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High Femme Camp Antics and Ahyoung Oh
Sep. 23rd, 2024 07:46 pmSome time ago I read the free sample of Dykette on Libby because my library didn't have the full book and I was trying to decide if I wanted to spend any money on it. I decided that I didn't, but the reason I was contemplating it at all was because the author had come into the bookstore I used to work at when I still worked there and asked us to order the book when it came out, putting it on my personal radar. (I think we did end up ordering it but it came out after I quit lol).
Anyway. After I read the free sample, I found an essay the author had written for the LA Review of Books about "High Femme Camp Antics", featuring several anecdotes and character traits later recycled for the protagonist of Dykette (straight up I think a whole paragraph from that was in the free sample I'd read). It's a lot of words to justify doing things your partner doesn't like on purpose as a form of testing your partner's loyalty/devotion to you, because something something performing femininity something something. (That is probably an uncharitable read of it poisoned by the FFA discussion of the essay I found later.)
Sometime after that, I caught up with the iconic and underrated lesbian webtoon SoraHaena's spinoff comic following Sora's toxic besties getting together, Ahyoung/Jaein?! It's published on a lot of vertical scroll comic portals with a censored version on Tapas and uncensored (I think) chapters on Tappytoon and Lezhin and maybe Manta? And while Sora and Haena's relationship is uncontroversially adorable (lesbian bokuaka coded, for my haikyuu friends), Ahyoung and Jae-in..... were honestly kind of confusing and frustrating for me to read about. In some ways, they're a classic butch/femme dynamic (very rare in manhwa, where women with short hair are either nonexistent or married to men in case you accidentally mistake them for a lesbian), with Jae-in both looking and behaving more masculinely, socially and in bed with Ahyoung.
But Ahyoung's behavior didn't really make sense to me on my first read: she kept expecting Jae-in to read her mind and then got mad she wasn't literally psychic, continued to hold grudges even after Jae-in apologized for whatever made Ahyoung mad even though she did not understand what the problem was and Ahyoung refused to explain it, and still had passionate gay sex with Jae-in? in a car???
Until. I remembered. High Femme Camp Antics.
And I realized that Ah-young, while probably not identifying herself with the femme lesbian cause and also probably not understanding most of the references mentioned in the article, would probably read that article and nod with understanding. Because much like the purveyor of High Femme Camp Antics, Ah-young's deepest, innermost desire is for someone to see her for who she perceives her "real self" (the bitchy, whiny, high-maintenance parts of herself) and want her for exactly that. And she gets that with Jae-in! But she's still frustrated Jae-in won't communicate with her in a way that she understands, and also that Jae-in is unfashionable and mean in her own way, and that's why they're still fighting in the last episode of the Webtoon. In the post-manhwa afterword, Jackbull explains that they wanted to make it clear that neither of them are more correct than the other, but that they're just so fundamentally different it's hard for them to see eye to eye on a lot of things. But they have amazing physical chemistry (which is why the censored SFW versions of this comic feel like half a story, the sex scenes are actually plot relevant!) so clearly, something is being communicated successfully...
In the HFCA essay, Davis analyzes a short story by Lesléa Newman within the framework of HFCA. "Even as she performs satiation, Lesléa is insatiable. Her antics fail at getting her precisely what she wants from Flash, because there’s always something unsatisfying about getting what you want by asking for it."
When Jae-in finally tells Ahyoung "I love you" (followed by "If that's what you want, then I'll say it. I'll do things the way you want") Ahyoung is briefly flustered and surprised, but still mad, insisting she should've just done everything right the first time.
Because there’s always something unsatisfying about getting what you want by asking for it.
It was really brave of Jackbull to follow up two sweet lesbian stories (there was a much shorter spinoff/side story preceding Ahyoung and Jae-in about a ditzy high school teacher and a mma fighter former student) with something this... combative? tempestuous? and also overtly sexual (the main story took place while the characters were still in high school but by the spinoffs they were well into college I think) As someone who tries to keep her personal life simple and straightforward and save the Antics for fiction, HFCA as described by Jenny Davis or as performed by Ahyoung did not make any sense to me until I put the two works in context and finally realized:
Some People Are Just Like That, Huh.
