fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2059 ]

[ SECRET POST #2059 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2059 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 045 secrets from Secret Submission Post #294.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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So, when else is equality not equality. Because it's been brought to my attention that treating gay characters the same as straight characters isn't actually equality if you're talking about character death. Because losing one gay character on a six-character show equates to losing 50 percent of your gay characters. Unless, apparently, you're also going to kill off two straight characters to balance it.

Didn't you know? Good story-telling involves a lot of math, fractions, and walking on eggshells. Plot and content comes later.

LOL.

That is the worst bartering system I have ever heard. I'll give you two straight kills for one gay kill. How about it?

How about this, if you can't kill your gay character because you think it is unbalanced then that gay character was never equal to begin with. He/She is your token gay. Which, I don't know, I think it's worse because that character can not go through hardship and grow as a character least you come across as homophobic. Thing is, the best characters out there are dragged through the mud. Instead, you have to treat your gay characters like some sort of glass menagerie. (And no gentleman caller is going to come in a save you from horrible writing.)

And the horrible thing? This gay bartering thing? Is coming from a group ringleadered by a gay man and full of gender- and sexuality-fluid people.

It was LITERALLY said that gay characters need to be treated better than straight characters until there is equal representation in the media (I'm guessing 50/50 because who's going to agree on equal representation compared to the real world) and then -- only then -- is it okay to have bad things happen to gay characters (but you should still really think about if it's something that *needs* done.

We will only know when there is true equality when no-one is actually noting what race, gender or sexual orientation a character is when they die and talking about how a minority is getting shafted because the character was fridged.

True representational equality in that sense is a long way off. Especially by fandom standards.

p.s. Your comment made me think of Torchwood for some reason... maybe because were talking about everyone being killed off. IDEK.

We will only know when there is true equality when no-one is actually noting what race, gender or sexual orientation a character is when they die

So, only when we've erased the identities of all the queers, then? That's not equality. Gender and sexuality MATTER. You can't just erase them from the equation without erasing a part of the person.

I think what they're trying to say is that equality will happen when we don't feel the need to have to make note that "this character was killed, and they're a woman" or "this character died and they're black." Not that gender, race and sexuality don't matter at all.

Re: Equality

(Anonymous) - 2012-08-22 23:45 (UTC) - Expand

That was not my point. My point was that we will know we're truly equal when sex, gender, race etc. don't actually matter to anyone anymore. When characters can just be what they are without it being noteworthy and statement making. I wasn't advocating erasure, I was advocating normalcy.

You know, the kind of utopia where there is no racism, sexism or homophobia.

Re: Equality

(Anonymous) - 2012-08-24 01:53 (UTC) - Expand

No. It would be great if we could have a media where gender and sexuality doesn't stick out the way it does now, where no one has to cling to the one or two well-written and well-represented homosexual pairings/relatable female characters in their circle of fandoms because they're all over the place, and therefore they could get killed off the same way straight pairings/male characters/whatever are without seriously depriving the fandoms in question of something unique. But we're not there yet. We have to actually build it to the point where they are equal before we can start treating them like they are equal.

OP

(Anonymous) - 2012-08-23 01:16 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Equality

darkmanifest - 2012-08-23 01:28 (UTC) - Expand

If gender and sexuality will always matter, then there will never actually be equality.

"So, when else is equality not equality."

Common lisp and scheme?

So...is this an honest question or just trolling? I can't tell.

But equality is still something we have to work for and think about when we deal with stories and stuff, at least for now. So your gay character dies and there's only straight characters alive now- How is that equal? If you don't want to research on the whole "bury your gays" thing, you might wanna at least think about why is it that out of six characters only one is gay? And how that somehow translates to equality in your mind.

Two were gay, hence the whole "killed off 50 percent of the gay characters."

I see. Well, when all is said and done, it really depends on wether the person writing and the person reading cares about it or not.

The number of gay people is relatively low, isn't it? I just looked up statistics and it said in most cities 1-4% of the population is gay, and even in cities like San Fransisco the number is only 15%. (At least according to here: http://www.domesticpartnershipflorida.com/gay-facts-statistics-2011/) So a show where, say, 50% of the characters are LGBT would be great to help increase the number of gay character on TV, but it wouldn't necessarily reflect reality and it wouldn't necessarily mean that a show that only has 5% of the cast being LGBT would be somehow discriminating against people of sexualities other than straight.

The problem isn't having a cast with 6 straight characters and 1 or 2 gay characters, the problem is when the gay characters might be more likely to be killed, percentage-wise, than straight characters on TV. (I'm not sure what the actual statistics on that is, nor do I know where to go find it--I'm guessing it's disproportionate because of the 'Bury Your Gays' trope, but I don't really know if that's true.)

