RantI’m not sure if this is the right sub to talk about stuff like this, but does anyone else feel like /everything/ has to have something trans related in it these days?

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[–]lovelyspearmintLesbeing a lesbian 22 insightful - 2 fun22 insightful - 1 fun23 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

It's not just trans. It's series having a 'Cast of Gay'. As in, the majority of the cast, if not the entire cast, are gay, bisexual, lesbian, (queer, trans). It's bothering me mostly because a) it's unrealistic statistics wise, and b) unless the author actually is gay/bisexual/lesbian (excluding transgays, transbians, non-binaries and pamsexuals), it feels like fetishisation, trend following and/or virtue-signalling, not a genuine desire to write about LGB characters.

One good example is the influx of 'cute' gay romances like Red, White and Royal Blue which purely exist for women to squee over. Just one look at the Goodreads page is enough to tell me this is written by women for women.

Another example of what I mean is the popularity of Gideon the Ninth and its sequel. I was interested when I heard the author was a lesbian, but then when I did a bit of digging about her partner on her Twitter account, I found that her partner is and continues to be a man. So she's using the lesbian label to promote her books about lesbian necromancers, and she has (since publishing) talked about her husband as a partner, never letting slip that he's a man.

The cherry on top is Sarah Gailey and her bullshit. She's a queer non-binary (who smartly never reveals the gender of her 'partner', always uses they), writes books with casts of LGBTQI+ people of colour (intersectional af), including a series set in alternate history Wild West where everyone is fine with people being LGB and respect and never question people's pronouns 🤮 I can stand that in far future sci-fi, but it's jarring and forceful in anything set in the past.

[–]Horror-SwordfishI don't get how flairs work 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I generally don't mind "alternate history" in that sense, although I would much prefer it to be just a completely different universe or something. Like "Bridgerton" on Netflix is "alternate history" but it's still jarring at first glance.

And I also don't mind a "cast of gay" necessarily. Sometimes it's fairly realistic - I'm thinking about "Queer as Folk" or "Looking" where I can buy that a group of gay guys that hang out in gay hotspots are all friends.

Mostly I get annoyed when there are gay characters that their whole thing is just "I'm gay, gay gay gaygaygay, look at me, I'm kissing another boy, I'm so gay, gay gay gay," because that's so offensive to me as a gay man. I'm more than just a gay guy. How hard is it to write just a regular old character and then throw in "and he's gay" at the end? I don't know; I guess for some people that comes across as pandering, too, but I'd much prefer to see characters that are acknowledged to be gay but it's just not even a thing that really comes up, because in most of my regular life, being gay is not even a thing for me.

[–]lovelyspearmintLesbeing a lesbian 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

My (straight) mother has always sung the praises of Tales from the City, which is a cast of gay that seems unforced, especially since they're in San Francisco.

The 'and he's gay' at the end feels like a gotcha or cop out, almost like 'we tricked you into thinking this guy was a normal guy, but he's actually GAY!' I personally think it's better if you treat the character the same as you would a straight one, have something hint at them being gay, or outright say it at some point in the story, but not have it be a twist or an ending beat.

[–]Horror-SwordfishI don't get how flairs work 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I haven't read "Tales from the City," but I actually started watching the original TV series of it a while back and, while I was somewhat into it, there was something weird about it for me. I think the musical cues messed me up, because there's always this slightly-creepy suspenseful-sounding music going on in the background but it's just like, two people talking about ice cream or something and it was a weird disconnect for me. Not sure how the newer version is, though. But yeah, that's the same as "Looking" - it's set in San Fran, so you'd expect a large gay population, and it wouldn't be surprising to see a group of four gay men as friends. If I was watching something set in, oh I don't know, West Virginia in a small rural town, and there was a group of four gay male friends that always managed to find gay guys outside of their group to date or whatnot, I'd be a little perturbed because that's not very realistic, and it just serves to take me out of it.

And yeah, that's kind of what I meant by the "and he's gay" thing. I don't want to see that as like a gotcha or anything like that, but I want to see well-written, fleshed-out characters that happen to be gay and it's neither a big deal nor the entirety of their personality.