Ireth
Myth Weaver
There are two characters in a story of mine whose sexual orientations have been a matter of some confusion for a while now. In the first draft of the story, they seemed like no more than good friends, and it came as a great surprise to me when, at the climax, Character B said about Character A, "I love him." Both of the characters in question are male, and Character B was previously established to be a straight widower whose wife had died in childbirth. There had been exactly one hint at B's attraction to A in the previous 29 chapters, and I hadn't even meant it to be such. B was originally intended to fall in love with A's sister, and that backfired epically.
After the climax was over and the two had some time to sit down and talk, I had them discuss their feelings for each other, both in the story itself and in character "interviews" I conducted as a way of gaining insight into B's thoughts and feelings. They seemed to come to the conclusion that a romantic relationship wasn't the best thing for them, since B is many years older than A, and A sees B as more of a friend and mentor than a lover. To complicate things, both characters are adherents to belief in the old Celtic gods and goddesses in a world that's predominantly Christian (i.e. fourteenth-century Scotland). I don't know whether the Celts had a taboo on gay/bi relationships (anyone with the historical knowledge to inform me, please don't hesitate to do so), but Christians certainly did and still do.
I've been thinking a lot about how I want to have this play out in the second draft: whether to go into more detail about the possibility of a sexual relationship between the two or to downplay it. The romantic side of their relationship is doomed to failure however I choose to portray it, as the two will ultimately decide that a adoptive father/son relationship is the way to go, but it could still be interesting to show one or both of them struggling with those feelings on top of everything else they have to go through.
The trouble I have in showing the relationship most lies with character A. Character B could easily be handwaved as a bisexual who hid his desire for men from his wife throughout their marriage (or even a gay who married a woman out of necessity), but character A comes across as rather asexual throughout the whole first draft, as well as the beginning of the second draft as it stands so far. Due to an inherited physical deformity which gets his family shunned by many of their neighbors, he probably feels like he has little chance of finding a spouse anyway. The deformity comes from character A's mother, and his father is seen as very strange to have married her and fathered more deformed children. The deformity is quite minor -- just an extra finger on their right hands -- but even so, people are superstitious and mark them as cursed.
I'm going to stop here before I go off on a further tangent, and leave the floor open to you guys for discussion and advice.
After the climax was over and the two had some time to sit down and talk, I had them discuss their feelings for each other, both in the story itself and in character "interviews" I conducted as a way of gaining insight into B's thoughts and feelings. They seemed to come to the conclusion that a romantic relationship wasn't the best thing for them, since B is many years older than A, and A sees B as more of a friend and mentor than a lover. To complicate things, both characters are adherents to belief in the old Celtic gods and goddesses in a world that's predominantly Christian (i.e. fourteenth-century Scotland). I don't know whether the Celts had a taboo on gay/bi relationships (anyone with the historical knowledge to inform me, please don't hesitate to do so), but Christians certainly did and still do.
I've been thinking a lot about how I want to have this play out in the second draft: whether to go into more detail about the possibility of a sexual relationship between the two or to downplay it. The romantic side of their relationship is doomed to failure however I choose to portray it, as the two will ultimately decide that a adoptive father/son relationship is the way to go, but it could still be interesting to show one or both of them struggling with those feelings on top of everything else they have to go through.
The trouble I have in showing the relationship most lies with character A. Character B could easily be handwaved as a bisexual who hid his desire for men from his wife throughout their marriage (or even a gay who married a woman out of necessity), but character A comes across as rather asexual throughout the whole first draft, as well as the beginning of the second draft as it stands so far. Due to an inherited physical deformity which gets his family shunned by many of their neighbors, he probably feels like he has little chance of finding a spouse anyway. The deformity comes from character A's mother, and his father is seen as very strange to have married her and fathered more deformed children. The deformity is quite minor -- just an extra finger on their right hands -- but even so, people are superstitious and mark them as cursed.
I'm going to stop here before I go off on a further tangent, and leave the floor open to you guys for discussion and advice.