The ‘Lesbian Space Princess’ Backlash Shows Online Fandom At Its Worst

After nearly two years of acclaim on the international festival circuit, the Australian animated feature Lesbian Space Princess has suddenly become the target of a coordinated and inorganic-looking online backlash. Social media platforms have been flooded with out-of-context clips, recycled jokes, accusations about the filmmakers, and memes celebrating different fandoms supposedly uniting against the movie. The film is also being review-bombed by users who, in many cases, give little indication that they have actually watched it and load their criticisms with hate speech.

The timing and scale of the hostility are particularly striking because the reaction bears little resemblance to how audiences have responded to the film until now. Lesbian Space Princess premiered at the Berlinale, where it won the Teddy Award for best feature and placed second in the Panorama Audience Award. It subsequently won audience prizes at the Adelaide and Sydney film festivals, competed at Annecy, Guadalajara, Melbourne, and Sitges, and was recently named Australia’s best animated feature by the Film Critics Circle of Australia.

None of that makes the film immune to criticism. Its humor is sometimes juvenile, extremely online, and deliberately provocative. For some, that’s a virtue, for others, a turnoff. Even some of the film’s positive reviews have questioned its easier jokes, familiar storytelling, and occasionally clumsy handling of gender. It is perfectly reasonable to watch the movie, dislike it, and explain why.

But much of what is now surrounding Lesbian Space Princess is neither criticism nor analysis. It barely relates to the film at all. Nameless and faceless accounts recycle the same footage and talking points, often without showing familiarity with anything beyond a few seconds of material stripped of its satirical context. Search the film’s name on almost any social platform, and genuine discussion is buried beneath dozens of lazily made pile-on posts about animation fandoms coming together to bash the film. As if anyone should be proud of that.

Particularly heinous are the posts questioning the film’s queer perspective. The film was developed by artists, many of them queer themselves, who drew from their own experiences, relationships, insecurities, and sense of humor. People are free to debate how successfully those experiences made it onto the screen, but attempting to interrogate or disprove the filmmakers’ identity is something else entirely. It’s toxic and abusive.

Lesbian Space Princess is also a landmark production for Australia’s increasingly vibrant animation scene, giving artists from smaller communities access to work, training, credits, and professional connections that can be hard to access outside major production centers.

The discourse surrounding Lesbian Space Princess is especially disappointing at a time when the online animation community feels more important than ever, because we know it does not have to function this way. The recent Friangle phenomenon began with nitpicking and mockery but quickly became an organic, good-natured exchange in which professionals and beginners shared advice, attempted their own versions, and supported the original artist. It was a lovely example of how animation fans and artists can come together to inspire and uplift one another. The campaign against Lesbian Space Princess shows members of the same community choosing to do the opposite.

Perhaps some of the hostility comes from an envious resentment toward a small group of independent artists who succeeded so publicly and so unmistakably. Perhaps it is simply the latest example of social media platforms rewarding cruelty and outrage. Whatever its origin, this campaign is weird, ugly, and toxic.

Since I bought Cartoon Brew, my goal has been to uplift all forms of animation, with a particular emphasis on independent work. That doesn’t mean we treat every indie production as beyond criticism. We have been critical and will continue to be when we believe criticism is justified and benefits our readers or the animation community. When work is disingenuous or exploitative, we’ll point that out. But Lesbian Space Princess is neither of those things, and anonymous harassment isn’t criticism. Review bombing isn’t meaningful audience engagement.

If you watched Lesbian Space Princess and disliked it, feel free to say so. But explain why. If you are piling on because a clip showed up in your feed and it seemed like an easy way to score validation from strangers and bots online, feel free to take your traffic elsewhere. We don’t need or want that kind of engagement here.