#its because there are legitimately people being attacked for being queer

[kryptid-of-the-krows]

Every time someone brings up "feeling different" in church I always misunderstand. They say "at school, you feel different and you don't do things your friends are doing. You feel left out about stuff you don't go to, and people treat you differently" and I'm like "yeah I get that!!" And they're like "...because your a good Christian!"

And I'm like " ha! No . I'm like that because I'm queer with extremely strict and fucked up parents, but thanks anyways<3"

[flagellant]

Why can't you people be normal about slurs for 2 seconds

Just because YOU reclaimed and identify with something doesn't mean everyone else does. No one cares about you IDing as a queer or dyke or fag or whatever, people just don't want strangers to randomly assign them words that have historically been used as slurs.

Like, do you understand that people have had this word used against them by bigots? Do you understand that maybe, it's tasteless to get upset at people for having trauma regarding a word? Are you able to comprehend that maybe insisting people be okay with being called a word that means odd, spoiled, ruined or weird is not a good look?

I'm autistic and have a severe learning disability. I'm totally fine when people use the word retard, I call myself a retard, I don't care. But I'm sure as fuck not going to walk up to a bunch of other autistic people I barely know and go "lmao what is up my fellow tards!!!"

I'm not trying to start shit, I'm legitimately trying to understand why you find it appropriate to make fun of people, often victims of abuse or hate crimes, for being triggered by a word.

"I'm legitimately trying to understand why you find it appropriate to make fun of people, often victims of abuse or hate crimes, for being triggered by a word."

Gay is a slur. Lesbian is a slur. Homosexual is a slur. Every single word we have ever had has always either had its roots in cruelty and oppression or has been used against us by our oppressors. There is no term that is pure and clean and innocent and has never hurt anyone's feelings.

Let's disregard fag for now. That one's still in the process of reclamation, I'll admit. Let's just talk about queer. Queer has been the academic term for non-cisgender and non-heterosexual history for half a century now. Queer theory has been around for thirty years. Queer was the word which we shouted as a radical inditement of our treatment by our oppressors: "We're here, we're queer, get over it" and "Not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you" should both sound familiar to you.

And now it's 2012 or so and queer is known as the most inclusive term we have. It's less unwieldy than LGBTQIAAP+. It's not based in a necessity of defining yourself through your oppression like MOGAI. It's, important, a deeply private word. Not in the sense that it is used privately, but rather than it grants its user privacy. If you're queer, everyone instantly knows you're a part of the community, but you aren't being forced to out yourself or give more details about your personal life and identity than you want. It was always a word about identity.

TERFs hate this. TERFs hate this so much, because it's inclusive of people they hate, like asexual people, trans women, and other freaks of nature who society needs to put down like dogs. Queer means TERFs can't as easily define you as the Bad Other. Queer means TERFs will be recognized more easily as bigoted towards the larger queer communities. So, obviously, they do what anyone would, and decide to take advantage of the language of social justice warriors of the time and attack impressionable young kids from 13-16.

The average 13-16 year old doesn't exactly have much experience in real-life queer spaces. They don't get to go to rallies or protests, they don't stay at community centers, their lives are insular and based entirely online. Their understanding of social politics is inherently rooted in the importance of posting in the right language. Their activism is one which tweets correctly. So TERFs slid into their inboxes and went "Hey, just so you know, queer is actually a slur used to oppress people and it's problematic to use since some people have been called it".

And this works, because of course it does, and now I have people like you in my inbox bitching and whining about how queer is a slur and how you've been called queer once or twice in your life. To this I say: My apologies, but fucking suck it up and reclaim it. I don't care about traumatic events you have with queer. It has been reclaimed by the greater community and was done so long before you were born if you aren't literally 50, and more importantly, by giving queer validation as a slur, you actively give our oppressors that power over you. I'm not going to let my oppressors know that if they say an identifier for us meanly enough then we'll stop identifying as that word. I'm not giving the power to silence and repress who we are to people who would use it.

Anon, I respect you enough to say that people who consider my identity as a slur should get punched in the face, because alt-right fash cunts, pig cops, evangelical christians, TERFs, and hyperconservative political lobbyists all consider my identity as a slur. Why should I treat you any different to them? What about your specific treatment of queer as a slur ends up with a meaningfully different result? The neonazis on kiwifarms won't care why you're telling me to shut the fuck up about queer. They don't give a shit about why you're saying this. What they give a shit about is if it works and if calling people queer will get them to shut up and curl up in a little ball and admit defeat and hand them slurs on a silver platter. And I'm not about to live that sort of life, so either get with the program or fuck off.

[sepublic]

In further hindsight I can see the parallels in Belos agonizing over how he mistreated Caleb and Lilith agonizing over how she mistreated Eda, and both trying to make up for that. But both crucially missing the actual emotional crux of the issue, that being the people they disregarded and hurt, the people close to that sibling and their real family for accepting them.

Because even if Lilith got to explain how the curse was an accident to Eda during Agony of a Witch, so what? That wasn’t why Eda was there. That wasn’t why she was so royally pissed. It was for kidnapping Luz, which would still remain unaddressed. Not to mention how unlike the curse, Lilith knowingly refused to listen to Eda about her lifestyle and choices, she still supported the coven over her sister, she still belittled Eda over the curse and was making another decision for her.

So even if Lilith did cure Eda, if Belos could actually undo the work of an Archivist and chose to? Eda would still hate Lilith and everything she stood for. She stands down from attacking Lilith in the season finale not because Lilith didn’t mean the curse, but because King clarifies she’s actually changing her general behavior by helping him and Luz. Even if Belos could bring back Caleb, his insistence on making his clones into witch hunters, ignoring Caleb’s defense of the isles, choosing to support Gravesfield’s bigotry over a brother who’d been for him much longer and actually loved him unconditionally… Insisting on ‘saving’ a perfectly happy sibling? That will always be a problem.

Maybe Philip made an exception for Caleb, at first; He knew at least of Caleb’s first meeting with Evelyn. So even if the rest were secret due to Evelyn being targeted by the community, Philip still didn’t rat on his brother for exploring the Demon Realm. Part of it may have been the insistence that Caleb could be ‘saved’, but he did the bare minimum of not getting his brother killed for one trip.

(But then Caleb ‘went too far’ and committed miscegenation, made Philip related to a witch; A conservative shame so deep he refuses to address it when discussing a vague ‘betrayal’. Like real life families, Philip rewrote Caleb as a Black Sheep to not be discussed, for ‘tarnishing’ the bloodline; A scandal replaced, eventually lost to time with nobody left to truly mourn the person they were. Maybe there doesn’t need to be, not anymore; His wife and child remembered and maybe they didn’t mention he was a human because to Caleb, that no longer mattered and he renounced that background like many queer folk, to embrace an identity shared with others who did care. So they remembered Caleb the witch.)

