#character representation

Yo. I didn’t know they made Xena and Gabrielle into a wildlife documentary. There’s an uncanny resemblance.

Don’t you think?

Like, if the character stays single, they can have both male and female sexual partners, yes, but that only strengthens the stereotype that bi people only care about sex instead of romantic bonds.

If they have a partner of the same gender, that's a win for the queer community, yes, but not really for the bis, because it once again strengthens the stereotype that bi people are just gays in denial.

And if they have a partner of the opposite sex, then it feels like their sexuality doesn't really matter, because either way they have a straight relationship and any homophobe can just ignore that "detail" about the character.

Portrait of Princess Hermenegilde von Esterházy (1769–1845), née Liechtenstein, as Ariadne on Naxos

Artist: Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French, 1755–1842)

Date: 1793

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna, Austria

Maria Josepha Hermengilde Esterházy

The Dear Evan Hansen movie has its problems, yes. I honestly don't like it, and I agree that they could've picked someone younger to play Evan.

But picking on Colton Ryan because "he's not Mike Faist" and "he's not what we want Connor to be," as some fans have charged, sounds so childish and stupid to me.

Some salient points:

One: Mike Faist clearly has outgrown Connor Murphy. In a recent interview with the New York Times, he clearly said that he feels like he's offloaded himself from the role and couldn't play again on the big screen after investing so hard on the character for five years. And anyone would agree that he's grown up from playing an emo teenager (as evidenced by the soon-to-be-released West Side Story revival film). He didn't want to do it anymore, so how was it that for some diehard fans, it was his fault that he wasn't in the movie?

Two: Why do some DEH fans seem to have stuck on imagining Connor Murphy the way Mike portrayed him? Like, can't we appreciate that every guy who played Connor (INCLUDING the understudies, who have to keep their hair short as they were also playing Evan and Jared) has brought different perspectives of Connor Murphy? Mike has a very different way of interpreting him. So does Alex Boniello. So does David Jeffery. And so does every understudy (Ben Levi Ross, Sam Primack, Roman Banks - the first person of color to play Connor - to name a few). It kind of sounds hypocritical that fans have called on a broader representation on roles played in theater (like including more people of color or LGBTQ+), and yet they have tended to “gatekeep” this one character into what they want him to be.