I know it's a meme to make fun of this kind of stuff, like gay Dumbledore, but sometimes that's really the only natural way to do it. I dunno, I'm not a Potterhead--Is there any point in time where it would've made sense for Dumble to tell his students he likes sucking cock?
Shockingly, there is no opportunity for the 150-year old wise mentor to tell his 11-15 year old student that he loves boning men.
I also feel like I'm the only person on the planet who noticed this (and noticed it before Gay Dumbledore, so my read wasn't tainted), but in the seventh book we're introduced to Elphias Doge, one of Dumbledore's childhood friends, who
clearly was in love with Dumbledore. It's never explicitly stated in the text but the way Elphias talks about him and the way other talk about Elphias it's obvious that he had an unrequited crush. But he (also 150 years old) doesn't walk up to a boy who's barely 17 and start reminiscing about how much he wanted to bang Dumbledore, either.
And yeah, it's because normal people
don't talk about their sexuality constantly.
All that said I don't really disagree with Lily's point... entirely. Dumbledore is Gay led to the current trend of creators arbitrarily attributing identity points to their characters after the fact in order to drum up more interest or controversy and it's pretty scummy. I don't think that's the case with The Owl House, Dana seems pretty genuine with her representation and TOH certainly doesn't need the attention bump so soon after airing its finale, but I've seen too many instances of creators just shrugging and going 'oh yeah they're totally gay' despite zero evidence within the work just to drum up some hashtag campaigns.
(Notably, this was not the case for Dumbledore is Gay. When Rowling made that announcement -- which was only a month or two after Deathly Hallows was released -- it was made while the books were still the hottest thing on the planet, there was no cultural demand for More Representation, and it wasn't in vogue to make every other character some flavor of gay. Dumbledore is Gay actually
was a stunning and brave reveal that was viewed in a largely positive light, as it canonized a well-respected and beloved character as being gay without having it overwhelm their identity. It's viewed with derision now because Rowling has since made some... questionable... Twitter revisions to the novels and others have jumped on the bandwagon, but at the time it was met with a great deal of praise. It's only been in the following years, when it's become common for people on social media to express how interesting they are by telling strangers that they like fucking boys AND girls, that is was met with demands for her to have put it in the text because 'she's writing the books she can do whatever she wants'. Which is not how storytelling for an audience works, by the way. The romantic subplots in these books are bad enough, I don't need to learn the romantic entanglements of everybody in Ravenclaw tower or whatever.)
So first of all this isn't how the meme works, good job Lily.
Second is that you, as a
completely independent creator who can literally do anything with what you're writing and have no obligation to the corporation that is funding your production, you have ZERO excuse not to put all this shit in your story. Given that you don't care about things like storytelling or continuity there is even LESS reason to not dedicate strips to talking about all the bullshit you have in the background.
Third, the things these creators can't put into their works are things like 'discussing pansexuality in an action-adventure show aimed toward pre-teens'. The things Lily doesn't put into her work are
vital background information and
entire storylines, and then she gets annoyed when people are confused because they don't religiously read her often self-contradictory wiki or the impossible-to-search Tumblr clarifications.
The fact that Lily doesn't put this information into her webcomic is demonstrably and substantially worse than ANY showrunner or author she's complained about.
