Tracing “El Goonish Shive” from being problematic to progressive
El Goonish Shive is a thrice-weekly webcomic following a group of teenagers in their sci-fi/fantasy lives and adventures. It currently runs the main story on a Mon-Wed-Fri schedule (With adjustments), with additional comics in the EGS:NP section (generally shorter jokes and out-of-continuity gags) and sketchbooks (Pictures, portraits, doodles, etc.). It is a fun, entertaining series with a long internal mythology, likable characters, and a good vibe.
When it started, however…..there were problems.
That is the first comic (Published 1/21/02), and it mainly just serves to say that it is a first comic, but then they close with the ‘joke’ about how Tedd looks like a girl. That joke, that Tedd is very androgynous, became a staple of the series and was constantly picked on. It wasn’t just in the first comics because they didn’t have anything else to say, this joke lingered for years, even when they began ongoing stories.
Tedd was also regarded as a sexual pervert, mocked by the people around him for the way he was always fantasizing about women and had weird fetishes. One of the first things he did in the series was invent a transformation gun (As I said, the comic is sci-fi/fantasy) and transform himself into a girl for ‘fun’, and he included hyper-sexualized attributes into the transformations (Including “pheromones” so that people would be attracted to the transformation even if they wouldn’t normally be).
The comic wasn’t just limited to Tedd with transformations, plenty of people were transformed (Some of them consensually) and there were…let’s call them ‘hijinks’. With the transformations and pheromones and whatnot, there were a lot of attractions/romances/relationships between people of the same physical sex at different points, and people with changing genders, but it was all explained/excused by not being ‘real’ or they were regarded as being ‘weird’. TvTropes calls this the “Discount Lesbian” trope.
I don’t think any of this was intentional, it likely just came from ignorance, but at the end of the day the intention doesn’t matter that much when there’s small bits of homophobic and transphobic “humor” scattered throughout the series for the first few years. Never the main point, but always popping up.
Then, over time, things began to chance.
Since the comic was never “BIGOTRY: THE SERIES" there isn’t a single point where it stopped being problematic, but over time they brought in LGBT characters. As in, the characters themselves are LGBT, it’s not just that they’re with a person who produces super-pheromones or is body swapped or whatever. The series stopped making “Tedd looks like a girl” jokes, and it’s not that the comic forgot that he looks androgynous, it’s that the comments moved to the bullies and villains so that the protagonists could counter them and explain why it’s an awful thing to insult somebody for. Then, to build on all of Tedd’s transformations and explorations from early in the series, it began to explore his gender identity and just what his desire to turn himself into a girl means.
The comic even explored some of their old interactions with an eye for how what they used to think was funny is really far from it. Like when Tedd’s dad disapproved of him turning himself into a girl in usual “grumpy dad” fashion.
Then a few years (Production time) later Tedd thought back on why he wasn’t comfortable bringing up some things with his father…
Then there’s the character Elliot, who in the second comic was right there with Tedd in trying to have Sarah come out in a bikini.
And a few years later (Production time) literally could not bring himself to objectify someone in his fantasies.
(Those women are, from first to last: Sarah, his current girlfriend. Grace, with a cameo by Tedd, her boyfriend. Nanase, currently dating Elliot’s sister. Carol, Sarah’s sister. Susan, a friend. Random Bikini Model that Dan Shive–author–has apologized for having say “I’m someone’s daughter” instead of “I’m my own person” in why it’s wrong to objectify her. The lean-in at the end is Ellen, Elliot’s sister).
The series also addresses the extremely toxic and sexist gamer culture you’ll encounter in comic shops and conventions and the like (There’s a whole bunch of assorted panels to follow, all from an arc where several of the characters attended a Magic: The Gathering-style card game tournament at the comic shop where Justin and Grace work).
For years now this comic has been inclusive, self-aware of the world it inhabits, and doing its best to improve itself and its readers one panel at a time. Of the eight characters you could call the “main” cast, fully half are LGBT: Tedd is genderfluid (As he realized in one of the pages posted above), Nanase is a lesbian, Justin is gay, and Ellen is bi. There’s also some evidence that Susan is asexual, but this is far from definite, because she’s showing some attraction in recent arcs and there’s…stuff….in her history. In the extended cast are other people with their own personalities and histories and identities.
Also, this last note here wasn’t planned, but as I was writing this post I discovered the second-to-last Sketchbook that was posted is of the wedding between Catalina and Rhoda.
I hope we get to see this in the story comic someday!
tangentwithtanner
turnnoffyourmind
vaporwave
