I always assumed Taco Bell just made you want to visit Canada and try one of our equally subpar cheap “Mexican” chains. (We have Taco Bell now, there is no escape.)
I mean, Joyce has already realised that her expectations of her relationship with Dorothy is based on her relationship with Becky, which she now knows was a relationship with a closeted gay girl who secretly fancied her, so I don’t see discovering she’s written Julia and Doris that way coming as a huge shock once she’s thought about it.
Which isn’t to say she’s not, just that this isn’t really evidence?
Eh, if she wrote the way those characters interact based even partly off of any of a variety of fictional characters that were queerbait it doesn’t have to be repressed queerness, just a matter of not knowing the significance of the tropes she was using. Also, it should be noted that “flirting” does not have to have anything to do with romantic or sexual desires, although the word does tend to have that connotation, the action itself is just a mode of communication that relies more on banter and humor with the intention of being liked and having fun. I flirt with my friends all the time, and I’m not attracted to most of them, and the feeling is mutual (we’ve discussed it), we just enjoy the act of flirting and tend to play off each other very well.
I should note, however that I am a straight guy (somewhere between a 0 and a 1 on the kinsey scale), so I am not fully informed about “queerbaiting” and am not entirely sure my understanding of the term is accurate. If I am understanding it correctly, doesn’t it require intent? Like, I am unsure how it is the author’s fault if they didn’t intend for characters to be read as queer and the audience is mad that they aren’t, especially since chemistry is not exclusive to romantic relationships (frankly, this is an issue I have with shipping in general, because male/female pairs can also be perfectly platonic, no reason to force them to get romantically/sexually involved just because they have strong chemistry, and it seems kinda toxic to me when a character has a canonical orientation but fans scream homophobia/queerbaiting/promoting a gay/straight agenda/whatever when their preferred ship doesn’t sail due to incompatible orientations, or, heck, even if their orientations are compatible but the writer(s) decide said characters are better off platonic for whatever reason, irrespective of “chemistry”).
Again, not saying it isn’t queerbaiting (largely because I’m not sure I fully understand what the term is supposed to mean) or even that Joyce can’t be some flavor of queer, just that A, at this point it seems like a bit of a leap to assume Joyce isn’t straight based off this single data point (and I am not aware of other data points, as even through the whole learning about sexuality and questioning her faith stuff she still maintained her interest in men and didn’t seem to display any interest in women), and B, it feels kinda shitty to accuse creators of bigotry because they ship different characters than the fans do.
Fun fact, Hugo-winning author Seanan McGuire’s Incryptid series was conceived out of spite for how Jo Harvelle’s story ended. Many pretty blonde monster-hunting ladies, not dying for twelve books strong.
Seanan, um. Wrote Ghost Spider (for Marvel). Wrote the Mira Grant Newsflesh books (Mira is a very thin and public pseudonym). Is an (extremely prolific and talented) filker (and in fact some of the characters in Incryptid first appeared publicaly in her songs; some drifted a bit since then before the first Incryptid novel was published, though).
I guess those are some places you could have heard of her?
She’s also been nominated for Best Series Hugo for either Incryptid or her other big series, October Daye, like, at LEAST the last three years running. I expect her to continue to be alternating them on the ballot until she wins. The volume of October Daye stuff apparently nearly broke the reading packet this year (since voters are provided copies of all the nominated material with their Worldcon membership, including full series for Best Series including associated things like short stories… and there is A LOT of October Daye.)
I haven’t read any of Incryptid, but I’ve read some of her comics and one of the Wayward Children books, which was quite good. Set in a home for the children who come back from faerie and other magical lands and can’t adapt back to mundane life.
Those are the ones I’ve read: “Every Heart a Doorway” and two of its sequels. “Down Among the Sticks and Bones” and “Beneath the Sugar Sky.” I liked them a lot.
Okay, I started following Seanan McGuire on Twitter a while back in the hopes that there’ll eventually be news about more Ghost-Spider, only to find out that she’s also into Magic: The Gathering (as she started kinda hyper-focusing on that ahead of her contribution to the Innistrad: Midnight Hunt story getting published).
Now, I’m already tempted to pick up her Alien: Echo YA novel despite my Inability To Just Pick Up And Read A Book, but if I succeed with that I guess I’m going give Incryptid a try as well.
What about Sparrow Hill Road? Rose Marshal starts out the book dead. Being dead is her superpower.
That’s a great Seanan McGuire starter book, BTW. Self contained chapters and a really brilliant synthesis of the vanishing prom date/vanishing hitchhiker urban legends.
I chose not to count Rose, Mary, or for that matter Fran Brown and Enid Healy who heavily feature in the short fiction focusing on past members of the family (even though they both do in fact eventually die in the short fiction, and both deaths heavily impact the rest of the family) because all of them died WELL before the present day of the main series. We meet Mary and Rose when they’re already ghosts, and as the great- and great-great grandmothers of the current generation, Fran and Enid’s deaths would be kind of expected by this point in the main novels even if monster hunting didn’t seriously reduce life expectancy.
In the current generation, the family has had remarkably good luck surviving thusfar (though with that threatened war with the Covenant looming, who knows,) pretty dang good luck with allies surviving, and who knows, maybe Alice will find her husband alive in whatever hell dimension a parasitic supernatural force keeps its captives next book. And come back to utter chaos, but things have been steadily escalating since Chaos Choreography so, sorry about that Alice, the Cuckoos decided to start armageddon while you were gone and shit kinda got fucked.
I looked into Seanan McGuire, and now I know what to give to my sister for christmas! (if I can hunt down the books, they are apparently hard to get in Germany)
Be nice if there was a similar show that didn’t chop up queer people and stuff ’em in the refrigerator, tbh. Just some handsome folks goin’ on a cross-country road trip, stabbin’ Satans and whatnot.
Unlike the CW this newspaper is run by a competent, asuumedly out, queer, lady so I’d hope that queerbaiting intentional or not would be noted and advised against much like it is right now to avoid bullshit like Supernatural from happening. Which is one of many reasons it’s good to have queer people and other minority groups given more positions of power.
True. Another reason is so we can finally take over media like we’ve been promised we were for the last decade. And then we can turn the Jetsons into an adoptive found-family story about explicitly trans/nb/lesbian cyborgs, the way God intended. (I’m like 80% joking. I think.)
I’d watch that. A more inclusive Jetsons reboot really playing on the possibilities of what a family of the future looks like sounds really cool. No reason Judy Jetson couldn’t be a trans fem cyborg! Maybe Elroy is ace and/or nonbinary cause in the year 3000 gender doesn’t mean shit and the human race can be propigated through test tubes.
Honestly the longer I sit on the idea, the more I warm up to it. Fuck it, is there a Nerd Term for optimistic, light-hearted cyberpunk? That’s what we need.
Walky isn’t completely hosed, LAWsome is probably a better fit for a newspaper, it’s a gag-a-day strip rather than a lore heavy serial drama. That might get him the gig.
What she’s not prepared to do yet is mostly irrelevant. Now is the time to put in the romantic tension and as Daisy said in the last strip, she’ll be a very different person before she gets to anything like an endgame.
Daisy’s never shown herself to be someone to let the reality of what’s likely true to get in the way of her making editorial decisions based on her fantasies. She’s already fantasizing about a Doris/Julia endgame, so that’s what she’ll decide based on.
I mean if we’re talking logistics now then who the eff is reading a physical copy of a college newspaper anyway? Daisy could easily publish one in the paper and have the othe be a digital exclusive alongside it. Anyone actually subscribed to the paper probably reads it through the paper’s twitter account or facebook page unless they’re a caveman that reads it on the website or rss feed. The point being any space constraint is arbitrary. It’s more likely a money issue. Sine this gig is paying less than lunch money.
I believe there are currently 0 comics in the in the (fictional version of the) IU newspaper but we don’t know yet if anything is stopping Daisy from publishing both. My guess for awhile has been that both strips will be published but nothing in the narrative has indicated if this is or is not a possibility. Y’know, other than Joyce and Walky’s assumption that it’ll only go to one of them.
I’m kinda hoping she allows both, since having two comic strips might attract more readers or something. And I think it’d be good for both Walky and Joyce to have their comics in the college newspaper.
One of the things I love about Joyce as a character is that even when some plot development concerning her is so inevitable that the entire comments section predicts it well in advance, it’s still a safe bet that Joyce’s facial expression on the day of will make it work as well as it would if nobody saw it coming.
which is super weird because she writes dirty stories every day specifically to squeeze out her horniness.
…maybe she forgot to squeeze out the gay horniness
To be fair queerbaiting is done intentionally to string along a queer fanbase by teasing queer storylines that there’s no intention of following through on while not alienating straight fans. There’s a level of intent behind it. It’s knowing the vast majority of your fanbase ship characters A and B and writing increasingly intimate scenes between them with no intention of the characters following through on romantic feelings.
It is not someone not quite consciously working out their emotions towards a same gender friend by unknowingly writing a queer coded relationship between characters based on themselves and friends.
Yeah, but I think that’s why Daisy only said it would “feel kinda queerbaity” cuz based on Joyce’s response it’s definitely not intentional but readers won’t see it that way. Friendly warning vs accusation u know
THANK YOU. It begins to feel a little oppressive, in a way, sometimes, when seemingly all close relationships between two characters of the same gender gets tagged as ‘queerbait’. Like, I genuinely feel upset and hurt by the idea that sex MUST eventually get involved in every close friendship or it’s fake and wrong. I don’t want sex ever, so are my relationships fake and wrong? Am I tricking people?
I accept that queerbaiting is indeed a thing, but sometimes close friendships really are close friendships and ‘flirting’ is not intentional.
because fandom tends to assume that the natural/desired endpoint of ANY relationship is sex (particularly when the characters and/or their actors are attractive, which they usually are), and if they still aren’t banging after a while, some start asking, “well why NOT?!”
Daisy in panel 4 is me when things introduce a female BFF that has infinitely better chemistry than any guy, including the person that the girl is dating. Or when they create conflict in the relationship and she runs off and things are infinitely easier and more comforting from the BFF than any single thing the boyfriend has said in the entire damn thing.
maybe Willis is roasting his own early writing, i wouldn’t know, but as for DoA, well half the cast is openly queer and several gay pairings have happened onscreen already, so, i don’t think he’s calling himself out here. of course knowing what we know about Joyce and Willis we’re attuned to any signs of snarky self-awareness but to me this reads as just regular in-character dialogue
I almost made a “queerbait” comment like 12 strips ago, but I didn’t, because it doesn’t feel fair to Willis. I only mention it here because yeah holy shit the vibe is still there, and clearly he’s aware of it.
“Dorothy can come with! She can be Prime Minister!”
With Joyce also commenting things such as “I’d find Sal attractive if I could ignore everything below the neck“, I’ve seen arguments that Joyce might be heterosexual but biromantic, which could be an interesting way to take things.
Could also just point to very very deep seated problems conceiving of her orientation outside of the boxes she was given. Like we all remember the “being gay is like lying” “I hate lying more than anything” period. That sort of shit can definitely give u fucked up conceptions of ur own sexuality.
