Gay Male Protagonist

[Koloss17]

12 hours ago, AquaRegia said:

I am honored to join the Eternal Thread.  I’m sorry I missed the beginning… but I see it as a blessing that I was forced to read 12 pages of heartfelt discussion before responding.  

I’m confident we can all agree: we crave divergent points of view in our heroes, done convincingly and authentically.  Some of us prefer to wait, rather than see it done poorly; others want it NOW, perfect or not.  I see the allure of both opinions.

I really just want to give everyone here a hug, and thank you for all the thought, effort and passion that has gone into this glorious work of messy art.  We are all flawed humans, trying to cope in an imperfect world.  We all deserve love, respect, and storms yes, representation in literature.  Thanks to AonEne, Comatose, Kidpen, The Awakened Salad, likehephaestion, and to Honorless, especially, for being willing to reach out to others and share their (sometimes painful) realities.  Isn’t the point of fiction to help us understand each other’s stories?  This topic has definitely done so for me.  From this vanilla white male cis/het, thank you all.

Finally, while I know the OP specifically asked about gay male protagonists, I do want to call attention to another incremental Sanderson triumph in RoW - our first trans viewpoint character.  I love that Leshwi is unquestionably a "she" to literally everyone, even people who have ONLY EVER SEEN HER in a malen body, e.g., Kaladin.  I found the writing so natural and convincing that I was finished with the book before I realized: “wait - so Leshwi is trans…?”  Well done, sir.

Wait here a minute...huh? 
 

WHAT DID I SKIP OVER WHILE READING

[AquaRegia]

50 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

WHAT DID I SKIP OVER WHILE READING

It's easy to miss, certainly.  Chapter 11 (p. 153 US/Can hardcover).  It's casually yet clearly stated in the two middle paragraphs on the page.

[Honorless]

On 1/5/2021 at 10:29 PM, Vissy said:

A Memory Called Empire. Read it. Lesbian protagonist, lovely scifi-drama-political stuff. That is the type of book I want more of.

There's actually quite a few well written lesbian protag in fantasy and sci fi fiction. (For reccs, look at the list I shared a few pages ago). Which is why I was a bit surprised at the relative lack of leading gay male protags, or even well-written gay characters. They're always supporting cast of characters. They're either there for shipping proposes, written by female authors and aimed at female readers, extremely fetishized, or, and I hate to concur with detractors of more gay rep but, nothing but a cardboard cutout written for the sole purpose of making a political statement by the author. It's rare that they're well-written, 3-dimensional beyond the romance and don't drop dead for/after fanservice.

 

I don't like inter-LGBT politics but people keep saying gay men hog all the attention in LGBT representation, which is something I really disagree with because gay men get the least amount of positive representation. Most of the gay representation where I come from, if it can even be called that, is extremely mocking, casual homophobia and insulting gay people to show how masculine a man is, just really crude jokes, that kind of stuff. And the rest of the bunch is, to borrow Japanese terms, yaoi aimed at fujoshi, and are not at all representative of the experiences of an actual gay man.

Hell, gay men often face the most direct violence, especially in Asian and African countries, where gay men are often the LGBT demographic targeted exclusively by violent people. Wherever there exists legislature against sexual or gender minorities, it's usually gay men who are hunted down. Yes, the other groups face ostracization and violence, but they rarely have to face stuff that can only be termed as organized hunts.

 

Ugh, anyway, some good stuff now. I got a few nice reccs, I was going to share them a while ago over here but I got distracted:

https://longexposurecomic.com/post/150300213458 (a few of you seemed to like Homestuck, I think you'll like this too. It's pretty sweet but also handles a few mature themes but mostly tries to remain upbeat and fluffy)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062757?view_full_work=true (Welcome to Night Vale/His Dark Materials crossover. Absolutely recommend. This was hilarious and terrifying. Maturity level is about the same as Pullman's series, and handles some of the same themes.

https://uncannymagazine.com/article/sun-moon-dust/ (Hugo award finalist, for good reason)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1599293

(Basically, Captain America watches Captain America films but not the Marvel ones, the in-universe ones, which exist because well, he's a national hero. Filled with period posters and theses (which is apparently the plural of thesis) on the subject of the American hero and his perception (including shipping him with Bucky))

also this:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/2185989 (it's in the same vein as above but it's a single paper by Bucky Barnes.)