(As a side note, I don't think it's a bad thing for a gay character to die if it makes sense within the story and it's not just something like "the villain is gay, so they have to die!" For example, if there's a situation where, say...the characters can only get out if someone stays behind and sacrifices themselves by...I don't know, repairing an escape pod from the outside. If out of the cast, only two of the characters knows enough about mechanics to repair the pod, probably whichever character is the more self-sacrificing (or a similar trait) is going to be the one to repair the pod. If that character happens to be gay, I don't think it'd be a bad them for them to be the one to volunteer to save the other characters. That being said, if out of the two characters the straight one is normally more self-sacrificing but the gay one is the one that ends up dying, that would look weird.

Is this metaphor even making sense anymore? I have no idea.)

Yeah, but let's remember that shows are not things that just happen on their own: a writer, or usually several writers, sit down and make decisions about what's going to happen. If you only have one gay character and then you also write a situation where that character is the only logical one to die, that's not inherently bad, but it does open you up to questioning if you've also done messed up shit with that character.

Battlestar Galactica is an unfortunately good example of this. Of the four queer characters, only one survived the series, and he was also the only able-bodied white dude of that group, and he was also pretty much a background character. The other three all turned evil and died, and two were brutally physically harmed before their deaths. This was all for plot reasons that weren't related to their being queer, and I'm not even saying any of it was badly written or inorganic, but it's still kind of "eeehhh....." when you put it all together.

Re: Equality

brightblueink - 2012-08-23 01:40 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Equality

yeahscience - 2012-08-23 01:52 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Equality

brightblueink - 2012-08-23 02:15 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Equality

gobbledigook - 2012-08-23 02:05 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Equality

brightblueink - 2012-08-23 02:20 (UTC) - Expand

I don't know about you, but I'm not constantly surrounded by throngs of gay people. I mean, are you seriously sugguesting that 50% of all characters should be gay so that things are equal? Nevermind that 50% of all people aren't gay?

There should be more gay representation in the media, but there should also be ACCURATE gay representation in the media. So, yeah. I'm fine with a situation where some shows focus on a group of friends where nobody is gay -- because groups of friends where nobody is gay exist. Ditto for or or two gay friends in a group and a giant group of gay people.

I don't think I suggested that... But from the way OP was speaking, it seemed like they felt the odds were made uneven when one of two(of a total six) gay characters died, but it was "equal" before that. I just asked why they felt like having two gay characters, now one, felt like it was enough.

I'm fine with a situation where some shows focus on a group of friends where nobody is gay -- because groups of friends where nobody is gay exist. Ditto for or or two gay friends in a group and a giant group of gay people.

I can understand that, but if that's the case, then why should gay characters be the minority? Like you say, when it comes to individual groups of people the total percentage of gay people in the world hardly matters.

I mean, fiction writing is pretty much all about bending what's considered "true" in the real world, so why is it that the rule that never gets broken is the one that makes more gay people being around?

This was part of why I was so pissed when Tara kicked it in Buffy. Seriously, if you absolutely had to kill someone like that, couldn't you have killed off someone in one of the seven or eight heterosexual romances that have happened in that show during it's six seasons so far?

If there was more than one gay or lesbian ship on the show at the time, I wouldn't have minded so much. Of course I still would've minded because that death was totally fucking pointless and gratuitous, but I wouldn't have felt like I got cheated out of a rare gem.

I'm trying to think of what other character death would create that kind of rage in Willow (which was the point of Tara's death). I'm only coming up with Dawn. I'm not even sure Xander would make the cut by that point.

Re: Equality

intrigueing - 2012-08-23 21:43 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Equality

teaphile - 2012-08-24 13:36 (UTC) - Expand

you watched Buffy?

I hate this notion that some people have that "equality" means one group should be treated better than another. I just...I can't understand the logic behind it.

The problem is, so many people are used to LGBT characters disproportionately getting sad endings or being written as villains, often with the implication that their sexuality/gender identity is the reason for their bad fortune or villainy. I think for a lot of people, even if they can recognize that killing off a gay character doesn't make a show homophobic, they may still be disappointed and have an emotional reaction to it.

I think things are changing a lot now, but a lot of people still have really bad associations with LGBT characters getting killed off. And there's still a lack of happy LGBT stories.

It would be nice to see LGBT characters as being no different than straight characters, and treat this like no big deal. As a writer, I don't think there's anything wrong with sad stories about LGBT characters. But I also sympathize with why people get so frustrated/disappointed. And as a writer, I also don't want to cause disappointment and unintentional sadness for my potential audience. So in my original fiction, I do try to give my gay couples happy endings if the story could go either way.

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