y’all notice how black panther quietly but fervently rejects western assumptions about women in non-western countries by not only displaying Wakandan women in a variety of influential positions but by making clear that only outsiders question them
women are shown in all levels of Wakandan society – Ramonda as a trusted advisor for her son, Shuri as the country’s leading innovator, Okoye and the Dora as respected warriors, Nakia as a spy and philosophical compass, unnamed women who serve as tribal representatives and spiritual leaders. it is not at any point suggested that their gender is a barrier to achieving anything in Wakanda.
there’s a moment during T’Challa’s crowning that’s small but very good, when M’baku questions letting a child handle the country’s technological advancement. he specifically calls her a child, not a girl, questioning her youth and perceived lack of respect for tradition but not her gender, which flies in direct defiance of many western assumptions about how masculine non-western men like M’baku treat women and girls.
that moment, as far as I recall, the most any Wakandan man ever directly disrespects a woman. a lot has been made of how much faith T’challa places in his female relatives and warriors, so I won’t rehash that, but it’s Good.
Ross briefly insults Okoye with his assumption that she doesn’t speak English, but 1.) the narrative and the audience both understand this to be an ignorant statement on Ross’ part for which he is promptly put in his place by Okoye herself and 2.) Ross immediately learns and does better. when he wakes up in Wakanda his disbelief is only for the level of the technology, not that a teenage girl is the mastermind behind it, and during the final fight he defers to Shuri’s guidance despite his piloting expertise.
a lot of words have already been written about Killmonger’s treatment of black women: the casual murder of his partner, his disregard and abuse of a spiritual leader, the slaughter of a Dora. it’s just one of many parts of his ideology that mark him as fundamentally misunderstanding Wakanda and being an Other in the kingdom.
Wakanda is a futuristic fantasyland that makes absolutely no narrative room for men who don’t respect the authority of women.
In addition to the Killmonger point –
I love how it circles back to the cultural disparity between Wakanda and the Western world. It demonstrates how similar ideologies – the drive for resource sharing and international responsibly – can appear so vastly different (ie Killmonger and Nakia). It speaks to the cultural environment in which they existed. I believe Killmonger to be a reflection of the internalised toxic values Western society presents poor Black boys – essentially following the well trodden path from vulnerability to violence.
Y’all know when Mulan is sitting in the rain and watches her parents silhouette disappear as the candle is blown out and then her eyes squint in determination and the music that starts to play and you see her go into the family temple and light a match and bow in respect and then sneak into her parents room and switch the scroll for her hair brooch and then the way her reflection is shown as she pulls the sword and cuts her hair?? It’s literally more iconic than any marvel movie
Y’all know that there is heavy symbolism in that scene to show that Mulan is the spirit of the Great Stone Dragon and that’s why Mushu wasn’t able to awaken it?
im sorry What!! i never knew this! my life feels fuller!!! ahhhh
Mulan sits in the rain underneath the statue of the Great Stone Dragon (who is looking down on her), and suddenly decides on a course of action. She looks up, resolved to go to war in place of her father and runs into the temple where she lights the match and beseeches protection for her family. The stone she bows to and that we see lit up by lightening strike is that of the dragon, whose eyes are looking out after her, lit from underneath by the candles. The scene transitions to the divider in the house that also has an icon of the dragon. where she replaces her hair comb with the summons. Then we see the sword hilt, also the dragon, and as she draws the blade we see her face replace it. She ties up her hair, then as she opens the wardrobe, the handles are also the dragon. After donning the armor, the view shows her facing us, with the hilt of the sword (the face of the dragon) in front of her face, where she then turns the sword to reveal her face, and sheaths it. As she leaves, we flash back to the temple, and the eyes of the dragon flash as her grandmother wakes up.
The Great Stone Dragon resides within her. She is the protector of the family.
After this explanation, the scene where Mushu cannot wake up the stone dragon makes so much more sense. I appreciate the symbolism so much more. I noticed the dragon but didn’t notice she was constantly juxtaposed with the dragon!
