Well Written LGBT+ Characters - Who is/what makes a well written homosexual?

[Truthspeaker]

Hisoka Morrow is the kind of character Masashi Kishimoto wanted to create, but didn't have the guts to follow through on. You learn few concrete things about him aside from his love of a good fight and his unhealthy interest in boys. But even though he sometimes helps the main characters, he's never been absolved for his depravity, and I think Togashi has ebough respect for his audience not to end the story by doing what Kishimoto did for Orochimaru and Sasuke.

Wew, lad.

When's the last time Square made a game you'd want to play more than once that wasn't a port*? Did it even happen this century?

* And even their ports don't have a great track record.

I think Tales is at pretty much the optimal level of popularity. If it got as popular as Final Fantasy, Bandai-Namco might start nickel-and-dimeing fans for all its worth with microtransactions*, "games as a service" subscriptions (where you lose access to content you paid for once you stop paying), and, of course, remakes of games that were originally one game now split into three parts, each sold at full price.

It's sad how right you are.

Plus, bringing it back to the topic of the thread, Tales can have gay characters without much fuss or controversy because the games generally fly under the radar in North America compared to Final Fantasy.

Symphonia isn't even the only time they've done it. They very heavily implied it in Vesperia, and had everything short of a kiss and a gay sex scene in Zestiria.

Even Kingdom Hearts hasn't gone that far, and I'm pretty sure Nomura's in the closet.

 

[Y2K Baby]

Hisoka Morrow is the kind of character Masashi Kishimoto wanted to create, but didn't have the guts to follow through on. You learn few concrete things about him aside from his love of a good fight and his unhealthy interest in boys. But even though he sometimes helps the main characters, he's never been absolved for his depravity, and I think Yogashi has ebough respect for his audience not to end the story by doing what Kishimoto did for Orochimaru and Sasuke.


When's the last time Square made a game you'd want to play more than once that wasn't a port*? Did it even happen this century?

* And even their ports don't have a great track record.


It's sad how right you are.


Symphonia isn't even the only time they've done it. They very heavily implied it in Vesperia, and had everything short of a kiss and a gay sex scene in Zestiria.

Even Kingdom Hearts hasn't gone that far, and I'm pretty sure Nomura's in the closet.

Why are you so excited about fags
Are you a fat chick

 

[Truthspeaker]

Why are you so excited about fags
Are you a fat chick

I'm secretly Shawn Mendes. Posting gay jokes online and talking about well-written LGBT characters is how I decompress on living a lie.

Camila's upstairs right now. I can barely hear myself think with all the noises her and Taylor make when they're scissoring.

 

[Y2K Baby]

Shawn Mendes

Literally who

 

[Truthspeaker]

Literally who

It's not my fault you know nothing of greatness, you fat, virgin sperg!

 

[Y2K Baby]

you fat, virgin sperg!

U

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Hisoka Morrow is the kind of character Masashi Kishimoto wanted to create, but didn't have the guts to follow through on. You learn few concrete things about him aside from his love of a good fight and his unhealthy interest in boys. But even though he sometimes helps the main characters, he's never been absolved for his depravity, and I think Togashi has ebough respect for his audience not to end the story by doing what Kishimoto did for Orochimaru and Sasuke.


When's the last time Square made a game you'd want to play more than once that wasn't a port*? Did it even happen this century?

* And even their ports don't have a great track record.


It's sad how right you are.


Symphonia isn't even the only time they've done it. They very heavily implied it in Vesperia, and had everything short of a kiss and a gay sex scene in Zestiria.

Even Kingdom Hearts hasn't gone that far, and I'm pretty sure Nomura's in the closet.

Can you elaborate on Vesperia, Zestria, and why you think Nomura is gay?

 

[Truthspeaker]

Can you elaborate on Vesperia, Zestria, and why you think Nomura is gay?

Sure thing.

Vesperia was more implication. Two of your female party members, Rita and Estelle, develop a very close friendship throughout the game. Rita in particular. Unlike Estelle, she doesn't show any romantic interest in men. There's even a sidequest where they raise a baby together in the deluxe edition of the game.

