#the aroace queen of brockton bay

[greatwyrmgold]

Smugbug shippers get through a conversation about Lisa's sexuality without implying that writing an asexual woman with close friends is homophobic challenge 2023

[stop-spreading-this-poll]

Round 1 Poll 77: Lesbian

Worm/Parahumans submission:

Lisa Wilbourn being a lesbian, not aroace. She says in Worm that she's not interested in relationships, and by the time of Ward she realizes that she was just using her power as an excuse to not wonder why she didn't feel the feelings everyone said she was supposed to feel. (Not her exact wording, maybe I'm projecting a little, but she clarified that it wasn't her power. It was as close to a canon ""I'm aroace"" statement as one can make without using the words aromantic or asexual.) I've pretty much given up on stopping people from shipping Lisa, even though the characters people ship her with all have better wlw ships, but can you at least stop pretending there's any canon support for shipping the aroace queen of Brockton Bay?

Portal submission:

The idea that Chell is both mute and that she’s lesbian for GLaDOS like, okay, fine, Chell is meant to be a proxy for the player to project themselves onto, that’s fair, but the fans keep treating it like it’s canon when it’s not. Just look at what the developers have to say: Interviewer: ”If all the test subjects were prisoners, does that make Chell a murderer? Is that why she’s so good at it?” Erik Wolpaw: “No, she’s just super focused. I always thought of her as pissed all the time, that’s why she never says anything. For Gordon, there’s no real reason why he doesn’t say anything, but Chell doesn’t like these robots and doesn’t even want to dignify their shenanigans with a response. She’s just storming through this place PISSED.” - Portal 2 Official Guidebook Erik Wolpaw: “My personal idea is that Chell can talk, but she’s just kind of pissed the whole time. She just doesn’t like robots. She doesn’t want to give them the satisfaction of ever responding to their nonsense.” (https://archive.is/20130104035703/http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/04/19/qa-with-portal-2-writers-erik-wolpaw-and-jay-pinkerton/#selection-2297.0-2361.55) Erik Wolpaw: “I always had this feeling of Chell is a character who’s just pissed off the entire time and having to do this, and just not giving them the pleasure of saying anything. She probably can talk.” (https://web.archive.org/web/20110717195941/http://www.vg247.com/2011/03/14/wolpaw-players-dont-care-about-portals-chell/) The Escapist: ""Wolpaw doesn't feel that people are actually invested in Chell as a character, and instead relate to the game world through her shell as themselves. Wolpaw admits that Chell can definitely talk, but added: ""She just chooses not to, what with the robots all being dicks. Why give them the satisfaction?"" (https://web.archive.org/web/20110511090046/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109845-Valve-Portals-Chell-is-Silent-Because-Its-Funnier)

[brocktonbay]

I am 80% sure that Taylor was just a lesbian in denial. Thoughts?

Yes. Totally. 

(apologies if you were looking for a serious, thought-out answer. i’ll write that up another day)

There is another parallel universe, so close to Earth Bet that it’s nearly indistinguishable. We’ll call it…Earth Het ;)

In this universe, Taylor pretends to have a crush on Brian because hey! He’s conventionally attractive and friendly enough, and normal teenage girls like Taylor are supposed to like boys, right?

Wrong. Leviathan happens, and Taylor’s whole perspective changes. She’s not the “hero” she thought she was and she’s seen and experienced things the average sixteen-year-old couldn’t even fathom. Who gives a fuck what people think about her anymore?

Taylor comes out of the closet, much to both her and Brian’s relief. The whole thing between them just felt forced, anyways.

And yknow how in canon Taylor’s pretty oblivious to other people’s perceptions of her? Well, that’s the same here.

Lisa is aroace, she swears up and down and left and right that she is, but ever since that night on the rooftop, where she saw a fresh-faced hero taking on the scariest fire-breathing motherfucker in all of Brockton Bay, well, she may be questioning her stance on love. It’s two years later, at the end of the world, when Taylor pulls the ultimate martyr move by forcing a second trigger that Lisa truly moves on. She gets enough migraines from her power alone. 

Aisha HATES that she has a “schoolgirl crush” on Taylor, as Alec likes to put it. She supposes she’s grateful that Taylor and Brian broke things off because it means Aisha doesn’t have to devote as much time to being petty and jealous of her brother. The problem is that she can’t quite tell if she likes Taylor or if she wants to be Taylor. That respect carries all the way through Gold Morning, when Aisha protects Taylor and holds her close as Taylor’s mind crumbles away (it’s the least she can do, for one of the only constants she’s had in her entire life). Aisha hopes she can lead the Heartbroken the same way.

