#wh- what’s this? *unfolds it* a trauma card? lol i’m not gonna play that — what is this this„ tumblr? *laugh track plays in the background*

[ghostiboos]

I can’t believe I’m having to clarify my opinions on the internet, but to be fair, it’s my own fault for posting something on the internet without an adequate literary analysis of my own statements (just joking btw — it’s totally valid for you to want to start a conversation, and thank you for at least trying to be polite about it. I hope you can forgive me if I sound a bit insulted that you would assume I'm the type of person you seem to be talking to.)

I guess for starters, I’ll clarify that the image is not a screenshot of someone else’s post (I’m guessing screenshot is what you meant by “print?”). It is an image I made from scratch.

I chose not to use a screenshot specifically because I had no intention of mocking the poster or their post, so I wanted to make sure that in case they actually saw this post, they wouldn’t feel mocked or misunderstood, and the post couldn’t be linked back to them by others either.

The poster is not intended to be the butt of the joke: I am the butt of the joke. I can understand how that might have been unclear to you, but allow me to elaborate.

Storytime: I was so sleep deprived that when I saw the phrase “Kyoya’s wife,” I literally squinted at it like a math problem that I was too stupid to understand lmao, but I was genuinely trying really hard to figure out what I was looking at. Once I realized why I was confused, I found it funny that I got so genuinely disoriented over something so obvious (aka: “oh! this person obviously interprets the character according to the literal canon, and I’m actually the weird one for being confused about that lol”). I made a meme about it (still sleep deprived) as if it was a grammatical diagram that I was solving incorrectly, and then I posted it with a caption that framed myself as genuinely confused about something that the intended viewer would find obvious, therefore making me look silly for not understanding such an obvious thing. I don’t really get much interaction on my posts (which is ideal for me because I only post for my own entertainment and have horrible social anxiety rip), and if anyone does respond, they’re usually another gay person, so I thought it was safe to assume that either no one would see this post or only like one gay person on the other side of the world who’s familiar with the well-known queer reading of OHSHC might maybe see it. I also thought this fandom was pretty dead and therefore safer to interact with, especially considering that the only posts I’ve seen about it (aside from the one mentioned in the original post) have been riffs on the queer reading, so I figured the chances of het discourse finding me was pretty small (In hindsight, I should have just left #ohshc out of the tags and used ship tags instead to ensure it wouldn’t land on an audience primed for misinterpretation, but I don’t like reducing characters to ships so I didn’t want to do that. Guess I learned my lesson lol). But just in case it ended up on the straight side of the internet, I made sure to include a disclaimer in the original tags of the post anyways. Here’s the original tags:

If you saw these tags and still misunderstood, I apologize that my phrasing was unclear. Please note the emphasis I placed on Kyoya being gay in my brain, and that other people are allowed to interpret him differently, and that the joke is about me being confused over a misunderstanding rather than anything having to do with the original poster being somehow wrong or bad.

For the sake of clarity: I support people interpreting fictional characters according to the literal canon of the source material. (If this even needs clarifying? Though, in all fairness, you don’t know me, so it’s understandable that you would read me as potentially hostile even though it’s not true.) It is not wrong when people interpret characters as they are explicitly written, that’s literally what you’re expected to do, there’s no reason I would have a problem with that. I am the weird one for interpreting Kyoya differently, that’s part of the punch line. So, on top of that, no, I do not think my interpretation of his sexuality is “more valid” than anyone else’s, because that would be a stupid opinion for me to have.

You were not the target audience, so it makes sense that you lack the context for this. Something you might not be aware of is that, as mentioned above, OHSHC has a very longstanding queer reading that is well-established and well-loved as an alternate interpretation of the source material, (also fun fact: Kyoya himself contains several references to queer media, and shojo in general is historically exploratory of queer themes and characters both implicitly and explicitly, which is something female writers were able to start really getting away with in the 70s due to sexism in the industry leading to looser regulation — It’s all very interesting!), so I’m not coming out of left field with this. But that’s a subcultural thing, and while it’s important to me and many people like me, it obviously doesn’t have to be important to you or anyone else. There is obviously nothing wrong with reading the words “Kyoya has a wife” in the canon text and then concluding that Kyoya must, therefore, have a wife. It would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise, just as it would be ridiculous to suggest that people are not allowed to interpret it any other way, so I’m glad to hear that you also have nothing wrong with people having head canons different from yours. So glad we can both agree that that would be incredibly stupid.

Side note: I scrolled through like 5 of your recent posts just to make sure I didn’t misunderstand where you’re coming from. Looking through that, it’s especially easy to see why you may have assumed that I was pretentiously implying some broader moral truth that “Kyoya must be interpreted as gay and everyone else is wrong” (which is, again, obviously not true). So allow me to share some things we have in common:

I don’t really do shipping either. Nor do I have any problem with other people shipping. I have no problem with characters not having canon labels for sexuality or gender (I enjoy it actually - I don’t even like using labels for myself, but I use them anyway because people on the internet don’t like it when you don’t explain yourself). In fact, as an ace person (<— label), I agree that, although I have no problem with people shipping in general, shipping culture can go too far when heavily plays into allo- and amatonormativity by reducing characters to how useful they are in a ship. I have no interest in policing you or anyone else how a fictional character should or shouldn’t be interpreted, and I also find it ridiculous and annoying when other people try to do that too.

I know this is long so I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t read any of it, but assuming you did, I hope that cleared up where you misunderstood? I was making fun of myself, not anyone else. I’ve been told I’m bad with words, so I tried my best to be clear, but apologies if it just came out as an incoherent mess. Also sorry this is so long (I feel kind of ridiculous talking about something so trivial in length). I just hate misunderstandings so so much and really do not want to have to revisit this with another attempt at explaining so I’m trying to be thorough.

(I considered rewriting this to be shorter but I am still very sleep deprived and cannot put off going to bed any longer than i already have. I have no doubt this response is possibly the cringiest and most incoherent thing i’ve ever written, please forgive me)

Hey does anyone have any idea what this phrase I saw on my dash is supposed to mean? I broke down the grammar and everything but I’m still confused :/