Just a few hundred dollars remain until YOU GET COMICS ON SATURDAY, STARTING TOMORROW.*nudge nudge*
WE DID IT
COME BACK TOMORROW FOR A NEW STRIP, woulda been monday's but now it's SATURDAY'S
Well, how do you know if you enjoy the taste of poop or not unless you taste it? Just cause your instincts tell you something is no reason not to consider they may be wrong. I mean, our instincts tell us to kill people who look different.
Maybe I never got that far over there (I prefer new characters in different universes!) – but I’ll have to look.
Willis! – Do a KickStarter for another version of these “Universes,” along the lines of http://www.ma3comic.com (Menage-A-3) – and I’ll bet you top $20K just to START IT!
Suddenly I regret saying anything at all in this conversation and I feel like I should’ve just stayed away from this topic.
Willis, you can delete these two posts if you’d like.
Yarrr
Nah props for saying it.
Somebody
I kind of think pushing people into a group like that is rather silly. I’m not a big fan of advocacy groups speaking for everyone either. Not everyone’s identity comes from sexuality or their sex.
You know, I’ve never seen more people pushing for a character to turn into a lesbian than I have in these boards. I don’t know, it’s starting to make me feel uncomfortable. No joke. I hope this doesn’t come off homophobic, and now it does by saying that. Okay, soft reset.
What I am talking about is it makes me uncomfortable with all this pushing because I imagine everyone saying this to an actual woman (or man) who was having this conflict, I don’t think it would help them through their issues, I imagine it would probably make it worse. Imagine if someone kept saying play with the ball, but you want to play with Legos, but they keep pushing the ball in your face. I should not have used ball. This is probably a terrible analogy. Metaphor. I really need to take an English course at university.
I started the above comment before this comment led to an entirely different place. Now this is just awkward. Not that it wasn’t before.
DarkVeghetta
Pretty sure we ship everyone with everyone. All it takes is but one expression or one suggestive situation and there will be ships. I doubt most are even sincere in their shipping’s – most just say it’s a joke. It’s a bandwagon and the whole Internet’s in on the
gag.
yea… i chalk it up to a disconnect of a fictional character and real people in this case, and thus this situation is a nice outlet for people to be a little silly and ignore being politically correct, but you’re not wrong for feeling this way.
personally, i’m rooting for joyce not to lose or corrupt her morals. i think it’d be nice to see, but that’s me.
Aras Pabedinskas
Well the thing is, when you say corrupt her morals, the morals are whats the problem here because they also include “It’s okay to try and convert Ethan from homosexuality” which also gives me disconnect in this situation. The thing is, what I want to see out of this arc is that Joyce eventually says it’s okay for others to be gay.
Okay this is going to take a while for me to explain. I now see some sort of.. double standard. That is probably not the right word. Maybe we can find the right one. If a bunch of people were trying to force a gay man to turn straight, that would obviously be wrong. Assuming that Joyce isn’t in fact gay, this is how I view thee situation. Maybe this sort of thing is what Willis has planned, to demonstrate the point of what it feels like from a gay person’s perspective when people tell them to stop being gay. I hope this doesn’t make me look like a complete tool, I don’t think I’ve got my head on straight right now.
Heavensrun
Eh, if a gay man was craving a little boob action and was going through a crisis of identity over it, I would absolutely be sitting there going “DUDE. YOU CAN BE BI. IT’S AN OPTION AND IT IS OKAY.” Like if Ethan was -actually- attracted to Joyce, and was freaking out because he thought he was supposed to be gay.
Being okay with who you are, as long as who you are isn’t destructive to others, is good.
Personally, I ship Joyrothy, so any development that steers us in the direction of hot christian-on-atheist shenanigans is okay with me!
Li
You mention a double standard here, and there certainly is one — two, in fact.
Shipping a “straight” romance is always considered acceptable, and is always assumed to be at least somewhat plausible; Joyce/Joe is somehow “better” than Joyce/Dorothy, even though we know for a fact that Joe and Joyce are not compatible and that a Joyce who fell for Joe would be as susceptible to “losing” some of her “morals”.
This is not because Joyce is straight, but because Joyce has not yet been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be gay. Characters, ALL, characters, are straight as a default until proven otherwise — AND EVEN AFTER BEING PROVEN OTHERWISE. The number of times fans have asked Willis if Ethan is “still gay in this universe” or have attempted to suggest that he might be secretly bisexual or biromantic is a number too high for my brain to even comprehend.
So actually your claim that it would be “obviously wrong” doesn’t hold water. You and I may agree that it would be wrong and that it should be obviously so, but it is empirically not. People do it constantly, and not just to Ethan or as politely as they’ve done it to Ethan; there are lots of people out there on the Internet right now saying that a lesbian character needs to be ducked straight, or even lesbian real life people!
So to wrap up:
1) It seems like there’s more respect for non-straight sexual identities than straight ones in any given fandom because “straight” is often less a fictional sexuality than a default one. Unless a character thinks about it and decides no on screen, it’s perfectly realistic to think they’re not really or not completely straight, and that “addressing the question on screen” thing is very rare. Vastly more characters are PRESUMED straight than are actually definitively straight.
Also, as anyone who is queer in real life will tell you, thinking one is straight or convincing oneself one is straight for years and years of one’s life only to later discover differently… is a thing that happens.
So: characters are rarely definitively straight, and even when they are we know there’s still the potential for gray area.
Conversely, a character who is queer is always definitively queer, by creator word if nothing else, and for all the “phase” nonsense we get spoonfed coming out is not something people are WRONG about. They go back into the closet sometimes, but it’s just not a fun ride you choose to take for no reason. Both fictionally and in real life, a non-straight identity is less likely to be a mistake.
And just because THIS ONE STRIP is by Willis doesn’t change the context it exists in.
