Something that really pisses me off
I keep seeing canonically gay characters be paired up with cisfem readers/ocs.
I've seen it with heartstopper's gay characters, RWRB, stranger things, and now heated rivalry.
While there can be an argument made for Ilya since he's bi, Shane is a fully gay man. Every time I try to find some HR fics, most of them have a female character as the love interest for Shane or even Kip.
Shane literally apologized to his mother for not trying hard enough to be straight. He's been struggling to come to terms with his sexuality which is a big part of his character growth and his path to self-acceptance. Giving him a female love interest/pairing completely rejects and ignores the work he's done and the work he plans on doing. While Rose helped him acknowledge his sexualtiy, it was Ilya who gave him the confidence to explore it in a safe way.
Gay erasure is a thing, and it's deplorable. From example Will Byers. After st5 dropped, an influx of fics were posted within the first like two weeks (which is pretty normal). Out of all the Will Byers fics that were posted in this time period, I'd say that about 80% of them paired him up with a female love interest. No, im not counting the platonic fics as they are what they are, platonic with a capital P.
Will was so scared that Vecna was gonna use his secret against him, that he felt compelled to come out to his friends. While the coming out scene wasn't written properly and could've been way better, it's the fact that he felt he had to save himself and the group. We all knew the group would support him, but this is still the 80s. He lived in a small town with a homophobic dad in the Reagan era. Look at how they treated Eddie for just playing DND, imagine what would happen if they found out Will was gay.
This shit had to stop. It's hard enough getting representation in the shows themselves, but the situation is worse when you erase their whole identity to fit your idea.
"Oh, but it's a fictional character. Why do you care?" I care because gay erasure is serious. You're saying that you don't care about a person's whole identity and going to force them in a situation that could be harmful mentally, emotionally, and maybe physically.
I know the characters are fake, but they represent real people. There are people like Shane who struggle accepting themselves, there are people like Will who live in places where it's not safe to be lgbtq+, there are people who read fanfiction that struggle finding something ANYTHING to read that represents themselves in some way.
White cast fem reader/oc has the most fics on wattpad and tumblr (ao3 knows better). There's barely any male oc/reader, let alone POC since yall did something similar when Sinners and Wakanda Forever came out. Leave something for us, yall have LITERALLY EVERYTHING.
