"no hints were dropped" ok not to be that person but here are the hints that were dropped regarding Colin and Trent being gay:
1. Colin mentioning Grindr in a joke
2. Trent touching the arm of a man in the background
Here is one of the hints that Keeley was bi (even though I do believe she's been canonically bi since season 1, but not everyone sees it this way)
1. Her desktop background was in the colors of the bisexual flag
Here were some of the hints that Ted was bi:
1. Bisexual flag colored triangles above his head in the hallucination sequence
2. Inverted pink triangle next to him in that same sequence (and you can't tell me the creators didn't know, when the Homomonument is based on that symbol)
3. Countless (countless!!!) comments about men's physiques ("huge muscular thighs all caked in mud", whistling at a picture of Pep, "look at that head of hair", "he's strong", "he looks like a Rodin sculpture in cleats", etc.)
4. About a man (Higgins) and a woman (Rebecca), he had to say: "that's a crowd I don't mind being smack-dab in the middle of"
5. Him checking Trent out in the pub in 2x07 (his eyes are up there, Ted!)
6. "It could go either way", "I contain multitudes" and other comments in this vein
7. Bi lighting as he entered the Yankee Doodle Burger Barn
8. Giving similar looks to the female waitress and the male waiters in that restaurant (including a waiter in a cowboy costume that looked like he belonged in a gay club, who tipped his hat at Ted when greeting him)
9. "That's cause you were put into a box", "That box ceases to exist today", the box in the hallucination sequence breaking into triangles (as in the bi triangles and the inverted pink triangke), "we've been playing too rigid", "our guys need freedom", "fast, fluid, free, with full support", the "box that one needs to break out of" being a prominent motif in season 3
10. Wishing Beard called him pet names ("Honey, is that an ingredient or something you just called me?")
11. His crush on Pep
12. The connection between Ted and Colin: "my whole life is two lives, really", both wearing orange in Sunflowers, "I just want to kiss my fella" (Colin doesn't say "fella" , but Ted says it all the time), Ted just needs to get inspired and Colin's play is "inspirational" after he comes out, as per the commentators
And so much other stuff that, had Ted not self-identified as straight (*cough* put himself into a box *cough cough*) , you could make the case that he was canonically bi.
Here are some of hints that there was a romantic connection between Ted and Trent:
1. They hit a lot of romantic beats, and not in the jokey self-aware way in which Roy and Ted hit them in "Rainbow", but in an organic and sincere way
2. They both checked each other out: Trent checked Ted out when Ted was changing in front of him, Ted checked Trent out when Trent came up to him in a pub and hit him with a pick-up line while his date that looked a lot like Ted waited for him outside
3. Did I mention that Trent was on a date with a moustachioed man who dressed in a similar style to Ted? Let's mention it again
4. In that very bar, during a 50 second long conversation, Trent managed to say the word "love" three times. I searched the word "love" in the transcripts of the episodes. There's no other instance in which its frequency is this high
5. "Love our chats" incomplete rule of threes
6. "Sport, it's quite the metaphor" (implied: a metaphor for love; see also "love's a beautiful game" from the song Ed Sheeran wrote for Ted Lasso), "Also makes for a heck of a nickname", "Good night, Ted", "Good night, sport"
7. The soft, romantic, melancholic song playing in the background of this scene, while Ted and Trent are the last ones left in the office, with lyrics such as "When your words begin to crumble like the sidewalks all around this crummy neighborhood / From the chalky cliffs of Dover / I'd come over, I'd start over if I could"
8. Trent wearing sunflower colors in the episode "Sunflowers" and in the finale; sunflowers symbolize Ted's home (it's not subtle). He's the only character dressed like that. I'm still looking for any other explanation other than "Trent is Ted's home"
9. Their constant flirting and the way they look at each other with incredible fondness
10. The entire episode "The Strings That Bind Us". It's structured around Ted and Trent's relationship, and the way Trent changed because of Ted (in season 2, Ted defined a soulmate as someone who changes your life forever). The red string metaphor. Ted points out that soulmates are connected by a string tied to their little fingers. Ted and Trent both extend their little fingers out in similar shots. They are connected by a huge block of red in their last scene of the episode. Ted makes several comments about other men that apply to Trent ("Look at that head of hair", "Frames his face nicely", "My favorite one, he was clean shaven"). Many more details that lead back to Ted and Trent: Nate tells the restaurant owner to tell Jade he said "Hello". Immediately after, Ted and Trent say "Hello" to each other. The map that Nate's father used to ask out his mom has the number 1.3 written on it and an illustration of two people at a table in a restaurant. Ted and Trent went to a restaurant together in season 1, episode 3. The last scene of the episode mimics a "Race for Love" scene from a romcom, with Trent chasing after Ted. Trent also does not say a word to anyone other than Ted in the entire episode. He is completely focused on Ted
11. "Trent, what do you love? Is it writing?" and Trent ends up writing a book about Ted and naming the manuscript after Ted and he only cares about Ted's opinion on it (he leaves the room when Beard starts reading, but stays in the office after hours just to watch Ted read. "I just wanted you to like it.")