Lotor is coded as half white/half POC with his white side being the side of his abusers and treated as being less than for being half POC (Altean) so,
Nevermind Lotor is proud of who he is. Nevermind Lotor is proud to be of Altean and Galra descent. Nevermind that you just slandered half of Lotor’s heritage in the name of defending him. Stripping his character down, stripping mixed race down, to a single sentence in the name of hate and uwu/woke points. Yes, Lotor is a survivor of abuse and wears that openly. But. Lotor is proud to be of Altean AND Galra descent. Proud of BOTH sides of his heritage. Washing over that and boiling his abuse down to a single sentence is a disservice to a phenomenal, nuanced character. But nevermind any of that. Let’s talk about:
What Voltron Owes Imperialism
or
Why Fandom is Missing the Point
Lotor being coded as half POC / half white may be completely on the money, but to say the Galra Empire is white coded is wildly inaccurate when we look at real life empires across history. Empire is not exclusively white. Empire does not know age, does not know gender, does not know race. Sci-Fi owes a great deal to European (white) imperialism but for this fandom it is important to remember Voltron originally came out of Japan. A country that has also parented deeply imperialistic ideologies and committed grave atrocities in pursuit of that imperialism. It is important to remember BOTH SIDES of Lotor’s heritage because, like all mixed race people, he pulls from more than one culture. But above all, IT IS IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER EMPIRE IS NOT THE ANSWER. Imperialism is bad no matter what form it takes.
The Galra as Imperial Japan-
Altea and the Galra both hold imperialistic views that closely mirror real world historical justifications for imperialism, but the Galra are not white coded. The Galra Empire holds more in common with Imperial Japan’s doctrine than with European empires in terms of structure, conquest, and internal justification. Looking at their structure, the Galra work on a class system. We have to assume there are at least a few classes given the complexity of such things, but we have only been shown a serving class and a warrior class, the latter being of the utmost importance and seemingly occupied by most of their citizens. We’ve only met 2 named non-warrior Galra across this war; and we likely were only shown the serving class to demonstrate that Zarkon has always been elitist. Like Imperial Japan, the Galra have a very rigid, militaristic internal hierarchy based on strength and blood, in that order, but always together. They elect their emperor based on valour and fighting prowess. They rise through the ranks based on how successful they are in battle, through honorable rite of combat. And following this ideology, Galra conquer because they are the strongest. Because others are weak and if a species is not strong enough to defend their people and their land then they deserve to be conquered and used for the glory of the Galra Empire. And the Galra consider their blood to be the source of that strength. The strongest are strong because they are pure and it is in their veins. But then we see that ideology tweaked as the Galra expand and spread. We see people like Shiro, who meet their criteria for strength without blood to bolster their claim, who have admirable fighting prowess. So Shiro becomes elevated; they call him Champion and brand him theirs by outfitting him with a piece of their culture, their technology. Because it is not enough for Shiro to be strong; he must be strong in the way they are: as a Galra. We see this again with mixed race Galra citizens like Lotor and his generals who have Galra blood and therefore are strong enough to be a part of their ranks, but they are still considered ‘less than’ because their blood is impure- ideology that was so deeply ingrained in Imperial Japan. This intense stratification in the Galra is perfectly illustrated when we are first introduced to Lotor:
The Galra also match Japan in terms of conquest. Colonization is achieved by sending merchants, missionaries and families to new territories to occupy the upper class and maintain hold on new land. But we learn Zarkon was not interested in this when Lotor recounts how he worked alongside the native inhabitants of his conquered planet. Zarkon was not out to colonize but to conquer. Like Imperial Japan, he sent soldiers and they conquered like locusts. They came in, stripped the area of resources, and put the appropriate fear into the local population. Like Imperial Japan, they preyed on the weak because they were strong. But a large part of why Japan was never conquered isn’t because of their tremendous fighting prowess. It’s because other imperialists, white imperialists, came to their lands, saw similar ideologies being practiced and sought alliance instead of subjection. And Japan eagerly accepted alliance, not out of fear, but because they sought to enhance their wealth through knowledge and technology. Sound familiar? If you’ve paid any attention to the early relationship of Alfor and Zarkon it should.
Why Galra and Alteans got along-
Earmarking Zarkon as Lotor’s white oppressor is an easy and thoughtless conclusion. Something fans like to jump to because the Galra Empire has been winning for thousands of years. Altea is not the oppressed POC wiped out by the evil white coded Galra. Altea is the white coded European imperialists overthrown by the POC coded Galra imperialists. It’s important to look at the other original Voltron paladins to understand this.
In VLD’s narrative, it is clear Alfor and Zarkon lead the alliance of their planetary system, the “formal agreement to work alongside each other.” Look at the screenshot above. On one side, we’ve got Zarkon, with Gyrgen and Trigel, and on the other we have Alfor backed by Blaytz. Instead of showing 5 individuals coming together on equal ground we are shown Zarkon and Alfor shaking hands while the others stand by. This implies that both Zarkon and Alfor had been working with other planets, shoring up allies and additional resources, to protect and expand their culture. Perhaps they were doing so in a peaceful way, but perhaps not.
