You know, the older I’ve gotten the more I’ve come to believe that these words we use to try to define people aren’t very useful. We invent terms like “heterosexual”, “homosexual”, “bisexual” and try to assign people to distinct categories based on those words. But those categories don’t really match up to the way the world actually works. People are attracted to whoever they are attracted to, they love whoever they love, categories be damned. And I say this as someone who actually fits pretty neatly into that “heterosexual” box, but I see many people around me who don’t fit any of those boxes. The concepts seem pretty well-defined until you start looking at the boundaries between them, and you see that those boundaries are so fuzzy that they don’t really exist. And the solution is not to invent more and more categories for each possible shade of meaning, because that just emphasizes our differences when we should be focusing on our similarities.
What I think I’m trying to say is that Faye isn’t homosexual or bisexual because of her feelings for Bubbles. If you need a word for it, then the word would be “Bubblesexual”, but that’s not really helpful either. But that’s where Faye is right now. She is attracted to Bubbles, not because she is attracted to women, or robots, but because of who Bubbles is for her.
And so what? Why does Faye have to be shoved into a box labeled “bisexual” as if she’s somehow different from me? When I look at Faye, I see a broken, wounded, but good-hearted person trying to live her life as best she can and find a little happiness along the way. That’s also what Bubbles is. And that’s what I am too.
I have no idea if any of this makes sense. I’m tired and not really thinking coherently. I’ve probably totally mangled whatever point I was trying to make. And that’s okay. Logical coherence is overrated. The key is compassion. Be kind and generous to all people, even imaginary people who only exist in a webcomic, because that’s good practice for the real world. Faye and Bubbles bring a little light into each other’s lives, and that’s really all that matters to me.