I tried to imagine being a person that accepts only flat, boring, predictable stereotypes that are never averted. Characters that must be only what it says on the tin, with no depth allowed whatsoever.
Honestly, it sounds dreadful.
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Having a character that sticks to the traits that define it, isnât being flat or boring. Itâs being consistent.
You may like them more or less depending on your personal taste, but they are what they are.
Sudden twists of this nature donât make said character âinterestingâ. From certain peopleâs point of view, they make it incongruous.
Actively ignoring traits or plot threads that you highlighted prior, while giving the character a twist in some other direction, does not make it âless flatâ, it just harms your own credibility as a writer.
If the next novel showcases Lorâthemar being strictly gay, it wonât be an âimprovementâ on his character. It will just be trashing the previous plots regarding his relations with either Liadrin or Thalyssra.
It wonât make his character plot less linear. It will simply make him less consistent.
We also need to factor in certain fantasy stereotypes that people think appealing.
If you are selling on a specific angle regarding this pirate and/or assassin, people may call you out if you step out what would come natural to them.
If you have a âwomaniserâ pirate that seems infatuated with the Lord Admirals protege, or a severe spymaster whose only wife is his duty to the crown (even if he has some soft spots for his apprentice), then you need to stick to a series of traits for future development. If you want to keep it consistent that is.
PS: And Iâve left out the part where I consider that making a character gay, straight or whatever, isnât really a trait that makes him/her any more/less interesting.
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Its not about comprehending spectrums. This is medieval fantasy game not the 21st century and in medieval times there was no such thing. I dont have anything against LGBT community as I previously stated.
I have an issue with like how everything is forced, out of nowhere, multiple rectons to previous arcs, not the mention all the human variations now for the sake of diversity. You claim that people are offended when someone is labeled. To be pretty honest, in my experience, the people who get offended the most are people from that community when something like this is changed only for the sake of variety without any lore justification. Whats wrong people wanting the story to develop like always? Why variety needs to be added? To appease the masses? You think that is justifiable?
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No such thing as what? Homosexuality is as old as human kind since it is an intrinsic aspect of it.
Religion made it a tabu and modern movements are trying to undo that. Simple as.
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Shhh! This is a medieval fantasy game. That means we only allow traditional medieval themes such as swords, knights, dragons, spaceships, and an absolute lack of queer people.
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Ah yes, the deep-space travelling goats, most fantasy, very medieval.
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What? Iâm pretty sure where you like to stick your benis in is not an intrinsic part of anything.
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The "Lorâthemar portrayed as strictly gayâ argument is a bit silly and implies to me you are not arguing in good faith if you are trying to compare that to the situation with Flynn and Shaw. Lorâthemar wouldnât really fit the bill for âstrictly gayâ as he was already canonically shown to be attracted to a woman (while, you know, not being attracted to the opposite sex is sorta what this whole gay thing is about). He can, however, be for example bisexual, if at some point he expresses attraction towards a man.
Anyway, you say that a character should stick to their traits, and I absolutely agree. That said⌠a bisexual man batting for both sides is doing exactly that . The only way I can see your logic working is if somebody is (wrongly) assuming that every character is straight, in which case they have nobody to blame but themselves. Big shrug from me.
âŚThat said, I donât know how to even begin explaining that âpirateâ is not a synonym to âheterosexual.â The LGBT Agenda did not prepare me for this.
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Well thatâs a big olâ pile of unexamined heterocentrism.
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It is. Gay relationships are as old as ancient Egypt/ Greece and so on, in the civilised society.
Otherwise anthropological studies have found Indian tribes practice homosexuality and itâs completely natural for some men to gather and make baskets instead of go hunting with the other men.
Also these men are visited in their tents by all other men who wish to indulge in such pleasures.
It is the civilised world that casts a dark veil over gay people.
And not to mention straight couples do that type of thing too.
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Iâd seriously rage quit if that was the case. Trolls shouldnât have such a stuff. Out of all playable races this stuff fits them the least. And especially her.
I agree that all this silly romances should be put down, because it more looks like dating simulator than world of warcraft. Not to mention they really suck at writing romances.
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Every character has the potential to become bisexual at some point.
That doesnât mean that certain people canât find it weird if the stereotypical trope about some rascally and womaniser pirate, is suddenly painted in such way that has said character liking men for the sake of some new script.
Just as you may find it natural, other might feel as if it clashes weirdly with the portrayal the character has had insofar.
Acting as if the fantasy trope in this case, didnât follow a rather obvious stereotype, is extremely disingenuous. But to each their own.
Still donât see why people canât feel as if these sort of script changes feel forced to them.
Assuming that unless told otherwise, the narrative is populated by straight characters? Specially if those display open affection/interest in the opposite sex?
How many bisexual/gay WoW characters can you name? Any particular one that predates Flynn or Shaw?
Assuming straight was the default, specially regarding characters that openly displayed certain tendencies regarding one particular sex, was indeed a staple in WoW.
I donât care if they make Shaw or Flynn gay.
I repeat that their case is one of the few romances that i didnât feel sprawled all over my face when reading the novel.
But that doesnât mean that people arenât feeling like itâs some random âtwistâ to characters that already seemed rather well defined (for WoW standards) regarding that particular âsexualityâ field.
This would feel less of a retcon if they had used any of the other characters shown to be basically asexual. And they have MANY of those.
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Sure, but even in that case it should not be âintrinsicâ to being human. The only intrinsic thing that has something to do with sex is reproduction. Nothing else.
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The pleasure centre is part of the human brain. Itâs not added later to the body. As such, it is intrinsic. Pleasure is essential to the human being.
