Final Fantasy is absolutely a good topic. If you don’t know what a BluMagee is, I recommend looking into ’em. It’s like Mega Man except as a fabulously dressed wizard.
Speaking of creatures and powers and games, Halloween is a little over a month away, and I could use all the help I can get in making the DoA game I have planned!
That’s truly a mood, but I like keeping up on Ana’s commentary, so I gotta scroll down to that at least. It’s like alternative alt text for me at this point
And I guess Booster reads pretty fast if they were able to give feedback from reading a story less than 10 minutes old. I wonder how many words Amber pushes out in the time it takes to scrub a memory card?
It’s not just the time to scrub a memory card, but also find and cleanse the online backup. Depending on how sophisticated Booster’s service’s security is, and how zealously Amber opted to go after the additional copies Booster made of it in the meantime, I could imagine this fan fiction may have even made it up to a few thousand words.
That remains to be seen. I haven’t read her work. I do know from the briefest of snippets that she’s a fan of meat based innuendo like “marinate” and “sirloin”. That’s amateur hour smut writing to me.
Now I’m curious what sort of prose you (and possibly others) prefer from your smut. Personally, I’m fond of excessive simile and irreverent/casual descriptions of dirty deeds. A conversational tone helps take away some of the “mystique”, if that makes sense.
I… don’t think ‘straight’ is the correct explanation here.
Also, I think it’s very simple not to want to date Booster for basically admitting they’re attracted to messed up people and also kinda wanting to photograph you all day.
I have no idea if this is an accurate read but I feel like somehow Amber would actually be into them more due to that interaction. Would feed her “I hate myself and must be punished/don’t deserve good things” complex to be with someone she knows is specifically attracted to messed up people.
Whether that would be *healthy* is a whole other story. But considering her last relationship was with the twin of her “nemesis”… and who knows, maybe a psych major would be a good match for someone with as many mental demons as Amber has. Booster is pretty…blunt, straightforward, and analytical and that can actually be a helpful balance for a partner who tends to spiral.
And Amber at least seems willing to call Booster out on their occasionally problematic behavior and probably finds their analysis of her mental state less bothersome than a lot of people would since she’s very very aware she has issues and probably thinks worse of herself than Booster would of her, so anything they say wouldn’t exactly wound her.
Booster might be unique in being able to understand the dualness that is Amber beyond just a clinical/observation basis too. Anecdotally, self-affirmation of genderfluidity seems to come about after experimenting with both “classic western” societal norms and expectations of gender roles, so Booster might have felt a little split in two as well. Plus, he is naturally adept at accepting people’s pronouns and most likely wouldn’t make a big deal of which side is presenting.
Ah, I see! It’s a very popular anime/manga series that’s really good. Specifically, the second part’s main character Joseph has a tendency to predict the next thing the guy he’s fighting will say, and then they’ll say it and then they’ll make a shocked face/noise.
You’ll have to excuse any typos or spelling errors, trees are having wild sex in my neighborhood and I’m in the splash radius, which means I can’t see well and having to depend on touch typing on my laptop. I don’t see any red squiggles under any words so maybe I got it right.
Trees can’t have sex!! They’re members of the kingdom Plantae which encompasses all plants, and reproduce through pollen coming in contact with the stigma of another plant.
Does “straight” still apply to nonbinary folks? Like, if I dated a self-declared straight woman before she Knew The Truth, would she potentially need to consider reclassifying herself?
Yeah, I was thinking it needs another axis for the person’s own gender ID maybe, but that still excludes people who are ace.
In general it’s a tough thing to map on a chart/scale and actually cover the full spectrum of variations. In terms of identity there’s the person’s sex, gender identity, and gender presentation. And in terms of attraction you have to factor in degree of attraction, gender(s) a person is attracted to, AND gender presentation (the spectrum of “feminine – androgynous – masculine” traits, which also may vary by culture and even time period).
Nonbinary/genderfluid AFAB here, married to a Kinsey-zero straight fellow, whom I was dating before I knew. He didn’t stop being straight, even though he ended up with a spouse rather than a wife. Basically I’m femme-y enough to trick his very binary lizard-brain, while his human brain respects my identity. Works for us.
Words and scales are useful to quickly express ideas to ourselves and others.
We know they’re broad brush strokes, and that probably nobody will completely fit the category.
Can you think of any situations where it’s nice to have a real quick way of saying / searching for a particular broad brushstroke of gender or sexuality?
@Leorale: yup that is my scenario with my spouse as well.
@Cal: as far as trying to completely define/map this stuff, I agree. A scale does not adequately capture the complexity. Gender and sexuality are straightforward for some but confusing and complex for others. But yeah like Leorale said, I feel like they have a use in very specific scenarios/conversations just as models to convey certain specific ideas easily and quickly, even if they wouldn’t necessarily work for everyone and every scenario.
And our brains just love categorization. Seems to be a key way they work, considering how often we try to label/categorize things that don’t necessarily actually fit into clear, distinct, separate boxes: sexuality and gender obvs, also another good example is the idea of a species. Species are boxes/labels we made up for our own convenience because our brain needs them for communication and understanding, despite the fact that it’s an oversimplified and not entirely accurate way of looking at biodiversity (life/evolution is a long branching spectrum that doesn’t actually have distinct borders and that becomes obvious when studying it in depth, but in casual conversation it is still helpful to be able to say “this is a dog, this is a wolf, this is a coyote.”
Yeah, sexuality (and gender) are complicated. And less clear cut for some than others. Labels are an attempt to make sense of it all but they have their own limits and, as Danny is an excellent example of, they can drift or people can have new realizations over time. And for some people, actual gender is less important.
It’s also helpful to remember that in addition to sex, gender, and sexuality all being separate, gender *presentation* is not necessarily linked with gender identity. Booster is nb identity-wise, but presentation-wise they lean a bit more masculine-androgynous with more subtle feminine traits.
I don’t see Amber being attracted to a woman or a NB person who presents more hyper feminine, but being attracted to Booster doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility, regardless of their gender, IF Amber’s attraction is based more on presentation than gender itself. Or not, entirely depends on what Willis wants to do obviously, lol.
I’m bi but more often attracted to masculine or androgynous gender presentation than very feminine so it’s possible that’s clouding my reading of this, and I can’t remember if she stated it explicitly, but I got the impression Amber at least considers Booster to be someone who is physically attractive. If I were in this cartoon world I certainly would. 😉
Oh, I see, you mean if you were dating a straight woman and then later she found out you weren’t a fellow after all? She wouldn’t have to reclassify herself unless she wanted to; she thought you were a man, and her brain treated you accordingly.
If she found out you were nonbinary and was like “ooh, hawt”, then the Kinsey scale may no longer contain her might.
Thousands of years ago when the planet was just a frozen waste…I didn’t fully read the thread so I think misunderstood the fourm but I am going to conclude that what was stated above that the ” kinsey scale exists and that attraction doesn’t always follow the rules”
I started dating my now-spouse when we were teens. At the time I thought of myself as a cisfemale, but now I identify as non-binary. He still considers himself a straight ally rather than queer, because I’m cispassing, so he suffers no privilege loss by being married to me. In the future, if I go through with some gender affirming surgery, he may reevaluate his decision to identify as straight.
I know at least 1 nonbinary person who would consider it misgendering for someone to state that they’re attracted to my nonbinary friend while identifying as straight(or gay). They’re not a guy or a girl, so if you’re attracted to my friend, you’re not attracted to only one gender.
I wonder how much of that requires prior knowledge. Without being Informed, I think we could argue that a woman would still be straight if she thought I was hot, but might not be if I told her my pronouns and she accepted that information. Like Nono said, it’s a loose definition anyhow, but your friend still has an interesting (and valid!) viewpoint.
I think what’s important isn’t so much whether “straight” is a label with a strict and unyielding definition–such things are simply antithetical to how queerness works–so much as whether Booster would be comfortable dating someone who identified as straight. They’ve already thrown a little shade on the idea that a gay man might be interested in them, and I suspect Booster wouldn’t be interested in a relationship where their partner identifies in such a way that might imply that Booster is a man (or near enough.)
like, three people get to be in overtly identity-affirming relationships. The rest of us fuckers hafta get our affirmations from sources other than the once-over impressions of randos.
Got cold shouldered out of a queer convention meetup cos my partner and I, both queer, looked too straight. so.
I don’t think Booster’s concern is that random passerbys might assume that they’re a dude. Like, if you’re non-binary, passive misgendering just comes with the territory. No, I think the concern is that they don’t wanna be in a relationship where they’ll worry their partner, who is usually dude-inclined, sees them as “close enough.”
It would really depend on the person I think, and their particular relationship with their gender. For some nb people, being seen as androgynous is important. For others, it’s not. For some, being nb is about feeling somewhere in “the middle” of the male to female spectrum. For others, it’s a feeling of being a distinct, 3rd gender. But for some, it’s just a lack of clear gender identity or attachment to a gender identity: Malaya expressed some feelings like this earlier in the comic if I recall, with her “I dunno how to argue with all of this” strip and her “she/they/whatever” line in another strip. Another good example would be Jim from OFMD. When asked if they’re a woman they did not reply with a clear “no” but more of a noncommittal “I guess, I dunno” indicating gender just wasn’t something that registers for them.
Someone who falls into that 3rd category (speaking from personal experience here) may not necessarily care how they’re perceived and may not have an issue with someone who is typically only attracted to 1 gender being attracted to them on the basis that their gender presentation aligns closely enough with that person’s orientation.
But for someone in one of the first 2 groups I mentioned above, it probably matters more and in those cases I can see the idea of someone who is exclusively attracted to one gender being uncomfortable/dysphoric.
I’d guess Booster probably falls into one of the first 2, considering they specifically use “they/them” pronouns. So I suppose it might be possible they would not be okay with a straight woman being attracted to them unless it comes with her realizing she is actually bi.
It’s notable that there was some pushback on the idea that Booster isn’t masc in the comments, seeming entirely rooted in the fact that Booster has kind of a boxy build, short hair, and dorms with a dude. It would be wild to assume Booster isn’t aware of how they’re gendered by others–achem. So my read of it is that Booster does not want to be perceived as masc-presenting, and part of that is not wanting to date people who’re theoretically solely into men. Framing it as something Ethan might not be into is just them not wanting the experience of finding out whether Ethan is into it.
Granted, that’s speculation on my part, and we’ll see how this plays out.
No I agree that is a totally plausible, and very likely accurate read of the situation based on how Booster has replied to stuff before.
I was just speaking generally about the topic. But agree that in my above examples it seems less likely that Booster falls into category 3 (indifferent about how their gender is perceived) and therefore much more likely to be bothered by someone being attracted to them if that person is attracted to strictly one gender.
I know folks like that, too. IMO how we experience attraction is just as personal as gender and the language we use to describe that experience is our own. It doesn’t have to be strict, and historically the meaning of orientation categories has changed a lot and will continue to, just like how we experience attraction can change at different points in our life regardless of how we generally see ourselves.
I’m nonbinary and queer lesbian. I’m still a lesbian when I get turned on by cross dressers or trans men or when I have sex with men because I’m primarily 99% of the time attracted to women and femininity and only want to be in relationships with people who have traits closely associated with femininity. I’m not attracted to men as a gender. I also call myself vegan, even though I’ll eat and drink animal products when I visit friends’ farms because it’s ethically sourced because it doesn’t sit right with me to tell people I’m vegetarian but won’t eat /their/ non-vegan food.
Huh. To me, “straight woman” implies “only attracted to men” rather than “not attracted to women,” which I infer is your operating definition. This is an interesting difference in definition.
That said, my husband is straight and still married me after I came out as nonbinary, so…. Yeah, binary categories get weird around nonbinary people.
Congrats. I actually feel queasy now. Probably going to skip breakfast.
(Not actually upset about that, I skip breakfast most days anyway. And I already wasn’t having a good stomach morning. But yeah, my imagination took some of the possible flavor combinations there and said ‘nope’, and my stomach agreed.)
They’re pretty perceptive and the dialogue here makes me think yes? Like they seem to even have the full “twin of nemesis” backstory somehow. I can’t remember if we ever saw the, receive that info in comic or if we’re supposed to assume Walky or Amber or just general dorm gossip shared it at some point off-panel.
