I Say Things: >promstuck makes john gay
>immediately unfollows
i’m very unimpressed
everything else is so ic
I didn’t even bother following. I knew it was going to happen unless there was a miracle.
i knew it was going to happen too, but some small part of me was going NO IT’LL TURN OUT OKAY AND KARKAT WILL STOP BEING OOC
seriously EVERYONE ELSE IS IC except for john and karkat wehhhh
but at least the creators don’t insist on it being canon
like geromy
Wait, Promstuck John turned out to be gay?! No… this… can’t po-
Are you honestly fucking surprised? I knew it was inevitable from what was damn near the start.
When Karkat revealed he was crushing on John was when it was obvious. When it was revealed that Vriska was John’s moiral made it disgustingly obvious. When Vriska started pushing John toward Karkat it was nauseatingly obvious and when I saw the scene with John “practicing CPR” on Karkat in three utterly random places the conclusion was so foregone that if anyone hadn’t realized what the ending would be by that point I honestly pity them.
I once mentioned that Promstuck was pretty good but for two flaws.
The first flaw is Vriska. Specifically her feelings for and relationship with John.
Promstuck started three months ago according to it’s tumblr page. By this point in the story Vriska’s feelings for John should have been terribly obvious, and obviously red in nature.
But the writer(s?) of Promstuck didn’t acknowledge, or even account for that possibility. In Promstuck Vriska is pale for John, not “Pale but pining/scheming to be more”, just pale. And secure enough in her paleness that she is trying to actively meddle with John’s other quadrants and set him up with a Matesprit.
And of course that Matesprit she is trying to set him up with turns out to be fucking Karkat.
Now I realize Vriska is impulsive and doesn’t quite understand how Humans work so objectively speaking if you’re willing to tolerate the premise that “Vriska is platonic best friends with John and trying to set him up ROMANTICALLY”, the idea of her trying to pair up John and Karkat does make enough sense.
The only problem is that from a narrative perspective it’s so unbelievably transparent to be almost offensive to my delicate sensibilities. You’re just telegraphing your plot so hard.
The second flaw is John. His sexual orientation is altered so blatantly and handled so unsubtly that it’s almost sickening.
John is so blatantly gay that literally every other character seems to “realize” that he is, and are for some reason insensitive assholes to the point of trying to force him out of the closet and pair him up with Karkat.
Yet he is still somehow so closeted that neither he nor Karkat realize he’s full of shit. Despite the fact that he has, under the guise of “practicing CPR” made out with Karkat on three seperate instances.
Looking back on the parts I read, the whole thing is mishandled to the point of borderline cruelty.
Isn’t Promstuck supposed to be a deliberately silly crackfic? Maybe I’m horribly misinterpreting the authors’ intentions, but I was under the impression that the alleged “second flaw” was actually a running gag poking fun at the implausibility of Johnkat in canon. As for John <3 Vriska, I just assumed that it fizzled in middle school like Karkat <3 Terezi. I’d appreciate an explanation of how and when they went pale, but I’m much more interested in knowing the situation with Equius, Aradia, Sollux and Feferi.
I strongly, strongly, strongly doubt it’s a parody of John/Karkat.
But in the highly unlikely event that I am wrong then the Authors would have their work cut out for them. It’s very difficult to parody Slash Fans because they are their own self-parody.
Trying to parody them without coming off as one of them basically means you have to go so over the top it becomes completely ludicrous.
