Twitter users are just discovering the coming out story of this beloved Pokémon

Everyone has been so excited about Velma from Scooby-Doo recently coming out as lesbian that people have overlooked another cartoon character with its own coming out story: Squirtle from Pokémon.

At least, that’s the joke currently going around queer Twitter. Twitter user @GoddamnItGavin recently posted an illustration from the 1999 Pokémon-themed children’s book Come Out Squirtle which makes it seem like the water-blasting turtle creature is queer.

Jacob Thornburg, a book reviewer, mentioned why the book seems queer-coded: “This is the story of Squirtle learning to stop being afraid and come out of his shell. His best friend is a dinosaur-like creature who is literally FLAMING. His tail has fire on it, is what I mean. Eventually he learns to come out, and the first thing he sees is a rainbow.”

Thornburg doesn’t think the book has a “subtle agenda” for children — really, it might just be a book about how friends can encourage shy children to enjoy the outside world — but queer Twitter ran off with it, absolutely insisting that the book is 100 percent about a queer coming out.

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Some commenters began pointing out other Pokémon that seem queer.

At least one book reviewer thinks the book is definitely about queerness.

Of course, others in the past have suspected Pokémon of having a secret queer agenda.

In 2015, Georgia televangelist Creflo Dollar claimed that the “satanical” Pokémon cartoon were designed “specifically to pervert adolescents” and push kids into homosexuality.

Specially, Dollar’s church conducted a so-called “study” which said that the monsters’ “phallic” shapes, their gender ambiguity, and the “over-sexualized relationship” between the cartoon’s hero Ash and his best friend Brock made children gay.

Naturally, that’s bonkers. But then again, some Pokémon names like Lickitung, Baltoy, Ferroseed, and Grumpig sound like screennames taken right from Grindr.