LogFAQs > #956988440

There's always been at least some implication that Tim was bi already. There was a storyline years ago where they kind of hinted that his feelings for Superboy might be a lot stronger than just "friendship".

If they're going to do sexuality retconning, I'd much rather they make people bi than gay, though. Because it's easier to justify "Well, he just happens to like some guys as well as women" than it is to justify "No, he just likes dudes, only dudes, exclusively dudes" when you've shown a character solely being interested in women for like 40+ years (and doubly so because in comics, we can HEAR people's thoughts).

Like, if they made Peter Parker gay tomorrow, it would be like "Wait, so in 60 years worth of stories, which was something like 15+ years worth of his in-universe life, where he was in relationships with like two dozen women, and where he has never had a single sexual thought about men but has repeatedly been infatuated with women, now he can't get off to women at all and is only interested in guys? That's kind of bullshit." And no, "Oh, he's just been really, really, really deep in denial but now he accepts his true self!" isn't really a great counter-justification.

Conversely, Northstar (who was always kind of written as a closeted gay man) comes out, and most people are like "Ehh, makes sense." And then there are characters who are newly introduced as gay right out of the gate (like Wiccan and Hulkling), where most people are "Ehh, fine, cool, whatever." Or even older characters who were never really established as having much sexuality can start to express as whatever and most people don't mind because it isn't contradicting previously established continuity.

The problem is, most of the time this sort of thing is done as a PR stunt by companies who are hemorrhaging readers away, in a desperate attempt to draw in new readers via shock outrage or pandering. So they deliberately choose characters that make no sense and that will prompt backlash because the backlash is what they want, not organic storytelling. And because they're more focused on the reaction than the narrative, the writing tends to be shallow as fuck, and even the people they're trying to attract don't care enough to start reading.

And then you get stuff like people complaining about how Jean Grey made Iceman gay.
---

"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family