A “fun” part of growing up is recognizing that the world we grew up in can be pretty damn unpleasant in some ways that were “normative” at the time. Representation is an ongoing process and unfortunately we’re currently at a point where planned representation is unfortunately kind of needed. Because otherwise, it would default back to “very special episode”/“One off gag”. Hopefully, any progress made can push things past tokenism towards more natural representation.
But when even a token push to inclusion is responded to with accusations of racism/forcing it down people’s throats/indignant pearl clutching by people utterly horrified by a character who doesn’t think and look exactly like them? It’s freaking hard.
Oh, thanks for the rec! I’m not Black but I’m glad to see someone repping themselves and I love how afro styles look. (Favourite style I ever saw was a woman who sculpted her hair into the shape of Hello Kitty’s head. I’ll see if I can find the pic if you want.)
This is a disturbingly accurate straight, corporate interpretation of Pride. I both cringed, and loved it. It even reaches into “turning your CHILDREN GAY!” It’s damn near impossible to simply be queer when many people’s only real access to queer people is a combination of this kind of shit, and whatever chaos is on the news. I live in a VERY unsafe US state for LGBTQ+, and a worrying percentage of the populace actually believes that queerness is exactly like this story.
In other words, I cringed, I puked in my mouth a little, great story.
(If you want to know what state I’m in, a nonbinary kid recently died after being attacked in the bathroom, and the state superintendent basically said, “LOL, freak.” There’s a reason I don’t advertise my preferences, and let people gender me as they see fit.)