Likewise, Lilith also looked the other way for Eda, ignored multiple opportunities to arrest Eda, removed wanted posters. But there was still the expectation that their ‘grace’ would be reciprocated, that eventually it would pay off in that loved one coming over. Or at least that’s what Lilith hoped, but it was definitely what Philip expected of Caleb; Because Lilith only took Luz hostage because Philip threatened to execute her otherwise. Eda’s health WAS at risk from the curse.

Philip killed a Caleb who was happy and safe when he’d been at least five years away from Gravesfield, in a world they couldn’t follow and wouldn’t be much of a threat in anyway, if at all; He did it because Caleb did not live up to that expectation. With Lilith, we know it was an accident and she did make legitimate amends to undo the curse, unlike Belos who kept killing Caleb again and again, with the Collector suggesting he’s using the Grimwalkers as a punching bag and no longer cares about saving them either.

Lilith never cared much for the (wild) witch hunting aspect of the position; She just wanted to be loved but she didn’t want people to be torn down for it. She was a teacher, a bad one but still. Even if she had yet to care about others outside of Eda and how her ideology was wrong for its harm, she at least used her love for Eda as a stepping stone; When her sister was almost executed as a wild witch, Lilith declared an intention to prevent any more petrifications, after preciously being shown looking the other way with them.

Despite her justified fears of Belos, Lilith wanted to do something because having it happen to a loved one made her finally empathize. Lilith used that love to listen to Eda and reconsider her own biases, for Eda at least. And she ended up caring for and loving Eda’s kids and friends and everything she stood for, too; She ended up doing things for them, too. Lilith cared about doing it for her sister, which is why she listened to and accepted her, instead of caring for the sake of creating an Eda that wasn’t Eda; Lilith got over her pride, that’s the difference in the end.

[damnfandomproblems]

In response to Fandom Problem #6253:

"Not when somebody says something negative about a problematic piece of media you like"

Purity culture is, in fact, also about this. Fear over people's moral "purity" of thought leads to a severe restriction of freedom of speech and castigation of people that break those boundaries. It's the reason Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence were banned for decades. It's the reason Republicans are trying to get the most innocuous boy love Mangas banned from schools and purging queer books from school libraries.

It's the reason fundamental Christians burned HP books in the late 90s and early 00s, and eschew even Disney movies for mention of magic today. It's the reason for the Satanic Panic and the idiotic fear around D&D and heavy metal music causing Devil worship and video games causing violence, all of which has been long since disproved. It's the reason there were groups of panicked mothers nation wide protesting the band KISS and why Fox News lost their minds over 2 seconds of blue alien side boob in Mass Effect.

It's the reason that every single public fanfiction archive before Ao3 got purged of anything queer whether it was adult content or just two teens confessing their feelings. The reason even heterosexual erotica, the most popular published genre, got banned or purged. It's the reason for the Tumblr and DeviantArt porn and erotica art ban. It's the reason Ao3 has a team of lawyers and has faced multiple online attacks over the last few years.

The same reason people in less tolerant countries are legitimately terrified of their fiction preferences being found out. It's the same bloody reason Salman Rushdie has a 3 million pound price on his head and lost an eye only 2 years ago to an assassination attempt.

Noticing a pattern of extremism that has its roots in religious "purity" culture managing to trickle into even the most insular of fandom communities isn't a misuse of the term purity culture. It's a complete understanding of its give an inch, and it'll take a mile mentality. Most "proshippers" if not all, are simply advocates for freedom in expression in fiction, usually because its a reflection of the health of a community and a nation's/culture's embrace of the principles of freedom of speech. When we notice an uptick in witch hunts over, of all things, fiction of more fiction, we aren't fear mongering to call it out, we're acting as canaries in a coal mine against something that we've seen invade our spaces over and over and over again and are trying to stop it.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[probablyasocialecologist]

During these times, and in line with its long-standing exploitation of liberal identity politics, Israel has been weaponizing queer bodies to counter any support for Palestine and any critique of its settler-colonial project. Israelis (politicians, organizations, and “civilians”) have been mobilizing colonial dichotomies such as “civilized” and “barbaric,” “human” and “animal,” and other dehumanizing binaries as a discourse that legitimizes the attacks on Palestinians. Within this settler-colonial rhetoric, Israel seeks to garner and mobilize support from Western governments and liberal societies by portraying itself as a nation that respects freedom, diversity, and human rights, that is fighting a “monstrous” and oppressive society, illuminated clearly through the declaration of the Prime Minister of Israel “There is a struggle between the children of light and children of darkness, between humanity and law of the jungle.” While these blatantly racist genocidal declarations take the stage, activists in Palestine and internationally are being silenced, harassed, detained, criminalized, workers fired from their jobs, and students suspended from universities. International feminist and queer activists, in solidarity with Palestine, are facing attacks and harassment by Zionists under the premise that those who support Palestine will be “raped” and “beheaded” by Palestinians for merely being women and queers. Yet more often than not, rape and death are what Zionists wish upon queers and women who stand in solidarity with Palestine. Zionist fantasies of brutalized bodies do not surprise us, for we have experienced the reality of their manifestation on our skin and spirit. Yet they never seize to accelerate in their explicit vehemence. It becomes evermore absurd when such framings are constructed against Palestinian society, in light of countless testimonies, reports, and documentations of sexual violence Palestinians have been facing throughout Israel’s 75 years of military occupation. From the thousands of Palestinian prisoners, men and women, who are subject to sexual torture and rape since Israel’s inception to this very day, to daily and escalating settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, to Israeli “civilians” filming themselves torturing kidnapped Palestinians as a TikTok trend, and the most recent harrowing footage published on social media platforms by Israeli soldiers which document the lengths of torture and sexual abuse soldiers and settlers inflict on our bodies regardless of their sexual orientation and gender – all forms of violence, including sexual violence are systematically and structurally part of Zionist domination over Palestinian life. And yet Israeli society continues to weaponize queerness for the purposes of justifying war and colonial repression, as if their bombs, apartheid walls, guns, knives, and bulldozers are selective of who they harm based on sexuality and gender. We refuse the instrumentalization of our queerness, our bodies, and the violence we face as queer people to demonize and dehumanize our communities, especially in service of imperial and genocidal acts. We refuse that Palestinian sexuality and Palestinian attitudes towards diverse sexualities become parameters for assigning humanity to any colonized society. We deserve life because we are human, with the multitude of our imperfections, and not because of our proximity to colonial modes of liberal humanity. We refuse colonial and imperialist tactics that seek to alienate us from our society and alienate our society from us, on the basis of our queerness. We are fighting interconnected systems of oppression, including patriarchy and capitalism, and our dreams of autonomy, community, and liberation are inherently tied to our desire for self-determination. No queer liberation can be achieved with settler-colonization, and no queer solidarity can be fostered if it stands blind to the racialized, capitalist, fascist, and imperial structures that dominate us.

