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.
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.