romance is everywhere in animal crossing. and the "not child friendly" excuse really hurts. if you cared about things being child-friendly, you'd be concerned about smug villagers, or especially about Kapp'n, who is a much older character, flirting with the player when said player might be a very young child. but no one thinks there's anything wrong with that. because it's straight.
The "not child friendly" argument coming up in this thread is funny to me too because it's literally and explicitly the excuse Nintendo has used historically to keep gay content out of their games. That and the whole "we're not trying to do social commentary" thing, which is equally offensive. This is in response to players campaigning for gay relationships to be added to Tomodachi Life back in 2014:
"[Nintendo] never intended to make any form of social commentary with the launch of Tomodachi Life...The relationship options in the game represent a playful alternate world rather than a real-life simulation. We hope that all of our fans will see that Tomodachi Life was intended to be a whimsical and quirky game, and that we were absolutely not trying to provide social commentary." (source)
In other words, "I don't see why you're so upset, we're just trying to imagine a playful alternate world where gay people don't exist".
Aside from the points I and others have made in this thread already about the specifics of the language choices in the localization and the validity of gleaning a relationship beyond "roommates/business partners" through it, for the folks in here saying things like "I don't see why this matters, why do you care, it's just a game, etc.": that quote is six years old. It's old enough to go to kindergarten, and yet in the intervening six years Nintendo
still hasn't published a game with queer characters that come any closer to canon than CJ and Flick. Until proven otherwise, the official stance of Nintendo in the year 2020 is
still that they'd prefer Playful Alternate Worlds that don't contain any queer people.
I think it's safe to say that everyone here is on this forum because we enjoy Nintendo games, and Animal Crossing in particular, and (most likely) New Horizons, but for the people here arguing that it's pointless to talk about this or that nobody should care, imagine how it feels to love the work of a publisher known for its inspiration of delight and childlike wonder, to feel attached to a series as joyful and kind as Animal Crossing, and have the company responsible for its existence basically tell you they're grateful for your "passion" (read: money), but they'd rather you didn't exist.
I'm not a shipper; I'm not gonna go out searching for CJ/Flick content, so I'm not saying any of this because I'm "mad that my ship isn't canon" or whatever. What I
am is queer, and it's nice to finally have a little morsel of content that nods towards me in a series I've been playing since it first came out on the Gamecube. It's a good feeling to see yourself reflected in the media you experience, even if you're forced to find that reflection in interpretation of language coming out of the mouth of a digital beaver.
It's a fictional game yes but if you cant handle two characters being gay in a game where they LITERALLY NEVER COME INTO PHYSICAL CONTACT WITH EACH OTHER Then you clearly have no tolerance for it irl either jsdnkjsdfnkdsjfn
