*nodnodnodnodnodnod!* Yes, yes, yes! Me too! I didn't say much during that particular debate because, well. Yeah, I have no idea how you balance straight authors writing queer characters and writing them well and queer authors writing queer characters and their voices still be the most important ones because privilege dynamics don't work that way, I know! But maybe we can change that! There are probably lessons to be learned here, but I don't think they've been fully implemented anywhere. (See: men writing girl children, and how this is frequently treated as more important and more worthy than women writing girl children. Argh.)

I don't know if it's fandom connections that have fewer queer girls than queer boys in YA fantasy? Because I read a fair amount of non-fantasy YA and I see the same pattern there. I think it's probably a broader cultural thing that fandom reproduces? Oh man, it must be, because there was this one book, right? And it promised me that it was about a young woman who was a lesbian! And she was deciding whether to come out or not and her BFF was a gay guy her own age. And. Guess which one of them had an S.O. by the end of the book and which one of them got turned down in a "can't we still be friends" scene that made me cringe for both her and the totally awesome fellow aspiring journalist girl involved? (Yes, let's get the bland jockish boys together and spend ink on their relational bliss, but God forbid we have FOUR queer people at a school of several hundred! I mean, it's valid to write about crushes not working out but -

Wow, this was some time ago and I'm still bitter.)