[ SECRET POST #1574 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1574 ⌋


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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 07 pages, 173 secrets from Secret Submission Post #225.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 - too big ], [ 1 - repeats ], [ 1 - unreadable ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom.livejournal.com]

37. http://i.imgur.com/tBSes.png

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

But... except for John "i am not a homosexual" Egbert (who probably meant by that remark that he isn't into guys at all, and until we have more evidence than the bizarre Cage obsession I'm going to take his word for it, at least for canon purposes) we don't actually know anything about the human characters' sexualities. Right now the two most likely endgames — if there even is a shipping endgame, which there very well might not be — are Karkat's Shipping Diagram or Sloppy Interspecies Make-outs, and if it's the latter then Rose will presumably turn out to be queer. I think it's still too early to say either way how queer-positive this comic is — which might actually be what you meant, in which case feel free to disregard the tl;dr!

[violent-aki.livejournal.com]

Also, it's important to remember that the kids ARE only 13-years-old, after all. And while I'm fully aware that one can realize their sexuality at such a young age (I was 13, so there you go) they do still have a lot of growing up to do and sexual encounters they likely haven't experienced yet. So, yeah, John might say he's not a homosexual NOW, as a 13-year-old boy, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have the capacity to change in high school/college/adulthood/whatever.

I do agree, though, that Rose definitely pings my gaydar.

Other than that, I'm not entirely sure what this secret is getting at. I've never heard Homestuck described as a "queer-positive comic," though, so maybe that's just me.

[(Anonymous)]

ia completely

and especially with rose

[kyoto-idol.livejournal.com]

You said what I wanted to say, much more eloquently than I was going to say it.

[homestar.livejournal.com]

This.

[(Anonymous)]

I get what you're saying, but the patron trolls have been pretty well humanized (lol) through character development anyway, so despite being a counter to humanity they're sympathetic characters. Also, not quite sure about troll romance being necessarily possessive, though it's certainly different. Also, for a people who supposedly don't put much care into the gender of romantic relationships, the vast majority are still hetero, yeah.

I agree that it would be interesting if one of the kids' inclinations went that way in canon but I think it's unlikely, sadly.

Basically I agree, it's not negative but it's not really super positive either? I usually here it recced for female characters though more than queer ones.

[(Anonymous)]

I missed a word, I meant the vast majority of troll relationships we've seen have been hetero.

[vethica.livejournal.com]

I see your point, but I think it runs up against what I personally don't like about sexuality in Homestuck. Which is that for as much as we're told the trolls are pansexual, how many times do we see any of them exhibiting a same-sex attraction? And how many of those times aren't blackrom? By my (admittedly poor) memory, the answer to the latter is two, compared with at least eight het redrom attractions off the top of my head. Seems a little disproportionate. :\

[(Anonymous)]

IIRC Hussie didn't come up with the whole "all trolls are pansexual" thing until he was a good ways through Hivebent.

And besides, just because a character is pansexual doesn't mean that there's any obligation to pair them with a character of the same gender. I mean, would you tell a pansexual man IRL that he has a obligation not to date cis women?

[(Anonymous)]

if that's true, it does make more sense.

well these are characters, not people, and it does seem unusual to me that there would such a skew toward hetero relationships in a fictional society where preference for one gender in romantic relationships is considered highly unusual.

[(Anonymous)]

They could all be pansexual in the way that humans are: in a theoretical, everyone has fantasies that they don't act on/the occasional thought that someone outside their usual interests is hot sort of way. But then, in practice, they totally aren't all pansexual. Most are straight! Many are bi! A few are gay!

[vethica.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I knew that didn't come out right. :\ But this is not one person IRL, it is a webcomic with a whole lot of supposedly pansexual characters. It is the author's decision who is attracted to whom, and while he's given us a lot of "normal"(ish) het redrom relationships and attractions, the same-sex ones are almost all blackrom, played for laughs, or both. Really, the only same-sex redrom stuff we've seen has involved Kanaya, who's the only one stated to be straight-up gay. I'm probably overthinking all this, but still, it rubs me the wrong way. That's all I'm trying to say.

