Gay Male Protagonist

[king of nowhere]

another relevant wob that surprisingly nobody dug out until now: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/40-the-alloy-of-law-annotations/#e705

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I guess I could be accused of not giving them full representation because of the fact that they usually have minor roles. The truth is that I'm worried I'd just do a poor job of it if I tried to write from their viewpoint; being gay is one of those things that tends to be very dominant in a person's way of seeing the world. It seems that there are a lot of pitfalls that I could saunter right into. I've think I've learned, after a lot of work, how to write female characters who (hopefully) don't feel wrong. However, I haven't taken the dive in trying to figure out how to write a gay or lesbian character.

But that's only one reason. There's a deeper one for me. Ranette will likely get viewpoints in the series, when I do more Wax and Wayne books. However, the books aren't about sexual identity, so I'll probably steer clear of that topic. In a way, I think that making a big deal of it could be more harmful. One of the reasons I put LGBT characters in my books is because they are a part of our world, and deserve representation in fiction. It's strange to think that in our world, LGBT people make up a significant minority of the population, yet in fiction (particularly fantasy fiction) they tend to either vanish completely or the story has to be all about who they are and their sexuality.

This strikes me as a bad way to do things. Just like not every book including women characters should be about feminism, not every book including LGBT characters should be about sexual orientation or gender identity issues. If they are, then that just highlights the supposition that they're out of the ordinary—it draws attention to that idea, rather than simply letting them be characters with a larger role in the story. We don't care about Lord Harms's sexuality, or Mister Suit's, or that of Miles. Why shine a big spotlight on Ranette's? It just seems divisive to me.

Anyway, those are just a few of my thoughts on the topic. Perhaps they will change as I ponder on it more.

 

this commentary actually shaped a lot of my opinions on the topic, because i never considered it much until i read it, and then i was like "oh, this makes so much sense"

regarding books with well-fleshed gay characters, john scalzi has a couple in the old men's war saga, a gay in book 1 and a lesbian in book 5 (or 3, depending on how you count a couple of short stories). neither is a major character, but they are important enough to have a developed personality. the gay does get killed, but then again, the colonial defence force has like 80% casualty rate; a lot of the protagonist's friends get killed in that book.

[Honorless]

Thanks! That WoB is one I haven't seen before. Gotta say I don't agree with Brandon here on his choice of example, Ranette's sexuality was the dominant character trait, as much as her skill at making guns and ammo. Ranette: the gun-toting lesbian

[RShara]

Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold is pretty good too.

[Elsecaller_17.5]

33 minutes ago, Honorless said:

Thanks! That WoB is one I haven't seen before. Gotta say I don't agree with Brandon here on his choice of example, Ranette's sexuality was the dominant character trait, as much as her skill at making guns and ammo. Ranette: the gun-toting lesbian

I don't know about defining trait. Granted I'm not the most observant person in this category but I didn't even pick up on lesbian till it was overtly stated (have a free pass to make fun of me). I'd call her main character traits ingenuity and general roughness.

[Honorless]

22 minutes ago, RShara said:

Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold is pretty good too.

The Vor Games is the only Vorkosigan Saga novel I've read and it has been a very long while. By the fact that you recommended this novel as one with a gay male protagonist, I assume the events that transpire in this book are only loosely connected with the rest of the series and as such do not require much in the way of knowing what's what in the rest of the series? Basically, that it's more of a standalone than part of a cohesive whole of the saga? 

[RShara]

45 minutes ago, Honorless said:

The Vor Games is the only Vorkosigan Saga novel I've read and it has been a very long while. By the fact that you recommended this novel as one with a gay male protagonist, I assume the events that transpire in this book are only loosely connected with the rest of the series and as such do not require much in the way of knowing what's what in the rest of the series? Basically, that it's more of a standalone than part of a cohesive whole of the saga? 

Yep.

[king of nowhere]

8 hours ago, Elsecaller_17.5 said:

I don't know about defining trait. Granted I'm not the most observant person in this category but I didn't even pick up on lesbian till it was overtly stated (have a free pass to make fun of me). I'd call her main character traits ingenuity and general roughness.

me too. just because she was not interested in wayne, it didn't mean anything. I learned that she was lesbian in the commentary.

and how many lines of text are devoted to her being lesbian? in the first book wax says that he doesn't think she is interested in any man. in the second, someone tells wayne that she has a girlfriend. and in the third wayne makes one single suggestion about it.

since all those instances (and any i may have forgotten to include) are all related to wayne trying to hit on her to her dismay, I would that even if you wanted to have her sexuality as her dominant trait, then it's not being a lesbian, but being wayne's love interest for the first two books: Ranette: the gun-toting lesbian unrequited coprotagonist's love interest.

not that she does much toting in the first place; she makes the guns, i don't remember her using them. I'd liken her to a sort of Q

[Karger]

11 hours ago, Honorless said:

Thanks! That WoB is one I haven't seen before. Gotta say I don't agree with Brandon here on his choice of example, Ranette's sexuality was the dominant character trait, as much as her skill at making guns and ammo. Ranette: the gun-toting lesbian

It is only relevant because of Wayne though it has no plot significance.

