This is a good trend, not a cliche.
From my POV, the reason for this largely appears to be the growing number of prominent queer/trans writers & members of the site, and straight/cis writers having a growing comfort with that subject material. This is normal; fiction always reflects your friends, the people you know.
It IS a shift from what we're used to, but honestly, what we're used to is a group of characters on the wiki even less diverse than the authors writing them.
Having an almost universally heterosexual (and male, etc) cast of characters, despite having a more diverse community, is the thing that's actually a bad cliche. It's weird, frankly, from an objective standpoint, but also so normal that we've all done it, including me. It's invisible; it's the default. It always stands out when you go against the default.
That's why it's a good trend. (I could actually go on about a few points/counterpoints, but none apply to Deci's tale, so I don't wanna derail.)
I'd normally continue this wall of text by saying, "Your feedback is still valid, I just think you're misidentifying the potential issue," but Decibelle already covered this, and also one of the likely actual issues. Curses! I could have blabbed on for so much longer… ;_;
(However, I do think DonCorleone's feedback was free of merit.)
My own critique: this is a low-conflict, slice of life tale. We have perhaps a few too many of those (zie hypocritically says, having masterminded Resurrection, which is one of the present big offenders despite the high-conflict potential of the setting).
I like this tale, nonetheless. I'd probably be downvoting the version I originally critiqued, but Decibelle did an impressive job on the rewrite, and this version I like quite a bit. A lot of the "cruft" was cut out and cleaned up, letting the characters shine through. I found it to be an enjoyable, engaging read.
(account deleted)