[genderkoolaid]

It’s weird because I love my non-binary and genderfucked siblings, I have two friends who have “weird” “cringe” genders and I love them and I think they do gender so well. But I’m scared that by “demolishing” the gender binary, I won’t get to be a binary man anymore. What does that mean? I want people to see me on the street and think “he/him”, I want people to think of me as heterosexual when I show affection to my girlfriend. I want to be a binary man, and I don’t know how to do that in non-binary world

Playing with gender and fucking with it is good and I fully support people doing that. But I do not want to be seen as anything other than Pure 100% man, I have been constantly called “they” as a way to undermine my masculinity and refusal to gender me properly by people who know my pronouns. I don’t want to be seen as anything other than a Man. I want to be associated fully with masculinity, I don’t want to seen as a lesbian, I don’t want to be seen as anything other than a heterosexual man. Not even that I don’t want to be seen as a lesbian, I don’t want to be associated with lesbians. I’m a trans man, I’m a MAN and my attraction to women is heterosexual, and I cannot accept ideas that tell me otherwise because that would cause me to misgender myself, and I’m tired of being seen like that When I say I’m a man I don’t mean “butch boy girl lesbian” etc etc, if someone wants to be that and fuck up everything, I appreciate it, but I feel uncomfortable with them saying they’re a trans man because when I say I’m a trans man I mean a MAN as in binary man

I think its very good that you started this by acknowledging that this is a product of fear and anxiety. Its important to understand that that is where this is coming from.

You are insecure about your manhood. That is not an insult. Its entirely understandable to feel that way, especially as a trans man. There was a post a little while ago where I talked about how trans men can fall into toxic masculinity, not because its a product of being a man, but because trans men more than cis men (solely in terms of gender) have their manhood scrutinized and devalued. Manhood is a rat race & trans men are fucked over from the start, so we have to try 10x harder to be seen as Proper Men. That leads to a constant pressure to perform "proper" masculinity to the fullest extent possible to try and avoid having your manhood discredited, which can be not only emotionally damaging but legitimately dangerous.

But you need to understand, and I say this with love: this is a you problem. It is not other people's responsibility to change how they identify to soothe your insecurity about your manhood. Other people's identity, in fact, means nothing about your own. Someone else using a label you use to represent a different experience does not mean you must also share that experience, or that you cannot use that label to describe your own.

You are, understandably, fearful that your manhood (which is already constantly being scrutinized and attacked), will be further devalued if "trans man" can also mean "lesbian". You share a community and a label with those men and as a result, their genderweirdness feels dangerous. They feel like a threat to your being. This is not dissimilar to how cishet men react to visibly queer men in their communities and families: "how will people think of me, as a man, if they associate me with a man like that? I need to stop him from being a man or make him be a man right in order to protect my own manhood." This is how the patriarchy functions; make every man constantly compete with each other, under the threat of violence if they fail. Its not your fault you feel this way- you are made to feel this way on purpose because of the patriachal panopticon that makes us self-regulate- but it is your responsibility to work on yourself and resist the urge to view other men as a threat to your manhood.

"Bi lesbians" existing does not mean that people will/should assume every lesbian is bisexual, and for men to use bi lesbians as an excuse to harass lesbians is lesbophobic but not the fault of bi lesbians. In the same way, "lesbian trans men" existing does not mean that people will/should assume every trans man is a lesbian, and people using lesbian trans men (or nonbinary people for that matter) as an excuse to misgender straight trans men is transphobic but not the fault of lesbian men. In both cases, lesbians who have felt pressured to be attracted to men and trans men who have felt pressured to be lesbians see this new fusion identity as a threat to their own as a traumatic response. That fear is valid, but we need to understand that its our own fear. Its not their fault that bigots tried to pressure you to be a certain way, and their identity does not mean that those bigots were justified in any way. Other queer people are not the enemy.

If you care about your genderweird friends- and I don't doubt that you do- its important that you recognize where this fear is coming from and take steps to confront & cope with it. I don't like when people use "fragile masculinity" as an insult; fragile masculinity is part of what keeps the patriarchy running, and men with fragile masculinity need the compassion that the patriarchy will not give them. So please know that when I say you are insecure about your masculinity, I'm not saying you are doing a Bad Thing. You have been made to have a fragile masculinity as a way of controlling you, and now you need to work on healing that in order to have productive and healthy relationships with other queer people (and people in general). You can't support other queer people while also viewing them as a threat to your own manhood, even unconsciously. It requires a process of strengthening your identity as a man and not letting anyone or anything make you feel like it can be taken away because you (or someone you are associated with) Did Manhood Wrong.

You might want to check out @gay-otlc. He's a straight trans man who's talked about the issues straight trans men face, while also being supportive of lesbian trans men, and his blog might help you out with dealing with these issues. In general when it comes to identity issues, I think its very important to see and interact with other people of your identity, especially those who are confident and able to confront/cope with bigotry in healthier ways. I wish you the best, anon.

[saltpepperbeard]

Im sorry about this i need to rant. I thought things were getting better but Izzy stan Twitter is at it again with their whining, truth bending and self-victimising.

'Do you like OMFD but wish the queer disabled hero didnt die?' IZZY IS NOT THE HERO OF THIS SHOW!!!!! He is at best a reformed antagonist. What an insult to the other disabled characters, and what about the actual heroes of the show??

'We've been betrayed by straight man writing queer stories'. First of all, way to dismiss the other writers. Also, its not his fault you project your personal traumas and mental health on a fictional character on a show with death in the title.

'GB's ending is comphet (?????) because 'we only need eachother' and theyre breaking away from their queer community' ED HAS BEEN WANTING TO LEAVE PIRACY SINCE LAST SEASON!!! also, its progress that Stede was able to resist basic flattery. And David made it clear that they still have work to do. This one truly broke my brain.

Im just sick of all this. Izzy stans have been coddled for the past week, being told its ok to grieve, but theyve crossed multiple lines. I do wish some things had been more explicit in this finale, only because David overestimated the maturity and media literacy of some people.

Sorry for this but i needed to talk to people here. Its beyond annoyance at this point. Im angry and sick of petty crybabies actively working to poison what we've built.

I'm a bit late to answering this, anon, so pardon the tardiness, but I think it says something that this still holds weight/relevancy even after a bit of pause.

