Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 4331-4335 (18-22, August 2020)
eschaton:
--- Quote from: JoeCovenant on 19 Aug 2020, 05:31 ---
--- Quote from: BenRG on 19 Aug 2020, 05:18 ---Jeph does seem to like this whole 'the one exception' trope in his romantic writing. We've seen it literally almost every time that a major cast member gets into a long-term relationship since the Dorapocalypse. These examples come to mind:
* Marten is basically hetero and very, very mildly bicurious yet he has fallen head-over-heels with Claire without even a blink of hesitation other than a concern about professional ethics; indeed his reaction to her was 'You're beautiful';
* Faye has never shown the slightest bisexual interest before meeting Bubbles (who, let's not be squeamish about it, isn't even her species);
* May and Sven are clearly in a mutual orbit despite the fact neither of them have shown the slightest interest in anything beyond sex before;
* Now Clinton, who has never shown even the slightest bi tendencies, is clearly very, very attracted to Elliot on a physical level as well as clearly having a strong emotional rapport.My point? I think that Jeph's view is that your one true partner is quite frequently the last person you'd expect and actually quite different from your 'type'. Although, arguably, Marten/Claire diverges from that last part as Claire is, in personality terms, quite similar to Faye, Dora and Padma (assertive, strong-willed but with strong insecurities). In any case, this viewpoint is clearly being reflected in a lot of his characters' most serious romantic relationships: It is the interpersonal match between those two individuals that matters, not any pre-existing labels about romantic and sexual attraction.
--- End quote ---
Not much to debate there.
I think (my) concern (problem is too strong a word) is that these "exceptions" are all occurring within a very small group of people.
Like... "Hmmm... which two characters can I use to squeeze into a relationship/situation which might be deemed something other than what wider society views as "normal", today...?"
And unfortunately, using these things in such a way as Ben describes above - makes them almost smack of tokenism...
--- End quote ---
In fairness however, if most of your social circle is LGBT, and you are not, you're probably much more liable to be open to the possibilities than if everyone you know is cis/hetero and repressed as all hell.
ihaveavoice:
Quick note that being attracted to Claire does nothing to alter Marten's sexuality. He's no less hetero for falling for a trans woman.
And the word tokenism gets thrown around quite a bit when it comes to representation, but what it actually means is doing no more than the bare minimum to look like you're including representation of some group - making only a token effort to show some diversity - and then patting yourself on the back for your inclusivity. Jeph has been writing a continuous narrative with fleshed out characters that happen to often be LGBT. In no way is he engaging in tokenism by showing us the inner worlds and slow burn romantic entanglements of these imaginary people.
I would also like to point out that a) a webcomic has no obligation to stick to some real world estimate of the average percentage of gay or bi people in the general population when it comes to the makeup of its cast - QC could have literally no straight characters if that's what its writer wanted to do, and nothing would be off or (lol) questionable about that; and b) as others have pointed out, it isn't even unrealistic in real life for a certain friend group and related circles to be majority LGBT, especially when their crowd is notably accepting and inclusive in other ways. It isn't even a universal reader experience to feel that the amount of LGBT representation in the comic is somehow odd, or even a universal straight-reader-with-mostly-straight-friends experience to feel that way. I speak as one of the latter who would legit never have thought of it if I hadn't checked out these forums and seen it keep coming up.
JoeCovenant:
--- Quote from: eschaton on 19 Aug 2020, 05:48 ---
--- Quote from: JoeCovenant on 19 Aug 2020, 05:31 ---
--- Quote from: BenRG on 19 Aug 2020, 05:18 ---Jeph does seem to like this whole 'the one exception' trope in his romantic writing. We've seen it literally almost every time that a major cast member gets into a long-term relationship since the Dorapocalypse. These examples come to mind:
* Marten is basically hetero and very, very mildly bicurious yet he has fallen head-over-heels with Claire without even a blink of hesitation other than a concern about professional ethics; indeed his reaction to her was 'You're beautiful';
* Faye has never shown the slightest bisexual interest before meeting Bubbles (who, let's not be squeamish about it, isn't even her species);
* May and Sven are clearly in a mutual orbit despite the fact neither of them have shown the slightest interest in anything beyond sex before;
* Now Clinton, who has never shown even the slightest bi tendencies, is clearly very, very attracted to Elliot on a physical level as well as clearly having a strong emotional rapport.My point? I think that Jeph's view is that your one true partner is quite frequently the last person you'd expect and actually quite different from your 'type'. Although, arguably, Marten/Claire diverges from that last part as Claire is, in personality terms, quite similar to Faye, Dora and Padma (assertive, strong-willed but with strong insecurities). In any case, this viewpoint is clearly being reflected in a lot of his characters' most serious romantic relationships: It is the interpersonal match between those two individuals that matters, not any pre-existing labels about romantic and sexual attraction.
--- End quote ---
Not much to debate there.
I think (my) concern (problem is too strong a word) is that these "exceptions" are all occurring within a very small group of people.
Like... "Hmmm... which two characters can I use to squeeze into a relationship/situation which might be deemed something other than what wider society views as "normal", today...?"
And unfortunately, using these things in such a way as Ben describes above - makes them almost smack of tokenism...
--- End quote ---
In fairness however, if most of your social circle is LGBT, and you are not, you're probably much more liable to be open to the possibilities than if everyone you know is cis/hetero and repressed as all hell.
--- End quote ---
Oh, I totally get that... (like, totally... it's why I find it a bit jarring all these things are happening in so small a community of main characters).
The 'concern' is that these tings all seem to be coming out of the main cast who, up until the point it occurs, have shown little/no inkling of any LGBT(AI) tendencies.
I lived most of my youth/early adult life surrounded by gay men and women (Actors, dahling, dontcha know?) :) ) and yes, was approached by quite a few guys - I found it flattering, but it was nothing I would be remotely interested in. I loved these guys, but had no interest in them sexually. I guess MY experience of the scene is that there was little to no ambiguity to if people were gay, straight or bi... but then, I can't say I ever saw anyone 'suddenly realise' their orientation either.
Different strokes, I guess. (No pun intended!) :)
eschaton:
--- Quote from: ihaveavoice on 19 Aug 2020, 06:19 ---Quick note that being attracted to Claire does nothing to alter Marten's sexuality. He's no less hetero for falling for a trans woman.
--- End quote ---
Again, I'm not up on my modern terminology, but my understanding is that trans people are by definition under the queer umbrella. Thus Martin/Claire is a queer relationship even though Martin himself might not be queer.
Regardless, sexuality - much like gender identity - is a matter of self-identification. I don't think we can definitively say he self-identifies as being hetero because he's never said anything on the matter whatsoever. He gets to choose his own labels - we do not.
I do find the long-term drift of the comic to be more and more LGBT-focused to be interesting though. It started as a pretty damn straight/cis cast, other than Dora's bisexuality, which was at first merely theoretical and joked about. Oh, and I suppose Pintsize had that "gay relationship" near the beginning of the comic which was never remarked upon again (weird how he's only a letch to human females).
oddtail:
--- Quote from: eschaton on 19 Aug 2020, 07:31 ---
--- Quote from: ihaveavoice on 19 Aug 2020, 06:19 ---Quick note that being attracted to Claire does nothing to alter Marten's sexuality. He's no less hetero for falling for a trans woman.
--- End quote ---
Again, I'm not up on my modern terminology, but my understanding is that trans people are by definition under the queer umbrella. Thus Martin/Claire is a queer relationship even though Martin himself might not be queer.
--- End quote ---
That depends. Does a relationship between, say, a bi guy and a bi girl count as "queer" just based on them being bi?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version