zenolalia | The Allowances of Art

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The Allowances of Art

There's a topic of conversation that has been rolling around my social media feeds, and which is extremely frustrating to me in ways that I have trouble articulating.

There's this persistent notion that you "shouldn't" write about characters with identities you don't share, because you "can't" understand the nuances of their lives. Sometimes, people will say you should only write about such characters if you've done extremely detailed amounts of research, and others will say it is utterly forbidden.

This is endlessly frustrating to me.

From the perspective of almost any of my myriad marginalizations, it puts people like me in a situation where no one will write for or about us except for ourselves. From the perspective of the marginalizations I don't share it, it leaves me without the ability to use my art as a way of expressing alliance and furthering equality. From the perspective of a writer, it just rings of the same censorship people are always trying to put on fiction, this time with a slightly different set of vocabulary.

I want to be able to read about, say, mixed race intersex people, without having to be the one who writes those stories for myself.

Basically, white/cis/hetero/men/whatever get the opportunity to be the audience. The rest of us are expected to be the creators. And we are expected to create only in extremely restrictive, and even separatist fashions.

I have a hard time expressing why, exactly, this line of argument is so frustrating to me. It seems more like a conflux of little things than any one major flaw.

But it's gettign more prominent again, and it's making me absolutely livid.

Basically, let straight white men write about queer poc so that queer poc like myself can take a goddamn break.

That's not mutually exclusive to "celebrate the art of marginalized people" either. But this expectation that marginalized people do all the hard parts...

Well.

It smacks of, "if you don't like white men being the protagonists of games, go make your own game," in progressive paint.

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Part of the problem (part of MY problem with this, anyway) might be that it insinuates that the experiences of marginalized people are SO different and foreign from the white/straight/male/etc default that you can't possibly grasp what it's like unless you are from that group. Like, way to make me feel like some sort of museum display or exotic zoo animal?

And ultimately... the sort of person who thinks, say, that trans people are sexual predators, isn't going to listen to this line of thought and will keep writing abusive trans people. But cis people who WANT to do the right will, and ergo won't write (or will write and won't share) for fear of being cancelled. So you end up with two types of art about trans people: by trans people (which we both know isn't likely to go mainstream) and shit stuff by bigoted authors (which will sell great and make people think we're all rapists waiting to happen).

There's also (in my experience) an element of oppression gatekeeping/fracturing the coalitions. Like there's no possible thing that a Black cis man and a white trans man have in common (because you just KNOW these people don't believe there's any crap that's mostly aimed at men).

Of course, I'm sure that at least some of these people went ahead and reblogged something about the bullshit the Olympics are throwing at Caster Semenya and tagged it "transmisogyny" with zero awareness of the irony...

Being engaged with a kind of marginalization which mirrors one's own can be extremely cathartic and educational, as well. It's one of the reasons why some people prefer writing/engaging with fantasy than realistic works. If understanding real world fascism through the lens of Harry Potter fascism is what it takes for somebody to grapple with the horrors of current politics without falling into debilitating grief, then so be it. It's why some trans or neurodivergent folks might resonate strongly with fictional types of non-humanism in ways which aren't actually self-dehumanizing; sometimes you want to be non-binary in peace without thinking about how transness is constructed and oppressed in society, and instead you ant to explore your own gender through the lens of a fictional society of dragons where there isn't that looming binary, or you want to consider your own thought processes as being structured mechanically without the "haha, you're a freak" social weight attacked to it. Sometimes it actually helps us critically engage with weighty and personal experiences when we allow that distance or that veil of allegory.

When it comes to understanding yourself through the context of understanding others, well. There's plenty that could be said about realizing how fucked up your parents were by gaining experience of what somebody's life with good parents looks like, or somebody with body dysmorphia finding solidarity with somebody with gender dysphoria, or even a transmasculine person reading about transfeminine-based queerness as a way to get to know their own feelings about transness without being swallowed by dysphoria and shame.

