[ SECRET POST #3216 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3216 ⌋

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

01.


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02.
(The Blacklist)


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03.
[The Sum Of Us/Russell Crowe]


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04.
[Dan and Phil]


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05.
[Tokyo Ghoul:re]


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06.
[dick grayson]


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07.
[Scandinavia and the World]


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08.
[Doctor Who]


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09.
[One Piece]


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10.
[Lost Dimension]


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11.
[Sleepy Hollow]










Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 075 secrets from Secret Submission Post #460.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[dratinis]

Personally, a lot of responses to this kind of question come across as fetishism, tokenism, or just plain exploitation. Especially the ones that go "let's make xyz gay to piss people off".

I think you managed to articulate why these questions bother me: the answers are really off-putting. I don't know, it's not cool to want to change a character's sexuality just because think the wank would be glorious. Like I know it's for fun, but it's still weird to me.

And yes, it does make more sense to have more variety in media! I have to say that it's less about politics, and more about media portrayals that make sense.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't like how so many people seem to only want to make xyz character LGBT+ because it would make other people angry, or as some kind of political figurehead. Isn't that just using LGBT+ people as ammunition, and basically just tokenism?

It might be tokenism if we all only wanted ONE LGBT character, for the sake of representation or whatever. But nobody is saying that here.

Nobody is saying, "And if I had this one LGBT character, I wouldn't want any more original LGBT characters."

Nobody is saying, "This is the only het character I would personally like to see as LGBT."

People are simply listing their favorite candidates for a het character they'd like to see established as LGBT. If you asked any of us how many LGBT characters we'd like to see in mainstream media, I'm sure almost all of us would say "A hell of a lot more than there are right now." And if you asked us for a comprehensive list of het characters we'd kinda like to see established as LGBT, I'm pretty sure most of us would have a lot more than one or two characters on our lists. And if you asked us why we wanted each of those het characters to be LGBT characters, our answers would probably range widely, from, "Because I ship him with another male character," to "Because I think it would make her character read as more complex," to, "Because I think it would make audiences reevaluate some of their ideas about gender and sex" to, "because that's how I think he comes off anyway," and a lot of other reasons.

OP asked a completely valid, and fun, theoretical question, and I really don't understand the need to pick it apart and reach for something to find suspect in it all.

[(Anonymous)]

[AYRT, also KotOR II anon]

Ah, well, see... the problem with saying "Nobody is saying xyz" occurs when some people are clearly saying xyz.

OP isn't the one I take issue with. It's some of the people posting in the thread about how they want a character to be gay JUST to piss off the fandom, or (at least once) because political representation, but mostly pissing off the fandom. The first is blatant exploitation, the second is tokenism. I was referring to specific behaviors I saw in thread when I posted.

For my part specifically, I just have to wonder: Why are we assuming that this or that character without a declared/established gender identity or sexuality is cis or het, anyway? This is because I start from a position of "everyone is neutral unless stated otherwise"... does no one else do that? Does it ever really matter if it's not plot relevant?

I'm also not too fussed about "representation" - I've never felt that I "need" more characters of my particular demographics, but if it's there and someone clearly tried to handle it properly, it's just a nice bonus. My benchmarks are "Does it make sense in context?" and "Does it enrich the story, or in a videogame, justifiably expand player choice?" (Granted, my own answer to the OP was blatant personal bias, but I did also try to look at it from those perspectives.)

I really don't understand some people's need to continually inject Big Political Statements into what should be a narrative question.

[(Anonymous)]

or (at least once) because political representation

Are you talking about the person who said Captain America? Or the person who said James Bond? Or both? Or neither?

Because the Bond one was me and I'm standing by that. I also give a hearty second to the Captain America one. We need things that challenge people's prejudices and biases, and shake up their/our flawed understandings of these huge concepts such as masculinity and nationality. When something does that it has the potential to make a significant impact. So if that's what you're arguing is tokenism, then we are just never going to agree.

But maybe you're actually talking about a completely different comment that I skipped over or something. In which case, which one?

I do think that wanting a character to be LGBT just to piss people off is a bit...petulant, I guess. But I really don't see it as exploitation. YMMV, all I can say is that I'm ace and I certainly wouldn't agree that making a character asexual just to piss people off was exploitation.

This is because I start from a position of "everyone is neutral unless stated otherwise"... does no one else do that?

