One interesting part of the whole anti-labeling theme is that the people who obsess over labels and the "correct terminology", like Aranea and Kankri, are characterized as pretentious windbags that you really shouldn't be giving airtime to. (I listened.) Which sure, is fuel for the anti-woke crowd, but they've got lower-hanging fruits to pick at anyways.

Perhaps one thesis of Openbound is that gender, blood caste (which can play the part of gender, race, and so on), and one's mythical role are not all that different - they're a preexisting system that tells you what you must be. You can probably also wrangle disability into that metaphor, but I don't consider my madrigal forum posts to have the requisite mad rigors to integrate that into the same concepts. I will ask, how many of these kids would be considered "on the spectrum"?

As characters, they must follow their role. As people? It is only right that they struggle against it. What was the Princess Tutu quote about choice and fate?