Yeah, that’s also a possibility. Like with Joyce’s neuroses (at least some of which, IIRC, are based off of Willis’s) having it – per Word of Willis – be open-ended as to whether it’s an actual neurodivergent thing, or just something stemming from her messed-up upbringing.
Honestly combine a neurotic personality, religious repression, and a complete inability to pick up on Gay Signals and you’ve got a wonderfully messed up ability to conceive of ur own sexuality
It’s definitely a possibility. OTOH, as has also been called out in the comic explicitly, growing up with a best friend with an unrealized crush on you can lead to your norms of platonic friendship being different.
Really? I admit I’m pretty clueless, but I always interpreted it as Joyce feels exactly the same way about Dorothy as she does Becky, and Becky resents it.
Joyce has never made a hypothetical gay marriage fantasy life with Becky, and then subsequently de-gayed it so that she can explore it in comic form while simultaneously saying “no homo” and also accidentally filling said comic with gay subtext.
I mean, is there even a Becky analog *in* her comic?
I mean, Joyce literally says that Becky’s secret attraction to her has affected what she thinks girl friendships are supposed to be like.
…Which, yeah, now that I read it back looks a lot more like “Joyce feels about Dorothy the way she thought Becky felt about her” than the reverse. Hmm.
Anyway, yes, there’s a Becky counterpart in the comic. Betty gets namechecked in the first strip, as the person Julia is on the phone to in the inevtiable first-Roomies-strip parody.
Which I guess makes her Sal to Julia’s Danny? Hmm…
So I definitely wouldn’t ever call DOA queerbaiting, no. (I’m actually always very hesitant to use that label, because to me it implies some intent?) But, I mean, everyone assumed Danny was straight until it was shown he wasn’t. Orientations can change over time, or the characters’ understanding of them can.
I’d interpret that older strip as Joyce falling into the trap of, like… thinking all gay people are into every friend they have of their gender. So if she’s not into her Best Friend™️, she can’t be gay/bi, right? Probably not helped by the fact her childhood best friend just confirmed that she is, in fact, into her LOL. So I don’t know if we can trust that statement as being for sure indicative of her orientation, since when Joyce said it she was still kinda homophobic (if I remember right?) and EXTREMELY sexually repressed. I don’t think Joyce was in a good position then to know what the details of her sexuality even were back then.
(And I say that with empathy since I actually happen to have personal experience here, though not with the extreme Christianity thrown in. Even when I was out as some flavor of queer, I still suppressed liking women. It’s weird but it can happen for various reasons haha?)
She certainly could come out as queer, but although there have been some hints, I’m not entirely sold on it yet. If she did, it’s certainly been foreshadowed enough it wouldn’t be a surprise out of the blue. If she doesn’t, that would also fit the character as we’ve seen her so far.
It certainly could be part of the repression, but her interest in men has been far more clearly sexual than the hints we’ve seen for her interest in women. Biromantic and heterosexual has been suggested by some, I think.
I never felt like Joyce and Dorothy were queerbaity (although Joyce may have enhanced their friendship a little too much in the interpretation to Julia and Doris). Like maybe Joyce as a character was or is (with the dating Sal above the neckline and the part with Billie’s chest and stuff), but I don’t think there were any canon hints at the possibility of them dating, let alone the “will-they-won’t-they, oh wait no they’re both straight now that you’ve read half of/the entire series” feel of intentional queerbaiting. Pretty much the only time I thought about them getting together was when Walky would bring it up
but then although I’m queer I’m not into ladies in any way so I might be missing signals that people who recognize lady/lady relationships more would know
Does it really make sense to talk about queerbaiting in the context of a story with plenty of actual queer representation? The whole point is to lure queer folks in with the hints of representation, but never actually make it explicit to keep from driving the straights away (or avoiding the censors in some cases.) Not every queer shiptease that doesn’t come to fruition is queerbaiting.
And while there are definite hints that Joyce might be queer and crushing on Dorothy, there have been none that Dorothy has any interest back. A couple of jokes that she’s aware of Joyce’s interest, but nothing that she returns it. Seems that would be also be necessary.
The one with two characters who were already canon bisexual and one gay dude?
‘Cause like you might actually be able to count Danny finding out he’s bi as “the early days” now, it was seven years ago, four years into the comic. Then a few months later Becky shows up and then like six months after that Dina’s revealed to be unconcerned about the gender of her partners.
Kinda same. Might be just that was very close to when I started reading (the comic was halfway through Walking With Dina when I first caught up), but Becky’s return is also almost exactly at the “halfway point” of DoA Season 1 (2010-2020), so it also helps to put pre-Becky stuff in “early DoA” that way.
A little different, I guess. Depending on when you draw the line, I guess you could find a point where there were canon different sex relationships, but no canon queer ones?
Run, Walky, Run! That last panel triggered a memory of a college video Willis did parodying “Run Lola Run” where goes to Taco Bell, but forgets his homework(?) assignment in his dorm room, and his roommate rushes to bring it to him.
(I think I’m remembering this correctly, but also can’t recall if it was posted to YT or some other video site, so I can’t check it)
I have to wonder how Walky managed to be late to this? Joyce was double distracted by the surprise visit from her stepsis’ half sis athei-sis, plus the friendship altering argument that event spawned. Walky was having lunch with his gf. And yet Joyce still beat him there. That’s almost impressive.
Me: “How do I put this delicately…”
King Daniel and Yotomoe: I’m sure LUCY thought WALKY was delicate when she sucked him off.
Me: “Yes, thank you. Very subtle.”
I really like Daisy here. She might think of the comic as a filler to gather a few more clicks, but she sees how seriously Joyce takes it and she does nothing to discourage her.
GO WALKY! Now that Joyce realizes Daisy is right, she’s probably wondering a few things about herself. Maybe she’ll be happy to pause her comic for some time. She needs an opponent!
I definitely do feel like queerbaiting is sort of a …loaded complaint. Insomuch that there’s times when it’s definitely happening and there’s times when I’ve seen people complain about it when I could hardly see it all. Like, not all characters who have super great dynamics with each other and good banter are necessarily gonna get together, queer or otherwise. Obviously the problem could stem from the fact that there’s so little queer relationships that people will get excited at the possibility of a queer relationship and become even more letdown by that not coming to fruition. It combines the normal letdown of a couple you ship not happening with the frustration of underepresentation. You can be baited by something without the creator even having intended to bait you. And I feel like you shouldn’t have to put a big “These two people aren’t gay and never will be” disclaimer on any close relationship just to prevent people from getting their hopes up. (And even if you do people will sometimes just view it as a purposeful misdirection and get their hopes up anyway in spite of it).
I think the queer baiting issue would be a less fraught discussion if
A) people had a more solid definition of what it was instead of grapevining that shit and
B) People were far less prone to the “But why do they HAVE to be in a relationship can’t they just be FRIENDS” canard
Like A is tough cuz like you ever tried to correct someone’s understanding of a term they half learned on Tumblr/Twitter/TikTok? Impossible, believe me I’ve tried. B is tough because people often aren’t trying to actively deploy that argument homophobically, but then u look at when people say that and it’s ALWAYS about gay pairings and u gotta just -gay thinking emoji-
I’ve definitely seen B) applied to “Season 1” Danny/Sal off the top of my head, but yeah it certainly has an overwhelming tendency to be applied to same-sex couples. “Sappho and her friend” is a phrase, after all.
Yeah the ratio is like 10:1 complaints about gay pairings vs straight ones in my experience. It doesn’t even like bother me any more it’s just exhausting after a while
Completely with you on this – I’m not mad, just tired LOL.
When talking about any individual relationship, of course they might end up being platonic friends… but once you notice the skew, well. You can’t unsee it. 🤔
I can’t even deny that I’m definitely guilty of B. Like if characters are super outlined as gay early on I’m like “oh ok they’re gonna be a thing” but if they’re not then I’m usually hesitant to assume they’ll end up in a queer relationship….to an extent. Like since it’s becoming increasingly more common my expectations are definitely more in the “oh, I wonder if she’ll end up with that girl.” since it’s been happening more. Like I don’t think I ever thought Enid and Red Action weren’t gonna get together in OK KO. I guess it’s just important to be aware of those biases, especially when discussing fiction.
For example I ALWAYS thought Ash and Misty were being shipped pretty hard in Pokemon but my gay roommate not only can’t see it but finds it shocking that I even thought that. (Meanwhile he thinks ash and his current friend in the show would be cute together)
Does it really count as “queer-baiting” if it involves non-human creatures that never really see any formal/official ships in the universe anyway, gay or straight?
Like I’ve never seen it in the context of “this show is lying to you to make you think it’ll happen” in a way that wasn’t deliberately pseudo-pornographic, like I remember this one super shitty sports anime I watched a review of where the two leads are basically trying to dom each other the whole time and, yeah, that was some fujo shit, but the only way I’d call that baiting is if I was dumb enough to fall for it.
When I see queerbaiting I see it more, like, that show about Falcon and Bucky hanging out getting taken to task because the show’s about the depth of their emotional friendship and a healthy platonic love they have for each other, that thing men are definitely totally allowed to share in any way as simple as guys who are friends in a way that involves emotional vulnerability and honesty and not growling macho soundbites about owing you a drink or calling you an asshole but meaning it in a fun way, but they didn’t kiss so it’s homophobic.
…now I’m wondering if that’s one reason the New Mutants film got stuck in post-production hell for so long. The same-sex romance is rather integral to the plot- no way to bundle it away into easily-expurgated scenes.
If “homophobic company means every property it owns is also homophobic”, then by that standard The Owl House – a kids’ cartoon where the protagonists are, as of early Season 2, an actual explicit same-sex couple (one explicitly bisexual in-show, the other officially a lesbian by word-of-creator who spent like half of Season 1 very visibly crushing on the former character) who’re constantly all over each other, and the creator is also on record as stating that homophobia “doesn’t exist” where the couple is – is somehow homophobic. 😛 (And that’s not even getting into explicit nonbinary representation, or the mentor of one of the abovementioned characters also being explicitly queer herself.)
Smh clearly someone hasn’t heard of outliers! But also I think it’s important to examine the way Disney handles it’s tv and movie properties differently. Disney allows a lot more leeway on the network than they do w movies. Movies r bigger impact/importance to their market presence so they pander to the homophobic cinema market. Cuz let’s face it people will make a culture war out of anything like that and god forbid Disney lose a percent of market share
Agreed. I also think it’s very much worth noting that The Owl House exists and is queer as hell and that’s wonderful… and it also got abruptly canceled and is getting about six episodes of material for the third season, which Dana Terrace was really surprised by. Now, shows aren’t renewed all the time even when creators are expecting and hoping for them, and Terrace has also said the timing on when it was canceled vis a vis production means hey, maybe it wasn’t homophobia, she’s not sure why and doesn’t want to spread unsubstantiated gossip assuming bad faith (it was apparently before the show went up on Disney + and before things got REALLY overtly queer, and it seems the reasoning was that some of the business executives decided it ‘didn’t fit the Disney brand’,) but… well, it’s not noticeably darker in tone or imagery than Gravity Falls, and it’s not more serialized than Amphibia, so a lot of people heard about this and uh. Struggled to assume good faith, shall we say.