Or Booster’s real secret is they’re not a psych major, they’re psychIC. XD
(And now I have typed “psych” so many times that it has lost all meaning to me and looks utterly bizarre…)
At first they were kinda bland IMO. Their initial personality was just “analyzes people like Mike did, but isn’t a massive dick,” essentially making them “Mike but without Mike’s main personality trait.” Now we’re starting to see more of what makes Booster, specifically, tick.
I still feel like they’re basically a replacement Mike, but they’re able to be a little less one note than Mike because his character was so tied to that cartoonishly cruel bully angle. I think I’ve got a better handle on how they fit into the cast now
I still feels to me that they’re fairly one note. But it’s a rather different note. Maybe it’s actually a chord and it just sounds to me like it’s just one note? I’m not very musically inclined.
Mike cultivated an atmosphere of jerkishness even when he was being helpful, and whether that help was deliberate was up for debate basically until the day he died. Booster on the other hand is actively and openly trying to be helpful, but coming off as a jerk in the process.
I knew a Mike and a Booster in high school and they were both insufferable, but had weirdly good chemistry with each other.
“I knew a Mike and a Booster in high school and they were both insufferable, but had weirdly good chemistry with each other.”
Man now I wish Mike had lived. You can still remove him from the main cast because he has to recover (physical therapy, regular therapy, probably other medical shit), but then he could pop in for a visit and meet Booster and I just really really want to see what that would be like.
I wouldn’t mind anyone I know reading my fics, but a) I don’t – can’t, really – write smut; and b) nobody wants to read them anyway, because most of them are about my Star Trek Online characters.
This is a pretty common thread in the comments, but I feel like for some reason Amber’s fics are probably really easy to find? I remember Joyce started writing fics after reading some of Amber’s, and this was after Amber informed her of them. I don’t remember if Amber told her where to find them but I get the impression that it probably isnt hard for those around her to do so.
I’ve only let one person I know IRL ever read my fanfiction, and it was one of my best friends, with VERY similar interests, who basically gave me live reviews and critique. If she wanted to now I would probably still let her, and maaaaybe my husband, but no one else.
I definitely turned in fanfic for English class assignments on at least 2 separate occasions. >.>
Not smutfic though. Either light and silly or serious and philosophical stuff. I just discovered by senior year that English assignments were WAY more fun if I managed to find a way to write them as Stargate fic or something.
Amber has said that she thinks everyone should kiss. I think that her finding someone physically attractive and wanting to ship them with herself or others is kinda different from her being actively interested in a relationship with them.
That’s a really interesting and useful distinction actually. Shipping is different from feelings of how relationships work irl, and they intersect in ways that are complicated
I feel like 90% of shipping arguments these days come from a weird evolution of shipping’s definition from “it’d be fun to watch these characters date/fuck” to “these characters dating/fucking would be good and healthy for them.”
Thiiiiis omg yes. I love so many messy problematic ships.
IRL I am in a very healthy relationship and if I saw a friend pursuing the kind of relationship I often ship in fiction, I would be deeply concerned for them and I’d very much encourage them to NOT continue that pursuit.
Way too often these days I feel like a lot of people have trouble with that distinction: that enjoying something in fiction is NOT the same as condoning it IRL.
In the same sense that a little girl wanting to dress up as the Evil Queen from Snow White does not, in fact, mean she actually wants to go around giving people poisoned apples or somehow thinks that is an admirable thing to do.
Mind you, the old shipping arguments were equally obnoxious, and usually more overtly misogynistic and homophobic (yes, even the ones about slash pairings written and read by people who liked slash…top/bottom discourse persists even to this day and it is nuts). Just terrible in different ways!
Am I wrong to think that coming out gave Booster the impression that they had an extra layer of insulation from criticism for this sort of behavior, and they set about, consciously or not, exploiting it beyond all semblance of reason?
Hahahaha. You’re saying that like trans people aren’t seen as predators in nearly every scenario they’re open about sexuality. I mean, I still fall into the “Booster is prone to creepiness” camp, but there’s nothing to exploit, especially if they’re transfeminine.
All the world’s a stage, and that stage has many audiences. I expect Booster is very, very aware that there are those for whom their sleaziness will be amplified, but that, except for Mary and Peter, the college-age cast are the opposite.
I know queer people who’re like this but it’s definitely not because they think they’re insulated from criticism–on the contrary, it usually seems to come from a place of “I’m gonna be ostracized no matter what, Frank Sinatra motherfuckers”
To me it reads like fairly standard “I learned about psych profiling recently and am very into it and proud of my skills in it” college-age arrogance and lack of self-awareness.
A LOT of people go through this stage and it has nothing to do with their gender and everything to do with being at an age where you are getting to experience independence for the first time and feel like an adult, and feel like you’ve learned a lot, but your prefrontal cortex is not finished cooking and you have also not been humbled by the more serious pressures and consequences of this sort of behavior in adulthood yet.
Tl;dr this is not uncommon behavior for someone in that age group with an analytical personality and interest in psychology.
Also, apologies to any college-aged people reading this, I am truly not trying to be condescending. I’m speaking from personal experience. I too went through a similar phase and I cringe thinking back on it, but it doesn’t make someone a “bad person” it just makes them a person who is still learning!
Also, while this bit may feel especially sensitive to college freshmen, it smacks fairly strongly of the “a little knowledge” thing and a lack of experience.
To be more clear about that, yes, these people are significantly more experienced than they were a year ago. But in ten years time, they’ll be much more experienced than they are now. They’ve learned a small portion of the curriculum for their major. If it were possible to learn it all in a single semester, we wouldn’t go to college for four years or more to learn it. Their field is much more complicated than they currently understand.
It *feels* like it covers the base cases very well, because they teach the more generally applicable stuff. But there’s all kinds of edge cases that Booster isn’t even aware of yet, and if they were aware of them, they’d be using a lot more caution than they are. If they weren’t an asshole, they’d still be cautious about them, just because they realized that it’s a complicated major that people generally study for more than 4 years before they get the degree they’ll use professionally and they’ve only been at it for a few months so there’s bound to be a lot they don’t get.
But they *are* an asshole, and arrogant because they’re probably used to being one of the smartest kids in the class, so they’re like this.
I’d agree, they’re not a bad person. They mean well, they’re trying to be helpful. But they’re still an asshole and will probably get called out on it more times before this is all over.
Exactly. College creates this weird environment where you feel like you’re approaching the end of your education, and have reached the final rungs of the knowledge ladder. You feel like you’ve been suddenly exposed to all this wonderful new info but still lack the awareness and experience to realize just how much you still don’t know.
And like you said, many who had a career/major decided early on probably entered college as the best (or at least one of the best) at that field in their high school class (often due to being one of the only people actually invested in. the subject at all, unlike one of dozens once they enter the major at college) and their identities at that point are heavily built around the idea of their major/future career
Considering how easily Booster read the room at the floor meeting, they probably figured it out.
They seem to have expertise in Insight, which doubles their proficiency bonus.
I expect their passive insight to be at least 17.
Yeah, in some ways this isn’t that far from what she’s done and how she tends to think about people. In her head. Ofc she usually isn’t putting that on them irl… Much….
“They” honest mistake but Booster prefers they/them. Important to not misgender. Not a big deal for a fictional character but best to inform the mistake.
i mean i assume most of it is unintentional but at least there aren’t multiple comments sections/discussions like reddit, they could literally wear a pin that says “they/them” and still get misgendered in some spaces
I do find myself checking lists for pronouns here or there when reading webcomics, if something’s got a large enough cast that I can’t remember all of the individual characters. I assume most people who read Dumbing of Age don’t do it on purpose (the assholes seem to make themselves *very* visible)
Yeah even though Booster is fictional and therefore not an entity with feelings that can be harmed in any way, I’m sure the misgendering jumps out to any nb fans reading the comments as a reminder of their own experiences/frustrations. So I think the corrections are important, even for fictional characters.
Plus it’s just good practice, helps people get into the habit of not misgendering for when a real person is actually involved.
I fully agree, even if I took the ‘it doesn’t matter, they’re fictional’ side (which I don’t), I know other people who can be affected by it are reading the comments
Look, if I could write well enough to write my own slash fic, I would. Damnit. I’m not here to cast stones, I’m just saying we could all use a little help.
As a fanfic author myself, I’d forgive anything if you left a good comment along with kudos.
Of course, I’d also have to delete my entire internet presence and run away to Bulmeria if someone I *knew* read my work and wanted to talk about it IRL…
Last night, someone left a multi-paragraph comment linking the latest chapter of my epic canon divergence AU WIP to the larger themes of both the story itself as well as those of the original work and praising my characterizations, and if I was on a jury, I would vote to acquit that person of first degree murder even if there was video evidence of them stabbing that poor gas store clerk fifteen times before they robbed the till and picked up a bag of jalapeño chips on the way out the door. (Obviously, I should have been struck during the jury selection process, but I bet the lawyers don’t know to ask “Has the accused ever left feedback on any of your works on Archive of Our Own?” so I’d probably slide through.)
well teasing with/about walky is overstepping boundaries but her fanfic is public, though other than her friend circle i’m surprised she’d let anyone know that /not as closely guarded as her amazigirl secret
To be fair, it’s being creepy on someone that sought to have them be creepy at someone else.
This doesn’t make it right, it makes it a big old mess of complicated I can’t properly work through. I don’t know if you can, if you can, I wouldn’t be able to verify that you did it right. But I presume you’re an adult who doesn’t need my verification, so go about your business. Have a good appropriate timeperiod.
It doesn’t matter in what ways it came to an end good or bad, if she has more good memories than bad about it and if she’s can still have just an ounce of fondness of him then their time together was worth it.
That aside I’m surprised it took her that long to write something like that, not the speed in which she did but that she waited to this point.
So, I have a legitimate question. I’ve never noticed any indication Amber is anything other than heterosexual. Despite than, she gets into homosexual fanfics. It reminds me of The Kids are Alright, where the porn a lesbian couple liked to watch was gay male porn. Is this a real thing?
yeah, fujoshis to be exact. tho not sure how many ppl still call themselves that these days now that we have more and slightly better about gay rep/realistic relationships as opposed to a straight girl/guy drooling over gay guys/lesbians making out and such (i mean nothing wrong with enjoying smut in your own time but yeah there is a negative stigma about liking that)
Fujoshi is Japanese and while there is some crossover there into Western fandoms, via anime and manga, in my experience, the term is not widely self-applied by non-Japanese fans. Fujoshi is a subset of the phenomenon.
I actually have met a guy/guy fanfic writer who wasn’t a straight girl. I’ve actually met *two* of them.
One’s a lesbian. As far as I’m aware, she doesn’t write other pairings of fanfic, just the guy/guy stuff.
One’s a gay dude. And his guy/guy fanfics are atrocious according to everyone I know who has seen them. Which includes him. It also includes his sister, who’s a lesbian that writes guy/guy fanfic. He likes the stuff that she writes so much better he at least said he was giving up writing his own stuff, but I’ve heard from his sister that he does still vomit out something every now and then.
What I found a bit odd about all of that is that he’s a professional writer. He can write very well, so long as he’s not interested in the wrong way apparently. Not to say that there’s something wrong about being interested in that stuff, just that his interest interferes with him actually managing to write what he wants to.
She doesn’t write stories for work, for the most part. The writing she does for work is all about what was done, what will be done, what should be done, or figuring out what should be done. One of those sounds a bit like a story, but it’s all in a business environment which takes all of the juice out. Given the field she’s in, I highly doubt that she’s taking that juice and using it in her own fanfics. I mean, supposedly they’re pretty good. Even her brother likes them.
I think “vast majority” is kind of a wild overstatement, especially given that (despite how much AO3 wants you to think it’s the only place anyone posts fic anymore) fanfic is pretty tricky to quantify with hard numbers. If nothing else the perception that this is the case has a tendency to delegitimize actual queer people in fandom.
Yeah tbh a lot of the people I know who write m/m fanfic are in fact nb people, lesbians, and bi women. *shrug* One of the most fervent Kirk/Spock shippers I know is 100% attracted to women and only women.