[Quantus]

2 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

me too. just because she was not interested in wayne, it didn't mean anything. I learned that she was lesbian in the commentary.

and how many lines of text are devoted to her being lesbian? in the first book wax says that he doesn't think she is interested in any man. in the second, someone tells wayne that she has a girlfriend. and in the third wayne makes one single suggestion about it.

since all those instances (and any i may have forgotten to include) are all related to wayne trying to hit on her to her dismay, I would that even if you wanted to have her sexuality as her dominant trait, then it's not being a lesbian, but being wayne's love interest for the first two books: Ranette: the gun-toting lesbian unrequited coprotagonist's love interest.

not that she does much toting in the first place; she makes the guns, i don't remember her using them. I'd liken her to a sort of Q

Well, TIL that she was a lesbian.  I thought she was just a dedicated craftsman with no patience for Wayne's shenanigans, and with we engineer's common tendency to ignore social...everything. 

[Koloss17]

2 hours ago, Quantus said:

Well, TIL that she was a lesbian.  I thought she was just a dedicated craftsman with no patience for Wayne's shenanigans, and with we engineer's common tendency to ignore social...everything. 

Have you read to the end?

end of BoM spoilers:

Spoiler

Wayne gets denied after he actually askes out ranette, and ranette answers that she has a girlfriend, to which Wayne then asked for something that might not quite be appropriate for this site. (but it is in the books, so is it allowed?)

 

[Karger]

58 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

that might not quite be appropriate for this site. (but it is in the books, so is it allowed?)

Why is a mariage a trois less appropriate then any other kind of physical intimacy?

[Quantus]

1 hour ago, Koloss17 said:

Have you read to the end?

end of BoM spoilers:

  Hide contents

Wayne gets denied after he actually askes out ranette, and ranette answers that she has a girlfriend, to which Wayne then asked for something that might not quite be appropriate for this site. (but it is in the books, so is it allowed?)

 

Huh, yes I read BoM but I must have missed it (or forgotten, it's been years). 

I guess I can offer myself as a single datapoint that her sexual orientation didnt seem a particularly central aspect of her characterization, for whatever that is worth. 

Edited February 17, 2020 by Quantus
grammar...

[Koloss17]

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

 I guess I can offer myself as a single datapoint that her sexual orientation didnt seem a particularly central aspect of her characterization, for whatever that is worth. 

I don’t think it was a central part of her character, nor do I think it should be. The whole point is to make LGBT things a normal thing that doesn’t stand out. I think Brandon did a fantastic  job at this with  Drehy, for when Kaladin was told he has a boyfriend, not a girlfriend, there was absolutely no judgement. Kal just went “oh okay!” And went on with the book.

 

[The Awakened Salad]

I just want to point out that there doesn’t have a to be a specific plot reason for a character to have a certain sexuality. People aren’t gay because something happened in their life, people are gay because that’s just them. So while there may not be a “reason” for a character to be gay, there’s no reason for them not to be either.

Edited February 17, 2020 by The Awakened Salad

[king of nowhere]

1 hour ago, Koloss17 said:

 The whole point is to make LGBT things a normal thing that doesn’t stand out. I think Brandon did a fantastic  job at this with  Drehy, for when Kaladin was told he has a boyfriend, not a girlfriend, there was absolutely no judgement. Kal just went “oh okay!” And went on with the book.

 

on top of that, sigzil being all scandalized because drehy didn't fill the proper paperwork to be gay was absolutely priceless

[Honorless]

Okay, so looks like I'll have to sort through and respond to a few of the subtexts here, which would also help me put my rationale for creating this topic and answer a few questions that might arise which one may not be so inclined to ask directly:

First of all, and let's not pretend that this isn't the first alarm bell that rang in the heads of a lot of people here upon seeing this thread, it's quite clear from looking at the defensive responses: I do like Brandon Sanderson's works. I wouldn't be here otherwise. Click on my profile and see the no. of threads I've created, not just this one.

Next, are we not supposed to be able to criticize an author? Are we not supposed to be able to disagree, not just to what they've written but also the things they say when we don't agree with their rationale? Brandon writes and talks about social and philosophical issues, this is gonna happen. Criticism is the very foundation of literature.

Why gay male character? Because there are countries which specifically ban male homosexuality, eg: Singapore. Where I come from, the idea that talking about gay rights or even criminalization of male rape would take the spotlight away from women's issues is an argument that was used successfully. Let's not shy away from it, society has massive issues regarding the idea of masculinity. There's a Vine that I can't find right now that showed a guy reacting to two men holding hands with "disgusting", and then he sees two women together and hollers "are you gonna kiss or what!" Check out the rationale with creating canonical gay male characters in popular games like Mass Effect (check out the controversy regarding the number of heterosexual and lesbian characters) and Elder Scrolls (whose creator outright states that they took out Pelinal Whitestrake being gay because the player might feel weirded out that a former incarnation of their playable character was gay).