(Meanwhile, Alex Hirsch, who is definitely still bitter about fighting Disney for background LGBT rep in Gravity Falls’ The Love God episode and also works on The Owl House, was snarking at Disney back in June about their marketing themselves as gay-friendly during Pride month and telling creators behind the scenes to remove gay stuff. And by ‘snarking’ I mean ‘completely and publicly out of fucks to give.’ Though I think that’s just normal Alex Hirsch by this point.)
All very true as well. Honestly, I just kind of felt like talking about The Owl House for a hot minute, there’s not a lot of circles I’m involved in where I really can express how much I feel for it, so. XD
But to respond to you in earnest, I don’t think it’s so much “the studio is trying to make you think it will happen” so much as “studio preys on audience reaction to homoerotic subtext for views” right? Like… What makes a queerbait so falling isn’t just that the couple doesn’t turn out cuz like hey! Sometimes u don’t win that one. But rather that the creators indulge the interpretation so as to continue to garner Interest from the LGBT audience. Like SPN was a queerbait, like the whole Castiel plot line where he falls in love w Dean? Queerbait for sure like genuine.
I don’t know what it means to prey on audience reaction for homoerotic subtext when I think an audience, and “an audience” can consist of any amount of people from within the pool currently viewing and observing, is gonna read homoerotic subtext into it regardless of circumstance.
Sure, homoeroticism abounds, theres like a whole school of media criticism that focuses on those dynamics. But there’s a difference between “well we unintentionally did something homoerotic” and “we did something homoerotic now time to ride that to the bank” like I’m not the best at articulating this but like… Jojos bizarre adventure is a series that is deeply homoerotic but without a real bait aspect to it if u ask me. Araki doesn’t leverage the homoeroticism to get specific types of engagement or audience share he’s just like that
I mean yeah JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is a homoerotic love story, even if that love isn’t sexual. It is a story about the beauty of the male form and the emotional (as in legitimate emotional honesty and vulnerability) bonds between men.
But I wouldn’t know how to suss out this kind of authorial intent in anything but its most blatantly manipulative and clearly for horny points, and that strikes me as a thing where I’m more concerned some dumb berk is writing this at all in the first place.
I think it really only should be discussed in the most blatantly manipulative sense, because the term’s definitely gotten out of control and queer subtext or coding are very different things from baiting. Like, we know Adventure Time couldn’t get away with Bubbline as more than subtext for almost its entire run. That’s not baiting, that’s genuinely the best they could do, and we know pushing more sooner would have risked cancelation because it’s an open secret that’s what happened with Steven Universe (in addition to a lot of fighting with the network executives for the Garnet wedding.)
By contrast, the examples I see given credence are Supernatural and Sherlock and Teen Wolf, where showrunners would often respond to questions about popular gay ships with ‘keep watching’ or the like, the writers would actively drop references to the ship, and then just as actively dismiss them because of COURSE they wouldn’t actually be gay. Sometimes it’s only one or the other, and I think the ‘keep watching’ with no intent to follow through is the worse of the two, but I seem to recall it often being both at once.
(Re: Good Omens, I think it really does come down to ‘differing views on angelic gender and sexuality between writer and audience’ especially since Gaiman’s described it as a love story as I recall, but also think if you’re gonna do Season Two, Neil, let them kiss already.)
Yeah that’s why I keep hammering intentionality as the driving aspect of the queerbait phenomenon. The creators have to Be intentionally dangling a gay relationship/romance as a ”possibility” to garner fan interaction and audience share without a corresponding attempt to ever make good on it. I do think a lot of people could use some more queer media literacy lmao as demonstrated by the deep misunderstanding of the phenomenon in certain circles.
That lack of intentionality is also why I commented somewhere else that I don’t think Daisy is saying Joyce is queer baiting, but warning her of how the audience could react to it. Daisy seems to be a decent enough editor when she’s not hopped up on pent up sexual urges.
Like reading Transformers More Than Meets The Eye I just came to a point where I said to myself “Rodimus Prime is definitely bisexual” even though Rodimus never hits on anyone, he just spoke to me as a dude robot who was bisexual, and then the robot I thought would end up his husband went and married a completely different dude robot.
That was a comic where I could have a tangible reason to believe Rodimus could be bi because beloved G1 icon Prowl was now a table flipping gay ex-boyfriend and Cyclonus was now a sad gay patriotic oni zombie samurai who’d get along great with Ruth, but I don’t think I was baited into believing homoerotic subtext it just means I had an interpretation of the text that’s not even necessarily proven wrong so much as never canonized.
And that’s an essential part of what defines the queerbait is that it’s an intentional, meant to lure in engagement, and the relationship/homosexual dynamic is never meant to have meaningful weight to it narratively
The main thing I’ve seen it about recently is the Good Omens TV series, where the homoerotic subtext between Aziraphale and Crowley is so heavy that even I noticed it, but the creators can always say “It says right there in the original book that angels don’t have a sexuality.”
I mean that’s literally correct. They’re not supposed to have genitalia or a sex drive, but they can if they feel like it.
Neil Gaiman, co-author alongside the dearly departed Terry Pratchet, has been pretty upfront about reading Crowley and Aziraphale however they come off to you
It can also happen with creators writing in subtext the studio doesn’t want put in there, but it slips past as long as it stays subtext. Probably more common in the past than today.
It has a similar effect though, since the tension is there, but it can never be openly acknowledged.
My JoJo shipping senses that let me write giant piles of words based on how minute instances of dialogue from the characters indicate that they are in love and already married has, appropriately, evolved into a Stand named Come Sail Away, allowing me to take any seeming crumb I can and to run wild with it.
There, on panel 2! Zoom! Enhance!
Captain Julia Gray’s love interest who isn’t Lord Jakkar, Space Vampire, was established as existing when Walky showed Lucy a doodle from last semester where Julia Gray has to assassinate him under the orders of President Doris, but it’s fine because he comes back as a werewolf.
On one hand you can make a pretty convincing case that this is Ethan’s insert into the Saga of Captain Julia Gray (henceforth referred to as Graysonas). Ethan is, actually, the guy Joyce thought she was gonna marry and then boy did she did not. To Joyce that’s actually being a red herring, and wack’d made a good observation on Patreon that Julia needing to kill him because an authority figure told her so is a pretty apt metaphor for how Joyce treated him for his sexuality.
But that gets in the way of the narrative I’m trying to impose, so let’s move on.
Whoever this guy is, his presence is one that Joyce can not only shamelessly declare a romantic red herring for the true OTP down the line, it’s one where hearing someone talk about romantic chemistry in her comic lead Joyce to naturally assume she means that guy, in that Joyce has intentionally written his interactions with Julia Gray in such a manner that they are meant to be coded romantic.
There are currently three men in Joyce’s orbit. One is Jacob, who has been out of it for a while on the grounds of Joyce’s sitcom shenanigans. Another is Walky, and lol no. That leaves one man whose dump truck ass Joyce has observed and, in writing this, I suddenly remembered he was the very first guy Joyce was convinced she was going to marry.
Y’all, I’m calling it. Joyce wrote Joe’s Graysona as Julia Gray’s werewolf boyfriend.
Who is Joe to Joyce? Well he’s someone who was supposed to be her future husband and then a whole date later made them hate each other’s guts for years before Joyce relied on him in a pinch, learned he was actually good all along, and ever since Joe has yo-yo’d from Good to A Jerk because he won’t outright stay good for long periods of time and whatever kindness he offers Joyce will eventually go away as he backslides into that version of him Joyce hates. Which is to say that whatever Joyce and Joe think of each other, it won’t last, ever, and Joyce can’t really trust the words that come out of his mouth as much as she’d probably like to, and that would manifest here in the Saga of Captain Julia Gray as a guy who’s not right for Julia, who’s just a red herring, and Julia’s gonna find her real partner soon enough.
Also, there’s the pretty overt meta narrative of paranormal romance and sexual repression, and by overt I mean Lord Jakkar, Space Vampire’s appearance in a Patreon bonus strip had him in a pitched gun battle side by side with Captain Julia Gray noting he had to protect her from his heaving flesh. Part one is Twilight, in that Joyce is enough of a connoisseur of true art to know that if one of her boyfriends is a vampire, the other is a werewolf.
The other thing I think is a bit more relevant is that werewolves are ordinary people who, like clockwork, become violent, destructive, uncontrollable animals, and there’s not a fun way to spin that as Joyce’s actual views on sex and, more specifically to her relationship with Joe, that thing that constantly, inevitably ruins his sincerity towards her.
And Joyce, currently, experienced a degree of sexual guilt watching his and Roz’s porno tape and it strikes me as the kind of thing Joyce would do when writing about her sexual hangups by externalizing them onto someone else. It would track with President Doris’ funny character flaw of being an immoral lust machine, since said immoral lust isn’t something Joyce has to think about in her direction.
In closing I really hope that the publication of the Saga of Captain Julia Gray leads to in-universe characters bickering over how Julia is clearly love with Jonah Rosethorn, Prince of the Werewolves, while their friend argues in favour of Lord Jakkar, Space Vampire, and also I just spent an hour writing about a fictional character’s fictional characters and what her moving them around the board represents for herself and which other fictional character she will smooch, and I need to make it as abundantly clear as possible that I feel no shame or remorse for doing so, I just wish I knew how to challenge this into writing a book or something.
ooh yeah that was pretty good!
yeah werewolves are a really interesting archetype, and let me heartily recommend this amazing 2017 Brazilian film called “Good Manners” which gets primo mileage out of the werewolf symbolism.
Please don’t feel ashamed, I love reading this kind of in-depth post! And I can personally go on for hours about character motivations for fucking Sonic characters, of all things, so I think you’re in good company here. 😎
Plus you raise a some good points about werewolves (the LUST WOLVES, am I right?)
Yeah but I’ve gotten to the point where i can not only go on about the character motivations of Sonic characters and why Sonic Adventure 2 had good writing or why Sonic and the Secret Rings has the most metal ending of all time, I can also go on about character motivations from the Sonic comics and, specifically, pinpoint exactly which of the three continuities I like most and why.
(it’s Archie Reboot, btdubs)
I just didn’t know I could go in like this on anything. I hadn’t been capable of it in I honestly have no idea.I might never have been until now.
The adderall is making me fire neurons I didn’t even know existed.
I can do you one better. I could make arguments for why Sonic BATTLE has the best characterizations in the series and why Sonic Heroes is an underrated gem.
Ooo I bought Sonic Battle a while ago and still haven’t gotten around to actually playing it. Love the detailed sprites though, and from what I know of the writing, I think I’d agree it has excellent characterization. 😀
I like that Gemerl became a recurring character in the comics so now he’s this stoic killdroid weapon of mass destruction from a dead civilization that was made even more powerful, but he’s best friends with a tiny rabbit girl and so spends his days baking cookies and having tea parties with her.
OH MAN yes that’s the kind of deep dive I meant! And you had me at Sonic Adventure 2 being good, TBH. 😎 I love Shadow SO MUCH and love when he’s treated like an actual character with actual motivation and trauma and djslslfjgg okay I’ll stop before I write an essay on something entirely unrelated!
