its absolutely despicable how lgbtq people have been taught to fear having any hope for representation in the media they consume. that we have to worry that any rep we do get will end up sad or dead. that we can only have one gay character/ship per show or gen audiences will find it "too gay" and it'll end up cancelled. that we constantly have to tell ourselves not to read too much into things because "we're probably being baited."
we deserve better than that. we deserve the peace of analyzing character and ship scenes without being called delusional. we deserve to feel hope and excitement over perceived hints in the narrative that a character isn't cishet or that a ship will be canonized. we deserve to feel contentment about those characters without the cloud of homophobic writing sitting over our heads threatening to storm. we deserve varied representation in all media, and it should have long been normalized by now.
there's no wrap up to this post i just think it's reprehensible and i'm so exhausted with it and to everyone that has felt or is feeling this way i'm sending you the warmest of hugs.