11. Trent's crush on Ted, confirmed by Jimmy Lance (and also obvious in the show, if you ask me)
Now, why would I believe that none of these hints were intentional? Maybe some could be explained away, but all of them? The hints we got for Colin, Trent and Keeley were so much smaller than this, and those turned out to be intentional.
anon i wish i could offer you the response you deserve, but i cannot stop rereading this masterpiece & focusing on the portions of evidence you provided that i didn't even pick up on until you laid them out. holy shit
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sits up in bed. so lana and ema definitely thought they were responsible for edgeworth "choosing death", right?
(the rest of this post was supposed to go in the tags, because it's not very well organised or written, but it got too long so. here are the slightly edited tags for your reading pleasure (or otherwise)):
i was going to make this solely about ema because she's the obvious one with her open adoration of edgeworth, but the thing about rfta is that it goes to great lengths to emphasise the connection between lana and edgeworth as well.
the sl-9 incident showed that lana grows attached to people deeply, hence angel starr's comment on how, when neil marshall died, 'she (lana) felt like her own brother had died.' with edgeworth, i think it was similar but worse. because he's not just a coworker or subordinate who's dear to her. he saved her life. and it cost him his own.
at the beginning of the case, edgeworth says he was mistaken for thinking that lana was always looking out for him post sl-9 (a statement interesting on its own because that's when everyone else says she grew distant), and, later on, he brings ema fingerprinting powder because lana asked him to. then, of course, there's the 'lady luck' comment he makes.
similarly, on lana's side, you obviously have the end of the trial when she says he did well, but there's also that additional moment post-trial where she's the only one to notice — in a group comprising her, ema, phoenix and gumshoe — that he's 'hiding', listening to their conversation. point is, there's enough to suggest that she might have been the nearest thing edgeworth had to a mia; his 'chief prosecutor' to phoenix's plain 'chief'. they're as close as two people can be in a relationship where one of them is constantly lying and the other is von karma's star pupil.
rfta is pretty straightforwardly depicted as the case which solidified edgeworth's resolve to do what he did; i don't think i have to prove that. rumours about him have reached new heights, his car and knife were involved in goodman's murder, he makes an unprecedented mistake in court by failing to connect the evidence room and carpark incidents, thus forcing the chief of police to enter the trial to do so himself, and he's publicly revealed to have relied on falsified evidence to secure a conviction in the sl-9 case, all of which only happened because of lana. jake marshall even claims that from the beginning — that if you trace edgeworth's rumours back to their source, you end up meeting one person: lana skye.
and it gets worse because at the end of rfta, she thinks he's fine!! she literally says, 'i was afraid the pressure would break you, but you rose above it,' and reminds him he's nothing like gant because he's not alone. she leaves the case thinking he will be okay. and then, what, like a week passes, and she finds out that he wasn't, and that he's gone, and it's her fault. even after she was freed from gant's control, even after she had finally stopped lying, she couldn't prevent herself from claiming another life. so much for 'lady luck', i suppose.
and the game reiterates this multiple times. gumshoe states at the start that edgeworth's ties to those higher up in the department have made him the subject of constant rumours, and phoenix says (in front of ema) that he shouldn't be held responsible for the forged evidence because that was all lana's doing, which then leads to edgeworth commenting (again in front of ema) that he feels as though 'something inside him has died.' it all goes back to lana. we can argue and say that it was technically gant's doing that caused all of this, but lana still took actions that led to it. even her complicated friendship with edgeworth isn't spared; it's that closeness between them that exacerbated those rumours. how could she not feel responsible in some way?
and with ema, it's rather obvious, isn't it? if she hadn't gone poking her nose into things, none of this would have happened or come to light. and, of course, she'd never choose anyone over her sister, not for anything in the world — it's simply not a question, but that's the problem, isn't it? it's not a question. it's not some hypothetical moral dilemma. it just is. she may not have killed neil marshall, but she still has one king of prosecutor's blood on her hands. and now she has to live with that. she just. has. to live with it. no matter if he chose otherwise.
moving on from that a little, i think it's actually wild how much of ema's journey to becoming a forensics investigator is paved with bad memories. neil marshall's death and her subsequent inability to testify are what drives her to begin pursuing it, her first proper investigation results in her idol's "death" and when she finally graduates, the person who saved her sister has been disbarred, and she can't even help because she isn't allowed to. all that pain and constant pursuit of her goals, and she's still the same ema skye, still that girl shrouded in darkness, always one step behind the truth, one step a little too late. no wonder she was angry in aa:aj. i would be furious.
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