However a really important experience for me was when I took Latinx Studies. It turns out that a lot of Latinx-American racial theory and narratives... closely resemble East Asian-American racial theory and narratives. And while I have all kinds of shame and hatred and bitterness and regret surrounding my culture and my heritage and my upbringing, that weight didn't carry over into learning about other peoples' experiences being Latinx. So I actually learned things about the politics of immigration and assimilation and stuff... without my trauma brain screaming "NONONONONONO!" and shutting everything out. And yeah, in some way you could say that I used another culture I didn't belong to in order to make things about me (in my own head!). However I don't see how that makes me different from any other non-Latinx student in the class. And, in fact, there were very few people in the class of recent immigrant generational status, which essentially meant that when it came to lessons relating to first- and second-generation immigration experiences versus third+ generation experiences for Latinx folks in the US, it meant that I had more firsthand insights to share about cultural disjoints and assimilationist politics than many of the actually-Latinx-but-third-generation-and-beyond folks who were raised to be much more competent of hegemonic American culture than I was. Despite how interested I am in the social sciences, I always steered clear of anything to do with East Asia or East Asian-Americanism or even family systems because it hit too close to home. But because I started my theoretical basis of immigration and non-black/white racial politics and culture-passed-down-through-generations with Latinx Studies instead of Asian American Studies, I actually know useful things about immigration and racial politics and generational culture. I have a framework in which to understand my dad telling me that as an American, I oppress him, and I have a more profound understanding of the politics of the US-Mexican border than most average non-Latinx folks I know. I makes me better for me and it makes me better at being a respectful ally/activist, because wow, that whole "putting yourself in other peoples' shoes" isn't all that bad of a thing when it comes to building connections and inspiring people to treat each other like fellow humans!

Also learning about queer Chinese identity (as in what queer people are doing in China, not Chinese-American queer identity) in my transnational queer studies class taught me a lot about my own culture (which was obviously never taught to me because why would my parents know about or teach me about queerness??) and gave me a lot of resources to articulate just how the constructions of male and female really are different between the American culture that I know and the non-American culture I was formatively raised in. And some dipshit tumblr activist would tell me "oh, but that's okay, because you are queer and Chinese, so that's your heritage and it's not appropriation or fetishization or disrespectful!" Except that's ridiculously wrong, because according to Chinese people born Chinese, I'm not one of them. Because it turns out that racial/ethnic politics are culturally bound, too! And the queerness that I bring with me, which is backed in the Western view of transgenderism being distinct from queer sexuality, would also be super out of place and even imperialist within the realm of native Chinese queer culture, in which there's not actually a distinction between what Americans would ostensibly identify as "butch lesbianism" and "transmasculinity." So actually, it would be a really ignorant take to extend the logic of "you shouldn't write outside of the identities you are" and say "but you're the race I say you are (Chinese), which matches the race I say those other people are (Chinese, but in China), and you're queer and they're queer (true, but queerness is constructed in different contexts! in relation to different systems!), so therefore if you wanted to write about being a Chinese trans person (in China), that'd be fine!" Which is exactly what they'd do! And in fact, at a certain point, people who engage in bad identity politics on tumblr tend to think so heavily within the realms of race/class/gender/ability/maybe religion that they forget about how very relevant identities such as immigration status/nationality/body type/language/geographic stability/etc are just as relevant. And because intersectionality and the matrix of identity is all about how literally everything is relevant, it quite actually does make significantly more sense to say "okay, never mind with policing individual-level identity credentials, let's just say we should all strive to be humble and focus more on institutional things and naming patterns on that scale."

Yeah. I can't speak to any specifics of what you're talking about, but I'd had similar experiences of understanding myself through other kinds of people.

Ever since I first discovered it when I was around 11, I've written and read a lot of slash fanfiction. As a teenager this lead to my discovery of many parts of the LGBT+ community, where I also tried to contribute as actively as I could, and which felt like the most comfortable place for me. As I identified as bi (and cis), that all seemed to make perfect sense.

But as time went on, it became more and more clear that I was actually on the asexual spectrum. I was scared of that for a lot of reasons, so it took a lonnnng time to admit that I wasn't just full bi. And then, even worse, I came to realise that I might actually be aro/ace. I HATED the idea of this with every fiber of my being. It felt so lonely and awful and like I was destined to be miserable and alone forever (not to mention that I was finding it really hard to find work at the time and was super scared how I'd manage to support myself without a partner).

Unfortunately, I had that revelation riiight around the beginning of the ace discourse. Which also coincided with the rise of antis and fujoshi discourse.

Suddenly I was second guessing everything. Why was I spending all my time thinking and writing about gay/bi men when I wasn't either? Did that actually make me a terrible appropriative fetishising straight piece of shit?