I have no idea what the actual ratio of various author types would be but just from my personal, anecdotal observations of demographics (at least in recent years), “vast majority” does seem to be an overstatement.
It *seemed* like more straight cis women in the space when I was younger back in the early 00s, but a LOT of those fic writers later came out as trans, nb, bi, etc. So there definitely seems to be a subset of fic writers/shippers for whom it’s a way to explore the complexities of their own identity.
Come to think of it, there just seem to be fewer cis men (straight, bi, or gay) in shipping fandom in general, regardless of the pairings involved. I dunno if that’s an accurate observation but it’s just what it seems like to me, and if it is accurate, I wonder why that is?
As an artist, I know a pretty even mix of genders in art/fandom circles, but not nearly as many of the cis men I know draw ship art or write fic of any kind.
I know as a cis guy who touches on a lot of fandom stuff, I’ve never felt involved with shipping culture all that much. I’ve had characters I absolutely think should smooch, and tend to prefer reading fanfics with certain pairings (though I don’t read all that much fanfic these days just in general). But I think there’s absolutely a sense that shipping is something that a lot of male-identifying folks in fandom don’t want to get involved in. A lot of that can be traced to stereotypes of what “shippers” are like (and many of those stereotypes are pretty strongly gendered) and a feeling of it being “unmanly”, I think.
To draw an example from the comic, Walky is pretty deep into fandom, but I think his stereotypical ideas of masculinity would prevent him from being involved in shipping discourse.
Fifteen years ago, I would have confidently said that online fandom—the parts that write most of the fanfic and almost all of the slash, the folks who once congregated on LiveJournal and now congregate on Tumblr, and who took a pause to create Archive of Our Own in-between—were overwhelmingly straight women.
These days, I’d just say they’re overwhelmingly not cis men, and there is a very healthy mix of trans and NB and lesbian and bi and pansexual and ace folks in fandom (and yes, many of them writing m/m slash) most of whom were probably always there, but not always out, in some cases not even to themselves. There’s more awareness and acceptance of non-straight, non-cis identities in that part of fandom, now. Thankfully.
It very much is. Turn ons don’t always have logical sense. Though guys sometimes try to force fantasy logic into real life, but in real life, lesbians don’t wanna screw guys or care what guys think of them. And gay men don’t appreciate girls getting up in their business asking if they top or bottom.
*They.
As in, while I want Booster to examine their tendency to enjoy/objectify people’s issues, they have a lot of time to grow up before they’ll be put in a position to help patients/clients.
But how did he find the story? Doesn’t the younger generation now dislike stuff like AO3 because it’s not autocurating content for them, or at least so I hear?
(Or is that people younger than depicted in this comic that applies to?)
I don’t know about anyone hating AO3 because of that. In fact, an awful lot of people think that there is some kind of algorithm on AO3 because that’s what they’re used to.
There was a tweet recently about this were someone pointed out how common people use tags that are some variation of “I hope the algorithm is kind to my story” and one of the replies expressed sincere confusion over the idea that there was no algorithm.
*Anything* with computers has an algorithm. Computers basically run algorithms, that’s it really.
Youtube and Google gave ‘algorithm’ a bad rap, in that they basically use that term to say “we’re throwing it into an AI and seeing what comes out. No, we’ve no idea how it works, that’s what AIs are like these days. Nobody knows how they work.”
The real answer for how they work is that they’re statistical modelling algorithms. They’re trained to provide answers that keep people on the site as much as possible, rather than being trained at providing correct answers. How do you determine what the correct answer is, without being the user or asking the user? Surely you don’t think search engines should ask the user, right?
(Actually, I do. Most of the time I google stuff, I want to be able to click a link at the end of my session to say either “I didn’t actually find what I wanted but I’m giving up.” or “I didn’t find what I was looking for, but you gave me something close enough so I’m going with it.” Because honestly search engines in general are failing me these days. I don’t know if it’s that I’m that different from everybody else, the idea of trying to keep people on the search engine site actually means they’re selecting for wrong answers without realizing it, or there’s some other issue like the data expanding beyond even Google’s ability to manage. But whatever is the cause, search fails me a lot.)
Less “not autocurating” and more “doesn’t provide tools for moderating content they find objectionable*” and it’s not a purely generational thing but yeah.
(*Ranging from kinks they don’t like to X-rated fic about real life children not even aged up, but mostly about racism. The actual kerfuffle was started by black fans of various ages tired of widescale racism.)
Thus the emphasis on “moderating” rather than “curating”; trying to put a “this author is being a dipshit and breaking the rules” tag on a work isn’t super helpful to anyone.
That and it’s not even possible to tag someone else’s work, right? Even if it was helpful to tag racist works it would require the author themself to admit they were being super racist.
(And thank you for providing context because I am not in the loop on these things at all.)
When Joyce first introduced Amber to Booster at the start of the semester, she told them Amber wrote filthy stories and they asked her to shoot them a link.
To clarify for folks: There’s apparently some hubbub going around about teens migrating from AO3 to Wattpad and making heavy use of its algorithmic recommendations, and both sides getting all “kids these days”/”ok boomer” about it. Nothing worth really worrying about, honestly.
I can’t unsee this lmao, I love both characters and that comparison. I want to say Booster is more mature and less innocent than Yay, but I guess we’ll see
Me and my girlfriend were actually arguing tonight over whether Booster’s supposed to be “cool”. (She thinks they are, I think they try too hard.) I know nothing about fashion and so am glad to have an outside observer confirm Booster dresses well. (I mean, I like how they dress, but I also have absolutely no trust in my own judgement on the matter.)
People who talk like this have definitely seen that it isn’t considered cool.
I bet Booster just reads a lot, and they enjoy using precise words that they like, and haters gonna hate.
Often, really wordy people can’t remember which words are common knowledge vs. which words are rare to other people. (I don’t think that last one necessarily applies for Booster, who started off with “ne’er shall I err”, but it’s still worth remembering for other wordy people in your life.)
I want Amber and Walky to reconcile and subsequently fuck, but the problem is that Walky is the one who fucked up and I just can’t picture him having the maturity to try to make it up to her. Unfortunate.
Reconcile yes but I don’t think I dare to get my hopes up for anything more than that, lingering feelings or not. Also hey I wouldn’t underestimate Walky, maybe showing some maturity is a bit of moving mountains for him but you do get to see a miracle every now and again.
Going by the self sabotage that was the Dina attack, Amber thinks they are bad for each other/together (probably because of her violent reaction to his inability to deal with his emotions over Mike’s death), so she doesn’t think it’s all on Walky.
So reconciling isn’t impossible and I will forever hold out hope for the SS Garbage Skowl.
Warning: long, impromptu, rambling, over analytical comment about Walky’s romantic relationships incoming.
The short version is that A. he fell for Dorothy fast, followed her flow most of the time, and tried to better himself for her,
B. he fell for Amber slower, but got physical with her quickly, they accepted each other’s flaws, and were probably the best romantic relationship either objectively had for several distinct reasons I mention further down (that’s not the same as best romantic partner),
and C. Lucy seems a little bland, their relationship seems a little bland, and I worry that she is too supportive of him while ignoring his flaws while I worry that Walky doesn’t genuinely find her attractive (or worse). Further details below:
Walky has messed with/dated 3 people now.
He fell for Dorothy pretty much at first sight and didn’t really know how to process those feelings.
As his first (from what I remember) romantic relationship as well as sexual relationship, she more or less guided him as he generally went with the flow of what she wanted, and he tried to better himself for her.
He also told Amber that he wasn’t over Dorothy the night of the impromptu Garbage Roof gathering.
With Amber, Walky either didn’t have or didn’t notice his feelings for her at first, though he was still technically dealing with Dorothy when he threw a toy at Amber’s head.
But the very next day after officially breaking up with Dorothy, after tweeting back and forth, they were making out on Garbage Roof.
Consequently, Walky and Amber have been slower to develop feelings than Walky and Dorothy (at least on Walky’s part, and I remember Amber and Danny once expressing negativity about him in relation to Dorothy’s choices in men), but they’ve been quicker to become physical (though no confirmed sexual intercourse, just implied dry humping after Walky punched Asher) than the previous relationship.
In my opinion, their relationship was the best they’d had so far. Walky was much more active and dynamic in their relationship vs how generally passive he was with Dorothy (not that passive is a bad thing, but I felt it was more due to him not yet finding his “voice”, I guess, in the relationship vs that simply being his personality).
And Amber was finally able to be with a guy who not only liked her, not only found her physically attractive, not only accepted her bad/negative behaviors, not only acknowledged she had an alter, but she could also date openly as herself (they still hid somewhat, but that was more of a choice than due to superhero identity shenanigans).
Then we have Lucy.
She’s too cheerful with not enough sharpness to her for my taste (outside of her calling Joyce bisexual after meeting her for less than a minute), but I’m not Walky.
That said, she encourages Walky a lot (which is good), but she also either doesn’t acknowledge or ignores his flaws (which is bad).
And while she seems to have expressed passion for him (or at least expressed that she finds him very attractive) to others directly or indirectly, it only comes off as simply liking him when they’re together, which could just as well be friendship instead of romance.
On the flip side, I fail to see what Walky is even bringing to the relationship other than being there, and that seems to have happened almost by default as his relationships with almost every other main character with the exception of Sal has stagnated (Becky, Dina, Joe), remained prickly (Joyce, Sarah), or gotten worse (Dorothy, Jennifer, Amber, and Mike by the fact that he’s not around to have a relationship with).
He’s been around Lucy for months and they have even started dating, yet he has expressed no attraction for her that I can remember at the moment, and even had to be told to ask her out by Dorothy, to which his reply isn’t that he likes her, but to ask if she likes him.
Then when he does ask her out, he still doesn’t say that he likes her, only that she’s a girl and likes cartoons and is therefore the total package (though he does repeatedly say she’s smart, and I think nice and fun, to others).
This seeming lack of passion or feelings of attraction makes me worry that he doesn’t actually have feelings for her, especially in comparison with how fast he moved romantically with Dorothy and physically with Amber, though it could simply be that he’s trying something different/purposely moving slowly.
That said, if he does genuinely lack any physical attraction for her, it could be that he has a type and Lucy simply doesn’t fit it (or worse, that he has some internalized racial bias towards being with a woman of color).
Either way, it’s unfair to Lucy to be dating her if he only sees her as a friend.
Oh good. One time she piqued his interest. I hope there are more I forgot and there will be many more in the future for the sake of their relationship.
He also flirted with her big time when they we were talking in a roundabout way about how many dates they have to go on before they get physical. I do think he’s genuinely attracted to her, even if this is a different sort of situation than with Dorothy, which was also honestly fairly different from with Amber, where he wasn’t immediately into her, either.
I will say Walky/Lucy always gave me a Scott Pilgrim-esque “He’s dating you because it’s easy” vibe that never sat right with me. I don’t feel like Walky likes her that much. She likes him a lot and he likes her a little and she just sorta makes up the difference. And I feel once she gets used to/disillusioned with him a bit the cracks might start forming. Like I never got the impression that Amber was a rebound, even with Walky still clearly pining after Dorothy. But for some reason Lucy absolutely feels like one to me.
Not saying this kills that theory dead, but it’s quite a gushing wound in it. I just don’t see the “settling” argument as holding much water, but I guess we’re going to see that put to the test with Raidah’s aim to meddle as of late now that Walky’s getting more presentable.
Not really. I used to blush simply because someone said I liked someone I didn’t.
Here we have an attractive person doing something intimate with their mouth to Walky’s person.
I admit it indicates some level of attraction, but it’s not a big an indicator as you seem to think.
I would also hope that it’s not the only indicator, but you’re the second person to bring up that exact same strip, vs bringing up multiple strips.
Being attracted to someone and being in a relationship with someone are not the same thing. Let me just say this. If any of the girls I knew did what Lucy did, I would react very similarly. It’s very easy to find someone attractive but that’s kind of a shallow level of appeal for dating. Right now it’s doing the trick, but down the road? I can’t say I’m sure.
First comic strip that they were both in.
