When I saw this page of the comic, my initial thought was "wtf?". Not a shocked "WTF?", but the head cocking befuddlement kind.
When I saw this page of the forum, my initial thought was *facepalm*.
First: Drawing conclusions with a dearth of evidence is laughably myopic. We know what's happening, but we don't know
why or
how. I can think of a half dozen or so reasons off the top of my head that would explain this without requiring character breaking.
Second: It saddens me that people are getting all in a huff over how a lesbian might not actually be a lesbian. In real life it is quite common for non-heterosexuals to "be in the closet" and identify as heterosexual, no matter where on the Kinsey scale they fall. There's no reason to do some author bashing because you
think that they
might have a bisexual identifying themselves as a lesbian. I would have to say it's actually fairly offensive to take such a stance, as double standards are one of the worst problems faced by gender and sexuality issues.
That said, I'm just going to list a few possible explanations which are not mutually exclusive:
1: The bath is enchanted or tainted.
2: Bern wants to change as much to make Maytag happy as Maytag wants to change to make Bern happy.
3: Bern is not strictly a lesbian, but represses heterosexual thoughts and desires.
4: This is not a depiction of physical events.
5: One of the compatriots of Moss is interfering with the situation
6: Glyph is not male.
Some of these are more likely than others, some of them are more socially acceptable than others. 1, 4, 5, and 6 have all been discussed here, and 3 has been touched on, so I'd like to go into a bit more detail on 2 and 3.
3: We don't know much about Bern's past, and she's not one to talk about her feelings and beliefs. It's not unreasonable for her stated sexuality to not match her actual sexuality. She's almost certainly primarily homosexual, but we don't know beyond that.
She might have some past trauma that made her repress heterosexual urges. If that's the case, then the most likely cause would have been growing up in a brothel and gaining her understanding of male+female relationships from the workers and customers. Then there's the possibility of a failed romance or a betrayal.
There are countless possible causes, but if it turns out to be a cliche like
rape then I'm going to have to pull out a sock full of dimes and beat the plot back into shape via retcon-by-force.
2: Bern was willing to give up her lifelong dream so that she could honestly and openly in an honest relationship with Maytag instead of treating it like a shameful secret. Maytag was willing to give up her sexual ideals for Bern's comfort. It's not unreasonable for Bern would be willing to push herself to do things that are outside her nature in order to meet Maytag halfway. It wouldn't be the first time that somebody was willing to put their own sexuality aside for the sake of their partner, after all.
If number 3 has some merit, then this would be more her overcoming her issues than trying to change how she feels.
@Razzly. In the United States, people seem to think that bisexuals don't exsit. If you're into chicks and you shag a dude, all your previous sexual experiance are rendered meaningless. This flies in the face of actaully imperiacal knowedge that says that someone may identify as homosexual or heterosexaul and have occasional lovers of thier nonprefered gender or identify as bisexual but only ever have sex with one gender for whatever reason. I blame the media.
see "no bisexuals" @ www.tvtropes.org
Here's the link to that:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoBisexuals
