Height Gap Couples, Age Gap couples, Interracial couples: All the ways we bridge the divide

Leyelle 2024-05-22 14:27:43 UTC #21

coming back and realizing this. Physics would be a much bigger concern between her and Zayzann than Alden. Five inches is pretty normal tbh. Any guy of an average height I'd date or marry would be a minimum of five inches taller than me.

Leyelle 2024-06-01 22:07:58 UTC #22

Dominic is 5 inches shorter than Essence 5'5 to her 5'10. This means he's about up to her chin in height. He personally finds girls being taller than him sexy, so he's got no qualms with this, and she doesn't care either way. He's also Vietnamese, while she is African American of Sudanese descent. So really the only gap they AREN'T bridging is age. She's only a year younger than him, but she acts like she's older.

Leyelle 2024-06-11 16:27:48 UTC #23

Hun, that's so mean lol.

Leyelle 2024-06-18 01:50:16 UTC #24

Oh yeah, how about introvert x extrovert couples?

In "Damsel in the Red Dress" Alicia is more introverted while Kattar is pretty extroverted. In "A Dozen Morning Glories" Essence is extremely introverted (92% by the MBTI test) while Dominic is very sociable, though he doesn't get lonely and depressed when alone like Kattar, and enjoys having time in his own thoughts or to sit reading a book.

So I guess I like my introverted FLs and more extroverted MLs lol.

Leyelle 2024-06-19 00:48:08 UTC #25

This might be a spoiler, but in "A Dozen Morning Glories" Essence's neighbor Shaun (a very relevant character, hang in there) is African American and her boyfriend is white. People feel the need to be judgy about that. But Essence's little sister Beth is half white because her dad was white, while Essence and Beth's mom is African American. It's not that rare.

Leyelle 2024-07-08 17:13:31 UTC #26

Real-life footage of divides being bridged XD. Tall queens x short kings anyone?

beebutterbee 2024-07-08 21:06:30 UTC #27

I have sort of tall queen x short king character pairing for one of my stories? Except the tall person is non-binary but they were AFAB.

Theo and Kay! Kay is on the shorter side for a guy I think, he’s 5’ 6”. Theo is 5’ 11”. I think I’ve shown them before, they’re for my dorky romantic comedy of planned for far out in the future lol. Well maybe not too far away from now but I’m working on other projects at the moment.

beebutterbee 2024-07-08 21:07:21 UTC #28

Oh I guess they’re interracial too? I think most of my couples are tho lol I didn’t even think to put that down because I’ve made it so normal in my stories.

Leyelle 2024-07-08 22:14:34 UTC #29

what does this acronym stand for?

A huge portion of couples in my stories are too, so it's barely worth commenting on at this point XD, but I still like acknowledging all the different kinds of dynamics there can be through my fiction and celebrating the ways we bridge the gap. Even ones that appear the same ethnicity at first are sometimes different combos (Kattar and Alicia are Mex-Korean and Mex-Navajo respectively) What ethnicity are these two?

beebutterbee 2024-07-09 00:11:48 UTC #30

AFAB is “assigned female at birth”, it’s used sometimes when people are trying to describe their experience as a trans person or non binary person, AMAB is the male version.

And yes same I feel like I have so many different backgrounds for people as couples I guess because I’m multi cultural, and many of my friends were in the city I grew up in, i see it very normal. But people are very unnormal about it else I’ve realized, so yes it is important to celebrate and acknowledge their heritages

Theo is from an Iranian family and their mom is white but they’re closer connected to their Iranian side, the story takes places in the U.K. Kay’s grandma is white too and I think he probably has other European ancestry but the rest of his family is mostly Filipino. Both their families are from immigrant families!

beebutterbee 2024-07-09 00:13:44 UTC #31

I do this alot too actually! Lady Lock is Mexican Nepali and Chariot is Mexican Greek.

Leyelle 2024-07-09 00:35:25 UTC #32

I thought people from the Middle East were considered white on the census too. so you mean white from Europe then?

yeah, I have a couple of these. I think it's a fun way to mix features and write characters. Melissa's husband is Mexican but she herself is a combination of Mexican, African American and Jewish. She says she literally comes from a 'mixed bag." Some of my characters are considered ambiguously 'everything' while they're spouses are more specific ethnicities, those are some of the most fun because every family member can have such different traits from each other. Plus most hispanics are by nature mixed from the start. I joked with my siblings just the other day that whenever I write Dominican characters I can make them look like whatever i want because we have all the traits straight hair, kinky hair, slanted eyes, round eyes, green eyes, gold eyes, fair skin, dark skin etc. writing mixed characters gives a lot of aesthetic freedom lol.