2) I’ll respect creator intent on straight character sexuality when we live in a world where non-straight characters are as common as straight ones, but until then I reserve the right to seek out more representation of me. Similarly, the Human Torcg being played by an awesome black dude will only be racefail when we live in a world where non-white superheroes are in any danger of being lost or forgotten. (This will never happen.)
As things stand, knowing a creator frowns on gay characters and would never make any or gets outraged at the thought that someone is “twisting” his babies actually makes me want to ship gay pairings harder. Because fuck that guy.
See also: Bioware’s epic fail in asserting 1) that Commander Shepard is straight (uh, more than half your female romance options disagree!), and 2) “no one is gay in the Star Wars universe” (again female romance options don’t count I guess) (and also seriously FUCK YOU).
3) People who are cheering for Joyce/Billie should not be worse than people cheering for Joyce/Joe. Just being a same sex pairing should not make something automatically worse for her. She’s in an unstable place? Then she shouldn’t be dating at all. She especially shouldn’t be dating Ethan, but people still ship that.
Did I miss anything?
Heavensrun
No, that seems pretty comprehensive. In Bioware’s defense, those things were ultimately addressed, even if they were stupid comments at the time. ;p
I will never understand people that ship Joyce/Ethan.
Aras Pabedinskas
What I was not attempting was to say that I am not fine with other people shipping. It’s not my thing, but I’ve made my peace with it and I have absolutely nothing against anyone who does it, or anyone on the board. I am also not against it happening where sexuality of characters are altered or explored, as long as it is not malicious. I’m straight but I know there are aspects of my sexuality that do not fit perfectly with that descriptor that I am exploring in my own time, and I am really not ready to expand on this any further than that so please don’t pry. Maybe I have been projecting my own insecurities on to the situation that I feel I am witnessing with the board and Joyce. All I know is that in my case, a bunch of people pushing for me to just give in, before I myself were ready for it, it would give me a panic attack. Heck, this is the first time I am actually expressing to other people anything about my sexuality, and it is making my chest hurt because I am afraid of what my family will think, and my brother occasionaly looks at these forums, which is making me really want to double back and erase this whole response. This is the way I am empathizing with Joyce at the moment. By the last strip, she has been shown getting curious. I think it is fine if she explores those feelings, and if she were to find that maybe she herself was gay or bi or somewhere between these things and straight, at least she gains an understanding of herself and of others, but just seeing how panicked she is about the situation right now and how so many people are pushing it, even in jest, it’s making me uncomfrotable because it looks like Joyce is about ready to collapse.
I’m also all for video games expanding on sexuality, although I would find it really weird if Mario was kissing Bowser, not that he has ever actually been seen kissing Peach. Okay, that should lighten things up a bit.
Li
First: /hug
Being confused sucks and sexuality is confusing, and I really wish not-straight sexualities would hurry up and get destigmatized because I hope that will make it less of a THING. If being gay stopped being seen as abnormal, all the shades of it would hopefully also be more accepted, and it especially sucks that you have to worry about being seen making these comments.
SOME of what gets directed at Joyce is at least partially malicious, because some of us get catharsis out of seeing someone with beliefs like hers get shaken up. I also think that this comic feels like a safe space for expressing that, because those of us who still like Joyce despite what she reminds us of (like me!) feel pretty sure that everything will work out okay for her in the end. Her lesbian panic right now is okay, because Willis won’t actually hurt her. SHE’S afraid, but I don’t have to be afraid for her.
Does that make sense?
/hugs again
You’re fine, by the way. Fine and valid and if you never want to experiment at all, that’s fine! I have a tiny bit of heterosexual interest, but not enough that I’d want to act on it — more like just enough to appreciate Chris Hemsworth’s arms. And that’s okay. If all you ever want to do is quietly think some men are attractive, that is completely fine.
The most important thing is that you get to a place where you can be comfortable with you. <3
Aras Pabedinskas
Ya, I understand what you’re saying. It’s not that I ever felt like Joyce wasn’t going to come out of this alright, but maybe I just starting treating fiction too much like reality. Joyce can’t actually be affected by our comments. Maybe I just let myself take this too far. I’ll lay off on the whole thing for right now. And thanks for the hugs… again.
DarkVeghetta
Ya know, I’m pretty straight. Or, at least my penis is (hurr durr). But there have been a few moments in my life where I have considered getting a satisfying mouthful of dick – especially my own (sadly I failed there). Pretty sure I can still safely call myself mostly heterosexual, though I do tend to go more for ‘pansexual’ these days if actually asked for specifics.
Heck, even that I’m unsure of until I actually do have teh gay sex – which is, quite frankly, very unlikely to ever happen. Sexuality is a gelatinous substance at times – I think of it more as a non-Newtonian fluid then a solid nowadays.
TL;DR: Sexuality is a non-Newtonian fluid. /hug
Concolor
You make many valid points. But there seems to be a bit of a disconnect throughout the thread: one can’t consciously CHANGE his or her sexual orientation. If you’re a guy and hot guys put the torque in your shorts and hot girls don’t do anything for you … you’re gay. You can ACT straight if you want to, but that won’t change your orientation. And that goes exactly the same for any other gender/orientation combination. If a girl (let’s take Joyce as an example) likes boys and has always liked boys and the idea of pairing up with her girl bff has never crossed her mind … she’s straight. She doesn’t have to be WORRIED about “becoming” a lesbian. She can’t. She doesn’t have the wiring for it. In her current situation, though, having been raised in a Very Strictly Defined climate, where “homosexuals are sinful and are going to Hell” was absorbed along with every other aspect of her moral code, she may have never before had the OPTION of entertaining such thoughts. But now she does, and it’s freaking her out. Lots of new input. It will have to be processed. And if she spends half a hundred sleepless nights going over all the ramifications, she may come to some surprising conclusions.
Or not.