I know we don’t all have the memory of an elephant but Amber is very public. The thing she’s maybe embarrassed about here is that Booster caught on about her real life behavior that sparked it it. Not very escapism-enabling of them. 🙁
Anyway more proof that the photography was a stunt supposed to lead her to Walky’s photo so Booster could take note. I do believe them when they said that they’re going to use this to befriend Ethan somehow, like she wanted
obligatory I like everyone in this comic strip I like this story disclaimer
Omg they would totally remember her saying that haha
I don’t even feel like Booster would need a good memory – it only happened like a week? ago? in comic time? Plus, first impressions stick
Do you not refer to your consoles like that? I call all my Sony consoles PlayStations, and my DS, Wii, and girlfriend’s Switch are both just Nintendos.
I call all my Playstations, PS1, PS2 etc and I call all Nintendo devices their actual names e.g. DS, Gamecube, Wii, 3DS, Switch.
I know it is a thing that people do call Nintendo devices just Nintendos but I can’t picture doing that because it comes across as ‘I don’t know what it is’ rather than ‘it is just more convenient to’ since most of them have shorter names and none of them are particularly hard to remember.
I also don’t refer to Xbox at all as I never have one, never has any games that I am interested in, and their naming conventions are actively confusing to me where I couldn’t tell you which order any of them go in consistently correctly.
God, Xbox really what the bed with names. There’s the Xbox, the Xbox 360, the Xbox One, and then I get lost. I could look it up (and have!) but they have to have done the newer names deliberately to confuse unsuspecting grandparents.
The thing is, there are only 4 generations of Xbox so it has very little justification for being this confusing, but it still somehow is.
It is Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X & S.
But they had the Xbox One X, and Xbox One S which are Xbox One models but they decided to use X and S for the latest ones making them easy to confuse with each other. And the base names are just chaotic so I don’t blame anyone for confusing their order or mixing them up.
I think legit the only time I confused any of the Nintendo ones was the Wii and Wii U as the latter was advertised poorly like it was a Wii addition rather than a separate console.
I came across a comic where people called their switch a “nintendo” and it super threw me for a loop. I’ve always said gamecube, wii, wiiu, switch, ds, etc etc. Even with playstation I specify what number. Particularly with consoles from Nintendo, just saying “Nintendo” feels really boomerish (no offense, whether or not you are one)
Adding to this, it just makes it hard to suggest games otherwise. Like I suggested some games to a coworker, only to find out that by “Xbox” she meant specifically the 360, which obvs wouldn’t work with new games
(Which is to say, she said she was taking the pics, but clearly she also went through pics outside of that. I am not suggesting she wasn’t well within her rights to not want them to have the pictures of her.)
So, is Amber still in love of Walky or is just physical attraction? She still thinks of Sal as a villain? Oh no! By the way, I like Booster more and more. They sure are nosey, but they are very honest about that and I really like how fast they can read something. Their future as a psychologist will be amazing. I think Booster and Amber could be a great couple. Booster is openly what Amber is deeply.
I’m not sure they ever progressed to love, but I don’t doubt she still likes Walky and it’s not just lust.
But she clearly thinks them being around each other is a bad thing as stated when she set herself up for Dina attack.
There’s a bunch of people dunking on Booster today, but honestly Amber writing smut and posting it on public places about her real-life acquaintances without thier consent feels like an extremely no good, bad thing.
In a rare development, I don’t feel like Booster has done anything wrong here.
To be fair, a lot of early writers base their characters off of people they know irl when they are not good at character creation yet and it sounds like she isn’t just writing ‘here is joyce banging dorothy!’ but turning it into like, superhero stuff to create some layers of distance from reality but it is still possible to tell who it is based on if you know her.
I used to just straight-up use my friends in fanfics. Luckily, those fics were written on notebook paper and never posted online for the back-then cretins to lay into.
Also, assuming it is indeed fanfiction, it’s possible that the social dynamics are there but the character dynamics aren’t. Like, if she’s writing a fic where Batgirl sleeps with Catwoman’s identical twin brother, who knows how much of herself she’s put into Batgirl or how much of Sal she’s put into Catwoman.
Amber: Working on shaming and socially chastising and framing Booster as a Creep(Social Rank)
Booster: Passively ignoring the attempt at being labeled with a Social Rank and doubling down as a Troll that would normally be harassing her on Twitter. But, she can’t block them. They live in her Dorm.
Ok so bets on, how long until the ‘Dumbing of Age’ tag on AO3 gets this exact-described fic, or was this perhaps an existing fic on there that Willis saw?
I mean, Booster made their intentions REAL clear. I don’t think Amber’s not picking up on it. I get the impression that she’s uncomfortable with it for one reason or another.
I think the reason is that she is still in a pretty rough headspace, between Mike dying, the implosion with Walky, her dead dad, her legal battles, worrying about Ethan, etc. She’s not really keen on being pursued at the best of times, or at least, distrustful of that attention, and she’s particularly not receptive when she is in this state of stasis, not really engaging with any of that. Amber doesn’t want to do feelings right now.
I am curious about how she’d react to Booster, say, 6 months ago or something, but I think she’s just really not in the mood. Doesn’t mean that can’t change, but her initial reaction is to push it away and say she’s not hot.
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I predict no controversies or arguments tonight, only good vibes and clean air.
we are notoriously calm and normal about these things, after all
Just an exceptionally chill crowd all ’round, especially when it comes to interpersonal interactions.
We never have any occasion to curse anybody, especially the illustrious author and illustrator! 🙂
*whispers* Damn you Willis…
I’m checking comments at 11:08 pm my time and never clicking on this page again, except perhaps as part of a re-read.
Then I should play some appropriate music 😏
*plays “Abracadabra” by Steve Miller Band on hacked muzak*
“Gonna reach out and grabya”
really really really really glad this is the top comment. im not going to scroll any further down
What, and miss out on all our very positive discussions and friendly exchanges?
Well there’s always Final Fantasy. And indie gamedev. 😉
Final Fantasy is absolutely a good topic. If you don’t know what a BluMagee is, I recommend looking into ’em. It’s like Mega Man except as a fabulously dressed wizard.
… Blue Mage. Fuck this phone.
Well I be an Abracadabra, Blue Mages rock! 🤩
Speaking of creatures and powers and games, Halloween is a little over a month away, and I could use all the help I can get in making the DoA game I have planned!
Can’t make any promises but who knows whither the wind may blow.
🥹
That’s truly a mood, but I like keeping up on Ana’s commentary, so I gotta scroll down to that at least. It’s like alternative alt text for me at this point
Amber works quick. Great for a novice writer. Very quick turnaround.
And I guess Booster reads pretty fast if they were able to give feedback from reading a story less than 10 minutes old. I wonder how many words Amber pushes out in the time it takes to scrub a memory card?
Depends on how long the story is. Like, if it’s a strict 100-words-only drabble, that’s only about 45 seconds of reading.
It’s not just the time to scrub a memory card, but also find and cleanse the online backup. Depending on how sophisticated Booster’s service’s security is, and how zealously Amber opted to go after the additional copies Booster made of it in the meantime, I could imagine this fan fiction may have even made it up to a few thousand words.
Considering that she’s been writing fan fiction since high school, I think Amber’s probably past ‘novice’.
That remains to be seen. I haven’t read her work. I do know from the briefest of snippets that she’s a fan of meat based innuendo like “marinate” and “sirloin”. That’s amateur hour smut writing to me.
Now I’m curious what sort of prose you (and possibly others) prefer from your smut. Personally, I’m fond of excessive simile and irreverent/casual descriptions of dirty deeds. A conversational tone helps take away some of the “mystique”, if that makes sense.
Anything written before 21 is juvenilia, frankly.
honestly, i love them as a frenemies duo
I’m wondering if they’re going for more than friends? Booster has been hitting on Amber for quite a few strips. But I think Amber’s straight.
I… don’t think ‘straight’ is the correct explanation here.
Also, I think it’s very simple not to want to date Booster for basically admitting they’re attracted to messed up people and also kinda wanting to photograph you all day.
I have no idea if this is an accurate read but I feel like somehow Amber would actually be into them more due to that interaction. Would feed her “I hate myself and must be punished/don’t deserve good things” complex to be with someone she knows is specifically attracted to messed up people.
Whether that would be *healthy* is a whole other story. But considering her last relationship was with the twin of her “nemesis”… and who knows, maybe a psych major would be a good match for someone with as many mental demons as Amber has. Booster is pretty…blunt, straightforward, and analytical and that can actually be a helpful balance for a partner who tends to spiral.
And Amber at least seems willing to call Booster out on their occasionally problematic behavior and probably finds their analysis of her mental state less bothersome than a lot of people would since she’s very very aware she has issues and probably thinks worse of herself than Booster would of her, so anything they say wouldn’t exactly wound her.
Booster might be unique in being able to understand the dualness that is Amber beyond just a clinical/observation basis too. Anecdotally, self-affirmation of genderfluidity seems to come about after experimenting with both “classic western” societal norms and expectations of gender roles, so Booster might have felt a little split in two as well. Plus, he is naturally adept at accepting people’s pronouns and most likely wouldn’t make a big deal of which side is presenting.
Ohh that’s another interesting point! I didn’t even think of that.
(And yeah anecdotally that matches my experience as well)
Are they actually into her? Given today’s strip, they could have just been goading her.
Could be both, tbh. Finding somebody hot and antagonising them needn’t be mutually exclusive.
Next you’re going to tell me that some boys throw toys at the heads of girls they like.
Some boys throw toys at the heads of girls they like.
…
HUH?!
From twelve years ago (or about five and a half months ago DoA time)…
https://www.dumbingofage.com/comics/2010-11-22-throw.png
(I was making a JoJo reference.)
Have no idea who or what this is.
Ah, I see! It’s a very popular anime/manga series that’s really good. Specifically, the second part’s main character Joseph has a tendency to predict the next thing the guy he’s fighting will say, and then they’ll say it and then they’ll make a shocked face/noise.
It’s called a yeet-cute.
I very much enjoy this wordplay.
Well this is a delight, thank you. I’ll be stealing it.
This pun wins the comments section today.
That is a thing that happens in this universe.
You’ll have to excuse any typos or spelling errors, trees are having wild sex in my neighborhood and I’m in the splash radius, which means I can’t see well and having to depend on touch typing on my laptop. I don’t see any red squiggles under any words so maybe I got it right.
Trees can’t have sex!! They’re members of the kingdom Plantae which encompasses all plants, and reproduce through pollen coming in contact with the stigma of another plant.
Unless, of course, they are trans-plants….
As Ruth will testify
If anything, she’s the comic’s #1 advocate of combining the two, especially as a flirting method!
Booster isn’t a girl so her being straight isn’t really relevant.
Does “straight” still apply to nonbinary folks? Like, if I dated a self-declared straight woman before she Knew The Truth, would she potentially need to consider reclassifying herself?
Labels aren’t a strict category, anyway. There’s a reason the Kinsey scale exists.
You can have a type, but attraction doesn’t always follow those rules.
This is very true. Sometimes though, I like to pose a hypothetical with the idea of seeing through the fiction’s reality.
Yeah i don’t really like the Kinsey scale, ’cause it’s binary nature indirectly excludes enbies like me 😑
Yeah, I was thinking it needs another axis for the person’s own gender ID maybe, but that still excludes people who are ace.
In general it’s a tough thing to map on a chart/scale and actually cover the full spectrum of variations. In terms of identity there’s the person’s sex, gender identity, and gender presentation. And in terms of attraction you have to factor in degree of attraction, gender(s) a person is attracted to, AND gender presentation (the spectrum of “feminine – androgynous – masculine” traits, which also may vary by culture and even time period).
Nonbinary/genderfluid AFAB here, married to a Kinsey-zero straight fellow, whom I was dating before I knew. He didn’t stop being straight, even though he ended up with a spouse rather than a wife. Basically I’m femme-y enough to trick his very binary lizard-brain, while his human brain respects my identity. Works for us.
I honestly don’t think there needs to be a scale at all. Gender and sexuality is complex and I hate that people feel a need to categorize everything
Words and scales are useful to quickly express ideas to ourselves and others.
We know they’re broad brush strokes, and that probably nobody will completely fit the category.
