It sort of went from trying to promote these kinds of authors to "I won't read anything that's not OwnVoices. I'll only read your book if you're LGBT." And that put some authors who were LGBT but not out into a difficult position, because they knew their books were OwnVoices but in order to relay that they would be forced to come out.
The debate comes up every once in a while, but for the most part the OwnVoice is considered to be a good, positive thing.
The MC in my series and her' best friend' grew up together. The whole strength of the relationship was founded on the best friend's perception and ideal of the MC. The best friend discovers that the MC, who she thought she knew everything about, has been keeping secrets from her. They both begin to change and grow during the adventure, but, the best friend keeps pushing the MC to be the person who she idealized. The MC isn't that person, and in reality, never was. At the end of the series the relationship and friendship, is over. I had no intention of writing that ending, but, it was faithful to the people the characters had grew to become.
I used despair, on top of the fact they don't get to see each other all that much. The needle in a haystack approach, except that all the hay can shoot, stab, bomb, or tear you to pieces literally. Oh yeah, added bonus, they have to find the right haystack. Or if you prefer an off the books rescue/suicide mission, and no help so to speak of. For more added fun the party that needs rescuing is in a rather uncomfortable situation themselves, where escape is pretty much nil from the inside.
Cool. But the long version of how they met, and all the crap they go through is way more graphic and can be disturbing on some level to some. They are not exactly the poster children for the standard romantic pairing. The good news is they are the 'good guys'.
I sometimes feel that fiction doesn't have enough intense friendships--there often seems to be a vibe of romance or, meh, the relationship doesn't matter. So I'd be inclined to vote for the friendship.
Good point. I suspect it's because friendships aren't terribly compelling in the narrative sense. I can't think of any book or movie where a friendship knocked my socks off. Or was enough to tie a story together or elevate the mundane to the sublime, like a romantic relationship can. I'm not saying that that's the way things should be, but it seems to be how friendships are portrayed. Be cool if someone could change that.
I'm both dating myself and revealing to be a horrendous sap, but Steel Magnolias did that for me. Of course that was a group of women with various levels of friendship, not a one on one friendship. The only one of those that comes to mind is Moana and Maui in the Disney movie Moana. YES I LOVE ANIMATED MOVIES MADE FOR CHILDREN I ALREADY ADMITTED TO BEING A SAP OKAY Books though...that's a hard one. None of those really come to mind, though I did write an extremely strong friendship between Nate and Carmen in UTK. I wouldn't call it sublime by many means, but it was part of the heart of the story IMO.
The HFN may end up as an intense friendship. Or they may kill each other. Or they may die for each other. Or they may go to opposite ends of the planet to avoid each other. Or one may keep the other in a cage like a pet parakeet. I'm really not sure yet.
Warning: TV Tropes "Heterosexual Life Partners" (same-sex) Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson Woody and Buzz Lightyear Oscar and Felix Mike and Sully Harry and Ron [multiple pairs of Nick Frost and Simon Pegg characters] Bill and Ted Superman and Batman Han Solo and Chewie, R2D2 and C3PO Steve Rogers and Bucky Peppermint Patty and Marcie Rosalind and Celia Sam and Frodo, Merry and Pippin, Legolas and Gimli Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn Harry Dresden and Michael Carpenter The A-Team Denny Crane and Alan Shore Temperance Brennan and Angela Montenegro Buffy and Willow Matt Murdoch and Foggy Nelson Reed Richards and Ben Grimm Rachel and Monica Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon The Gilmore Girls Kenzi and Bo Rizzoli and Isles George and Jerry (not that there's anything wrong with that) Starsky and Hutch "Platonic Life Partners" (opposite-sex) Hawkeye and Black Widow Marlin and Dory Peggy Carter and Howard Stark Phoebe and Joey Leslie and Ron CJ and Toby Will and Grace Lilo and Stitch
Yeah, those are all great friendships, but I wasn't really including TV. TV has a prolonged viewing experience and a hundred plus hours of material to play with. I was thinking more about books and movies where the friendship dynamic has to do a lot of work in a short amount of time. Steel Magnolias, Beaches, and Tomatoes definitely pull that off. On the teenager you could throw Goonies and Stand by Me in there too.
The Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russel novels... Spoiler ...depict an intense platonic friendship for a few books, until, well, they got married.
I might get shouted off this page for suggesting this, but what if you researched the ways that those opposed to homosexuality propose that same-sex relationships can go wrong? You could explore as if there was some merit to those claims in order to produce the conflict. Ultimately, the couple would triumph over these supposed obstacles. It would be a sort of mental exercise. The resolution of your story would basically be a rebuttal to those claims. I would strongly suggest using real-life examples of couples who overcame these obstacles to avoid creating a strawman, and avoid theology altogether. I dunno. Might not be what you want to go with unless you're looking for some level of hyper-realism. And your research may lead you to places you don't want your story to go.
Stories about marginalized victims overcoming obstacles have fallen out of favor. Minorities and LGBT want to read about people like them doing the same things that straight white people do in books.
The OP asked for a conflict that didn't involve cheating. I thought this idea might have some likelihood of being useful, however small that liklihood was, so I gave my two cents. It's a classic arc, too; society or an antagonist or both say something can't be done, and then there seems to be truth in what they say, causing the hero to doubt themselves, but ultimately succeed and prove the obstacles that were said to make their goal impossible can be overcome.
Slightly off topic here. But that's an excellent example of what can happen if you allow your characters to become real and tell you what to do. Some folks think that's a silly way to write a story and 'you' the author are always in control. However, while it's true that you are in control, 'you' the author can certainly learn from what your characters do. Being in control doesn't always mean you were right about everything when you started out. I'm sure this eventual ending is more 'right' than the one you'd originally planned. Never be afraid to deviate from 'the plan' if your understanding of your characters has evolved.
I think it is safe to have some sort of curve ball or bump in the relationship of your characters. despite what everyone says no relationship is 100% perfect. It also makes the writing more interesting in my opinion
I would like to apologize for jumping to sleep-deprived conclusions "but what if you researched the ways that those opposed to homosexuality propose that same-sex relationships can go wrong (because they know things the pro-LGBT crowd don't know)?" instead of waiting until morning to read this more carefully: "but what if you researched the ways that those opposed to homosexuality propose that same-sex relationships can go wrong (so that you can prove these false narratives wrong)?" That said, @Homer Potvin 's point about going overboard on this still stands. Challenging the lie "LGBT+ people are 'lesser' than we are, and their relationships are 'lesser' than ours" works best when some works focus on tackling and disproving the misconceptions explicitly and when other works focus on normalizing LGBT+ people and relationships, rather than everybody always doing one or the other: Everybody always focusing on explicitly calling out the misconceptions makes it look like LGBT+ lives and relationships are inherently harder than "normal" lives and relationships Everybody always focusing on normalizing LGBT+ makes it look like the problems in society have already been dealt with
