fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2926 ]

[ SECRET POST #2926 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2926 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sometimes the "all characters are gay" thing bugs me but I think it depends on why it's written that way. If you take the 10 biggest characters in a canon and write them all as having same-sex partner (even if some of them are straight or have never shown any same-sex attraction in canon, and even if they have same-sex canon partners) and try to pass it off as really realistic I'll roll my eyes. But if you're writing it just because you want to because why not? then it's not a big deal.

I don't like it because it's OOC. When I read fanfic I want it to be congruent with canon, and anything different better have a damn good explanation.

O_o I... don't quite understand this viewpoint, anon.

Yes, some characters like to go around going, "By the way, have I mentioned I'm heterosexual? Man, I am SO heterosexual. Like, the very IDEA of queerness makes me curl in a fetal position." But a lot of them just don't state it, because it just doesn't come up.

It doesn't seem OOC to me to have a character be queer if they just NEVER express a sexual preference in canon at all?

Then again, pretty much all my friends these days are queer, so in my case, yeah, actually, if you made a show about my social life, it would be the Rainbow Brigade, only you might not know it because we'd be busy making art or having meltdowns.

AYRT

It just depends on the situation, but honestly, most characters DO express a sexual preference in canon. If they have a relationship with someone of the opposite sex, or express interest in somebody of the opposite sex, statistically speaking they are very likely straight. And they're certainly going to be perceived that way, because bisexuality is much rarer than homosexuality, which is already uncommon. So having one of those characters be bisexual is one thing, I can buy that, but several is just ridiculous. There just aren't that many statistically, so IMO you're going into bizarre territory that doesn't hold up to canon. And yeah, queer people do form communities, so you're going to find larger ratios of them together socially, but not when people are randomly thrown together.

because bisexuality is much rarer than homosexuality

Uh, what? Where did you hear that, Anon? Because, um, the Kinsey Report REALLY disagrees with you. People who have some sexual experience with both sexes are MORE common than gay folks. (And in men, at least at the time of the study, guys with sexual experience with both were 46% of the population. Not exactly rare.)

And that was back in the 50s, one of the most repressed eras in the past century of US history.

Sorry, I should have said people who identify as bisexual.

Wait, no, that still doesn't make sense. You weren't arguing that people who identify as bisexual are rare, you specifically said,

"If they have a relationship with someone of the opposite sex, or express interest in somebody of the opposite sex, statistically speaking they are very likely straight."

That is factually wrong. If 46% of men in the fifties had a same-sex experience, then it is actually FOLLOWING PROBABILITY to have half your male characters have at least one same-sex experience.

So what they identify as doesn't matter. It's their ACTIONS. Which is what fanfic is mostly writing about, unless characters are specifically stating their orientation.

Also, I have brought evidence to the table. Where is yours? Because right now, it feels like you're saying, "Bisexuals shouldn't exist much in fanfic because I say so," not out of any reason, logic, or evidence.

Well, in the case of characters in fics, I'm talking about them identifying as bi or gay, not just being a 2 on the scale. I genuinely don't want to get into the Kinsey scale study because this is besides the point of this debate, but given that most of the people in that study were interviewed on a volunteer basis, most of them being young, I would suggest that the results are highly skewed at best. As for my assertion that homosexuality and bisexuality are uncommon, I honestly can't believe you are asking for a source, because it's widely accepted fact, but okay? Go Google "how many people are gay or bi", and then click on the first 30 links that pop up. Every study shows anywhere from 3 to 9 percent of the population in the United States, with 9 being extremely generous, most are closer to 3-5%. People who identify as bisexual is always less than half of the percentage of people who identify as gay, usually around a third and sometimes around a fourth.

So what about that isn't rare?

A lot of people who are bisexual (as in they feel attracted to both sexes or have sexual encounters with both sexes) don't identify as bisexual. Part of that is because people tend to feel they have to "choose." Bisexuality has a really bad rap.

But anyway, when they have done studies of arousal, they actually found that bisexuality is more common than homosexuality.

I don't find that hard to believe at all. But I also think that just because you are aroused by sexual material involving the other gender doesn't mean you'd want to have sex or be in a relationship with that gender, hence identifying as straight or as gay even if you have a modicum of attraction to the other gender.

...but fanfic by it's very definition is going to be different from canon.

That's the whole point of it.

Unless all you read is gen that basically rehashes the canonical events, then I'm not sure what you're getting out of fanfiction at all.

I read fanfiction that is a continuation of canon, i.e. more canon.

But it's not canon, and never will be. It comes with other people's views and biases and interpretations of canon, some of which will be entirely at odds with yours.

I can't see how you're setting yourself up for anything other than disappointment, honestly.

I'm actually not disappointed pretty regularly. There are a lot of good writers out there who understand canon quite well and are very good at slipping into it.

DA

but I mean just logically that could never be canon. It is not canon. It agrees with a specific understanding of canon (ie yours) but said understanding of canon is itself also distinct from canon. It really feels like you're coming fusing your understanding of canon with the thing itself.

It's not like I read fanfic and think that it is a part of canon. I simply enjoy fanfic that fits into the world of canon. And it's not an interpretation of canon. It IS canon. Some people extrapolate from canon in ways that I wouldn't do, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I dislike when people CHANGE canon. And that's just my preference.

But I'm not really even sure what point you're trying to make anymore. *shrugs*

I think anon understands that.

It sounds like they're saying they like thinking of it as a continuation of canon. I understand that because I do the same thing. I don't go around saying to other people "this is canon!" (that would be ridiculous) but I think of it as part of the canon that exists in my head. In other words...the whole thing is one big elaborate headcanon to me.

It's not necessarily OOC to write a character as queer - only if a character is confirmed straight, which doesn't actually happen that often, I don't think. And even then, if it's well-written, exceptions to one's orientation can be a thing - they happen in real life, too.

To me, it's about bending probability to the extreme when you write all the main characters in a large canon as queer at the same time, and going out of your way to write same-sex pairs just for the sake of it, without regard to whether the couples in the fic actually work and without regard to any residual effects of broken-up canon ships. (To be clear, I don't mind writing ships that contradict canon ships, but if it's done at a point in canonical timeline after the ship has been established, acting like it never happened breaks canon and isn't realistic. And again, I'm talking about fics that are touted as being realistic and well-written, not just written for fun indulgence.) Chances are if you pick 20 people at random they will not all be queer. In fact chances are pretty low. Chances are high that one or more of them will be queer, of course, but low that they will all be queer. Compound that with the above-mentioned OOC-ness that sometimes has to be used to force this, and...it doesn't come off as good writing at all, but rather as possibly fetishistic or, at best, lazy.

Now if a canon presented itself with all the characters being queer, then it totally could work. But (for better or for worse) most canons don't. So again - it's about realism, to me.

Edited 2015-01-08 06:09 (UTC)

AYRT

Basically I agree with you. I'm just hugely invested in the canons of the works I like and I don't like things that do, or even *seem* to, challenge it's existence. So if you can convince me that so-and-so character is gay based on something in canon, then I'm likely to go along with it. When you start making every character gay I go, "huh?", because that is so completely unrealistic and is at odds with the canon universe (assuming it's not the canon of something about the queer community, of course), especially universes that are supposed to be slices of the real world. The more fantastical the universe is, and the less sexuality is discussed within canon, the less likely I am to be bothered.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2926 ]

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