Like spending four hours a day chewing on the other dogs and another six sleeping in your lap. And then being told not to beat up the kittens. By their mother. Violently and with claws.
Ok, you should probably have stepped in there a bit sooner.
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You know I am wondering why the "Fake Gay Pairing" is often better than what usually goes on in a story.
I think my running theory is that because it isn't a traditional pairing the writers don't need to keep to a strictly banal typical format. As well since it has no chance of actually happening, they can keep the tension anywhere they'd like rather then slowly pouring it out. THAT and the unfortunate implications but I am going to ignore it.
Think of what happened in Legend of Korra when you compare the final pairing to what came before it. Yes, it actually happened but it wasn't strongly focused on because they would get kicked off the air. So they instead focused on the sort of emotional support they gave each other. Not to mention that because they couldn't actually HAVE a gay romance, they could only very loosely imply that it existed until a post-show message that said "yeah it totally happened" which should tell you all you need to know about how actual existent it was (Barely at all), it means that the focus of the last season wasn't actually on their relationship.
Hmm actually I guess that example isn't the best one. It seems like the reason why the final romance in Korra worked... Is because they couldn't give it over importance, overblow it, and had to be subtle. The show which does romance terribly, suddenly did it well when they were too scared to actually show romance. Not to mention that for once the romance was on equal footing, another serious problem with Legend of Korra is that the woman called the shots and it was typically up to the men to make the mistakes (and if the woman made a mistake, it was the man's fault). Which isn't a problem on its own, but FAR to much of the romance is represented by one person needing to please the other, needing to forgive the other, needing to make time for the other. The final romance was more mutual.
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NO WAIT! I have a better example!
There was an anime I watched about basically a small group of friends who work on a romance manga together, pretty good overall. One day to do research they play a dating sim. Now skipping ahead as they keep playing it they slowly come to the realization as to how special the male best friend character is as far as the plot is concerned, in that he is selfless and supportive of the main character asking for absolutely nothing in return and basically gives his youth up for you.
Leading them to be so moved by this they try to make a fan manga involving this guy and realize that the only person he would ever be happy with is the main character (who is also male)... and end up making essentially gay porn without even really realizing what they are doing.
I like to contrast this to TYPICAL dating sim behavior in which the girls are people to be pleased typically by saying what they want to hear.