To some extent, I still don't know exactly why I tend to be drawn to those stories. (Partly, I think it really is just lack of complex, interesting f/f relationships that aren't already canon.) But the fact is, I could relate to a lot of it. The feeling of not fitting in with the majority? Of knowing that people around you want you to do something, but you can't? That they specifically want you to get into a nice pretty heterosexual family that will make them look good to the neighbours? Of trying to make yourself feel something and failing? Of wondering if you're even capable of romantic love or attraction? all of these were my experiences.

But writing about gay/bi people is easier, because it didn't hit quite so close to home. I could still imagine a happy ending that was counter mainstream but didn't feel like giving up. I could still imagine someone else understanding and caring about me above everyone else. For me, it was still too hard to see that when it came to being ace and aro.

As for why it was usually men? Partly the same deal - I know I'm supposed to relate to women, so it's especially jarring when I can't. Reading about cis women having sex in particular made me more and more self-conscious about my own asexuality.

Not to mention that I have also realised over time that I likely have ADHD inattentive, and while I think I'm probably not autistic, I definitely relate to those experiences a lot. And there's a LOT to that a big part is how it makes wlw spaces not comfortable for me: part of the reason I don't especially relate to women is that most women are neurotypical! But the current feminist politics on tumblr leans heavily into 'women are all BEST FRIENDS who HAVE EACH OTHER'S BACKS, don't be #notliketheothergirls, men are all bad because they never do chores and aren't emotionally available' (neither of which I'm great at either? :/) so... wlw spaces are sometimes rly uncomfortable to me right now because I don't feel that innate female bonding and attraction and then feel guilty and feminist because of it.

AND: part of ADHD for me is that I'm just... super self-conscious 24/7 around other people. I'm constantly trying to stamp down on my weird traits and just be Normal, even though ordinary conversation and ways of hanging out are really tiring and difficult for me. But I honestly have never seen this properly expressed in fiction? Usually neurodivergent characters are portrayed as not caring if they look or act weird, and female neurodivergent characters are just rare altogether. Instead, I found these feelings were way better depicted in stories about people feeling ashamed of their own queerness, and in stories about men dealing with toxic masculinity and finding it hard to express themselves.

So tl;dr, growing up I had these feelings of difference but found a way to deal with them in a way that was healthy and productive - I actually have helped out with several different LGBT+ activist things! But this whole idea that you're only supposed to write about people like yourself really fucked me up, because that wasn't what I needed at the time, and in fact might well only hurt me more than anything. But as usual tumblr decided that rhetoric is the only thing that matters, not real-world consequences, and you're only entitled to do something that goes beyond that extremely narrow view of acceptable behaviour as long as you can write up three full essays of intricately detailed and analysed information as to why, yes, you do actually Need it. :/

I'm still working my way through the rest of this discussion so I don't have much to actually say in response to your points here (other than, thank you for articulating them!), but I do want to point you to this fic I wrote a few years ago, which is specifically about how two neurodivergent characters are perceived by the people around them, including by a third ND character--a young woman who is highly concerned with assimilating to normative society, and who offers the main two advice on how better to do so. It's short, and barely a drop in the bucket, but as you mentioned an absence of ND characters who are aware of their divergence from the norm and care about it, I thought it might be worth offering.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/4785884

Another thing that pisses me off is that it artificially raises the barriers to entry. If you have to do a fuckton of research before writing about something or you'll get dogpilled, then most people won't do the excruciating amount of research.

Having high barriers to entry won't increase the amount of stories featuring marginalized people, it'll do the opposite.

Absolutely true. I actually used to write a lot of fiction about people "like me," which is to say American-acculturated people of color, queer people, disabled people, etc etc.

And I just don't anymore, because even, "this is based on a real event that really happened in my real life" isn't considered enough "realism" and "research" for a lot of people.

I've basically stopped writing fiction at all.

And I'm not the only one who finds this kind of expectation unmanageable and has since given up.

I've been thinking about this.

With these kinds of people, it's not exactly about doing the research so you don't fuck up and write something horribly offensive out of ignorance.

See, these people tend to think (mostly subconciously) that there's about 5-7 "narratives" that the lives of marginalized people fit into.

You see this most often with trauma survivors, but it's fucking everywhere. For people like this, research isn't simply like looking into the daily routine of an, IDK, technician on a nuclear submarine before writing an in-depth story with someone like that as your protagonist, but about Finding The Right Narratives.