I think that basic misinformation is a lot of what is behind gay-bashing by these super-macho straight guys. Either they Don’t Understand the Mechanism (orientation is present at birth and is largely determined by the makeup of hormones in the amniotic fluid at certain points in the pregnancy) and so they are reacting strongly against something they FEAR, or they Don’t Understand the Mechanism and have harbored same-sex attractions for years and are violently denying them due to cultural or religious pressures. What they need to comprehend in either case is that they Can’t Change Who They Are. They can lie about it, if they fall into the second category, and pretend to be straight, but it only frustrates them … and any woman unlucky enough to marry one (thinking of my cousin here…). If they are in the first category, they need to comprehend that they don’t have to worry about “catching the gay”. They don’t have to fear it. Same-sex orientation shows up in 5-10% of the population, in all cultures throughout history. It is a NATURAL variation. It is present in nature in hundreds of non-primate species. They just need to Get Over It Already.
Both of my daughters are bi. The older one has no hard-set gender identification. She feels girly sometimes and masculine sometimes. She likes girls (was engaged to one briefly) and guys (currently in an exclusive relationship with one), and the combinations overlap. She doesn’t really fit any given category, and defines herself as “queer”. That’s just her. The younger one is decidedly female and happy with it. Also, she like girls about as well as guys. My two sons, on the other hand, are completely straight. All four of my kids understand the causes and outcomes of sexual orientation and are fine with it. We also have a gay couple (college guys) living in our household, so any questions that came up were quickly and easily answered.
Now. All that being said … what should Joyce do?
She should learn everything there is to know about sexual orientation. She should do the research, as we have, and if she is intellectually honest, she will come to the conclusion that there is nothing “wrong” with being gay, that she can’t “save” Ethan if he truly is gay, and that THAT IS OKAY. She needs to do some serious introspection and look at what she likes and doesn’t like, what she believes or distrusts, what is provable or un-provable about all of it, and come to an internally consistent worldview. A personal philosophy is crucial to being a completed individual, and the philosophy needs to be YOURS, not just a regurgitation of someone else’s platitudes.
Do I think she will manage all that in Freshman year? Hell, no. It took me until I was in my forties, and I worked at it. But she should get started. The longer she waits, the more world-shaking the changes will be. And she looks pretty shaken already.
Li
Not talking about real people, talking about fictional characters and asserting that there is nothing wrong with bending a “straight” character’s sexuality in fanfic or w/e, and there will BE nothing wrong with it until we come far enough as a society that
a) straight becomes a REAL fictional sexuality rather than the default
b) other sexualities are recognized as being just as normal with no stigma attached
c) other sexualities are actually and reliably represented in the media
All of these are important things that haven’t happened yet and which are incredibly necessary to *have* happen before anyone can expect fandoms to stop wearing queer-colored glasses and writing “straight” characters as gay.
And straight is in quotes because, again, it’s the default. In this very web comic’s fandom, we’ve had people loudly insisting that Joyce is straight, but we have no evidence of that. She wants to marry a nice boy, she thinks being gay is a sin, and she had one on camera erotic dream about Ethan that was extremely confused as to what “sex” is.
And Joyce, though she has OBVIOUSLY never even considered attraction to girls a possibility and therefore has never even thought about her orientation, who thought being gay was a choice and since she hasn’t made it was impossible, is STILL in a world, ala David Wilkis, where non-straight sexualities exist and are talked about a lot.
And as worlds created by people go? Those two traits are super unusual.
So yeah. Still not going to bother taking “straight” character’s sexualities seriously. All Tony Stark’s interest in women proves is interest in women — it doesn’t, as you well know, exclude an interest in dudes. (And I would understand someone who thought his interest in women was over the top to the point of being a phony cover, too.)
None of this has anything to do with real people, except to note that real people can ALSO seem straight and even think they are straight only to discover otherwise later in life. My points were MUCH more about the validity of seeking out more representation in a world where you can reliably assume that far, far less than 5% of the characters in a book or TV show are going to be queer.
(And by the way, I don’t buy stats like those even a TINY bit. Sexuality is a spectrum, and 95% of people are absolutely not completely straight. Nooooo waaaaay. But it’s impossible to get reliable data on actual percentages when there’s so much stigma attached. And just promising anonymity isn’t enough when people can be in deep denial.)
I completely agree that no PERSON can change their sexual orientation. I disagree that Joyce is “safe” JUST on the basis that she’s never thought about it before, though. Because again, it’s not an either/or. A guy doesn’t have to be 100% into men and only men to call himself gay; for example, I know that I would never want to BE with a guy despite a 5-10% attraction to them, so I use the word “lesbian”. Maybe a more technically accurate term would be “gay-leaning homoromantic bisexual”. But that’s a mouthful and — right now — what you choose to call yourself is a big part of your identity.
I also think this question is more complicated for ladies because lady attraction is not something society helps us understand. Perfectly earnest books, by women, tell us not to worry if we don’t have orgasms during sex because some women don’t! (There is an interesting void of acknowledgment that maybe your partner sucks, or SHOULD be sucking, or even that you could help yourself out — it’s just treated as something wholly “wrong” with you, and unfixable except by luck.)
We try to study female arousal and come away with the conclusion that ALL women are bisexual because the women studied all responded physically in equal measure to heterosexual and homosexual stimuli (visual, it was porny), but another interpretation offered up is that women who get wet when threatened with rape have an evolutionary advantage (less tearing), so maybe that’s why we seem to get aroused by all potentially sexual situations.
My point: it’s very easy for a girl, straight or otherwise, not to know what her body wants.
I hate that this is true, by the way, because it feels very condescending. Plenty of women have learned what they want and enjoy sex and go after it. But that does not change that Joyces still roam the earth in huge, depressing numbers.
DarkVeghetta
All valid points here, so no reason to add my own.
