Male Roles Vs. Female Roles in Fiction: Discussion/Analysis/Troperwank

I think it's not necessarily that they're more common so much as portrayals of physical intimacy between women are more widely accepted than ones between men. That's something I've seen LGBTQ men complain a lot about.

Yeah, gay men might make more appearances than lesbian women, but you're much more likely to see a lesbian woman kissing her partner or the like than you are a gay man.

Yah, intimacy between two men is still seen a sort of squick factor for many(I have it, even if i should know better), so gay men appear is usually as single or with a boyfriend as after though while women can have gay gilfriend with expresion of concern.

Indeed. There may be more (solitary) gay/bisexual male characters overall, but there seems to be a lot more more gay/bisexual female couples. But Not Too Gay and Wordof Gay tends to affect male ones much more strongly than female ones. For a recent example look at Tracer, who was visibly intimate with her girlfriend, whereas Soldier 76's boyfriend already broke up with him and the one photo we see of them could easily be mistaken for brothers or friends without context.

Likewise, although the scene in Thor Ragnarok was ultimately cut, they were thinking of depicting Valkyrie leaving her lover's room after sex, and Jeri Hogarth is visibly cheating on her wife with the secretary, while dialogue was the extent of the homoeroticism present in Joe Russo's character in Endgame. I have not watched Agents of Shield to judge but while Joey Gutierrez is openly gay and acknowledges it in dialogue and background references I believe he's single as of the present and his boyfriend is never shown.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jan 18th 2020 at 5:08:31 AM

TBH I am wondering if the overall percentage of lesbian female charceter isnt higher, and that distribution isnt because male charecters as a whole are so much more common.

That too is a big part of it. The Gay Best Friend which accounts for a lot of gay characters tends to be male rather than female.

Western comic books seem to be less afraid of depicting male homosexuality than other media but despite having less barriers it also sees the least direct circulation, and the overt display of homosexuality among male characters usually doesn't make it into adaptations, or at least not without a ton of censorship (see Constantine).

Edited by AlleyOop on Jan 18th 2020 at 9:18:28 AM

Constantine's bisexuality is an interesting case because there's still an ongoing controversy of fandom whether it was something "added" to the character in a believable way or not. Personally, I think making him the most prominent bisexual man in comics is something that's added to him. He was not a minor one-off character but an extremely popular fan favorite. I don't think it seemed out of nowhere either since he's a guy whose past was always shrouded in mystery.

I have to admit when I heard he was a bisexual man I did find that rather interesting. I haven't read any Hellblazer to comment on the execution, but in concept, it's very rare for a character of Constantine's archetype to be queer in any way, so it makes him stand out.

The execution....

Yeah.

Well, the best thing we can say about that is it's not like John has any healthy relationships.

He generally has his close partners die before they can work out how irritated they can make each other within the relationship. <_<

Nobody does Doom Magnet quite like the Constatines.

No wonder. Even leaving out that he is on the shitlist of Hell and Heaven, John just tends to piss off people.

Since we're on the topic of male same-sex romances, I'm not sure if it was talked about before, but the base game of Fire Emblem: Three Houses only had a 1:5 male to female ratio of same-sex romances for Byleth. DLC has improved it somewhat by adding one more in DLC (who is a spoilertatstic character) and one possible (only known through datamining because said DLC isn't out yet). The reason why I'm saying possible for the second DLC character is because two men who male Byleth can S-rank support (which are typically reserved for romance options) are considered platonic because the two men have canon wives.

This also brings up another issue, while the Fire Emblem series has had more representation as of late, there is a clear bias towards Bishōnen gay men. The examples are Niles from Fates, Leon from Shadows of Valentia, and Lindhardt and the two DLC characters from Three Houses.

Edited by tclittle on Jan 19th 2020 at 2:24:46 PM

That and constantine issue reveal at issue: is easier to see a man as gay and bisexual when is easly more coded that way.

and by coded I mean they if are overly feminine, there is still sense of gay=feminite that make the hold concept uneasy for a lot of people and why in the case of constantine it seen added because he is "Manly concept".

and this concept is also apply on tumblr or LGTB fandom who kinda tend to soften all gay chararters just because.

It depends on the fandom from what I have seen. I know some LGBT subsets of fandoms are really into bara/very masculine men and their isn't anything wrong with that.

