fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3118 ]

[ SECRET POST #3118 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3118 ⌋

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How do you feel? Especially if you're gay? Does it feel like an affront to you? Like gay characters are only "allowed" to exist if they die, or their deaths are because they're gay, regardless of any other plot contexts?

Because, thar's the reaction I see a lot, and it makes me feel like saying 1. Character is not a reflection of you; you are not Character, and 2. Character -like you, I imagine - is more than their sexuality and reducing them to that is really shortsighted especially from someone who's all about the craft of writing.

But I'm not gay,so maybe I'm just way off base.

Uhh... Well, that depends on how and why they died. I feel more affronted whenever I see another Gay Villain (or Bisexual Villain).

Gay fridging isn't really as much of a concern to me as making someone LGBTQAetc and just making them automatically evil because reasons while their straight white protagonist runs around saving the world.

Charlie on SPN and Willow on BTVS are the biggest examples I can think of, if that context helps.

Yeah, I still can't really care. I don't think it's particularly terrible for any character to die until it becomes a case of the black guy always dying first.

To my knowledge this doesn't tend to happen with queer characters as much as they get cast as antagonists.

Re: When gay characters die...

(Anonymous) - 2015-07-18 23:50 (UTC) - Expand

Most people on Supernatural who aren't Dean, Cas, and Sam end up dying on Supernatural (...but hell, even they've each died a couple of times before even though they at least got to come back). This is especially true if the character is a woman. I'm not sure that one is really a good example. If she was one of the few characters to kick the bucket, then maybe it would be more suspicious

Re: When gay characters die...

(Anonymous) - 2015-07-19 00:36 (UTC) - Expand

This right here is why I was baffled by all the Hannibal shippers who were wailing about "Representation!"

IDK bro a cannibal serial killer isn't exactly great representation.

but it shows you how transparent their motive are, they care more about their ship becoming canon than any actual notion of social justice

SJ shippers are among the most annoying. No, getting to be smug that your ship is canon is not my social-justice issue.

Frankly, you kind of are. There's a huge history of killing off gay characters. It's a trope. It's how they were allowed into a lot of media (I'm thinking movies in particular) in a very homophobic culture: hint heavily at the gay, but kill them at the end, because that's the punishment for being gay. It's an ugly history and it's been teaching gay people, and especially gay kids, to connect their gayness with death and punishment and tragedy. Gayness as a tragic trope is an incredibly hurtful thing to see over and over in media, and we've had more than enough of it.

thiiiiiiiiiiiiiis you've basically summed it up right there.

Brokeback Mountain IS this trope. It's rare for gay characters to appear in media at all, even rarer that they get a happy ending. (Because clearly they're going to hell!)

nayrt

Uh, "gay fridging" is certainly a thing, but not all gay people who die in media are necessarily fridged. Brokeback Mountain is NOT an example of that - the story centers around their love story, and the death of one of the characters is not to punish anyone or get rid of scary gay subtext. That is just not the case at all. And the main character learns how to come to terms with his love and gayness at the end, thus definitely not being a gay fridging trope.

I'll agree that "gay Romeo and Juliet" tropes might.. be "overplayed", but frankly I find them too realistic in this day and age to really accuse of being trite.

Re: When gay characters die...

(Anonymous) - 2015-07-19 01:27 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When gay characters die...

(Anonymous) - 2015-07-19 04:37 (UTC) - Expand

I've heard that was a common thing... in very old movies that were made before all our parents were born and most of which are long gone now. It doesn't seem relevant to apply to anything current.

Re: When gay characters die...

(Anonymous) - 2015-07-19 05:52 (UTC) - Expand

Depends entirely on the story.

I'm bisexual... and, most of the time, it doesn't bother me at all. If there's nothing to imply that the character died because they were gay, or if there was and it was a hate crime, a real thing that happens, as long as the death is treated respectfully in the story I don't see it as a problem either. Basically as long as the other characters react to the death the way they would to anyone else's death I don't think it means anything.

If they're a joke character whose only purpose is to be gay and then die and it's comical, that would bother me but I can't think of anything I've seen where that happens, although I'm sure it does somewhere. [I only thought of that example because it's something that happens to straight teenage couples in horror movies who are introduced to have sex and then get killed off, implication being that having sex without being married is bad and you should be punished for it.]

I've also read articles criticizing the gay character death by hate crime for teaching kids that if you're gay, you'll get killed for it, so don't be gay... but all the examples they give are things that, when I saw things like that as an Impressionable Young Child, I thought it was crystal clear that the message was this is wrong and horrible, don't fucking kill people for being gay, NOT that it's gay people's job to stop being gay.

