#gay or bi or trans or ace or whatever combination of the above

[grassbreads]

Man, genuinely there's little that excites me more than encountering queerness in fiction where I wasn't expecting it. I'm gonna be thinking about Kikuhiko/Yakumo from SGRS for so long.

Even setting aside the subtext of his feelings for Sukeroku, the narrative around his relationship to gender norms and his own expression is so fascinating. Guy who grows up steeped in rigid 40s gender roles and actively tries to enforce them, yet only truly feels like himself when he's acting on stage as a woman. Guy who says his life would have been better if he were born a woman and then refuses to elaborate.

[sarahreeese]

The diversity issue One Chicago isn’t fixing any time soon

6 years on TV 15 seasons of all the One Chicago shows combined. 94 regular and recurring characters 2 specifically stated LGBTQ+ characters that were on for more than an episode. One who died due to man pain, and the other a manipulative awful girlfriend of said dead woman.

That’s about 2% of the characters on all of the shows.  

Their only significant gay character died in 2014. That’s nearly 4 years without any kind of representation. When One Chicago was criticized for having a lack of racial diversity on their shows, they made Med, whose cast is nearly half people of color. (Though they don’t all get equal air time or story quality but that’s another post.)  Justice took it one step further and had more people of color than white people.  So they can take criticism and change tactics, they’ve shown that. So why not change this? They’ve had time, characters, and 2 shows to correct this glaring problem. Why haven’t they?

It wasn’t planned from the beginning/The characters haven’t shown any signs of being gay. Sexuality isn’t something that needs to be revealed right away, there are so many storylines especially in the field that these characters work in that would make for great drama AND great representation. Give me a fire fighter or a cop who is gay, and hides it from the team because they don’t want to be seen differently by their team. Or a new character who had a horrible experience with their old team or house or whatever, and decides to come out only after they trust people. Or we could just have a great storyline where someone is out and proud and everyone deals with it respectfully. As for trans characters, all of the above apply, but they could also have a doctor transitioning, and we see the medical storyline play out as well as the emotional one with the doctors. People discover these things about them later on in life, there is no reason any character couldn’t be made to have these thoughts and feelings. These storylines write themselves and are incredibly easy to weave into the shows naturally. You’re just being lazy One Chicago.

It doesn’t have network appeal/wouldn’t play well with the demo. There are currently about 36 regulars/recurring characters active in the One Chicago Universe. No one is being threatened by putting any LGBTQ+ characters into the storyline. Also if people aren’t exposed to this in television, how will they be introduced to these ideas if they don’t know anyone personally. Also queer people exist and watch this show. We want representation too. And 18-49 is definitely going to have some of us in it.

They’d have to bring in new characters in order to have LGBTQ+ ones. No, they wouldn’t. See the first mock question. But also in the past 2 seasons they have introduced about 7 recurring or main characters. All of them straight.

You don’t know if they’re straight, you’re assuming. Yeah, because that’s the intention that the shows are going for. In order for representation to exist there needs to be some sort of explicit statement or act to show it. Otherwise it doesn’t count.

It’s not realistic to the type of jobs. Really... There are no gay cops or firefighters, or doctors?

These shows are about the jobs not the personal lives. Sexuality and gender expression ARE NOT PERSONAL LIFE THINGS. It’s who someone is, and that’s One Chicago’s specialty. The characters stop them from being just like every other procedural on every other network. And if you have time to show us scenes of every other heterosexual couple you have time to show us queer ones.

Stop watching the show if you don’t like it. No. I love these characters and that’s why I want these shows to do better, and be better. I’d also love consistent writing, which I’m not going to get either, but I can still ask for it.

Now here’s a list of characters who could easily be either read as queer or could discover they were queer. (Also PS, I’ll be using gay in the colloquial manner as in Make this Character Gay, which also means like make them queer or any kind of LGBTQ)

Starting with the newest regular characters.