Closer to home: remember the memes made in response to Dumbledore being gay? Orson Scott Card, the author of Ender's Game and a fellow Mormon author's statements against homosexuality? 

 

Now my response to the comments themselves:

Regarding Drehy and Ranette: really? *scepticism*. You guys really don't think that Drehy and Ranette being gay was pivotal to their character? How much screentime have these characters even gotten? Especially Drehy, compared with other Bridge 4 characters.
Also do you really not see the problem with this? You have heard of "show, not tell"? It is apparently okay in Vorin religion for a gay couple to marry and yet how many gay couples do we see in the background over three entire full-length books? Compare that with the no. of background heterosexual couples, start with Hashal and Matal, from WoK. Pathism and Survivorism are supposed to have very different views regarding homosexuality, and we see the two religions come into conflict, there's a gay character situated in the conflict zone and yet we see nothing come from it. We're just told by the author about these religions' stances and that's it.

In the first place, we even get this information about how homosexuality is treated across the Cosmere from a WoB and not from the stories themselves. Ranette and Drehy (& his doctor boyfriend) are not just the only gay characters we see, they are the only indication that gay people even exist.

We don't see Ranette hanging out with her girlfriend, it's just dropped that she's lesbian. Drehy doesn't say anything nor do we ever see him with his significant other, it just comes up in a discussion. And that scene was very meta. It looked like Brandon was saying "see how cool my characters are with homosexuality?"

Edited February 18, 2020 by Honorless

[Quantus]

16 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

I don’t think it was a central part of her character, nor do I think it should be. The whole point is to make LGBT things a normal thing that doesn’t stand out. I think Brandon did a fantastic  job at this with  Drehy, for when Kaladin was told he has a boyfriend, not a girlfriend, there was absolutely no judgement. Kal just went “oh okay!” And went on with the book.

 

I absolutely agree that it doesnt need to be a central part of her Character by any stretch, I was just surprised that @Honorless said "Ranette's sexuality was the dominant character trait, as much as her skill at making guns and ammo"  when at the time the only personal detail I could name was that she was uninterested in Wayne specifically.  I mean, I was aware of more gay subtext with Shallan than with Rannette, though to be fair that was pointed out in WOB questions or I probably would have missed it too.  

 

8 hours ago, Honorless said:

Regarding Drehy and Ranette: really? *scepticism*. You guys really don't think that Drehy and Ranette being gay was pivotal to their character? How much screentime have these characters even gotten? Especially Drehy, compared with other Bridge 4 characters.
Also do you really not see the problem with this? You have heard of "show, not tell"? It is apparently okay in Vorin religion for a gay couple to marry and yet how many gay couples do we see in the background over three entire full-length books? Compare that with the no. of background heterosexual couples, start with Hashal and Matal, from WoK. Pathism and Survivorism are supposed to have very different views regarding homosexuality, and we see the two religions come into conflict, there's a gay character situated in the conflict zone and yet we see nothing come from it. We're just told by the author about these religions' stances and that's it.

In the first place, we even get this information about how homosexuality is treated across the Cosmere from a WoB and not from the stories themselves. Ranette and Drehy (& his doctor boyfriend) are not just the only gay characters we see, they are the only indication that gay people even exist.

We don't see Ranette hanging out with her girlfriend, it's just dropped that she's lesbian. Drehy doesn't say anything nor do we ever see him with his significant other, it just comes up in a discussion. And that scene was very meta. It looked like Brandon was saying "see how cool my characters are with homosexuality?"

So, for the case of Ranette I think Id still argue that it's not pivotal to her character, simply because it's entirely extraneous to her narrative purpose of Experimental Gunsmith.  She could have preferred women, men, both or neither and it wouldnt have altered any of the scenes she was in or what she was there for.  For context, I am an engineer so that is a trait that gets highlighted/amplified in my mind for any character regardless of other factors, because it's something that I very personally identify with (#NavaniRULES).  

Drehy is probably a different case.   He has had relatively little specific narrative role beyond being another founding member of Bridge 4, although that in itself aint nothing since he's had way more screentime than other arguably more significant characters.  He's also on the short list of those that have sworn the Windrunner 2nd, and is one of the two that rescued Gavinor so he may get a larger narrative role relating to the kid (there's been idle speculation that Bridge 4 will 'adopt' him).   He was a relatively major member of Bridge 4 in the sense of having more developed personality early on than many other members (who often didnt survive, granted), long before his sexuality was mentioned.  And even if his prime narrative role so far has been to highlight Kaladin's (and by extension Vorinism's) preconceptions and prejudices, there are several others that are playing the same role (Lyn, Rlain, etc), and I think it fits the narrative since Exposing and Exploring Prejudices is a fairly major theme throughout.  

