"The Twitter cliche that the user with an anime avatar harraging your mentions is as likely to be a nazi as communist is an easy go-to example of how fans of the same or similar works might be—obviously “fans of…” don’t universally share the same politics, identities, and beliefs."

it's worth interrogating the racial implications of interpreting people with "anime avatars" to be a homogeneous group, in the context of dismissing people for participating in the cultural output of an international subculture. not strictly related to the article but something i've been thinking about lately

"I think of some of the disturbingly hateful reactions I’ve seen over the past few years to the work of queer women who are exploring difficult, messy, incomplete feelings, as if they had done real harm by not being sufficiently perfect in their processing, depicting situations that didn’t slot neatly into the positive and self-loving way we demand that women embody."

i think that its important to be kind in interpreting and criticising works that arent out of the mouth of corporations but at the same time "messy feelings" might genuinely be troublesome and in some cases reactionary or even sort of evil, especially when dealing with the messy feelings that arise from forming your sexual/gender/Queer identity on the internet as a teenager like most of us did.

i also think that the majority of these reactions to "the work of queer women who are exploring difficult, messy, incomplete feelings" come from other "queer" people, often who probably dont run in the san francisco/portland/new york/gdc social circles and who dont have large followings like these "creators" that the op is obliquely referring to often do. social media is almost inherently designed so that the reactions to these works will be seen by the creator. i dont think its unfair to categorise these reactions of queer people interpreting creations depicting "difficult, messy, incomplete feelings" as being difficult, messy, and incomplete themselves.