I wish I could be as strong as Al and Sulla, but I know that so many people are relying on me to be strong and just continue being the stable foundation that I am. 😔

I understand where you’re coming from, but I’m a trans woman and this blindsided me entirely. I love it and it makes more sense in retrospect, but I hadn’t the faintest idea ;^;

When I read over that story online I thought it was awfully trans… The bear goes to everyone and says that it’s a bear, and they all say “you’re just a confused man in a fur coat who needs a shave.” And the bear is sure that it’s a bear, and in the end realizes that it didn’t need anyone’s permission… “confused man” is obviously not hard to read as a transphobic thing (though I’m well aware the original author didn’t intend that.)

Al shaves a little while before the fight with Brendan that ends their relationship–it’s a big deal to both of them. Al wanted to shave for a while, but Brendan didn’t agree, and now it becomes this Whole Thing. And at that point in the story, Al literally IS a confused man (or Person Who Thinks They Are A Man) who needs a shave.

But then there’s also the fact that most people would assume that Al IS a bear (as in: large hairy gay man) upon first opening the comic, but Al… isn’t. Hence, simultaneously: The Bear That Wasn’t. Really beautiful level of thought put into this work.

There’s nothing wrong with being a mistake.

Didn’t Al say his parents sent him away when he misbehaved as a kid? Maybe he tried to express himself in a certain way and the repercussions were so bad it made him severely repress who he really is

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n0ice

Oh… there are interesting possibilities here, too. Because even as supportive as Brendan has always been of Sulla, AND even as smart as Sulla is, we’re still products of our environments as much as of our biology. So if Brendan had a mostly binarist conception of gender in Sulla’s youth, then Sulla may have thought, “Well, this ‘male’ body feels wrong, so I must be a girl, instead.” And maybe that IS right for her.

But if Al is some form of nonbinary, then they have to be really confused right now. Because being a man still wouldn’t feel right, but they might be looking at transwoman Sulla and thinking, “That doesn’t seem right, either.” And maybe that’s confusing for them.

Ooooh!

I think you’re almost certainly correct about the black and gray representing repression/oppression, and/or probably depression as well. But when I looked up “demisexuality”, I found that it was under a WikiP page title “Gray asexuality”.

It might be that the color was meant to hint that Al was attracted to Brendan because of the emotional bond they established, or because Brendan was attracted to him, or something like that.

Maybe.

“I don’t know what I am”.

There’s also the line from the fifth panel on the previous page — I still think Brendan intended something like “It’s OK if you’re a straight (or non-homosexual) transwoman”. But Al doesn’t seem to be responding positively to that.

If Al was simply trans, I really would have expected something more like: “Seeing Sulla, and how happy she is being female, made me realize that I really am like her”.

It isn’t that I want or prefer Al to not be trans; it’s just that what Al is saying is unclear and ambiguous. But it could also be that Al is confused enough about everything that nothing comes out clearly. Maybe being trans is just that difficult a realization to come to, for Al specifically.