Looks like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bury_your_gays

The idea seems to be that lesbian / gay relationships are often portrayed as suffering tragic outcomes instead of living happily ever after.

I think this is a play on Harry Potter and the crappy views of it’s author.

Only a valid argument when the media does not spend a significant chunk of time developing an heterosexual romantic plotline with a different set of characters that is not integral to the plot.

Which is the vast majority of media. Hollywood cannot help but shove straight love interests into absolutely every man-woman character pair they see without any regards for plot relevance.

It’s so pervasive that when it doesn’t happen (e.g. Mad Max: Fury Road) it’s as much a marked point of pride as if they had a gay romance.

When a straight character does it, it’s “building a deeper emotional connection with the audience”.
When a gay character does it it’s “pandering”, a “political statement”, “unnecessary”, “irrelevant to the plot”, and “something that should have been left for the audience to read between the lines”.

sure, but people want to see characters that represent them in books to feel validated. if you reveal that a character was lowkey gay years later that does nothing for the thousands of gay kids that read the stories when they were actually popular.

besides, it’s just lazy. a good writer can make a character gay without it being a major facet but also make it obvious to the reader to help gay kids feel validated and seen.

if you really just want to write a straight character but also want the liberal cred of saying you do positive representation you can just have them mention their husband and it would at least show a forethought and like you weren’t just reacting to trends on Twitter. something a certain famous author has shown a penchant for in years that have come to pass.

alternatively, you can actually write a good gay character. it’s not impossible. look at that one episode of the last of us with nick offerman. it was really gay. it was also very human and relatable. it was very much about their gay romance and yet their gayness didn’t effect them in important moments. they didn’t love or die any differently than the rest of us, but it wasn’t a straight romance turned gay either. shit was beautiful.

though if my experience with my gay friends tells me anything what they really want is extremely raunchy stories about problematic, abusive, and neglectful relationships. specifically weird Chinese gay romance right now, but that’s just what’s trendy i guess? maybe my sample size is too small…

I agree #5 is mostly the right way to do it. Characters should be liked because they are interesting. Adding some cookie cutter stereotype to pander to an audience is bad writing. They can embody certain traits, but it should be normal. You shouldn’t add a prejudice to a character to explain them.

“Mitchells vs. The Machine” the daughter in that was done so well. There is no “omg you’re a lesbian?!” from anyone. The family accepted it before the start, so it wasn’t even a plot point, which is how it should be. That’s just her sexual preference and not her whole identity. They didn’t hang on that as a reveal, it just happened naturally. I think it’s great to incorporate characters from all walks of life. But just remember they are normal people and not sideshow acts.

Yeah, if someone asks why a character knows a thing and the author points out that the parts of the character that were under the surface of the page or got cut because they weren’t interesting are because he spent his teens as a cliche theater kid and had a much older boyfriend who survived the Reagan genocide before becoming a special forces guy involved in the alien conspiracy

Or a fan asks why that character did a slightly off thing that doesn’t make sense without context, and the author explains how she reflexively avoids touching her friends not because she’s traumatized but because she’s internalized narratives of lesbians as creepy or predators or something and thinks she’s being a bad friend if she cuddles with a straight girl she thinks is hot.

That’s not what this ever is though

I know about Dumbledore, what are some other examples of number 5?

Owlbsolutely no idea who you’re talking about

Of a repressed population, yes. You can portray characters in media as explicitly being in a non-straight relationship and also not make it central to that character’s plot. Just a trait that they have that’s demonstrative and not… Well… “Token gay guy energy”

Maybe. Who knows what our creator reveals about us outside the canon of the real world?

Ok. So we gonna apply that to straight people too?

my problem with this is that aspects of identity that people are oppressed on need to be discussed within a framework of undoing that oppression. we have to talk about race because people are oppressed based on their race. we have to talk about sexuality because people are oppressed based on their sexuality. i would even say we have a great societal failing in which indigenous religions aren’t respected or studied, and are all sublimated and eliminated by christianity, islam, and buddhism. many religions contain a group’s collected collective wisdom. there’s even valuable wisdom to be found in christianity, islam, and buddhism, lest anyone think i am trying to speak outright against these, but we should be studying the collected wisdoms of both these smaller religions and bigger religions because when you draw everything from one source you become stuck in orthodoxy instead of open to possibilities.

here in north america, there are even religions which preach that queer identities serve a specific societal role and are to be celebrated and loved just like the child bearing identities. until we reach a point where a religion like that is allowed to be seen and heard without being labeled as pagan heathens to be purified, i think we have to talk about both. it’s one of those things where when there is an oppressed group and you choose to remain neutral, you are taking the side of the opressor

So, no kissing or hand holding in public? Isn’t that a bit too uptight?

I mean if it’s in media about romance, friendship, whatever (think some of the parts or stranger things, I guess?) it’s fine

If I’m watching Saving Private Ryan it would be fucking awkward to just randomly learn Ryan is trans or some shit.

It’s all about presentation, as with all things.