08-11-13 Now pucker up

[Artemisia]

Am I allowed to ask what that was in relation to since I seem to find it just flew right over my head.

[Crystafent82]

Sorry, in plain english:
Ignore stereotypes and outward appearance, it's the person itself it' all about.
Sadly some people think that they have to follow the stereotypes to define themselves.

[Don Alexander]

Have you ever seen the german comedians from Bullyparade? They made a queer Star Trek parody, hillarious 3 minute jokes in their shows. Then they made the mistake and made a 90 minute version of it.

Hey, Traumschiff Periode 1 was the only thin from Michael Herbig that I actually liked... I thought Schuh des Manitou was pretty stupid. Which, by the way, also contained loads of campy gayness.

[Artemisia]

Thank you. That I understood. Ruby is actually outside the stereotype of a lesbian while Dillon is smack dab in the center of the stereotype of what it means to be gay. In a story, a stereotype can be useful for laying out a story or it can be very usefully broken to add to the flavor of a story. We could watch as Dillon runs around trying to provide Ruby with a boyfriend only for it to be revealed at a later date that she has no interest in men, but find the attention as a whole embarrassing. Or it could be revealed that she is straight.

[FrostDancer81]

And just as well Arte, I see no real reason to care about the argument at hand because it will end in the same way all others have: hurt feelings, people hating each other and misconceptions about other people because they said one thing the other didn't like. At this point, we should all really just stop taking these comics so seriously, along with teh characters, cause it's not gonna get any better or worse from here on out so...

*Hands Arte a flower*

As Vash the Stampede would say: Love and Peace!

[Artemisia]

Well, FrostDancer, I take stories very seriously, but as I said, I am not the storyteller in this case. So long as we can avoid the presentation of theories as absolutes, I won't get upset.

[Crystafent82]

True, but Schuh des Manitu had only 1 over-the-top in pink dressed red indian, who was not a main character.
Traumschiff Periode 1 had 2 over-the-top queer parodies of Spock and Kirk as main cast and it made for me the whole movie a 3-minute-sketch dragged out for 90 minutes. That ain't funny in my book.
I mean, compare it to let's say the sketch where Spucki (Spock), Captain Kork (Kirk) and Schrotty (Scotty) debate if he is a friend or a foe. Then they ask their guest directly, camera spins around to Darth Vader. Vader pull out his lightsaber, holds it to his scrotch and activates the blade making it look like a 1 metre long erect penis made of light.
The captain and his crew exhale and say 'Ah, friend!'

That was funny, the first few times.
But not the whole thing dragged out for 90 minutes.

And yes, sadly some gay men think that they have to behave so over-the-top to be gay.

[Mandy]

It can hard for a gay man to find other gay men if they let themselves blend in. Searching blindly for the chameleon minority can be hard, ya know? Wearing rainbows is a better shorthand, really, but people will live how they want to. Besides, once you've spent enough time living as a stereotype, that is who you are. It's no longer an act.

I don't really consider it homophobic to have the occasional negative depiction of a gay person. It's far more annoying to see a writer feel obligated to make all minorities perfect, well-rounded, hard working people. Regardless of gender, race, or sexuality, people all have an equal opportunity to be a bothersome prat.

['J']

i thought that was what craigslist was for

[Mandy]

Nah, Craigslist isn't for dating. It's where you go for all the free stab wounds you could ever want!

[Bambikles]

Sadly some people think that they have to follow the stereotypes to define themselves.

But stereotypes rarely come from thin air. They're basically Flanderization applied to a whole group of people.
*flies away before being torn apart*

[Spidrift]

I don't really consider it homophobic to have the occasional negative depiction of a gay person. It's far more annoying to see a writer feel obligated to make all minorities perfect, well-rounded, hard working people. Regardless of gender, race, or sexuality, people all have an equal opportunity to be a bothersome prat.

Yeah, but... Well, Dillon is such a jerk... More to the point, though, his obnoxiousness is a direct function of his campness. A character like Senna is (mostly) just a case of equal-opportunity obnoxiousness, because she's a bad person who just happens to be a transsexual. If she wasn't transsexual, she could still be just as vain, delusional, selfish, and bitchy. Likewise, say, Matt is unfaithful and self-indulgent and just happens to be bi; his bisexuality is only relevant in that it doubles his opportunities. Neither has to be read as an insult to their particular group.

Dillon, though, is annoying because he's a raging queen. He doesn't listen to people because he's too busy with the camp melodrama, he treats female friends as living dress-up dolls, and so on. If he wasn't gay, he'd be highly unlikely to be written the same way, unless it was an extended and slightly weird joke about preconceptions. He strikes me as a strangely homophobic bit of characterisation, in ways that, say, Senna isn't transphobic.

[Artemisia]

I don't really consider it homophobic to have the occasional negative depiction of a gay person. It's far more annoying to see a writer feel obligated to make all minorities perfect, well-rounded, hard working people. Regardless of gender, race, or sexuality, people all have an equal opportunity to be a bothersome prat.

Actually, only depicting someone of a specific category as being good is as bad as depicting someone of a specific category as being bad. In other words, it is as bigoted to portray gays as 'good' as it is to portray them as 'bad'.

[themacnut]

Yeah, but... Well, Dillon is such a jerk... More to the point, though, his obnoxiousness is a direct function of his campness.

His campness is also part of the humor of his character and the strip. You'd think it would have inspired much gay rage and led to the site being shut down from DoS attacks or something, but apparently he became popular enough, probably based on emails to the creative team, to be moved to his own comic. As much as you may hate Dillon's raging gay queen camp characterization Spidrift, apparently a large proportion of readers of this site love it, and Dillon, to death.

Yeah I don't get it either. But the proof is in the existence of the comic and this very forum we're posting in.

[Spidrift]

Based on what they said when the comic launched, one gets the impression that the creative team are among Dillon's biggest fans. I'd like to think that the comic actually gets by on the interest value of the Amber/Ruby relationship, but... Well, not everyone shares my immaculate taste, I realise.

From something said on TV Tropes, I also gather that some people think that Dillon was okay at the start of Ma3, then devolved into a raging stereotype over time there. Personally, looking at his earliest appearances on Ma3, I don't see it. But maybe I'm missing something crucial there.