Amy’s life has been a shitshow for as long as she can remember. Circumstances of her birth and all that. She doesn’t like to think about the Slaughterhouse Nine, but Skitter is something of a bright spot in that dark time. She swept in like some sort of knight-in-shining-armor on a horse (or a beetle), facing down the most notorious serial killers in all of North America without a trace of fear. Hell, she even offered Amy a place on her team. And for what it’s worth, saliva was the easiest way to spread her counter-pathogens around.

Neither Sabah nor Lily have had crushes on Skitter. They only have eyes for each other. 

Weaver’s presence turns the life of the Chicago Wards upside-down. She’s scary competent and straight-up scary and probably their best bet at surviving through the end of the world. 

Grace hates her guts completely and utterly. She hates Weaver’s stupid curls, and her slender arms, and the way Weaver gets up-close and physical in their training spars, not even remotely flustered like their dorky boy teammates. So Grace teases her, gets up close and pushes Weaver around. She never learned about the proper ways to show affection, beyond the oft-repeated idea that “if a boy hits you, he likes you.” Why can’t it work for girls?

Poor Theo. He doesn’t even realize Taylor doesn’t like boys. Luckily, he’s started bonding with Cuff “Call-Me-Ava” over how cool their new teammate is. They decide to start training together, so that they can impress Weaver with their improvement.

Dennis still gets the most attention from Parahuman gossip sites. Missy thought it would be funny to send him a link to a popular fanfiction page for the so-called ship “Tick-Tock.” If only they knew the truth…

And then there’s Rachel.

Rachel and Taylor, who’ve gone from friends, to enemies, to friends and back again. Trust is hard earned, but these two have worked harder than most to earn it with each other.

Rachel knows what it’s like to have a brain altered by powers. She can’t quite remember what she was like before, but she knows it wasn’t this. Rachel doesn’t believe in wasting time on what-ifs and could-have-beens. 

Taylor, too, was affected by her powers. It was slow and insidious, the kind of thing you couldn’t notice until it was too late. Maybe Lisa knew, at the bottom of her heart, but didn’t want to admit it. How could she, how could any of them, when Taylor was getting more successful, more unstoppable with every victory? They basked in her confidence, they flourished under her guidance.

Rachel steps into Taylor’s control-range of her own will, because after all this, she still trusts Taylor.

The Queen Administrator doesn’t care about the feelings of an inferior shard. Khepri doesn’t care about some silly dog-girl. But Taylor cares. 

She releases Rachel from her control. Even though she’s losing her higher cognitive function, precious names and faces and memories, she trusts Rachel.

The world ends, but All of the earths, all of the worlds, all of the universes are saved. The girl responsible is nowhere to be found.

Lisa is good at making deals. Contessa is tired of being the boogeyman.

They stick Taylor in Earth Aleph and close the doors behind her, because it’s the closest thing to a happy ending Taylor is going to get. Sticking with the Undersiders will be a death sentence, by way of parahuman or passenger.

But the heat dies down. There’s crazier shit on the horizon, new heroes and old villains and everything in between, and people don’t ask about the girl anymore.

Rachel has a little farm on Gimel. It’s a lovely and peaceful place, where she learned to heal all those years ago. Foster care to runaway to wanted criminal makes it hard for Rachel to settle down.

She calls her farm “home.”

And when Taylor comes home, there are tears in her eyes. She’s clutching Rachel’s hand so tight that Rachel feels it go all prickly and stiff. Crying is bad. Why is Taylor crying?!

“It’s okay,” Taylor tells her, pressing their foreheads together. Her glasses are fogged up, and Rachel resists the urge to wipe them off. 

“I’m happy here.”

Rachel nods, confusion dispelled for the moment. She smiles and drags Taylor through the front door.

“We’ll be happy here,” Rachel replies, so quiet as not to be heard over the sound of dogs barking.

ANYWAYS! That’s my explanation for the technically-Ward-Compliant AU where Taylor is just chillin on Rachel’s farm and enjoying an early retirement. The Heartbroken love visiting, even though they’re not allowed to tell anyone outside of the Undersiders that Taylor Hebert is alive.

(Also Victoria is bi, but that’s a conversation for another day.)

[greatwyrmgold]

Hello! I just want to thank you for supporting aroace Lisa so passionately. It's made me start reading Worm and I've really been enjoying it. While it's sad that a lot of people don't respect her identity, I'm glad there are people like you out there to defend the truth :)

And I want to thank you (and everyone else who sends asks/PMs like this) for the support. Sometimes it feels like i'm the only person who gives a shit about Lisa being aroace, and it's nice to be reminded that I'm not.

[greatwyrmgold]

I don't want to @ the involved parties or get into a Big Discourse about this, but...anyone who says Lisa being turned off relationships by her powers was something Wildbow made up at the end of Worm so people would stop shipping Smugbug is a fucking liar.

