#gonna put this in my pouf tag too methinks

[autistic-shaiapouf]

thank you for answering my ask about pouf. i need to find more fans like you who take pouf seriously. i honestly believe homophobia is the main reason he’s so hated and not taken seriously enough in the fandom. (like yes he plotted against sweet baby komugi but like, his actions were very understandable-maybe even the most logical of all the royal guards?)

Thank you for your patience in how long it takes for me to gather my thoughts on these asks! I love love love pouf and honesty found a lot of the ways he thinks and struggles to be intensely relatable, so I feel especially sad when people dismiss him/the things he's done because there's just so much going on with him; he can't really be broken down into singular characteristics, none of the guards can, but with pouf there's a tendency for people to either full on despise or forget about him, or reduce him down to annoying, when there's just as much complexity to him as there is for the other guards. Granted, there doesn't seem to be as much hatred for him as there was a few years ago, but it's still definitely there.

Towards the beginning of his arc, I feel like he could definitely be considered more of a comic relief type character, just ridiculously overblown and over the top, but then there's that slow progression until the famous 2 minute improv ballet breakdown scene where he actually becomes more of a threat and is definitively an antagonist. I honestly can't think of any other characters who have that kind of progession, so I'd say that (amongst many other things) it definitely makes him unique in that respect. There's a whole lot to be said about his actions and I feel like I covered it pretty well in the other ask I wrote for (but by all means if you wanna ask more then feel free, I'm having the time of my life doing this!), so I'm gonna head straight for the heart of this 👀

I'm not saying the homophobia angle is fun to unpack, I'm just saying that there's a lot here. What's really interesting is that it's actually entirely possible to read him without applying any kind of sexuality at all; I think it's completely possible to just see this as twisted devotion and nothing more, but I personally support the gay reading in addition to that. And that's also where things get interesting because I'll see some of the jabs people take at pouf in the tags and while I don't feel I'm seeing anything overt, there IS a considerable number of jokes that are just swings at his sexuality. I'm not immune to the occasional "haha gay" joke, but seeing it enough from lots of different users + the general disdain towards him really does drive everything in at a bad angle.

This also works with the other big thing i see in the tags, which is also the prime criticism I see of pouf, and that's that people found him annoying. It's a fair criticism, and when I showed this arc to two of my friends they felt the same, I could hear some very deep sighs every time the violin solo kicked in again because they were so sick of seeing him. Calling him annoying on its own is a valid criticism, but seeing it so often while it also tends to be juxtaposed with people poking at him for being gay really does start to paint an unfortunate picture.

He's definitely one of the more flamboyant and, for lack of a better way to say it, "loud" characters too, and this is where I'm seeing the most interesting intersections. It's pretty widely agreed that people read killua as gay, but the worst extent I've seen (and I speak as someone who doesn't really venture into the tags too often) is people insisting that he can't be gay because of either his age or that he's just a very good friend, neither of which really stack against some of the outright mockery I've seen against pouf.

This gets even more down to the wire when you look at an antagonistic character like hisoka, who is also pretty consistently read as gay (or maybe it actually is canon? I've seen some debate over it) and has arguably committed worse acts than pouf ever did, yet hisoka is a fan favorite in a lot of circles; both of them are also pretty bold in design as well, making them really stand out against the rest of the cast. There's a weird unique intersection of things going on with pouf specifically.

I do remember seeing someone who didn't like his character because he seemed like every homophobic/gay stereotype rolled into one man, and I think that might nail it. From that to the jokes about him being the ultimate theater kid, he's flamboyant in a way that can come off as obnoxious, and combining that with the way he targeted komugi and was kind of very clearly in the wrong sets him up as a target. I saw someone else say that, because of the way he kept going after meruem, pouf gets very dangerously close to the stereotype of gay men being predatory, but I personally feel like that may be a bit of a stretch.

From a sexuality lens, there's just a lot of things going on; I didn't mean for this to get as long as it is, but I definitely know what you mean anon U_U pouf is very easy to make fun of and bully because he stands out so much, and I've done my fair share of bullying too, but a lot of the bullying does come from a certain angle, which is suspect to say the least U_U

#hxh #shaiapouf #pouf anon ily you are welcome to send asks whenever you like 🙌 #anyways very funny how ppl will slam pouf for the infamous [redacted] scene in ep 128 and conveniently forget that youpi was there too 🤔 #like pouf is a character you can just LOOK at and think hmm no het man looks like that and it gets messy #gay coded if not explicitly so? absolutely; but then comes the interpretation of how it was done #im not the biggest authority on this; im queer and just reporting what it is that ive seen #but yeah no there's definitely something going on as far as the gay angle goes :/ #im bracing for if this actually shows up in the tags 👀 the previous one didnt? and i wanna troubleshoot that but 👀 oh boy #but yes! yall can talk to me about pouf whenever yall want i will ALWAYS be down for it ❤ #asks #antblogging #gonna put this in my pouf tag too methinks #pouf spoofs #cw: hisoka #it's just a mention but yknow yknow