P.S. Ao3, a fanfiction site, won a Hugo Award! That is so significant!

https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/185945394672/rodorah-rodanghidorah-and-ghidorah-centric-fic (I know this sounds weird, but it's Kaiju shipping, yeah. Don't let that put you off though! And I know you're curious! Go on, give it a try, it might surprise you)

Edited February 10, 2021 by Honorless

[AonEne]

Ooooh, if we're recommending gay fics, there's a wonderful series called Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail that's Bucky's POV and does awesome characters and psychology, and is an adorable Stucky slow burn. Top 10 fanfics for me, highly recommend it. Take everything you want in a fic, characters, comedy, plot, on-point characterization, mix it all together and reread the results. There's cursing but not NSFW, except for in one chapter which warns for it. 60-70 chapters overall? Something like that, wish I could link to it but I'm using a school computer atm. 

[beejsbj]

On 27/12/2020 at 3:46 AM, Kingsdaughter613 said:

Seeing as LGBTQ+ exist in most religious texts (albeit in the negative, at least in modern ones) that isn’t really indicative. Hermaphrodites also get brought up in several texts, despite their rarity. Judaism has special rules about hermaphrodites despite them being a tiny population. (To be fair, Judaism has rules about EVERYTHING.)

Not to mention, the Jewish people are less than 1% of the world’s population, but I’m pretty sure most of the world has heard of this tiny ethnic group! There are more LGBTQ+ people than there are Jews, so by your definition no one should have heard of a Jewish person.

Historically there have been many different cultures with many different opinions on homosexuality, including some like the Azish (change of gender forms?). It’s only since Christianity really took off that the predominant opinion has been negative. Note that on the world with the most Christianity-like religion gay relationships are not accepted by most of the population. At least in the North.

You bring up some good points. But you also fail to put it into context of information exchange. Ofcourse we know bout minorites. We have the internet. The alethi at most have spanreeds and half the population doesn't read. Even more aren't even educated.

 

Our historical information when put into context also comes from the upper parts of society, scholars. Peasents from random towns aren't likely to be aware.

 

The negative and positive depections in themselves are largely influential. We don't know the true size of our same sex attracted population because of social and cultural influence. And roshar seems to itself be basing itself based on our negative influence modern world. 

 

Going back to kal. A dark eyed man in a random village who was forced into the army at a young age. I suppose the best place where he could have been exposed to same sex relationships would be in the army but alas, we don't really see much of it.

 

Though you have shifted my perspective on this, thank you

[twenty second of the sun]

On 4/9/2020 at 1:47 PM, twenty second of the sun said:

I myself am not trans so I can not speak to whether the portrayal was accurate to what actual trans men experience, but I have friends who are trans and to my cis eyes it seemed like a well written example of representation .

off topic but this is objectively wrong 

[Kingsdaughter613]

On 1/6/2021 at 4:55 PM, beejsbj said:

You bring up some good points. But you also fail to put it into context of information exchange. Ofcourse we know bout minorites. We have the internet. The alethi at most have spanreeds and half the population doesn't read. Even more aren't even educated.

 

Our historical information when put into context also comes from the upper parts of society, scholars. Peasents from random towns aren't likely to be aware.

 

The negative and positive depections in themselves are largely influential. We don't know the true size of our same sex attracted population because of social and cultural influence. And roshar seems to itself be basing itself based on our negative influence modern world. 

 

Going back to kal. A dark eyed man in a random village who was forced into the army at a young age. I suppose the best place where he could have been exposed to same sex relationships would be in the army but alas, we don't really see much of it.

 

Though you have shifted my perspective on this, thank you

The internet doesn’t explain why the Greeks had a specific god for hermaphrodites (Hermaphrodetus) or why nearly every ancient culture had some form of law about Gay and Lesbian individuals. The Romans went so far as to have an elite legion made up entirely of gay couples! LGBTQ people were certainly not unknown to the ancient world, internet or no internet.