Can you think of any situations where it’s nice to have a real quick way of saying / searching for a particular broad brushstroke of gender or sexuality?
@Leorale: yup that is my scenario with my spouse as well.
@Cal: as far as trying to completely define/map this stuff, I agree. A scale does not adequately capture the complexity. Gender and sexuality are straightforward for some but confusing and complex for others. But yeah like Leorale said, I feel like they have a use in very specific scenarios/conversations just as models to convey certain specific ideas easily and quickly, even if they wouldn’t necessarily work for everyone and every scenario.
And our brains just love categorization. Seems to be a key way they work, considering how often we try to label/categorize things that don’t necessarily actually fit into clear, distinct, separate boxes: sexuality and gender obvs, also another good example is the idea of a species. Species are boxes/labels we made up for our own convenience because our brain needs them for communication and understanding, despite the fact that it’s an oversimplified and not entirely accurate way of looking at biodiversity (life/evolution is a long branching spectrum that doesn’t actually have distinct borders and that becomes obvious when studying it in depth, but in casual conversation it is still helpful to be able to say “this is a dog, this is a wolf, this is a coyote.”
Yeah, sexuality (and gender) are complicated. And less clear cut for some than others. Labels are an attempt to make sense of it all but they have their own limits and, as Danny is an excellent example of, they can drift or people can have new realizations over time. And for some people, actual gender is less important.
It’s also helpful to remember that in addition to sex, gender, and sexuality all being separate, gender *presentation* is not necessarily linked with gender identity. Booster is nb identity-wise, but presentation-wise they lean a bit more masculine-androgynous with more subtle feminine traits.
I don’t see Amber being attracted to a woman or a NB person who presents more hyper feminine, but being attracted to Booster doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility, regardless of their gender, IF Amber’s attraction is based more on presentation than gender itself. Or not, entirely depends on what Willis wants to do obviously, lol.
I’m bi but more often attracted to masculine or androgynous gender presentation than very feminine so it’s possible that’s clouding my reading of this, and I can’t remember if she stated it explicitly, but I got the impression Amber at least considers Booster to be someone who is physically attractive. If I were in this cartoon world I certainly would. 😉
Oh, I see, you mean if you were dating a straight woman and then later she found out you weren’t a fellow after all? She wouldn’t have to reclassify herself unless she wanted to; she thought you were a man, and her brain treated you accordingly.
If she found out you were nonbinary and was like “ooh, hawt”, then the Kinsey scale may no longer contain her might.
(Comment nesting. Both my comments were replies to @Taffy.)
Sexuality and Gender are not one in the same one’s sexuality does not necessarily correspond with one’s gender identity.
We’re in agreement. Also, I’ve only just noticed that your gravatar is of the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future, which is neat.
Thousands of years ago when the planet was just a frozen waste…I didn’t fully read the thread so I think misunderstood the fourm but I am going to conclude that what was stated above that the ” kinsey scale exists and that attraction doesn’t always follow the rules”
I started dating my now-spouse when we were teens. At the time I thought of myself as a cisfemale, but now I identify as non-binary. He still considers himself a straight ally rather than queer, because I’m cispassing, so he suffers no privilege loss by being married to me. In the future, if I go through with some gender affirming surgery, he may reevaluate his decision to identify as straight.
I know at least 1 nonbinary person who would consider it misgendering for someone to state that they’re attracted to my nonbinary friend while identifying as straight(or gay). They’re not a guy or a girl, so if you’re attracted to my friend, you’re not attracted to only one gender.
I wonder how much of that requires prior knowledge. Without being Informed, I think we could argue that a woman would still be straight if she thought I was hot, but might not be if I told her my pronouns and she accepted that information. Like Nono said, it’s a loose definition anyhow, but your friend still has an interesting (and valid!) viewpoint.
I think what’s important isn’t so much whether “straight” is a label with a strict and unyielding definition–such things are simply antithetical to how queerness works–so much as whether Booster would be comfortable dating someone who identified as straight. They’ve already thrown a little shade on the idea that a gay man might be interested in them, and I suspect Booster wouldn’t be interested in a relationship where their partner identifies in such a way that might imply that Booster is a man (or near enough.)
*laughs in be-partnered ace*
like, three people get to be in overtly identity-affirming relationships. The rest of us fuckers hafta get our affirmations from sources other than the once-over impressions of randos.
Got cold shouldered out of a queer convention meetup cos my partner and I, both queer, looked too straight. so.
I don’t think Booster’s concern is that random passerbys might assume that they’re a dude. Like, if you’re non-binary, passive misgendering just comes with the territory. No, I think the concern is that they don’t wanna be in a relationship where they’ll worry their partner, who is usually dude-inclined, sees them as “close enough.”
It would really depend on the person I think, and their particular relationship with their gender. For some nb people, being seen as androgynous is important. For others, it’s not. For some, being nb is about feeling somewhere in “the middle” of the male to female spectrum. For others, it’s a feeling of being a distinct, 3rd gender. But for some, it’s just a lack of clear gender identity or attachment to a gender identity: Malaya expressed some feelings like this earlier in the comic if I recall, with her “I dunno how to argue with all of this” strip and her “she/they/whatever” line in another strip. Another good example would be Jim from OFMD. When asked if they’re a woman they did not reply with a clear “no” but more of a noncommittal “I guess, I dunno” indicating gender just wasn’t something that registers for them.
Someone who falls into that 3rd category (speaking from personal experience here) may not necessarily care how they’re perceived and may not have an issue with someone who is typically only attracted to 1 gender being attracted to them on the basis that their gender presentation aligns closely enough with that person’s orientation.
But for someone in one of the first 2 groups I mentioned above, it probably matters more and in those cases I can see the idea of someone who is exclusively attracted to one gender being uncomfortable/dysphoric.
I’d guess Booster probably falls into one of the first 2, considering they specifically use “they/them” pronouns. So I suppose it might be possible they would not be okay with a straight woman being attracted to them unless it comes with her realizing she is actually bi.
I wanna be clear, I’m not making broad generalizations here (at least, not on purpose)–I’m extrapolating specifically from Booster’s own objections to dating Ethan, a gay man.
It’s notable that there was some pushback on the idea that Booster isn’t masc in the comments, seeming entirely rooted in the fact that Booster has kind of a boxy build, short hair, and dorms with a dude. It would be wild to assume Booster isn’t aware of how they’re gendered by others–achem. So my read of it is that Booster does not want to be perceived as masc-presenting, and part of that is not wanting to date people who’re theoretically solely into men. Framing it as something Ethan might not be into is just them not wanting the experience of finding out whether Ethan is into it.
Granted, that’s speculation on my part, and we’ll see how this plays out.
No I agree that is a totally plausible, and very likely accurate read of the situation based on how Booster has replied to stuff before.
I was just speaking generally about the topic. But agree that in my above examples it seems less likely that Booster falls into category 3 (indifferent about how their gender is perceived) and therefore much more likely to be bothered by someone being attracted to them if that person is attracted to strictly one gender.
I know folks like that, too. IMO how we experience attraction is just as personal as gender and the language we use to describe that experience is our own. It doesn’t have to be strict, and historically the meaning of orientation categories has changed a lot and will continue to, just like how we experience attraction can change at different points in our life regardless of how we generally see ourselves.
I’m nonbinary and queer lesbian. I’m still a lesbian when I get turned on by cross dressers or trans men or when I have sex with men because I’m primarily 99% of the time attracted to women and femininity and only want to be in relationships with people who have traits closely associated with femininity. I’m not attracted to men as a gender. I also call myself vegan, even though I’ll eat and drink animal products when I visit friends’ farms because it’s ethically sourced because it doesn’t sit right with me to tell people I’m vegetarian but won’t eat /their/ non-vegan food.
Huh. To me, “straight woman” implies “only attracted to men” rather than “not attracted to women,” which I infer is your operating definition. This is an interesting difference in definition.
That said, my husband is straight and still married me after I came out as nonbinary, so…. Yeah, binary categories get weird around nonbinary people.
love how my original comment was about how i enjoy them as a platonic duo and everyone’s arguing over shipping
booster. c’mon.
They left feedback tho!
They had .
Also let’s see if I recall anything about using html tags.
Remember how to use html? I Sure don’t.
Anyway, Booster had incentive and this comic calls back to https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/formed/
I always enjoy a Chekhov’s gun that takes two years to fire :3
thanks for going back for this and sharing~
Not a lot of A03 commenters leave a psych profile of the writer. So points for effort, but negative points for everything else about this.
The weirdest part is, their comment was accidentally about Nash.
Ten out of ten for style, but minus several million points for good thinking.
BoosterFeed: Can you do a version where the twin is nonbinary? I can give you more kudos!
AmbrGrrl: stop trying to butter me up
wait, does Booster know that Amber and Walky were together for a little while
Even if they didn’t it wouldn’t be hard to pick up the context clues from when Walky introduced them.
I don’t think so, or at least, I doubt anyone has told him directly.
*them
Booster knows everything
But do they know why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
I like Apple Jack’s better. Especially in a Kool-Aid frosty parfait!!! 😋
Congrats. I actually feel queasy now. Probably going to skip breakfast.
(Not actually upset about that, I skip breakfast most days anyway. And I already wasn’t having a good stomach morning. But yeah, my imagination took some of the possible flavor combinations there and said ‘nope’, and my stomach agreed.)
I have no idea what you pictured but it’s wrong.
Cuz kids know what’s up, that’s why. And because CTC is fuckin’ delicious.
They’re pretty perceptive and the dialogue here makes me think yes? Like they seem to even have the full “twin of nemesis” backstory somehow. I can’t remember if we ever saw the, receive that info in comic or if we’re supposed to assume Walky or Amber or just general dorm gossip shared it at some point off-panel.
Or Booster’s real secret is they’re not a psych major, they’re psychIC. XD
(And now I have typed “psych” so many times that it has lost all meaning to me and looks utterly bizarre…)
Booster is really winning me over as a character, now that they’re also a fucked-up person who does fucked-up things.
“Now”?
At first they were kinda bland IMO. Their initial personality was just “analyzes people like Mike did, but isn’t a massive dick,” essentially making them “Mike but without Mike’s main personality trait.” Now we’re starting to see more of what makes Booster, specifically, tick.
Ah, gotcha gotcha. I think I’m picking up on what you’re throwing down.
I still feel like they’re basically a replacement Mike, but they’re able to be a little less one note than Mike because his character was so tied to that cartoonishly cruel bully angle. I think I’ve got a better handle on how they fit into the cast now
Yeah, I’m seeing how they got now! Still creeps me out, but this page is getting me used to them? Sorttttoffff
*fit, not got…
I still feels to me that they’re fairly one note. But it’s a rather different note. Maybe it’s actually a chord and it just sounds to me like it’s just one note? I’m not very musically inclined.
I mean, I think they were a massive dick about it. The not-Mikeness was mostly that they didn’t wear an angry face.
Mike cultivated an atmosphere of jerkishness even when he was being helpful, and whether that help was deliberate was up for debate basically until the day he died. Booster on the other hand is actively and openly trying to be helpful, but coming off as a jerk in the process.
I knew a Mike and a Booster in high school and they were both insufferable, but had weirdly good chemistry with each other.
“I knew a Mike and a Booster in high school and they were both insufferable, but had weirdly good chemistry with each other.”
Man now I wish Mike had lived. You can still remove him from the main cast because he has to recover (physical therapy, regular therapy, probably other medical shit), but then he could pop in for a visit and meet Booster and I just really really want to see what that would be like.
I don’t mind people knowing that I participate in fanfiction but I’d set myself on fire if someone I knew irl read any of it
I wouldn’t mind anyone I know reading my fics, but a) I don’t – can’t, really – write smut; and b) nobody wants to read them anyway, because most of them are about my Star Trek Online characters.
Well now I’m curious.
This is a pretty common thread in the comments, but I feel like for some reason Amber’s fics are probably really easy to find? I remember Joyce started writing fics after reading some of Amber’s, and this was after Amber informed her of them. I don’t remember if Amber told her where to find them but I get the impression that it probably isnt hard for those around her to do so.
IIRC, she first read them on Amber’s computer while she was trying to set Amber and Walky up.
