#peanutpower1993

[13eyond13]

i don’t know if you’ve been asked this before, but what’s your take on misa being a lesbian with comphet? personally i agree 100% !!

Hi hi! I don't know if I've been asked before either actually! 😅 Sorry, but this got a bit personal and rambly...

Hmmm... This is one of those things that everyone can interpret for themselves, I would say? Comphet crushes are something I myself was very agonizingly confused by for the longest time; the environment I grew up in wasn't at all gay friendly and extremely sheltering and heteronormative for most of my formative years, and my attractions weren't that easy for myself to define or be confident about most of the time until I was basically in college and out on my own. I do remember what it was like for me to have comphet crushes, though I think it's one of those things that's a bit differently defined and interpreted on an individual level by the person who is experiencing it. Comphet attraction for ME growing up manifested mostly as only liking fictional or totally unavailable guys, and immediately getting uncomfortable and losing interest in them if they actually started liking me back or wanting to be in a real relationship with me. I often repressed and wrote off my very real crushes on girls as silly, platonic "girl crushes," and exaggerated my crushes on guys to properly fit in. I knew on some level that I seemed to actually have stronger interest in girls, and that I appeared to have a harder time wanting to settle into a dating relationship than most of my straight friends. But I could never tell if this was actually being gay. I thought that maybe I was just being picky or lazy or scared, or that I was just too young to want to get serious with a guy in that way. I actually had to spend several years in long-term relationships as an adult with both guys and girls and do a lot of self-reflection and meet a lot of different people before I really felt I knew for sure I was gay due to how well I can repress my own feelings at times. So it's definitely not always an easy thing to figure out or define, even when you're a very introspective type who values being honest with yourself and others.

It's a bit difficult for me to confidently proclaim that Misa's definitely a lesbian who just doesn't know it yet just based on what we see her doing in the story, simply because I think it's something that's up to individual interpretation! Her behaviour is very different than my own most of the time, and relating strongly to their behaviours and such is usually what makes me more confidently decide that a character who wasn't said to be gay in canon isn't straight. I have strong headcanons for characters like Light being gay and repressed because I personally had lots of experiences and behaviours that very closely resemble what we see him go through and perform all throughout the story, for example. Misa, on the other hand, seems pretty open about her feelings and impulsive about acting on them whenever she wants something, so repression and shame and fear aren't that high on the list of qualities I would attribute to her? But I also know something like comphet attraction can manifest completely differently in different personalities and circumstances. And based on what I know about it in general I would say Misa definitely could be interpreted as experiencing comphet attraction in certain ways, too. She seems to decide she's in love with Light based on pretty hasty criteria, picks a fairly obvious choice of a crush that most people wouldn't question her for, and she doesn't seem to be that put off by how little he's genuinely caring about her in return, for example. If she DID just like Light in a comphet sort of way then I guess she probably would actually feel relieved subconsciously that he wasn't genuinely that into her in return. She also displays a bit of homophobia whenever she expresses disgust about L chaining himself to Light; and sometimes these kinds of reactions can come from people being closeted or repressed themselves, or trying to go along with the crowd to avoid being thought of as potentially not straight themselves because they're afraid or in denial or confused.

I would probably say that it's valid to interpret Misa either way in this regard, then! I think it's valid to see her as a comphet attracted lesbian especially if you identify with her behaviours as being like the comphet attraction you experienced yourself. She's a fun and interesting and oddly complicated character, and though it's not my usual first interpretation of her identity and her actions I would be open to seeing her as a repressed lesbian just depending on the story or the ship or whatever. But I ALSO think it's valid for other fans to not want to interpret a character who presents as straight and occasionally homophobic as secretly gay, too. 😅 I maybe sound overly serious about this, but it's just because I think this sort of criteria should be something we normally only use to understand ourselves better, and that it can be a bad idea in real life to try hard to sniff out repressed gayness in other people or to assume that's what's secretly driving their behaviours (especially if it's something like being homophobic, as there are definitely homophobic straight people, too).

Speaking of this topic though, a now-questioning female friend of mine who always seemed 100% confident she was straight growing up actually just sent me a link to a bunch of info about compulsive heterosexuality for girls when we were chatting about it the other day. so maybe I'll link it here in case it's of use to anybody else? 😄