That sed, and without trying to sounds like an asshole I feel duty-bound to say to you, Concolor, that your oldest daughter sounds extremely hot (mostly due to myself also being about as manly as I am girly). *appreciative nod*
Focka
Silly playing around in forums aside, “lose” or “corrupt” her “morals”? What morals are these? The ones which say it’s a horrible icky sin to be gay/have pre-marital sex/believe in gender equality and anyone who does it is to go directly to hell?
ShaggyDonahugh
I don’t think they’re necessarily saying that it’s a bad thing, just that it can be debilitating to a person that holds themselves to a certain standard to break those standards. It’s like swearing to never drink a single drop of alcohol because of all the bad things you’ve heard about it, but then going to a spring break party and having it everywhere. Yeah, you’re going to see a lot of moronic drunk people, but then you’re also going to see those that don’t drink a lot, and end up having a great time. It’s tempting to lose yourself, but it’s also incredibly frightening. So in the end I guess I’m saying that they don’t mean that Joyce’s corrupted version of her morals are wrong, just that it would break a few preconceived notions that she has about the gay/bisexual world and help her grow as a person.
We’re just joking, we’re not actually expecting Joyce to get it on with Sal, and it’s not like Joyce can hear us. Personally I’d consider it just plain bad writing if Joyce suddenly became lesbian.
timemonkey
Yeah, you don’t spontaneously become a lesbian unless you’re exposed to Rachel kicking ass.
Wazza
what if it’s not sudden? What if it’s foreshadowed by all sorts of denial and sneaking glances and being uncomfortable with being surrounded by attractive females in states of undress in different ways than her strong personal nudity taboo would usually imply?
99% of the comments aren’t serious. We’re just having fun. We all know Joyce is straight.
Aras Pabedinskas
Ya I know it’s not serious, I’ve probably went along with the joke at sometime myself, but it’s just making me think about things like this, you know. Sometimes, you just think about what it would be like if the jokes weren’t actually jokes. I don’t know, I’m stupid.
CRtwenty
I’d be a little upset if Joyce actually wound up being gay without some serious character development since it’d be totally out of character for her.
Lesbian Joyce fanart is AOK though. <_<
Li
Sexuality isn’t a character trait that someone can have or lose, so “out of character” and “character development” are the wrong words. Being suddenly gay AND COMFORTABLE WITH IT would be OOC, but noticing for the first time that she’s attracted to women? No. That happens in real life too.
Heavensrun
This. I was straight for basically my entire life until I was in my mid 20’s and I started to realize I was bi. It wasn’t sudden, but it also wasn’t something that was “there all along”, either.
Zababcd
We don’t ‘know’ that Joyce is straight. We only know how she identifies. She probably is straight, though. Normally we’d have had some significant evidence to the contrary by now if she wasn’t.
Not really… It’s been a long time for _us_, but for the characters, it’s only been THREE WEEKS. For all we know, Joyce has repressed bisexual feelings due to the ideals forced onto her growing up, or at the very least, what she’s been through these past few weeks could easily have been enough to make her start feeling bi-curious (which is completely acceptable, no matter where she ultimately realizes she falls on the Kinsey Scale).
Also, sexuality is a very fluid thing.
Zababcd
That’s true, but I wasn’t referring to reality. I meant that we would have had some significant evidence to the contrary not because it would have existed in real life, but because it is something I would have expected from a storytelling perspective.
james
there a time and place for everything and it called “college”
plus I think lesbian rape is not as plausible as it is with the xy chromosome…..
Aras Pabedinskas
Not denying that lesbian rape has happened but, why bring it up in this conversation?
Heavensrun
I think his point is that Joyce is currently dealing with some rape attempt trauma and she might feel safer directing her romantic feelings at women right now. Which isn’t implausible, mind you, but “lesbian rape is not as plausible” is a really unwise choice of words, because it gives the impression that he doesn’t believe lesbian rape ever happens.
DarkVeghetta
Think it just implies he thinks it’s less probable. See “not as plausible”.
To make a horrendously oversimplified comparison, I’d
say it’s nut-produced-testosterone versus
period-fueled-extreme-hornyness. Hmm… going to have to agree with james during most days of the month.
Heavensrun
You do realize that lesbian rape is a thing that happens, right?
Raen
…are you trying to insinuate that Ryan has “turned” her? Because that’s all kinds of fucked up.
(And, actually, I don’t think it’s the first time it’s been said… urrrgh.)
225 thoughts on “End up gay”
Raibean
Lies from your mouth
Resne
Well, at least her hips don’t lie.
ASmellyOgre
Too many sexy ladies for Joyce!
Hinoron
For Joyce?
Don’t you mean Billie?
Poor girl, she’s apparently not only Lesbian-Candy, but Bicurious-Candy!
nalem
How do you know you won’t like it if you haven’t even tried it?
Darwin2500
That sounds like EXACTLY what Satan would say 😛
Bill M.
You don’t need to take a bite of an excrement sandwich to know it tastes like excrement.
Evil Fairy
The Mike avatar sells that for me so hard, you don’t even know!
Jenny Creed
Well, how do you know if you enjoy the taste of poop or not unless you taste it? Just cause your instincts tell you something is no reason not to consider they may be wrong. I mean, our instincts tell us to kill people who look different.
Wonder Wig
No one can resist a freckled shoulder, Joyce. No one.
Yotomoe
Especially not Walky.
Khantalas
Too late, Joyce. Your fate was sealed the moment you laid eyes on Billie.
HK-A6A7
I doesn’t matter how hard you try Joyce, you are only delaying the inevitable.
Darwin2500
To be fair, her Walkyverse counterpart delayed it longer than almost any other female character in the ‘Verse…
Ivan
Maybe I never got that far over there (I prefer new characters in different universes!) – but I’ll have to look.
