Thread:Trigger009/@comment-16581186-20151128172836/@comment-995426-20151128214530

UltimateTitan6: You know how I've made over 1000 GIFs, right? And part of that is that I watched episodes again and again and again, and paid great attention to all sorts of little details. At one point I even painstakingly gathered clips of all of Spike/Slash's scenes for analysis. And while Raphael and Spike had a size difference and Spike depended on Raph for things like food, they consistently treated each other as partners rather than parent and child. Raph craved Spike's emotional validation, and Spike could have some of the most telling facial expressions towards Raph. Even the way Spike was first introduced was scripted in such a way as to superficially make Raph look like he was talking to a boyfriend&mdash;that was specifically set up as the first impression. And the very first thing the mutated Slash proposed was an exclusive ninja partnership, and Raph enthusiastically accepted&mdash;again, a relationship of partners rather than parent and child. And that was all before the yandere plot came to fruition. Even if it were theoretically debatable whether Slash was Raph's love interest, it is not quite so debatable that Raph was Slash's love interest, first through insane obsession, then as a jilted love-hate relationship.

In fact, the only reason I don't add Slash to Category:LGBT Characters, is because the show wasn't technically specific about whether Slash was homosexual or homoromantic, and even that's very conservative reasoning that strains conventional wisdom, especially in a show that wasn't going to seriously talk about anyone's sex lives or lack thereof to begin with. Until gay people are generally better understood, respected and appreciated as social beings, it will continue to be the case that many people will require a higher burden of proof for gay than they do for hetero. I mean, users on this wiki routinely assume that Leorai are a mutual love interest; and as much as I like Leorai, Karai has actually shown far less romantic reciprocation for Leo than Raph has shown for Slash&mdash;it's a glaring double standard. Karai is a kunoichi trained to use sex as a weapon to unbalance an opponent, but that's , not romance.