I don't if it's probably not what the narrative is implying. Which is to say, if a character is established as being attracted to one gender, and is not relatively quickly established as also being attracted to the other (another?) gender, then I will assume their sexual preference is for the gender they have been established to be attracted to.

In real life I typically won't make that assumption about a person, but when it comes to fictional narratives it's usually a pretty safe bet that a character who hasn't been established to be bisexual isn't intended by the writers to be bisexual. With a few exceptions, of course.

I really don't understand some people's need to continually inject Big Political Statements into what should be a narrative question.

Me either, though to be honest, that does rather seem to be what you're doing here. I mean with the whole "If you do it for this reason then that's Exploitation, and if you do it for that reason then it's Tokenism" bit. That seems like make a big political issue out of a playful narrative thought experiment, to me.

[(Anonymous)]

It's probably one of those. I can't remember which comment I was thinking of this morning.

But anyway: If you really want to "challenge people's prejudices", that's what the "write your own characters" option is for. The idea that "it has to be an established character because they're well-known" just reads as "we need to use the name of someone famous to take advantage of their star power" more than anything else - and going along that line of reasoning, the hypothetical decision to make the character come out as LGBT+ focuses more on using them as a tool to further someone's political opinion than on what suits the character's personality and background.

If you're turning characters gay just for the sake of having more gay people in media, that's tokenizing in the sense that it's acting to fill an imaginary quota. If you're doing it just to "shake people up", and not because it complements the character and improves the story, you're using the character as a mouthpiece to convey your views in a very direct sense, and that's what feels exploitative to me - that, say, "gayness" or "transness" or "aceness" are being valued not for the depth they bring to narrative and character, but for what they contribute to someone's idea of a Message Everyone Needs to Hear.

It's the difference between a regular narrative and an author tract - intent. I'm agender. I'm aro (or gray-aro, damned if I can figure that one out). I don't know about you, but if someone picks me out for something "because we need more people who aren't cis or het here", that to me feels like being used - as if someone's trying to define me by my (lack of) gender or my orientation. Doubly so if it's more like "Hey, we're going to parade your existence around because we know it's going to make the cishets mad" - which is basically exactly what a lot of people are saying here. If it were me up there and not some character (and of course, none of these are our own characters), I'd feel exactly like a puppet on strings, and that bothers me. Is that so hard to imagine?

I mean, if it is first and foremost about enriching the narrative and expanding the character's dimensions in an interesting way, go right ahead. If it just happens to do us "non-mainstream" folks a favor, well and good. Just as long as gender/orientation isn't being made the character's defining trait.

I'm still going to maintain that my intent wasn't to *introduce* politicizing material. I already said I have no issue with the OP. I only responded to it because it leaves a sour taste in my mouth, in a "right things for the wrong reasons" sort of way.

As for reading into characters - I suppose if one way or another is actually clearly implied, reading them as that is probably valid (well, in my case, assuming I notice - I'm notoriously blind to romantic/sexual subtext). But if it doesn't come up (or just has a very weak presence at best) in the narrative, then they're undefined. Still, when it comes to "making a character xyz orientation", I hugely prefer having actual grounds to support it, not just throwing in a complete 180 degrees for some reason or other.

I'll admit, though. I still don't quite understand where you're coming from (or anyone else, for that matter) regarding the whole idea of using characters (particularly established ones) to send this or that message, or in this case changing said characters for that purpose explicitly. Mostly because this is one of the first times I've run into someone who disagreed without immediately turning things into a flamewar. So, well, I am curious.

[(Anonymous)]

I did the jon snow comment and no, I wouldn't want it just to piss people off, but also because it would be awesome in a Dumbledore-sort of way, only more so if it were actually IN the books, plus I think it would make a great development for his character. But I would have lots of fun seing fandom explode. Like, Red Wedding Sorty explode. Or Korrasami-explode. That's just the part that is most fun to watch :P
I'm an LGBT Person, btw.

[(Anonymous)]

Well... I suppose that's fair. Not very clear in the original post, but this does make things clearer. I haven't read past the first book, but as a long-time lover of spoilers, I am curious to hear your reasoning for why Jon could be gay/bi...

Well, I can't say I don't *understand* the pissing the fandom off thing. Wank threads are, indeed, the height of entertainment. Just that I think that should be incidental, not the express purpose, because the idea of "Someone's gender/orientation was decided for the sake of flamebait" still weirds me the hell out as any sort of serious proposition.