Anyway. After I read the free sample, I found an essay the author had written for the LA Review of Books about "High Femme Camp Antics", featuring several anecdotes and character traits later recycled for the protagonist of Dykette (straight up I think a whole paragraph from that was in the free sample I'd read). It's a lot of words to justify doing things your partner doesn't like on purpose as a form of testing your partner's loyalty/devotion to you, because something something performing femininity something something. (That is probably an uncharitable read of it poisoned by the FFA discussion of the essay I found later.)
Sometime after that, I caught up with the iconic and underrated lesbian webtoon SoraHaena's spinoff comic following Sora's toxic besties getting together, Ahyoung/Jaein?! It's published on a lot of vertical scroll comic portals with a censored version on Tapas and uncensored (I think) chapters on Tappytoon and Lezhin and maybe Manta? And while Sora and Haena's relationship is uncontroversially adorable (lesbian bokuaka coded, for my haikyuu friends), Ahyoung and Jae-in..... were honestly kind of confusing and frustrating for me to read about. In some ways, they're a classic butch/femme dynamic (very rare in manhwa, where women with short hair are either nonexistent or married to men in case you accidentally mistake them for a lesbian), with Jae-in both looking and behaving more masculinely, socially and in bed with Ahyoung.
But Ahyoung's behavior didn't really make sense to me on my first read: she kept expecting Jae-in to read her mind and then got mad she wasn't literally psychic, continued to hold grudges even after Jae-in apologized for whatever made Ahyoung mad even though she did not understand what the problem was and Ahyoung refused to explain it, and still had passionate gay sex with Jae-in? in a car???
Until. I remembered. High Femme Camp Antics.
And I realized that Ah-young, while probably not identifying herself with the femme lesbian cause and also probably not understanding most of the references mentioned in the article, would probably read that article and nod with understanding. Because much like the purveyor of High Femme Camp Antics, Ah-young's deepest, innermost desire is for someone to see her for who she perceives her "real self" (the bitchy, whiny, high-maintenance parts of herself) and want her for exactly that. And she gets that with Jae-in! But she's still frustrated Jae-in won't communicate with her in a way that she understands, and also that Jae-in is unfashionable and mean in her own way, and that's why they're still fighting in the last episode of the Webtoon. In the post-manhwa afterword, Jackbull explains that they wanted to make it clear that neither of them are more correct than the other, but that they're just so fundamentally different it's hard for them to see eye to eye on a lot of things. But they have amazing physical chemistry (which is why the censored SFW versions of this comic feel like half a story, the sex scenes are actually plot relevant!) so clearly, something is being communicated successfully...
In the HFCA essay, Davis analyzes a short story by Lesléa Newman within the framework of HFCA. "Even as she performs satiation, Lesléa is insatiable. Her antics fail at getting her precisely what she wants from Flash, because there’s always something unsatisfying about getting what you want by asking for it."
When Jae-in finally tells Ahyoung "I love you" (followed by "If that's what you want, then I'll say it. I'll do things the way you want") Ahyoung is briefly flustered and surprised, but still mad, insisting she should've just done everything right the first time.
Because there’s always something unsatisfying about getting what you want by asking for it.
It was really brave of Jackbull to follow up two sweet lesbian stories (there was a much shorter spinoff/side story preceding Ahyoung and Jae-in about a ditzy high school teacher and a mma fighter former student) with something this... combative? tempestuous? and also overtly sexual (the main story took place while the characters were still in high school but by the spinoffs they were well into college I think) As someone who tries to keep her personal life simple and straightforward and save the Antics for fiction, HFCA as described by Jenny Davis or as performed by Ahyoung did not make any sense to me until I put the two works in context and finally realized:
Some People Are Just Like That, Huh.