Forgive me if this is a little negative, but... didnāt Dimension 20 used to be queer?
One of the big things that got me into the show (aside from the production values) was the number of characters who were lesbian, or trans, or bi, or poly, or ace. I like the way Fantasy High presents family as something thatās complicated, that can and often should be replaced with other types of intimacies.
Now donāt get me wrong, toddlers are adorable. I love the tiny chaos gremlins in my life. But when TUC2 ends with three different m/f couples having babies I canāt help but find that profoundly alienating. Was biological family and reproductive futurity the point all along? Did I miss something? Are we in a Harry Potter epilogue?
Thereās nothing inherently non-queer about reproduction, and not all m/f pairings are heteronormative, but this isnāt the first time Iāve seen D20 arcs end with biological family as the Big Good Endpoint. (Iām still a little bewildered that Pirates of Leviathan had to shoehorn in Jackās never-before-mentioned ghost parents? Like they were somehow more important to him than his often-mentioned ghost crew, or Garthy, or his new found crew/family? Anyway thatās another rant.) When so many of the pcs end up neatly paired off in baby-making twosomes, and others are already positioned in the story via magical biological family inheritance, then the transformative non-normatively of queerness kind of gets pushed to the side. There are still queer characters, but itās not a very queer narrative.
People have different needs and desires in storytelling, and Iām glad people are enjoying this ending, but babies ever after is just not for me. Iām not upset for shipping reasonsāI really donāt care about that. I just canāt find enough queerness in this story to feel represented, and that honestly surprised me.
