If the shitty wizard boy movies can count as Christmas movies while also being 1. not really about Christmas, and 2. not very good movies, then we can definitely count Hook. Is all I'm saying.

So if someone who reads a good bit of contemporary romance assumes characters are/will be straight, it's not just that they've forgotten bi people exist in general. It's that theyve probably come across more than a few m/f romances where characters WERE bi. And it just didnt register to them at all.

On the other hand, if someone was to assume that romantasy was "straight," I'd have to sigh & admit, yeah probably. While bi authors/characters show up there too bc we're everywhere, romantasy is hugely dominated by cishet narratives, at least atm. But contemporary romance is usually more nuanced.

This is really inside baseball about romance genres, but there's really 2 things at play. One is obviously that bi ppl can be in m/f relationships; statistically that's most common, y'know?

But also bi authors write romance, & a lot of contemporary romance writers write their characters queer.

To be clear, not trying to justify keeping it around as a holiday forever. But that like many things, other structures are helping keep this holiday relevant, and I really want to see those get addressed.

One of many problems we could start fixing w more/longer govmnt holidays + more mandated PTO

Outside of loving the food and sort of seeing it as the defacto start of the Christmas holiday, I'm okay letting it go. There's almost nothing else cultural or meaningful even associated with it; it'd be pretty easy to let go of tbh.

But squandering the unusual amount of time off is what feels hard

It feels very hard to not justify using the time and treating it like it's something special, bc the whole American system is so fucked that most people rarely get enough time off to visit out of town loved ones, or it takes away from those few, valuable sick/personal days. Nevermind vacations.

The current situation is that in many places, the right is too entrenched/gained too much ground through gerrymandering and stacking the supreme court. But the overall political climate still needs pulled back away from it's far-right swing. And we can help that! By voting far left in large numbers

I agree, taking it down is a lot of effort for me, too. And then, not even with the reward of things looking nice at the end

That is so true, too! And it feels a lot less rewarding to complete!