so obviously I can not speak for elegantSpinstress but from what I read of her posts she does differentiate between like general m/m relationships and fandom yaoi relationships. like a big chunk of the initial post talks about how to a certain fandom subculture(?), Fujoshi, the specific dynamics of a ship is EXTREMELY important. like will write entire essays over whose name should come first in a ship name and how terrible you are for seeing it any other way. ship manifestos!! those were so common once upon a time there’s a whole Term for it! i think she has a solid point that this type of fandom-work dynamic is important to keep in mind when discussing relationships in the work. like oh my god idk if yall were on tumblr for the rose/kanaya on-screen kiss but so many people who were just used to m/m stuff dominating fandom lost their entire MINDS because outside of like specifically sapphic works that was like. unheard of. it was (at least within that tumblr culture bubble) a Big Fucking Deal. People were starved and here was an oasis. That a lot of people walked past bc fandom still has a m/m bias just like. Go and sort homestuck ships by number of works on ao3 or whatever booru is popular right now idk. Search ANY fandom really and see the stats. The bias is Super Real and I’m only bringing this up because it strengthens the point being made: it’s all on a meta level in discussion with fandom and how it treats character relationships and messing around with those expectations. Kinda weird to single her out for this imo when like yaoi fanbase expectations vs how actual m/m relationships work is like. A commonly joked about thing (at least in my stomping grounds anyway). Like have you ever seen those jokes about taking a fujo to a gay bar on bear night and the fujo freaking out because it’s not some twinks? If you haven’t that’s whatever but like. Yaoi, fujoshi, and their history both in Japan and in the west have very frequently come under scrutiny for unrealistic and highly specific expectations to the point of fetishism and sometimes even homophobia. Fujoshi gets thrown around a lot these days but at one point it carried some Connotations not just “someone (usually a girl) who likes gay media” (and also if you didn’t already catch on yaoi is technically its own thing. bara/geicomi is lumped in under the yaoi name in the west but that is not the case in Japan and those are the terms (bara is a bit older and mostly fallen out of use but yaknow) you probably actually want to search for on manga sites to get stuff about like older men, harrier men, and yaknow just like grounded slice of life stuff? higher likelihood of being written by a gay guy with other gay guys as the intended audience yaknow)

And also I don’t want to like repeat what a lot of people already said but to be brief shitty messy relationships is par for the course with homestuck it’s kind of what you need to be able to handle to get through the work. It’s called difficult for a reason. Many reasons actually but this is also one of them. And you keep bringing up how this whole thing is based on how some friends of yours were unhappy with this aspect of the comic, but like. What about you? How did you PERSONALLY feel about all this? Yeah you point out certain scenes or elements you think suck or are uncomfortable but on the Whole is this something you truly believe is wrong and bad… or are you just speaking for some friends of yours that bounced off the work and moved on. Like… Just because some of your friends didn’t like this specific thing about it doesn’t make it bad. It could be better sure, a whooole lot of things in this comic could be better… but it doesn’t make it bad. ppl can just dislike things. and friends can disagree on what they like and don’t like. idk maybe im just reading the vibe wrong