We have this story of five warriors coming together to form an unlikely bond, but it’s interesting that we never hear anything about the other three paladins or their cultures, no mention of how they may have influenced Altea or Diabazaal. Just a clip of Alfor visiting one of their planets. We don’t even know if any of the other 3 paladins’ people survived the mass genocide that was Zarkon and Alfor warring with one another. The implication in all of this is that Zarkon nor Alfor were interested in adopting or preserving other cultures but rather sought to spread their ‘superior’ way of life.
Altea as Imperial Europeans-
Everything about Altea’s practice and ideology points to a very imperial European (white) concept of Believed Moral Superiority. Their decisions are very paternalistic, holier than thou, and centered on the idea that they are thinkers who only need others, like the Galra and Blaytz, for brawn. Allura and Coran set Alfor up as this great peacemaker, a very European justification with promises of prosperity that is never delivered. Alteans built a giant near-indestructible magical war machine and labeled it ‘Defender of the Universe.’ They had castle ships which they used to maintain their lifestyle and culture during prolonged visits to other planets. Alteans were regularly making off-planet visits to Weblums and Balmera to collect recourses for their technology. And ages before Alfor’s alliance with the Galra, Alteans ventured far enough into space to discover a mystical, magical place of secrets and wisdom which only a select few from their race were bidden knowledge of and access to. All of this adds up to the fact that Alteans have been conquering in the name of exploration for some time. Alteans operate under the guise of spreading peace and knowledge but that only lasts as long as the leader has pure intentions. When a leader becomes corrupted or a new one takes their place, what happens? Oh wait, we saw that in 03×04 Hole in the Sky with Empress Allura.
This alternate reality furthered the story line in so many ways, but for this post let’s focus on how it helped our understanding of Allura. There she was known as Empress Allura where she “put down the Galra uprising and established the Altean Empire 10,000 years ago… Without [her] will to fight and avenge the loss of [her] father, Altea would not have been able to spread peace and stability throughout the universe.” An imperial justification rampant throughout European empires. And Princess Allura lights up at this description of herself and her people.
The show even goes as far as to parallel ‘the Altean peace movement’ with slave labor, a strong call back to European justifications for empire in response to viewing other worlds as savage and in need of control and/or redemption. In that reality, Allura established the Altean empire for peace and justice but also vengeance. She spread that empire because she believed Alteans know peace and prosperity and she wanted to bring their ‘good fortune’ to others. Maybe in her lifetime she was good to her newly conquered subjects. Maybe she had their best interests at heart. Maybe, like Lotor, she had high ideals. But the fact is Allura built an empire and ten thousand years later her legacy is not peace but slavery. Back in this reality, Altea is just a more palatable version of European imperialism because it is an empire that was snuffed out before it could grow into something irretrievably evil. But it was still an empire, one in which Allura believes.
The Point is Empire in any form is Not Good-
Empire must justify itself. Empire is not good. Imperialism is not good. Any of it. The point is that Allura needs to wake up and smell the damn coffee known as freedom. Altea is a call to European imperialist ideology and Allura strongly identifies with this because she was born into it and has believed in it her entire life. The point is that Allura must unlearn her prejudices, unlearn her flawed ideology, and look beyond Altea if she truly wants peace for the universe. Seasons 1 and 2 were about her learning to recognize imperialism. Seasons 3 and 4 demonstrate that she is able to see past it for the greater good. But we have yet to hit the beat where Allura clearly identifies what is bad about her beliefs, about Altea. Allura is not a fickle character rewritten every other season to suit the needs of the plot. Imperialism is something deeply ingrained in her and it will take more than a few heart-to-hearts and minor epiphanies to change that.