I’ve only let one person I know IRL ever read my fanfiction, and it was one of my best friends, with VERY similar interests, who basically gave me live reviews and critique. If she wanted to now I would probably still let her, and maaaaybe my husband, but no one else.
I definitely turned in fanfic for English class assignments on at least 2 separate occasions. >.>
Not smutfic though. Either light and silly or serious and philosophical stuff. I just discovered by senior year that English assignments were WAY more fun if I managed to find a way to write them as Stargate fic or something.
Clearly Amber’s not ENTIRELY over her crush on Walky.
well it was a fling/friends with benefits thing rather than ‘crush’ (well, i suppose mutual but i usually associate ‘crush’ with being one sided lol)
Amber has said that she thinks everyone should kiss. I think that her finding someone physically attractive and wanting to ship them with herself or others is kinda different from her being actively interested in a relationship with them.
That’s a really interesting and useful distinction actually. Shipping is different from feelings of how relationships work irl, and they intersect in ways that are complicated
Oh, absolutely this. I ship all kinds of bullshit that wouldn’t fly IRL, and people who don’t can’t be trusted.
I feel like 90% of shipping arguments these days come from a weird evolution of shipping’s definition from “it’d be fun to watch these characters date/fuck” to “these characters dating/fucking would be good and healthy for them.”
I don’t want good and healthy, I want wild and messy. Or actually, maybe both at once. Never pays to be narrow-minded, after all.
Sorry, what was your question?
Thiiiiis omg yes. I love so many messy problematic ships.
IRL I am in a very healthy relationship and if I saw a friend pursuing the kind of relationship I often ship in fiction, I would be deeply concerned for them and I’d very much encourage them to NOT continue that pursuit.
Way too often these days I feel like a lot of people have trouble with that distinction: that enjoying something in fiction is NOT the same as condoning it IRL.
In the same sense that a little girl wanting to dress up as the Evil Queen from Snow White does not, in fact, mean she actually wants to go around giving people poisoned apples or somehow thinks that is an admirable thing to do.
Yep. It’s the purity culture bullshit.
Mind you, the old shipping arguments were equally obnoxious, and usually more overtly misogynistic and homophobic (yes, even the ones about slash pairings written and read by people who liked slash…top/bottom discourse persists even to this day and it is nuts). Just terrible in different ways!
Yeah it’s like we’ve swung from one discourse pendulum to the other. The internet and nuance are like oil and water.
Well said, Meagan.
Am I wrong to think that coming out gave Booster the impression that they had an extra layer of insulation from criticism for this sort of behavior, and they set about, consciously or not, exploiting it beyond all semblance of reason?
No, like Mike, they just don’t give any fs.
I dont think so, I think they’re just an asshole
A really big, arrogant asshole. I don’t like him.
Them.
Hahahaha. You’re saying that like trans people aren’t seen as predators in nearly every scenario they’re open about sexuality. I mean, I still fall into the “Booster is prone to creepiness” camp, but there’s nothing to exploit, especially if they’re transfeminine.
All the world’s a stage, and that stage has many audiences. I expect Booster is very, very aware that there are those for whom their sleaziness will be amplified, but that, except for Mary and Peter, the college-age cast are the opposite.
I think it is Booster liking to show off their psychological profiling skills. Like at that gathering.
Your bias is showing and it’s not a good look, my friend.
Booster acts like this because they’re a Psych major.
And this is till EARLY Freshman year.
I know queer people who’re like this but it’s definitely not because they think they’re insulated from criticism–on the contrary, it usually seems to come from a place of “I’m gonna be ostracized no matter what, Frank Sinatra motherfuckers”
Ain’t that a kick in the head?
What a stupid bloody name for a song!
But not a bad song.
Wasn’t that Dean Martin, not Ol’ Blue Eyes?
They’re all basically the same guy in my mind, but yes you are correct. That’s on me.
No worries. I only really remember because that one’s in Fallout: New Vegas
Carla.
God I really wanna see Carla and Booster hang out. Carla loves talking about Carla, Booster would love talking about Carla, what could go wrong?
To me it reads like fairly standard “I learned about psych profiling recently and am very into it and proud of my skills in it” college-age arrogance and lack of self-awareness.
A LOT of people go through this stage and it has nothing to do with their gender and everything to do with being at an age where you are getting to experience independence for the first time and feel like an adult, and feel like you’ve learned a lot, but your prefrontal cortex is not finished cooking and you have also not been humbled by the more serious pressures and consequences of this sort of behavior in adulthood yet.
Tl;dr this is not uncommon behavior for someone in that age group with an analytical personality and interest in psychology.
Also, apologies to any college-aged people reading this, I am truly not trying to be condescending. I’m speaking from personal experience. I too went through a similar phase and I cringe thinking back on it, but it doesn’t make someone a “bad person” it just makes them a person who is still learning!
Also, while this bit may feel especially sensitive to college freshmen, it smacks fairly strongly of the “a little knowledge” thing and a lack of experience.
To be more clear about that, yes, these people are significantly more experienced than they were a year ago. But in ten years time, they’ll be much more experienced than they are now. They’ve learned a small portion of the curriculum for their major. If it were possible to learn it all in a single semester, we wouldn’t go to college for four years or more to learn it. Their field is much more complicated than they currently understand.
It *feels* like it covers the base cases very well, because they teach the more generally applicable stuff. But there’s all kinds of edge cases that Booster isn’t even aware of yet, and if they were aware of them, they’d be using a lot more caution than they are. If they weren’t an asshole, they’d still be cautious about them, just because they realized that it’s a complicated major that people generally study for more than 4 years before they get the degree they’ll use professionally and they’ve only been at it for a few months so there’s bound to be a lot they don’t get.
But they *are* an asshole, and arrogant because they’re probably used to being one of the smartest kids in the class, so they’re like this.
I’d agree, they’re not a bad person. They mean well, they’re trying to be helpful. But they’re still an asshole and will probably get called out on it more times before this is all over.
Exactly. College creates this weird environment where you feel like you’re approaching the end of your education, and have reached the final rungs of the knowledge ladder. You feel like you’ve been suddenly exposed to all this wonderful new info but still lack the awareness and experience to realize just how much you still don’t know.
And like you said, many who had a career/major decided early on probably entered college as the best (or at least one of the best) at that field in their high school class (often due to being one of the only people actually invested in. the subject at all, unlike one of dozens once they enter the major at college) and their identities at that point are heavily built around the idea of their major/future career
lol awkward if they don’t know why they broke up. dunno if walky would’ve brought it up or he would’ve played it off as a joke
Considering how easily Booster read the room at the floor meeting, they probably figured it out.
They seem to have expertise in Insight, which doubles their proficiency bonus.
I expect their passive insight to be at least 17.
I’m starting to really enjoy what Booster brings to the comic
I can’t decide who’s creepier, but I think Booster has the edge.
Definitely Booster, though Amber’s not far behind them at this point.
Yeah, in some ways this isn’t that far from what she’s done and how she tends to think about people. In her head. Ofc she usually isn’t putting that on them irl… Much….
hey if he left a detailed comment he’s golden
Booster uses ‘they/them’.
“They” honest mistake but Booster prefers they/them. Important to not misgender. Not a big deal for a fictional character but best to inform the mistake.
i mean i assume most of it is unintentional but at least there aren’t multiple comments sections/discussions like reddit, they could literally wear a pin that says “they/them” and still get misgendered in some spaces
I do find myself checking lists for pronouns here or there when reading webcomics, if something’s got a large enough cast that I can’t remember all of the individual characters. I assume most people who read Dumbing of Age don’t do it on purpose (the assholes seem to make themselves *very* visible)
Yeah even though Booster is fictional and therefore not an entity with feelings that can be harmed in any way, I’m sure the misgendering jumps out to any nb fans reading the comments as a reminder of their own experiences/frustrations. So I think the corrections are important, even for fictional characters.
Plus it’s just good practice, helps people get into the habit of not misgendering for when a real person is actually involved.
I fully agree, even if I took the ‘it doesn’t matter, they’re fictional’ side (which I don’t), I know other people who can be affected by it are reading the comments
thanks for assuming the best, fully unintentional and I don’t know why I made the mistake.
(@ sirksome and anon)
It ain’t a Booster strip without a little bit of misgendering in the comments.
The comments can have little a misgendering, as a transphobia
If this comment didn’t want to be subjected to at least a little misgendering, she wouldn’t have decided to use she/his as his pronouns.
shoot this is the second time recently I’ve made this mistake. I’m a nonbinary trans man; I don’t know why I keep making this mistake.
clarified my gender to make clear that I wouldn’t WANT to misgender them
I don’t remember retyping my email so idk why icon keeps changing
would request deletion but I won’t to be accountable
*want, fuck.
Sprry for the flood of comments, I was frustrated with myself and it was 5am so I wasn’t thinking super clear
“I built The Machine to detect acts of terror–but it sees EVERYTHING.”
She writes FAST.
Just like how she codes and hacks
Considering some of the drek I’ve seen on AO3, I struggle to find that to be a compliment, honestly.
Yes, my standards are too high for the kind of shit I’m searching for.
Look if you want a proper Dobby x Dumbledore fic, just write it yourself.
Look, if I could write well enough to write my own slash fic, I would. Damnit. I’m not here to cast stones, I’m just saying we could all use a little help.
So write some bad stuff. Write a lot of it. After a while you should see your writing getting better.
Or, .like me, she seldom proofreads before hitting “post”.
As a fanfic author myself, I’d forgive anything if you left a good comment along with kudos.
Of course, I’d also have to delete my entire internet presence and run away to Bulmeria if someone I *knew* read my work and wanted to talk about it IRL…
Last night, someone left a multi-paragraph comment linking the latest chapter of my epic canon divergence AU WIP to the larger themes of both the story itself as well as those of the original work and praising my characterizations, and if I was on a jury, I would vote to acquit that person of first degree murder even if there was video evidence of them stabbing that poor gas store clerk fifteen times before they robbed the till and picked up a bag of jalapeño chips on the way out the door. (Obviously, I should have been struck during the jury selection process, but I bet the lawyers don’t know to ask “Has the accused ever left feedback on any of your works on Archive of Our Own?” so I’d probably slide through.)
Hey, you WANTED them to leave feedback on your fics, Amber.
Ew, Booster. Ew.
well teasing with/about walky is overstepping boundaries but her fanfic is public, though other than her friend circle i’m surprised she’d let anyone know that /not as closely guarded as her amazigirl secret
It’s not really teasing, they dont know her at all, it’s being creepy on someone that expressed disinterest.
To be fair, it’s being creepy on someone that sought to have them be creepy at someone else.
This doesn’t make it right, it makes it a big old mess of complicated I can’t properly work through. I don’t know if you can, if you can, I wouldn’t be able to verify that you did it right. But I presume you’re an adult who doesn’t need my verification, so go about your business. Have a good appropriate timeperiod.
It doesn’t matter in what ways it came to an end good or bad, if she has more good memories than bad about it and if she’s can still have just an ounce of fondness of him then their time together was worth it.
That aside I’m surprised it took her that long to write something like that, not the speed in which she did but that she waited to this point.
plus you can still be physically attracted to ppl you hate/miss ppl who treated you terribly
Enh, she’s already seen Walky’s curves anyway.
To everyone who wanted “Replacement Mike”, I say again: your wish is granted.
No no no! Not the replacement! The upgrade, I tell you!
As a former sound tech, it’s common knowledge in the trade that if you do a mic drop, you will need a replacement mic.
I’ve seen the kind of beating an Electro-Voice RE50B can take.
Ribbon mics are basically Fabergé eggs in comparison.
So, I have a legitimate question. I’ve never noticed any indication Amber is anything other than heterosexual. Despite than, she gets into homosexual fanfics. It reminds me of The Kids are Alright, where the porn a lesbian couple liked to watch was gay male porn. Is this a real thing?
Male-attracted women writing male-on-male fanfiction is a whole thing.
…
Who do you think was writing all the Kirk/Spock fic back in the day?