(My personal hill to die on is that the Japanese dub of Sonic X is Good Actually™️. A lot of people hate it but only saw the English dub which just, like, isn’t the same experience.)
But no, anyway, I love when people make these kinds of posts about fandoms! It’s awesome!
Because I know he’s kind of a punching bag in the comics lately with the whole “he’s just Vegeta now, get over it” thing foisted onto the only piece of media that actually features him, but Evan Stanley milked that characterization for all its worth in Chao Races.
It’s an obvious misstep right now but I think Flynn can write a good character out of Evan’s take, but right now he seems too burnt out on the idea of giving Shadow any focus with how scrutinized the character is from every angle. Shadow being a guy who can mouth off to Sonic and back it up is good, I actually think that’s something he should always have.
I genuinely feel bad for Ian Flynn re: Shadow. We know he likes writing Shadow with emotions, and he’s clearly exhausted by the push and pull between what Sega wants and the fandom.
Same. It’s gotta be a rough spot to be in, as someone who knows these characters extremely well and is clearly invested. He can’t really win right now either way. :C
Nah. Well, not 100%. I’m actually okay with IDW Shadow – less okay than I was, now that I know someone higher up than Ian Flynn has told him to write Shadow as less nuanced, but he still seems in character enough. And Evan Stanley did an excellent job with the hand the IDW team’s been dealt, I agree!
I was more talking about English dubs like Team Sonic Racing reducing Shadow to a one-note character, as well as people in the fandom. A lot of people LEGIT seem to think Shadow is just ~edgy~ which is… sure. He can be a little pissbaby edgelord sometimes, that’s part of him. But it’s not all of him.
……sorry for my off-topic ramblings haha. We just happened to hit on my favorite topic, like, ever. |D
There’s a reason why some days I’m hyper-engaged here and some days I go ‘no, no, I actually have to do other things today, no comments for you, self.’ But also, this is EXCELLENT and I could see this being the case about Werewolf Other Guy. Thank you, I love it.
Daisy, I’m rooting for Joyce’s comic, but don’t you dare offer her the job before the deadline is up. That’s not fair. Joyce can wait until the end of the day or even the next day.
I’ll be interested in how someone pointing out the queer subtext affects how Joyce and Dorothy interact. If there’s a strip in the school paper featuring females developing a relationship, won’t people start to notice Joyce and Dorothy hanging out? And the Joyce / Dorothy nonship echoes the Becky /Joyce nonship.
It must be weird writing real people fic where everyone looks at the stand-ins for you and your close friend an d goes “y’all they’re deadass in love.”
Okay look writing the Ted Cruz Isekai* is inherently weird but I meant stuff where characters are blatant stand-ins for yourself and your friends and then the audience reacts to them in ways you never expected and don’t reflect what you think your relationship is like.
*I ummed and erred on unleashing this terrible phrase until I realized Mary has probably made a Ted Cruz Isekai.
No that’s Reincarnation, which is a frequent recipe component for Isekai.
So if Ted Cruz got hit by a truck and ended up in a fantasy world with a harem of submissive waifus, that’s Isekai.
If someone woke up one morning and discovered they were now Ted Cruz, that’s Reincarnation.
And if someone from another world dies and reincarnates as Ted Cruz, or if someone from Earth dies and reincarnates as Ted Cruz in another world, then that’s Reincarnation Isekai.
Isekai (a distinction is purposely being made between them and Portal Fantasy, the actual genre about going a relatable hero being teleported to land of magic and mystery) is about some loser nerd getting freed from his real world responsibilities and failures and wakes up in a world that runs on Dragon Quest rules where his obsession with nerd media now makes him the most important human being who ever live, and also he just has straight up cheat codes too.
All of them are bad so just watch the one about the girl who dies, ends up in her favourite dating sim, and then realizes to her horror that she reincarnated as a minor villain who dies in every route and must now radically change her character’s personality and goals and derail the entire plot so she doesn’t get killed, accidentally making everyone around her fall in love with her.
There’s a reason why a lot of writers go a bit more remixed with major characters’ traits where they can and save the really recognizable adaptations of people they know for bit roles and petty grudges. There’s always exceptions, especially with younger writers, and ultimately all your characters are in some way a reflection of you, but having seen reactions of that type to the ‘characters heavily based off you and a friend are considered romantic’ phenomenon… yeah it is apparently VERY awkward.
All this discussion of queerbaiting/queer subtext/etc. is reminding me of when my 11th grade English teacher had the class watch Bend It Like Beckham, and other kids kept turning in their seats to look at me, the only openly queer student in the class.
I actually would love for one of the stories to be that Joyce is told by her editor she wants the characters to bang or the strip is cancelled. That would be an interesting lesson about losing creative control.
The implication of this comic is that Danny and Joe should have gotten together in Roomies, right? Since Joyce is the Willis stand-in here and Dorothy is the Joe replacement in her Roomies! expy?
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*Walky slams comics on desk*
“No one else with NICE GIRLY PARTS has applied, so”
time for the return of Walkette
But the anomaly’s all the way up in Canada…
Walky actually completely forgot about Daisy, the last panel is just Taco Bell having its usual effect.
Providing quick energy, thus enabling a short sprint?
…Sure, that’s why their tagline was Make a run for the border.
I think that’s just weird racism on their part.
I always assumed Taco Bell just made you want to visit Canada and try one of our equally subpar cheap “Mexican” chains. (We have Taco Bell now, there is no escape.)
Aside from TacoTime and Lonestar(-ish) do we have other mexi-ish chains?
There’s Taco Boyz on the east coast. They have …
oh, only 4 locations. Maybe be patient.
Taco Johns was big in IL for a while. (Their spicy flat tater tot rounds [Potato Ole] were an undergrad staple in the 80s.)
for once, it’s not just Daisy being horny
Yet.
Oh my.
She has more than one note? cool!
The horny is on the down-low today.
I mean, yeah. Queerbating is a problem in media.
**gives several otherwise excellent shows a glare for queerbating their audience**
The only solution is for Julia and Doris to have amazingly hot naked sex at some point. I really don’t see any other possible resolution.
she can feel the overwhelming straight energy coming off of joyce and isn’t even trying.
I wonder if this is the start of Joyce realizing she may not be entirely straight
I think she can still repress it for quite a while longer.
Then again, given what she said about Doris and Julia earlier…
If I’ve learned anything it’s that Christians are MASTERS at self repression
Honest doubt accounted for, I guess this DOES explain how Becky would be able to last this long after multiple times hurting herself in confusion.
When it doubt just bottle that shit up!
Try doing that at high altitudes!
Hmm airplanes do make great places for dramatic reveals, what with the being trapped in an aluminum can thousands of feet above sea level
Mountains work too!
And also balloon rides!
U can’t trick me I’m not getting in that basket you’ve got there I’ve seen the films
Don’t forget the “lash out at anyone who actually is living the life you secretly want” part.
They just have a neat friendship.
I certainly hope so.
We can only hope. Or wishfully think. Is there a meaningful distinction?
That would be fun. I imagine it would lead to some wonderful dramatic tension.
Depending on whether or not Becky really got over Joyce not reciprocating her feelings it could cause some not pretty fireworks
“Did I stutter?”
— the Breakfast Club, 1985
Welp. So it’s Dorothy, huh.
oh god, yes
I mean, Joyce has already realised that her expectations of her relationship with Dorothy is based on her relationship with Becky, which she now knows was a relationship with a closeted gay girl who secretly fancied her, so I don’t see discovering she’s written Julia and Doris that way coming as a huge shock once she’s thought about it.
Which isn’t to say she’s not, just that this isn’t really evidence?
Eh, if she wrote the way those characters interact based even partly off of any of a variety of fictional characters that were queerbait it doesn’t have to be repressed queerness, just a matter of not knowing the significance of the tropes she was using. Also, it should be noted that “flirting” does not have to have anything to do with romantic or sexual desires, although the word does tend to have that connotation, the action itself is just a mode of communication that relies more on banter and humor with the intention of being liked and having fun. I flirt with my friends all the time, and I’m not attracted to most of them, and the feeling is mutual (we’ve discussed it), we just enjoy the act of flirting and tend to play off each other very well.
I should note, however that I am a straight guy (somewhere between a 0 and a 1 on the kinsey scale), so I am not fully informed about “queerbaiting” and am not entirely sure my understanding of the term is accurate. If I am understanding it correctly, doesn’t it require intent? Like, I am unsure how it is the author’s fault if they didn’t intend for characters to be read as queer and the audience is mad that they aren’t, especially since chemistry is not exclusive to romantic relationships (frankly, this is an issue I have with shipping in general, because male/female pairs can also be perfectly platonic, no reason to force them to get romantically/sexually involved just because they have strong chemistry, and it seems kinda toxic to me when a character has a canonical orientation but fans scream homophobia/queerbaiting/promoting a gay/straight agenda/whatever when their preferred ship doesn’t sail due to incompatible orientations, or, heck, even if their orientations are compatible but the writer(s) decide said characters are better off platonic for whatever reason, irrespective of “chemistry”).
Again, not saying it isn’t queerbaiting (largely because I’m not sure I fully understand what the term is supposed to mean) or even that Joyce can’t be some flavor of queer, just that A, at this point it seems like a bit of a leap to assume Joyce isn’t straight based off this single data point (and I am not aware of other data points, as even through the whole learning about sexuality and questioning her faith stuff she still maintained her interest in men and didn’t seem to display any interest in women), and B, it feels kinda shitty to accuse creators of bigotry because they ship different characters than the fans do.
This is the most dramatic thing that has ever happened to Walky.
In.
His.
Life.
…. what kidnapping?
He refuses to be traumatized, dammit!
(It’s not working.)
Walk runny walk… No wait
Hehe. I LOL’d.
Walky rennt!
run like your comic depends on it
Let’s be honest, Daisy, queerbaiting isn’t exactly a franchise-killer. I mean, Supernatural got 15 seasons off the back of it.
RIP supernatural u really did push the boundaries of how homophobic u could bury your gays on network television
They were nothing if not pioneers. And also homophobes. Probably misogynists, while we’re at it.
Oh absolutely misogynists how many women got killed off for pathos? Like all of em? Horribly?
I’ve seen one episode past Season 9, and that’s the Scooby-Doo! crossover from Season 13. Daphne and Velma make it out alive, if that counts?
Its been a while, didn’t the series start by killing off two female characters pretty much back to back?
I’m almost certain that’s Episode 1. Momchester and Girlfriend.
Lmao yeah the beginning of the series hinges on the brutal murder of Mary Winchester and then Sam’s girlfriend…. Winnifred? Idk
Fun fact, Hugo-winning author Seanan McGuire’s Incryptid series was conceived out of spite for how Jo Harvelle’s story ended. Many pretty blonde monster-hunting ladies, not dying for twelve books strong.
(Well, okay, it is entirely possible that the as-yet-unreleased twelfth book kills off someone, but we’ll see.)
The name’s familiar. Not sure where from, but a new book series to read is always welcome.
Seanan wrote the foreword for DOA Book 10, so that could be where you heard about the name?