Re: SA

elaminator - 2015-07-19 00:37 (UTC) - Expand

Re: SA

(Anonymous) - 2015-07-19 00:41 (UTC) - Expand

IA, and well said.

I suppose it depends on the individual situation, but as long as the character isn't dying because they are gay I see it as any other death. (Which means I might very well think that the death was bullshit, but I might also see it as perfectly fitting considering the piece of media.)

If the death is a hate crime...well, that's depressing, but anon is right, it does happen and as long as it isn't treated lightly I'm not going to scream about it. (I DO want happier stories staring gay characters, but I feel like with time we'll see more of it. Things are changing, even if slowly.)

Because of the fact that "tragic" is practically the only ending for lesbian characters/relationships in media, as a lesbian myself, it does start to feel a little...pointed. It's why, with femslash, I ship almost exclusively pairings that have zero chance of ever becoming canon, because the likelihood of one half (or both halves!) of a canon lesbian pair being killed off is so huge that it's emotionally exhausting to try to deal with over and over.

Like, I kind of get what you're saying-- characters should not be seen only as extensions of their sexuality. But it's noticeable. And it does send a message.

I am gay, and in my opinion, it just depends on it's done. With any trope I'm pretty willing to look at it fairly and on an individual basis. Still, trends are hard to ignore.

The question is, does it feel like the movie killed off the gay character because they didn't want to actually deal with the gayness? For that matter, did the character in question have defining traits and a characterization that didn't amount to "s/he's gay"?

If the character is treated fairly as an individual, and the story doesn't feel like it's conveniently getting rid of that character or punishing them, then I'm less likely to be offended. I'm also quite willing to keep in mind the genre - if loads of straight characters are also dying off, there's that, too.

Ok, let's talk some specifics:

Rent: Love justifies a better ending, unless you're a feminine gay man, then you're dead at the start of Act 2.

Red Sonja: Classic example of the evil lesbian trope.

Freedom Ring: A gratuitously violent death at a time when the publisher was struggling to avoid sacrificing LGBT B-listers as plot fodder or keeping them out of production hell.

Deep Space Nine, Jadzia Dax: Probably doesn't qualify because Dax's bisexuality was brought out in a handful of episodes and shuffled back into subtext.

Mass Effect 3, various: Honestly the apocalyptic ending is the only one that makes sense as a conclusion to the series. For members of the crew to go the way of Beowulf has a certain satisfaction.

Dragon Age 2: That you can bring about the death of various companions is completely unrelated to their bisexuality.

To a similar degree, it doesn't bother me that Rose Quartz in Steven Universe is apparently dead.

Re: When gay characters die...

(Anonymous) - 2015-07-19 01:21 (UTC) - Expand

Like several other people in this thread, it just depends. For example, if a character is revealed to be gay and is then killed off pretty soon after, then that's annoying and feels like the writers wanted to get points for having a gay character but didn't actually want to deal with having a gay character on the show. In a lot of cases though (especially on shows where numerous characters have died instead of JUST the gay character), it doesn't really bother me.

I feel... pretty much the same way I feel when straight characters or characters with no confirmed sexual orientation die.

I don't think they die for being gay, unless they're the only gay character in the entire universe and they are being singled out for being gay, and die in a manner that no one else dies.

it does bother me, with few exceptions.

though what bothers me more is your flippant disregard for the existence of this well-known trope.

How is it flippant?

It's very late so this is going to be kind of a ramble.A lot of gay culture from the past century is tied into the pulp fiction of the 50s, and a lot of those were only considered okay if the characters realized their sins and "reformed", or died as some kind of punishment. This kind of thing in stories both reflects and informs the way society in general thinks. Also, unlike real people, fictional characters are given certain traits for a purpose and if the author said "I'm going to make this character gay and then they die", they probably did that for a reason, especially if that was the only gay character. And a lot of it might be subconscious but in that case I think authors really need to take a look at what they've written and question the implications.

tl;dr gay characters can die but in 2015 I am really sick of reading about it and I'm really happy with the steps a lot of creators have been taking to get away from it

Unsurprised and irritated because it is such a common trope to kill off the gay/lesbians. It has bad implications that they can never be happy and must die tragically and it is a trope that happens all the time. Very unimpressed and depending on my mood I can quite happily ditch watching something with such generic writing.

(Unless it's like a horror movie and everyone dies, although it's always easy to pick who will survive)

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