#when the queer coding is coding queers

[meshaamem-li]

*side eyes in stars and time* you're telling me a queer coded this?

[easeinjazzout]

hits him with the beam text transcript in alt (boy do i hope i did it correctly)

[a-compass-without-a-needle]

This is what happened after 3.1 isn't it?

[cheezy-whizz]

shout out to homicidal homoerotic toxic best friendships in movies, gotta be one of my favorite genders

[xnyu09]

Robin Volume 4 #124

[thief-of-eggs]

*points at a very straight media with literally no queer characters* Now this… this is the greatest queer love story ever told

[spoopy-cactus]

pride month 👍

[scurvyboy]

hey could you do a lil doodle of fiddauthor but fiddleford is a trans guy and he recently got on t pls and thank you

[jad3-d]

“stop forcing these ships, hoyo doesn’t know what they’re-“

yes they do. they do know what they’re doing.

[seahorsepencils]

also can we just talk about the fact that in the Wish World, a woman can get away with calling another woman beautiful without setting off everyone's queer panic, but when a man does it to a man, it tips over the edge? so the Kates of the world are flying just under the radar, but are likely to be more emotionally repressed as a result - and yet, all the queer or queer-coded characters in this world are offered the same security and protection from doubt by the prospect of entering into an opposite-sex marriage...

[bakuhatsufallinlove]

I’ve seen people saying 431 wasn’t written by Horikoshi but by his assistants; is there any truth to that? (Sorry if this isn’t the type of question you like to answer, you’re honestly the most reputable source I know for MHA)

The only reason people are saying this is because they hate the content and want an excuse to dismiss it.

We have no reason to believe this chapter was written or drawn by anyone other than Horikoshi, who has a team of assistants as all manga artists do.

The only middle-men here would be WSJ editors and executives, who have regular input on the story's direction and execution. One could theorize about how much pressure and of what kind there might have been on Horikoshi, as the creator of a hugely popular and lucrative shounen series, to hint towards the possibility of a heterosexual relationship at the end, especially considering WSJ's relationship to the "settle down and have kids" politics of modern Japan. But that's all it would be: theorizing.

Regarding editorial overreach, Horikoshi has said that he will tell the story he wants to tell. I'm not positive, but I think he went through several editors trying to find a good fit, someone who would respect his vision instead of dominate it. It would be insulting to insist he is some helpless victim with no agency whatsoever. Or, for that matter, that he would ever allow someone else to draw his manga for him, slap his name on the title page, and call it a day.

I have no special information in this regard, but my guess is that Horikoshi arranged to end the serialization of the series where he wanted to, then had meetings with his publishing team to discuss what kind of material he could create to fill the final tankōban, which needed extra material to meet publishing standards. 431 is the result of that.

At 38 pages, it could have been two serialized chapters. But it wasn't.

The thought I keep coming back to is that 431's pages are after Horikoshi's afterward in the volume. I've heard that people are trying to say that 430 and 431 are BOTH "up for interpretation" or "just future possibilities," but consider this: only one of those was included in regular serialization and can be read back-to-back with all the other chapters in the usual way.

That chapter directly parallels the first chapter in a number of extremely meaningful ways, both visually and thematically. That's 430.

The other chapter, for whatever reason, comes after Horikoshi's comments on the story's conclusion. It is literally separated from the rest. Maybe this isn't that significant, but I don't know any other final ending chapter like that. Demon Slayer's volume-exclusive epilogue comes immediately after the serialized chapters, with the only break being a two-page extra explaining character genealogy. Gotouge's comments come after the brand new epilogue.

All of that, plus the content itself, contributes to me personally feeling like 431 is just extra. It's undeniably Horikoshi's work, but it doesn't draw any strong parallels to the established themes of MHA. It isn't necessary to the conclusion of the story we've followed.

But for what it's worth, I haven't seen anyone in the jpn fandom bring up whether 431 is canon or not, because they don't care. Japanese fandom is very flexible and self-indulgent. Fanworks and headcanons regularly contradict canon and no one cares even a little. It doesn't matter if the chapter is "canon" or not, they'll do what they like either way.

I have seen a huge range of responses from jpn fans. Some see it as confirmation of a het ship, others see it as open-ended. Some find the outcome sad, some felt it was hopeful. Many people had mixed reactions of happiness and sorrow.

I saw at least one person interpret the "put down the camera" note as providing the fans the opportunity to "freely imagine what happens in the future." Another person questioned how they were supposed to interpret that phrase in conjunction with Shouto's monologue about "inevitability."

I'm gonna go Plus Ultra here and reach far beyond the framework of your question, so let me just say this: No one has to care about the creator's intentions. No one needs permission to ignore canon.

For one thing, we are only ever guessing what the creator's intentions are. We can only surmise and make arguments based on our interpretations of their work.

To act as though there should be one sole authority that dictates what the audience is allowed to think about art is ridiculous, and that includes the creator.

Because art is completed by the audience. Art is communication. In language, the speaker knows only what they intended, while the listener knows only what they interpreted. We may discuss our perspectives in different ways to try to understand each other better, but in storytelling, the audience doesn't interact that way with the creator. They interact with the art itself.

Art means something new the moment it touches another human heart.

Who I am, what I value, my experiences in life, all of these influence how I see Horikoshi's story. And that's a good thing. To remove myself from that—to insist that who I am as a person has nothing to do with what art means to me—is to diminish the meaning of art itself.