Because every, let's say, trans person's life fits into narratives, then personal testimonies will all also fit into those narratives, and when those people write their stories with trans protagonists, those stories are going to follow The Narratives.

And when those stories have something that deviates from The Narratives (like a trans dude protag liking PiV sex), they must not have done the research! What does it matter if the author's a trans guy who likes PiV sex! They're probablly lying about their identity!

(sorry for the textdump, i had an epiphany and needed to tell someone)

[mindblown gif here]

And by extension, "I'm just like a privileged person, except I have darker skin/I love someone of my own gender/I use a cane to walk" is not a Correct Narrative.

I'm not sure how this fits in with the "we're just like you except for [thing]" that's common in the queer and sometimes disabled community, though. Cognitive dissonance? Not the same people pushing both?

I partially agree with the sentiment. In America, even well meaning non minority creators tend to completely fail to portray how a character's minority status infuences their being, ending up with characters who appear fully assimilated into mainstream society and not facing any kind of prejudice due to their minority status.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I'm going to ask: is "writer made a story in which marginalized person doesn't face oppression and is totally accepted in their society" a problem, necessarily? Is it still a problem if, say, we're talking about a 29th century spacefaring society or a fantasy world with magic and dragons as opposed to our world? And what is your solution to this (if you do think it's a problem)?

It is a problem when the creator aims to realistiocally portray modern or historical society for audience over ten years old. I've read far too many novels set in pre war period where Jewish kids are friends with goische kids and everything is just peachy, they probably have a Black friend too! I hate those sugar-coated fantasies pretending to be realistic.
Anyways, my main problem is stories giving the roles of cishet WASPy men to characters who aren't, but still writing them as they would have wrote cishet WASPy men. Let's take Voltron, because it's a good subject for this type of analysis. Excluding the disastrous s8 totally, we learn nothing about how being Cuban influences Lance, what Italian culture means to Pidge and Matt, what does it mean to be mixed Polynesian and Black for Hunk, even IF Keith is a part-Native living in a reserve (popular fandom theory) or part-Asian (another fandom theory), what parts of Japanese culture does Shiro hold particularly dear - hell, we aren't even shown Shiro as a gay man beyond a brief scene that establishes him as a gay man! Meanwhile, invented Altean culture gets plenty of focus, and being mixed half-galra (bad aliens) half something else is a big source of angst for Keith and Lotor! This would have been a good moment to talk with Hunk, who similarly has experience as a mixed person, but nope.
What are the good examples? Steven Universe, obviously, with its lesbian, nonbinary, and Desi characters being explicitly lesbian, nonbinary or Desi while starring in a scifi cartoon. Ms Marvel, where the character's ethnicity and religion is unalienable from her stories. Hazbin Hotel, which paradoxically in one episode established more queer characters than any animated series that is not anime safe for Steven Universe. New She-Ra looks like going there.

But why does all historical or modern fiction have to be realistic in the first place? It's important for stories with researched, nuanced depictions of oppression to exist, but like... sometimes I want to read a Regency Era novel about a dashing mixed genderqueer person doing crimes and seducing the king's mistress without also dealing with the fact that life was generally not great for real people in that real time. Suspension of disbelief is a thing you need for fiction, after all.

And the thing is, fans generally expect the heroes of their fiction to be... well... heroic. "He fights crime but he also really, really hates anyone who isn't a straight white Christian" makes it harder to make your (presumably diverse) audience see your protagonist as the good guy. Not impossible, but harder. (And I mean... there WERE white Christians who were friends across racial and religious lines in pre-war Europe and America.)

Personally, I haven't watched Voltron, so I can't say how things were handled. The "don't have fantasy-mixed characters talk to realistically-mixed characters about it" seems like an oversight, but without the context I can't really make the call. What I'm getting that is that you want stories in which the characters' marginalizations are examined and shown to affect them. That's a reasonable thing to want! I like those sorts of stories too. But I don't think they should be ALL the stories, and my experience with fiction - especially with the modern and historical fiction you specifically brought up - is that it's very much a parade of marginalized characters being repeatedly marginalized.