 

 

On the overall topic, one place I feel like Ive seen whole topic being handled well is the tv DC/Arrowverse shows.  There are quite a few characters that are gay and also just normal characters, and their relationships are given just as much or as little focus as a straight character in the same narrative place.  The Flash's captain was gay and mentioned his boyfriend/fiance/husband occasionally in passing, and we met him when the captain was hospitalized, but that's exactly the amount of personal life that Im used to getting from that supervisor role in any other procedural cop show.   Other gay characters like White Canary that are central leads get all the same relationship subplots that you'd expect of the genre (and these days TV is willing to let character have healthy relationships, which is awesome for everyone).   And then there is Constantine that flirts with literally everyone, which has long been the character in the comic books; while NBC shied away from it when they had the character for a seasons, CW embraced it for the overarching plot-lines:  He met a nice man, fell in love and settled down, only for his Demonic past to catch up to them and make it all go to pot (ie. comic book standard).

[Pathfinder]

Just a tidbit of information that I am not sure if it will affect anyone in this thread how they see the situation with Drehy but I feel it is relevant. (to clarify, not saying this piece of information should make the treatment of Drehy ok, or not ok. Just adding information). Drehy is based on an actual person in Brandon's life. That person is also actually gay. And I believe the person that Drehy is involved in, is the real life partner of the real life person (who we see upset and in tears near the end of Oathbringer because he thought at the time that Drehy went down with Kholinar and is dead). 

[Honorless]

@Quantus, Lyn and Rlain's issues were developed slowly throughout the books. We have Shallan providing us insight into Vorinism affecting women, though ironically she fails to understand Lyn there. Same with Rlain, the Parshendi-human divide was explored well with Eshonai and Venli and Kaladin's journey with the Listeners before Rlain's chapter.

Drehy being gay was handled in one chapter. And that was it.

You are misunderstanding the point I'm trying to make here, which can be tl;dr'ed as:

A ) these characters are all the indication we've gotten that homosexuality even exists in the Cosmere within all of the books

B ) How the characters' sexuality was handled and revealed in the books: We don't see, we are told. These revelations also serve to depict that the main characters are cool with it, though Wayne bumbled here majorly, which was part of his character development. That's my point and complaint regarding Ranette.

But really I broke down what my issue was quite clearly here:

Quote

It is apparently okay in Vorin religion for a gay couple to marry and yet how many gay couples do we see in the background over three entire full-length books? Compare that with the no. of background heterosexual couples, start with Hashal and Matal, from WoK.

Pathism and Survivorism are supposed to have very different views regarding homosexuality, and we see the two religions come into conflict, there's a gay character situated in the conflict zone and yet we see nothing come from it. We're just told by the author about these religions' stances and that's it.

In the first place, we even get this information about how homosexuality is treated across the Cosmere from a WoB and not from the stories themselves. Ranette and Drehy (& his doctor boyfriend) are not just the only gay characters we see, they are the only indication that gay people even exist.

We don't see Ranette hanging out with her girlfriend, it's just dropped that she's lesbian. Drehy doesn't say anything nor do we ever see him with his significant other, it just comes up in a discussion. And that scene was very meta. It looked like Brandon was saying "see how cool my characters are with homosexuality?"

 

I stopped watching Arrow after Season 2 so I can't comment there.

Comics depends on the creator, even with the same character. I do like Constantine though, and some issues have really handled him well, but most and the most popular ones still simply depict him as a chick (and demon, and demon chick) magnet.

Edited February 18, 2020 by Honorless

[king of nowhere]

10 hours ago, Honorless said:

 

Why gay male character? Because there are countries which specifically ban male homosexuality, eg: Singapore. Where I come from, the idea that talking about gay rights or even criminalization of male rape would take the spotlight away from women's issues is an argument that was used successfully. Let's not shy away from it, society has massive issues regarding the idea of masculinity. There's a Vine that I can't find right now that showed a guy reacting to two men holding hands with "disgusting", and then he sees two women together and hollers "are you gonna kiss or what!" Check out the rationale with creating canonical gay male characters in popular games like Mass Effect (check out the controversy regarding the number of heterosexual and lesbian characters) and Elder Scrolls (whose creator outright states that they took out Pelinal Whitestrake being gay because the player might feel weirded out that a former incarnation of their playable character was gay).

 

Closer to home: remember the memes made in response to Dumbledore being gay? Orson Scott Card, the author of Ender's Game and a fellow Mormon author's statements against homosexuality? 

yes, we know. there are still large parts of the world that disagree with the notion of equal women rights, much less sexual minorities. even in the western world, where they have received equal legal standing in most places, they still face fairly large pokets of resistance. there are still plenty of douchebags around, and since douchebag's money is as good as everyone else's, there's also many firms that won't take a stand for fear of losing customers (in italian we have a nice word for it, omertà; strictly speaking it refers to the regime of intimidation set up by the mafia so that the people won't testify against them, but it is used more generally for any instance of not speaking up against injustice for fear of personal consequences, even when very mild. a person who won't speak up is omertoso. It's a word that carries a certain moral judgment; someone who is omertoso is, first and foremost, a chicken, a coward. Second, he is also an indirect accomplice of the injustice he won't speak up against. And third, as he suffers because of the injustice but won't try to fix it, he's also bringing it upon himself. won't stop most people from lapsing to omertà rather than having to stand up for their beliefs, though. So, the creators of the elder scrolls are omertosi. I can't find a satisfying english translation.)

yes, lgbt discrimination - and specificallyt male gay discrimination - exhists and it is still strong, even in those countries that gave gays full rights.

but that does not mean that everything regarding homosexuality has to be laced in discrimination. especially sanderson, who appears to be making a good job at it

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Now my response to the comments themselves:

Regarding Drehy and Ranette: really? *scepticism*. You guys really don't think that Drehy and Ranette being gay was pivotal to their character? How much screentime have these characters even gotten? Especially Drehy, compared with other Bridge 4 characters.