Zestiria's different. The main character, Sorey, never shows any interest in women beyond friendship. He has plenty of options. He spends almost the whole game travelling with hot women. But he never shows any romantic or sexual interest in any of the female characters in the game.

He's far more interested in his best friend Mikleo. The game treats Mikleo fairly similarly to how the series has treated love interests in the past. They spend the most time together. They're each other's most important person. There's even a scene in the game where one of the male party members is asking Sorey if he wants to peek on women, and Sorey doesn't understand the appeal at all; but does understand the appeal of Mikleo at the bath.

It's doubly unusual, because Sorey and Mikleo aren't going through a romance storyline. For all intents and purposes, they're already a couple. And there are hardly any games out there of any kind where the main character is already in a romantic relationship at the star of the story, and they stick through it to the end.

Zestiria's a flawed game. It's DLC was extremely disrespectful to the audience, and the AI is downright pathetic. But Sorey and Mikleo's relationship is actually worthy of respect. Their relationship is healthy, charming, and functional; free of the melodrama, abuse, and misogyny of Masashi Koshimoto's homoerotic oeuvre.

* * *

As for Nomura, I'm not as confident with him as I am with Kishimoto. But his intrusive interest in gaudy fashion and musical theater, combined with his work's lack of interest in actual relationships between men and women, and his lack of interest in developing women characters in material where he actually works on the story, all scream "suspect" to me.

Kishimoto's a tricky case: he has a very good understanding of how to make compelling characters, but he continuously sabotages his writing by refusing to follow through on the logical consequences of his characters actions the moment he adds a sympathetic touch. It gets downright comical how easily people in Naruto are willing to forgive crimes such as treason, pederasty, Mengele-esque human experimentation, and genocide just because Kishimoto himself feels sympathy for his latest pet.

I'm certain Naruto and Sasuke have romantic feelings for each other. But I wouldn't call them well-written after how badly Kishimoto insulted his readers intelligence.

Kishimoto's also a vile, sexist pig. He hates women as much as any notable writer I can think of, including Bret Easton Ellis and Dave Sim. But Ellis and Sim at least have the decency to follow through on the logical consequences of their characters actions.

It's a shame how much feminist outrage has been wasted on unserious bullshit like female characters in sexy outfits or male characters rescuing female characters from bad guys. It could, in theory, be useful when blasted at deserving targets like Naruto.

 

[A Beached Whale]

I was pleasantly surprised by, and adore Robin from Stranger Things Season 3. She's incredibly witty, smart, funny, and a nice addition to the cast. Her sexuality only came up when she had to gently turn down a heartfelt confession by a male friend. The scene was handled again, surprisingly well given most of 2019's ideas of 'inclusion'.

 

[Dunkirk]

The Ciaphas Cain series has Grifen and Magot, two Imperial Guardswomen who are a blatant couple, and everyone (Cain included) rolls with it, they kick ass and being a couple doesn't hurt that, so they don't get any shit for it.

Amusingly enough, Cain gets accused of having sexual designs on Magot at one point by a bitchy rival, and Cain finds this hilarious because (A) she's obviously not into men and his rival is a dumbass for not noticing the obvious and (B) Magot would have put a bolter to his ballsack if he tried anything even if he is a Commissar and he knows it.

It's hard to fuck up writing an LGBT character in 40k as the universe is just so overwhelmingly brutal and grimdark, that the fact they're LGBT is overshadowed by the horde of screaming xenos/heretics/daemons.

 

[Chewy Suarez]

I was pleasantly surprised by, and adore Robin from Stranger Things Season 3. She's incredibly witty, smart, funny, and a nice addition to the cast. Her sexuality only came up when she had to gently turn down a heartfelt confession by a male friend. The scene was handled again, surprisingly well given most of 2019's ideas of 'inclusion'.

Stranger Things is TV caviar. I’m not shocked they were able to do this properly. I love the Scoop Troop.

 

[FitBitch]

Honestly, the story of the comic "Castle Swimmer" isn't great but I do appreciate that it is a gay romance where the struggle of the characters being together isn't because they're gay. Gayness is really a non issue for the entire plot and I like that.

 

[IN 041]

Lahey and Randy from Trailer Park Boys.