beebutterbee 2024-07-09 01:13:56 UTC #33

I mean technically not culturally, most people I know would consider Middle Eastern a part of being Asian, it’s Near Eastern, so Iranian is also Asian? Iranian people I’ve met tend to say their middle eastern and mean it that way and would never say their white. The census also considers non-Black Hispanic people white and that’s not entirely correct either because a lot of them are indigenous and often have super dark skin, so really the census isn’t a good metric for things like that in my opinion

I have a friend with Lebanese family and she always jokes no one believes her when she tells people she’s technically Asian… so I guess it’s not accepted by people who aren’t aware? I think geographically it’s considered Asian but culturally people describe it both ways as their ancestry is usually mixed too. Sorry that write forever to explain something someone else could write in a few sentences Recently I wrote an artist statement and I had to rewrite it because I didn’t realize it had a 300 word limit and I wrote twice that … I thought it was short at first…

And heck yeah! Glad to see someone writing more characters with multiple backgrounds. So many people in my life are multi cultural and me included so it’s nice to see in other writers

beebutterbee 2024-07-09 01:19:39 UTC #34

Did a little research on a more accurate term and Middle Eastern can be anything from white, Eurasian, or Asian… but also there is Black diaspora within some communities too. It’s hard to fit everything into a box neatly, people have different experiences even within the same culture, so in a story a character is just a tiny snippet into that broader world of lived and shared experiences :0!!

MK_Wizard 2024-07-09 02:48:22 UTC #35

It's not a couple, but a ship that has become popular with the fans. Even though Astra is engaged to Ira, people love her next to the titular character Psychoborg and boy are they night and day. Astra is 23, looks Aerian, average height, classy, delicate and a wizard. Psychoborg is dark, very tall, muscular, rugged, rough around the edges, and 30. Will it become official? Well... let's see.

justanothernerdling 2024-07-09 12:45:43 UTC #36

My mains are interracial, have a large height difference (about 25cm), one is nobility and the other a poverty-stricken son of two criminals, one loves physics and maths while the other is artsy, one is a flirty needy pansexual and the other is a shy, touch-adverse demisexual. And despite all the differences they love each other so fiercely, finding each other in the same sense of wonder and respect.

Leyelle 2024-07-09 12:59:28 UTC #37

oh, i know not culturally. But honestly black versus white is just a really limited and insufficient metric for most things lol.

This happens to me all the time. I have a tendency to be long-winded with my writer bios lol. No problem running long to explain though. I don't think Middle Easterners make sense to be considered white either, but I have seen one calling herself white, specifically quoting the census standards.

same. I love seeing more rep, cuz when I was younger there really wasn't hardly any. I'm a mixed queenie being black on my mom's side and Dominican on my father's. my dad looks Arab, but i look totally black, i think, but my mother disagrees. my features are honestly kind of exactly in between. middle texture hair, middle skin tone, middlingly broad nose, and full lips. the only really definitive feature i have are my slanted eyes which are Dominican lol.

I agree. My characters all represent different sides of different diasporas. Kattar didn't even know he was biracial as a child because some Mexicans have slanted eyes lol. My character Essence Walker is the darkest member in her family for reasons no one can trace while her "niece" has light-colored (golden) eyes. Every group has a wide range of features, experiences and what they consider themselves, no matter what the broad category people classify them as happens to be. My go-to term for myself is afro-latina, but that's not on most lists, or any, that I've seen.

beebutterbee 2024-07-09 16:54:20 UTC #38

Truth truth, the census is just kinda limited Afro-Latina/latino is super common too so you would think they would put it on the list already XD When I was kid standardized testing asked for our race but at the time I could only choose one but I was confused because I’m both white from my Italian side and mixed-indigenous from my Mexican side of the family.

Saaame like on my website I was proud that I only made it three paragraphs because I could just go on and on and explain my art for forever. It seems we like writing TOO much… wait, but I like writing too much xD I guess we just have to find readers who like reading too much!

Yeah there wasn’t a lot for me either, but there were a few cool films by Mexican directors that I really enjoyed and still enjoy! I lowkey loved the crappy telenovelas my abuela watches though they were ridiculously bad but also that’s what made them watchable

But in general there isn’t much, which is a shame because our cultures have such a rich heritage to be inspired from. I love reading and learning about different cultures too so I put that in my work, influenced by people I know or even just art I really really vibe with Glad to see you also have a focus on it

Leyelle 2024-07-09 17:13:54 UTC #39

definitely lol.

legit, I used to love "Maya and Miguel" which is a Hispanic-centered show, and it's also the only show I've ever seen with Dominican characters. But this generation can hopefully change that, so kids of all cultures will grow up seeing themselves in stories

beebutterbee 2024-07-10 01:29:10 UTC #40

There was quite a few Hispanic characters from PBS! I think Inez from cyberchase was also Hispanic. I think it’s good to see other cultures too different from their own, it opens people’s world a bit more I’m not sure what kid shows go on now actually? I haven’t watched any of that since I was little I don’t watch tv in general now though.