A few months ago, I wrote a piece about what I termed “Magical Obligatory Queer Dating”: to make a long story short, some characters have greatness thrust upon them, and some have seemingly obligatory relationships with the only other LGBTQ+ character on their show thrust upon them. However, we sometimes see an alternate, almost opposite, scenario—queer characters on TV shows who rarely or never seem to have any romantic relationships. In essence, I believe both situations ultimately end up stemming for the same problem: time constraints. When there are LGBTQ+ characters on TV shows, they are more likely than not to be side characters, rather than main characters. As such, they have limited time to explore their love lives, so writers either end up pushing them into an ultra-convenient same-sex relationship, or just not bothering to have the character date at all. However, I don’t think the latter option has to be as problematic as the former, and can actually be a source of good queer representation.

Single sometimes, in a relationship sometimes, gay all the time.
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