 

I don't for both of them, and many other people also don't. for ranette, it really has no bearing on her story whatsoever. if instead of being a lesbian she was merely not interested in wayne, if instead of having a girlfriend she had a boyfriend, or she was happily single, there would be absolutely nothing changing about the story of herself.

regarding drehy, i also don't see what would change about his story if he was straight. it's been a while since my last reread of the stormlight archive, but i don't remember him being given more space than most other minor crewmembers. his homosexuality is mentioned in passing, when it was being talked about other bridgemen romantic lives. Huio is visiting prostitutes. Bisig is in a relationship. Punio is married, even though he was trying to hide it. Drehy is gay. I don't remember it getting more comment than that. It gets some attention, but that's normal; the normal assumption is heterosexuality because it's by far the most statistically abundant, and once you know your friend is gay you have to take note on a few levels - his significant other is he and not she, you should not try to introduce him to single girls, those kind of things. From my point of view, i found that can relate the experience of his friends to mine when i discovered that my aunt's best friend was really her girlfriend. "huh, you're getting married, nice, can't believe i didn't connect the dots earlier", then conversation moves on. really I don't see drehy being gay as defining his character or his storyline.

I do believe instead that you are mistaking those characters because of your involvment. to me, they are just characters. their sexual orientation has no more influence on how i see them than it has on how i see my aunt - and really, the only difference there is that now that i know she's fully bisexual and her wife is lesbian i somethimes ask them some questions on how it is life as a lesbian; they are the only people of a sexual minority that are close enough to me to ask personal questions. so, that ranette is a lesbian is totally unimportant to me; doesn't change who she is, and unlike my aunt i can't even ask her personal questions.

But for you? you want to see gays represented. you are eager for it. you think the rest of the world should be shown more of them. And so, because of your priorities, the fact that those two characters are gays is the most important thing about them. because you see them as representing the whole category. because to you and your beliefs, their sexual orientation is important and paints a big bright sign over their head. and you are accidentally mistaking that for importance in the story and those character's role in it.

Quote

Also do you really not see the problem with this? You have heard of "show, not tell"? It is apparently okay in Vorin religion for a gay couple to marry and yet how many gay couples do we see in the background over three entire full-length books? Compare that with the no. of background heterosexual couples, start with Hashal and Matal, from WoK.

fair point.

on the other hand, how many couple do we see at all? i don't know, but i doubt it's more than a few dozens. to the best of my knowledge, lgbt comprises about 5% of the population. that we see drehy in stormlight archive, ranette in mistborn, feels just about right statistically. could be two characters in the same book, tops.

again, this correlates well with my personal heterosexual experience. besides my aunt, i knew a gay from university (just a guy living in the same dorm; he was nice, but i never exchanged more than a few words with him) and once i went out with my cousin and some of her friends and among them was a transsexual (a former girl who became a man; by the way, am i supposed to call him a transsexual woman, or transsexual men?). He was nice, he is an engineer so we had a lot in common as men of science, but i never saw him again, as my cousin lives very far and i only visit occasionally.

so, in my experience gays are not popping out of stones. they are rare, you meet one occasionally. for most people you meet you'll never inquire anyway; probably some of my coworkers are gays, some of my students; i only know a few of them enough to know. (similarily, there are probably many more gays than you know in those books. perhaps the butler was, or one of the cooks, or some of the minor nobles who are never mentioned by name.)

so, if i read a book and we are introduced to a handful of main characters and a double handful of minor characters, and one of those characters is gay, it feels just right. If it turned out every other person was gay or bisexual, it would certainly be statistically weird (and that's how i reacted in mass effect when kaidan tried to hit on me: "oh come on, what are the odds?")

Now, if there was a major gay character, I'd expect that guy to also have many gay friends. i expect he knows some places that are mostly frequented by other gays, because people with something in common tend to want each other's company. I'd take it as one more reason it would be harder for a straight author to write a gay protagonist.

 

Quote

 

Pathism and Survivorism are supposed to have very different views regarding homosexuality, and we see the two religions come into conflict, there's a gay character situated in the conflict zone and yet we see nothing come from it. We're just told by the author about these religions' stances and that's it.