I can totally understand the frustration because I too have seen some absolutely WILD takes. And I don't even go into the main tags, nor am I on Twitter, yet I STILL manage to see whispers of things in my peripherals. I have seen some things similar to what you mentioned that made me just...goggle. I could genuinely just do nothing but...GOGGLE. GAWK, GAPE, AND GOGGLE HSDJKLS.

I of course invite you to hang in this little Safe Spaceship Corner, because so many people are trying to maintain a steady course throughout all of this. But even still, it's frustrating that one can't even really go into the fandom space on Twitter or into the tags without being BOMBARDED. And I'm upset that it has to be that way. I'm upset that people are legitimately finding it difficult to interact with the space, or even enjoy the material now.

And again, AGAIN, I still maintain my opinion that his fans are allowed to be sad/angry/upset by his death. I totally get that. But what I do NOT subscribe to is attempting to pull everyone else down into that and painting it all to be some sort of "personal attack." Or just...throwing any sort of vitriolic label at it in an attempt to "justify" the upset instead of just...sitting with that upset.

Like...It's a story. You may not like it. And that's totally okay. There are things in this season I didn't particularly like. But that's MY opinion, and based off MY personal preferences, not the fault of those who decided to share their story with me. It's not some betrayal, or vendetta, or anything of the sort. And it's such a shame that it's being painted as such and THEN some.

[hopeymchope]

Hey. There was a new Raincode interview written a few days ago and in that interview, Halara’s gender was brought up. I made a post about that question on my blog and I am curious your thoughts about it. I also linked the interview in my post.

(This is the post in question, for anyone interested. Which I think you probably should be, but... )

My thoughts are mostly that Kodaka's quote/response feels frustratingly uninformative and devoid of any value, but also sadly unsurprising. I know it's just a machine translation, so maybe this isn't capturing the exact nuance of the statement... but the sentence "I didn't specifically intend a social message" is just exactly the kind of vague, wishy-washy, "I really don't want to be in trouble with or offend anyone on any side of any possible argument" language that I've LONG gotten used to in promotional interviews about movies, TV, books, games, etc. Because god forbid you possibly appear to be either for or against anything that might be considered controversial in any possible market! Having STANCES on THINGS could damage your profit margin with some potential demographic.

I suppose this could be all there is to it. Maybe Kodaka legitimately means what he says here and put no greater thought into Halara's lack of gender identity. But I also think it'd be weird if the implications of leaving their gender unknown didn't at least occur to him at some point, particularly as there's been a growing awareness of so-called "X-gender" people in Japan over the last year and a half.

But ultimately, "Master Detective Archives: Rain Code" is Japanese media, and that leaves this kind of question-dodging not only expected, but arguably maybe even necessary. Take a look at the recent of the recent controversy over The Witch From Mercury, the Gundham anime that is over-the-top mega-gay. Bandai Namco still felt the need to declare that the relationship between Suletta and Miorine is "open to interpretation" despite the fact that the two get FUCKED MARRIED.

In fact, this Kotaku article does a good job digging into not only that anime's particular can of worms, but also how queer-friendly media in Japan continues to be suppressed and censored from the dominant conservatives behind the media companies and government even while those works enjoy massive popularity with younger consumers. Get a load of what they say about Yuri! on Ice:

Look no further than the fate of 2016’s smash hit Yuri! On Ice, which tells the tale of a struggling figure skater, Yuri Katsuki, who is coached back to success by the charismatic and undeniably handsome Victor Nikiforov. Similar to The Witch From Mercury, the pair’s relationship is explicitly laid out in the story, and the characters also exchange rings. It was, and still is, celebrated as a landmark anime for LGBTQ+ representation. It received acclaim in Japan, winning Animation of the Year at the Tokyo Anime Awards as well as a number of fan-voted awards. It has consistently been named as one of the top anime of the 2010s by IGN, Anime News Network, and here at Kotaku. In what seemed like an obvious move to capitalize on the success of the show, a feature-length Yuri! On Ice movie was greenlit almost immediately. But six years later, a statement from Studio MAPPA CEO Manabu Otsuka said that despite the show being a hit, the company didn’t make a lot of money off of Yuri! On Ice, and as such, the movie likely won’t happen. Back when Blu-ray sales mattered to the anime industry, Yuri! On Ice torched the competition, selling nearly double the amount of discs of its nearest competitor, the juggernaut franchise Love Live. The runaway success of Yuri! On Ice led to MAPPA’s heightened profile in the industry, which helped it secure the rights to produce Attack on Titan’s never-ending final season, the massively popular Jujutsu Kaisen, and the second season of Makoto Yukimura’s viking masterpiece, Vinland Saga. For MAPPA to claim that the Yuri! On Ice movie isn’t financially viable is disingenuous and contradicts standard industry metrics for success. MAPPA could release the Yuri! On Ice movie tomorrow, and it would be a guaranteed hit. Which begs the question, what is the hold up? It's a reminder that speaking out against the anime production committees that dole out the work to animation studios is a dangerous game. In most of her press for Yuri! On Ice, creator and director Sayo Yamamoto played nice, answering softball questions that never directly addressed the very obvious love playing out on screen between Yuki and Victor. But, in the Yuri! On Ice fanbook “Go Yuri Go!” from 2017, Yamamoto claimed that the series had been censored outside of her control, and she had to fight to keep a kiss between Yuri and Victor in the final cut of the show. Since then, Yamamoto has not gotten any other projects. To have arguably the biggest hit of 2016, receive critical acclaim from your own industry, and then not be given any work? It doesn’t add up. MAPPA has tied Yamamoto to the Yuri! On Ice movie project and essentially strung her out for six years now, leaving her in a kind of professional purgatory. In an industry where the slightest scandal can lead to blacklisting, the idea that Yamamoto is being punished for wanting to go all-in on a queer narrative is not far-fetched.

So. Yeah. This is all a very long way of me saying "I don't know whether what Kodaka said here really tells us much about his intentions/thoughts, nor do I expect we'll ever hear much more on the topic." A lot of Japanese creators have gone the way of just letting the work speak for itself and vaguely denying anything else in public, because it's just safer that way... even if it leaves the rest of us clueless as to where the legit allies are.

Either way, Halara is a pretty awesome representation regardless. I'll just take that as a positive sign.

[deafeninggardenerpanda]

Sorry if this is more of a redundant question or related to one that you already did, but what is your opinion on people claiming that ships with little evidence or up to interpretation are "canon"?