Enter Lotor-
Maybe the worst part of all of this isn’t just the glorification of Altea as something it never was, but holding Lotor up as an oppressed baby suffering under colonization. Yes, he has suffered under imperialism, but Lotor is also entirely on board with CONTINUING THIS EMPIRE’S IMPERIALISM! (just maybe a little nicer.. maybe) Hint: If you still want to own people and their lands for the sake of owning them, it’s imperialism. Even if you don’t strip them of their resources and commit casual genocide. It’s still. NOT. GOOD. Lotor is whole heartedly owning the Galra Empire. He is not trying to repay the grievances committed against others by his people. He has not talked of plans to improve the lives of his current conquered subjects. He has not concerned himself with quelling the rebellion against the Galra Empire, his empire. (Side note: a lot of rebels are also coded as mixed race.) Lotor has almost exclusively shown interest in making allies who can bolster his status and gain him access to new resources. He talks of improving the lives of his citizens, Galra citizens. He talks of allowing non-Galra citizens who are strong, who are worthy, to join their ranks. But only if they are strong enough. Fans get upset that Allura is twisted into a naive character to suit the needs of the plot, but that is not what’s happening. Allura has saddled herself alongside Lotor because Lotor is speaking to her in terms of her ideology. Altean ideology. Altea’s way of empire. They are both imperialistic as fuck. Lotor talks of improving upon what his father built, but it is still an empire. And Allura buys into it because Lotor is using her terms of empire. An empire that preaches exploration and peace where WE ARE ALL SAFE AND WARM.
Allura harbours deeply imperialistic views and prejudices. Through the seasons we have seen her slowly chipping away at that mindset, but she is still holding on to an idealistic view of Altea. An Altea that mirrors European empire on multiple levels.
A large part of what makes Allura a compelling character is that her coding opposes itself. She comes from a culture built on a foundation of white European imperialist ideology but she knows the struggles of a POC at the hand of the Galra Empire. We are seeing her slowly understand that Altea’s imperialist way of thinking is not going to end well. She needs to change her ways, her beliefs, if she truly wants the universe to be free and prosper.
Pissed at me for calling out our beautiful ebony princess as white coded? Consider how we as a fandom would interpret Altea and Allura if everything was the same in VLD canon but Allura was still a white skinned, blonde haired, blue eyed woman as she is in earlier incarnations. Same behavior. Same character. Same history. Same descriptions. But Allura was white. How would you feel about Altea then?
Notes: HUGE thank you to @akaiikowrites for being an amazing history buff! If you want to scream at me or with me over this or anything to do with VLD my ask is open!
In the book, Sophie possess a certain kind of magical power – she makes things real by saying them. She can lay spells just by saying them. When she made hats, and she told a hat that it would make a rich young man fall in love with it, a rich young man fell in love with the woman who bought it. When she told a hat it would make some woman look beautiful, everyone knew the mayor’s wife looked positively radiant in it. It’s what drew the Witch to her hat shop in the first place. When she cursed out a bucket of plant food, it turned to potent weed killer. When she told herself she might as well be an old woman, when she told herself she was doomed to fail, when she told herself she was plain and boring and no one would ever notice her, no one did.
When Howl tried to break the spell on Sophie, and he tried many times, he always failed. Not because his magic was less powerful than the Witch’s, but because it was less powerful than Sophie’s.
Tonight’s aesthetic before I fall asleep: Fixing that weird Lucretia Wonderland thing where she gives THB exactly ZERO useful info before they head into a nightmarish hellscape. I’m willing to bend characters around narrative necessity to a degree, but that feels so weird and off to me – there’s no way Keesha wouldn’t’ve given them AMPLE INFO, right?
So let’s try this on for size:
Lucretia’s not the only one who’s escaped Wonderland. There aren’t very many, but eventually it’s inevitable that a few fish slip the net. Part of the price, then, is your silence. After escaping Wonderland, you can’t speak about it. Can’t tell anyone what happens in the fairy light tent. You just swallow hard and open your mouth and nothing comes out. Your fingers stall out on the page, the pen drops from your fingers.
And so it is that Lucretia, who kept her secrets so well that even her family didn’t know what she was capable of, didn’t know how much pain she was in, is cursed with her own inability to communicate writ large.
She wants to tell them (she wanted to tell all of them, wanted help, wanted them to stop her before she dropped the journals into Fischer’s tank), but she can’t. For once, she actually can’t.
And the silence, and her shame, lodges in her throat like a stone
Oh. THIS is an interesting concept. (and Lydia and Edward fucking with Lucretia’s head is something I’ve thought about a lot)
me roasting the everloving fuck out of homestuck, as is common in a rather unhealthy blackrom
This is very good and very true. It’s like Hussie just assumed Act 7 would be done in a few months and then when we realized animation takes time he just stalled forever.
OP is also leaving out
* Pre-scratch and post-scratch Jane meet up, but don’t do anything interesting (or even speak onscreen?)
