Mistborn Era 3 (1980s) Speculation - Queer Main Character?

[Comatose he/him]

So, at the risk of being the guy who is always posting about queer topics, this has been bouncing around in my head for a while and I thought I would see what others thought about it.  

So, going off of this (careful clicking the source, as there is some Stormlight discussion as well):

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Brandon Sanderson

There are several. Drehy, in The Stormlight Archive, the bridgeman is gay, because he's based off a good friend of mine who's gay. Ranette in the Wax & Wayne books, the woman that Wayne's in love with, she's gay, and it's hinted at in the first book. By the second book, they're like "Dude, she's gay, just leave her alone." So yes, I have written gay characters. I've never written a gay main viewpoint character, maybe someday I will, it's not something I've done yet.

source

along with other WoBs, we know that Brandon is considering writing a gay main viewpoint character at some point.  I know this is something I personally would love to see, but I also understand Brandon's hesitation.  Indeed, given the relative lack of queer history on earth (it is out there, but not super extensive) and the very particular relationship between dominant world religions and human sexuality on earth, I can understand how it would be difficult to write queer characters in period fantasies--it would be easy to come across as too modern or to fall into historical stereotypes about queer people.  Now, I do not think that is an excuse, and eventually I hope Brandon does get to a point where he can integrate queer characters with major roles into the Cosmere no matter the time period, but I do think that a 1980s era Mistborn novel is a great opportunity for him to give it a (hopefully successful) try.  

Here's what I think would make a major queer viewpoint character in the Era 3 Trilogy a possiblity:

(1) Scadriel is probably the closest Earth analogue in the Cosmere, so it is a world on which it wouldn't be out of place to have queer narratives which resemble our Earth ones (they even have a dominant world religion (Survivorism) which disapproves of same sex relationships); 

(2) As there is a lot of media and art about depicting the lives of queer people in the 80s, it would be an easier time period to research, and it would hopefully be easier to write a queer viewpoint without seeming anachronistic; and

(3) It would be SO FUN!  I mean, I know he always says 1980s technology level, and that in Mistborn especially fashion/tech/culture are often out of sync, but how fun would it be to have a scene in the spy thriller set in a 1980s gay club?

So anyways, that's what has been bouncing around in my head the past while.  What do other people think?

 

[Yezrien]

The bad guy could be a religious fanatic who wants to "cure" homosexuality with a focused emotional allomancy regime. Once it's proven that his methods don't work, he resorts to a more direct means of altering people: hemalurgy! Actually, this might be too dark and disturbing for Brandon's techno thriller. This is horror material.

I just don't know if the gay club scene is Brandon's idea of fun. I think he's more likely to use a queer protagonist if the queerness ties directly into the plot. If the villain is a homophobe, a gay hero has a personal stake in the fight.

[Comatose he/him]

If you take a look at what Brandon says here:

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W. Heus
How do you feel about the lack of prominent gay characters within the epic fantasy as a genre and do you ever include (or will ever include) gay or lesbian characters in your own work

Brandon Sanderson
That's an issue that I feel I should speak about delicately, because it's one of those charged issues that can create a lot of division. But my basic feeling is that a character should not be any more or less sympathetic, or more or less evil, or anything like that, because of sexual orientation or because of basic beliefs or philosophy on things like religion. So there are gay characters in my books, though so far they have been side characters. I don't make a big deal of it, because I tend not to make a big deal of the sexuality of side characters in general. For instance, in The Way of Kings, Drehy, a member of Bridge Four, is gay. He's based on a good friend of mine who is gay. There is a lesbian character in Alloy of Law; again I don't make a big deal of it though it's a little more obvious.

Basically, I just try to write characters and try to have different makeups of characters. I feel gay characters should be included, and I'm annoyed that sometimes there seems to be an association between including gay characters and using that as a means of making them seem like a reprehensible character. You may know what I'm talking about; I've seen it in books before and it bugs me. 
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/210/#e4664

 

And here

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Brandon Sanderson
Chapter Fourteen
They Visit Ranette
Ranette was a late addition to the story. I didn't start building her until I was working on chapter ten or so. (All earlier references to her were added in during revisions.)
I was feeling there was a hole in the story, that it needed one more character, probably a woman. I also wanted to add a gunsmith to the book, and so I started working on who she would be. Some hints of her personality came from the other character from the original short story. (Remember, the person who became Wayne was riding into town on a kandra with a horse's body. That kandra was female.) The personality I'd been developing there eventually jumped rails to become Ranette.
She's not kandra any longer, and I shifted some pieces of who she was to make her a more complete person. If you didn't catch the hint from Wax, she is indeed a lesbian, though it's not much of a big deal for the book. I try to find places for LGBT characters in the novels. (There's another one in The Way of Kings.) However, I back off from making much of an issue about it.
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.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/40/#e705

 

It seems to me like he would be hesitant to make a book where a character’s sexuality is a major plot point, and personally I would prefer it if the queerness of the characters is just an aspect of who they are rather than a central issue.  

Sexuality is just one aspect of who a person is, and I know it can be frustrating for people when the few representations of queer people in media are defined by their sexuality and prevented from being well rounded fully realized characters.  Personally, I would love to see a queer spy who hasn’t even got time to think about romance, but maybe in the back of their mind (as a sub plot) is wondering how they are going to come out to a parent or mentor.  To me that would be cool. 

I would also say there are lots of ways to give a queer hero (or villain!) a personal stake without making the conflict about sexuality, just like most straight characters can be given a personal stake without it being about “straightness”.  

For the club scene, I was thinking something like a chase scene through a dark and crowded dance club would be cool, but you would be correct that Brandon's opinions might differ.  

[CrazyRioter she/her]

I agree that it would be better if the whole story wasn't about the character being queer. Too often when (especially straight) people do that everything else about the character gets ignored and they end up being flat and the story itself ends up being cringey.