Seanan, um. Wrote Ghost Spider (for Marvel). Wrote the Mira Grant Newsflesh books (Mira is a very thin and public pseudonym). Is an (extremely prolific and talented) filker (and in fact some of the characters in Incryptid first appeared publicaly in her songs; some drifted a bit since then before the first Incryptid novel was published, though).
I guess those are some places you could have heard of her?
Ah, there we go. Got a TPB of some of her Ghost Spider stuff on the ol’ comics shelf.
She’s also been nominated for Best Series Hugo for either Incryptid or her other big series, October Daye, like, at LEAST the last three years running. I expect her to continue to be alternating them on the ballot until she wins. The volume of October Daye stuff apparently nearly broke the reading packet this year (since voters are provided copies of all the nominated material with their Worldcon membership, including full series for Best Series including associated things like short stories… and there is A LOT of October Daye.)
I haven’t read any of Incryptid, but I’ve read some of her comics and one of the Wayward Children books, which was quite good. Set in a home for the children who come back from faerie and other magical lands and can’t adapt back to mundane life.
Those are the ones I’ve read: “Every Heart a Doorway” and two of its sequels. “Down Among the Sticks and Bones” and “Beneath the Sugar Sky.” I liked them a lot.
Okay, I started following Seanan McGuire on Twitter a while back in the hopes that there’ll eventually be news about more Ghost-Spider, only to find out that she’s also into Magic: The Gathering (as she started kinda hyper-focusing on that ahead of her contribution to the Innistrad: Midnight Hunt story getting published).
Now, I’m already tempted to pick up her Alien: Echo YA novel despite my Inability To Just Pick Up And Read A Book, but if I succeed with that I guess I’m going give Incryptid a try as well.
What about Sparrow Hill Road? Rose Marshal starts out the book dead. Being dead is her superpower.
That’s a great Seanan McGuire starter book, BTW. Self contained chapters and a really brilliant synthesis of the vanishing prom date/vanishing hitchhiker urban legends.
I chose not to count Rose, Mary, or for that matter Fran Brown and Enid Healy who heavily feature in the short fiction focusing on past members of the family (even though they both do in fact eventually die in the short fiction, and both deaths heavily impact the rest of the family) because all of them died WELL before the present day of the main series. We meet Mary and Rose when they’re already ghosts, and as the great- and great-great grandmothers of the current generation, Fran and Enid’s deaths would be kind of expected by this point in the main novels even if monster hunting didn’t seriously reduce life expectancy.
In the current generation, the family has had remarkably good luck surviving thusfar (though with that threatened war with the Covenant looming, who knows,) pretty dang good luck with allies surviving, and who knows, maybe Alice will find her husband alive in whatever hell dimension a parasitic supernatural force keeps its captives next book. And come back to utter chaos, but things have been steadily escalating since Chaos Choreography so, sorry about that Alice, the Cuckoos decided to start armageddon while you were gone and shit kinda got fucked.
I looked into Seanan McGuire, and now I know what to give to my sister for christmas! (if I can hunt down the books, they are apparently hard to get in Germany)
Incidentally, I am glad to have shown up early enough today to have started a conversation about one of my favorite authors. 😀
There is that rumor that some exec tried to push Misha Collins to get his wife to get a C-Section so he could get back to work.
Yeah, sounds plausible.
RIP to a weird and bad one
Be nice if there was a similar show that didn’t chop up queer people and stuff ’em in the refrigerator, tbh. Just some handsome folks goin’ on a cross-country road trip, stabbin’ Satans and whatnot.
Unlike the CW this newspaper is run by a competent, asuumedly out, queer, lady so I’d hope that queerbaiting intentional or not would be noted and advised against much like it is right now to avoid bullshit like Supernatural from happening. Which is one of many reasons it’s good to have queer people and other minority groups given more positions of power.
True. Another reason is so we can finally take over media like we’ve been promised we were for the last decade. And then we can turn the Jetsons into an adoptive found-family story about explicitly trans/nb/lesbian cyborgs, the way God intended. (I’m like 80% joking. I think.)
I’d watch that. A more inclusive Jetsons reboot really playing on the possibilities of what a family of the future looks like sounds really cool. No reason Judy Jetson couldn’t be a trans fem cyborg! Maybe Elroy is ace and/or nonbinary cause in the year 3000 gender doesn’t mean shit and the human race can be propigated through test tubes.
Honestly the longer I sit on the idea, the more I warm up to it. Fuck it, is there a Nerd Term for optimistic, light-hearted cyberpunk? That’s what we need.
Transhumanism?
The Jetsons take place in 2062. George is scheduled to be conceived this Thanksgiving Day weekend.
I’m pretty sure Willis will remind us of this fact when it arrives.
Unfortunately.
not lighthearted, but check out Neofeud
You said it!
What does an Amazon Music sign-up page have to do with it? (That’s all the link leads to for me, sorry if it’s supposed to be something else.)
Oh I’m sorry!
That was supposed to lead to the lyrics to “Hey Pikachu!”
The N64 game?
The song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00RAQ4mT4Bc
By the way, you might wanna look at BOTH translations.
http://www.animelyrics.com/anime/pocketm/pmheyp.htm
Kate & Allie, Rizzoli and Isles…
That first one was Before My Time, and I always mistake the second one for some kind of pasta dish.
LOL! My time goes back to Howdy Doody and Roy Rogers.
Sorry Walky but I think that’s game set and match.
Walky isn’t completely hosed, LAWsome is probably a better fit for a newspaper, it’s a gag-a-day strip rather than a lore heavy serial drama. That might get him the gig.
Except Daisy wants a strip with a non-queerbaity lesbian romance from the mains.
Okay but Joyce is not prepared for that yet and Walky would probably be willing to do it to get the gig.
What she’s not prepared to do yet is mostly irrelevant. Now is the time to put in the romantic tension and as Daisy said in the last strip, she’ll be a very different person before she gets to anything like an endgame.
Daisy’s never shown herself to be someone to let the reality of what’s likely true to get in the way of her making editorial decisions based on her fantasies. She’s already fantasizing about a Doris/Julia endgame, so that’s what she’ll decide based on.
Leaning a LITTLE hard on the fourth wall there in panel 4, Willis
Oh good something felt off about it but I wasn’t sure what.
how so? i don’t get it
Haha, I’m assuming he’s repeating feedback he’s received from Joyce & Dorothy’s interactions in the actual comic story
She already noticed the lesbian subtext! Things aren’t looking good for the Walkman.
Is there anything stopping Daisy from publishing both strips?
Her budget for comics being $5 a strip?
Space, probably. As time goes on, comic strips just don’t get as much traction in actual newspapers now.
In all honesty? The only thing stopping from Joyce from just doing all her comics online would just be upkeep cost.
Yeah, there were four last semester and this semester Daisy’s only allotted space for one.
She’s a university student. They get an online footprint for free. The main problem would be having so much in that she runs out of space.
I mean if we’re talking logistics now then who the eff is reading a physical copy of a college newspaper anyway? Daisy could easily publish one in the paper and have the othe be a digital exclusive alongside it. Anyone actually subscribed to the paper probably reads it through the paper’s twitter account or facebook page unless they’re a caveman that reads it on the website or rss feed. The point being any space constraint is arbitrary. It’s more likely a money issue. Sine this gig is paying less than lunch money.
That’s what I’m expecting to happen. I think it’d be smart on Daisy’s part!
I believe there are currently 0 comics in the in the (fictional version of the) IU newspaper but we don’t know yet if anything is stopping Daisy from publishing both. My guess for awhile has been that both strips will be published but nothing in the narrative has indicated if this is or is not a possibility. Y’know, other than Joyce and Walky’s assumption that it’ll only go to one of them.
I was wrong. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/02-look-straight-ahead/strip/
I don’t know why I thought there weren’t any comics. One of their cartoonists graduated last semester is all.
Foe effs sake is it really just the Friday of that same week? Are they not even a week into the new semester?!
Also, Dorothy said in one of the earlyish strips that there were like four comics in the paper.
I think they run Heathcliff?
In my experience most college papers are desperate for anything resembling content or readership so I would say no.
I’m kinda hoping she allows both, since having two comic strips might attract more readers or something. And I think it’d be good for both Walky and Joyce to have their comics in the college newspaper.
I’m not used to responsible smart Daisy, but I hope it continues.
Someone got Daisy some sex toys for her birthday and she’s no longer so sexually frustrated.
She got a nude pic of “Ruth” a couple days ago.
One of the things I love about Joyce as a character is that even when some plot development concerning her is so inevitable that the entire comments section predicts it well in advance, it’s still a safe bet that Joyce’s facial expression on the day of will make it work as well as it would if nobody saw it coming.
Run, Walky, run!
And ooooh. Joyce. It’s even in your writing now. XD
which is super weird because she writes dirty stories every day specifically to squeeze out her horniness.
…maybe she forgot to squeeze out the gay horniness
She could be biro-het. Then she could still squeeze all the horniness out, but still have romantic feelings creep into her writing.
Which is weird, because in my experience squeezing increases horniness, it doesn’t get rid of it.
Literally, figuratively, or both?
I’m asking for a friend.
I think it’s more trying to affirm that her feelings are totally just deeply platonic don’t consider it anything else
I was thinking Benny Hill instead of Run Lola Run
Yes, I can totally see this
I was thinking Running in the 90’s.
I was thinking… “Run Forrest Run!”
“MANNI!!!!!”
To be fair queerbaiting is done intentionally to string along a queer fanbase by teasing queer storylines that there’s no intention of following through on while not alienating straight fans. There’s a level of intent behind it. It’s knowing the vast majority of your fanbase ship characters A and B and writing increasingly intimate scenes between them with no intention of the characters following through on romantic feelings.
It is not someone not quite consciously working out their emotions towards a same gender friend by unknowingly writing a queer coded relationship between characters based on themselves and friends.
Yeah, but I think that’s why Daisy only said it would “feel kinda queerbaity” cuz based on Joyce’s response it’s definitely not intentional but readers won’t see it that way. Friendly warning vs accusation u know
Also Daisy is maybe a little biased here.
Daisy might try to invoke editorial influencing on the creative process.
Nah, Daisy’s definitely lesbiased
THANK YOU. It begins to feel a little oppressive, in a way, sometimes, when seemingly all close relationships between two characters of the same gender gets tagged as ‘queerbait’. Like, I genuinely feel upset and hurt by the idea that sex MUST eventually get involved in every close friendship or it’s fake and wrong. I don’t want sex ever, so are my relationships fake and wrong? Am I tricking people?
I accept that queerbaiting is indeed a thing, but sometimes close friendships really are close friendships and ‘flirting’ is not intentional.
because fandom tends to assume that the natural/desired endpoint of ANY relationship is sex (particularly when the characters and/or their actors are attractive, which they usually are), and if they still aren’t banging after a while, some start asking, “well why NOT?!”
I think that’s a good time to enforce the boundaries between reality and fiction. Nobody gets to headcanon your actual relationships.
Daisy in panel 4 is me when things introduce a female BFF that has infinitely better chemistry than any guy, including the person that the girl is dating. Or when they create conflict in the relationship and she runs off and things are infinitely easier and more comforting from the BFF than any single thing the boyfriend has said in the entire damn thing.