Probably because Fire Emblem, and Three Houses in particular, features a decent amount of Female Gaze, and though their tastes are more diverse than it used to be, that means the LGBT options are going to lean somewhat towards the tastes of Yaoi Fangirls who historically tend to prefer M/M romances involving Bishōnen characters more than gay men themselves might (not that there aren't many existing gay men who wouldn't also enjoy that as well).

Although Niles, while not fully Bara Genre levels of masculine, seems to be well regarded among the cis gay men who do like it.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jan 19th 2020 at 4:40:08 AM

So yesterday I heard two older women say that they'd rather work in male dominated work industries than female dominated ones because apparently envy/politics/behind your back talk is REALLY really really nasty in them .-.

That kinda sounds like what people say about girls' bullying vs boys' bullying methods, but yeah first time I've heard of it. Does anyone here have heard similar things either in real life or in media?

First off, anecdotal evidence isn't indicative of anything. Second, this is a thread about fictional roles. What you're talking about might be more relevant in the Womens' Issues thread.

An article on Netflix Dracula's depiction of Lucy Westenra. Warning for spoilers.

Note the show is created by Steven Moffat whose depiction of Irene Adler in his Sherlock Holmes t.v. show also got criticism.

Lucy Westerner is portrayed as a vapid party girl who hates her materialist lifestyle and being defined as beautiful only to commit suicide after she loses her beauty.

I think that's still a heads up above Irene Addler where they creepy fetishsize BDSM and lesbianism/bisexuality while doing fanfic about her and Kate Middleton.

And then you have Irene in Elementary, where she’s Actually Moriarty, and is the one person capable of manipulating Sherlock and utterly ruining him. AKA the best version of Irene outside the original stories.

I always found the fact that writers latched onto Irene Adler as a makeshift love interest for Holmes a bit weird, since in the original story Holmes respects her for outsmarting him but his admiration is purely intellectual, and she only ever appears in one story. Holmes never shows romantic attraction to anyone so I'm pretty sure he's aroace. One of the bigger examples of heteronormativity in fiction if you ask me.

Irene and Lucy are both some curious examples of how pop culture has learned surprisingly little from the Victorian era. In those cases, they almost go backwards. Irene goes from a clever woman who outsmarts Holmes (in a story where Holmes is more or less the villain, mind you) to usually his love interest and frequently a damsel in distress.

Lucy Westenra, who's shown as a gentle ray of sunshine in Dracula often ends up as some kind of vapid Alpha Bitch and, surreally, very sexually promiscuous as if to justify Dracula (the rapist analogue) targeting her.

At least some of it is because Holmes doesn't have much in the way of a proper love interest. Modern adaptations often feel an absurd need to shove some kind of Token Romance into it, but they're too cowardly to go either of the two routes of 1. creating an original character for it for fear of being accused of making a Mary Sue, or 2. making Watson, who actually does have a history of assumed sexual tension with Holmes, Promoted to Love Interest.

To be somewhat less interesting, it's more the fact that Watson and Holmes are partners and Watson is the guy who gets with the Girl of the Week. If we can say twice as a week.

If you need a love interest then use John.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 22nd 2020 at 12:13:08 PM

It's always bugged me how that happens to Lucy's character... again and again.

It's clear from the books that she is a caring, creative young woman who quite cheerfully thumbs her nose at propriety when the codes of conduct stifle her ability to decide who she may or may not enjoy as friends, even though she isn't otherwise as progressive as Mina is. Hence her insisting on having Mina as her maid-of-honour, despite the very clear class divide. Her mother was busy pestering her to make better social connections, but she wanted her actual friend from school, not a "proper" rung on the local social ladder.

Most of Lucy's downfall is at the misguided hands of the men in her life... And, her mother's repeated attempts to put climbing social ladders before her daughter's wishes.

That great, big, easily accessible window? Wouldn't have been an issue if the supposedly spoiled rotten Lucy had actually had her way and been able to move rooms to share with Mina as both had initially wanted to do. But... just think of the proprietary of it all! The classes just cannot mix like that before a wedding! (Even though they had shared a room at school, mind. But, like, boarding is totally different! )

Nope: the common sense downgrade to a room Mina could contribute to without being wiped out or feeling like a leech for not paying towards? Shot down in flames.

Heck, Lucy gets talked out of a lot of what she actually wants or is not even consulted over decisions made on her behalf. Even when she's vamped and supposedly mesmerising people left and right. And, it gets her worse than killed. Girl can't catch a break, even after being damned simply because she looked good to a bigoted blood-sucker.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jan 22nd 2020 at 8:40:14 PM