* [S] Cascade ends with the heroes killing the Condesce, who is immortal. The music even turns sinister at the end to call attention to the fact that the Condesce can’t actually die, except nvm she can I guess because the comic’s over.
* Aranea mind-controls all the ghosts to their deaths, and none of the ghosts care about it. Once she dies again and presumably returns to the afterlife she is never seen or mentioned again
* Rose actually complains that she never figured out what “play the rain” even means, let alone did it, and the fact that every’s character arc has fizzled out is lampshaded and handwaved with “real people don’t have character arcs” in a realistic story where half the cast died at least once and all the humans are gods.
* Speaking of missing character arcs, Rose never meets her Denizen. (Neither does Dave, unless you count Davesprite)
* The main four kids never work together, because Jade is asleep the whole climax and, when she does wake up, tries to break up a fight between Bec Noir and some other dog she’s never seen before because she’s literally unaware the final battle is happening and there’s anything more important she could be doing.
* Karkat, the secondary protagonist of the comic, does nothing of importance for the whole of Act 6 and sits the final battle out after his Dream Self is killed as a gag
* It is established that Meulin is being mind controlled by her evil boyfriend. No one notices or cares and it’s never mentioned again.
* It is established that her evil boyfriend is working for Lord English and forcing her to do the same.
No one notices or cares and it’s never mentioned again.
* Damara is also working for Lord English and no one cares.
* This means that three out of twenty-four members of the ghost army is secretly working for Lord English. Luckily, they all forget to do anything to help him. Or maybe they don’t and actually do turn on the army. I don’t know what happened because it happened offscreen.
* The Ghost army even still exists without Vriska and Aranea mind-controlling it. Everyone just decided “whatever” and stuck around
* It is established that Mituna has brain damage because he had to push his powers past his limits in a Mysterious Event for everything to succeed. Fans theorize he sent his Prospit flying off so it could land in the final session and provide Quest Beds to everyone who still needed one. The actual answer is that it’s never mentioned again.
* John has a tearful reuninon with Jane’s dad, who he’s never actually met before
* Speaking of which, Jane’s dad exists in a timeline where his biological mother wasn’t around until he was an adult. This is never addressed or explained.
* Aradia’s whole character in Act 6 is that she is a dispassionate observer who kind of wants to see reality be destroyed just for the spectacle of it but whose primary desire is to just not die again and thus she’s sitting the plot out. She then leads the charge against a god-killing monstrosity. Makes sense!
* A few pages before the final battle, Dave comments that the kids have never even met Lord English and have no real reason to oppose him. They’re never given one, except the post-credits explanation of “John was bored”
* The comic begins updating on Snapchat. The Carapacians kidnap Jane and hold her prisoner on the moon or something but no one cares about the snapchat comcis so it just kind of stops.
That’s really the fitting end for Homestuck, isn’t it? Canceled mid-storyline because no one cared enough to install SnapChat, yet still trucking nonetheless.
My favorite is nepeta never having a strong purpose, other then the fact that she had a crush on karkat. Hussie then throwing us hints about her confronting this with her ancestors connection with the signless, her cut scene with jasper hinting that she was to come back to life to address this, and never fucking following through with jack shit THE TWO TIMES SHE HAD BEEN REANINATED.
Don’t forget:
Cronus was prophesied to be important against Lord English, which never happened
John was prophesied to die heroically, which afaik never happened
Gamzee’s character had a fuckton of unresolved questions
as a kid i always thought gotham was in michigan because i thought it was a midwestern city like chicago, and there was always shit going down at the pier or in abandoned factories and if michigan has anything it’s a lot of piers and abandoned factories. anyway turns out it’s probably in jersey.
other good reasons for gotham to be in michigan:
one of the most heavily forested states in the country with 20 million acres of forests oh my god poison ivy would be so powerful the second she got outside city limits fuck
there’s 20 million acres of this and she’s got plant powers no wonder they want her on lockdown
there are more than 6,000 shipwrecks in the great lakes how many supervillain origin stories is that good for
“63 commercial ports handled 173 million tons of cargo in 2006″ aka holy shit that is a lot of opportunities for boatcrimes
mr freeze has a pretty tragic origin story but if you had to put up with michigan winters and then some motherfucker showed up freezing the town outside of freezing season you would have no mercy
MOTHERFUCKER I JUST PUT MY SNOWBLOWER IN STORAGE DO I LOOK LIKE I NEED THIS SHIT RIGHT NOW
imagine batman giving someone directions by pointing to his hand
“we believe killer croc is somewhere around here” he says pointing to the tip of his thumb
good fucking luck finding stats on abandoned buildings in michigan but holy shit are there a lot of them, no wonder they’re always having fights in abandoned factories and empty warehouses
“kitty why are you including that map of the railroads like it’s relevant” because when you’re trying to sleep and you hear a train in the distance it’s fucking spooky okay
i have no evidence that traincrime is an issue for batman i’m just saying the ambiance is there
I have been rereading the MsScribe saga today, which I now believe was so much more than an account of fandom because to have been able to write it is to understand fandom as it operated. This is important because we spend a lot of time on this website talking about how fandom should be, not about how it currently exists, as actual fact. Charlotte Lennox’s analyses of fandom, particularly, of how MsScribe was able to manipulate fandom, were very sharp, and talked about things that fannish people were not necessarily willing to talk about.
