Pop Culture Fix: "Sweetbitter" Gets a Lesbian Bartender, "Black Lightning" Gets a Bisexual Half-Amazon, "Thor" Cuts a Queer Moment and Other Stories

Welcome to your weekly Pop Culture Fix, a story by dolphins, for dolphins, and also for dolphin friends. I’ve been watching Humans this week, have you seen it? I love it!

Come Out Come Out Wherever You Are

+ Plus-size Australian model Fiona Falkiner, a former spokesperson for eHarmony, is dating a lady named Lara Creber. “I am just focusing on my own happiness at the moment and Lara is a big part of that. She makes me happy and that is all that matters,” she told The Daily Telegraph.

+ Hip-hop artist Keko comes out as lesbian after being granted Canadian citizenship!

Lesbian & Bisexual Characters!

+ Sweetbitter, an upcoming Starz series based on Stephanie Danler’s best-selling novel, has cast Eden Epstein as Ari, “an adventurous lesbian who backwaits by day and DJs by night.”

+ The CW has added another queer character to the cast of “Black Lighting”: Grace Choi, played by Chantal Thuy, is a bartender who has a thing with Anissa Pierce (Nafessa Williams). She’s gonna be a recurring character. The series premieres in 2018, and is the first CW superhero show to feature a Black protagonist. According to Player One, when reporting on the inclusion of Anissa Pierce, Grace Choi is “unapologetically bisexual” in the comics:

[Anissa] came to hit it off with teammate, Grace Choi, and the two began a romantic relationship. As an Asian-American hero who is later revealed to be half Amazon, Grace carries the gifts of the gods — superhuman strength, durability, speed, stamina and healing. She’s tall, muscular, feminine and unapologetically bisexual. She had much different and more traumatic upbringing than Thunder, surviving a human trafficking ring. When Black Lightning refused to accept Thunder’s desire to follow in his footsteps, it was Grace who was there for her through it all.

+ Mindhunter Casts Masculinity as Society’s True Criminal Element: This piece makes a passing mention of an important issue: that Anna Torv‘s character (who they actually accurately label as a lesbian) is “not given much subplot of her own, except a brief background into her lesbian relationship and a very suggestive story around a cat.”

+ Tessa Thompson on a Decade Defying On-Screen Stereotypes: Tessa Thompson is EVERYWHERE and it’s great and we wrote about her last week and now we get to write about her again. This is a fantastic interview which touches on many topics including her role as Valkyrie, who she announced on twitter is bisexual, and told Vanity Fair, “I think she’s like Loki — she’s gender-fluid and bisexual in the comics. I think that’s something really beautiful about her. It’s something that I talked about with Taika, and something that was a part of my approach for the character.”

Apparently, Thompson fought for a scene in Thor: Ragnarok that would make her character’s bisexuality clear… and then it got cut. This isn’t surprising as big-budget films like that often rely on a widespread overseas box office so they like to play it safe. (See also: Wonder Woman.) But it’s disappointing. The company line is that it “had to be cut because it distracted from the scene’s vital exposition.” :-|

+ I can’t find any evidence that there will be a queer character in this, but it’s a Murphy/Falchuk production and it’s got Connie Britton, Angela Bassett and Aisha Hinds being low-key butch, so: Watch new promos for Fox’s ‘9-1-1’ starring Angela Bassett, Aisha Hinds & Rockmond Dunbar.

+ The Nerdist visited the set of The Runaways and here are 8 Things We Learned Inside The RUNAWAYS Homes:

The Runaways’ only queer hero, Karolina, is an intergalactic alien with the code name “Lucy in the Sky.” But from the quick tour we got of her room, her powers and personality are very much controlled by her evangelical mother, Leslie Dean. Karolina’s room was a vast pink palace, decorated as if it was a showroom rather than a haven for a teenage girl. Huge chandeliers and mirrors took center stage, but it was the minor details that really interested us. Karolina’s room was filled with trinkets from her mother’s celebrity Church of Gibborim, hinting that Karolina is the poster girl for the sinister organization.

+ Interview: Stars of ‘Carmilla the Movie’ Talk Film release, LGBT Representation and More

+ QPOC Horror Movies: These 6 Fright Flicks of Color Are Scary & Problematic

+ The low-key Princess Cyd is a coming of age without the drama

Cool Girls

+ I love this woman, I love her work, I love her attitude, I love her style, I haven’t been this in love with a new artist since Janelle Monae came into our lives: Hayley Kiyoko Interview: Multi-Platform Star Talks ‘Feelings’ Music Video and Lesbian Representation

In an interview with Elle you’d mentioned that for “Sleepover” you were asked, “Is it gonna be another music video about two girls?” Was there the same sort of resistance this time, or are people maybe starting to get that this is real life, and that it’s not changing?

I didn’t get that resistance this time. I feel like people are starting to get the hang of it, that I’m going to always like girls and there’s always going to be a girl involved in the video. There’s multiple ways of telling those stories, and you know, if I do my job correctly I should be able to tell those stories every time and have it be fresh and unique because there’s so many different parts of relationships. The before, the after, during. But I feel like people are starting to get the picture.

+ Christine Vachon Stays Thriving by Telling the Stories That Hollywood Won’t — People Do Not Talk About Christine Vachon Enough! They simply do not! She is an incredible lesbian producer who is behind films like Hedwig, I Shot Andy Warhol, Boys Don’t Cry and Carol and we love her.

+ Hole’s Patty Schemel On Fighting The Patriarchy And Her S obriety Journey:

“As a lesbian who started drinking at 12 years old, I have a lot of compassion for the people who are currently navigating these issues in their own lives, in private and in public; addicts and confused kids are both master secret-keepers. Now more than ever we have to stand up for ourselves and each other. If we want to change things in the culture or in our private lives, we can’t be ashamed to make noise.”

+ Tegan Quin on ‘The Con’ and how it almost broke up Tegan and Sara

+ What Hollywood Needs to Do to Combat the Culture of Sexual Harassment