Essay: On Sexuality
THIS IS A COINCIDENCE I SWEAR TO GOD. I had just started this when I noticed Edward had put one up. ^^a Anyway, as far as camp goes, I have chosen to play Capell as bi with a strong-leaning-towards-girls, and here is where I'm going to explain why. I'm going to do my best to be succinct, but I fail at that at the best of times and I have a lot of ground to cover. I'll compromise with "interesting" (I hope?), barring any sort of brevity. Really, I'm just sounding my ideas out, because I like to hear myself talk, and all this fascinates me. And I love reading about other people, so I'm hoping this will be entertaining for someone else, too.
First: Capell liek girls. Oh gosh, let me tell you how Capell liek girls. This is not even remotely in question. There are several instances of embarrassing, goofy desperation over girls that come up in canon, from making the world's doofiest face while being boob-squished hugged, to examining Aya's panties when she eats it on a patch of ice. CAPELL IS NOT SUAVE ABOUT THE LADIES OKAY. But he knows he is supposed to like them, even if he displays...pretty much no knowledge of what he's supposed to do about it.
So Capell likes girls. He even has a section of his profile titles devoted to describing the sort of girls he likes. However, I don't think this rules out the possibility of him liking boys -- it's just not an idea he's examined terribly closely. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that Capell is an unblessed, the ramifications of which are an entire other essay to themselves, but the short version is that he has grown up alone and isolated. He has very little positive interaction with others, probably not much interaction at all. All he knows about getting along with people would have been things he picked up by watching people as he passed through towns, or in inns, when he could afford to stay in them.
In the canon itself, relationship things are fairly analogous to real-world relationships, so far as we are shown: Mothers and fathers raise children together, the sleezeball airship pirate party member hits on anything with legs, and old men in taverns barter for date-rape drugs in order to get it on with the hot waitress. Pretty (visually)het-dominant society. However, I am extremely loath to ascribe the same contemporary prejudices we have here to fictional places, without extreme, explicit evidence of this being the case. What I mean is, I'm not going to assume homophobia is as prevalent in Capell's world as it is in ours unless they tell me it is. If they get to leave out racism* and global warming, then I get to leave out homophobia because they haven't told me I can't. So just because we're not given an obviously gay couple or anything doesn't mean, to me, that it isn't a possibility. Of course, you can interpret Kiriya's falling all over himself to do what his (academic) Master Savio tells him to do (while loathing the rest of humanity), or Edward's tripping over his own tongue and scrambling to be the most! Helpful! Person! Ever! Whenever Sigmund so much as blinks any way you want, but that's not an explicit acknowledgment.
There is one explicit acknowledgment of it, in one of the personal skills traits Capell gives to Kristofer, but -- in an obvious and oh-so-charming testament to how this canon operates -- it is not a title you can actually obtain during natural gameplay. When in towns, you can check any party member's traits from the menu. In dungeons, you can only check those of the people you have in your party at the time. Kristofer is a secondary party member, which means you can never have him in the same party as Capell. This title is given in the middle of a dungeon, and by the time you reach the next town, it has already changed. Sneaky, huh? The title in question is:
Title 1(level 4): Desperado -- So does he go for ANYONE that's pretty? (gulp)
Which. Yeah, okay. Kristofer hitting on Capell makes Capell uncomfortable! It'd make ME uncomfortable too (especially since the title previous to this one is "So does he go for ANYTHING that's pretty?", which, what, is Kristofer hitting on the bear or something?), but that's not the point. Like I said...much earlier, boys hitting on other boys is not something Capell would be very familiar with, and Capell repeatedly shows a cringing reluctance towards anything that is not what he is used to.
However, this title also tells me that Capell thinks of himself as pretty -- not just generically attractive, or handsome, or manly or whatever, but pretty. Along with this, there are a couple of other cases in the personal skills table ("His muscles are so sweaty they're...they're...blinding!" and "There's something about the tone of his voice...and how he moves his hands" for Balbagaan and Eugene, respectively) and hidden scenes where Capell is enthusiastically attentive to his party members (of either gender) in ways that aren't necessarily indicative of any preference, but what they do indicate, as far as I'm concerned, is a marked lack of that defensive homophobia you will see in some men, the "I cannot acknowledge or otherwise notice anything about another man ever, lest someone claim I have caught a case of the gay, and heaven help them if they touch me." And again, with as subtle as this canon can be, I would expect that sort of thing out of Capell, if they meant that to be in there.
Since that was paragraph six and nowhere near my point, I'm going to try and wrap up here. IN CONCLUSION: Capell is not going to go looking for male romances**, not in the way he does with girls, and it's probably not going to be something he considers or thinks about, unless someone is waving the concept in front of his face (which, okay, happens a lot in camp). However, it's not an idea that repulses him or anything, and he would be okay with the idea, after an initial lot of squirming and being uncomfortable. But since he is...not used to human contact much at all, that one is pretty much a given. He doesn't know how physical contact is supposed to work, so until he figures that out, he'll be awkward with everyone.
In the end, Capell is so starved for attention that he would accept any form of affection pretty gratefully, and then imprint like a baby duckling. He does this with his camp friends as well, but to a lesser extent. He just wants a little love and attention. >:
*This is not to say there is no predjudice in Capell's world. QUITE THE OPPOSITE. But the concern there is less who you're sleeping with and more what time of the month you were born.
