#it'll be fascinating to watch people strip laios of Acceptable Protected Identities before they start in on him

[festivalfoxes]

'man its crazy how people think laios is the most evil man alive just for really intensely engaging his special interest' in the latter half of the 2010s there was ongoing Discourse about newt geiszler pacificrim's interest in kaiju being a disgusting and insensitive thing that, since kaiju are ~basically~ weapons of mass destruction, makes him A Creepy War Fandom Guy who loves human suffering (this was before pac rim2, which is bad, but is not relevant here for other reasons beside it being the Worst. also, there were no statements on whether the guys in the military hierarchy of nuclear-powered punch robots were also Creepy War Fan Guys.) never mind that he is actively yk working against the kaiju, and his pursuit of knowledge of them does in fact majorly directly contribute to saving the world. obviously newt and laios are different characters in different contexts, but presumably .1% or less of the people involved in newt discourse personally knew or were someone victimized by a kaiju so yeah it's actually really easy for me to imagine a bunch of in-world dm people thinking laios is gross and horrifying and dangerous for being interested in monsters. if he wasn't the fandom's Precious Autistic Mascot people here would be saying that about him already. give it a few years and they'll forget the autism and start talking about how shipping labru is bad because laios as a disturbingly socially inept White Man who won't shut up about monsters would be traumatizing for kabru to exist near