I’ll put it this way: I’ve never met (in person) a guy/guy fanfic writer who wasn’t a straight girl. It’s a whole Thing.
yeah, fujoshis to be exact. tho not sure how many ppl still call themselves that these days now that we have more and slightly better about gay rep/realistic relationships as opposed to a straight girl/guy drooling over gay guys/lesbians making out and such (i mean nothing wrong with enjoying smut in your own time but yeah there is a negative stigma about liking that)
I would be very nervous around a self-declared fujoshi. Never met one who wasn’t fucking weird.
Fujoshi is Japanese and while there is some crossover there into Western fandoms, via anime and manga, in my experience, the term is not widely self-applied by non-Japanese fans. Fujoshi is a subset of the phenomenon.
Counterpoint: Our Flag Means Death is written by (google tells me) David Jenkins and headed by Taika Waititi.
I actually have met a guy/guy fanfic writer who wasn’t a straight girl. I’ve actually met *two* of them.
One’s a lesbian. As far as I’m aware, she doesn’t write other pairings of fanfic, just the guy/guy stuff.
One’s a gay dude. And his guy/guy fanfics are atrocious according to everyone I know who has seen them. Which includes him. It also includes his sister, who’s a lesbian that writes guy/guy fanfic. He likes the stuff that she writes so much better he at least said he was giving up writing his own stuff, but I’ve heard from his sister that he does still vomit out something every now and then.
What I found a bit odd about all of that is that he’s a professional writer. He can write very well, so long as he’s not interested in the wrong way apparently. Not to say that there’s something wrong about being interested in that stuff, just that his interest interferes with him actually managing to write what he wants to.
She doesn’t write stories for work, for the most part. The writing she does for work is all about what was done, what will be done, what should be done, or figuring out what should be done. One of those sounds a bit like a story, but it’s all in a business environment which takes all of the juice out. Given the field she’s in, I highly doubt that she’s taking that juice and using it in her own fanfics. I mean, supposedly they’re pretty good. Even her brother likes them.
Straight women write the vast, vast majority of m/m fiction, not just fanfic. Especially erotica.
I think “vast majority” is kind of a wild overstatement, especially given that (despite how much AO3 wants you to think it’s the only place anyone posts fic anymore) fanfic is pretty tricky to quantify with hard numbers. If nothing else the perception that this is the case has a tendency to delegitimize actual queer people in fandom.
that said there’s quite a bit of it, yeah
Yeah tbh a lot of the people I know who write m/m fanfic are in fact nb people, lesbians, and bi women. *shrug* One of the most fervent Kirk/Spock shippers I know is 100% attracted to women and only women.
I have no idea what the actual ratio of various author types would be but just from my personal, anecdotal observations of demographics (at least in recent years), “vast majority” does seem to be an overstatement.
It *seemed* like more straight cis women in the space when I was younger back in the early 00s, but a LOT of those fic writers later came out as trans, nb, bi, etc. So there definitely seems to be a subset of fic writers/shippers for whom it’s a way to explore the complexities of their own identity.
Come to think of it, there just seem to be fewer cis men (straight, bi, or gay) in shipping fandom in general, regardless of the pairings involved. I dunno if that’s an accurate observation but it’s just what it seems like to me, and if it is accurate, I wonder why that is?
As an artist, I know a pretty even mix of genders in art/fandom circles, but not nearly as many of the cis men I know draw ship art or write fic of any kind.
I know as a cis guy who touches on a lot of fandom stuff, I’ve never felt involved with shipping culture all that much. I’ve had characters I absolutely think should smooch, and tend to prefer reading fanfics with certain pairings (though I don’t read all that much fanfic these days just in general). But I think there’s absolutely a sense that shipping is something that a lot of male-identifying folks in fandom don’t want to get involved in. A lot of that can be traced to stereotypes of what “shippers” are like (and many of those stereotypes are pretty strongly gendered) and a feeling of it being “unmanly”, I think.
To draw an example from the comic, Walky is pretty deep into fandom, but I think his stereotypical ideas of masculinity would prevent him from being involved in shipping discourse.
Fifteen years ago, I would have confidently said that online fandom—the parts that write most of the fanfic and almost all of the slash, the folks who once congregated on LiveJournal and now congregate on Tumblr, and who took a pause to create Archive of Our Own in-between—were overwhelmingly straight women.
These days, I’d just say they’re overwhelmingly not cis men, and there is a very healthy mix of trans and NB and lesbian and bi and pansexual and ace folks in fandom (and yes, many of them writing m/m slash) most of whom were probably always there, but not always out, in some cases not even to themselves. There’s more awareness and acceptance of non-straight, non-cis identities in that part of fandom, now. Thankfully.
It very much is. Turn ons don’t always have logical sense. Though guys sometimes try to force fantasy logic into real life, but in real life, lesbians don’t wanna screw guys or care what guys think of them. And gay men don’t appreciate girls getting up in their business asking if they top or bottom.
Ok. Somebody needs to report Booster. He is the exact kind of person who should not EVER be allowed to be a psychologist or therapist of ANY kind
Hello, no thank you, please.
*They.
As in, while I want Booster to examine their tendency to enjoy/objectify people’s issues, they have a lot of time to grow up before they’ll be put in a position to help patients/clients.
Ah sorry, forgot entirely, been a while. Thanks for the reminder
I dunno, the idea of my therapist reading my fanfiction and leaving comments sounds fucking hilarious.
…
Are we SURE that Booster isn’t Mike in disguise?
That’s Jennifer you’re thinking of.
nah mike would’ve sent a copy of the fic to both sal and walky
Booster isn’t Replacement Mike.
They’re the upgrade. 😉
Maybe they’re like a Majin Buu reincarnated as Uub kinda deal 😆
Honestly I could dig that.
But how did he find the story? Doesn’t the younger generation now dislike stuff like AO3 because it’s not autocurating content for them, or at least so I hear?
(Or is that people younger than depicted in this comic that applies to?)
1: They
2: What’s this about autocuration being in demand?
I don’t know about anyone hating AO3 because of that. In fact, an awful lot of people think that there is some kind of algorithm on AO3 because that’s what they’re used to.
There was a tweet recently about this were someone pointed out how common people use tags that are some variation of “I hope the algorithm is kind to my story” and one of the replies expressed sincere confusion over the idea that there was no algorithm.
*Anything* with computers has an algorithm. Computers basically run algorithms, that’s it really.
Youtube and Google gave ‘algorithm’ a bad rap, in that they basically use that term to say “we’re throwing it into an AI and seeing what comes out. No, we’ve no idea how it works, that’s what AIs are like these days. Nobody knows how they work.”
The real answer for how they work is that they’re statistical modelling algorithms. They’re trained to provide answers that keep people on the site as much as possible, rather than being trained at providing correct answers. How do you determine what the correct answer is, without being the user or asking the user? Surely you don’t think search engines should ask the user, right?
(Actually, I do. Most of the time I google stuff, I want to be able to click a link at the end of my session to say either “I didn’t actually find what I wanted but I’m giving up.” or “I didn’t find what I was looking for, but you gave me something close enough so I’m going with it.” Because honestly search engines in general are failing me these days. I don’t know if it’s that I’m that different from everybody else, the idea of trying to keep people on the search engine site actually means they’re selecting for wrong answers without realizing it, or there’s some other issue like the data expanding beyond even Google’s ability to manage. But whatever is the cause, search fails me a lot.)
I just meant that stories are sorted by date or by title and not the site guessing at what stories people are going to click on.
Less “not autocurating” and more “doesn’t provide tools for moderating content they find objectionable*” and it’s not a purely generational thing but yeah.
(*Ranging from kinks they don’t like to X-rated fic about real life children not even aged up, but mostly about racism. The actual kerfuffle was started by black fans of various ages tired of widescale racism.)
I mean, there’s a tagging system. Users just have to be smart enough to figure out the tagging system.
I will admit I vastly prefer ff.net’s system of tagging more than AO3, but AO3 has the better everything else.
Thus the emphasis on “moderating” rather than “curating”; trying to put a “this author is being a dipshit and breaking the rules” tag on a work isn’t super helpful to anyone.
That and it’s not even possible to tag someone else’s work, right? Even if it was helpful to tag racist works it would require the author themself to admit they were being super racist.
(And thank you for providing context because I am not in the loop on these things at all.)
When Joyce first introduced Amber to Booster at the start of the semester, she told them Amber wrote filthy stories and they asked her to shoot them a link.
To clarify for folks: There’s apparently some hubbub going around about teens migrating from AO3 to Wattpad and making heavy use of its algorithmic recommendations, and both sides getting all “kids these days”/”ok boomer” about it. Nothing worth really worrying about, honestly.
For the strangest reason, and I’m not sure I can justify or explain it, but Booster is kinda reminding me of Yay Newfriend.
They’re both gender-no-thank-you smartasses with stellar fashion sense and a juvenile level of understanding when it comes to human psychology.
I can’t unsee this lmao, I love both characters and that comparison. I want to say Booster is more mature and less innocent than Yay, but I guess we’ll see
I’m generally happier to see Booster than Yay, but damned if they don’t fit a similar niche.
This would be such a Yay move, yeah.
Willis. Benevolent Pornlord. Do we get to see this candid photograph perhaps?
First thing I thought as well.
Me and my girlfriend were actually arguing tonight over whether Booster’s supposed to be “cool”. (She thinks they are, I think they try too hard.) I know nothing about fashion and so am glad to have an outside observer confirm Booster dresses well. (I mean, I like how they dress, but I also have absolutely no trust in my own judgement on the matter.)
Oops, this was supposed to be a reply to Taffy here.
At the very least, I like their use of colors and shapes.
I think Booster tries too hard to seem cool when talking to people by using big or archaic words but does have some good fashion sense.
People who talk like this have definitely seen that it isn’t considered cool.
I bet Booster just reads a lot, and they enjoy using precise words that they like, and haters gonna hate.
Often, really wordy people can’t remember which words are common knowledge vs. which words are rare to other people. (I don’t think that last one necessarily applies for Booster, who started off with “ne’er shall I err”, but it’s still worth remembering for other wordy people in your life.)
Thank you. Someone understands!
I want Amber and Walky to reconcile and subsequently fuck, but the problem is that Walky is the one who fucked up and I just can’t picture him having the maturity to try to make it up to her. Unfortunate.
Hey, hey, Booster x Amber could be promising, keep an open mind 🙃
Reconcile yes but I don’t think I dare to get my hopes up for anything more than that, lingering feelings or not. Also hey I wouldn’t underestimate Walky, maybe showing some maturity is a bit of moving mountains for him but you do get to see a miracle every now and again.
Going by the self sabotage that was the Dina attack, Amber thinks they are bad for each other/together (probably because of her violent reaction to his inability to deal with his emotions over Mike’s death), so she doesn’t think it’s all on Walky.
So reconciling isn’t impossible and I will forever hold out hope for the SS Garbage Skowl.
I think Walky had a point, but he really should have kept his mouth shut and gotten the moment over with. They would have at least moved on.
I do think he should apologize, but to be honest, I think Walky and Lucy are a more interesting pairing. I never really got on the Walky/Amber train.
Warning: long, impromptu, rambling, over analytical comment about Walky’s romantic relationships incoming.
The short version is that A. he fell for Dorothy fast, followed her flow most of the time, and tried to better himself for her,
B. he fell for Amber slower, but got physical with her quickly, they accepted each other’s flaws, and were probably the best romantic relationship either objectively had for several distinct reasons I mention further down (that’s not the same as best romantic partner),
and C. Lucy seems a little bland, their relationship seems a little bland, and I worry that she is too supportive of him while ignoring his flaws while I worry that Walky doesn’t genuinely find her attractive (or worse). Further details below:
Walky has messed with/dated 3 people now.
He fell for Dorothy pretty much at first sight and didn’t really know how to process those feelings.
As his first (from what I remember) romantic relationship as well as sexual relationship, she more or less guided him as he generally went with the flow of what she wanted, and he tried to better himself for her.
He also told Amber that he wasn’t over Dorothy the night of the impromptu Garbage Roof gathering.
With Amber, Walky either didn’t have or didn’t notice his feelings for her at first, though he was still technically dealing with Dorothy when he threw a toy at Amber’s head.
But the very next day after officially breaking up with Dorothy, after tweeting back and forth, they were making out on Garbage Roof.