**Not that Capell...goes looking for any romances at all. He clearly wants one, but he is also extremely passive, and lacks any initiative. He'd pretty much never ask somebody out, unless they made a really obvious first move. Like holding up a sign that said "Ask me to date you, you doofus."
First: Capell liek girls. Oh gosh, let me tell you how Capell liek girls. This is not even remotely in question. There are several instances of embarrassing, goofy desperation over girls that come up in canon, from making the world's doofiest face while being boob-squished hugged, to examining Aya's panties when she eats it on a patch of ice. CAPELL IS NOT SUAVE ABOUT THE LADIES OKAY. But he knows he is supposed to like them, even if he displays...pretty much no knowledge of what he's supposed to do about it.
So Capell likes girls. He even has a section of his profile titles devoted to describing the sort of girls he likes. However, I don't think this rules out the possibility of him liking boys -- it's just not an idea he's examined terribly closely. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that Capell is an unblessed, the ramifications of which are an entire other essay to themselves, but the short version is that he has grown up alone and isolated. He has very little positive interaction with others, probably not much interaction at all. All he knows about getting along with people would have been things he picked up by watching people as he passed through towns, or in inns, when he could afford to stay in them.
In the canon itself, relationship things are fairly analogous to real-world relationships, so far as we are shown: Mothers and fathers raise children together, the sleezeball airship pirate party member hits on anything with legs, and old men in taverns barter for date-rape drugs in order to get it on with the hot waitress. Pretty (visually)het-dominant society. However, I am extremely loath to ascribe the same contemporary prejudices we have here to fictional places, without extreme, explicit evidence of this being the case. What I mean is, I'm not going to assume homophobia is as prevalent in Capell's world as it is in ours unless they tell me it is. If they get to leave out racism* and global warming, then I get to leave out homophobia because they haven't told me I can't. So just because we're not given an obviously gay couple or anything doesn't mean, to me, that it isn't a possibility. Of course, you can interpret Kiriya's falling all over himself to do what his (academic) Master Savio tells him to do (while loathing the rest of humanity), or Edward's tripping over his own tongue and scrambling to be the most! Helpful! Person! Ever! Whenever Sigmund so much as blinks any way you want, but that's not an explicit acknowledgment.
There is one explicit acknowledgment of it, in one of the personal skills traits Capell gives to Kristofer, but -- in an obvious and oh-so-charming testament to how this canon operates -- it is not a title you can actually obtain during natural gameplay. When in towns, you can check any party member's traits from the menu. In dungeons, you can only check those of the people you have in your party at the time. Kristofer is a secondary party member, which means you can never have him in the same party as Capell. This title is given in the middle of a dungeon, and by the time you reach the next town, it has already changed. Sneaky, huh? The title in question is:
Title 1(level 4): Desperado -- So does he go for ANYONE that's pretty? (gulp)
Which. Yeah, okay. Kristofer hitting on Capell makes Capell uncomfortable! It'd make ME uncomfortable too (especially since the title previous to this one is "So does he go for ANYTHING that's pretty?", which, what, is Kristofer hitting on the bear or something?), but that's not the point. Like I said...much earlier, boys hitting on other boys is not something Capell would be very familiar with, and Capell repeatedly shows a cringing reluctance towards anything that is not what he is used to.
However, this title also tells me that Capell thinks of himself as pretty -- not just generically attractive, or handsome, or manly or whatever, but pretty. Along with this, there are a couple of other cases in the personal skills table ("His muscles are so sweaty they're...they're...blinding!" and "There's something about the tone of his voice...and how he moves his hands" for Balbagaan and Eugene, respectively) and hidden scenes where Capell is enthusiastically attentive to his party members (of either gender) in ways that aren't necessarily indicative of any preference, but what they do indicate, as far as I'm concerned, is a marked lack of that defensive homophobia you will see in some men, the "I cannot acknowledge or otherwise notice anything about another man ever, lest someone claim I have caught a case of the gay, and heaven help them if they touch me." And again, with as subtle as this canon can be, I would expect that sort of thing out of Capell, if they meant that to be in there.
Since that was paragraph six and nowhere near my point, I'm going to try and wrap up here. IN CONCLUSION: Capell is not going to go looking for male romances**, not in the way he does with girls, and it's probably not going to be something he considers or thinks about, unless someone is waving the concept in front of his face (which, okay, happens a lot in camp). However, it's not an idea that repulses him or anything, and he would be okay with the idea, after an initial lot of squirming and being uncomfortable. But since he is...not used to human contact much at all, that one is pretty much a given. He doesn't know how physical contact is supposed to work, so until he figures that out, he'll be awkward with everyone.
In the end, Capell is so starved for attention that he would accept any form of affection pretty gratefully, and then imprint like a baby duckling. He does this with his camp friends as well, but to a lesser extent. He just wants a little love and attention. >:
*This is not to say there is no predjudice in Capell's world. QUITE THE OPPOSITE. But the concern there is less who you're sleeping with and more what time of the month you were born.
**Not that Capell...goes looking for any romances at all. He clearly wants one, but he is also extremely passive, and lacks any initiative. He'd pretty much never ask somebody out, unless they made a really obvious first move. Like holding up a sign that said "Ask me to date you, you doofus."