Thread:Gilgameshkun/@comment-16581186-20151129161318/@comment-995426-20151129182637

You don't have to agree. But I still want my sincerest insight to be respected. I even wondered sometimes if my perceptions were skewed, which is why I asked my other TMNT fan friends what their impressions were. They're all gay too, but it's still a worthy exercise to seek the consensus of several people. We're all in agreement about what we saw, and believe Raph and Slash were not just mutually attracted, but individually gay even apart. You can come to your own conclusions, and even if we can't agree, I do wish you'd understand and appreciate the particular weight that group consensus can carry. Hell, even Yoshimickster (who I believe is not gay) admitted to me that he thinks Slash is probably gay for Raph. Bebop and Rocksteady too. But like a lot of other people, he still likes Raph &times; Mona Lisa. (If you're reading, Yoshimickster, feel free to jump in and clarify if I'm in any way mistaken.)

Also, my friends and I not only agreed about the show gradually erasing or heterowashing visible gay characters, but one of my good friends is black and gay, and he's observed the show gradually erasing visible ethnic minorities. All the non-bit black characters are now mutants, and most of the remaining human characters are white as day. The only remaining non-mutant persons of color are Oroku Saki, Mr. Murakami and Carlos Chiang O'Brien Gambe. And Saki wears a face-obscuring mask all the time, and Carlos is actually a rather irreverent parody of multiethnicity that treats it like a joke, making Murakami the only remaining unambiguously positive portrayal of an ethnic minority character. By watching the show, you'd think Manhattan has almost no black or Latino people, whereas in real life there are many of them.