Willis! – Do a KickStarter for another version of these “Universes,” along the lines of http://www.ma3comic.com (Menage-A-3) – and I’ll bet you top $20K just to START IT!
Plasma Mongoose
It’s OK 2 B Gay
Aras Pabedinskas
I’d like you anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuR5YMyfeNI
I don’t know how to do the text link thing ^
Plasma Mongoose
(a href=”url”)Words You Want Displayed(/a)
Just replace () with greater than and less than symbols.
Aras Pabedinskas
Wait, all the brackets or just the one’s at the end.
I’m just going to try it.
I’d like you anyway
Aras Pabedinskas
IT WORKED WOO!
Steve
Good job, you now know html.
Neospector
Is his name Lancelot?
BlueRam
It’s okay to be Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing.
Osaru Sensei
Joyce, Chillax.
Us LGBT folks aren’t scary at all, and we don’t bite (unless that’s what you discover you’re into, then by all means…)
There is nothing wrong at all with liking people of the same gender. Me and my girlfriend go way back.
Osaru Sensei
Suddenly I regret saying anything at all in this conversation and I feel like I should’ve just stayed away from this topic.
Willis, you can delete these two posts if you’d like.
Yarrr
Nah props for saying it.
Somebody
I kind of think pushing people into a group like that is rather silly. I’m not a big fan of advocacy groups speaking for everyone either. Not everyone’s identity comes from sexuality or their sex.
Aras Pabedinskas
Joyce, calm down, breathe. Slowly, okay? And let go of Billie’s hand, your crushing it.
Ancestral Hamster
Joyce, you can grab Billie’s butt instead, it’s more resilient (and softer).
Yotomoe
Or her boobs. They’re softest of all.
xain
yes and feel at ease as Billie starts cradling you into her bosom
Kernanator
Don’t deny it.
You know you want it.
Plasma Mongoose
Could be worse, she could have been robosexual like Malaya.
SUGauthor
In this universe that’s called “having toys” and she already met Sarah.
Doctor_Who
In this universe, Malaya falls in love with Roz’s hat.
Yes, Ultra-Car is a dildo-hat in this reality. Betcha didn’t know that.
Kernanator
…That explains everything.
Wazza
in this reality, ultradildohat despises erself for being so… entangled… with those messy humans
Random Person
This makes DoA much more closer to Girls with Slingshots than I thought.
Aras Pabedinskas
You know, I’ve never seen more people pushing for a character to turn into a lesbian than I have in these boards. I don’t know, it’s starting to make me feel uncomfortable. No joke. I hope this doesn’t come off homophobic, and now it does by saying that. Okay, soft reset.
What I am talking about is it makes me uncomfortable with all this pushing because I imagine everyone saying this to an actual woman (or man) who was having this conflict, I don’t think it would help them through their issues, I imagine it would probably make it worse. Imagine if someone kept saying play with the ball, but you want to play with Legos, but they keep pushing the ball in your face. I should not have used ball. This is probably a terrible analogy. Metaphor. I really need to take an English course at university.
I’m sorry.
Aras Pabedinskas
I started the above comment before this comment led to an entirely different place. Now this is just awkward. Not that it wasn’t before.
DarkVeghetta
Pretty sure we ship everyone with everyone. All it takes is but one expression or one suggestive situation and there will be ships. I doubt most are even sincere in their shipping’s – most just say it’s a joke. It’s a bandwagon and the whole Internet’s in on the
gag.
CanvasWolfDoll
yea… i chalk it up to a disconnect of a fictional character and real people in this case, and thus this situation is a nice outlet for people to be a little silly and ignore being politically correct, but you’re not wrong for feeling this way.
personally, i’m rooting for joyce not to lose or corrupt her morals. i think it’d be nice to see, but that’s me.
Aras Pabedinskas
Well the thing is, when you say corrupt her morals, the morals are whats the problem here because they also include “It’s okay to try and convert Ethan from homosexuality” which also gives me disconnect in this situation. The thing is, what I want to see out of this arc is that Joyce eventually says it’s okay for others to be gay.
Okay this is going to take a while for me to explain. I now see some sort of.. double standard. That is probably not the right word. Maybe we can find the right one. If a bunch of people were trying to force a gay man to turn straight, that would obviously be wrong. Assuming that Joyce isn’t in fact gay, this is how I view thee situation. Maybe this sort of thing is what Willis has planned, to demonstrate the point of what it feels like from a gay person’s perspective when people tell them to stop being gay. I hope this doesn’t make me look like a complete tool, I don’t think I’ve got my head on straight right now.
Heavensrun
Eh, if a gay man was craving a little boob action and was going through a crisis of identity over it, I would absolutely be sitting there going “DUDE. YOU CAN BE BI. IT’S AN OPTION AND IT IS OKAY.” Like if Ethan was -actually- attracted to Joyce, and was freaking out because he thought he was supposed to be gay.
Being okay with who you are, as long as who you are isn’t destructive to others, is good.
Personally, I ship Joyrothy, so any development that steers us in the direction of hot christian-on-atheist shenanigans is okay with me!
Li
You mention a double standard here, and there certainly is one — two, in fact.
Shipping a “straight” romance is always considered acceptable, and is always assumed to be at least somewhat plausible; Joyce/Joe is somehow “better” than Joyce/Dorothy, even though we know for a fact that Joe and Joyce are not compatible and that a Joyce who fell for Joe would be as susceptible to “losing” some of her “morals”.
This is not because Joyce is straight, but because Joyce has not yet been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be gay. Characters, ALL, characters, are straight as a default until proven otherwise — AND EVEN AFTER BEING PROVEN OTHERWISE. The number of times fans have asked Willis if Ethan is “still gay in this universe” or have attempted to suggest that he might be secretly bisexual or biromantic is a number too high for my brain to even comprehend.