I believe you mentioned this somewhat with FranFlam, but what about with other ships that you like where this seems to be common with like Metadede? Or is it the case of "it's fine as long as they aren't attacking people who think otherwise"?

under the cut! nah totally valid q anon i love talking about stuff like this:

tbh i think kirby is just a series that should not have romance in it at all. innocent things like ribbon and kirby in 64 is like fine because i personally dont take kid relationships too seriously but like anything else i just dont think its the place for it. for metadede in particular, ofc i love shipping and i like to scream with other shippers and pick out things and see it in a shippy context but i absolutely dont think metadede is canon, will ever be canon, or even particularly Should be canon actually. im just gonna stick to metadede and franflam like your examples for this because you dont really see people trying to claim any particular (fanon) m/f ship as canon in this fandom but hey even tho i think a lot of us can agree nintendo makes some great games, nintendo is also a big soulless corporation that does not care about us. if youre someone desperate to find a cake in the crumbs on the floor in terms of canon main/major character queer rep, anything nintendo is absolutely not the place for that

to answer your question, that sums up how i feel about other people who try to make canon ship claims too. i try to think the best of people because the lines get really blurred when a lot of people just like making jokes about ships being canon vs Actually genuinely thinking that, but for anyone who legitimately does try to push their ship as canon its just kinda like Mmmm. that gets a thumbs down from me... its not like problematic in of itself (unless you try to claim that people who dont like the ship are homophobic by default or something. youre getting thrown in the grain silo and you probably need to go outside) so like technically i guess i dont care, but i sure do think its obnoxious as hell and also absolutely REEKS of "FRIENDS dont DO that!! people who arent dating dont DO that!!!!! so they must be dating!!!!" and then the thing in question is the two characters like holding hands sometimes. of course theres something to be said about Writer intent but cmon this is a series where people kiss each other on the lips platonically all the time i cannot take canon ship claims seriously. why is so much of peoples worth in a ship staked in whether its "canon" anyways? it just comes off as wanting a reason to lord over others why a certain ship is better than everyone elses. unless two characters make out in a cutscene complete with blushing afterwards prefaced by a lot of romantic tension through the entire game previously its not canon. thats my hot take lol. we have a rare series where canon romance isnt in your face and shoved down your throat every moment and yet some bad folks in the fandom will try to do that for you still. unbelievable

[talisidekick]

Tranguy here again, so im being harassed and called slurs, can you respectfully tell people to not call me a tranny and tell me im a straight man.

Its getting frustrating, apparently im a facist now? Im sorry for causing this

Okay, I'm going to go off on this:

When someone has different views we don't necessarily agree with, or flat out disagree with, the one thing we don't do is disrespect the persons identity. Both gender and sexual identity.

Why?

Because when we do, we're telling our enemies, our opposition, the people that oppress us that it's acceptable to misgender, mock, and deny a person their identity. It legitimizes the attacks against us. We can't reflavour their attacks on us to hurt someone we don't like or hate. That just makes us into hypocrits and bullies. We have to be better than this because if we're not, we're just as bad as our enemies. We don't need to and shouldn't resort to underhanded tactics, because all it does is lessen us.

Anon here has some conservative views, problematic ones in my opinion, but that doesn't stop him from being a transgender man and gay. Don't go on a crusade of hate when offering knowledge and kindness is the working path here. All attacking him is going to do is reinforce his bad takes and prevent him from having the option to challenge himself and learn/change. Don't go acting high and mighty because many of us, myself included, didn't start off knowing everything we do. It's a process, and all attacking another queer person is going to do is make them another piece of ammunition for our opposition to radicalize and use against us.

Ie. if you need proof of this, look at all the lesbian and gay and queer cisgender men and women who supported Republicans in the US who are now staring down the barrel of Project 2025 that seeks to criminalize them for existing across the entirety of the US, a project that their support helped make possible. Those lesbians, gays, and queers were radicalized by our enemies because they felt isolated and unsafe to reach out to anyone else. They were used as nothing more than tools until they weren't useful anymore.

When one of us has concerning or problematic views we attempt education, and if they become violent and problematic, we block them. Online, the enemy of popularity is lack of engagement. If Anon has views you don't want to see, block him so you don't have to see his takes.

And Anon, it might be hard to push past, but once you take a moment to breathe, I still encourage you to look more into queer peoples experiences. Understanding the anger against you can be a useful exercise in affirming what we know by challenging what was said with our knowledge or correcting our mistakes when our knowledge fails. If people are calling you a fascist, it's because something you said is being viewed as oppressive, it's not because you necessarily are a fascist, I can't confirm or deny that, it's because something you said is harmful and in opposition to someone elses lived reality. This insult levied at you is an opportunity to gain greater understanding. Good luck. And I wish you well on your path to improvement through your life. Keep an open mind, and always ask: who's hurt by this? How? And why?

[net-banshee]

I was on tumblr during the era when the ace community was at its biggest. I was also on tumblr when people started attacking the ace community.

I remember the words they used. "straight passing", "not oppressed", "basically straight", etc. I remember people using personal experiences with ace people in their lives (aces talking about sex more than allos) to say aces weren't valid or real or whatever.

I also remember bisexuals being under attack for similar reasons. despite being a cornerstone of queer history, people decided they weren't queer enough.

queer becoming a slur again, policing on how people could and couldn't be trans (from trans people!! fuck you kalvin garrah!!!), pan vs bi arguments, all this shit that popped up not very long ago.

I am not old. I was not there for the birth of the queer rights movement. but I was there to see it suddenly spiral into chaos as infighting began.

and it didn't take a lot of digging to find out what it really was: TERF pipeline.

TERFs made up a pipeline to get people to more easily accept trans people not being queer: if someone could believe aces or bisexuals weren't queer enough, what else could they believe? trans women aren't women, perhaps? queer people don't even deserve rights?

it's all a game. it's all made to destroy us. OP probably jokes about the CIA shit but that's legitimately what happened. some straight people decided that a fun way to see our community crumble would be to incite hatred from within, arguments over validity, what constitutes queerness. then, after we've divided ourselves, it's far easier to take away our rights because we're trying to do it to ourselves.

I've said this before, and I've also had people ask me for my sources. my source is that I was fucking there.

so next time someone gives a shit about neopronouns or bi lesbians, I invite you to either call them a fed, or tell them they're a pawn of the straights that would see us destroy ourselves. whichever works faster.

officially decided that anyone who tries to divide the lgbt community is a fed. i dont care if you're not actually a fed, if you're causing infighting in a minority community then you're a fed who just isnt getting paid to be one. either apply for a job at the CIA or shut the fuck up

[vtori73]

Hmm... you would think we would... as a community get past the point in which we learn to recognize when patterns repeat and intercommunity prejudice & stigma rears its ugly head around again but like... no one seems to ever learn or cares to learn. I know a lot of these people are just selfish fuckers who are only looking out for themselves (big example being the "drop the t" folks) but we also have the ones who are very similar to the folks mentioned previously but the main difference being that they aren't necessarily TRYING to be bootlickers to allocisheteronormative society but are actually just being bigots & don't realize it!

