The matter of intended audience is sticky in its own right, and while there’s an argument to be made that creators of children’s art are banking on and catering directly to adult fans, it’s ultimately beside the point, which is that adults are consuming this work and treating it as an acceptable resting place for one’s tastes.

Children must be exposed to things that trigger learned, taught, and unconscious disgust so that they can begin to unpick society’s toxic conditioning and more fully and naturally accept themselves and others. This unwillingness to engage ugliness is troublesome no matter a piece of artwork’s audience. So much is lost by accepting the standardization of bodies that goes hand in hand with feel-good media.

Imagine stripping The Sopranos of James Gandolfini’s deviated septum and hulking, heavy frame, or Perfume of Grenouille’s insectile repugnance. The near-universal acceptance in creative circles that all fictional characters should be, at a minimum, easy on the eyes is an aspect of representation in art which often goes undiscussed. The uniform visual inoffensiveness of such art presents its own questions: if we’re never exposed to images which cause discomfort, does that impact our ability to feel empathy for people society deems outcast or unattractive? Exposure through fiction to the inner lives of people we consciously or unconsciously consider offensive is a powerful tool in expanding our ability to connect with others, to learn to automatically acknowledge their full humanity.

But why, in the first place, are queer adults forming such intense emotional bonds to children’s media, and what effect does a steady diet of soft-edged pastel art have on the adult mind? That this particular segment of fandom has often turned to intense online harassment when upset over their chosen fiction is a separate issue addressed in part by my piece on online puritanism.

In the queer community especially, shows like Rebecca Sugar’s Steven Universe, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Noelle Stevenson’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power have found significant cultural purchase among older teens and adults well into their 30s and 40s. Over the past two decades, “adult who consumes primarily children’s media” has gone from a reviled fringe identity - think Bronies, adult male fans of the My Little Pony revival, monopolizing cons and fanart forums meant for actual children - to a more or less normative way for grown people to relate to art. Image taken from Strange Suspense Stories #60, artist Jack Kirby, pub.

Corrupted Vessels by Briar Ripley Page