The CCR Era! How does Bookworms challenge/use conventions and represent social groups/issues ? Part 1!

First off, we wanted a romance. The one thing we knew off the bat was no, we are not going to be writing a straight romance.

The romance genre is dominated by straight relationships, so we wanted to do something different. 

After we recasted our actors, we had an interracial couple. This is also not as common, the genre (and this applies to other genres) use white characters as leads. Our couple challenged that convention of ‘straight white couple.’

Our non-binary character Adrian also challenges conventions. 

They are a more feminine presenting person. However, their femininity does not invalidate their identity as a non-binary person.

I wanted to stress this in the film. I thought the easiest way to do this was to have them dress more feminine, but also establish their identity as a non-female person. We pinned a non-binary pin to their bag, which is visible in the first few seconds of film. 

I’m proud of Adrian’s characterization on the film. It was also a nice way to put a fresh spin on our selected genre. 

Part two can be found in the next post!