Consequently, Walky and Amber have been slower to develop feelings than Walky and Dorothy (at least on Walky’s part, and I remember Amber and Danny once expressing negativity about him in relation to Dorothy’s choices in men), but they’ve been quicker to become physical (though no confirmed sexual intercourse, just implied dry humping after Walky punched Asher) than the previous relationship.
In my opinion, their relationship was the best they’d had so far. Walky was much more active and dynamic in their relationship vs how generally passive he was with Dorothy (not that passive is a bad thing, but I felt it was more due to him not yet finding his “voice”, I guess, in the relationship vs that simply being his personality).
And Amber was finally able to be with a guy who not only liked her, not only found her physically attractive, not only accepted her bad/negative behaviors, not only acknowledged she had an alter, but she could also date openly as herself (they still hid somewhat, but that was more of a choice than due to superhero identity shenanigans).
Then we have Lucy.
She’s too cheerful with not enough sharpness to her for my taste (outside of her calling Joyce bisexual after meeting her for less than a minute), but I’m not Walky.
That said, she encourages Walky a lot (which is good), but she also either doesn’t acknowledge or ignores his flaws (which is bad).
And while she seems to have expressed passion for him (or at least expressed that she finds him very attractive) to others directly or indirectly, it only comes off as simply liking him when they’re together, which could just as well be friendship instead of romance.
On the flip side, I fail to see what Walky is even bringing to the relationship other than being there, and that seems to have happened almost by default as his relationships with almost every other main character with the exception of Sal has stagnated (Becky, Dina, Joe), remained prickly (Joyce, Sarah), or gotten worse (Dorothy, Jennifer, Amber, and Mike by the fact that he’s not around to have a relationship with).
He’s been around Lucy for months and they have even started dating, yet he has expressed no attraction for her that I can remember at the moment, and even had to be told to ask her out by Dorothy, to which his reply isn’t that he likes her, but to ask if she likes him.
Then when he does ask her out, he still doesn’t say that he likes her, only that she’s a girl and likes cartoons and is therefore the total package (though he does repeatedly say she’s smart, and I think nice and fun, to others).
This seeming lack of passion or feelings of attraction makes me worry that he doesn’t actually have feelings for her, especially in comparison with how fast he moved romantically with Dorothy and physically with Amber, though it could simply be that he’s trying something different/purposely moving slowly.
That said, if he does genuinely lack any physical attraction for her, it could be that he has a type and Lucy simply doesn’t fit it (or worse, that he has some internalized racial bias towards being with a woman of color).
Either way, it’s unfair to Lucy to be dating her if he only sees her as a friend.
With regard to attraction between Walky and Lucy, I would like to point you to https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/solution/
Oh good. One time she piqued his interest. I hope there are more I forgot and there will be many more in the future for the sake of their relationship.
He also flirted with her big time when they we were talking in a roundabout way about how many dates they have to go on before they get physical. I do think he’s genuinely attracted to her, even if this is a different sort of situation than with Dorothy, which was also honestly fairly different from with Amber, where he wasn’t immediately into her, either.
I brought up the differences between how he acted with his previous two romantic interests in my long winded rant.
I will say Walky/Lucy always gave me a Scott Pilgrim-esque “He’s dating you because it’s easy” vibe that never sat right with me. I don’t feel like Walky likes her that much. She likes him a lot and he likes her a little and she just sorta makes up the difference. And I feel once she gets used to/disillusioned with him a bit the cracks might start forming. Like I never got the impression that Amber was a rebound, even with Walky still clearly pining after Dorothy. But for some reason Lucy absolutely feels like one to me.
Exactly how I feel.
Agreed.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/solution/
Not saying this kills that theory dead, but it’s quite a gushing wound in it. I just don’t see the “settling” argument as holding much water, but I guess we’re going to see that put to the test with Raidah’s aim to meddle as of late now that Walky’s getting more presentable.
Not really. I used to blush simply because someone said I liked someone I didn’t.
Here we have an attractive person doing something intimate with their mouth to Walky’s person.
I admit it indicates some level of attraction, but it’s not a big an indicator as you seem to think.
I would also hope that it’s not the only indicator, but you’re the second person to bring up that exact same strip, vs bringing up multiple strips.
I have found one more strip that could indicate that Walky has attraction for Lucy.
Or it could indicate he realized he unintentionally said something suggestive and then made a joke after they both became slightly embarrassed.
It was during their first Taco Bell date.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/chill/
Being attracted to someone and being in a relationship with someone are not the same thing. Let me just say this. If any of the girls I knew did what Lucy did, I would react very similarly. It’s very easy to find someone attractive but that’s kind of a shallow level of appeal for dating. Right now it’s doing the trick, but down the road? I can’t say I’m sure.
Amber: “I prioritize replies to those who leave comments on my fanfiction.”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/formed/
First comic strip that they were both in.
I know we don’t all have the memory of an elephant but Amber is very public. The thing she’s maybe embarrassed about here is that Booster caught on about her real life behavior that sparked it it. Not very escapism-enabling of them. 🙁
Anyway more proof that the photography was a stunt supposed to lead her to Walky’s photo so Booster could take note. I do believe them when they said that they’re going to use this to befriend Ethan somehow, like she wanted
obligatory I like everyone in this comic strip I like this story disclaimer
Omg they would totally remember her saying that haha
I don’t even feel like Booster would need a good memory – it only happened like a week? ago? in comic time? Plus, first impressions stick
Unless Booster brought an original NES with them to college, I find it weird that they call their console “my Nintendo.”
Do you not refer to your consoles like that? I call all my Sony consoles PlayStations, and my DS, Wii, and girlfriend’s Switch are both just Nintendos.
I call all my Playstations, PS1, PS2 etc and I call all Nintendo devices their actual names e.g. DS, Gamecube, Wii, 3DS, Switch.
I know it is a thing that people do call Nintendo devices just Nintendos but I can’t picture doing that because it comes across as ‘I don’t know what it is’ rather than ‘it is just more convenient to’ since most of them have shorter names and none of them are particularly hard to remember.
I also don’t refer to Xbox at all as I never have one, never has any games that I am interested in, and their naming conventions are actively confusing to me where I couldn’t tell you which order any of them go in consistently correctly.
God, Xbox really what the bed with names. There’s the Xbox, the Xbox 360, the Xbox One, and then I get lost. I could look it up (and have!) but they have to have done the newer names deliberately to confuse unsuspecting grandparents.
Shat. They shat the bed. With shit, not whit.
XBox 1X. And the latest is XBox 1S.
I think they’re trying to rub off on the cool of Cars and/or Sailor Moon seasons, and failing epicly.
Can’t wait to play the new Halo on my Xbox F-150.
The thing is, there are only 4 generations of Xbox so it has very little justification for being this confusing, but it still somehow is.
It is Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X & S.
But they had the Xbox One X, and Xbox One S which are Xbox One models but they decided to use X and S for the latest ones making them easy to confuse with each other. And the base names are just chaotic so I don’t blame anyone for confusing their order or mixing them up.
I think legit the only time I confused any of the Nintendo ones was the Wii and Wii U as the latter was advertised poorly like it was a Wii addition rather than a separate console.
I came across a comic where people called their switch a “nintendo” and it super threw me for a loop. I’ve always said gamecube, wii, wiiu, switch, ds, etc etc. Even with playstation I specify what number. Particularly with consoles from Nintendo, just saying “Nintendo” feels really boomerish (no offense, whether or not you are one)
Adding to this, it just makes it hard to suggest games otherwise. Like I suggested some games to a coworker, only to find out that by “Xbox” she meant specifically the 360, which obvs wouldn’t work with new games
I mean, ultimately the generic “Nintendo” nomenclature is probably just a timeline-proofing measure.
OK, I’m willing to entertain the possibility that these two *might* deserve each other
G-d, this reminds me of the time a co-worker told me they found my freaking LiveJournal.
I still don’t understand how I didn’t die instantly from horror and embarrassment.
oohhh, I like them.
I like Booster.
Fucked up move, to be sure, but given what Amber said they took the card for, she also overstepped, so… swings and roundabouts?
(Which is to say, she said she was taking the pics, but clearly she also went through pics outside of that. I am not suggesting she wasn’t well within her rights to not want them to have the pictures of her.)
So, is Amber still in love of Walky or is just physical attraction? She still thinks of Sal as a villain? Oh no! By the way, I like Booster more and more. They sure are nosey, but they are very honest about that and I really like how fast they can read something. Their future as a psychologist will be amazing. I think Booster and Amber could be a great couple. Booster is openly what Amber is deeply.
I’m not sure they ever progressed to love, but I don’t doubt she still likes Walky and it’s not just lust.
But she clearly thinks them being around each other is a bad thing as stated when she set herself up for Dina attack.
who says the supervillain was sal? she could’ve been the twin.
There’s a bunch of people dunking on Booster today, but honestly Amber writing smut and posting it on public places about her real-life acquaintances without thier consent feels like an extremely no good, bad thing.
In a rare development, I don’t feel like Booster has done anything wrong here.
To be sincere, they were a supervillain and her twin brother. Only who knows her can understand the reference.
To be fair, a lot of early writers base their characters off of people they know irl when they are not good at character creation yet and it sounds like she isn’t just writing ‘here is joyce banging dorothy!’ but turning it into like, superhero stuff to create some layers of distance from reality but it is still possible to tell who it is based on if you know her.
I used to just straight-up use my friends in fanfics. Luckily, those fics were written on notebook paper and never posted online for the back-then cretins to lay into.
Also, assuming it is indeed fanfiction, it’s possible that the social dynamics are there but the character dynamics aren’t. Like, if she’s writing a fic where Batgirl sleeps with Catwoman’s identical twin brother, who knows how much of herself she’s put into Batgirl or how much of Sal she’s put into Catwoman.
I frequently read fanfiction where I finish it and go “you were really working through something there, huh”.
Amber: Working on shaming and socially chastising and framing Booster as a Creep(Social Rank)
Booster: Passively ignoring the attempt at being labeled with a Social Rank and doubling down as a Troll that would normally be harassing her on Twitter. But, she can’t block them. They live in her Dorm.
quick reader
Since my other post has the wrong pronoun, I want to cleanly say it here:
“Hey as long as they left a detailed review they’re golden.”
But was that feedback an actual comment, or just kudos, Booster? One of these gets you a lot more leeway than the other.
I’m confident Booster not only commented, they left kudos while logged in.
…gonna need to see this photo now
Willis you need to get on the AO3 train and start posting fics as Amber. Your audience (at least me) demands it. <3
Ok so bets on, how long until the ‘Dumbing of Age’ tag on AO3 gets this exact-described fic, or was this perhaps an existing fic on there that Willis saw?
Yep, it’s always nice to comment where possible~
I like to comment just to show my new avatar.
Like like, now.
I approve. Very good. (applause)
As long as they left feedback, it’s fine.
This is why I don’t share my (other) AO3 account.
Booster is flirting with Amber SO HARD, and she is just not picking it up.
But what do they want? Amber and Walky together? Or a throuple? Either way it’s fun to see Booster taking Amber off-guard so much.
I mean, Booster made their intentions REAL clear. I don’t think Amber’s not picking up on it. I get the impression that she’s uncomfortable with it for one reason or another.
I think the reason is that she is still in a pretty rough headspace, between Mike dying, the implosion with Walky, her dead dad, her legal battles, worrying about Ethan, etc. She’s not really keen on being pursued at the best of times, or at least, distrustful of that attention, and she’s particularly not receptive when she is in this state of stasis, not really engaging with any of that. Amber doesn’t want to do feelings right now.
I am curious about how she’d react to Booster, say, 6 months ago or something, but I think she’s just really not in the mood. Doesn’t mean that can’t change, but her initial reaction is to push it away and say she’s not hot.
I know people are gonna say this is creepy but I absolutely love it.
It is creepy, but Booster probably shouldn’t be openly mocking her about it.
They’re cruising for a bruising
I’m kinda all for it
Called her the fuck out for Friendfic. Dayum.
always leave at least a kudos
Considering Amber hacked into Booster’s cloud storage, I’d say they’re both creepy and invasive assholes to each other. And I LOVE that for them.