He can ask Belkar and there will have been crew around as well.
Any more “out of the blue” than if she’d mentioned an ex-boyfriend?
Interesting comic–looks like Rich is regretting some of his past sexist portrayals of Haley. Honestly I hadn’t thought about it much, but it’s interesting to see his thoughts.
If it was an ex-boyfriend there wouldn’t have been any need to mention him, because he obviously wouldn’t be wearing female armor. Actually, at reading Haley’s line about “Kinda surprising, since you’re so skinny”, I thought Rich was going to make a joke about how D&D armor always seems to fit whichever character needs it (for obvious gameplay reasons). He could have made the throwaway line something about how Bandanna had to lose some weight so she could swing around the rigging or something.
I don’t have a problem with gay and lesbian characters, but I sorta wonder if Rich is tossing them in to appease a demographic. I could picture a forum-activist going “and why aren’t there any GLBTQA characters in the comic” and Rich thinking “Hmm, I suppose I could add some throwaway line to make that demographic happy”.
It’s similar to the point you make about regretting Haley’s earlier sexualization. Yea, fantasy women are usually portrayed in bikini armor and as romance candy for the manly hero. Yes, that’s probably not a good stereotype to continue. But changing Haley from “Let’s see what 18 Charisma is worth under the hood” to “Like dungeon delving with a bare midriff” just to make some activist happy is a flanderization that I’m concerned will steer the comic away from the witty and the gritty.
Like I said, you want a gay character, or characters that pass the Bechtel test, or a racially diverse cast, great. Just don’t do it at the expense of the story. Rich hasn’t done that yet, it’s just something I worry about. I’m sure he can handle it well - I also know it’s easy to get bogged down and forget what made the comic great to start with.
There wasn’t a need for the armor lending in the story, either. Story elements are there because RIch puts them there. It could just as easily have been a helmet, or bracers of archery, or anything else, and been a boyfriend.
That’s an incredibly cynical take, and I don’t recall any similar complaints from you about when Roy had a girlfriend–did you wonder if Rich was tossing a straight couple in to appease the straight demographic?
Likely the demographic Rich is trying to please is himself.
Again, you have no evidence that that’s true, and your concern appears wholly unfounded. I’m delighted that Rich is going ahead with his vision for the story, including thinking about places in the past where he’s unhappy about how he portrayed characters, and isn’t worried about offending target demographics like you, folks who make a big deal out of a throwaway lesbian reference.
Yes, it is incredibly cynical of me. It just caught my attention.
And you probably didn’t hear anything from me when Roy got a girlfriend because I wasn’t on the boards until years later.
Well, according to the translations of Haley’s speech when it was scrambled, she did kiss a girl. More than once. So we already have a bi (curious?) character in the comic.
ETA: and Nale and Sabine had experimented with sex with Sabine in male form.
Is there any hope, I wonder, of a bit of . . . fanservice?
Since Belkar is still alive, Roy can ask him what happened.
Gods, I hope not.
:rolleyes:
Really? I mean, really? If you’d been on the boards, I would have heard you saying things about how concerned you were that he was just appeasing a target demographic of straight people, and that you worried he’d go activist happy instead of following the story’s direction?
C’mon now.
Oh this is execrable. My point it I wasn’t around to make any comments on it one way or the other.
I think Burlew was making a point about some of the common sexism in the genre.
- Women dress in ridiculous costumes as fan service.
- Women engage in ridiculous rivalries.
- Straight characters are “normal”. Gay characters only exist to make some point.
- Lesbians only exist for fan service.
- Women exist to support the male protagonists. They don’t have any ambitions of their own.
Burlew was throwing all these stereotypical cliches out in the open so we can see how unrealistic they are.
I understood your point fully. My failure, I believe, is in not making my own point clear, so I hope you’ll let me try again:
There is no way on God’s green earth that you would have made a similar comment if you had been around at that point. There is no freakin’ way that, had you been around when Belkar got friendly with his cat, you would have talked about appeasing pet-lovers. There’s no flippin’ chance that, had you been around for the storyline between Elan and his dad, you would have complained about sops to the reconnect-with-your-father John Bly demographic. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that you would have complained about whatshername’s pregnancy as a sop to straight parent couples if you’d been around for whatshername’s pregnancy. Your concerns are not happening because of a genuine concern about appealing to demographics, but because the relationship in question was gay.
I’m suggesting that you’re operating from a position of heteronormativity, the terribly-named milder cousin of the equally-annoyingly-named heterosexism, itself the relatively harmless version of homophobia, in the spectrum I just made up. The gender dynamics of straight relationships are invisible to you, because they’re what you expect; you act as if there’s nothing potentially political about them. But gay relationships suddenly raise your red flags, because they’re not what you expect.
I’m suggesting that you take the opportunity here not to be defensive or eye-rolly or all mad at me for suggesting such a thing, but instead to check yourself, your own assumptions, your peculiar response to a gay relationship being treated as no big thang, in a way that you absolutely don’t respond to a straight relationship’s treatment.
Ball’s in your court. I’ll do my best not to go down this road with you further, because I think I’ve gone about as far as I can while keeping it related to OotS, but I do encourage you to spend some time thinking about whether your response is legitimate.
Cheers.
Can you guys take the dick-beating elsewhere please? Some of us are emotionally invested in a badly-drawn web comic based on a role-playing game.
Left Hand of Dorkness, yellowjacketcoder – whatever y’all are talking about, if you need to continue to talk about it, take it to the Pit. This particular squabble has taken a personal tone that is not appropriate in this thread.
I am, too, obviously, and I think that what I was talking about above is central to this particular strip, and I think your dick-beating comment is offensive and unwarranted–but I’ll take twickster’s advice and, as I said in my last post, not discuss this further.
This isn’t the first time that Burlew has portrayed homosexuality as no big deal in Stickworld. One of Elan’s jailers was gay, and it gets no more response than “Really? I didn’t know that” from his co-worker. And in one of the print-only comics, two female paladins say that they’re starting a romantic relationship with each other, and even Miko Miyazaki has nothing more to say on the matter than “May the Twelve Gods bless your union”.
Probably because it’s no big deal to most D&D players.
I admit I raised my eyebrows a little at the addition of the latest gay character. Which is sort of odd: there’s no reason to believe that homosexual percentages in Stickworld should be identical to that in the real world. Not that they differ by all that much anyway. Also, Little Nemo nailed it in post 433. (How does he do that?)