Mega Robo Bros Q&A Extra

Just the one question this time. But it’s quite a big one.

It’s soon - very soon - going to be time to clean the newsletter decks and batten down the social media hatches and prepare for an onslaught of All Donut Squad Everything around these parts. But before we do, there was just one bit of outstanding Mega Robo Business to which I wanted to attend.

I received a really lovely and thoughtful e-mail the other week, and since it brings up a question I’ve been asked a few times now I thought it might be helpful to answer it here, just so I have something I can point people towards in future.

I’m going to begin by including the whole message, which I would normally try not to do as it says some incredibly nice things about my work, and that obviously makes me deeply uncomfortable. But it’s important in giving context to the question, I think, so I’m just going to suck up my own awkwardness and allow it.

Okay. A reader named Lyra ASKS:

I just wanted to thank you for writing Alex the way you did in your comic series Mega Robo Bros. I started reading it in the Phoenix years ago, and I always found Alex the more interesting and complex character. As their story developed, I found myself identifying with Alex and feeling like the dialogue related to myself in a way, and they ended up being one of my first gateways into the transgender community. There are so few trans characters in most books and films compared to many other LGBTQ+ identities, especially if those pieces of media are targeted towards children. This is why it's incredibly important to let trans kids know they belong and aren't alone, which makes even more of a difference when it's in as popular a series as Mega Robo Bros. So I wanted to thank you for putting a subtle, well written, not rushed or underdeveloped, trans character at the centre of your plot in this rapidly changing world where we could soon be outlawed in some countries.

Aside from transgender issues, I also wanted to just praise the worldbuilding in your books. Mega Robo Bros has one of the best and most creative interpretations of London I've ever seen. The way machines are integrated into society really makes it seem like Alex and Freddy are living in our world, rather than some far-future dystopia that doesn't feel like this city. Also, many science fiction writers don't seem to recognise that some things will just stay the same. It's very rare you'll see someone reading a book in what's supposed to be a future city, and social media will often be used just for exposition or a plot device. However, your idea of social media is more real - for example, I can imagine like the watermelon video happening in today's world, and having a major effect. Your idea of London doesn't feel like modern London, with robots randomly inserted here and there, nor does it feel like a futuristic, unknown city where you have to fill in all the cultural gaps yourself. Rather, it takes an exact middle ground between those two, to great effect.

To return to Alex, I read the Q&A recently and noticed there was nothing about Alex's gender. Is there any sort of author statement on this? Are they male or female, or non-binary? Or even agender, genderfluid or some other identity? I'm really glad - as are many others - that they got a satisfying conclusion to their story, and I understand if this isn't a question you can answer.

So first of all, thank you so much for, well, all of that.

Honestly? I’m hesitant to give any kind of definitive answer or official author statement on Alex’s gender identity outside the text itself. And I apologise if that’s disappointing, and I do really understand and respect the question, and so I wanted to attempt to explain my reasoning properly here.

Firstly, because these characters feel so real to me that talking about what I’d consider their personal business feels weirdly like discussing my real-life friends or family. Which is to say, it is something I would do ENTHUSIASTICALLY, behind their back, in a pub, but probably not out loud on the public internet. But more importantly because - well, because I honestly think that my fullest, best thought-through and most articulate statement on this already exists, and is eight books long, and is called Mega Robo Bros. I genuinely feel like I’m better at expressing myself in comics than I am in plain old words, and anything I tried to say here would inevitably stumble and feel limited, incomplete or inaccurate in comparison.

There’s also the thing, that I’m very aware of, which is that Alex is fictional, and a robot, and as such - obviously - their experiences will not map directly onto those of any particular real world group. If I say that Alex is trans, or Alex is non-binary, then it’s like I am claiming to be representing trans and non-binary people’s experiences, and I feel like I could only ever be misrepresenting them at best, or trivialising them at worst, and I don’t want to do that.

Also, honestly, I’m kind of just suspicious of the very idea of an Author Statement. Anything that for whatever reason I didn’t expressly put on the page in those eight books, I feel like I don’t have the right to come along and state definitively outside of them. Those books exist and they’re there for any reader to interpret and take whatever they take from. I think it’s fair to say I have my own opinion on where Alex ends up in terms of how they understand and express their gender identity by the end of the series. But as I say, the story exists, and anyone can read it and it might resonate differently for them and they may come to potentially different conclusions, and I don’t think I have the right to invalidate anyone else’s take just because I drew the thing.

I have a distinct suspicion of authors who come along years after the fact and state ‘actually, THIS is what was going on in my story’. You either put it on the page or you didn’t, and if you didn’t then to me it is now completely fair game for reader interpretation, and you don’t get to be praised (or indeed censured) for something you didn’t actually do.

To me, Alex’s story is all about finding, as you grow up, that you just don’t fit comfortably into any of the categories the world is determined to place you into. And how painful that can be, when you’re young, and when you see all around you people for whom those categories seem to fit so easily and comfortably. But also ultimately, once you come to ownership and self-acceptance, how powerful, and joyful, and liberating.

Anyway, given all that, for me to come along after the fact and say ‘actually, Alex is THIS’ would feel weirdly contrary to the spirit of the whole thing.

So, yeah. If that came off as a very long-winded way of dodging the question, I’m sorry. But I do genuinely think that this is a case where YOUR take on Alex is, in fact, more important than mine.

While I’m here, though, one more thing. It’s the sort of thing that I always would have hoped went without saying but, as we stand at what feels in many ways like such a singularly stupid and appalling moment in our culture’s history, right now it feels worth saying anyway: Mega Robo Bros, its characters and its creator will always - always - stand fully in love and solidarity with trans and non-binary people everywhere.

Anyway. I did tell you I was better at comics than words. But there, for whatever it’s worth, are my words.

Okay thanks bye xx