“Sure.  Maybe not totally my type, but I definitely wouldn’t turn someone like him away, if I was doing the relationship thing.” “You’re not?  How come?” “My power kind of takes the mystery out of things.  Relationships are hard to get off the ground unless you can get the ball rolling with a healthy dose of self delusion and lies.”

—Tangle 6.2

This is before the timeskip, before Coil's betrayal, before Taylor even meets Coil. This isn't the very beginning of the story, but it's dang close. It's maybe one-eighth through Worm's wordcount (~200k out of >1.6 mil).

And while I can't prove that Wildbow didn't write it in because he wanted to discourage Smugbug, A. there would be simpler ways to do that (like making Lisa and Taylor straight, which would be almost effortless since most characters are assumed to be until proved otherwise) and B. none of you chucklefucks can prove Wildbow did. You're making shit up and hoping your audience either already believes Wildbow hates lesbians or that they ship Smugbug so hard that they don't question anything that supports it.

And while it's true that Lisa's aroace-ness doesn't get upgraded from "power side effect" to "personal identity" until Ward, but that does not matter. There are two ways of looking at this: The canon-characterization angle and the ace-erasure angle.

Lisa's canon characterization is that she doesn't have any interest in sex or dating. (She says she MIGHT change her mind in a few years, but I thought the same thing when I was 16, and also very few smugbug fics/art are set a few years after Lisa says that.)

As for ace erasure...Lisa isn't "canonically aroace" before Ward, but calling her aroace-coded feels too weak. She literally says she does not want to have a romantic or sexual relationship with anyone. She's aroace in all but name.

In conclusion: I can't stop you from shipping Lisa. But I can call out when you're being shitty about it. At least fucking admit that you're going against Lisa's canonical characterization instead of trying to well-actually her sexuality.

[greatwyrmgold]

Wormfic authors when Lisa is aroace: but what if . . . She wasn't???? What if she was just lying or-

The 900lb gorilla that had escaped the zoo early this morning: OOO OOO OOOOOOOOOO AH AH AH OOO AH

I'm not sure if the 900-pound gorilla is how aroace Tattletale acts in canon or that one guy on Tumblr who keeps telling people not to ship the aroace queen of Brockton Bay.

Either way, fair.

[greatwyrmgold]

Every so often, I see some fanart of Lisa and Taylor hanging out, and think "Oh, that's nice!" Then I read the author raving about how they make a cute couple and think "Oh. This is supposed to be a date."

[greatwyrmgold]

wait what the fuck how does that work what part is homophobic how what?

—@samwise210

Figured this should be its own post. It's kind of a wild conversation.

Typical disclaimer: I'm trying NOT to start drama, so I'm not going to name names. I'll be posting screenshots of the relevant PMs (with username and PFP removed) at the end of the post, to show that I'm not just making up a guy to be mad at. Novel disclaimer: It's been a while since I actually reread the conversation in question. The simplified version has gotten a bit more extreme over time.

For the sake of sanity, I'm going to call the other party P. P did not directly say that it was homophobic for ace characters to have friends. What they said was that Lisa being ace was homophobic, because it was only there to stop Taylor from having a sapphic relationship with Lisa. Which is a conspiracy theory as hilariously low-stakes as it would be pointless, if it was a real thing.

Anyways, part of the problem is that P's argument is kinda incoherent. It's focused more on Wildbow in general, how he writes lesbians in specific, and the aforementioned conspiracy theory than anything that was actually written about Lisa. The only Lisa-relevant thing that gets brought up is the fact that she's aroace and not in a relationship with Taylor (or later Victoria).

In retrospect, I don't think I made this argument well when I was PMing with P. I pointed out that their assertions had no merit, then I said that P was basically saying that it was homophobic to write ace characters. Perhaps because of how stressed I was from all the other ace!Lisa drama flying around at the time, I forgot to explain the logic connecting those two points.

When you get down to it, the only claim P made that was both germane and accurate was that Taylor and Lisa had the sort of close friendship that shippers love (not P's framing), and that Lisa was ace and therefore couldn't be in a sapphic relationship.

The implied logic (which I failed to properly articulate at the time) is that these factors were sufficient basis to call Lisa's (lack of) sexuality homophobic. Which isn't quite what P believed; they put a lot of stock in the "Wildbow only made Lisa ace to stop people from shipping her!" conspiracy theory, and thought that was a relevant point.

Other crazy things:

Lisa's sexuality never factoring into the plot makes it a plot device. (Which is, for the record, the opposite of what a plot device is.)

On a related note, the fact that Lisa's story doesn't revolve around her sexuality is what makes her a token. (Same deal.)

Rachel is aroace in canon. (Aromantic makes sense, but post-timeskip she's having sex with Biter because "he wasn’t a bad lay, if she was in the mood for that.")

