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letsfantasticstudentllama · 5 years ago

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Damn Kishi did the gays really bad, didn't he? Look at all the boys their in love with each other I mean?? ah why can't they be married

I completely understand the sentiment but I think the fandom does a good job of marrying the babies. I don’t believe Kishimoto did the gays bad because honestly this is the best he could do given that he had the huuuuuuge responsibility to keep his manga a legacy.

Like, I understand we want more support and acceptance for gay people and couples in fiction but Naruto wasn’t born in the new world past 2012 that is significantly more accepting of homosexuality.

Regardless, note that Kishi threw in a canon NaruSasu kiss in the 2000s. Even Yuri on Ice (2016) doesn’t yet have a 100% undiluted canon kiss and the bois are practically fiances.

Also it is easy for people in the west to make demands for more acceptance/normalization of the good ol’ LGBT without understand just how violently homophobic most of the world is. People will trash and burn anything that is explicitly gay here. Naruto wouldn’t be taken as seriously, hell had Naruto and Sasuke gotten married, even the most hardcore fans all over the world would abandon, curse and even protest it. Most of these folks don’t even come up to a “homophobic” standard - they’re known to reject shounen anime with any hint of love in it. These man-children love their muscled up hunks just screaming and wrestling and talking power levels (ironically that is what I imagine GAY MEN do in their stereotypical gym exchanges). Love is just too girly. Caring is not manly. Gay love and happiness? Get the hell outta here.

Hell in the west itself we have Avatar: The Legend of Korra being trashed for having canon bisexuals now. People still love and credit Avatar: The Last Airbender way more because although it was pretty gay it wasn’t outright gay.

Look at these uglies. Avatar Roku and Fire Lord Sozin. They’re the HashiMada of ATLA. Roku was the Avatar - implied bisexual. Aang, his successor, implied bisexual. Kyoshi, Roku’s predecessor if I remember correctly - now confirmed a canon bisexual woman. Korra, Aang’s successor, canon bisexual. Korra takes a bazillion bullets to this day for being OUT there and having a girlfriend.

And the ATLA/ALOK fanbase is still smaller compared to Naruto’s. Would any gay in Naruto have it easy if they were labelled? Hell no.

We live in a world where feminine stuff, gay stuff, trans stuff isn’t taken seriously (on a GOOD day, most of the time it is never even given coverage, permissions, or is met with aggression) especially if it is labelled so. Kishimoto is a fucking hero in my opinion to even bring out the genderqueers (IMO Haku, Orochimaru) and aces (IMO Juugo, Kimimaro) give them iconic importance in his manga when I guess people didn’t even know these things existed, they still don’t. There’s plenty of gay in the manga but he left it to the readers to read between the lines (and made it easy with REALLY strong hints)

All in all, I can’t complain. I love this series to death. I love and respect Kishi with all my heart for giving us such a complex and beautiful story and not overplaying one or two aspects of any of his characters and that includes sexuality (and of course not underplaying it either).

They’re still together. Still doing their thing. So what if they don’t have a government document to prove their love. The sun-moon love is still in place(Thank you for the ask, anon, sorry I wrote a book for a reply I just feel a liiiittle passionate about this, just a tad bit xD)

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letsfantasticstudentllama · 5 years ago

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