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I firmly believe that sexuality is fluid and that people who consider themselves straight can fall for a female, or vice versa. IMHO sexuality are preferences not rules set in stone, and there can always be exceptions to the rule.
I think it is possible for two people to share a deeper bond than with others, and this bond to be discovered later in life/ in certain special circumstances. I have written such a subplot, when the notorious womanizer finds himself seduced by a man. And it doesn't mean that he is suddenly bisexual/ attracted by other men after losing that special one in a battle. No, what they shared had been too special and unique.
What made their bond unique? They were first best friends, with too many things in common. One of them was the notorious womanizer, the other was gay and he fell in love with him, succeeding to seduce him after a while. And having the seducer seduced for once, and in the most unexpected circumstances for him, was interesting. He saw this, ultimately, as the complete relationship, body and mind, something that he would never get with anyone else.
I firmly believe that sexuality is fluid and that people who consider themselves straight can fall for a female, or vice versa. IMHO sexuality are preferences not rules set in stone, and there can always be exceptions to the rule.
I am mainly familiar with this as "Gay for You" in m/m romance, where it is fairly popular. There has certainly been discussion of how this trope can be problematic and contributes to bi-erasure. I do not feel knowledgeable enough to participate in such a discussion.
The GFY trope satisfies the reader’s desire for a happy ending by promising that the couple will find happiness together despite their sexualities, rather than finding their happiness through discovering their sexualities. Homosexuality is treated as a hurdle to be overcome, a tragic circumstance that could have destroyed the relationship had the romantic connection been less intense. That’s not just homophobic. It’s biphobic, and it’s bi/pan erasure.
I'm glad you mentioned this, too. I think part of what I found so irritating in the book I just read was that everyone's attraction felt like more of a deus ex, rather than the exploration of something complex and fluid, which is what I had been hoping to read. There was the issue of cardboard characters, and cardboard sexuality, overlooking major points of being a unique human being. Oversimplifying destroys personal identity.
That would bother me too. I think the writer would need to set up a solid background to make it believable that there really was an unusual connection that made it "just you". Same goes for het-romances. I'd really want to know what it was that made the MC fall in love. I think a lot of gay/lesbian authors just find this to be an easy trope to work with and can get lazy with it. I've not read enough het-romance to know if it's the same in that genre.because first the character in question self-identified as gay, later on he swore he wasn't, and bisexuality wasn't even a concept. It was just like the author grabbed an excuse to justify whatever was or wasn't happening at the moment.
I tend to agree - unless of course the character generally doesn't find themselves attracted to people of the same gender. As readers we can't help but see a story through the window of our own experiences. And if someone happens to find a lot of people of one specific gender attractive they might find it hard to think as someone who finds very, very few people to be attractive (regardless of gender).I felt like it was a cop out -like the character didn't particularly come to terms with their sexuality but rather resigned themselves to saying my attraction is solely to this one person and I have no other attraction to my same gender.