Thinking about how dehumanizing it is that marginalized characters and their storylines are expected to be positive without “challenging” flaws or complexity, to the point of disenfranchising actual marginalized creators and the stories we’re “allowed” to tell

Realizing my stories have to fit into a cookie cutter narrative because I am writing about marginalized people isn’t empowering. How many marginalized creators and stories are we missing out on because we have decided that we only want one kind of marginalized representation?

I’m also thinking about how often people think the very presence of queer characters means that, for some reason, the work must follow specific tropes befitting a wholesome romance even if the work is NOT in that genre at all

I feel an article coming on