In the first place, we even get this information about how homosexuality is treated across the Cosmere from a WoB and not from the stories themselves. Ranette and Drehy (& his doctor boyfriend) are not just the only gay characters we see, they are the only indication that gay people even exist.

We don't see Ranette hanging out with her girlfriend, it's just dropped that she's lesbian. Drehy doesn't say anything nor do we ever see him with his significant other, it just comes up in a discussion. And that scene was very meta. It looked like Brandon was saying "see how cool my characters are with homosexuality?"

 

are we even told that survivorism is against homosexuality, except in commentary? I don't think so. how much do we know of those religions tenets from the books alone? not much. while worldbuilding is awesome, there is a limit to it. you only have so muh space in a book. we don't have enough space to be told the detailed tenets of survivorism, we don't have enough space to be told specifically about homosexuality, and we certainly don't have enough space to see a clash over it.

again, i assume it comes down to our differences. for you, it is an important topic. if you want to be told one thing, it's how are homosexuals considered. but to most of us - especially to most of us who are not prejudiced - it's not even a topic at all.

what do you think of lgbt right? - of course those guys have rights like anyone else. is there even anything to discuss?

what do you think of gay marriages? - they can do whatever they want

gay adoptions? - i would prefer to start with a small batch and gather some hard scientific evidence before greenlighting it, but i don't expect any problem

gay culture? - is that even a thing? I assume every gay will have his own passions and interests like everyone else. Just like i reject the idea of masculine culture

gay discrimination? - of course it's terrible. no, i have no idea what we should do about it; i don't partake in it and nobody i know partakes in it; for more, ask a sociologist

would you be interested in reading a book with a gay protagonist? - why would i even care?

would you like to know more about gays? - what is there to know? I assume on the surface they are just like us, and on a deeper level they are just as individually diverse as anyone else. but if i want to know more, i ask my aunt

i am campaigning against gay discrimination - well that is good. go do it where there's actual need

you see, this reaction is pretty common among people i know. it's not that we have anything against lgbt. it's not that we are unaware of their exhistance. it's not even that we are insensitive to their plight - though perhaps we underestimate it because we take our attitude for granted too much. we are just not particularly interested in learning about a complete stranger's intimacy - which is what the whole argument boils down to, for us.

and so we are not particularly interested in exploring about those topics in a book, besides knowing that they exhist. probably i would care if there was a well-written main character who made me care, but i certainly would never buy a book for that specific reason alone.

-------------------

now there is only one thing i need to figure out: if i don't care much about gay representation, why did i spent the last two hours writing a long and personal answer?

thinking a bit more about it, i can see that i perceive in the op a forced interpretation of the world according to an ideological framework. i think you have this preconceived notion and you are trying to see everything in this light, and this always brings me into a debate.

it's better if i close here, before blabbering a couple more hours about my own deeper convictions and personality traits. but thank you for allowing me to dig up some new personal insight. that's also why i like debating beliefs (gaahh! i said i have to stop!)

[+Bliev]

@Honorless I want to acknowledge how much I appreciate the work you've put into this thread and how thoughtful you've been about it. It can be easy to say it should be "all about the character" and that "sexuality" (or gender, or race, or whatever) shouldn't matter or isn't even something that stands out to you when the default normal in almost every book ever is heterosexuality (or traditional gender norms, etc.). It's painfully obvious to those of us who aren't represented, even when we enjoy a writer otherwise. Heterosexual relationships are the backbone of every one of Brandon's books. All of them. Yet we have seen no homosexual relationships enacted on screen and had allusions only to two. It feels like erasure no matter the authors' intent. I'm not in the LGBTQ community, but I've had a similar experience over my decades reading traditional and high fantasy as a girl and then a woman. It's so very often the same gendered tropes over and over and the male as the neutral. Brandon has improved on this because he's worked at it and developed it. He should do the same with sexuality.

I also take exception to the writing off of inclusion in fantasy and literature as being some sort of "woke" unimportant nonsense. Representation matters in every way, shape, and form. Sociological and psychological has shown this over and over again. Books should reflect life, and life is a diverse collection of people. And if you create a fantasy world that is not a diverse collection of people, well, that tells me something too. 

[Koloss17]

I feel that this topic is something that is very closely connected to the ability of Brandon Sanderson, where he doesn’t have much to go on, so he can’t really incorporate it into his books that well. It does drive a hole through his universe he created, but it is pretty hard to change. He could meet with ten LGBT members of each sub group of the LGBT group, and try to incorporate it into his works, but that would still be pretty tough and probably not representative enough. I also think having a main character be LGBT won’t happen. He just doesn’t have enough experience with the LGBT community. And this thread shows that him incorporating it could create even more chaos. It is just such a controversial topic that everyone has their own opinion about that there might not be a good way to do it with just a handful of people to reference. But I hold to my faith in Brandon that he will try his darned hardest to incorporate more of the LGBT community in his books, but maybe not as up front and in detail as we might like because of the possibility of doing it wrong.