And I can tell you that your average Jew throughout history knew of gay men, as the prohibition comes up in the most important Bible reading of the year. So your average Jewish peasant would have known. Your average Christian peasant depended on the local priest. Your average Muslim would have varied based on how knowledgeable the individual was; Muslims tended to be better educated than Christians. Your Greeks and Romans probably did know, as LGBQ relationships weren’t uncommon among the gods. Many Native tribes had third genders, so I suspect knowledge of LGBTQ was not uncommon among them either.

So going by our own world’s pre-Christian history, LGBTQ being common knowledge among most of the population is fairly reasonable, as are the different perspectives on such relationships.

[LordFlea]

On 17/02/2020 at 3:07 AM, Honorless said:

The gay male protagonist. Bane of mainstream literature. But things are better now™. *sigh* LGBT literature is still very much- actually hold that thought. The existence of that term alone shows the problem: that LGBT literature is a separate thing from straight literature. We rarely have fantasy, mystery or sci-fi whose main character happens to be gay, we have gay fiction which happens to have a fantasy, mystery or sci-fi setting, rarely. Mostly it's just romance. Written by women. *sigh* It's mostly erotica, basically not even aimed at the same gender. 

There are gay authors: Adam Silvera, TJ Klune, Will Walton, Benjamin Alire Sáenz,... well-known LGBT authors. Special thanks to Richard Morgan who finally wrote a non-romance with a gay male character as the main protagonist. Also Robin Hobb.

Gay characters are almost never the main protagonist in the mainstream literature. Gay literature is still a niche genre and generally not taken to be a part of mainstream literature.

When gay characters do appear in the mainstream and they're not badly written, they're usually secondary characters or at most, the deuteragonist. These authors are then treated like the bastion of LGBT literature and everyone else would remember their example for the next ten years as completion of the required dosage of gayness they can handle on their reading list. They will then cite these books everytime some poor sod mentions we need more representation, "wasn't that one book from 5 years ago with that one gay character (who probably dies later on)  enough?" And these authors too, even after all this time, are in the minority compared to those who simply ignore that gay people exist. These are the books most likely to have a lot of romantic subplots. Love triangles, ahoy! "But we need romance in our books!"

"Why do we need to have a gay character?" "what does it add to the character?"

Female gay characters are, of course, fine. I mean there's also less gay female characters because it's not as daring and "female lead" is still something that can be used to sort books but at least people aren't directly opposed to them. Gay male characters on the other hand are an insult and a threat to masculinity everywhere *long exhale*

So we have Ranette and Drehy filling the quota of gay characters in the Cosmere and they're tertiary characters. So far, we have maybe-promises from the author regarding gay characters in the future.

On a completely unrelated note, how many love triangles have we had in the Cosmere so far again?

 

This post is my anger and this post is my logic:

Also check out this comment by @The Awakened Salad which addresses the question of why a character would "need" to be gay:

 

So write the book you want to see out there?

[Honorless]

17 minutes ago, LordFlea said:

So write the book you want to see out there?

Someday, maybe. I don't exactly live in the parts of the world that are accepting of homosexuality, y'know, so... that's going to be very difficult and even attempting to do that will affect my life hard.

[LordFlea]

5 hours ago, Honorless said:

Someday, maybe. I don't exactly live in the parts of the world that are accepting of homosexuality, y'know, so... that's going to be very difficult and even attempting to do that will affect my life hard.

Fair enough I get that. But you do know what I mean right? I'm not saying that your cause isn't right, but getting mad at others for not doing what you even aren't?

 

Doesn't seem very life before death to me.

[Honorless]

50 minutes ago, LordFlea said:

Fair enough I get that. But you do know what I mean right? I'm not saying that your cause isn't right, but getting mad at others for not doing what you even aren't?

 

Doesn't seem very life before death to me.

Just venting, mate, and not pointing at Brandon specifically. Brandon's actually come a lot far (I think the Arcanum has all of that recorded, so you can see his views evolve). If you've read the topic I do talk about how what has been done so far with the LGBT characters hasn't been handled all that well.

