Rising Shards

“Hello my loyal viewers and welcome to your favorite mid-lunch series, Midday with Kalei Koridia!” Kalei said proudly, holding up a plastic fork as her microphone. “I am your famously attractive and beloved host, Kalei Koridia and I’m here to ask the people some questions.”

Oka’s “relationship she didn’t want to become canon becoming canon” situation had Kalei wondering if any of our friends and classmates had the devastating feeling Oka and I had when some kind of media we’d associated with queerness (either relating it to our own or just finding general LGBT themes) took a turn to be very straight, and if anyone else reacted as emotionally as we did.

Kalei held her fork up to Lillia, who intensely stared at the utensil to make sure it wasn’t dirty before looking back at her interviewer.

“LIllia Cadence, what we want to know is, have you seen anything like a game, comic, book, any of that goodness that you were all ‘oh this is soooo gay’ like Zates and Oka here, and then got all crybaby tantrum when you didn’t get your way?” Kalei asked.

“I think you could phrase that a little nicer.” I said.

“Yeah what the heck! Crybaby tantrum? I’m having an emotional moment here…” Oka said.

“I have, yes,” Lillia said. “Even prior to understanding myself, I found myself sad when certain relationships happened in series, in hindsight it was typically the ones that felt lazy about defaulting to common heteronormative tropes. I’ve also seen plenty of others in queer fandom spaces have similar reactions to moments like that, as I had a stint as a moderator on a forum and have seen numerous meltdowns.”

“Would you describe them as crybaby tantrums?” Kalei asked. “It’s important for my survey.”

“Forum wise, yes, but I’ve seen far worse tantrums than Oka being upset about her cartoon before.” Lillia said. "Even though they were generally queer spaces, the biggest tantrums generally weren't from specific queer disappointment, if I may add."

“Interesting.” Kalei said.

“Koridia. Ask me next.” Roux said. They were seated at a table next to ours and had apparently been listening in. Latte didn’t seem as interested in Roux in our talks, but still decided to join us as the two scooted their whole table over to connect it to ours.

“We did not give permission to do that.” Kalei said.

“I don’t need to act.” Roux said. “Now interview me.”

“You only like just figured out your deal a few weeks ago, so I can guess your answer.” Kalei said.

“Sure, but maybe I’m having hindsight feelings with my newfound clarity.” Roux said, holding their own fork up. “Otherwise I’m gonna start a ripoff of your midday talk show and obliterate you in the ratings.”

“Mine isn’t even a real talk show, that’s not much of a threat.” Kalei said.

“You really wanna try me on this?” Roux said. “Just ask me the question and I’ll back down.”

“Fine, is there anything in hindsight you feel did the whole straight betrayal thing?” Kalei said.

“Nah.” Roux shrugged.

“Terrific,” Kalei said.

Our table (I guess tables since there were two together) was filling up, as our friends passing by at lunch wanted to see what the fuss was about. I think Kalei’s fake TV show host voice carried around a lot further than she intended. Only Amara had any idea what we were talking about when the love trio passed by, while Rain looked at us like we were aliens and KJ did the same (though she maybe could have known what we meant but was just copying Rain trying to win points with her). Iris had about twelve sob stories with somewhat similar circumstances, but it became apparent she got highly emotional at everything she watched no matter the content.

“How about you, Maia?” I asked.

“I’ve been bummed sometimes, yeah,” Maia said. “Especially when I’m like ‘oh yeah this girl’s just like me, gay girl alert’ and then she ends up with the most loser dull dude just because.”

“Thank you!” Oka said.

“I doubt you ever had that exact thought,” Kalei siad.

“I’m just describing the vibe, dumbass, it’s not like I’m transcribing my actual thoughts to you.” Maia said.

“Ignoring calling me a dumbass, have you cried over any of these bummed out times?” Kalei asked.

“I’ve been bummed, yeah, but enough to cry about it?” Maia asked. “No.”

“Hold up,” Iris said. “MaiMai…you’re gay?”