I know this whole arc with Joyce is kinda Willis poking fun at all of his earlier writings.
Is that queerbait-y comment directed towards DoA’s early Joyce and Dorothy?
early?
Ongoing, even.
maybe Willis is roasting his own early writing, i wouldn’t know, but as for DoA, well half the cast is openly queer and several gay pairings have happened onscreen already, so, i don’t think he’s calling himself out here. of course knowing what we know about Joyce and Willis we’re attuned to any signs of snarky self-awareness but to me this reads as just regular in-character dialogue
I almost made a “queerbait” comment like 12 strips ago, but I didn’t, because it doesn’t feel fair to Willis. I only mention it here because yeah holy shit the vibe is still there, and clearly he’s aware of it.
“Dorothy can come with! She can be Prime Minister!”
Is it queerbaiting when Joyce and Dorothy being straight is just kind of A Thin and never hasn’t been?
Like there was a whole strip of Joyce going “I know I’m straight because if I like girls I would definitely like Becky!”
With Joyce also commenting things such as “I’d find Sal attractive if I could ignore everything below the neck“, I’ve seen arguments that Joyce might be heterosexual but biromantic, which could be an interesting way to take things.
Could also just point to very very deep seated problems conceiving of her orientation outside of the boxes she was given. Like we all remember the “being gay is like lying” “I hate lying more than anything” period. That sort of shit can definitely give u fucked up conceptions of ur own sexuality.
Yeah, that’s also a possibility. Like with Joyce’s neuroses (at least some of which, IIRC, are based off of Willis’s) having it – per Word of Willis – be open-ended as to whether it’s an actual neurodivergent thing, or just something stemming from her messed-up upbringing.
Honestly combine a neurotic personality, religious repression, and a complete inability to pick up on Gay Signals and you’ve got a wonderfully messed up ability to conceive of ur own sexuality
It’s definitely a possibility. OTOH, as has also been called out in the comic explicitly, growing up with a best friend with an unrealized crush on you can lead to your norms of platonic friendship being different.
Joyce definitely feels a way about Dorothy that she doesn’t feel about Becky, and Becky has noticed this and kind of resents it
Really? I admit I’m pretty clueless, but I always interpreted it as Joyce feels exactly the same way about Dorothy as she does Becky, and Becky resents it.
Joyce has never made a hypothetical gay marriage fantasy life with Becky, and then subsequently de-gayed it so that she can explore it in comic form while simultaneously saying “no homo” and also accidentally filling said comic with gay subtext.
I mean, is there even a Becky analog *in* her comic?
…that we know of.
I mean, Joyce literally says that Becky’s secret attraction to her has affected what she thinks girl friendships are supposed to be like.
…Which, yeah, now that I read it back looks a lot more like “Joyce feels about Dorothy the way she thought Becky felt about her” than the reverse. Hmm.
Anyway, yes, there’s a Becky counterpart in the comic. Betty gets namechecked in the first strip, as the person Julia is on the phone to in the inevtiable first-Roomies-strip parody.
Which I guess makes her Sal to Julia’s Danny? Hmm…
So I definitely wouldn’t ever call DOA queerbaiting, no. (I’m actually always very hesitant to use that label, because to me it implies some intent?) But, I mean, everyone assumed Danny was straight until it was shown he wasn’t. Orientations can change over time, or the characters’ understanding of them can.
I’d interpret that older strip as Joyce falling into the trap of, like… thinking all gay people are into every friend they have of their gender. So if she’s not into her Best Friend™️, she can’t be gay/bi, right? Probably not helped by the fact her childhood best friend just confirmed that she is, in fact, into her LOL. So I don’t know if we can trust that statement as being for sure indicative of her orientation, since when Joyce said it she was still kinda homophobic (if I remember right?) and EXTREMELY sexually repressed. I don’t think Joyce was in a good position then to know what the details of her sexuality even were back then.
(And I say that with empathy since I actually happen to have personal experience here, though not with the extreme Christianity thrown in. Even when I was out as some flavor of queer, I still suppressed liking women. It’s weird but it can happen for various reasons haha?)
She certainly could come out as queer, but although there have been some hints, I’m not entirely sold on it yet. If she did, it’s certainly been foreshadowed enough it wouldn’t be a surprise out of the blue. If she doesn’t, that would also fit the character as we’ve seen her so far.
It certainly could be part of the repression, but her interest in men has been far more clearly sexual than the hints we’ve seen for her interest in women. Biromantic and heterosexual has been suggested by some, I think.
I never felt like Joyce and Dorothy were queerbaity (although Joyce may have enhanced their friendship a little too much in the interpretation to Julia and Doris). Like maybe Joyce as a character was or is (with the dating Sal above the neckline and the part with Billie’s chest and stuff), but I don’t think there were any canon hints at the possibility of them dating, let alone the “will-they-won’t-they, oh wait no they’re both straight now that you’ve read half of/the entire series” feel of intentional queerbaiting. Pretty much the only time I thought about them getting together was when Walky would bring it up
but then although I’m queer I’m not into ladies in any way so I might be missing signals that people who recognize lady/lady relationships more would know
“but I don’t think there were any canon hints at the possibility of them dating,”
them being Joyce and Dorothy
Does it really make sense to talk about queerbaiting in the context of a story with plenty of actual queer representation? The whole point is to lure queer folks in with the hints of representation, but never actually make it explicit to keep from driving the straights away (or avoiding the censors in some cases.) Not every queer shiptease that doesn’t come to fruition is queerbaiting.
And while there are definite hints that Joyce might be queer and crushing on Dorothy, there have been none that Dorothy has any interest back. A couple of jokes that she’s aware of Joyce’s interest, but nothing that she returns it. Seems that would be also be necessary.
It’s why I specified “early” DoA.
If you take the first couple of years of DoA, it’s very different than today.
The one with two characters who were already canon bisexual and one gay dude?
‘Cause like you might actually be able to count Danny finding out he’s bi as “the early days” now, it was seven years ago, four years into the comic. Then a few months later Becky shows up and then like six months after that Dina’s revealed to be unconcerned about the gender of her partners.
I think that, at the very least, everything before Becky’s return counts as “early DoA” in my book.
Kinda same. Might be just that was very close to when I started reading (the comic was halfway through Walking With Dina when I first caught up), but Becky’s return is also almost exactly at the “halfway point” of DoA Season 1 (2010-2020), so it also helps to put pre-Becky stuff in “early DoA” that way.
A little different, I guess. Depending on when you draw the line, I guess you could find a point where there were canon different sex relationships, but no canon queer ones?
Run, Walky, Run! That last panel triggered a memory of a college video Willis did parodying “Run Lola Run” where goes to Taco Bell, but forgets his homework(?) assignment in his dorm room, and his roommate rushes to bring it to him.
(I think I’m remembering this correctly, but also can’t recall if it was posted to YT or some other video site, so I can’t check it)
HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER
With sophisticated humor.
Sophassticated humor.
With the Hippocratic humors.
It’s not every day that the hacked music thingy gets hijacked by the alt-text.
I have to wonder how Walky managed to be late to this? Joyce was double distracted by the surprise visit from her stepsis’ half sis athei-sis, plus the friendship altering argument that event spawned. Walky was having lunch with his gf. And yet Joyce still beat him there. That’s almost impressive.
Maybe Lucy distracted him.
We didn’t see how many other things she sucked off of him before his interview. Walky’s a notoriously dirty boy.
Lucy did declare her intent to see him all sucked off
Yeah I can see why that’d take some time then! There’s a lotta Walky to be sucked off.
That strip was just straight up porn for you, wasn’t it.
Me: “How do I put this delicately…”
King Daniel and Yotomoe: I’m sure LUCY thought WALKY was delicate when she sucked him off.
Me: “Yes, thank you. Very subtle.”
That seems very likely.
Panel 4:
It’s okay, you can just say Supergirl.
*”Sandstorm” by Darude plays in the last panel*
JULIA GRAY AND FUTURE PRESIDENT DORIS IS CANON!
*gay trumpets*
[joyce looking up to remind herself what ‘queer’ is]
[joyce further googling if it’s ok to use the term ‘queer’]
[joyce googling if there some kind of secret fishing bait community for the queers]
She’s a size six, does that help?
I really like Daisy here. She might think of the comic as a filler to gather a few more clicks, but she sees how seriously Joyce takes it and she does nothing to discourage her.
A+ bossing.
She’s a really endearing character
Yeah, this is honestly adorable and extremely supportive. This plus how she talked to Ruth while on their date have really endeared me to Daisy. ;w;
GO WALKY! Now that Joyce realizes Daisy is right, she’s probably wondering a few things about herself. Maybe she’ll be happy to pause her comic for some time. She needs an opponent!
I definitely do feel like queerbaiting is sort of a …loaded complaint. Insomuch that there’s times when it’s definitely happening and there’s times when I’ve seen people complain about it when I could hardly see it all. Like, not all characters who have super great dynamics with each other and good banter are necessarily gonna get together, queer or otherwise. Obviously the problem could stem from the fact that there’s so little queer relationships that people will get excited at the possibility of a queer relationship and become even more letdown by that not coming to fruition. It combines the normal letdown of a couple you ship not happening with the frustration of underepresentation. You can be baited by something without the creator even having intended to bait you. And I feel like you shouldn’t have to put a big “These two people aren’t gay and never will be” disclaimer on any close relationship just to prevent people from getting their hopes up. (And even if you do people will sometimes just view it as a purposeful misdirection and get their hopes up anyway in spite of it).
I think the queer baiting issue would be a less fraught discussion if
A) people had a more solid definition of what it was instead of grapevining that shit and
B) People were far less prone to the “But why do they HAVE to be in a relationship can’t they just be FRIENDS” canard
Like A is tough cuz like you ever tried to correct someone’s understanding of a term they half learned on Tumblr/Twitter/TikTok? Impossible, believe me I’ve tried. B is tough because people often aren’t trying to actively deploy that argument homophobically, but then u look at when people say that and it’s ALWAYS about gay pairings and u gotta just -gay thinking emoji-
I’ve definitely seen B) applied to “Season 1” Danny/Sal off the top of my head, but yeah it certainly has an overwhelming tendency to be applied to same-sex couples. “Sappho and her friend” is a phrase, after all.
Yeah the ratio is like 10:1 complaints about gay pairings vs straight ones in my experience. It doesn’t even like bother me any more it’s just exhausting after a while
Completely with you on this – I’m not mad, just tired LOL.
When talking about any individual relationship, of course they might end up being platonic friends… but once you notice the skew, well. You can’t unsee it. 🤔
I can’t even deny that I’m definitely guilty of B. Like if characters are super outlined as gay early on I’m like “oh ok they’re gonna be a thing” but if they’re not then I’m usually hesitant to assume they’ll end up in a queer relationship….to an extent. Like since it’s becoming increasingly more common my expectations are definitely more in the “oh, I wonder if she’ll end up with that girl.” since it’s been happening more. Like I don’t think I ever thought Enid and Red Action weren’t gonna get together in OK KO. I guess it’s just important to be aware of those biases, especially when discussing fiction.