[Honorless]

10 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

yes, we know. there are still large parts of the world that disagree with the notion of equal women rights, much less sexual minorities. even in the western world, where they have received equal legal standing in most places, they still face fairly large pokets of resistance. there are still plenty of douchebags around, and since douchebag's money is as good as everyone else's, there's also many firms that won't take a stand for fear of losing customers (in italian we have a nice word for it, omertà; strictly speaking it refers to the regime of intimidation set up by the mafia so that the people won't testify against them, but it is used more generally for any instance of not speaking up against injustice for fear of personal consequences, even when very mild. a person who won't speak up is omertoso. It's a word that carries a certain moral judgment; someone who is omertoso is, first and foremost, a chicken, a coward. Second, he is also an indirect accomplice of the injustice he won't speak up against. And third, as he suffers because of the injustice but won't try to fix it, he's also bringing it upon himself. won't stop most people from lapsing to omertà rather than having to stand up for their beliefs, though. So, the creators of the elder scrolls are omertosi. I can't find a satisfying english translation.)

yes, lgbt discrimination - and specificallyt male gay discrimination - exhists and it is still strong, even in those countries that gave gays full rights.

but that does not mean that everything regarding homosexuality has to be laced in discrimination. especially sanderson, who appears to be making a good job at it

I don't for both of them, and many other people also don't. for ranette, it really has no bearing on her story whatsoever. if instead of being a lesbian she was merely not interested in wayne, if instead of having a girlfriend she had a boyfriend, or she was happily single, there would be absolutely nothing changing about the story of herself.

regarding drehy, i also don't see what would change about his story if he was straight. it's been a while since my last reread of the stormlight archive, but i don't remember him being given more space than most other minor crewmembers. his homosexuality is mentioned in passing, when it was being talked about other bridgemen romantic lives. Huio is visiting prostitutes. Bisig is in a relationship. Punio is married, even though he was trying to hide it. Drehy is gay. I don't remember it getting more comment than that. It gets some attention, but that's normal; the normal assumption is heterosexuality because it's by far the most statistically abundant, and once you know your friend is gay you have to take note on a few levels - his significant other is he and not she, you should not try to introduce him to single girls, those kind of things. From my point of view, i found that can relate the experience of his friends to mine when i discovered that my aunt's best friend was really her girlfriend. "huh, you're getting married, nice, can't believe i didn't connect the dots earlier", then conversation moves on. really I don't see drehy being gay as defining his character or his storyline.

I do believe instead that you are mistaking those characters because of your involvment. to me, they are just characters. their sexual orientation has no more influence on how i see them than it has on how i see my aunt - and really, the only difference there is that now that i know she's fully bisexual and her wife is lesbian i somethimes ask them some questions on how it is life as a lesbian; they are the only people of a sexual minority that are close enough to me to ask personal questions. so, that ranette is a lesbian is totally unimportant to me; doesn't change who she is, and unlike my aunt i can't even ask her personal questions.

But for you? you want to see gays represented. you are eager for it. you think the rest of the world should be shown more of them. And so, because of your priorities, the fact that those two characters are gays is the most important thing about them. because you see them as representing the whole category. because to you and your beliefs, their sexual orientation is important and paints a big bright sign over their head. and you are accidentally mistaking that for importance in the story and those character's role in it.

fair point.

on the other hand, how many couple do we see at all? i don't know, but i doubt it's more than a few dozens. to the best of my knowledge, lgbt comprises about 5% of the population. that we see drehy in stormlight archive, ranette in mistborn, feels just about right statistically. could be two characters in the same book, tops.

again, this correlates well with my personal heterosexual experience. besides my aunt, i knew a gay from university (just a guy living in the same dorm; he was nice, but i never exchanged more than a few words with him) and once i went out with my cousin and some of her friends and among them was a transsexual (a former girl who became a man; by the way, am i supposed to call him a transsexual woman, or transsexual men?). He was nice, he is an engineer so we had a lot in common as men of science, but i never saw him again, as my cousin lives very far and i only visit occasionally.

so, in my experience gays are not popping out of stones. they are rare, you meet one occasionally. for most people you meet you'll never inquire anyway; probably some of my coworkers are gays, some of my students; i only know a few of them enough to know. (similarily, there are probably many more gays than you know in those books. perhaps the butler was, or one of the cooks, or some of the minor nobles who are never mentioned by name.)

so, if i read a book and we are introduced to a handful of main characters and a double handful of minor characters, and one of those characters is gay, it feels just right. If it turned out every other person was gay or bisexual, it would certainly be statistically weird (and that's how i reacted in mass effect when kaidan tried to hit on me: "oh come on, what are the odds?")

Now, if there was a major gay character, I'd expect that guy to also have many gay friends. i expect he knows some places that are mostly frequented by other gays, because people with something in common tend to want each other's company. I'd take it as one more reason it would be harder for a straight author to write a gay protagonist.

