After a two-week hiatus for real-life issues, I am back again to continue discussing my take on various character types.  Updates: editing is going quite well on Possessing Redemption, and hopefully within the next couple weeks, the first major pass on the draft will be complete!

Now, last time I left off with some musings on the John Wick movies and how they related to some stuff I wrote about men and women as characters.  This time, I’m going to try tackling the LGB characters.  You’ll note I left off the T, and that’s because I feel trans issues could take up an entire blog on its own.  I’d like to discuss that subject in its own post so I promise it’s not an attempt at erasure or forgetfulness or spite.

I will fully admit that I’m just not versed in the myriad novels that are targeted at LGBT audiences.  As the straightest, whitest dude imaginable, I’m simply not the target demographic.  What I do wish is for this genre to have better visibility.  “Mainstream” works are pretty much made for people like me, but there’s a problem in how that sort of crowds out fantastic works by novelists working in the LGBT genre.

The reason I wish that is because mainstream works still tend to treat gay characters as jokes or “expendable.”  The Dresden Files has characters fake homosexuality as a recurring joke.  I’m holding my breath on the whole thing in the Beauty and the Beast remake.  And for the expendable thing, it’s that old trope of Bury Your Gays – loathe as I am to drag out TV Tropes.  Gay characters exist to later just get killed.

To me, that’s not a good representation.  It’s so difficult to find LGBT characters in a mainstream work that actually behave as, well, people.  They don’t typically appear as people; they appear as props.  “Hey, we’re so cool and hip, we have a gay character.  Also the gay character does nothing and then dies.  PROGRESS.”  For me, I’d rather see them as human beings, as heroes, as people.  Even when we do have some kind of progressive step forward, it feels like it gets yanked away.

Look at the new Wonder Woman movie.  Despite DC recently saying, “yeah Diana is canonically queer,” the movie portrays her as only straight.  Now, the movie’s been written and in production for years so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt: perhaps that wasn’t an official stance when the script was created.  But that’s not the only recent case.  In the CW’s take on the Archie comics, Riverdale, a character who was asexual was made straight.  This is solely to appeal to mainstream audiences, but why wouldn’t we have had an asexual character?  (We all know the answer; it just sucks.)

It may take study, and delicacy, but I want characters of all orientations to be represented in my works.  People should have characters in their leisure hobbies who represent them, and they should be proud of the representations.  That is my goal.  It’s what I hope for as an author, and I hope my readers find themselves somewhere in my stories.