[Kingsdaughter613]

On 5/11/2021 at 2:04 AM, Honorless said:

Someday, maybe. I don't exactly live in the parts of the world that are accepting of homosexuality, y'know, so... that's going to be very difficult and even attempting to do that will affect my life hard.

You could use a pseudonym and publish in another part of the world.

[Honorless]

6 hours ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

You could use a pseudonym and publish in another part of the world.

Now that's an idea... I don't really know how publishing works but this sounds tempting

[Kingsdaughter613]

4 minutes ago, Honorless said:

Now that's an idea... I don't really know how publishing works but this sounds tempting

Once you have a manuscript you can reach out online to agents. An agent can help you navigate the publishing process. Thanks to the internet you can be in one country while your agent is in another.

Publishing under a pseudonym is a fairly common practice, so I don’t think that would be an issue. Getting your foot in the door... that’s the hard part.

[twenty second of the sun]

On 5/11/2021 at 6:31 AM, LordFlea said:

Fair enough I get that. But you do know what I mean right? I'm not saying that your cause isn't right, but getting mad at others for not doing what you even aren't?

 

Doesn't seem very life before death to me.

it doesn’t need to be life or death its a problem that doesn’t need to exist

[LordFlea]

2 hours ago, twenty second of the sun said:

it doesn’t need to be life or death its a problem that doesn’t need to exist

All I was trying to say is that throwing your hands up in defeat before trying to change things isnt in the spirit of the first ideal. Was honestly a throwaway statement

[Could Be Fire]

On 2/16/2020 at 1:42 PM, SwordNimiForPresident said:

I don’t disagree with what you guys are saying, but I don’t like the idea of authors changing their main characters simply to check a box. They should write them how they imagined them, whether that be gay, trans, straight or what ever else.

There is a recognized issue (more talked about in film-writing) with the 'default male' idea. Where for most people when they think of a 'default human' without putting any thought, they'll think of a straight, white, cis male. So we end up with those types of characters disproportionality represented in fiction because if there's no "reason" to make a character something else that's what they end up as. It's important to think about if there's actually a reason for a character to be male/straight/white/etc. or if an author is just defaulting.

Brandon talked pretty clearly about he's fallen into that trap before with his comments on the Mistborn screenplay. Basically, he focused so hard are writing Vin well that he defaulted on the gender of all the rest of the cast and ended up with a basically entirely male supporting cast (Shan is essentially the only other female character of any note in the first book and we only get 1-2 more with the rest).

[Honorless]

39 minutes ago, Could Be Fire said:

There is a recognized issue (more talked about in film-writing) with the 'default male' idea. Where for most people when they think of a 'default human' without putting any thought, they'll think of a straight, white, cis male. So we end up with those types of characters disproportionality represented in fiction because if there's no "reason" to make a character something else that's what they end up as. It's important to think about if there's actually a reason for a character to be male/straight/white/etc. or if an author is just defaulting.

Brandon talked pretty clearly about he's fallen into that trap before with his comments on the Mistborn screenplay. Basically, he focused so hard are writing Vin well that he defaulted on the gender of all the rest of the cast and ended up with a basically entirely male supporting cast (Shan is essentially the only other female character of any note in the first book and we only get 1-2 more with the rest).

This. Also, not devaluing people who fit those characteristics! In fact I'd say considering these characteristics "the default" devalues people who fit those characteristics and makes them cardboard cutouts.

Also it's not very nice to assume any characters who don't fill the default characteristics are only there for political cred. Those people exist. And it is true that they are underrepresented.

[AonEne]

On 5/11/2021 at 5:31 AM, LordFlea said:

Fair enough I get that. But you do know what I mean right? I'm not saying that your cause isn't right, but getting mad at others for not doing what you even aren't?

Doesn't seem very life before death to me.

Not everyone has the ability or desire to write a book themselves, but that doesn't make the need any less present in literature.

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, AonEne said:

Not everyone has the ability or desire to write a book themselves, but that doesn't make the need any less present in literature.