So actually your claim that it would be “obviously wrong” doesn’t hold water. You and I may agree that it would be wrong and that it should be obviously so, but it is empirically not. People do it constantly, and not just to Ethan or as politely as they’ve done it to Ethan; there are lots of people out there on the Internet right now saying that a lesbian character needs to be ducked straight, or even lesbian real life people!
So to wrap up:
1) It seems like there’s more respect for non-straight sexual identities than straight ones in any given fandom because “straight” is often less a fictional sexuality than a default one. Unless a character thinks about it and decides no on screen, it’s perfectly realistic to think they’re not really or not completely straight, and that “addressing the question on screen” thing is very rare. Vastly more characters are PRESUMED straight than are actually definitively straight.
Also, as anyone who is queer in real life will tell you, thinking one is straight or convincing oneself one is straight for years and years of one’s life only to later discover differently… is a thing that happens.
So: characters are rarely definitively straight, and even when they are we know there’s still the potential for gray area.
Conversely, a character who is queer is always definitively queer, by creator word if nothing else, and for all the “phase” nonsense we get spoonfed coming out is not something people are WRONG about. They go back into the closet sometimes, but it’s just not a fun ride you choose to take for no reason. Both fictionally and in real life, a non-straight identity is less likely to be a mistake.
And just because THIS ONE STRIP is by Willis doesn’t change the context it exists in.
2) I’ll respect creator intent on straight character sexuality when we live in a world where non-straight characters are as common as straight ones, but until then I reserve the right to seek out more representation of me. Similarly, the Human Torcg being played by an awesome black dude will only be racefail when we live in a world where non-white superheroes are in any danger of being lost or forgotten. (This will never happen.)
As things stand, knowing a creator frowns on gay characters and would never make any or gets outraged at the thought that someone is “twisting” his babies actually makes me want to ship gay pairings harder. Because fuck that guy.
See also: Bioware’s epic fail in asserting 1) that Commander Shepard is straight (uh, more than half your female romance options disagree!), and 2) “no one is gay in the Star Wars universe” (again female romance options don’t count I guess) (and also seriously FUCK YOU).
3) People who are cheering for Joyce/Billie should not be worse than people cheering for Joyce/Joe. Just being a same sex pairing should not make something automatically worse for her. She’s in an unstable place? Then she shouldn’t be dating at all. She especially shouldn’t be dating Ethan, but people still ship that.
Did I miss anything?
Heavensrun
No, that seems pretty comprehensive. In Bioware’s defense, those things were ultimately addressed, even if they were stupid comments at the time. ;p
I will never understand people that ship Joyce/Ethan.
Aras Pabedinskas
What I was not attempting was to say that I am not fine with other people shipping. It’s not my thing, but I’ve made my peace with it and I have absolutely nothing against anyone who does it, or anyone on the board. I am also not against it happening where sexuality of characters are altered or explored, as long as it is not malicious. I’m straight but I know there are aspects of my sexuality that do not fit perfectly with that descriptor that I am exploring in my own time, and I am really not ready to expand on this any further than that so please don’t pry. Maybe I have been projecting my own insecurities on to the situation that I feel I am witnessing with the board and Joyce. All I know is that in my case, a bunch of people pushing for me to just give in, before I myself were ready for it, it would give me a panic attack. Heck, this is the first time I am actually expressing to other people anything about my sexuality, and it is making my chest hurt because I am afraid of what my family will think, and my brother occasionaly looks at these forums, which is making me really want to double back and erase this whole response. This is the way I am empathizing with Joyce at the moment. By the last strip, she has been shown getting curious. I think it is fine if she explores those feelings, and if she were to find that maybe she herself was gay or bi or somewhere between these things and straight, at least she gains an understanding of herself and of others, but just seeing how panicked she is about the situation right now and how so many people are pushing it, even in jest, it’s making me uncomfrotable because it looks like Joyce is about ready to collapse.
I’m also all for video games expanding on sexuality, although I would find it really weird if Mario was kissing Bowser, not that he has ever actually been seen kissing Peach. Okay, that should lighten things up a bit.
Li
First: /hug
Being confused sucks and sexuality is confusing, and I really wish not-straight sexualities would hurry up and get destigmatized because I hope that will make it less of a THING. If being gay stopped being seen as abnormal, all the shades of it would hopefully also be more accepted, and it especially sucks that you have to worry about being seen making these comments.
SOME of what gets directed at Joyce is at least partially malicious, because some of us get catharsis out of seeing someone with beliefs like hers get shaken up. I also think that this comic feels like a safe space for expressing that, because those of us who still like Joyce despite what she reminds us of (like me!) feel pretty sure that everything will work out okay for her in the end. Her lesbian panic right now is okay, because Willis won’t actually hurt her. SHE’S afraid, but I don’t have to be afraid for her.
Does that make sense?
/hugs again
You’re fine, by the way. Fine and valid and if you never want to experiment at all, that’s fine! I have a tiny bit of heterosexual interest, but not enough that I’d want to act on it — more like just enough to appreciate Chris Hemsworth’s arms. And that’s okay. If all you ever want to do is quietly think some men are attractive, that is completely fine.
The most important thing is that you get to a place where you can be comfortable with you. <3
Aras Pabedinskas
Ya, I understand what you’re saying. It’s not that I ever felt like Joyce wasn’t going to come out of this alright, but maybe I just starting treating fiction too much like reality. Joyce can’t actually be affected by our comments. Maybe I just let myself take this too far. I’ll lay off on the whole thing for right now. And thanks for the hugs… again.
DarkVeghetta
Ya know, I’m pretty straight. Or, at least my penis is (hurr durr). But there have been a few moments in my life where I have considered getting a satisfying mouthful of dick – especially my own (sadly I failed there). Pretty sure I can still safely call myself mostly heterosexual, though I do tend to go more for ‘pansexual’ these days if actually asked for specifics.