 

[Jmz_33]

Kanji from Persona 4

 

[Gingervitis]

View attachment 976897
Kanji from Persona 4

...he’s not gay though. He even says that he’s straight several times, and even has a crush on Naoto. His issue wasn’t being gay, it was being too effeminate by Japanese standards and overcompensating for it.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

He's far more interested in his best friend Mikleo. The game treats Mikleo fairly similarly to how the series has treated love interests in the past. They spend the most time together. They're each other's most important person. There's even a scene in the game where one of the male party members is asking Sorey if he wants to peek on women, and Sorey doesn't understand the appeal at all; but does understand the appeal of Mikleo at the bath.

Don't forget that Sorey knew Mikleo's super secret name.

 

[Comicsgeist]

I went through my movie collection and picked out some of the best:

River Phoenix as a gay hustler with a crush on Keanu Reeves in 'My Own Private Idaho'

Ian McKellen as a fictionalized James Whale in 'God's and Monsters' is just heartbreaking.

Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive... um.. yeah.

John Cameron Mitchell's 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch' give's you an insane tranny that's actually a character that's allowed to be both flawed and funny.

For some Bi-representation, both 'Y tu Mamma Tambien' and 'The Dreamers' feature a menage a trois that veers into homoerotisism with teen characters exploring their burgeoning sexuality in a very organic way.

 

[Clipper]

Hisoka Morrow is the kind of character Masashi Kishimoto wanted to create, but didn't have the guts to follow through on. You learn few concrete things about him aside from his love of a good fight and his unhealthy interest in boys. But even though he sometimes helps the main characters, he's never been absolved for his depravity, and I think Togashi has ebough respect for his audience not to end the story by doing what Kishimoto did for Orochimaru and Sasuke.

Do you mean Hisoka's gay? Because Hisoka is more likely a pedo than he is gay.

 

[Manwithn0n0men]

Its what comes down to every good character: Motivation. Backstory, personality, these things are all wound up in the motivation for a character, which is the driving force for the story. We don't know anything about the Joker except his motivations. From this, we can infer all of the above. The reader can piece it together themselves, hence show, don't tell. See the fanfic Tony Stark, the motivation is a real human connection, which explains his personality, actions and sexual preference.

A character with no motive is just there. You can see them, but they're not moving. They're solely defined by what the author tells you. So more often than not, badly written gay characters will have little to no motivation or purpose to the plot. Therefore, the author has to tell you that they're gay. Or trans. Or lesbian. Even if the purpose and setting of the story is in the LGBT community, the characters will be meaningless without motivation. They'll feel one dimensional and that their only trait is that of their sexuality. Because they serve no real purpose in the story, you can give them whatever backstory you want. It doesn't matter. There's a play called Torchsong by Harvey Firestein, which sort of describes his life. All the characters are gay, but they all have their motivations, ambitions and dreams. Their sexuality is central but at the same time its ancillary. They even go as to explain 'Why do you have to be gay all the time?' And it gives a pretty good example on why one of the characters is very flamboyant while the other is the complete opposite. Its all about the motivation.

If you give a character motive, you can define them, flesh them out. If you can't figure out what they're motive is, they shouldn't be there. That's why so many gay characters are terribly written, because they have no motives. They simply exist to be there. There's also the problem with perfection, a lot of LGBT characters are written with no flaws or particularly idealistic, with a lack of motivation which lets them stand out.

On this note:

What the heck are characters anyway? Characters bring your story into focus. They help make Themes, Plot, and Tone be something that people can relate to through their actions and their talking words. They also are tools for the audience to engage in the story with. "I relate to X and thus I like X in this story"

So you have to ask yourself (in asking if a Gay character is being well written): Does this character being some flavor of queer serve the story?

Lets use the Movie IT 2

Gay couple in the opening were harassed (and one was killed) to show the evil and corrupt nature of the town. This was a good use of gayness in a character.

Now one of the Losers was Gay: How did that serve the story? It didnt. But his gayness was a cheap throw away plot element so it also didnt give gay people a reason to invest in the story

 

[I Don]

Alan Cumming as Dylan Reinhart in Instinct. Sure, the MC's gay and even kinda flamboyant, but (usually) the show doesn't make a big deal out of it and focuses on the crime mystery aspect.