Ava Bekker: Definitely brought in to be the new lady Connor fucks, but hey you could make her Bi or Pan. She made a comment about liking dangerous men, does that mean she doesn’t like dangerous women? Make her gay 2K18. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see her not wooed by Connor’s charms and become Zanetti 2.0? She could use a great girlfriend, or non binary friend. Maybe a sweet smart bundle of anxiety who is a second year psychiatry resident? You could show possible anxiety she might have about coming out when she’s in line for a competitive position.

Hailey Upton: Possibly had an affair with that dude. Alright. Make her bi then. Or if she didn’t have that affair, make her gay. There’d probably be very positive feedback, and her character might be better received if it didn’t look like she was taking Erin’s place completely. She’s cool, and calm, and doesn’t do a million illegal things an episode like some other characters. Gay Icon 2K18. Make it happen PD.

Stella Kidd: She’s got a thing going with Severide. That’s great, you can be Bi and in a relationship with a dude. That’s what bi means. Have her talk about an ex who is not a dude. Or if you’re going to make Kelly find himself for the umpteenth time instead of getting them together, have Kidd find a nice not cis-guy to date. 

Isidore Latham: Sure he had that mean sex worker trick him at the conference he went to with Connor, but we don’t know any indications of who he is interested in. Why not make him queer?

Looking at characters who have been around for a few seasons.

Sarah Reese: She comes from the east coast with a very wealthy mother and absent father. Her mother was never home, and we are shown her numerous confidence issues. If she was bi or pan, she would probably not express it because she wants to stay in the shadows. We can see that in the pastel neutral colors that she dresses in, and her over all demeanor. Show me a Sarah who falls for someone who she thinks she shouldn’t, and have her wrestle with those feelings and come out ahead of them. Then we can see her date a super intelligent and confident heart surgeon from South Africa. Sarah is also young and has super liberal leanings, making her the most obvious choice in Med.

Maggie Lockwood: We know next to nothing about Maggie. She’s an open book and has no restrictions put on her by previous statements. She’d be an excellent lesbian who is proud of her sexuality and is one of the most respected people in the ED.

Noah Sexton: Give me something that would make me stand Noah as a character. Show him dealing with his identity as a latino man from a religious background. It would be interesting and much better than his sexual harassment storyline we’re going with in this season.

April Sexton: Very similar to Noah with regards to being latina with a religious household, but she also has very strong desires to please her parents, and falling in love with someone who isn’t a man would be a challenge for her to over come. 

Kelly Severide: I mean who says he hasn’t slept with someone who wasn’t a woman before. Again, he can be with Kidd or whoever else they want to put him with, and mention an ex-boyfriend. Or maybe he doesn’t mention it and it comes out and we see a respected queer lieutenant. And who wouldn’t want to see Taylor Kinney maybe make out with a dude?

Connor Rhodes:  Bad boy who bucks familial conventions by being bi. It’s one of the reasons he ran off when he graduated school. Now he’s back in Chicago and is juggling his identity with the expectations of his family, name and this fellowship. Ava finds out he’s bi too, and they become ONLY friends. But good friends. 

Kevin Atwater: You’ve given him 0 romantic options in the show in 5 seasons, while Ruzek has had 2 engagements...(different post...) Maybe it’s because he’s gay. He and Peter Stone had excellent chemistry on the Justice crossover, delve into that. Show this badass strong and sensitive guy with a great boyfriend.

Sylvie Brett: Maybe she ran away from her wedding for more than just cold feet about missing out on the world. Maybe she never acknowledged those feelings inside her and she wants to date someone other than a guy? I don’t know. Possibilities are open.

This is just a small amount of options. You could write a scenario for nearly every character in this universe. So why don’t they? 

PS: I’m horrible at coming up with Trans and Ace/Aro head canons so if you have any please reblog and put them. I want to read them very badly. ALSO if you have any head canons about this reblog and put them. Let’s get diversity in fanon if we’ll never have it in canon.

