#haruhi suzumiya but she's not a children's cartoon character and she's not the most ideal role modle either

[dukeofriven]

Fuck yeah, my... favourite-ish* MLP character is bi

But I will say that this:

Really deeply kind of hurts? Because the fun thing about us Bisexuals is that you can ship us with a girl character, or with a boy character, or with a gender-neutral character, or a non-sexed amorphous space blob with great hair without violating our stated sexual preferences. Sure we all have individual tastes (I don’t find all men attractive universally), but it’s less... woof, I’m come to hate the word ‘problematic’ outside of academic discourse but it’ll serve here... ‘problematic’ to write up a fic with a bi character and not have somebody say ‘you jackass why would you be so dismissive of a character sexual orientation by setting them up with [X]?” (Or [Y] or [Z] or [space blob] etc). So with all that freedom in mind it... uh... it really fucking hurts to see someone with the mindset “In my canon this character is in an A/A pairing - the idea that they might hypothetically also be in an A/AA pairing is uncomfortable to me. It detracts from the story I want to tell. Bisexual erasure is kind of a hot-button topic on Tumblr—well, so is everything from Marvel casting to washing chicken with soap, but stay with me here—but the way i always encounter it isn’t usually the literal sense: that bisexuals are ‘erased’ from media spaces, or otherwise made invisible. No, it’s always more a sense that one is unwelcome in other spaces. You can’t hang with the straights - ‘cause you count as a queer, and hear all those ‘why are straight people like that’ at all those cool queer parties we don’t invite the straights to. But you don’t really ever feel like you belong in a lot of the queer spaces, either - you’re there on sufferance. So long as you toe the line of a certain accepted spectrum of performative queerness - so long as you ‘meet the requirements’ you can get by (ha!). But whereas, say, a lesbian couple that was indistinguishable from every straight suburban lady you ever had harass you in a grocery store  get to stand out as ‘subverting culture norms’ without ever not being queer, an identical bi person standing behind them in line with an opposite-sex partner probably feels like they don’t have the same kind of claim to ‘non-straightness’ as everyone else. It’s more than just ‘passing for straight’ - it’s a communal demand for performance. If you’re not going to ‘act gay’ then you don’t get to be one: you’re not non-straight queer person, you’re a straight person who thought an actress was pretty once, or had a childhood crush on a boy that was only ever the platonic flushes of early adolescence - and so on. With bisexuality it so often feels that your particular orientation isn’t who you are, but what you do: it is conditional, and like an insurance broker you must pass annual test to demonstrate you’re still worthy of retaining your licence to label yourself ‘bi.’ I don’t know if M. Guimba want to protest because the idea of Sunset Shimmer dating Fash Sentry and having an atractive eye towards women ruins the integrity of his canon, or the thought that Sunset dating... I duont know, Pinkie Pie while not being immune to the charms of males destroys what the character ‘is’ - but either way it’s kind of appalling, if for no other reason than it’s so common. “I want this to be a wlw fic - she can’t be bi, then she wouldn’t fit in with her lesbian gf.” “In my fic Susnet bones down on Big Macintosh - so she can’t be bi, that would make her a lez.” And so on. It’s a scenario where you can’t when - where you feel like you can’t win because the game is rigged to undermine your validity no matter which way you turn. Which is a real heavy thing to put on a twitter comment about a Western children’s cartoon show that’s coming to an end - but here we are. The last decade has seen an incredible flowing of queer characters in kid’s media - and yet I am so hard pressed to name any bisexuals. I’d say “Korra and Asami” but anyway who managed to make it through that leaden follow-up comic knows they were positioned pretty explitly as a lesbian couple, not two bi women in a relationship (or, at least, that’s how it felt to this bisexual, who was admittedly more furious about the ATLA universe feeling the need to inject homophobia into its world and then qualifying which nation was the most homophobic... Christ that comic is frustration). So beyond them, there’s............... uh................................... anybody? Because unless Webby tried to do a sitcom double-date at a fun-fair with Lena and, I dunno, Huey this season in DuckTales (I’ve yet to watch it) I have fucking nothing. Just Sunset Shimmer. Unless you, as a fan, would prefer it to be otherwise, of course. Can’t have the bis getting too greedy and having an entire one queer character to themselves.

* Look, Starlight Glimmer is also perfect and flawless, and if I want to be pedantic I can point out that technically Sunset is an Equestria Girls character and Starlight is mostly an MLP character.