Heck, even that I’m unsure of until I actually do have teh gay sex – which is, quite frankly, very unlikely to ever happen. Sexuality is a gelatinous substance at times – I think of it more as a non-Newtonian fluid then a solid nowadays.
TL;DR: Sexuality is a non-Newtonian fluid. /hug
Concolor
You make many valid points. But there seems to be a bit of a disconnect throughout the thread: one can’t consciously CHANGE his or her sexual orientation. If you’re a guy and hot guys put the torque in your shorts and hot girls don’t do anything for you … you’re gay. You can ACT straight if you want to, but that won’t change your orientation. And that goes exactly the same for any other gender/orientation combination. If a girl (let’s take Joyce as an example) likes boys and has always liked boys and the idea of pairing up with her girl bff has never crossed her mind … she’s straight. She doesn’t have to be WORRIED about “becoming” a lesbian. She can’t. She doesn’t have the wiring for it. In her current situation, though, having been raised in a Very Strictly Defined climate, where “homosexuals are sinful and are going to Hell” was absorbed along with every other aspect of her moral code, she may have never before had the OPTION of entertaining such thoughts. But now she does, and it’s freaking her out. Lots of new input. It will have to be processed. And if she spends half a hundred sleepless nights going over all the ramifications, she may come to some surprising conclusions.
Or not.
I think that basic misinformation is a lot of what is behind gay-bashing by these super-macho straight guys. Either they Don’t Understand the Mechanism (orientation is present at birth and is largely determined by the makeup of hormones in the amniotic fluid at certain points in the pregnancy) and so they are reacting strongly against something they FEAR, or they Don’t Understand the Mechanism and have harbored same-sex attractions for years and are violently denying them due to cultural or religious pressures. What they need to comprehend in either case is that they Can’t Change Who They Are. They can lie about it, if they fall into the second category, and pretend to be straight, but it only frustrates them … and any woman unlucky enough to marry one (thinking of my cousin here…). If they are in the first category, they need to comprehend that they don’t have to worry about “catching the gay”. They don’t have to fear it. Same-sex orientation shows up in 5-10% of the population, in all cultures throughout history. It is a NATURAL variation. It is present in nature in hundreds of non-primate species. They just need to Get Over It Already.
Both of my daughters are bi. The older one has no hard-set gender identification. She feels girly sometimes and masculine sometimes. She likes girls (was engaged to one briefly) and guys (currently in an exclusive relationship with one), and the combinations overlap. She doesn’t really fit any given category, and defines herself as “queer”. That’s just her. The younger one is decidedly female and happy with it. Also, she like girls about as well as guys. My two sons, on the other hand, are completely straight. All four of my kids understand the causes and outcomes of sexual orientation and are fine with it. We also have a gay couple (college guys) living in our household, so any questions that came up were quickly and easily answered.
Now. All that being said … what should Joyce do?
She should learn everything there is to know about sexual orientation. She should do the research, as we have, and if she is intellectually honest, she will come to the conclusion that there is nothing “wrong” with being gay, that she can’t “save” Ethan if he truly is gay, and that THAT IS OKAY. She needs to do some serious introspection and look at what she likes and doesn’t like, what she believes or distrusts, what is provable or un-provable about all of it, and come to an internally consistent worldview. A personal philosophy is crucial to being a completed individual, and the philosophy needs to be YOURS, not just a regurgitation of someone else’s platitudes.
Do I think she will manage all that in Freshman year? Hell, no. It took me until I was in my forties, and I worked at it. But she should get started. The longer she waits, the more world-shaking the changes will be. And she looks pretty shaken already.
Li
Not talking about real people, talking about fictional characters and asserting that there is nothing wrong with bending a “straight” character’s sexuality in fanfic or w/e, and there will BE nothing wrong with it until we come far enough as a society that
a) straight becomes a REAL fictional sexuality rather than the default
b) other sexualities are recognized as being just as normal with no stigma attached
c) other sexualities are actually and reliably represented in the media
All of these are important things that haven’t happened yet and which are incredibly necessary to *have* happen before anyone can expect fandoms to stop wearing queer-colored glasses and writing “straight” characters as gay.
And straight is in quotes because, again, it’s the default. In this very web comic’s fandom, we’ve had people loudly insisting that Joyce is straight, but we have no evidence of that. She wants to marry a nice boy, she thinks being gay is a sin, and she had one on camera erotic dream about Ethan that was extremely confused as to what “sex” is.
And Joyce, though she has OBVIOUSLY never even considered attraction to girls a possibility and therefore has never even thought about her orientation, who thought being gay was a choice and since she hasn’t made it was impossible, is STILL in a world, ala David Wilkis, where non-straight sexualities exist and are talked about a lot.
And as worlds created by people go? Those two traits are super unusual.
So yeah. Still not going to bother taking “straight” character’s sexualities seriously. All Tony Stark’s interest in women proves is interest in women — it doesn’t, as you well know, exclude an interest in dudes. (And I would understand someone who thought his interest in women was over the top to the point of being a phony cover, too.)
None of this has anything to do with real people, except to note that real people can ALSO seem straight and even think they are straight only to discover otherwise later in life. My points were MUCH more about the validity of seeking out more representation in a world where you can reliably assume that far, far less than 5% of the characters in a book or TV show are going to be queer.
(And by the way, I don’t buy stats like those even a TINY bit. Sexuality is a spectrum, and 95% of people are absolutely not completely straight. Nooooo waaaaay. But it’s impossible to get reliable data on actual percentages when there’s so much stigma attached. And just promising anonymity isn’t enough when people can be in deep denial.)
I completely agree that no PERSON can change their sexual orientation. I disagree that Joyce is “safe” JUST on the basis that she’s never thought about it before, though. Because again, it’s not an either/or. A guy doesn’t have to be 100% into men and only men to call himself gay; for example, I know that I would never want to BE with a guy despite a 5-10% attraction to them, so I use the word “lesbian”. Maybe a more technically accurate term would be “gay-leaning homoromantic bisexual”. But that’s a mouthful and — right now — what you choose to call yourself is a big part of your identity.
