Felix Ever After

by Kacen Callender

The love interests in books, or in movies or TV shows, are always white, cis, straight, blond hair, blue eyes.

‘I guess it just feels like I have one marginalisation too many, sometimes. So many differences that I can never fit in with everyone else. I can feel people are uncomfortable with me, so I end up feeling uncomfortable, too, and then I end up standing and watching everyone else make connections, fall in love with each other, and I …’

‘The issue is that we’ve never really gotten to see our own stories,’ Declan tells me. ‘We have to make those stories ourselves. Even if a creator made a character to be straight, they put those characters out into the world, right? So those characters are mine now.

Live. Live them for the people who didn’t get to enjoy being a teenager. For the people who never lived past being a teenager.’