For example I ALWAYS thought Ash and Misty were being shipped pretty hard in Pokemon but my gay roommate not only can’t see it but finds it shocking that I even thought that. (Meanwhile he thinks ash and his current friend in the show would be cute together)
Speaking of that last one, I wonder….
Does it really count as “queer-baiting” if it involves non-human creatures that never really see any formal/official ships in the universe anyway, gay or straight?
http://www.animelyrics.com/anime/pocketm/pmheyp.htm
TBF, they laid on Enid having a crush on Red Action super thick very early on.
I’ve never seen it not be loaded.
Like I’ve never seen it in the context of “this show is lying to you to make you think it’ll happen” in a way that wasn’t deliberately pseudo-pornographic, like I remember this one super shitty sports anime I watched a review of where the two leads are basically trying to dom each other the whole time and, yeah, that was some fujo shit, but the only way I’d call that baiting is if I was dumb enough to fall for it.
When I see queerbaiting I see it more, like, that show about Falcon and Bucky hanging out getting taken to task because the show’s about the depth of their emotional friendship and a healthy platonic love they have for each other, that thing men are definitely totally allowed to share in any way as simple as guys who are friends in a way that involves emotional vulnerability and honesty and not growling macho soundbites about owing you a drink or calling you an asshole but meaning it in a fun way, but they didn’t kiss so it’s homophobic.
I mean that show is homophobic because it’s the MCU and the MCU is homophobic. It’s categorical
I haven’t watched any of them since Spider-Man Homecoming was bad and lost all faith, but I’ll take your word for it.
Disney is homophobic, Disney owns MCU MCU is homophobic QED
…now I’m wondering if that’s one reason the New Mutants film got stuck in post-production hell for so long. The same-sex romance is rather integral to the plot- no way to bundle it away into easily-expurgated scenes.
If “homophobic company means every property it owns is also homophobic”, then by that standard The Owl House – a kids’ cartoon where the protagonists are, as of early Season 2, an actual explicit same-sex couple (one explicitly bisexual in-show, the other officially a lesbian by word-of-creator who spent like half of Season 1 very visibly crushing on the former character) who’re constantly all over each other, and the creator is also on record as stating that homophobia “doesn’t exist” where the couple is – is somehow homophobic. 😛 (And that’s not even getting into explicit nonbinary representation, or the mentor of one of the abovementioned characters also being explicitly queer herself.)
Watch The Owl House, is what I’m saying.
Smh clearly someone hasn’t heard of outliers! But also I think it’s important to examine the way Disney handles it’s tv and movie properties differently. Disney allows a lot more leeway on the network than they do w movies. Movies r bigger impact/importance to their market presence so they pander to the homophobic cinema market. Cuz let’s face it people will make a culture war out of anything like that and god forbid Disney lose a percent of market share
Agreed. I also think it’s very much worth noting that The Owl House exists and is queer as hell and that’s wonderful… and it also got abruptly canceled and is getting about six episodes of material for the third season, which Dana Terrace was really surprised by. Now, shows aren’t renewed all the time even when creators are expecting and hoping for them, and Terrace has also said the timing on when it was canceled vis a vis production means hey, maybe it wasn’t homophobia, she’s not sure why and doesn’t want to spread unsubstantiated gossip assuming bad faith (it was apparently before the show went up on Disney + and before things got REALLY overtly queer, and it seems the reasoning was that some of the business executives decided it ‘didn’t fit the Disney brand’,) but… well, it’s not noticeably darker in tone or imagery than Gravity Falls, and it’s not more serialized than Amphibia, so a lot of people heard about this and uh. Struggled to assume good faith, shall we say.
(Meanwhile, Alex Hirsch, who is definitely still bitter about fighting Disney for background LGBT rep in Gravity Falls’ The Love God episode and also works on The Owl House, was snarking at Disney back in June about their marketing themselves as gay-friendly during Pride month and telling creators behind the scenes to remove gay stuff. And by ‘snarking’ I mean ‘completely and publicly out of fucks to give.’ Though I think that’s just normal Alex Hirsch by this point.)
All very true as well. Honestly, I just kind of felt like talking about The Owl House for a hot minute, there’s not a lot of circles I’m involved in where I really can express how much I feel for it, so. XD
But to respond to you in earnest, I don’t think it’s so much “the studio is trying to make you think it will happen” so much as “studio preys on audience reaction to homoerotic subtext for views” right? Like… What makes a queerbait so falling isn’t just that the couple doesn’t turn out cuz like hey! Sometimes u don’t win that one. But rather that the creators indulge the interpretation so as to continue to garner Interest from the LGBT audience. Like SPN was a queerbait, like the whole Castiel plot line where he falls in love w Dean? Queerbait for sure like genuine.
I don’t know what it means to prey on audience reaction for homoerotic subtext when I think an audience, and “an audience” can consist of any amount of people from within the pool currently viewing and observing, is gonna read homoerotic subtext into it regardless of circumstance.
Sure, homoeroticism abounds, theres like a whole school of media criticism that focuses on those dynamics. But there’s a difference between “well we unintentionally did something homoerotic” and “we did something homoerotic now time to ride that to the bank” like I’m not the best at articulating this but like… Jojos bizarre adventure is a series that is deeply homoerotic but without a real bait aspect to it if u ask me. Araki doesn’t leverage the homoeroticism to get specific types of engagement or audience share he’s just like that
I mean yeah JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is a homoerotic love story, even if that love isn’t sexual. It is a story about the beauty of the male form and the emotional (as in legitimate emotional honesty and vulnerability) bonds between men.
But I wouldn’t know how to suss out this kind of authorial intent in anything but its most blatantly manipulative and clearly for horny points, and that strikes me as a thing where I’m more concerned some dumb berk is writing this at all in the first place.
I think it really only should be discussed in the most blatantly manipulative sense, because the term’s definitely gotten out of control and queer subtext or coding are very different things from baiting. Like, we know Adventure Time couldn’t get away with Bubbline as more than subtext for almost its entire run. That’s not baiting, that’s genuinely the best they could do, and we know pushing more sooner would have risked cancelation because it’s an open secret that’s what happened with Steven Universe (in addition to a lot of fighting with the network executives for the Garnet wedding.)
By contrast, the examples I see given credence are Supernatural and Sherlock and Teen Wolf, where showrunners would often respond to questions about popular gay ships with ‘keep watching’ or the like, the writers would actively drop references to the ship, and then just as actively dismiss them because of COURSE they wouldn’t actually be gay. Sometimes it’s only one or the other, and I think the ‘keep watching’ with no intent to follow through is the worse of the two, but I seem to recall it often being both at once.
(Re: Good Omens, I think it really does come down to ‘differing views on angelic gender and sexuality between writer and audience’ especially since Gaiman’s described it as a love story as I recall, but also think if you’re gonna do Season Two, Neil, let them kiss already.)
Yeah that’s why I keep hammering intentionality as the driving aspect of the queerbait phenomenon. The creators have to Be intentionally dangling a gay relationship/romance as a ”possibility” to garner fan interaction and audience share without a corresponding attempt to ever make good on it. I do think a lot of people could use some more queer media literacy lmao as demonstrated by the deep misunderstanding of the phenomenon in certain circles.
That lack of intentionality is also why I commented somewhere else that I don’t think Daisy is saying Joyce is queer baiting, but warning her of how the audience could react to it. Daisy seems to be a decent enough editor when she’s not hopped up on pent up sexual urges.
Like reading Transformers More Than Meets The Eye I just came to a point where I said to myself “Rodimus Prime is definitely bisexual” even though Rodimus never hits on anyone, he just spoke to me as a dude robot who was bisexual, and then the robot I thought would end up his husband went and married a completely different dude robot.
That was a comic where I could have a tangible reason to believe Rodimus could be bi because beloved G1 icon Prowl was now a table flipping gay ex-boyfriend and Cyclonus was now a sad gay patriotic oni zombie samurai who’d get along great with Ruth, but I don’t think I was baited into believing homoerotic subtext it just means I had an interpretation of the text that’s not even necessarily proven wrong so much as never canonized.
And that’s an essential part of what defines the queerbait is that it’s an intentional, meant to lure in engagement, and the relationship/homosexual dynamic is never meant to have meaningful weight to it narratively
The main thing I’ve seen it about recently is the Good Omens TV series, where the homoerotic subtext between Aziraphale and Crowley is so heavy that even I noticed it, but the creators can always say “It says right there in the original book that angels don’t have a sexuality.”
I mean that’s literally correct. They’re not supposed to have genitalia or a sex drive, but they can if they feel like it.
Neil Gaiman, co-author alongside the dearly departed Terry Pratchet, has been pretty upfront about reading Crowley and Aziraphale however they come off to you
It can also happen with creators writing in subtext the studio doesn’t want put in there, but it slips past as long as it stays subtext. Probably more common in the past than today.
It has a similar effect though, since the tension is there, but it can never be openly acknowledged.
I like seeing this more quiet side of Daisy! Would love to see more of her around people she’s not thirsting for.
Daisy might be my favourite minor character, and that she has more depth than just her central gimmick is a big part of that.
If Joyce doesn’t get the job, I’ll bet Daisy encourages her to self-publish as a webcomic. (If only so she gets more Julia and Doris comics.)
My JoJo shipping senses that let me write giant piles of words based on how minute instances of dialogue from the characters indicate that they are in love and already married has, appropriately, evolved into a Stand named Come Sail Away, allowing me to take any seeming crumb I can and to run wild with it.
There, on panel 2! Zoom! Enhance!
Captain Julia Gray’s love interest who isn’t Lord Jakkar, Space Vampire, was established as existing when Walky showed Lucy a doodle from last semester where Julia Gray has to assassinate him under the orders of President Doris, but it’s fine because he comes back as a werewolf.
On one hand you can make a pretty convincing case that this is Ethan’s insert into the Saga of Captain Julia Gray (henceforth referred to as Graysonas). Ethan is, actually, the guy Joyce thought she was gonna marry and then boy did she did not. To Joyce that’s actually being a red herring, and wack’d made a good observation on Patreon that Julia needing to kill him because an authority figure told her so is a pretty apt metaphor for how Joyce treated him for his sexuality.
But that gets in the way of the narrative I’m trying to impose, so let’s move on.
Whoever this guy is, his presence is one that Joyce can not only shamelessly declare a romantic red herring for the true OTP down the line, it’s one where hearing someone talk about romantic chemistry in her comic lead Joyce to naturally assume she means that guy, in that Joyce has intentionally written his interactions with Julia Gray in such a manner that they are meant to be coded romantic.
There are currently three men in Joyce’s orbit. One is Jacob, who has been out of it for a while on the grounds of Joyce’s sitcom shenanigans. Another is Walky, and lol no. That leaves one man whose dump truck ass Joyce has observed and, in writing this, I suddenly remembered he was the very first guy Joyce was convinced she was going to marry.
Y’all, I’m calling it. Joyce wrote Joe’s Graysona as Julia Gray’s werewolf boyfriend.
