It can be from any angle. Presently, I’m pondering what kind of context various LGBTQ+ characters can be written without making any kind of political statement, or rather, simply making a statement through normalization in a natural way. In other words, how do I empathize like the cool kids clique?
a much deeper explanation and context
The only example that comes to mind is the Star Trek Discovery pilot. I tried watching it but it felt cringe to me, like overt feminism without normalization or balance. I had recently finished all of the primary Dune series and absolutely loved Siona and the Fish Speaker army of women (that rapes men at one point) in GEoD; Sheeana, Darwi, and Murbella in Heretics/Chapterhouse; the Bene Gesserit, Honored Matre, etc. I never thought twice about these roles being a statement in of itself. These were simply great characters that happened to be women.
Another example is R. Daneel Olivaw in many of Asimov’s books. They are normalized AGI without the dystopian bias message and fear mongering.
Tell me about your favorite characters or how some niche and underrepresented group is/can be done right please. I’m not just asking about the diversity of those that tend to stand out as targets for conservatives. I want to know about that aspect of your life that very few people are aware of.
For instance I am an ex Jehovah’s Witness. I know what it is like to be raised in social isolation even within a city and suburbia. I know about the artificial mental wall and duality of ‘us versus them’ and how facts are subjectively ignored and filtered. I know how social network isolation is reinforced and used to manipulate. I also know how the brainwashing is achieved both intentionally and unintentionally. Then there is the misogyny, and unique forms of prejudice, and conventional forms with the normalization of hate. I can write this kind of character well, or rather how it feels to escape such a system, the loneliness, the intellectual insecurities, the ungrounded curiosity and the unbounded feeling of escaping the oppression while building a moral and philosophical ethos from scratch after rejecting everything your life was built upon. It is a tragic character that is stuck in the middle; very capable, but very difficult to realize their potential.
Tell me about your secret character like I have revealed mine please. How do I write them in a way that feels natural in their triumphs and vulnerabilities?
I’m going to go with Waymond in Everything, everywhere, all at once. And this video will explain it to you beautifully. I watched this video essay so many times. It’s just completely uplifting.
For me probably Terry Pratchett’s dwarves. Or TBH quite a lot of his characters…
Yea, Terry Pratchett had some great LGBT+ folks before the names were even widespread. It’s one thing I found enraging about the reception of The Watch - anyone objecting to the depiction of Cheery Littlebottom clearly wasn’t reading the same books. The show had a lot of other issues: I disliked Sybil for a few reasons and there were some oddly weird plot changes that broke the story logic.
Bortus and his husband Klyden from The Orville. Just two dudes from an all-male planet full of toxic masculinity trying their best to raise a family.
The Bortus family arc kinda starts to feel like the entire point of the series in season 3, and I’m okay with that.
Vivec in Elder Scrolls. Why are LGBT characters written very well there? Because there, sexual orientation is generally as much of an afterthought as being cissexual is an afterthought in real life.
Do Star Wars species count as minorities?
Captain Holt in brooklyn 99. He’s both black and gay but the most standout thing about him is how he is extremely precise and organised and how he shows very little emotion.
He’s portrayed by Andre Braugher who sadly enough past away last year.
His voice sounds like velvet and he has the gravitas to demand attention.
He is also very funny. "You know what the toughest part about being a gay black police officer is?
The discrimination".
Disney released an animated movie a couple years ago called Strange World. It was a wildly mediocre movie with a plot that had a very obvious pro-environment, message that was subtle as a brick.
But what really ruffled the conservative feathers was son character who had a gay crush. For as preachy ad the rest of the movie was, the gay crush subplot was amazingly well done. They treated it like any other hetero love interest subplot. It wasn’t preachy or hamfisted or campy… it was just a family being happy for the kid.
I think what can be done to write these characters better is stop trying to make political statements with them.
For LGBTQ+ specifically, Todd from Bojack Horseman. He’s asexual, and he just kind of…is asexual. It’s a major plot line of character development as he figures himself out, but the asexuality isn’t a gimmick or hook. We care about Todd and this matters a lot to him, so we care about it too. It happens to be him exploring his (a)sexuality, but it could have been anything.
Abed Nadir in Community is one of the best examples IMO of doing diversity in tv right. He is autistic, and that fact is central not just to his character but to making the whole show work. Being autistic creates jokes, it’s never the joke itself. (He’s also not precious or off-limits. Abed IS the butt of some jokes, but not his autism.) He is arguably the audience surrogate despite (because of?) so much of his “deal” being how he doesn’t relate to people like everyone else. In general no one feels sorry for him (and when someone does they look like the asshole by the end of the episode). He has a lot of classic, stereotypical ASD traits, but they are treated like personality traits. He’s a shining example of why identity-first language feels important for a lot of people: he is a complex and fleshed-out whole person as he is. If you took away his autism he’d be flat and boring and unrelatable, a completely different character.
Abed and Todd both kind of just exist very authentically in their worlds. No one (character or writer) is asking you to feel a particular way about them, just to appreciate them for who they are like any other character. If we care about the world and the character, we’ll care about what matters to them.
This is a great dimensional perspective I think I need to mull over in order to better empathize with many. Thank you.
Camina is a really great character on all levels.
I’m not sure I totally get what you’re asking, but I’ll take a stab at it and you can let me know if it’s helpful or not.
Gus Fring. Not even confirmed as gay in Breaking Bad that I remember, but I see it was confirmed in Better Call Saul. He’s also black and in an interracial relationship. The while situation was crucial to the plot of those arcs of the story, but his race or sexuality was never explicitly central to his narrative. He was never stereotyped, and none of those attributes were plot points in and of themselves.
Noho Hank and Cristobal from Barry. Many of the same things as for Gus Fring. All 3 of them were what I’d consider serious characters. Their stories would be largely the same if they were all white and hetero.
Pretty much everyone in The Woman King. I loved the heck out of this movie as I was watching it. These characters couldn’t be much more opposite of me personally, but the story fleshed them out as all unique individuals and their race and gender were important to the story, but that is just a matter of fact. The characters were black and were women. Some were tougher, some were quieter, etc, but they all worked together to help their people. They were all just great characters. I’m out he was gay made a few things make more sense, but it’s not like it changed our relationship. He was worried it would, but I liked him all these years, this was just a part of him, it wasn’t all of him. To me it mattered as much as what hair color he was.
If you write characters with these things as accents to who they are rather than say, starting with the attributes and creating a character from that, in think you’ll avoid what you’re worried about.
Gus Fring. Not even confirmed as gay in Breaking Bad that I remember, but I see it was confirmed in Better Call Saul.
i’ve heard that fring was gay; but was never aware of it until recently. where was it confirmed?
i’m gay; i watched better call saul; and the only example i could think of was his relationship to his business partner; but if that’s all there was it was waaaay too subtle to be realistic.
Not really a secret character by any means, but Apu from The Simpsons was pretty good.