Special shoutout to  @lesbianhaileyupton, and @xelmanrique318 for bringing this up in the tags and causing me to get pissed enough about it to write this whole thing out. I reblogged their posts, and they’re 100% worth a read.

[somewhere-in-the-dungeon]

Things which are also not broken

If you are gay or bi or trans or ace you are not broken. You don’t need to be fixed. You should be as comfortable being you as possible. That kind of thing isn’t wrong any more than a favourite colour can be wrong. You should be in a relationship with someone who satisfies what you want from a relationship, if you want a relationship at all!

There is another side of that coin.

I am straight, cismale, and allo. I am also not broken.

(That’s hard for me to say. It’s hard for me to type. Through a weird and unlikely origin story I got a not-so-great view of those attributes more or less from the start, but that’s not what I’m writing this about.)

That thing above, about being in a relationship with someone who satisfies what you want from a relationship? That’s still true about people like me. There are things I like in partners (long hair!) things I really like in partners (large vocabulary!) and things I need in partners. (Likes me back!)

There are also things I need present somewhere among the people I interact with, but not necessarily combined into one particular role. Like, I really want people to play D&D with, but if my significant other wasn’t into D&D I’d be fine with that as long as I could have monday nights or whatever to game with other people. The same is true of wanting people to work out with, people to cuddle with, people to talk about programming with, and lots of other things. And lots of things can be dropped or compromised on- I’d like someone to spar with, but I don’t need someone to fill that space. Given that, what are the things I really need, in particular, from a significant other? What piece of a relationship am I actually fundamentally unwilling compromise on having?

I want to have children with someone, birthed from (hopefully) the best parts of both of us, and to raise those children alongside them. That’s the project I want to dedicate my life to over all others, and that’s not something I’m willing to settle without. Everything else is ultimately negotiable, though just because something is negotiable doesn’t mean it should be negotiated away.

I’d be alright being with a man who was able to and enthusiastic about having kids. I’d be less fine with, but ultimately compromise, about being more feminine if that’s something my partner needed. I’ve offered to forego sex entirely apart from the instances needed to have kids or to route around that as much as we could. None of that changes the fact that the set of people I’m attracted to is a strict subset of people without beards and with apparent boobs, or that I feel elated when I’m called handsome. It doesn’t change the murmuring river of lust that feels ceaseless sometimes from wearing at the back of my mind, or that I can shut it there indefinitely if I need. 

It’s okay to let my eyes linger on a really nice rack as long as the owner of said boobs is fine with it. It’s okay to enjoy the feel of stubble on my chin or to revel in the rush from when I do feel muscular and powerful. And it’s okay to want sex so badly I’d trade half the fingers on my hand for a good hard fuck right now. 

I am not broken.

Absolutely nobody is obliged to have sex with me. Absolutely nobody is obliged to express any interest in having sex with me. I can want sex all I want without that changing. I don’t want to convince or bargain or make anyone have sex with me. I don’t want anyone to have sex with me who is anything short of wholly enthusiastic at the prospect. And yet I am not an asshole for getting aroused at a stray thought and spending some willpower stuffing those impulses back in their pen.

(and sexy things happen way, way more often than I would have ever considered possible ten years ago! Life is literally unbelievably better than I expected it could actually be on every axis!)

Wanting things is always okay, acting on those wants is sometimes okay sometimes not okay. Trying to figure out how to ethically get what you want is always okay. I have not figured out how to get everything I want, and that is okay. It still looks like I will wind up getting that primary thing, kids, from my particular relationship setup someday. I can get other things (D&D, coding talk, workout buddies) from other relationships. 

And if someone else finds out that they do not want to be in a relationship where there will not be sex, I completely support that person not being in that relationship, just as much as I’d support a girl finding out they do not want to be in a relationship with a guy or someone who decided they do not want to be the ‘girl’ in girlfriend.

I am not broken.