#ciconia

Asian Woolly-necked Stork (Ciconia episcopus), family Ciconiidae, order Ciconiiformes, India

Like, they're generally written with the sort of sympathy that doesn't happen without a lot of careful intent. But at the same time, their queerness is almost entirely subtext and fantasy and jokes. It rarely gets to be real.

Some are simple. Rena is definitely into girls. She stares at Shion's ass. She buys cards with sexy dog-girls on then. She says at the end of Tsumihoroboshi that she would love to have a relationship with Keiichi as long as he dressed like a maid. There's even the whole metaphorical situation with the angel mort pastries. But it only shows up in jokes and subtext. The story never actually engages with Rena's queerness in an undeniable way. To Rena, Mion is rival for Keiichi's affections, never a potential love interest in her own right.

Ryukishi07 knows how to write psychologically real characters. But then when it comes to queerness, it's like if he wrote a character who was 95% a realistic queer character, but then changed one little detail at the last moment so they're technically not queer. Like, apparently, Mion was not intended to be a trans guy. Apparently her whole masculine persona was supposed to be a facade because she thought Keiichi liked tomboys, and because Shion was a tomboy as a little kid and Mion felt she had to maintain that persona as she grew up. Which is just not remotely realistic behavior. For one thing, Mion keeps the facade up even when Keiichi's not around. For another thing, since she's the sole author of the persona, she could choose, at any time, to have it undergo "character growth" into mannerisms she was more comfortable with. No part of that explanation requires her to call herself an old man. It just doesn't hold water. It's like Ryukishi07 wrote a realistic trans guy and then chickened out at the last moment and tried to paper over it with an excuse about a weird tomboy with a complex about his sister.

Same with Beato. She's a trans girl. Obviously. But that's never explicitly engaged with. Instead, there's a whole excuse about a fall off a cliff causing her a completely implausible genital injury that impacted her hormone levels. Not to mention she IS kind of getting forcefemmed into the role of Beatrice, so there are several excuses available to deny her queerness.

Eva can be read as trans masc, but that never gets explored. And even then, she has enough other complexes about sexism and her place within the family that those thoughts can be written off as well.

The most we get of Keiichi's gender is some jokes about his weird feelings about forcefem. I think he can be plausibly interpreted as an egg. But the thoughts never undeniably rise beyond the level of jokes.

Bern and Lambda are canon lesbians who are in love with each other and have an active sex life. But they only exist in the fantasy world.

Zepar, Furfur and Lion are all non-binary, but they're fantastical too. Lion's the closest thing we get to a normal queer character just living their life while happily queer. And they are specifically a fantastical hypothetical that doesn't exist in reality. They're sort of half-real half-fantasy. Also, like, when asked about their gender, Lion's response is basically "I'm whatever you think I am", which is such a non-answer it's incredible. On the one hand, that IS a queer way to present oneself, but on the other hand, it very much intentionally opens up the door for other people to project things onto them rather than putting their foot down and defining themself.

No matter what kind of rhetorical backflips you use to avoid the issue, out of Shannon/Kanon and Miyao/Meow, one of each pair has to be trans. There's simply no other way for two people of different genders to exist in the same body. But they all have androgynous bodies. So a cis reader can assume whichever one they prefer *might* be cisgender. I think the intent is pretty clear that both systems are transfem with a leftover egg alter, but it's, again, not made explicit.

Jayden is... well, he's got that scene at the very end where Inner Jayden asks Miyao to fly away with him, and he seems pretty comfortable teasing Miyao. But at the same time, he has that big scene wondering what's in Meow's pants and makes it very clear that he has some preferences, even if he's willing to put them aside for her sake.

There are also the several fujoshis in Ciconia who make jokes about shipping their male squadmates. But nothing more than jokes. We never hear how the men feel about it.