Screenshots of the relevant PMs, as promised:

I mentioned this in a later PM, but I want to point out to y'all that the timeline here doesn't make much sense. People were shipping Victoria and Lisa way before Lisa's Ward interlude.

I still hate it. Why does Tumblr not let you expand the PM box to more than 6% of your monitor. Ugh.

Anyways, the rest of the conversation was me responding to P's points, then being told that I wasn't listening well enough. And then P blocked me, which, whatever.

Also, if the "calling lesbian relationships pandering" thing is referring to what I think it's referring to, it's a comment Wildbow made about not wanting to introduce a lesbian couple until Wildbow knew the audience knew that they weren't included so he could write steamy lesbian sex scenes. Which would be pandering! (I'm paraphrasing, I didn't bother to look up the actual quote.)

[greatwyrmgold]

I say this without a shred if malice ok? Let ppl ship what they want. I'm aroace and i do what i want stop letting a fandom tag ruin things for you or you'll never be happy. Chill w it

I have not posted about shipping Tattletale in a month and three days, and that last post was a joke about which Antares ship is the best. The last time I said anything serious on the subject was a month and three days before that (spooky!), and that was yes-anding someone else who wants fanfic writers to acknowledge that Lisa is ace. The last time I wrote something substantial on the topic was almost two months before that—four months ago to the day, in fact.

There are a couple weird coincidences in your timing, but none weirder than choosing to bother me about this issue right now.

[greatwyrmgold]

Hot take: "Worm (or other Wildbow serial) is Xist/Xphobic, and I don't need to explain why because it's patently obvious to anyone who reads" is the second-worst type of Wormblr post.

So, first of all, even if it was true it would drive me up the wall. If you make an assertion, you should be willing to at the very least explain why you think that thing is true. This isn't goddamn Twitter. The more important/meaningful the assertion, the more important the explanation.

Second, it's not true. It might be obvious to you, someone who has spent years critically analyzing media and reading Wildbow serials, but that doesn't mean it's obvious to someone who just had this bug supervillain story recommended to them and thought it was really cool.

Like: Yeah, the way that Lung and the ABB are written is cringeworthy, and the entire world outside the USA and Canada is sketchily drawn, and just casually dropping Nazis in Brockton Bay reads a lot different in a post-alt-right world, and so on, and so forth...but it's not the fucking Turner Diaries. If this level of racism was obviously racist to everyone, or even everyone who wasn't a far-right dipshit, then racism wouldn't be anywhere near as big of a problem as it is.

Third, or maybe two-and-a-halfth, this kind of post won't convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you. People who already think that Worm is X will nod and reblog, people who don't will scratch their heads in confusion and scroll past. Some of them will ask what you're talking about, and while I don't want to name names, a shockingly common response is to just dismiss the question. What do you hope to accomplish? Driving the people trying to understand what Wormblr is talking about over to Spacebattles or fukin' Reddit?

TL;DR: If you want to call Wildbow racist/sexist/homophobic/etc, remember that you have more than 280 characters to do it in. Explain yourself.

...

Hotter take: The absolute worst kind of Wormblr post is the kind which ships canonical aroace queen Lisa Wilbourn and then says it's lesbophobic to point out that she's aroace.

[greatwyrmgold]

I get why people ship Taylor with, like, half of the female supporting cast. I get why there are jokes about the lesbian chemistry between Worm's straight girls. But can we please try to leave Lisa out of it?

I mean, yeah, I see what y'all see with Lisa and Taylor, and I kinda see what y'all see with Lisa and Vicky. But there aren't a lot of aromantic or asexual characters around, and Lisa is definitely one of them. Even if you don't want to count her power excuse...

She’d come to terms with the fact that her lack of interest in the romance or the physical stuff wasn’t because of one excuse or the other.  She was pretty sure it wasn’t because her power preferred her this way.  It was just her. Ward, Interlude 10.x

Lisa's one of the mere handful of aro/ace characters I came across before finally realizing I was (I had my own set of excuses). Even now, I haven't encountered many aro/ace characters in media, and way fewer if you discount the ones I heard about specifically because they are aro/ace.

Imagine if there was a running gag in the fandom about shipping Flechette and Weld, or Tristan and Moonsong, or Avery Kelly and Jude Garrick. Wouldn't that be weird? Wouldn't it feel off? It would to me, at least. And it's the same for aromantic characters.

It's not a big deal, just...a little irritation, every time I see a Tumblr post or whatever jokingly shipping Tattletale with someone. There are just a lot of posts like that.

Also: There are better lesbian ships in the fandom. Look at Taylor's friendship with Rachel. Hell, look at Victoria's friendship with Ashley. They even have a kid that they substitute-parent together! How do people look at Victoria and Lisa and think "girlfriends" instead of "grumpy moms who have to get along because their kids are friends"?