I forget who wrote this line, but it was from a video essay that I really liked about writing characters of certain, typically unrepresented identities.

If you want a good gay character, write a good character, then make them gay. Same with any other minority or identity. Character writing comes before identity if you want a good story.

If the story is centered around their struggles with that identity that’s fine, but in certain media it seems like “I’m the character that’s gay! That’s it!” rather than “I’m a complex character that moves the story that happens to be gay!”.

Either way though, I hate seeing a well written character of certain identities be bashed despite being well written, and I also hate seeing characters that are very obviously meant to pander.

I loved it. It felt natural, and complicated. Mark is young, impressionable, but loved his dad. Looked up to his dad. It’s only naturally for him to feel so conflicted and it felt very well written during that dialogue. He wasn’t even angry at Nolan’s wife or his new Half-brother, but rather at Nolan. Ugh so good