 

are we even told that survivorism is against homosexuality, except in commentary? I don't think so. how much do we know of those religions tenets from the books alone? not much. while worldbuilding is awesome, there is a limit to it. you only have so muh space in a book. we don't have enough space to be told the detailed tenets of survivorism, we don't have enough space to be told specifically about homosexuality, and we certainly don't have enough space to see a clash over it.

again, i assume it comes down to our differences. for you, it is an important topic. if you want to be told one thing, it's how are homosexuals considered. but to most of us - especially to most of us who are not prejudiced - it's not even a topic at all.

what do you think of lgbt right? - of course those guys have rights like anyone else. is there even anything to discuss?

what do you think of gay marriages? - they can do whatever they want

gay adoptions? - i would prefer to start with a small batch and gather some hard scientific evidence before greenlighting it, but i don't expect any problem

gay culture? - is that even a thing? I assume every gay will have his own passions and interests like everyone else. Just like i reject the idea of masculine culture

gay discrimination? - of course it's terrible. no, i have no idea what we should do about it; i don't partake in it and nobody i know partakes in it; for more, ask a sociologist

would you be interested in reading a book with a gay protagonist? - why would i even care?

would you like to know more about gays? - what is there to know? I assume on the surface they are just like us, and on a deeper level they are just as individually diverse as anyone else. but if i want to know more, i ask my aunt

i am campaigning against gay discrimination - well that is good. go do it where there's actual need

you see, this reaction is pretty common among people i know. it's not that we have anything against lgbt. it's not that we are unaware of their exhistance. it's not even that we are insensitive to their plight - though perhaps we underestimate it because we take our attitude for granted too much. we are just not particularly interested in learning about a complete stranger's intimacy - which is what the whole argument boils down to, for us.

and so we are not particularly interested in exploring about those topics in a book, besides knowing that they exhist. probably i would care if there was a well-written main character who made me care, but i certainly would never buy a book for that specific reason alone.

-------------------

now there is only one thing i need to figure out: if i don't care much about gay representation, why did i spent the last two hours writing a long and personal answer?

thinking a bit more about it, i can see that i perceive in the op a forced interpretation of the world according to an ideological framework. i think you have this preconceived notion and you are trying to see everything in this light, and this always brings me into a debate.

it's better if i close here, before blabbering a couple more hours about my own deeper convictions and personality traits. but thank you for allowing me to dig up some new personal insight. that's also why i like debating beliefs (gaahh! i said i have to stop!)

You have problem a problem with one gay person liking you, on a virtual platform, who's not even a real person?

Your comment regarding gay adoption rights, just wow, gay parents exist you know? And their kids are doing just fine

"i am campaigning against gay discrimination - well that is good. go do it where there's actual need" - first of all, you and people like you are creating this need

On a related note, @Pathfinder, thanks for that info, it is relevant in this context, in my opinion. Though you might recall that I mentioned that I was aware of Brandon's former stance regarding this and inspiring change for the better, this was on Parallax' controversial thread?

@king of nowhere, you were saying?

It's not about you knowing about someone's intimate details? Did the presence of any of the hetero couples bother you? Why should this? I'm not asking you to buy books featuring gay characters, you won't, I get it.

No I'm not shoe-horning any political agenda here, a person would not need your approval to want to be represented in media and express that

A gay main character is what I'm asking for, I'm not sorry that someone rearing their heads up to ask an author that they've loved to write about people like them seems completely uncalled for to you

The fact that anyone would write up such drivel, knowing that it could be up there for posterity, knowing that other people would see this... that just goes to show why I needed to write this in the first place

 

@AonEne, I hope you don't mind too much that I'm dragging you into this but well, looking at the state of this thread, can I ask you to read the whole thing and lend a little support? Because that last one was really uncalled for, to say the least, and congrats, you've successfully hurt me from miles away, hope you're feeling proud of yourself 

I thought I could respond coherently to what you wrote, but just lost my energy halfway. I've tried to address things logically but just what the hell

Edited February 19, 2020 by Honorless

[AonEne]

I don’t mind at all. Give me a bit to read everything, it looks like there’s a lot of content here and I don’t want to rush in. 

[Pathfinder]

29 minutes ago, Honorless said:

On a related note, @Pathfinder, thanks for that info, it is relevant in this context, in my opinion. Though you might recall that I mentioned that I was aware of Brandon's former stance regarding this and inspiring change for the better, this was on Parallax' controversial thread?

Sorry, I don't fully understand what you are saying, so to clarify my post. All it was intended to say was Drehy was based on a real character in Brandon's life. Like Skar. Just saying that was the reason for the character's inclusion in the story. The intention was not to argue for or against any point in this thread. Either side in this thread or anyone here can use that information as they wish. Anything stated regarding that information is not intended to be connected to me in any way. Post not intended to say that due to it being a real life character, how Drehy was portrayed is ok. Nor am I saying it is not ok. Just saying Drehy is based on a real life character. Hope that helps. 

edit: even more just in case. I am not saying Drehy being a real person being why he is included in the story, is arguing or disputing what you said about using Drehy to say "hey this person is gay". Again, not my intention to argue in favor for or against any argument in this thread. Just adding information. Hope that helps

Edited February 18, 2020 by Pathfinder