They just end up being and repeating bigotry because they never have or do bother to analyze or research the people who oppress them, the rhetoric that they use, the thinking behind it, the mindset etc because not all but plenty of bigots DO actually fear us because they don't understand us and our existence scares them. We mess with their worldviews they've been told are the only truths in life, and if these things they have based their whole life on are wrong... what else could they be believing is wrong??? We legitimately scare them, regardless of how it seems on the outside on the inside plenty of them are just afraid but it's sad and dangerous when our own community members end up giving into their own fears to attack and belittle identities and subjects they don't understand and are unwilling too.

Plenty fall for it because they refuse to actually look into history & sure many are deprived of it but at a certain point it becomes your responsibility, not others, to educate yourself on things outside of your basic understanding of them ESPECIALLY if you're not a part of said group or affected by said subject. It's how we get white trans people speaking over Black trans people on intersectionality, it's how we get LG folks telling Bi people what the definition is for our sexuality or what problems we do/don't face, or non ace/aro people being told they are "basically straight"/aren't queer and that's just some quick/easy examples.

I do think some do realize it though, and LIKE being able to be the bully instead for a change. It's all shitty though, & the queer community should be better at being an ACTUAL community.

[e-the-village-cryptid]

Hey I’m also queer and I use it as an identity label. I don’t agree with people excessively trigger tagging it when it’s not necessary, but I’d really suggest you educate yourself on its history as a slur. I am a gay trans man, so this is absolutely not terf rhetoric from me. But I was called queer in a derogatory way my entire life because I lived in a rural area where it was absolutely used as a slur. Maybe consider that ppl asking for trigger tags are also LGBT and not your enemy lol

Like go ahead and isolate yourself from other queer ppl all you want but just bc some ppl are genuinely triggered by the term doesn’t mean they’re attacking you for using it, lmfao

I know you probably mean well by this ask, and I see where you're coming from. I disagree, but I will give a good faith answer in return.

To understand where I'm coming from, let's compare the words queer and gay. Both words originally referred to general sexual deviancy in a pejorative sense, only later being reclaimed as proudly worn identities. Both words have been used as slurs for a long time afterwards, queer being more popular in the mid 20th century and gay gaining popularity as a slur in the later 20th into the 21st century.

I know way more queer people in real life who have a complicated relationship with the word gay than the word queer because gay was the word that was slung at them as an insult and a weapon their entire childhood. Gay was The insult of the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Anything bad, or weak, or stupid was "gay". There were whole campaigns to try to stop the use of gay as an insult, that's how bad it got. It's given a lot of people a lot of pain connected with the word.

But I have never, ever, seen someone tag a post "g slur". Why? Two words, both initially pejorative, both reclaimed, both continuously used liberally by those who hate us as a slur and an insult. Isn't it interesting how the more inclusive of those two words was targeted in a concentrated effort that started just a few years ago in terf communities? Isn't it interesting how the more narrow, less inclusive word, despite being the one more recently used as a slur and insult, despite the people in the community who still flinch when they hear it, was simply left alone?

To be clear, I don't think that we should be trigger tagging gay, or starting some "gay is a slur!" movement. I'm just pointing out parallels and questioning why the attitude towards two words with similar histories are so vastly different.

Educate myself on its history? I know it was used as a slur. So was gay, so was lesbian, so was every goddam word we have ever used to describe ourselves because it is not the words they find disgusting, it is us. Queer has been reclaimed and used in a neutral or positive way for decades and decades.

Context matters. "you dirty queer" = slur "I went to the queer student group meeting last week" = not a slur "ew that's so gay" = slur "I came out as gay when I was 16" = not a slur

No one is denying that queer has been and can still be used as a slur. But this specific "queer is a slur in any context!" movement legitimately did come out of terf communities in the last few years. I'm not accusing you of being associated with terfs. But "queer is a slur and triggering no matter how it's used" is terf rhetoric, and they've managed to spread it beyond their community. To claim that a word that has been reclaimed for decades and used in a neutral-to-positive context is a slur is disingenuous, and they know it, but they've successfully gotten other people to parrot it by hiding it under a layer of false concern.

One final thought: I have literally never seen anyone ask for queer to be tagged because they personally are triggered by the word. It's always people speaking on behalf of some hypothetical person who can't stand to even see my identity written out in a neutral-to-positive context. And if anyone really is so genuinely triggered by the term that they can't even stand to read it, they can just filter the post content, tumblr lets you do that.

[bullshit-tqia]

“You can’t force me to—”

They did. You were almost attacked.

It’s absolutely retarded that you are interpreting my “some women think trans women are sexual abusers so its better to leave those people alone instead of unintentionally reinforcing their beliefs” as “just be okay with transphobia.”

No dumbass, I’m telling you it exists and to stop moralizing other trans people who guide their beliefs around what is the current reality instead of what they want. You are going to see “afab only housing” in this point in time. You can’t act like people are “doing a great disservice” because of an ideal that has never existed. To the people you argue with, it has never existed, they cannot comprehend it. You aren’t going to tell them “this is how it should be” when they don’t know what that is. I can’t say “there should be no borders” and say people are insane because they argue for borders. Because borders have always existed, how can I moralize based on something that is just an ideal? I have to introduce the basic components of what a future “no border” society must be and it has to go well before people can legitimately comprehend the possible good of there being no borders.

This is called pragmatism. It’s called a plan. It’s called the process to achieving human rights. And it’s frustrating to you because you don’t want to realize that this entire fucking time you have done nothing to improve your situation.

And secondly, shut the fuck up about my country. You don’t know American queer history, the majority of queer Americans don’t know American queer history. Because, if you did, you would know that prior to stonewall, the one riot everyone says “gave us gay marriage” even though it happened in 1969 and gay marriage was legalized across the states in 2015, there were many laws on the table for protecting gay people and ending police raids.

But after the riot…all those laws were scrapped. There was a potential protection making its way through FLORIDA’S legislature that was dropped. Because the riot gave cishets a “valid” reason for the raids. Because if the angry queers were going to destroy buildings if the “police only just showed up” (this is the impact of misinformation and the lack of context) then they will think they need more police. You don’t commit more crime to protest more police in your neighborhood, you just give the police more of a reason to be there. That’s how fundamentally retarded rioting is. You’re playing into stereotypes to defeat a stereotype. But that’s not how it works. It doesn’t defeat them, it reinforces them.

Stonewall and the following riots set the community back decades and the riots of the AIDS crisis actually made things worse. It lowered people’s patience and empathy with gay people which made them unmotivated to do anything for them. It is astounding that people think it’s logical to make people hate you in order to make them like you. No, you do civil disobedience like MLK. Then, like Thurgood Marshall, you better the rights of others by working within the system to represent the needs and wants of those people.