The fact is, we need stories in which queer/disabled/non-white/etc characters are shown as regular people doing interesting things. Again - they shouldn't be ALL the stories. But if every piece of fiction involving trans people involved said trans people being misgendered (which is the reality for us in this world at this time)... I'd never read a damn book or watch a fucking movie ever again. Marginalized people need to see world where they're no longer marginalized for race/gender/etc to relax, and privileged people *also* need to see those world so that they know what to strive for.

And in the end, given a choice between "no mainstream stories about people like me" and "mainstream stories about people like me in which my oppression isn't documented", I'd prefer the latter. I've been alive nearly three decades and have a case of bipolar that's old enough to legally drink in the US - and I have yet to see a character with the same in any piece of media that I did not create myself. By your logic, I will continue not seeing myself in fiction unless someone decides to write a story in which the protagonist deals with both the awfulness of the bipolar itself and the horrible, horrible treatment people like me get from society. Because it sounds like you think that someone taking mood stabilizers twice a day in between saving the world and going on wacky adventures is not good enough.

The series you described at the beginning would be a fantasy. There's only how much you could stretch the suspension of disbelief before it becomes a fantasy. Anyways, I wrote about series that aim to be realistic. Take Doctor Who - a series starring a time travelling alien can have a detective lizard lady and her girlfriend in Victorian era without it being particularly weird, why the hell not?
Anyways, you are focusing on opression. I am focusing on "what makes X minority X minority". Did you know that Batman, Batwoman and Harley Quinn are Jewish, Robin I is Roma, Batgirl I become disabled heroine Oracle, Robin II is mixed enough to reasonably suspect a Chinese asassin was his mother, Batgirl II is a neurodivergent mixed race girl, Robin IV is a working class teen mom, Robin V is mixed race, with Middle Eastern ancestry on both sides? Probably not, because the comics barely aknowledge those aspects in most cases (Batman, Batwoman, Harley Quinn, Robins) or those versions don't appear outside comics (Batgirls). I want stories that focus on the characters' minority status in-depth. And that requires intense research by the creators. I almost never see that in Western stories.
Actually seeing a character taking meds for psychiatric disorders would be great, but with Western fiction the portrayal would most likely be a character saying out of nowhere "By the way, I'm bipolar!" and it's never mentioned again, like Batgirl's roommate being transgender (honestly, she says that out of nowhere and it's never mentioned again, not even background gadgets or trans flag or anything, if you missed that one chapter you will never know).
I believe my position is well explained in an essay I wrote on queer representation in children's media: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18208784/chapters/50177957

Edited 2019-11-04 14:14 (UTC)

Historical fiction is fantasy when it doesn't deal with bigotry? You're moving the goalposts so much that I'm not even sure they're still in the same city they started in. Honestly, with your comments on this thread, I'm getting a feeling - and, you know, I could be wrong, but I'm going to say this just in case I'm not - that you've been told by a... very specific part of queer fandom that consuming fiction is a form of social justice. That you should only read/watch stuff that's "pure" enough and that if you don't like something you need a social justice reason for it. And I want to say - that's a horrible belief, and the people who say this are pretty messed up. You can enjoy fiction that's problematic, and you can not enjoy fiction without picking it apart for racism and sexism. (I personally have never been able to get more than twenty pages into The Name of the Wind - not because of any bigotry, because I haven't found any in the first chapter, but because the writing is the literary equivalent of nails on chalkboard for me.)

Guess what: I knew more than half of those (and the other half I didn't because I haven't heard of those characters). And this despite the fact that I have read about three volumes of print comics in my life. I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at, honestly. I never said that I don't want stories that focus on a character's marginalized identities. But - and please do correct me if I'm wrong - the impression I'm getting is that you are saying that you want fewer "oh BTW I'm X, let's go back to our regularly scheduled plot" and more in-depth examination.

And the crux of the matter, that I want you to understand - and why Zeno wrote this post in the first place - is that what you're doing, saying "you must put in this much research and effort into writing marginalized characters" is cutting off the nose to spite the face. It will NOT lead to more or better representation. It will lead to people who want to be good allies making less representation in general. They'll look at the research required - and it's a lot - and say no. They'll stick to straight white men, who are safe. They'll try to do the research and publish and get torn apart: on the one hand by conservative bigots screaming about "PC culture" and on the other by progressives screaming that they did things wrong. And here's the thing: you cannot write any marginalized character without people of that marginalized group saying you did something wrong, because no group is a monoloth. The example that comes to mind is Disney's Princess and the Frog: Tiana was bashed for simultaneously being "too much of a Black stereotype" and "not Black enough". Now, Disney's big and rich, they don't care. But an independent writer who self-publishes? That's the sort of shit that makes people give up writing. I've been participating in various writing groups for a decade and a half. I lost count years ago on the number of people I've seen drop out because they got torn apart for being "problematic".

