maggiekarp2:

insomniacflaaffy: srlac: insomniacflaaffy: I don’t care if the protag is gay or trans or whatever. The story has to be good. Gender and sexuality aren’t part of a character’s personality. I’m not going to suddenly read your book if the first word you describe your character is ‘lesbian’ or ‘agender’. Yeah representation is awesome and all but let the reader find out that the protag is gay by, I don’t know, reading the actual story. Stop having the protag throwing around that they’re gay every moment they talk like it’s their catchphrase. I rather have a hero that happens to be gay/trans/whatever than a person saying ‘I’m this’ like it gives them a free pass to stuff. It doesn’t. Stop that, that’s bad writing. As a writer and reader, I feel this so much. Unless your story is specifically about a certain trait of a character (a story about race focusing on a character’s skin colour, a story about sexuality focusing on a character’s preferences etc.) then they shouldn’t be mentioning it every turn. If I’m reading a fantasy novel, Sir John Smith being gay is irrelevant as to whether or not he can slay that dragon. I certainly agree that representation is important. But the way I see good representation is by having a character that is well-written to the point where you’ve made a person. They can have whatever traits you want, but a person has more traits to them than their skin colour, or their gender identity, or who they find attractive. If you’ve made a character and people can only identify them as ‘the gay one’, or ‘the trans one’, or anything like that, then you haven’t made a character. You’ve made a condensed caricature. And at that point you can’t really blame anyone if they don’t identify with/like the character when there’s not that much about them to like/identify with in the first place.

You. I like you. Y’all need to read some Ursula K. Le Guin if you haven’t already. Modern champions of social justice in x field like to forget she ever existed and think they invented brown people and gay people, but she does good sci-fi/fantasy with those types of characters where their identities are both seamless and the entire point, not in a pandering way at all.

Adding my two cents here since I read a lot of books during my free time in highschool (and I can’t wait until break to read some more). I read this really nicely written series (I think it was called Rainbow Boys) which detailed the struggles of three LGBT boys and their sexualities. Obviously in this case, knowing how they identify themselves in crucial to the plot of the story. In fact, two are gay and one is bi and knowing that helped advance the plot and brought excellent character development.

Another series I read, called Cherub, has nothing to do with LBGT themes or romance; however, at one point, two guy friends where chatting about girlfriends. One of them asked the other why he never had a girlfriend, to which he responds with “I’m gay”. Here, being gay isn’t thrown around like balls during dodgeball. It was brought up in conversation and it also helped person A grow as a character when he tried wrapping his mind over his best friend being gay.

In these examples, characters’ sexualities are brought up when needed for plot or development. What Flaaffy is saying is that if you read a summary where the character is described as gay/trans/not cis or het, and there is NOTHING else to go on, it’s a bad story. Sexuality is only ONE part of a character.

Summary one: Bob is a hardworking man who lives a normal life with his boyfriend, until one day, aliens invade the Earth! Using nothing but a kitchen knife, the two must defend their simple apartment from the invaders.

Summary two: Hi, I’m Raven. I’m a MTF transperson and my life is pretty boring. Also I’m trans. A new student joined my school and I hope to be friends with him and I’m trans incase you didn’t know.

In the first one, being gay isn’t important to the plot but it was revealed subtly and without much force. Also aliens! I want to know how the hardworking Bob and his boyfriend defeat aliens with a kitchen knife!

I know the second one is quite exaggerated but being trans is literally the only defining point of this character. Is she popular in school? I don’t know, but I do know she’s trans and I’d much rather read about Bob.

I hope I made some sense. There’s nothing wrong with stating whether characters are LGBT or not but if that’s literally all they have going for them and it’s not important to the story what-so-ever, then that’s bad writing and is just as useless as stating that a character is cishet. If it comes up in the story without being forced, then great! Dat’s some good rep right there!