“Please tell me you’re joking,” Maia said.

An intense awkward silence followed. Even if she kept a stone face, I assumed Iris was joking and waited for her to burst out laughing. I thought that surely those two had to have at least talked about their romantic interests at some point. With Iris it could go either way, but come on. Before I got my answer out, everyone else started talking again and the subject almost changed three times before Kalei wrangled things back to her question, moving on from the Iris and Maia situation.

“Not really?” Aira said when asked. “My big fixation growing up was Blocktritus and that doesn’t really have any romance.”

“Heck yeah, Aira gets it.” Roux said.

“I’d put myself in that boat too,” Marmalade said.

“I knew you’d be on my team on this.” Kalei said.

“Well, for the most part,” Marmalade said. “There was a character in this indie comic I was reading that had a character I was so sure was trans and it turned out they weren’t, like blatantly so, the artist had a whole strip about how cis they were in response to others having the same interpretation as me. That knocked me out for like a week.”

“Alright, but I bet you were cooler about it than the duo here.” Kalei said, nodding towards Oka and I.

“Why is me crying about this series not cool?” Oka asked. “I don’t mean that me crying is cool, but why are you going so in on us for this?”

“I don't know, really,” Kalei shrugged. “Just kinda confused about this phenomenon, I guess?”

“Then don’t say we’re uncool for being emotional about this if you don’t even understand it!” I said.

“Alright, maybe I was a bit rough,” Kalei said.

Kalei had been through a lot recently, so we had to tread carefully when her rude levels were rising and needed to be lowered. She was most likely lashing out due to bad feelings from that, but that didn’t mean we had to just let her talk to us like that. As usual, Kalei could dish it out, but then when getting it back she’d take it very hard, which could be a pain if she was in a really bad mood. 

“You can do this poll without making fun of me for crying,” Oka said. “And Zeta too. It’s perfectly fine to cry.”

“I wasn’t going in on crying, I know it’s alright to cry…” Kalei said. 

“It didn’t come across that way.” I said.

“I meant it more in the way you two are just kind of over the top about stuff that isn’t that big, like a cartoon.” Kalei said. “Which sounds real jerkass when I say it out loud.”

“Uh huh,” I said. “And it’s not like you’re that different.”

“Indeed, I seem to remember you getting passionately upset about a game mode you liked getting patched out of Talon.” Lillia said.

“Ugh, fair.” Kalei said. “How about from here on I ask entirely just about me being curious about if anyone else feels like this?”

“Sure, please make sure to lay off the tantrum stuff.” I said.

“And crying!” Oka said. “This isn’t even the first time you went in on us for crying!”

“What do you have against crying, anyways?” I asked. 

“Nothing!” Kalei said.

“Lillia, please say something scary to make Kalei not make fun of us anymore.” Oka said.

“If you say the words crybaby or tantrum one more time, you will regret it.” Lillia’s intense glare worked its magic, disarming Kalei and being too terrifying for Kalei to get all mopey about getting called out for being a jerk.

Kalei did keep her word and from there on made her poll mainly learning about others instead of it just feeling like a roast session for Oka and I. Some people Kalei knew and I didn’t arrived next, which made me clam up. At this point there were so many people around that Oka and I snuck off just to get a breather from all the socializing.

“Are you feeling any better?” I asked.

“Not…particularly,” Oka said. “It’s kind of nice how many friends we have here that we can talk about this with, and I’m glad we’re at a point where we can shut Kalei down when she’s getting all mean, and really glad we have Lillia to help there, but…” She frowned deeply, her eyes welling up. “I just want Radish and Cecelia to be a canon couple…they’d be so cute…much better than that guy…”

I hugged Oka as she started thinking about her ship gone wrong again, the pain of that returning in full force.

“Maybe it’s time to read some fanfics? I bet there are some good ones for your ship.” I suggested.

“You should try and find some for me,” Oka said, pouting. “You’re a lot better at searching.”

“It would be my pleasure.” I said.