Fuck you too, AH

[soc_puppet]

Spoilers for [S] Wake through "Eridan: Abscond." plus one.





We will not be discussing how long it took me to get a decent scan of these. Instead, I will just say that I plan on going printer/scanner shopping this evening, if at all possible.

[/crappy doodles (and less crappy doodles)]

Feferi? Kanaya? I'd like to potentially welcome you to the Land of Women and Refrigerators. (Aradia, congrats on defrosting?)

Edit: While I'm doing humorless feminist commentary, Eridan's actions also fit the misogynist roots of many mass killings, as well as the vast majority of murders of women. And one "Vriska" isn't going to erase that.

Edit 2: Running a retraction on LOWAR. Got a bit ahead of myself there. Attempting to be clearer.

1) Larger cultural context considered, I'm a bit disappointed that the violent slasher-type deaths we got on Derse were Feferi and Nepeta. I'm willing to believe that the Derse lads needed to do a dream-self-revival that we don't know about (aside from Sollux, who we do know about), which is why none of them were featured.

2) On the asteroid, Feferi and Kanaya are tragic, but not fridged. In light of Sollux's survival, I'd even say their deaths were gratuitous, but fridged is not the correct term. Feferi might have been, if the story revolved more around Sollux, but it doesn't. Kanaya, I admit, I was mostly interpreting this a bit too liberally, but fuck if I don't still feel like AH just said he needed to kill someone we were invested in to make Homestuck a good story.


My apologies for incorrect use of terminology. If there's more I'm missing, let me know and I'll do my best to knock my thoughts and words into correct order.

Comments

[yeloson]

I'm just starting the Troll Arc of Homestuck and am moderately entertained thus far, though, I'm not looking forward to whatever part coming up leads us to women in refrigerator-ville.

Le sigh.

[soc_puppet]

You know, I honestly thought for a minute that I might be exaggerating or mis-thinking - and then I stopped and did the math, and yeah, not quite :/ I mean, I'm still going to have to double-check some numbers, but what I do have for sure paints a pretty grim picture.

Basically, it's a damn shame that a webcomic that bucks so many other trends and gives us such a wide array of interesting, complex female characters then turns around and pours the misogyny back on, intentionally or not :(

[yeloson]

Ugh. I kinda got a hint when DreamJade got killed that women might now get to get too powerful w/o paybacks in this comic, I'm sorry to hear that I'll be seeing more of that :/

Right now it's this, Gunnerkrigg Court, and Erfworld that I'm following (Erfworld also has interesting women, but it's basically a dude-focused comic, le sigh).

[crescendo]

Um, he's also killed Tavros and Bro. They're not gender-based killings. It's about kids having to deal with death in a coming of age story, not about killing girls because they're females in comics. This is the sort of feminist commentary I like the absolute least, because it assumes that every time a woman dies it's because of misogyny, not because of any deeper plot reason. Would you prefer that only male characters die? Because that's hypocritical. Girls can die without it being the same as being fridged.

[crescendo]

and by "he" i mean hussie. right.

[soc_puppet]

He may also have killed male characters, but he's killed more female characters total, more female characters on-screen, and generally killed female characters in bloodier ways than male characters.

I do not for one minute believe it is deliberate misogyny. I believe it's a symptom of living in a culture that largely marginalizes women and girls, and while the comic itself for the most part transcends the icky parts of this culture, it is not entirely immune to it, nor is its creator.

It's very true that I may be over-thinking this, and I'm more than willing to give Homestuck until the next comic starts to prove me wrong. I won't know until I have all the numbers though, and at the moment the equation isn't looking as balanced as it might be.

[crescendo]

Honestly, I think you're focussing too much on gender, which in and of itself is a big problem/symptom of our culture. It's not important to the plot that they're female characters! They could've just as easily been male characters, and they still would've died the same way. If you want to focus so much on gender, more male characters have died and stayed dead. The god tier deaths are a plot device, not marginalising women, and --

Right, so I'm just pissing myself off at this point, therefore I'm not going to bother replying any more. To be honest, I don't think you quite understand what fridging actually means, and as I said, this is the sort of feminist commentary that makes me rage a little, because it comes across as tuning out any other interpretations, even if you are saying you're waiting for the rest of the updates.

[soc_puppet]

You know what, you're right. I did misuse fridging. I was probably too invested in Kanaya, and between that and the stupid formspring (which I am not visiting again if I can help it, because it appears to only piss me off), I got ahead of myself.

My apologies for misconstruing the situation. I'll run a retraction on that forthwith.

[dogmatix]

Mmmm, killing someone in a story... depends on the story.

Keeping in mind that I know nothing at all about this comic, ^^; this is my two cents on character death.

It can be necessary. If you have a dangerous situation like a quest/exploration/adventure where people could die, it becomes unrealistic to have them all survive, all the time, for the entire story, otherwise the dangers stop having an impact, because hey, they always survive.

I know that in a big plotty thing I'm working on right now, one of the group does, indeed, die. It sucks. I don't want to do it. I really, really like this character and so does the group. I hate doing it and I get physically choked up about it sometimes. But I'm still going to do it because it makes the story stronger.