A few things struck me as particularly prophetic about this current state of fandom.
The fandom community is completely defenseless against bad faith actors who know how fandom works.
Consider MsScribe’s meteoric rise. Consider how knowing the right words is the one and only condition to being considered Good.
Fandom operates on a couple of perverse incentives:
Trauma will earn you not only sympathy, which it should, but also earn you authority to speak to a number of topics.
Trauma had become the only way that you earn authority to speak to those topics.
In the times of MsScribe, this manifested in her story about her accident and her stay at the hospital, but it was very interesting how she trotted out the story in irrelevant contexts.
MsScribe has also claimed to have experienced sexual assault.
Now, this is combined with fandom’s de facto policy of Always Believe. This set of rules on which fandom operates does not mean that Always Believe should be done away with, but that we have to understand that it should come as no surprise that bad faith actors will exploit this rule.
Accusations of racism and bigotry elevate fandom to a higher level of importance than it actually is.
I have a post or two about how fandom is not actually important in the grand scheme of things, so I will not belabor the point here.
Fandom still plays a huge part in the lives of fans, however, so it must be important, right? How do we make it seem more important?
I believe MsScribe’s stunt with the racist and homophobic sockpuppets presages fandom’s abuse of social justice language. This is not a new point, but by elevating shipping wars to the levels of racism and homophobia, people can claim righteousness and justify their overzealous reactions.
The thing is that nowadays, fandom no longer even requires sockpuppets to be made. Offences in order to generate appropriate outrages do not need to be odious neo-fascist statements; they are everywhere, manifest. You need to keep up with the latest non-ablest language, or you’re out. This is why fandom will never be able to surpass MsScribe’s sophisticated level of wankatry–there is simply no need for it.
Separately, it amuses me to no end that fandom remembers Dan Savage as the guy who said some unwise things about asexual folks, and not one of the media dipshits who championed the Iraq war.
So a lot of the dynamics that we’re talking about right now have already been in existence in fandom, literally as early as the first true fandom history was written. Scary, no? But this is also why I completely reject analyses like Devin Faraci’s that paint this generation of fans as particularly “entitled,” as though “entitled” is not the right wing’s favorite bludgeon with which to hit Millennials. I also reject Aja Romano’s lol-tastic version of how fabulous and important fandom is in her numerous, brazenly ahistorical posts for Vox.com. I invite the likes of Charlotte Lennox, who has a real understanding of fandom and its history, as well as a willingness to talk about oft avoided things, to contribute to the discourse instead.
****Coming to you soon, maybe: A long ass post about everything wrong with Faraci’s and Romano’s takes on fandom.
i’d never heard of this before, but am reblogging it mostly for @vastderp, who may get a kick out of it in light of his experience with similar scoundrels in other fandoms. 😀
folks who like to argue with gay people when we say “this character is gay/a lesbian” by saying “NO, theyre BI, here is an itemized list of every interaction theyve ever had with the opposite sex, you are committing BI ERASURE” are hilariously pathetic but the MOST pathetic are the people who think vriska is bi because she had a crush on nicolas cage
between john’s appreciation of nic cage in his dogged “heterosexual” way, vriska’s fake crush on john, and both of them using nicolas cage as a human figure they use to assert their heterosexuality by reacting to his traditionally masculine roles by respecting and mimicking him (john) and feeling swooned by him (vriska) it’s safe to say they’re both gay and their respective relationships with human actor nic cage are manifestations of their performative straightness
vriska actually wants to be a big strong hero and john thinks nic cage is fucking sexy. both do everything in their power to deny their truth up to and including dating each other for 12 minutes. they’re both gay
just moving along like everyone else 