THATS WHAT GOT US GAY MARRIAGE IN 2015. IT WAS GAY LAWYERS AND LOBBYISTS.

And the polite ways don’t work in Russia because its fucking Russia. You all have never had a democratic system of government or a spec of liberal ideals because you’re “above that.” Which is why you repeat the same anti-US propaganda here which your dreadful, horrific, fascist country has perpetuated in mine for almost a decade now. You and the rest of your country are literal scum of the Earth. I hate you and your people more than anything else in the world for your country’s axis of evil. You and your country is responsible for the loss of rights in America. Because your country started dumping its horrific propaganda into mine, buying out people to spread misinformation and illiberal ideas into my country.

Your country used and created Donald Trump the Fascist as a pawn to ruin entire swaths of the USA and the fact that you think you have ANY right to tell me what to say and do is fucking disgusting. No, you need to listen to American liberals. Your country’s meddling has plunged millions of people into hellfire in mine so don’t you fucking dare spout the same misinformation about my country’s history and its present. Putin is Hitler. You are an ambivalent crybully Nazi who’s upset I don’t worship your little aryan dreamland of a new Soviet Union.

GTFO.

Can’t say “afag” then get upset that there’s afab-only housing

[wibble-wobbegong]

st fandom is so homophobic like I've been in a lot of other fandoms but I haven't seen people get attacked in the same way some bylers are???Like I won't deny some bylers might be corny and there are def weird bylers out there but why do I see people calling will slurs and hoping he gets aids on twitter or som shit. Like that's not normal.. and then people are surprised when we're defensive sometimes

st is more homophobic than most other fandoms because of its sheer popularity and the rise in fandom culture being the norm. fandom used to consist of mostly queer people and otherwise nerds, but being a part of fandom has grown and reached outside of those groups. you’ll see people who know nothing about fandom culture reach into fandom and have a complete disrespect for it.

shipping wars have always been an issue, so has homophobia, but with st there is a huge wave of people being exposed to fandom AND legitimate queerness in a way they never have been before. people see bylers taking the time to dig deeper into the show and coming out with the fact that mike and will are probably queer and treat then like they’re insane for it. now that will has been confirmed queer, these people who have never been a part of fandom before, are going insane and blaming the potential of byler on the duffers trying to appeal to what the fans want rather than realizing that fandom people are often the ones who take the time to understand what writers might be trying to convey on a deeper level.

others just can’t handle that their show might not revolve around straight characters. they don’t care about the characters, they just don’t understand why queer people might be represented as something more than side characters or trauma stories. cishets have never had to worry about representation so the idea that they aren’t gonna be the focus of their favorite show is like popping that bubble they live in. they’ll be forced to accept that people like mike can be queer, even gay, and that’s not a reality they can handle. they can’t deal with the fact that they aren’t able to detect every single queer person, that queer people might be around and they won’t even know. that their children or siblings might be queer. they’d rather have will live a “realistic queer experience” and mike represent the average misogynistic, homophobic asshole many straight guys relate to so they can continue living in that bubble. if will goes back into that role people want him in, it’s easy for them to brush of his queerness and say it was obvious from the start and that they always knew.

basically, none of these people can accept that the story has been queer all along because it was it wasn’t written for them, and popular shows are ALWAYS written for them. their puny little brains can’t comprehend that the story was never for them, never about them, and that they misunderstood the entire message of the show.

[lorenfangor]

I heard that #40 was super homophobic :/ so I skipped it. But now your fic is making me want to give it a try. How problematic is it? Are the characters worth it?

Okay.

Okay.

Let’s talk about #40.

The plot of The Other (a Marco POV) is that Marco sees an Andalite on a video tape sent in to some Unsolved Mysteries-esque TV show, and he assumes it’s Ax and hauls ass to save him from being captured. Ax, being Ax, has videotaped the show, and they pull it up and Tobias uses his hawk eyes to figure out that it’s not Ax, it’s another Andalite - one without a tailblade. Ax is appalled at the presence of this vecol (an Andalite word for a disabled person) and we find out that he and others of his species have deep ingrained prejudices against at least some kinds of disabled people.

Despite this, Marco and Ax go looking for the Andalite in question because he’s been spotted by national TV, and they meet a second one, named Gafinilan-Estrif-Valad. The vecol is Mertil-Iscar-Elmand, a former fighter pilot with a reputation and Gafinilan’s coded-gay life partner. The two of them have been on Earth since book 1; they crashed their fighters on the planet and have been trapped there thanks to the GalaxyTree going down. Gafinilan has adopted a human cover, a physics professor, and they’ve been living in secret ever since.

Thanks to that tape, Mertil has been captured by Visser Three, and he’s not morph-capable so he can’t escape. Gafinilan wants to trade the leader of the “Andalite Bandits” to the Yeerks to get his boyfriend back; he can’t fight to free Mertil because he’s terminally ill with a genetic disorder that will eventually kill him, and (it’s implied that) the Yeerks aren’t interested in disabled hosts, even disabled Andalite ones. Despite Ax’s ableism, the Animorphs agree to work with Gafinilan and free Mertil, and they’re successful. Marco ends the book talking about how there are all kinds of prejudices you’ll have to face and boxes that people will put you in, and you can’t necessarily escape them even if they’re reductive and inaccurate, but you can still live your life with pride.

So now that I’ve explained the plot, I’m gonna come out the gate saying that I love this book. I love it wholeheartedly, I love Marco’s narration, I love Ax having to deal with Andalite society’s ableism, I love these characters, and as a disabled lesbian I don’t find these disabled gays to be inherently Bad Rep.

that’s of course just my opinion and it doesn’t overshadow other issues that people might have? but at the same time, I don’t like the seemingly-common narrative that this book is all bad all the time, and I want to offer up a different read.To that end, I’m going to go point by point through some of the criticisms and common complaints that I’ve seen across the fandom over the years.

“Mertil and Gafinilan were put on a bus after one appearance because they were gay!”

this is one I’m going to have to disagree with hardcore. I talked about this yesterday, but in Animorphs there are a lot of characters or ideas that only get introduced once or twice and then get written off or dropped - in order off the top of my head, #11 (the Amazon trip), #16 (Fenestre and his cannibalism), #17 (the oatmeal), #18 (the hint of Yeerks doing genetic experiments in the hospital basement), #24/#39/#42 (the Helmacrons’ ability to detect morphing tech), #25 (the Venber), #28 (experiments with limiting brain function through drugs), #34 (the Hork-Bajir homeworld being retaken, the Ixcila procedure), #36 (the Nartec), #41 (Jake’s Bad Future Dream), and #44 (the Aboriginal people Cassie meets in Australia) all feature things that either seem to exist just for the sake of having a particular trope explored Animorphs-style or to feature an idea for One Single Book.