Who is Joe to Joyce? Well he’s someone who was supposed to be her future husband and then a whole date later made them hate each other’s guts for years before Joyce relied on him in a pinch, learned he was actually good all along, and ever since Joe has yo-yo’d from Good to A Jerk because he won’t outright stay good for long periods of time and whatever kindness he offers Joyce will eventually go away as he backslides into that version of him Joyce hates. Which is to say that whatever Joyce and Joe think of each other, it won’t last, ever, and Joyce can’t really trust the words that come out of his mouth as much as she’d probably like to, and that would manifest here in the Saga of Captain Julia Gray as a guy who’s not right for Julia, who’s just a red herring, and Julia’s gonna find her real partner soon enough.
Also, there’s the pretty overt meta narrative of paranormal romance and sexual repression, and by overt I mean Lord Jakkar, Space Vampire’s appearance in a Patreon bonus strip had him in a pitched gun battle side by side with Captain Julia Gray noting he had to protect her from his heaving flesh. Part one is Twilight, in that Joyce is enough of a connoisseur of true art to know that if one of her boyfriends is a vampire, the other is a werewolf.
The other thing I think is a bit more relevant is that werewolves are ordinary people who, like clockwork, become violent, destructive, uncontrollable animals, and there’s not a fun way to spin that as Joyce’s actual views on sex and, more specifically to her relationship with Joe, that thing that constantly, inevitably ruins his sincerity towards her.
And Joyce, currently, experienced a degree of sexual guilt watching his and Roz’s porno tape and it strikes me as the kind of thing Joyce would do when writing about her sexual hangups by externalizing them onto someone else. It would track with President Doris’ funny character flaw of being an immoral lust machine, since said immoral lust isn’t something Joyce has to think about in her direction.
In closing I really hope that the publication of the Saga of Captain Julia Gray leads to in-universe characters bickering over how Julia is clearly love with Jonah Rosethorn, Prince of the Werewolves, while their friend argues in favour of Lord Jakkar, Space Vampire, and also I just spent an hour writing about a fictional character’s fictional characters and what her moving them around the board represents for herself and which other fictional character she will smooch, and I need to make it as abundantly clear as possible that I feel no shame or remorse for doing so, I just wish I knew how to challenge this into writing a book or something.
Okay actually seeing all nine paragraphs of this I feel a little shame.
Just a bit.
Write a fucking book, Spencer, for Christ’s sake. The wordcount is clearly not the problem it used to be.
Please don’t feel shame. This was great analysis and I really enjoyed reading it.
seconded
ooh yeah that was pretty good!
yeah werewolves are a really interesting archetype, and let me heartily recommend this amazing 2017 Brazilian film called “Good Manners” which gets primo mileage out of the werewolf symbolism.
I am starting to look forward to your walls of text.
Please don’t feel ashamed, I love reading this kind of in-depth post! And I can personally go on for hours about character motivations for fucking Sonic characters, of all things, so I think you’re in good company here. 😎
Plus you raise a some good points about werewolves (the LUST WOLVES, am I right?)
Yeah but I’ve gotten to the point where i can not only go on about the character motivations of Sonic characters and why Sonic Adventure 2 had good writing or why Sonic and the Secret Rings has the most metal ending of all time, I can also go on about character motivations from the Sonic comics and, specifically, pinpoint exactly which of the three continuities I like most and why.
(it’s Archie Reboot, btdubs)
I just didn’t know I could go in like this on anything. I hadn’t been capable of it in I honestly have no idea.I might never have been until now.
The adderall is making me fire neurons I didn’t even know existed.
I can do you one better. I could make arguments for why Sonic BATTLE has the best characterizations in the series and why Sonic Heroes is an underrated gem.
Ooo I bought Sonic Battle a while ago and still haven’t gotten around to actually playing it. Love the detailed sprites though, and from what I know of the writing, I think I’d agree it has excellent characterization. 😀
Sonic Battle was indeed a good time.
I like that Gemerl became a recurring character in the comics so now he’s this stoic killdroid weapon of mass destruction from a dead civilization that was made even more powerful, but he’s best friends with a tiny rabbit girl and so spends his days baking cookies and having tea parties with her.
OH MAN yes that’s the kind of deep dive I meant! And you had me at Sonic Adventure 2 being good, TBH. 😎 I love Shadow SO MUCH and love when he’s treated like an actual character with actual motivation and trauma and djslslfjgg okay I’ll stop before I write an essay on something entirely unrelated!
(My personal hill to die on is that the Japanese dub of Sonic X is Good Actually™️. A lot of people hate it but only saw the English dub which just, like, isn’t the same experience.)
But no, anyway, I love when people make these kinds of posts about fandoms! It’s awesome!
Is it about IDW Shadow
Because I know he’s kind of a punching bag in the comics lately with the whole “he’s just Vegeta now, get over it” thing foisted onto the only piece of media that actually features him, but Evan Stanley milked that characterization for all its worth in Chao Races.
It’s an obvious misstep right now but I think Flynn can write a good character out of Evan’s take, but right now he seems too burnt out on the idea of giving Shadow any focus with how scrutinized the character is from every angle. Shadow being a guy who can mouth off to Sonic and back it up is good, I actually think that’s something he should always have.
I genuinely feel bad for Ian Flynn re: Shadow. We know he likes writing Shadow with emotions, and he’s clearly exhausted by the push and pull between what Sega wants and the fandom.
Same. It’s gotta be a rough spot to be in, as someone who knows these characters extremely well and is clearly invested. He can’t really win right now either way. :C
Nah. Well, not 100%. I’m actually okay with IDW Shadow – less okay than I was, now that I know someone higher up than Ian Flynn has told him to write Shadow as less nuanced, but he still seems in character enough. And Evan Stanley did an excellent job with the hand the IDW team’s been dealt, I agree!
I was more talking about English dubs like Team Sonic Racing reducing Shadow to a one-note character, as well as people in the fandom. A lot of people LEGIT seem to think Shadow is just ~edgy~ which is… sure. He can be a little pissbaby edgelord sometimes, that’s part of him. But it’s not all of him.
……sorry for my off-topic ramblings haha. We just happened to hit on my favorite topic, like, ever. |D
There’s a reason why some days I’m hyper-engaged here and some days I go ‘no, no, I actually have to do other things today, no comments for you, self.’ But also, this is EXCELLENT and I could see this being the case about Werewolf Other Guy. Thank you, I love it.
can’t wait to see the comments for Tomorrow’s strip haha.
Using my psychic witch powers, I deduce that a massive quantity of pumpernickel will be involved.
Zombie Mike will return???
If it remains mostly comedic, we will (hopefully) avoid exceeding the safe levels of discourse.
If we exceed the safe levels of discourse, we can always send the excess to that course.
Keeping my fingers crossed that Joyce will get the job.
and my, rooting for her discovering she is bi
Joyce, flustered and flushing; obviously having more complicated feelings than she would have if she just thought Daisy misinterpreted her writing.
You heard it here first, folks. Joyce and Dorothy OTP by the end of DoA or it was all queerbaiting!
Daisy, I’m rooting for Joyce’s comic, but don’t you dare offer her the job before the deadline is up. That’s not fair. Joyce can wait until the end of the day or even the next day.
I’m taking this as a win 💜💙💜 BI JOYCE 💜💙💜
She’ll be fine until the ukulele album she commissions from Danny ends up featuring a love song.
I’ll be interested in how someone pointing out the queer subtext affects how Joyce and Dorothy interact. If there’s a strip in the school paper featuring females developing a relationship, won’t people start to notice Joyce and Dorothy hanging out? And the Joyce / Dorothy nonship echoes the Becky /Joyce nonship.
It must be weird writing real people fic where everyone looks at the stand-ins for you and your close friend an d goes “y’all they’re deadass in love.”
> It must be weird writing real people fic
Let me stop you there.
Okay look writing the Ted Cruz Isekai* is inherently weird but I meant stuff where characters are blatant stand-ins for yourself and your friends and then the audience reacts to them in ways you never expected and don’t reflect what you think your relationship is like.
*I ummed and erred on unleashing this terrible phrase until I realized Mary has probably made a Ted Cruz Isekai.
Forgive me, I’m new to this genre. Does this mean someone woke up and they are now Ted Cruz?
No that’s Reincarnation, which is a frequent recipe component for Isekai.
So if Ted Cruz got hit by a truck and ended up in a fantasy world with a harem of submissive waifus, that’s Isekai.
If someone woke up one morning and discovered they were now Ted Cruz, that’s Reincarnation.
And if someone from another world dies and reincarnates as Ted Cruz, or if someone from Earth dies and reincarnates as Ted Cruz in another world, then that’s Reincarnation Isekai.
Isekai (a distinction is purposely being made between them and Portal Fantasy, the actual genre about going a relatable hero being teleported to land of magic and mystery) is about some loser nerd getting freed from his real world responsibilities and failures and wakes up in a world that runs on Dragon Quest rules where his obsession with nerd media now makes him the most important human being who ever live, and also he just has straight up cheat codes too.
All of them are bad so just watch the one about the girl who dies, ends up in her favourite dating sim, and then realizes to her horror that she reincarnated as a minor villain who dies in every route and must now radically change her character’s personality and goals and derail the entire plot so she doesn’t get killed, accidentally making everyone around her fall in love with her.
Umm, which one, that is an entire sub genre of Isekai.
there”s more of them???
I never watched it myself, I meant My Next Life As A Villainness, I think it’s called.
I stopped at Ted Cruz getting hit by a truck and being some other universe’s problem. I’m on board.
I got just a little further, and then I read what looked like “submissive walrus” and my brain went “???” SPROING
You realize that Ted Cruz Isekai is an irrecoverable conversation derailer
I suspect that may have been the intention.
There’s a reason why a lot of writers go a bit more remixed with major characters’ traits where they can and save the really recognizable adaptations of people they know for bit roles and petty grudges. There’s always exceptions, especially with younger writers, and ultimately all your characters are in some way a reflection of you, but having seen reactions of that type to the ‘characters heavily based off you and a friend are considered romantic’ phenomenon… yeah it is apparently VERY awkward.
People have been commenting on Joyce’s girlcrush on Dorothy since they became friends. Hasn’t stopped her yet.
Daisy in the fourth frame: “Aw, this child isn’t out to herself.”
All this discussion of queerbaiting/queer subtext/etc. is reminding me of when my 11th grade English teacher had the class watch Bend It Like Beckham, and other kids kept turning in their seats to look at me, the only openly queer student in the class.
oh yeah, that movie i watched and instantly remembered as having this queer romance in it xD
Either the RSS feed is finally acting right, or the hiccups are in sync with the calendar.
I actually would love for one of the stories to be that Joyce is told by her editor she wants the characters to bang or the strip is cancelled. That would be an interesting lesson about losing creative control.
I also see it as entirely possible.
“YOU OWE IT TO YOUR FANS!”
“I do!?”
Does Slipshine exist in the Dumbiverse?
Walk the walk, Joyce!
Run the run, Walky!
The implication of this comic is that Danny and Joe should have gotten together in Roomies, right? Since Joyce is the Willis stand-in here and Dorothy is the Joe replacement in her Roomies! expy?
fuck yes, gravatar and comment synergy
lol