I'm just popping in so here goes.

On ability anyone can(with enough time and practice) get to the level to wright a novel, and with the rise of self publishing it's getting easier.

On willing I don't think you have the right to demand something that you aren't willing to do yourself.

Ok, popping out now.

[Honorless]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

I'm just popping in so here goes.

On ability anyone can(with enough time and practice) get to the level to wright a novel, and with the rise of self publishing it's getting easier.

On willing I don't think you have the right to demand something that you aren't willing to do yourself.

Ok, popping out now.

And that counters which of my points that I've made in the topic? To begin with the point was more acceptance of queer people, less othering, that means more portrayal in mainstream literature & media rather than being relegated to a niche or hyperspecialized subgenre. Being LGBT is not like being an ethnic minority group, they don't have their own communities that they grow up in, they have to realize that they're different and then find/create their own. More accessible representation makes that just a little bit easier.

Another point was that within the bodies of work that do have representation, including the Cosmere, there be something better than tokenism, characters that don't have anything to do with the plot but are just set pieces that are there or invisible representation that apparently exists in the mind of the author but never penned down and minority identities as nothing more than flavour text that don't affect the characters' experiences in-world.

Would you consider "go make your own thing" a good counter-argument to problematic racial, gender or religious representation?

Edited May 18, 2021 by Honorless

[Frustration]

35 minutes ago, Honorless said:

And that counters which of my points that I've made in the topic? To begin with the point was more acceptance of queer people, less othering, that means more portrayal in mainstream literature & media rather than being relegated to a niche or hyperspecialized subgenre. Being LGBT is not like being an ethnic minority group, they don't have their own communities that they grow up in, they have to realize that they're different and then find/create their own. More accessible representation makes that just a little bit easier.

Would you consider "go make your own thing" a good counter-argument to problematic racial, gender or religious representation?

Two things.

One, I did not quote you so I don't see why I needed to dispute your arguments, I was correcting some misconceptions about writing

Two yes, Yes I would.

[Honorless]

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

Two things.

One, I did not quote you so I don't see why I needed to dispute your arguments, I was correcting some misconceptions about writing

I'm responding to this:

3 hours ago, Frustration said:

On willing I don't think you have the right to demand something that you aren't willing to do yourself.

Talking about me or a group that includes me with a third party does give me the right to defend myself

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

Quote

Would you consider "go make your own thing" a good counter-argument to problematic racial, gender or religious representation?

Two yes, Yes I would.

Hmm... I think I've already stated why I find such a response problematic, specifically in the context of LGBT representation, in my previous comment. As for the rest, we've both participated in topics that have brushed those issues, so you know my stance on it. This kind of response just increases segregation, groupism, partisan politics.

[Frustration]

4 hours ago, Honorless said:

Talking about me or a group that includes me with a third party does give me the right to defend myself

I was refering to litterally everyone but ok.

look I have no problem with you asking for something, but if you ask you have to accept no as an answer

if you demand you have to be willing to do it yourself.

You can't demand someone else do something you aren't willing to do and then get upset when they don't do it how you want.

[Honorless]

52 minutes ago, Frustration said:

look I have no problem with you asking for something, but if you ask you have to accept no as an answer

if you demand you have to be willing to do it yourself.

You can't demand someone else do something you aren't willing to do and then get upset when they don't do it how you want.

Wow, I'm just a little in awe at the oversimplification and removal of literally all context up there.

Y'know if people thought like that, a heck of a lot of people wouldn't have rights at all. It's nice to have no idea what that feels like, but it's not nice to continually have to live like that.

You are literally saying no criticism is ever valid.

You are literally complaining about the fact that I'm complaining, then when I explain why I'm complaining, you're saying, okay I see you have reasons to complain but the answer is no, so you should just stop complaining.

If that is indeed what you're doing and that is indeed what you believe in, then I suggest you start practicing what you supposedly believe in and stop complaining about other people's complaining and just accept that they're gonna say no when you try to tell them that they shouldn't complain.

Edited May 18, 2021 by Honorless