I’ve written about a lot of gay characters in video games over the years, but I didn’t know until yesterday that Angry Birds has what seems to be a pretty explicitly queer bird in its ranks. Well, at least that’s what fans thought until an official post through the game’s social channels labeled him as merely an ally. The fans are not pleased.
It all started well-meaning enough. The official Angry Birds X (formerly Twitter) account posted a July Pride Month post stating that “Pride isn’t confined to just one month” and telling queer fans that they’re “worth fighting for.” The text is fine. It’s good, even. It’s the image that accompanied this heartfelt message that has fans making a ruckus.
The attached graphic includes Chuck, the yellow bird featured in a lot of Angry Birds movies and TV shows. He’s been in the Angry Birds Toons animated series, and has a starring role in the CG-animated films, where he’s voiced by Frozen star Josh Gad. But behind him in the post on X is the “Ally flag,” which includes a rainbow-colored “A” in front of a black-and-white striped background.
Whatever the intention was, fans took this to be a declaration that Chuck is only an ally of the queer community, rather than a part of it himself. Meanwhile, here’s a clip from the 2016 film of him fantasizing about another man’s ass.
Some fans also point to the unhinged 2018 episode of the Angry Birds Toons series called “Miracle of Life” as evidence of the bird being queer. In the episode, Chuck and Angry Birds protagonist Red are locked in a cage by the evil pigs to make them fuck. This is not an exaggeration, this is literally what happens. They’re trying to get them to make an egg for them to eat. It’s a whole thing. But Chuck blushes at the notion rather than reacting with immediate anger, which some fans read as further evidence of him liking boy birds.
“Y’all choose the gayest character to make the ‘straight ally,’” @TheLameShiver wrote.
“THAT BOY IS *NAWT* AN ALLY THAT IS A WHOLE ASS FRUIT BASKET RIGHT THERE,” @FIeshbook said.
“So he’s like the straight friend that swears he’s straight but does the gayest things ever,” @AShortGuy_ replied.
Some fans elected to just “fix” the graphic by putting the standard Pride flag in the background instead. Doing so would have both likely felt true to fans’ perception of the character over the years while also giving the Angry Birds brand some plausible deniability if they weren’t ready to commit that hard. Some of the responses claiming Chuck isn’t straight have been hidden by the official account, but they were mostly ones that either had profanity or direct references to bangin’. There are also some predictably bigoted responses in the hidden replies, so look through them at your own risk.
The Angry Birds brand has been incredibly online over the years, using platforms like TikTok to create its own versions of popular memes and trends. The team even boosted fan art shipping Chuck with Red for Pride Month in 2018 (while also acknowledging the series has no canonical relationships). So I find it hard to believe that no one was aware that a pretty sizable number of Angry Birds fans read Chuck as queer. Overall, the whole thing could have been avoided by using the regular ol’ Progress flag. Don’t overthink it next time, y’all.
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