I’ll admit it: I used to read Homestuck. And when I quit reading it, it left something of a hole in my reading list – a hole shaped like something colorful and funny. What was I to do? It’s a rare piece of comedy that doesn’t rely on harmful and oppressive humor, as I had painfully been reminded by Hussie’s work.
I love my readers! I love y’all. The fact that you take the time to read the words I type means a lot to me, definitely, but it’s not just that. We have so much in common! The fact that you come here means that you must be looking for the same thing I am: better queer and trans representation. So if I can help you find that, well, that’s something that warms my heart.
One thing that I always found hard to swallow about X-Men was how the government was so hardline anti-mutant. I guess it makes sense if you’re maintaining the whole mutants-as-civil-rights or mutants-as-militant-queers metaphors, but Marvel never seemed to want to go all in with those metaphors, so the question still lingers: Why not draft the mutants, get a bunch of superpowered cops and soldiers of their own?
It’s been a big week for Yes Homo! Between my *ahem* controversial review of Stand Still Stay Silent and the somewhat less contentious write-up I did for Computer Love, there’s a lot of new faces around the site. And by “faces” I mean “Google Analytics statistics” but that hardly seems like a neighborly way to put it! Anyway, I’ve gotten some messages, so it’s time for another Mail Bag.
When we think about “science fiction”, we typically think of two things: cerebral scifi, like the Twilight Zone, which uses speculative settings and concepts to delve deeper into the human condition; and pulp scifi, like Star Trek, which uses speculative settings and concepts as an excuse to blow things up. Sometimes a writer will try to achieve both, occasionally one thinks it’s the other, and rarely a work will effectively unite the two aspects of the genre, but overall, this dichotomy of “thinky” scifi and “explodey” scifi tends to remain unquestioned. What would – what could – science fiction that didn’t fit into either category even look like?