Considering I’m talking explicitly about relationships that aren’t pointed out or are a key plot point, I’d say you’re the one “missing the forest”. Hetero-normative characters are just that - the norm. They aren’t pointed out because everyone will assume it already, and none of them apparently need intricate explanations to you to just be straight. But if a character is just gay, it’s all of a sudden something that needs to be justified? Get out of here.
Firstly, I find it hard to believe you could even provide me an example where a character is in a relationship without that relationship ever being pointed out.
Secondly, I didn’t say the relationship had to be a key plot point. In my examples they are, because those were the easiest for me to remember, but they don’t have to be.
The core of what I actually said is it’s shoehorning if you give a character a trait but never use it, or make that trait their only reason to exist in the story. It stinks of being added for marketing, and is bad story-telling.
That’s why my first example was a shoehorned in retcon that absolutely only exists because marketing, cause explain why else JKR never once touched upon it until that point.
As to hetero-normative people assuming a character’s sexuality. You are right, but that’s the same with literally any normative trait - race, relgion, gender, etc… If you don’t name it, people will assume it.
You get around that by defining that trait, and when you do define that trait, people will expect that your character affirms that trait in how they act.
You act like people want an essay for why an LGBT character is LGBT, when what most people want is just for the character to actually be seen acting like they are, and not for that to be the only reason they exist in the story.
I could say I’m the President of the United States, but if you never see me acting like it, I might as well have made it up - that’s the crux of it.
Considering I’m talking explicitly about relationships that aren’t pointed out or are a key plot point, I’d say you’re the one “missing the forest”. Hetero-normative characters are just that - the norm. They aren’t pointed out because everyone will assume it already, and none of them apparently need intricate explanations to you to just be straight. But if a character is just gay, it’s all of a sudden something that needs to be justified? Get out of here.
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Firstly, I find it hard to believe you could even provide me an example where a character is in a relationship without that relationship ever being pointed out.
Secondly, I didn’t say the relationship had to be a key plot point. In my examples they are, because those were the easiest for me to remember, but they don’t have to be.
The core of what I actually said is it’s shoehorning if you give a character a trait but never use it, or make that trait their only reason to exist in the story. It stinks of being added for marketing, and is bad story-telling.
That’s why my first example was a shoehorned in retcon that absolutely only exists because marketing, cause explain why else JKR never once touched upon it until that point.
As to hetero-normative people assuming a character’s sexuality. You are right, but that’s the same with literally any normative trait - race, relgion, gender, etc… If you don’t name it, people will assume it.
You get around that by defining that trait, and when you do define that trait, people will expect that your character affirms that trait in how they act.
You act like people want an essay for why an LGBT character is LGBT, when what most people want is just for the character to actually be seen acting like they are, and not for that to be the only reason they exist in the story.
I could say I’m the President of the United States, but if you never see me acting like it, I might as well have made it up - that’s the crux of it.