This is a series that’s episodic and has a very limited overall story arc because of how children’s literature in the 90s was structured - these books are closer to The Saddle Club, Sweet Valley High, Animal Ark, or The Baby-Sitters’ Club than they are to Harry Potter or A Series of Unfortunate Events. Mertil and Gafinilan don’t get to be in more than one book because they’re not established in the main cast or the supporting cast, I don’t think that it’s solely got anything to do with their being gay.

“Gafinilan has AIDS, this is a book about AIDS, and that’s homophobic!”

Okay, this is… hard. First, yes, Gafinilan does have a terminal illness. Yes, Gafinilan is gay. No, Soola’s Disease is not AIDS.

I have two responses to this, and I’ll attack them in order of their occurrence in my thought. First, there’s coded AIDS diseases all over genre fiction, especially genre fiction from that era, because the AIDS epidemic made a massive impact on public life and fundamentally changed both how the public perceived illness and queerness and how queer people themselves experienced it. I was too young to live through it, but my dad’s college roommate was out, and my dad himself has a lot of friends who he just ceases to talk about if the conversation gets past 1986 or so - this was devastating and it got examined in art for more reasons than “gay people all have AIDS”, and I dislike the implication that the only reason it could ever appear was as a tired stereotype or a message that Being Queer Means Death. Gafinilan is kind, fond of flowers, and fond of children - he’s multifaceted, and he’s got a terminal illness. Those kinds of people really exist, and they aren’t Bad Rep.

Second off, Soola’s Disease? Really isn’t AIDS. It’s a congenital genetic illness that develops over time, cannot be transmitted, and does not carry a serious stigma the way AIDS did. Gafinilan also has access to a cure - he could become a nothlit and no longer be afflicted by it, even if it’s considered somewhat dishonorable to go nothlit to escape that way. That’s not AIDS, and in fact at no point in my read and rereads did I assume that his having a terminal illness was supposed to be a commentary on homosexuality until I found out that other people were assuming it.

“Mertil losing his tail means he’s lost his masculinity, and that’s bad because he’s gay! That’s homophobic!”

so this is another one I’ve gotta hardcore disagree with, because while Mertil is one of two Very Obviously Queer Characters, he’s not the only character who loses something fundamental about himself, or even loses access to sexual and/or romantic capability in ways he was familiar with.

Tobias and Arbron both get ripped out of their ordinary normal lives by going nothlit in bad situations, and while they both wind up finding fulfillment and freedom despite that, it’s still traumatic, even more for Arbron I’d say than for Tobias. And on a psychological level, none of the main cast is left unmarked or free of trauma or free of deep change thanks to the bad things that have happened to them - they’re no less fundamentally altered than Mertil, even if it’s mental rather than physical. And yes, tail loss is equated with castration or emasculation, but that doesn’t automatically mean Mertil suffering it is tied to his homosexuality and therefore the takeaway we’re intended to have is “Being gay is tragic and makes you less of a man”. This is a series where bad shit happens to everyone, and enduring losses that take away things central to one’s self-conception or identity or body is just part of the story.

Also, frankly? Plenty of IRL disabled people have to grapple with a loss of sexual function, and again, they’re not Bad Rep just because they’re messy.

“Andalite society is confusingly written in this book, and the disability aspects are clearly just a coverup for the gay stuff!”

Andalite society is canonically sexist, a bit exceptionalist and prejudiced in their own favor, and pretty contradictory and often challenged internally on its own norms. In essence, it’s a pretty ordinary society, and they’re really realistic as sci-fi races go. It makes sense from that perspective that Andalites would tolerate scarring or a lost stalk eye or a lost skull eye, but not tolerate serious injuries that significantly impact your perceived quality of life. Ableism is like that - it’s not one-size-fits-all. I look at Ax’s reactions and I see a lot of my own family and friends’ behaviors - this vibes with my understanding of prejudice, you know?

“Mertil and Gafinilan have a tragic ending, which means the story is saying that being gay dooms you to tragedy!”

Mertil and Gafinilan have the best possible ending that they could ask for? They are victims of the war, they are suffering because of the war, they get the same cocktail of trauma and damage that every other soldier gets. But unlike Jake and Tobias and Marco, unlike Elfangor, unlike Aximili? Their ending comes in peace, in their own home. Gafinilan isn’t dying alone, he’s got the love of his life with him. Mertil isn’t going to be as isolated anymore, he’s got Marco for a friend. Animorphs is a tragedy, it’s not a happy story, it’s not something that guarantees a beautiful sunshine-and-roses ending for everyone, and I love tragedy, and so I will fight for this story. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it deserved better. But it’s not less meaningful just because it’s sad. Nobody is entitled to anything in this book, and it’s just as true for these two as it is for anyone else.

“It’s not cool that the only canonically gay characters in this series don’t get to be happy and trauma-free and unblemished Good Rep!”

This is one I can kind of understand, and I’ll give some ground to it, because it is sucky. The only thing I’ll say is that I stand by my argument that nothing that happens to Mertil and Gafinilan is unusual compared to what happens to the rest of the cast, and that their ending is way happier than Rachel and Tobias’s, or Jake and Cassie’s. But it’s a legitimate point of frustration, and the one argument I’ll say I agree has validity.

(Though, I also want to point out that I think there are plenty of equally queercoded characters in the story who aren’t Mertil and Gafinilan - Tobias, Rachel, Cassie, and Marco all get at least one or two moments that signal to me that they’re potentially LGBT+, not to mention Mr. Tidwell and Illim in #29 and their long-term domestic partnership. There’s no reason to assume that the only queer people here are those two aliens when Marco’s descriptions of Jake exist.)

“Marco uses slurs and reduces Gafinilan’s whole identity to his illness!”

Technically, yes, this is true, except putting it that way strips the whole passage of its context. Marco is discussing the boxes society puts you into, the ones you don’t have a choice about facing or escaping. He’s talking about negative stereotypes and reductive generalizations, he’s referring to them as bad things that you get inflicted upon you by an outside world or by friends who don’t know the whole story or the real you. The slurs he uses are real slurs that get thrown at people still, and they’re not okay, and the point is that they’re not okay but assholes are going to call you by them anyway. He ends by saying “you just have to learn to live with it”, and since this is coming from a fifteen-year-old Latino kid who we know is picked on by bullies for all sorts of reasons and who faces racism and homophobia? He knows what he’s talking about. He’s bitter about what’s been said and done, he’s not stating it like it’s a good thing.

Yes, absolutely, this speech is a product of its time, but it’s a product of its time that speaks of defiance and says “We aren’t what we’re said to be,” and in the year this was published? That’s a good message.

tl;dr The Other is good, actually, and Mertil and Gafinilan are incredible characters who deserve all the love they could possibly get.