In Honor Of Jdash Confirming Newt Is Gay

In honor of jdash confirming newt is gay

it's been 3 years since the tweet(s) and i still have a lot to say. the discourse surrounding it has long since calmed down, but to this day some people's responses bother me immensely and i wanna get a few things off my chest.

"it undermines his friendships"

um.. no ? i can't believe people still have this weird mindset. straight people can have friends of the opposite gender, gay people can have friends of the same gender. bi people ?? pan people ?? they can have friends. (don't even get me started on the weird spot nb people land in with this weird friend mindset some homophobes have).

if you never saw newt's relationship with thomas/minho (or even alby) as anything other than platonic before, then newt being gay literally changes nothing.

"he did it as fanservice"

no. if it was fanserice he would've pandered more to the ships; newtmas being the most popular but thomas was not mentioned. if it was fanservice and for any personal gain he would've hinted at other characters also potentially being queer. if it was fanservice he probably would've at least confirmed newt was into thomas; but he didn't. cause it wasn't about any romance, it was about newt and a part of his character.

the crank palace would've been the perfect opportunity to pander more to shippers if that's what he was doing, but there were no explicitly hinted romantic feelings there either. (there were certainly ways to read certain parts of this book as queer, but i won't get into that in this post.)

"he was forced"

yes and no.. the final push to him confirming newt's sexuality was because someone criticized him for donating the proceeds from the crank palace to lgbtq+ (and BLM) charities. however, the way his tweets were phrased leads me to believe what he says. he voices his apprehension to confirm something so long after the work was released in fear of it coming across as insincere. (*cough* jkr *cough*). he also mentioned in this same 2-part tweet that his upcoming series (at the time) would feature lgbtq+ characters much more prominently and explicitly (no plausible deniability).

tldr for this point: it was someone criticizing him that finally made it happen, but i do believe he genuinely stands for what he said. he'd gone through a lot of personal development during the 11 years between the first book's release and the tweets, i don't doubt that for a second.

"there were no hints in the books"

this is a hard one to talk about without outing myself as a newtmas shipper, but i have a few things to say.

james did not intentionally write newt as a queer character. if you read through the books and didn't pick up any queer subtext/undertones, then that was how he, at the time of writing, intended it. however . does this mean there was nothing there ? how come a huge part of the fandom read him as queer then ? it's all up to reader interpretation whether certain subtext is or isn't present in the work they're consuming.

link to the part 1 that i never see people acknowledge when discussing the "announcement": https://x.com/jamesdashner/status/1336775453755895809?s=20