What makes a story queer?

Spotted on Bluesky:

I need the straights out there to understand that the presence of queer characters isn't what makes a story queer, and that you will never be the authority on whether a story is or isn't queer. It's fine and healthy to acknowledge that not every conversation includes you.

— Sen 💀🔥 (@dresdencodak.bsky.social) Jul 4, 2024 at 11:50 AM

In a lot of media there's an assimilationist attitude toward the inclusion of queer characters, because it prioritizes cishet comfort: "they're not that different from you, their existence won't threaten heteronormativity!" But that's a lie, we are different and we still deserve the same empathy.

— Sen 💀🔥 (@dresdencodak.bsky.social) Jul 4, 2024 at 12:05 PM

A near-universal component of being queer in a society like ours is being required, from birth, to identify with a pov that is not our own. With that in mind, part of being queer usually means reading between every line to find ourselves and others like us. It's a psychic survival mechanism.

— Sen 💀🔥 (@dresdencodak.bsky.social) Jul 4, 2024 at 12:22 PM

So it's not just us queers having fun when we say Gonzo is a nonbinary icon, or that the only straight Star Trek character is somehow Miles O'Brien. By necessity we're tapped into the Astral Plane, and we're also objectively correct.

— Sen 💀🔥 (@dresdencodak.bsky.social) Jul 4, 2024 at 12:31 PM