#Finding the animedia posters in decent quality wasn't exactly a cakewalk either

[descendant-of-truth]

Y'know what maybe I'm not done talking about Journeys queercoding actually. maybe I do wanna work out my literary analysis muscles for the sake of Pokemon protagonists. why not

To clarify, this isn't about me personally enjoying the ship between Ash and Gou. I do enjoy it, but I'm making an argument for potentially deliberate queercoding in the writing, I'm not necessarily just here to gush (though that may be a side effect)

I'm also a firm believer that actions or behaviors that we typically think of as romantic are only made romantic if that's how the people involved feel about it. I don't think romance is the only possible way to interpret their relationship.

But when it comes to predicting where a story might be going next, or figuring out what the writers are intending to hint at us, I gotta pull out my textbook of Romantic Tropes first to see what fits the bill.

And I'm sorry, but even if it's not the intended interpretation, you can't include all of these scenes:

...and assume no one in your audience will think there's anything romantic happening here.

Of course, those are just the obvious visual interactions between them that can come off as romantic, to say nothing of the symbolic visual hints; the no less than four rainbows they've been under (one of which was reflected in Gou's eye), the two sets of heart-shaped pokemon that swam past them in a single episode which also had them falling under a rainbow, stuff like that.

But even all of that is pretty surface-level stuff. If the writing doesn't support a queer reading very strongly, then my argument for the queercoding being particularly intentional would fall flat.

Thankfully, the writing does support a queer interpretation, so I'm in the clear! Since breaking this part down will take a lot longer, I'm putting it under a cut.

So, right off the bat we've got the basic setup for the show. For the first time, the focus is primarily on Ash and one other person, as opposed to two or more people... despite having a third person in Chloe, who could easily make this into a trio dynamic, considering she's friends with Gou from the start. But they choose instead to make the core of the show about Ash and Gou.

This is even reflected in promotional material, where they'll often be placed closer to each other than Chloe:

Them being roommates is something I usually bring up as a joke, but it is worth noting anyway simply because it's another way the writers have decided they're going to spend almost all of their time together when they really didn't have to.

But now we gotta get into the real Writing Choices(TM) that are the meat and potatoes of this analysis, such as: making brief allusions to the idea that they might like other guys, too

One way to build up a character's orientation is to show them being attracted to people in shorter instances before giving them a main love interest. Think Luz from The Owl House; she had expressed attraction to both boys and girls before she got a girlfriend or started wearing a bi pin.

Likewise, this is Ash when he's thinking about Leon after seeing him battle for the first time:

I kid you not, he keeps up this blush and zoned-out expression for a solid minute, so caught up in thinking about how cool Leon is that he doesn't even think to eat the scones in front of him.

Now, Ash is a person frequently characterized by his love for food, and in previous episodes he had expressed a particular adoration for Galar scones, so this is pretty unusual behavior for him.

So unusual that it's. literally never happened before, to the best of my knowledge?? I don't think it takes much analyzing to realize that, even if it was brief, you could easily take this as Ash having a celebrity crush on Leon.

(There's even pink flowers in the background but that's probably less important)

Meanwhile with Gou, his "setup crush" in this scenario would be Horace. These two have a whole episode dedicated to their first meeting and the bond they forged, and how that turned bitter on Gou's end when he gets stood up right as he thought he was finally making a friend.

What sets this up for a romantic interpretation is largely the framing of things towards the end of the episode:

"Why do I keep thinking of him" is historically not the most platonic thing you could be bitterly thinking to yourself while you remember stargazing with someone, even if I do stand by my statement earlier of nothing being inherently romantic by itself

The end of the episode also implies that the feeling is mutual, if this shot is anything to go off of

(It's just a very shoujo manga-esque frame okay there's no way I wasn't going to point it out)

And the ending scene is two Celebies looking down happily at the two of them while the narrator talks about how pokemon form "many different kinds of bonds"

Many kinds of bonds, huh? Wonder what he could possibly be implying there

Okay so we've got orientation buildup, next in line is this. suspiciously consistent trend of characters who are close to Ash telling Gou to take care of him, or even going out of their way to test him to make sure he's good enough to be his rival or friend.

Gou himself even echoes the sentiment completely unprompted once, which says even more to me that they're trying to make a point out of this:

And here's the thing. None of the other companions have ever undergone this sort of treatment. Nobody questioned whether or not Ash's friends were good enough to hang out with him before, so why now? Why Gou? What makes him different?

Kiawe is relatively easy to explain because (from what I can tell) he's just Like That about rivalries, but why the addition of describing a rival as "the person closest to Ash"? Why does Gary suddenly care about the quality of Ash's buddies when that was never really a concern for him before?

Well gee I don't know about you guys but to me, this feels like the trope where someone's friends and family all start scouting out the guy they're interested in (or who is interested in them) to make sure they won't like, break their heart or something. And despite my best efforts, I'm struggling to see how this wasn't the writers' intention behind these plotlines.

Gou telling Ash's mom that he'll look after Ash on two separate occasions as opposed to the initial one also feels like an easy parallel to someone promising their love interest's parents that they'll be a good partner.

To my understanding, that isn't traditionally something friends also have to promise, even if there's more justification here as Ash and Gou are traveling around and getting into chaotic situations regularly.

So, with all this in mind, it kind of reframes the stuff I mentioned earlier, doesn't it? The blushing, the hand-holding, the spin hug that I'm never getting over, the frequent appearance of rainbows and the heart shaped Pokemon (Luvdisc if you were wondering)... it feels a lot more intentional once you take into account the bigger themes in the writing.

And once you start looking, it keeps piling up. The way Gou hurriedly says that he totally didn't want to help Ash out or anything after Scorbunny gives him a knowing look, like how most tsundere tropes tend to play out:

Or the specific way Gou is taken aback by one of Ash's compliments before trying to play it off by looking cool, only to be comically shocked when Ash gets distracted by something else:

I could go on but I'm running out of image space and I think you get the idea.

Ash's side of this whole thing is admittedly a lot more subtle than Gou's (*cough* because he's arospec) which is why I haven't gone over it much - my aim with this post was not to go too far into speculation territory - but we at least have marketing on our side for that

Gee Ash how come Animedia let you feed Gou two pastries

Anyway, in conclusion: I ran these two through the literary queerometer and the results were positive, thanks for coming to my TED talk