I don't need Horikoshi to agree with me. I don't need him to see things the same way I do or tell me I'm right. He wrote a story about the complex, profound love between two boys. Whether he thinks that love means they'd wanna kiss each other is completely fucking irrelevant to me.

The love is on the page, where I found it.

Other people may think it means something different or fail to see it entirely, and that's fine. That's their relationship to the story. That has nothing to do with me.

I'm glad Horikoshi got to write the story he wanted. I wished I liked his extra chapter more, but them's the breaks.

[marimeeko]

Why do shonens gotta sell me the most intimate queer masterpieces but then say that Boy 1 ends up with Girl 1 and lives happily and very heterosexually ever after, as if these main boys didn't just spend 430 chapters being emotionally entangled and mortally codependent on each other.

[mofsblog]

You know there's something about Noel/Charlie that kept standing out to me the longer he was on screen (I'll be fully honest. It took me a while to get the appeal of his character but I get it now/hj) and it's just? This weird tangible feeling of relief I got whenever he interacted with Arthur and John? And I couldn't place why but something about their interactions felt comforting. And then I heard Arthur joke about his blindness with Noel and then it clicked and I realised the reason why their whole relationship feels like oddly freeing and like a lot of tension releasing is because Arthur's spent the whole (20+ hour long 😭) series up to this point hiding such several big fundamental parts of himself (John's whole existence, his real name the fact he's blind, or even the fact he's a murderer) from almost everyone he meets and it's just nice to see him and John be openly themselves around someone (who isn't Kayne and who they actually chose to tell willingly) for once.

[franklyimissparis]

rtd i am in your walls this is so fucking gay

[bicryptide]

"Rise leo is not canon queer/MLM-"

Be serious.

[joyswonderland1108]

"KEEP GOING". Okay but.. going where, exactly?

You know, i was minding my own business, lying to myself that i had emotionally recovered from "Who", when i remembered that glorious monitor shot of Jungkook's eyes, glowing like the moon itself, and right above him.. the words "KEEP GOING"

I blinked. I sniffled. I screamed internally.

But i let it slide. I said "no Joy, maybe it's just encouragement for life. For growth. For stage presence. For getting up in the morning without dissolving into tears because Park Jimin looked into a screen and saw Jeon Jungkook's face and decided that was the push he needed."

BUT THEN. THEN. THEN.

Came the "Are You Sure?" poster. And guess what's slathered across it again like some poetic whisper from the depths of the Jikook Cinematic Universe?

KEEP. GOING.

Oh. Oh Okay. So we're doing that again?

Because i thought i was hallucinating the first time. I really did. "Who" drops, and suddenly Jimin's staring at a monitor like he's receiving a divine prophecy, and who's on that screen? Jungkook. And what's floating above him like a celestial commandment from Gay God himself? "KEEP GOING".

I looked at it. It looked at me. We looked at each other. And i said "huh. Interesting. Probably just a cute little motivati-" NOPE. Shut up. No. We are not doing that rationalizing thing today.

Because fast forward to "Are You Sure?" and BAM. There it is again. That same cursed phrase. "KEEP GOING". Like a haunting. Like a secret code. Like Jikook's personal tagline for their unauthorized, unwritten, but highly televised romance.

Let me just.. hold on.

Let me put on my my conspiracy theory hat, no, my whole tinfoil bodysuit, and dive in.

(Me with my Jikookies going down that rabbit hole)

Because if we're gonna be told twice, not once, but twice, in big bold letters that we should "keep going", then i'm gonna start asking QUESTIONS.

Like:

Keep going WHERE?

Keep going with WHO?

Keep going.. HOW gay is this road exactly?

Are we talking Seasong 2 of AYS where we finally get a confession on camera, filmed like a K-drama, complete with cherry blossoms and tragic violin music?

Or maybe it's a Jikook subunit called "Keep Going", where every song, or every line, is them soft-singing each other's name while playing acoustic guitar and making eye contact?

A Jikook movie perhaps? A coming-of-age story about two boys who found each other in the chaos of idol life and clung on like they were the only real thing left?

Or, and hear me out, to coming out.. of the closet? Like, "keep going" down that rainbow brick road, boys. We've got flowers. We've got fanfiction. We've got archived live clips of you making heart eyes at each other in 4K. Let's gooooo.

And before someone in the back starts yelling "You're reading too much into it!!!" let me just say, YEAH. I AM. That's LITERALLY THE POINT.

I'm not here for logic. I'm here for pain and chaos and the fact that Park Jimin and Jeon Jungkook keep choosing the same exact three words like it's a personal mantra carved into the walls of their heart.

They could've written anything. "Stay strong". "Belive in yourself". "Do laundry" (You and i both know what a Jikook laundry is but we're not gonna there lol) But no. They said "KEEP GOING". And not once. TWICE. Publicly. Boldly. With full chest.

So here i am. I will keep going. Right into madness. Right into emotional bankruptcy. Right into the group chat like "guys i saw another Jikook sign and i need someone to tranquilize me" (@mimiskookie @kkhluvsbts @kanmom51 Just be patient with me lol)

Because maybe, just maybe, the real meaning of "Keep going" was the delulu we made along the way.

And whatever they're doing, wherever they're going, i wanna go too. Even if it's straight to clown camp with no chance of parole.

[And just as i was about to hit "post" i remembered.. the "KEEP GOING" in BT21. Taped to the wall. Behind Chimmy and Cooky. Like the phrase itself is now following them across universes. So actually, it's not even two times anymore. It's three. No, FOUR. Jikook said keep going and i'm about to keep spiraling.]