Originally Posted by
Sutekh
I feel like whoever designed the look and feel for Hulkling and Wiccan did a pretty cool job of mixing that up, actually. Wiccan gets cast as 'the girl' of the couple (which is pretty heteronormative in itself, to assume that one of them has to take a female role, when both are dudes). Visually, Teddy seems to have more superficially 'female' traits like sculpted hair and face jewelry (and shows more skin, in comics traditionally for the ladies, and Namor....), than Billy, who has, IMO, a more, shall we say, 'thrown together' look. A focus on his appearance is even part of his backstory with his friend exploiting his ability to change his appearance. Most relevantly, which one drives the story, and which one stands behind and more or less 'supports her man?' It's almost always Billy driving the story, while Teddy is, at best, in the passenger seat, holding the map.
Looking at the two of them, a straight perspective might automatically assume that the bigger beefier one is the 'butch' and the shorter slimmer one is the 'femme,' but a closer reading of their appearances would suggest that Billy's the 'dude' and Teddy's the 'girlfriend.' (Then again, this could just be a side-effect of Billy getting so much more focus than Teddy that it sometimes comes off as Billy is the protagonist and Teddy is little more than 'the protagonist's girlfriend...')
Ideally, they should be more evenly splitting the focus. (And any argument about whether or not one of them *should* be taking on a femme role in a gay relationship or if that's too 'heteronormative' or even subtly oppressive or whatever, imposing girl+guy relationship standards on a guy+guy relationship is a bit out of my depth.)