comic book trend that honestly irks the fuck out of me is when an existing character comes out as gay and they invent a new character to be their partner. like theres nothing wrong with it per se its just that the new boyfriend/girlfriend character is always jarringly bland and uninteresting, especially when compared to the latent homosexual potential that definitely already existed in the story. like there’s something so deeply unsatisfying about introducing a new side character as a girlfriend for karma in new mutants 2019 when she’d been having dramatic hand-holding adventures with dani the whole time. it implies such a definite hesitancy to ever make characters gay For Each Other, and the result of that hesitancy is that you don’t get any of the long-term slow-burn relationships that heterosexual characters get (like between batman and catwoman or whatever). instead you get New Relatable Millennial Queer Partner that you have to fight tooth and nail to give a fuck about. nobody’s doing it like rictor and shatterstar anymore nobody’s doing coming out reveals that hit like that