I’ve just seen a couple of weird/meaningless “hottakes” in the tags that I just don’t get. 1) K/l/iff apologists. I just don’t get why some people feel the need to go out of their way to defend him or whatever, because I don’t think anyone legit hates on him except in a meme-y way. I’m saying that as someone who draws him a lot, and pretty favorably at that, so wherever these mythical K/l/iff haters are, they’re at least civil enough to not put it on fanart, so I don’t get what the problem is. If people don’t like him, they have legitimate reasons not to, and even if they didn’t, it’s just an opinion about a fictional character. 2) This is one I saw today: “Don’t s*xualize 1/0/10 because they’re robots and can’t consent.” Bro, what in the world are you talking about?? #1: they’re s*xualized by the game. One of their introductory lines is “We get the s*xy mission done.” as one of them runs his fingers across his body. The main character spends the majority of their boss fight ogling them. That ship has long since sailed. If you’ve got a problem with the fandom doing it, then I guess you’ve just got a problem with the game. I’m not trying to say that it’s an illegitimate stance to have, but the post I saw was specifically targeting the fandom, so it seems like an arbitrary double standard. #2: I don’t see why that would even be a problem since they’re supposed to be adults anyway. This isn’t a S/A/YU situation where she’s explicitly a minor and otaku culture has completely destroyed some people’s ability to accept that s*xualizing cartoon minors is a bad thing (obviously in that case it’s a bad thing). Like I know that 1/0/10 doesn’t have an official age, and you can argue about that all you want, but they’re heavily implied to be adults: That’s the general age of the demographic they represent and appeal to. They’re military which in most countries only employs legal adults (in fact we know that V/i/nyl City’s military only employs adults because Y/i/ruk says he’s waiting until he’s older to join their (nonexistent) air force, and we know he’s at least younger than 21 and probably a minor). Their physical design lines up with how adults are portrayed in the game: tall and angular, and more so they share Neon J’s body-type who is most definitely an adult. #3: “They can’t consent because they’re robots.” Um what’s your point??: yeah they are robots: a manmade item, not a sentient creature. Like strictly speaking, I guess it’s true that they can’t “consent” to anything, but no more than a hammer could “consent” to pounding a nail. Like robot ethics is a whole discussion to itself that isn’t going to be helped by talking about a fictional robot boy band. But it’s just the idea that this is the reasoning this person gave against it; it baffles me. But let’s deconstruct it anyway: If you don’t think they can consent, then you don’t think they have free will to begin with, in which case you recognize that they aren’t people and thus don’t have the autonomy to consider consent in the first place. If you do think they have free will, then you have to accept that they choose to call themselves s*xy and furthermore draw attention to it, so they’re canonically fine with it anyway. Like I don’t care about people having headcanons that don’t make sense; I have plenty of those. If you think 1/0/10 are sentient enough to be seen as equals among their human/cyborg peers, then fine. That seems to be the majority anyway. But you can’t “call out” a fandom based on your own headcanons, and certainly not if they’re engaging with it on the same level as the media itself. There’s no need to make a statement about it like you’re unearthing some grand issue that needs to be solved.