I also think this question is more complicated for ladies because lady attraction is not something society helps us understand. Perfectly earnest books, by women, tell us not to worry if we don’t have orgasms during sex because some women don’t! (There is an interesting void of acknowledgment that maybe your partner sucks, or SHOULD be sucking, or even that you could help yourself out — it’s just treated as something wholly “wrong” with you, and unfixable except by luck.)
We try to study female arousal and come away with the conclusion that ALL women are bisexual because the women studied all responded physically in equal measure to heterosexual and homosexual stimuli (visual, it was porny), but another interpretation offered up is that women who get wet when threatened with rape have an evolutionary advantage (less tearing), so maybe that’s why we seem to get aroused by all potentially sexual situations.
My point: it’s very easy for a girl, straight or otherwise, not to know what her body wants.
I hate that this is true, by the way, because it feels very condescending. Plenty of women have learned what they want and enjoy sex and go after it. But that does not change that Joyces still roam the earth in huge, depressing numbers.
DarkVeghetta
All valid points here, so no reason to add my own.
That sed, and without trying to sounds like an asshole I feel duty-bound to say to you, Concolor, that your oldest daughter sounds extremely hot (mostly due to myself also being about as manly as I am girly). *appreciative nod*
Focka
Silly playing around in forums aside, “lose” or “corrupt” her “morals”? What morals are these? The ones which say it’s a horrible icky sin to be gay/have pre-marital sex/believe in gender equality and anyone who does it is to go directly to hell?
ShaggyDonahugh
I don’t think they’re necessarily saying that it’s a bad thing, just that it can be debilitating to a person that holds themselves to a certain standard to break those standards. It’s like swearing to never drink a single drop of alcohol because of all the bad things you’ve heard about it, but then going to a spring break party and having it everywhere. Yeah, you’re going to see a lot of moronic drunk people, but then you’re also going to see those that don’t drink a lot, and end up having a great time. It’s tempting to lose yourself, but it’s also incredibly frightening. So in the end I guess I’m saying that they don’t mean that Joyce’s corrupted version of her morals are wrong, just that it would break a few preconceived notions that she has about the gay/bisexual world and help her grow as a person.
That being said, WHOO CORRUPTED MORALS xD
SUGauthor
We’re just joking, we’re not actually expecting Joyce to get it on with Sal, and it’s not like Joyce can hear us. Personally I’d consider it just plain bad writing if Joyce suddenly became lesbian.
timemonkey
Yeah, you don’t spontaneously become a lesbian unless you’re exposed to Rachel kicking ass.
Wazza
what if it’s not sudden? What if it’s foreshadowed by all sorts of denial and sneaking glances and being uncomfortable with being surrounded by attractive females in states of undress in different ways than her strong personal nudity taboo would usually imply?
Undrave
It’s mostly just joking around.
timemonkey
99% of the comments aren’t serious. We’re just having fun. We all know Joyce is straight.
Aras Pabedinskas
Ya I know it’s not serious, I’ve probably went along with the joke at sometime myself, but it’s just making me think about things like this, you know. Sometimes, you just think about what it would be like if the jokes weren’t actually jokes. I don’t know, I’m stupid.
CRtwenty
I’d be a little upset if Joyce actually wound up being gay without some serious character development since it’d be totally out of character for her.
Lesbian Joyce fanart is AOK though. <_<
Li
Sexuality isn’t a character trait that someone can have or lose, so “out of character” and “character development” are the wrong words. Being suddenly gay AND COMFORTABLE WITH IT would be OOC, but noticing for the first time that she’s attracted to women? No. That happens in real life too.
Heavensrun
This. I was straight for basically my entire life until I was in my mid 20’s and I started to realize I was bi. It wasn’t sudden, but it also wasn’t something that was “there all along”, either.
Zababcd
We don’t ‘know’ that Joyce is straight. We only know how she identifies. She probably is straight, though. Normally we’d have had some significant evidence to the contrary by now if she wasn’t.
Totz the Plaid
Not really… It’s been a long time for _us_, but for the characters, it’s only been THREE WEEKS. For all we know, Joyce has repressed bisexual feelings due to the ideals forced onto her growing up, or at the very least, what she’s been through these past few weeks could easily have been enough to make her start feeling bi-curious (which is completely acceptable, no matter where she ultimately realizes she falls on the Kinsey Scale).
Also, sexuality is a very fluid thing.
Zababcd
That’s true, but I wasn’t referring to reality. I meant that we would have had some significant evidence to the contrary not because it would have existed in real life, but because it is something I would have expected from a storytelling perspective.
james
there a time and place for everything and it called “college”
plus I think lesbian rape is not as plausible as it is with the xy chromosome…..
Aras Pabedinskas
Not denying that lesbian rape has happened but, why bring it up in this conversation?
Heavensrun
I think his point is that Joyce is currently dealing with some rape attempt trauma and she might feel safer directing her romantic feelings at women right now. Which isn’t implausible, mind you, but “lesbian rape is not as plausible” is a really unwise choice of words, because it gives the impression that he doesn’t believe lesbian rape ever happens.
DarkVeghetta
Think it just implies he thinks it’s less probable. See “not as plausible”.
To make a horrendously oversimplified comparison, I’d
say it’s nut-produced-testosterone versus
period-fueled-extreme-hornyness. Hmm… going to have to agree with james during most days of the month.
Heavensrun
You do realize that lesbian rape is a thing that happens, right?
Raen
…are you trying to insinuate that Ryan has “turned” her? Because that’s all kinds of fucked up.
(And, actually, I don’t think it’s the first time it’s been said… urrrgh.)