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Why gay romances don't work in movies/TV

In order to answer this question we have to consider why romance is such a common and ubiquitous plot device in so many pieces of entertainment media, and has always been, for thousands of years, in all forms of fiction, including mythology, literature, theater, paintings, sculptures and, more recently, comics, radio plays, film and TV series. Romantic relationships between fictional characters in such pieces of fiction can range all the way from just some very short unimportant scenes, to being the main plot of the entire work. The entire conflict in the piece of fiction may be centered around a romantic relationship.

The reason for this is, of course, because love and romance is such an important and fundamental part of human life and human existence, and it's such a complex and interesting topic and can create such strong feelings in people that works of fiction and entertainment explore the concept and can create very interesting narratives, conflicts and goals based on that alone. Even if romance is not the main plot of the movie, but is some kind of small side story, or just a sort of ending or "epilogue" for the story, it can give a sense of joy and satisfaction to the viewer. It's no wonder that, for example, one of the very last scenes of The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy is a wedding (even though romance is in no way any important plot in the movie trilogy, or even the original source material).

And this brings us to one important aspect of romance in works of fiction during the entire history of humanity: It's there because it's interesting, entertaining, thrilling, emotional and satisfactory to the viewer. In the vast, vast, vast majority of cases it's not there to send some kind of "message", or to try to influence the viewers in some manner (with very, very few exceptions during the history of humanity). It's there to make the story more interesting, not to "educate" the viewer, or trying to influence and affect the viewer in some manner. In other words, there's no underlying agenda behind the inclusion of romance in the work of fiction.

This makes it quite different from 99.9% of "gay" romances in modern works of fiction, especially movies and TV series. The motivation for them to be "gay" is different. The motivation is wrong.

The motivation to include a gay romance in modern pieces of fiction is not to make the work more interesting, entertaining, suspenseful, emotional and satisfying. It's to send a "message". The motivation is agenda-driven, not entertainment-driven. The gay romance in the vast majority of cases has been written there in order to try to influence the viewer, rather than it being there to support the story and make it more interesting. In other words, it has been artificially and unnaturally shoved in there, for all the wrong reasons.

In addition to that, the average person, man or woman, who may find normal heterosexual romance interesting, does not find gay romance interesting. They don't empathize. They don't feel what the characters are feeling. They don't get the warm and comfortable feeling of the thought of being close to a loved one, for the mere reason that they aren't interested in someone of the same sex. When they see a romantic scene between a man and a woman, men may feel some attraction to the woman, and women may feel some attraction to the man, and thus they can empathize at some level, and thus find the scene compelling, empathetic and emotional. However, when the average person sees a romantic scene between two people of the same sex, the emotional connection between the viewer and the characters isn't there, and thus it isn't that interesting nor immersive.

Add to that the fact that the reason for the scene to be there is, as said, agenda-driven rather than natural fluent storytelling, and it further destroys the mood of the scene for the average person.

That's why gay romances don't tend to work in movies or TV, or any other piece of media for that matter. And trying to make them work is quite a futile task.

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