[izelmecatl.livejournal.com]

I think it's because the kids' orientation is not as important to them now, they're humans and develop at a different rate than trolls do (at least it seems that way when it comes to this particular aspect of their lives). I mean, their species puts considerable importance to relationships; they have and actual authority that keeps track of their relationships and no genetic yield = death. So yeah, pressure for the trolls to figure that shit out is way more intense than those of the humans, who may or may not end up discovering their preferences later on in life.

[vazavati.livejournal.com]

This. Also, speaking from experience here, what a thirteen-year-old says or thinks about his or her sexual orientation is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate. xD

[(Anonymous)]

The trolls may be others, yes. But most of the trolls we've seen are sympathetic, well-developed characters, not just bizarre murderous aliens. I mean, seeing how much the fandom loves them should tip you off that they're not just meant to be strange caricatures of humans.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, don't give a crap, I'm just there for Kanaya.

[(Anonymous)]

Same ^_^

[kody-applefield.livejournal.com]

Funny. These are the precise reasons why I love Homestuck so much.

[rmg.livejournal.com]

i think that the fact that there are some more positive things about troll society (the lack of homophobia and apparent lack of sexism, the fluidity of gender roles, etc.) do a lot to make sure that the trolls aren't too otherized, that their society isn't just an exaggerated dystopian murderdrome.

also, the trolls who i'd argue are the most overtly coded as queer (from our perspective as human readers on 21st century earth) would be kanaya and karkat, who are also probably among the most "human" and sympathetic of the trolls

[(Anonymous)]

Sad to say, but your standards for progressive are unrealistically high.

[sliefoxx.livejournal.com]

I don't completely disagree with you.

[tenebrais.livejournal.com]

I think I'm managing to nail down why there's so much disagreement whether Homestuck has positive or negative depictions of sexuality, gender, disabilities, etc.

It's because the author doesn't care about that stuff.
Most of the time if a character is gay or disabled or something like that, it's because the creator of the work is trying to make a point, whether it's showing the trials and tribulations of such a person, or trying to make a positive depiction of the person in that "look aren't we modern!" sort of way, or simply to make jokes about it. But Hussie doesn't do that. To him, things like sexuality and so on are just possible facets of a character he can use as plot and characterisation demands.

Karkat seeing himself as his kismesis is an extension of his general self-hating characterisation. This extends easily to Karkat having a hatecrush on John when he first sees him. By this point it becomes clear it's time to address homosexuality in troll culture as that's going to affect how he proceeds. There are only two ways it could go, given troll culture: either homosexuality is a death sentence (those who don't reproduce are killed) or it is a biologically (and therefore culturally) valid form of romance. Since homosexuality had come up in small mentions in the past without the gravity one would expect of something that would lead to inevitable death, it's clear from that that trolls must be naturally pansexual. This also helps in making humour of the fact that John claims he's not a homosexual by then having to explain what homosexuality is exactly.

This sort of logic is behind every 'progressive' choice. There is a balance of sexes in the characters because a game that expects its players to populate a new universe will do that. Tavros is in a wheelchair because by that point the fandom was already enamoured by the idea and it gave him a significant thing to be mopey and pathetic about. Terezi was blind because of the extensions of her Libra theme, in addition to helping her demonstrate that she's the most effective troll at actually trolling. And so on.

The upshot is that Hussie only considers matters of social justice in his characters when it's immediately relevant to what they're doing. Sexuality is only going to come up when characters are close or forward enough for romance to be on the table. Disability only comes up when the characters need to use it. Half of the characters being girls is pretty much put down to a matter of pronouns. This means that the characters normally get portrayed as ordinary people who happen to be homosexual or disabled or what have you, which is seen as progressive to some. However, it also means that it doesn't become an important theme to the work or most of the character arcs, which makes it a disappointment to others.

These are just my own musings, though. I'm not a psychic; he might not actually think this way.

[(Anonymous)]

Why hasn't anyone else commented on this?

I think this is a very rational and well thought out way of putting it.