I don’t really want to start a fight, and that’s not my intention with this, but I get the sinking feeling it’s gonna cause one. My point is aimed at whinesaboutrp, who I’d do the @ mention thing, but tumblr isn’t letting me atm. So.
Maybe I’m overthinking this whole thing, and for everyone else this really is a basic argument about whether or not it’s okay to ship what character with whom, but I’m attempting to approach this as a legitimate discussion about sexuality in literature, with some of the language of role playing mixed in. Boiled down, I don’t care about shipping, and it’s never been something I’m much interested in. It just happens the discussion is taking place in a tag dedicated to a roleplaying site.
But come on. This is an interesting discussion, and there is a lot to unpack and talk about here. And I’m right there with you when you say Dirk is 100% without questions, gay. It’s right there, black and whi-. Well, okay, Orange and grey, given the font, but, it’s in the text. Kanaya, however, is a lot more dubious, and it’s interesting to talk about.
As another brief aside, and I said as much in one of the earlier posts I made in regards to the topic. But. Especially in Kanaya’s case, where she personally has never made a definitive statement? Claiming that a female character with a pattern of female partners in concupiscent relationships being attracted to a male in the same context is queer erasure, is wrong. Because the statement implies a value judgement on bisexual and pansexual identifications being less worthwhile than a strictly homosexual one, which is already problematic given the way bi/pan people are treated in the GSRM community and in general.
Jesus, I am doing a lot of damned talking today. My point is, there is a discussion to be had, and it can be an interesting one, but to ‘whinesaboutrp’ specifically, and the cherubplay tag in general, guys, don’t make this personal. We’re talking about fiction, and playing games around the fiction. There is no need to attack one another when this could be a great discussion. Please?
kanaya is unarguably gay, we have word of god on the matter, why is it so important that she personally says it? why does her sexuality not count otherwise? she will never actually say it, by the way, because she comes from a society without a concept of “attracted only to one gender”
it doesn’t imply bisexual relationships are less worthwhile, it implies that kanaya is not bisexual. that’s all. why is it that even though trolls are normally bi and pan you have to argue making the single one we know is not bit into a bi character is permissable and arguing otherwise is biphobic
biphobia and bi erasure is a major problem in fandom. I agree with you on this matter. it’s a serious issue that characters are often perceived as straight or gay with no in-betweens. the problem with applying this to kanaya is that we know for a fact that she is gay. andrew hussie himself said that she is, from a human point of view, a lesbian, which means she’s only interested in girls. and why does it always come down to kanaya and dirk, the two characters we know for a fact are gay?
why aren’t you more interested in the way fandom, for example, tried to prove gamzee must be gay because he was interested in tavros, then outright declared his black interest in terezi was feigned or didn’t count? that’s pretty biphobic. how about how people decide that jake english was actually straight and forced into experimentation by dirk? that’s bi erasure as hell. what about the assertion that dave, jade, and roxy, 3 characters we have no confirmed sexuality for, must be straight because we haven’t seen them in relationships with the same gender? how about the assumption that sollux is straight because he’s only been in relationships with aradia and feferi? the assumption terezi is straight because of gamzee and karkat while ignoring that her relationship with vriska was treading very close to full on kismesis territory?
you’re right, assuming someone is a sexuality based on their relationships is iffy as hell. but nobody’s assuming kanaya is gay based on her relationships. we know it’s true because hussie said so, and while you’re right that maybe hussie is full of shit sometimes, I don’t personally see “kanaya is a lesbian” as worth ignoring the way fat vriska jokes or caucasian bullshit is, because unlike either of those things, kanaya being a lesbian promotes inclusivity. sometimes the author doesn’t have to be dead 100% of the time. sometimes the author’s statements, especially hussie’s jokey ones, can be ignored (fat vriska). sometimes they’re important to those of us that feel represented by kanaya. sometimes they’re important context for the comic – if hussie had given us word of god that sollux, for example, was straight, and then used his only concupiscent relationships being straight as a backing for that, it’d be less biphobic and bi-erasey to claim sollux was straight.
the thing is that straight-normative arguments are way, way worse about this, and way less inclusive, than the people who are fighting for gay characters to be left alone. if you have seen how this fandom tries to prove, over and over, that dirk isn’t gay because he hates being labeled, can you understand how tired of the same thing happening with kanaya we are? because it’s seen as bi erasure to claim kanaya and dirk are gay, but nobody gets on a high horse about how it’s bi erasure to claim john is straight. because straight sexuality is normatized.
I hope that is more articulate about why this is a problem.