Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

[gs_silva]

We finally meet Christine! She's one of the core group of Alien Romance friends, but she fast-tracked her bachelor's in 3 years and now she's starting med school in Boston. Priyanka is her roommate and the only BU character I've invented so far, but I'll have to invent more. I'd be open to crowdsourcing new characters. Who do you picture would attend med school in Boston in 1990? I have an initial concept for another female student who is a huge hockey fan, and drags Christine in with her because Christine finds her attractive and wants to have something in common with her. Whether Christine will be in another F/F romance arc remains to be seen. In this time period, bisexual students were taking more liberties than they'd been able to previously. But there was still a general belief that bisexuality didn't exist, and that if you picked one 'side' and then dabbled in the other, you were 'cheating' - even if it was nobody's business and you didn't actually have anyone to 'cheat' on.

Christine is in a further bind because she agreed not to break up with Ren before they parted ways. Ren considers her his long-distance girlfriend (but in an open relationship), and Christine doesn't want to torpedo that agreement. But it means that she'll have to explain it to any potential partner, or she'll have to lie to them.

All right! Time for the transcription.

Christine, who is very tall and has a pixie cut and wears a dress shirt and slacks, and Priyanka, who is somewhat shorter and has luxurious black hair and a long skirt, walk by a poster advertising "Richard Baird, MD, Guest Lecturer."

"This guest lecturer is one of the top in his field!" Priya says excitedly.

"And it's one of my favorite topics," Christine adds. "Underserved patients!"

In the lecture hall, Priya leads them down the aisle. "I want to sit in the front so I can hear well," she explains.

"Sounds good!" Christine says.

They sit, and Dr. Baird comes out. "Good morning! I'm Dr. Richard Baird, oncology secialist at Auburn Medical Center. A lot of new faces, I'm happy to see. I've been giving lectures here for 17 years, and it's great seeing how our student body changes with the times. Ah! Young lady in front! Where are you from?"

Priya looks surprised. "Me? I'm... I'm from India."

"Interesting! Boston must be quite a shock to you," Dr. Baird says, gazing down at her from the podium. "We'll be covering some challenging material in this lecture, so if you need any help, I'm sure the gentleman sitting beside you would be accommodating."

As the Dr. Baird begins his lecture, Priya and Christine look to Priya's left, where there's only a row of empty seats. Priya whispers in confusion, "...there's nobody sitting beside me."

***

I have many things to say about life, but taking the time to type it all out isn't convenient at the moment. Stick a pin in that, and hopefully I'll have a chance to get it all out later, although I really should spend all my free time doing more touchup on my graphic novel.

Comments

[wantedonvoyage]

here was still a general belief that bisexuality didn't exist, and that if you picked one 'side' and then dabbled in the other, you were 'cheating' - even if it was nobody's business and you didn't actually have anyone to 'cheat' on.

This was the premise, sort of, of Kevin Smith's movie Chasing Amy. The female MC (played by Joey Lauren Adams)'s lesbian friends are very threatened by her being attracted to the male MC (Ben Affleck), and on the flip the male main character's best friend (Jason Lee) is threatened by the fact that his "bachelor bromance" with his colleague (and they were cartoonists, coincidentally) is getting overshadowed by a woman he knows to have been sexually adventurous in the past. It was released in 1997.

[gs_silva]

Oh yeah! I've never seen it. Jay and Silent Bob movies were never my thing, and they came out too late - I'd already graduated from college, and my filmgoing buddy group had dissipated. But I picked up some of the themes and memes over the years.

[moth2fic]

I love the way you bring in current but universal themes so casually. Great scene!

[gs_silva]

Thanks so much!

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>In this time period, bisexual students were taking more liberties than they'd been able to previously. But there was still a general belief that bisexuality didn't exist, and that if you picked one 'side' and then dabbled in the other, you were 'cheating' - even if it was nobody's business and you didn't actually have anyone to 'cheat' on.<<

A lot of hippies were into Free Love and never subscribed to labels or limits like that. And higher education in the 1990s -- that would be hippiespawn growing up. A lot of us also didn't pick up those cultural hangups.

A few years back, I watched a series about sex in America. So many women who didn't know where their clitoris was or how to have an orgasm, and guys who didn't know about their prostate gland! O_O Next visit to my parents, I thanked them for raising me as a hippie and teaching me how bodies work.

Re: Thoughts

[gs_silva]

Ah, I can't cover all walks of life. No hippies, and very few liberal backgrounds. (Cathy's family is all I've got, and they're back in France!) I hope that people will ultimately feel that Christine is expanding her boundaries well enough. But I've hardly said anything about her backstory. I'll get around to it. (She comes from an evangelical family in an evangelical community, but other LGBTQ+ family members have paved her way out of that and into the wider world.)

ETA: the Sievers siblings, Ella and Jon, were raised kinda liberal in a way... although they're missing some life experiences too.