I'm not going to say that Dumbledore's sexuality was handled well, but I will say that it becomes slightly easier to understand some of his personal history once you consider that he was probably in love (either secretly or in a relationship, I don't know) with Grindelwald. But that's about it.

A big issue is that sexuality is only really a relevant characteristic to a character when it is on display. I'm not saying it isn't an inherent characteristic, but if it isn't directly relevant to a scene at hand, it shouldn't be brought up. Because it's irrelevant. (This extends to any expression of sexuality, not exclusively representational material)
So, unless it is saying something else about the character, that they are flirty or awkward, then it's going to come across as extremely ham fisted to bring it up just to say it./quote]

While I agree with you on principal, we need to think of an unfair double standard when it comes to LGBTQ characters. Being a cis straight white male is often treated as the default and unless stated otherwise characters will most often be though of as that "default". And due to this "default" thinking and media/creators doing stuff like queer baiting you have to have some sort of out right way of saying or showing they are LGBTQ that often leads to "extremely ham fisted to bring it up just to say it" or ends up so vague, hard to tell if they are meant to be LGBTQ. Kaya*, Will, Saheeli and Huatli are have been hinted to be not-straight but due to the vagueness and the Chandra/Nissa mess it makes it hard to tell if these are are meant to be LGBTQ or not.


Personally for the kinda of story magic is telling I think it can be causal as a male character saying he had a male lover in the past, has a male lover/husband/ect waiting for him back at home (like with Ral) and/or saying they find another male character attractive. Thats all causal stuff I think can inform characters without going over the top and its typically what magics use of sexuality reaches.

*Separate note this might also be why we are seeing this announcement now with Kaldheim, they might solidify the hints that Kaya is into women.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2020-12-14

Not Kaya but a non-binary Theros athlete.

I like Niko very much already, not just for the rep but because we finally see a -aligned athlete, someone who wants perfection through practise instead of being a nerd.

Honestly not a fan of the art.
And being even more honest, more irritated it's someone else from Theros than anything else.

Edit: I do feel I should say I like the direction of the character. I didn't mean to come across as so negative above. That said, not sure how invested I can get in them, but that's more to do with incompatible personality types.

I knew I wasn't imagining this but I can't recall where it comes from. Help me with a source?

The Forsaken

It's from a passage when Kaya was waving nostalgic over someone with whom she may have had feelings for maybe. Said person had a moderately feminine name. If any actual pronouns were used, I can't recall.

That said, while it's totally fine to entertain the possibility, it's built on a LOT of assumptions with minimal evidence.

“She had friends, trusted friends, here and now. But she hadn’t had anyone to care about that way—to love that way—since Janah. She didn’t miss Janah, but she missed that feeling. But now wasn’t the time to think of Janah or of love.”

I think its safe to say Janah is/was a ex-lover since the context was Kaya thinking on Ral and Tomik. Could they be a guy, sure but Janah is a traditionally a female name and where people are questioning if Kaya likes ladies.

And it doesn't really bother me if she did. I've just got a looooong history of hating the speculation itself.

The "default" is more that characters are asexual who are likely in straight relationships. There's that cliche about when a kid finds out Mom and Dad are into each other like that. The issue with most properties trying to inject sexuality representation is that attraction in general is rarely an aspect of a character in the first place (and, in general, it's a common pitfall to make attraction too big a space of a character's character when it is a part of it. Morseso with LGBT+). So generally, you're personal suggestion is the ideal way to go, but, to make PR spectacle of it, companies tend to blow it out of proportion, which goes counter to the best way to do it being not to make it into a big deal. Ironically, it's the people fishing to find it making any vagueness into a possibility that makes it harder.

I definitely dislike the "relatable" tendency they've taken on in recent years. What it comes down to is basically making all the stories revolve around the personal stories of a few central characters, making those characters think and act like teenagers even though they're 1: adults and 2: dealing with the fate of the universe. It feels weird watching Nissa and the character who canonically attempted to genocide an entire plane play race-to-the-top-of-the-skyclave, and then have Nissa get mad at Nahiri for killing a plant because liking plants and being shy are her 2 character traits. It feels bizarre when it's juxtaposed with the fully realized worlds of the multiverse that have pages upon pages of lore fleshing them out and trying to make the feel grounded and verisimilitudinous. Like half the story is spent in a coffeeshop AU fic version of itself.

Re: the whole Nissa/Chandra thing, I don't think people are mad that there wasn't enough LGBT representation, I think people are mad that they pretty much teased an LGBT relationship really hard and got a bunch of people really invested in it, and then pulled the football out of the way at the last minute. They didn't have to make them gay, but they shouldn't have promised their audience something they weren't going to deliver. I don't think anyone would be complaining if the characters had just always been straight.

My two biggest problems with the gruul friends debacle with what they did is they'd already established Chandra as being fairly thirsty for Gideon and then abandoned that totally to go down this fairly unbelievable path towards Nissa. It just didn't feel natural for her to be bi as they never bothered to really develop the chemistry between the two in any way that felt meaningful. Hell, I'd have believed Lillian's x Chandra before Nissa x Chandra.

My second problem is Nissa sucks. That's all, that's the entire problem.

Honestly the entire gatewatch sucks. None of them have any personality whatsoever because if they did, then an audience member might have a different personality and not find them R E L A T A B L E anymore. We have elf girl who's oh so very shy that she's afraid to speak up but loves her plants so much that she gets mad whenever they die, we have the pyromancer whose wacky immaturity and "random"ness makes it impossible to believe she's over the age of 14, we have the mind mage whose only traits are being really good at things, or so we're told, so every major event in the multiverse has to revolve around him despite the fact that I've read the story on and off for years and I can't even think of a single personality trait he has, there's Gideon, the guy who used to have a personality but it got retconned, and there's Liliana, who's black-aligned so we need her to be evil and edgy but she's also the protagonist so we can't make her genuinely hateable, so we'll resolve the whole thing with an elaborate series of plot contrivances that continually strip her of any narrative agency whatsoever so she can do evil things without ever having to be evil.

But, it's difficult to see the nixing of the hinted relationship as an *improvement* to the story. If anything, it's just adding another level of inconsistency. Like even if we factor the LGBT part out of the equation, if you keep teasing and building up an implied romance, even if you do a clumsy job of it and write all your characters with the personality of drywall, and then abruptly cut it off with a single paragraph and no build-up or foreshadowing beforehand and no meaningful explanation afterwards, that just makes the story feel even more contrived and disjointed.

Which would be the second time it's happened to Chandra, trip have a relationship abruptly cut short with no explanation.

Was the first one with gideon? I thought that ship got blown out of the water with Origins retcons.

I mean, Purifying Fire still happened.

Origins was functionally a complete canon reboot. Even if some events weren't wiped from the canon, everyone's characters and personalities were.

Unless it's directly contradicted, I don't think you can assume it doesn't still have bearing when other aspects of the property still clearly occurred.

I can't think of any gatewatchers who act anything like their pre-origins selves.

In Kaladesh Chandra still feels attracted to Gideon, and then there's the infamous line in Forsaken. She's bisexual, or at least would be if WOTC didn't chicken out. Are you honestly surprised a aligned character wouldn't be like that?