This kind of stuff always irks me. (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Monday, November 30, 2020, 15:10 (1242 days ago) @ cheapLEY
edited by Korny, Monday, November 30, 2020, 15:19

Click through for the full thread. TL;DR is this writer at Bungie, who is bi, wanted Saint and Osiris’s relationship to be more explicit, and he made it so.

I suppose it's difficult when you join an existing process, but Rowling Revisions on characters and their relationships always feels somewhat dishonest to me. More so when tons of lore already establishes a specific bond (Saint calling Osiris "Brother" just makes their romantic relationship weirder if they want to say "nope, they been gay the whole time!").
I won't go so far as to call it "pandering", because it's not quite from left field, but I feel like if their relationship was intended to be romantic from the beginning, as Brookes claims, then lore nerds should have had a bone or something to pick at that would confirm it. Of course, that was the point of him wanting to make it more explicit this past season, but when done so strongly, it just doesn't come off as organic.

It reminds me a bit of the Celeste writer deciding around DLC time that, 'ya know what? the protagonist is trans!'. Though in that instance, the writer acknowledges that it was not originally written through that lens... But yeah, given the themes that the game already tackles, it does make sense for that to be a fact of the character, so the "revelation" as not as... tacked-on as it would otherwise be? Certainly not as bad as most LGBTQ+ reveals tend to be.

I think one of the best ways to develop a romantic story (or pieces of a romantic story) in an organic way (gay or otherwise) is to focus on the trust between characters, rather than on their admiration or respect of one another. The lore bits that people have been referencing as evidence of a relationship (such as this Warlock bond in D1) focuses on the latter details more than the trust aspect, and that to me just reeks of straw grasping, and the kind of bits that writers will latch onto and say "see? been there the whole time!".

And what's weird is that Brookes agrees with this:

Queerbaiting exists, it's not kind, and it has no place in a queer-friendly community or within spaces that promote LGBT rights. There's a place and time for nuance and that isn't it, because to do so is actively damaging to a marginalized community.

— Robert Brookes 💖💜💙 (@Sphynxian) November 28, 2020

Even Saint's letters to Osiris just feel like "Man, I think you're great! And the city is also great!"

You ever watch The Legend of Korra? Throughout the series, the characters of Korra and Asami are written as only having heterosexual relationships. But early on, they start developing trust towards one another, and when Korra is seriously injured and in recovery, she only writes to Asami, instead of the character that had been established as her love interest. This is one of several "wait a minute" moments that the writers managed to blend into the show (that was otherwise at the mercy of Nickelodeon's finger-wags). Funny enough, they started planting the seeds early, because they didn't actually think they could get away with explicitly showing them get together, until Nickelodeon gave them the okay (with caveats, as explained in the show's post-mortem) So by the time the show ends with them together, it was an "of course" moment, despite their friendship starting out as simply platonic, but they trusted each other completely by the time they got together. That made the whole thing feel like it was earned, and honest. So when the creator titled his post-show article as "Korrasami Is Canon", nobody was shocked, because, yeah, we know.

Ultimately, I do think that a "better late than never" approach is way better than a "leave them guessing" ambiguity, so I'm happy to have Word of God put their foot down. And maybe it's asking a lot from a guy who probably doesn't write a whole lot of romance/relationship stuff, but I hope that moving forward, writers don't continue to tiptoe around details if they insist on drawing attention to the footprints left before. If they lead somewhere, I hope they actually go somewhere with them. And no, tucked away in lore is not where such details should be left. I want them to put it in the game. You can only impact people with an emblem and pin and "representation matters" claims for so long. Sooner or later, you gotta do the walk with your onscreen characters if that is a detail you want to reveal.

How is a whole other subject. Maybe have them host a Crimson doubles event as a couple that gets you to the Lighthouse?