Seeking sexual pleasure is intrinsic to the human.
Homosexuality is also intrinsic to certain individuals. It is part of who they are as people, it is essentially how they seek partners.
If youâre unaware of how it works, thereâs plenty of resources online and in libraries.
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On the âcertainâ side, thereâs Marcus, the Human Paladin protagonist of the Steamy Romance novels who is known as a womanizer but he actually had a relationship with at least one man (probably more, but to be fair he even had a relation with a Forsaken lady, so he even wentâŚthere 
), so heâs 100% bi and probably pansexual too.
On the âuncertainâ side, thereâs Tholo and Anren, the male Tauren and male Night Elf âfriendsâ from the Firelands reputation quests who were always considered âa little too closeâ than regular best friends would normally be. Blizzard has put a lot of âsubtle hintsâ in the quest text about their gay relationship, but I guess itâs not 100% confirmed in their case, although itâs very possible they are gays.
On the âfanfictionâ side, thereâs Anduin, who was speculated for a long time to be gay because the Alliance players were afraid in this case he wouldnât want to marry a queen and so he would be the last member of the Wrynn royal family as showed in the comic with the vision of the future about Old Anduin and Velen [debunked anyway as he likes not just humans but also draenei women] and Prince Kaelâthas, as a part of the fanbase (probably the ones disliking his character) speculated after Jaina picked Arthas over him, Kael became bisexual/gay with either Illidan or Rommath as his partners before joining the Legion, but this is complete fanfiction as it was never showed Kael had any real attraction toward a male (on the contrary, before knowing Jaina it was said he was infatuated with the beauty of living Sylvanas), so this theory has been debunked as well and probably it has to be attributed to the fact that the âgay memeâ has been part of the jokes about Blood Elves male characters for a long time, and finally Iâm glad Blizzard is moving away from this meme as other races have their own confirmed bi/gay characters right now 
Also Wrathion and Baine (both with Anduin), but these are mostly jokes I think 
why would the sexuality have anything to do with it?
it would be forced to see a relationship between tyrande and gallywyx too.
same applies to shaw and flynn.
one is a james bond inspired character, the other a captain sparrow inspired one.
you can swap their genders and it still would feel forced.
shaw/wyrbbane would make more sense despite their differences, their commitment to duty would be enought common ground.
Britney would be proud of you. Also Oberyn Martel says Hi. Honestly, I cant see why someone who is portrayed as flirtatious with women, cannot be attracted to men either, after all Flynn, as you said, was just womaniser seeking pleasure or smth.
But here in novel they touched on the subject why Flynty boy and Shaw developed some sort of affection to each other, while in comparison Veleera and Taelia arcs had little to no actual connection rather then flirting and longing.
Now I can see how all of a sudden it feels forced to have 2 gay couples introduced in Shadowlands when there were none before (only fanfiction) and yes Blizzard have been pushin that propaganda for some time. And I totally understand why that would cause such uproar, but by the end of the day its up to each individual to get used to the fact that this will be new norm these days and at first might even be too much.
Whats wrong with changing scripts.
P.S. Im still waiting for you Sylvanas retcon debate btw.
There has been no retcon of any sort. There was no follow up to the arc, simple as that.
WellâŚthatâs still basically what the word means.
I see why would people feel it forced. Specially given a setting such as WoWâs, with itâs simplistic narrative.
More often than not, characters are painted as either asexual, or following on more standarised fantasy tropes.
Flynn followed on the sort of cheeky pirate bastard, that likes to drink rum, brothels, and had some âcharmingâ crush on Taelia.
Shaw was this severe assasin, cold and distant, with some soft spots for Valeera and/or Amber.
They had their own âtemplateâ of stereotypical traits of some classic narrative tropes. And followed on the more simplistic nature that had been the staple modus in the games setting.
Making either gay would seem out of the blue.
And having writers grasping at them being Bi would feel less of an explanation, and more as a convenient bail out card to avoid criticism regarding the obvious tendencies they had the character display prior.
Thatâs one of the reasons why i think that if Blizzard wanted to introduce said sort of characters, they shouldâve done so with those that were still undefined/ambiguous regarding that particular aspect.
Even if i personally do not feel really bothered regarding how they handled this particular couple.
It breeds inconsistency regarding the character. Thatâs the sort of stuff that creates MoP vs Stonetalon Garrosh.
I edited the post where i referenced it 
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Sure they were as you have described, but dont you think the novel slowly developed the given reasoning to why they became close? It is out of blue, like many things in life, but nonetheless still pretty real.
And more often then not, we have perfectly straight couple suddenly shifting their âcrushâ arcs or hinted arcs, such as Thrall, and some stay true to it. But in this case the outrage coming is less about so called âretconnedâ arcs but about the âwhat I do not want to readâ forced arc, judging from the comments.
Its called Standardised because people are used to seeing these kind of characters.
This really just described some emotionally unstable mofo, who just doesnt care ! Hehe.
I do not know what their intention was and do not care to, but as it stands we are given two men bonding over some emotional commonality in a rather nonsexual way and as it stands we had them known to flirt with females as well, at least Flynn, and the rest is up for your interpretation as a reader.
OK thatâs what you mean, yeah I can see that. But even though reasoning to why Garrosh became what he did, was there. It was rushed yes, but still even if they changed the scripts direction is not a crime if done properly. Garroshâs story wasnt inconsistant it was faded and loads of unexplained âHowâ-s. Like in this particular example there was nothing retconned that completely disregarded already established lore or ignored its existence, its was build upon ⌠badly.
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Wow, not only you completely didnât understand his point but thrown some nice new fancy label to disregard what he is saying.
Good job man.
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