And the sort of person who doesn't care about making the representation good, like the writers of Split? They. Don't. Care. They will continue writing bigoted stuff and laughing at "snowflake SJWs" who get upset. Your insistence that everyone who wants to write marginalized characters do research will lead to worse representation further saturating the market.

Oh, and you haven't mentioned it so far, but I want to head it off at the pass just in case: "but of course people can write about their own marginalization without putting in so much effort" might seem like a good idea... but it doesn't work. When I write about transness, I get called a cishet by people who don't like the way I go about it. This despite me being very public about my gender (and orientation) everywhere. This despite the fact that many of my avatars have a trans symbol on them.

...you know that, for basically everyone except my spouse, kids, and followers of my various abuse recovery blogs, hearing me say "I'm bipolar" a couple of times and then not knowing any more about it is... exactly what happens? I've had partners and roommates whose entire experience with my various disabilities was zilch beyond a quick heads up. Because I wanted it that way. So if one of them goes out and writes a book with a bipolar character based on me and that quick coming out is all there is in there... I can't exactly blame them.

Okay, I read your essay. Again: I have not watched LoK or SU (I struggle with TV-based media for reasons that aren't relevant here). I want to point out, though, that you're specifically pointing at children's media. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a major network to greenlight children's media that includes explicit queerness or disability? (I'm getting flashbacks to Tinky Winky here - sure, times have supposedly changed since the 90's, but the media is extremely resistant to progress.)

Because here's the thing: the people who ultimately make the decisions about what gets made and what doesn't, in the mainstream? The network execs? They care about one thing: PROFIT. A show of entirely straight white people is a safe bet when it comes to profit. A show in which a few characters are queer/of Color/non-Christian/disabled? Riskier, but they can mitigate that risk by not making a big deal out of it. And here's the funny thing: the more people like you complain "ugh, Legend of Korra was so bad because the queerness was shown all wrong"? The more the execs look at that and think, hmmm, guess queerness is riskier than we thought, better make it more straight.

Let people be imperfect, for fuck's sake. Let people try things out. Someone who tentatively puts a mixed race character into their work and hears "oh, neat, I love that X is mixed" is more likely to put more mixed characters in. And if they get more encouragement, they are more likely to explore that mixedness in later installments, or make a different mixed character in a different work and examine that one's experience with race. But someone who puts a mixed character into their work and gets "ugh, you did the mixed experience all wrong"? Like I said: many of them will just GIVE UP. And I, a mixed person with a complicated relationship to race? Feel more alienated.

I certainly think that historical fiction of this sort is "speculative fiction," and "wish fulfillment," but those things do not actually constitute a fantasy.

“Steven Universe, obviously, with its lesbian, nonbinary, and Desi characters being explicitly lesbian, nonbinary or Desi while starring in a scifi cartoon.”

SU seems like an odd example for this. None of the characters are recognizably connected to a real-world lesbian or nonbinary culture. (Maybe Mystery Girl for her style of clothing?) And the Desi characters don’t get a lot of focus on how their culture differs from everyone else in Beach City. To the extent that these characters aren’t “assimilated,” it’s because of fantasy things like being a fusion. It feels unfair to hold this up as a good example while condemning other stories for not doing more than it does.

They are very realistic by showing what does it mean to be lesbian - loving women, with a side of gender noncomformity (Ruby, post-CYM Pearl). Stevonnie is a gorgeous example of a nonbinary person, as in every appearance they reject gendering and consistently refer to themselves by neutral pronouns. I loved the shaving scene in Jungle Moon, it showcases their biologically nonbinary nature. Most Western series do not dwelve on queerness of the queer characters, saying that they are queer and maybe showing their wedding for a few seconds. In Steven Universe, queerness of the characters is a crucial plot point. And while we don't see Connie celebrating Diwali, her and her parents hit the nail on the "overprotective education focused overeducated Desi parents" trope.

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The Allowances of Art

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