping with men? Is evidence of this possible?

If it's not possible, doesn't this argument become an insistence that everyone could be bi?

[sarillia]

saying "this character could be canonically bisexual, you cannot deny it" is just as hard a claim as saying they're straight.

That's not true. One argument is "this character could be bi" and the other is "this character is definitely straight". The second one demands more evidence than the first.

I realize there are people here who are probably arguing against some post they saw on Tumblr claiming this character is definitely gay, but no one has said that here. All people here are arguing for is the possibility that he could maybe be attracted to guys and that there's no definitive evidence against that.

[(Anonymous)]

They are saying that, if they are demanding hard evidence that a character is straight and definitely in no way possibly ever gay, in order to believe a character is straight, though. Which is what the original anon I responded to said.

How would evidence of "would never be attracted to men" be possibly ever given, if we can't even take a character's word for it because they might be fucking men while drunk?

I'm not even arguing about sexuality here so much as the impossible setup this argument is creating.

[(Anonymous)]

And this character could be a Christian wolf otherkin, but if it doesn't appeared in the original source material, he's not. The text is everything.

[(Anonymous)]

Except... not?

You can be straight without flat-out proving there is not the least tiniest possibility of ever being attracted to a single member of the same sex for the rest of your life ever.

Like, until such a point as he DOES show he's attracted to guys, the default read is going to be straight. Maybe that's not the way it should be in complex deep-reading media... but in a kid's show? Come on.

[(Anonymous)]

You can be straight without flat-out proving there is not the least tiniest possibility of ever being attracted to a single member of the same sex for the rest of your life ever.

There are two things here that are separate. First of all, what is the character's sexuality. Second of all, what can we as viewers conclude about the character's sexuality from the information presented on the show. You can easily be straight without proving it either way. But what we're talking about here is, what kind of evidence exists to prove that this fictional character as presented on the show is straight? Obviously, of course, being unable to prove a character is straight does not mean they're gay. It means we're in a realm of uncertainty.

You can be straight without flat-out proving there is not the least tiniest possibility of ever being attracted to a single member of the same sex for the rest of your life ever.

I just flat-out disagree with this. I think it's wrong and I think it's pernicious and I don't see any reason or argument for thinking it's the case. I don't see what complexity of a story has to do with sexuality and I don't see any good reason to presume a character's sexuality being straight or gay or whatever.

If you want to talk about, you know, what the writers had in mind when they were writing the character, sure. But I think that's a different thing.

[(Anonymous)]

Assuming you were referring to the second part above, not the first again...

I don't see what complexity of a story has to do with sexuality and I don't see any good reason to presume a character's sexuality being straight or gay or whatever.

It's not about the complexity of the story, it's about the complexity of the storytelling. Children's media, and especially animated media does not, as a rule, present "subtext" the way live-action or otherwise more mature media does. What you see is what you get. Ergo, if a character presents as straight, that is the default read in this sort of media.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Oh woops sorry, yeah, I fucked up my copy-paste. Yeah, I was referring to the second part.

And what I would say is that it doesn't have to be a question of subtext. One, I don't think it's necessarily that easy to conclude a character presents as straight, and I think it's too easy to fall into the habit of just assuming characters are presenting as straight because that has been the social default. Two, I think you're assigning way too much weight to the things that the creators intended - or that we assume them to have intended - as against what is actually presented on screen. I don't see any particular reason to equate "The creators did not make a conscious decision to portray this character as queer" with "This character should be read as striaght".

[(Anonymous)]

Uh, you CAN be straight. You CAN also be, you know, bisexual. The fact that you want to insist that we default straight is a you-problem.

The only one who could say is the character themselves (and even then, not everyone has a clear understanding of their own sexuality, especially in adolescence).

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think there are really many cases where you can convincingly say that an interpretation of a character's canon sexuality is dead-on 100% objective fact.

More to the point, I'm just skeptical of someone making that argument while also advocating a different ship, and it really bugs me when people try to cloak arguments that are really about ship preferences in all kinds of arguments about facts or morals or whatever, and that's what it feels like OP is doing here. Obviously they're far from the only people ever to do that, and aren't going as far as other people have, and I'm not saying otherwise, and I agree that those other people are worse. but it just bugs me a bit that's all.

[(Anonymous)]

Agree with the second paragraph here. As soon as someone post-scripts an argument of this sort with "...and I ship [pairing that coincidentally aligns with argument]", you've lost me.

That said, RE interpretation of canon sexuality... surely anything that 100% aligns with canon IS 100% objective fact. Not saying that's the only valid interpretation, but if you're talking facts, canon is basically the dictionary definition.

[(Anonymous)]

I would agree that anything that is explicitly demonstrated in canon is inarguably canonical.

I think there are many things in almost any canon that are inconclusive or uncertain, and I think that is going to very often include sexual preferences of characters.