A Single Unified LGBT Character Thread

^ The emoticon makes me think you're probably joking anyway, but you're not implying that dysphoria necessarily makes someone that depressed, right? It all depends on the individual and their environment.

I mean in this case it probably wouldn't make them any more depressed than turning into fucking furniture.

I am exaggerating, but so is AHR exaggerates from the example I used.

Uh. I wasn't exaggerating? If I wanted to do a thing where people turn into furniture, I would absolutely explore the dysphoria and dysmorphia that would come from it 100%

Which erases distinctions between characters I was hoping for get some opinions about.

...how would exploring differing forms of dysphoria and dysmorphia erase distinction? Like it's not an on/off switch.

Especially if you go with the theatre canon that it's actually a slow transformation as opposed to an immediate one.

edited 4th Apr '17 2:49:01 PM by MrAHR

It was just an unspecific example.
Oh how horrible it is to be an object is obvious and trivial and done already.
I asked for thoughts on unique twist relating to the thread's topic, while you just tell me to forget it and make generic.

edited 4th Apr '17 2:55:06 PM by Adannor

—blink blink— I am a bit confused here. We often look at the tragedy of being an object, but not the psychological state associated with it. Dysmorphia is basically NEVER portrayed in the media.

I am confused as to what you're taking offense to here and what's exactly "generic" here.

You could even show the contrast with characters who previously suffered from those issues in their human bodies, how they are dealing with their item bodies, and how it contrasts with those who are experiencing such things for the first time?

edited 4th Apr '17 3:00:49 PM by MrAHR

Double post, but if you want an example of what I'm talking about, take a look at the cut song Human Again. It's a very good cute song, and it's very action oriented. Most of the things they desire are things they want to do and can't, due to being objects. But this is very different than looking at the psychological state one might be put in.

We get it loosely touched on with the wardrobe and the candle (be good looking again, have hair again), but these are offhand lines, and make up a minority of the song lyrics. Even the choreography are mostly action oriented with making the castle nice and presentable. Once again we get some hints with the wardrobe, but not really that much.

All I really proposed initially, as my own personal desire, would be to take the stance the wardrobe had, and see how it would come up across various individuals and how it would be expressed, across several identities with varying pre-established problems and several items of varying agency.

edited 4th Apr '17 3:25:14 PM by MrAHR

Oh I see, hmm. I think he could have the Hate the Sin Love the Sinner attitude as a middle step, but than change to affirming, after even longer. Obviously going all at once might not be quite realistic, I wouldn't put a major focus on his journey, but he could still have one.

So, I'm making an RPG, and I was wanting some advice on writing a major supporting NPC (she's the leader of an intelligence organization hiring the PC)

They're a transgender character (or at least one who willingly underwent a Gender Bender). I was wondering how her past might come up on conversation. Maybe the player can just ask her story and have her explain it that way?

edited 4th May '17 11:29:25 AM by Protagonist506

A character who was subject to an unwanted Gender Bender wouldn't be transgender in the Real Life sense. Although they would be effectively in the same situation as a transgender person of their pre-transformation sex (i.e. a cisgender man transformed into a woman would be in the same situation as a transgender man, and a cisgender woman transformed into a man would be in the same situation as a transwoman).

So it's really hard to say without more information.

Never mind, misread that as "unwilling".

Basically, don't make the mistake Mass Effect: Andromeda made and remember that for a transgender person, their original name and pronouns are very personal info regardless of if they're open about being trans.

Slight side note: It's "transgender character" (transgendered is sort of like saying "The gays"; not outright offensive, but kinda rude).

edited 4th May '17 11:29:09 AM by Bisected8

My mistake. Two questions:

What did Mass Effect do wrong? And which character is transgender?

My current conception for the character is that they're a transwoman, but didn't discover this until after she changed her biology. She initially went into it to undergo an Empowered Gender Bender (to use special cybernetics that were only compatible with a female body) to become more badass. She realized later that, in hindsight, she was a woman who had previously been in a male body, rather than a man who was in a female body.

edited 4th May '17 12:34:08 PM by Protagonist506

You ask one NPC what brought her to Andromeda, and she infodumps you that she was called Stephan but that wasn't who she was and she wanted a new beginning. This can a third sentence out of her mouth on your first meeting.

Which isn't how most real people treat their identities and is just beating you over the head with "Look we have representation!".

edited 4th May '17 12:54:11 PM by Adannor

Yeah, I have a similar problem with the protagonist-he's canonically autistic but I've had trouble thinking of a situation where it'd be brought up organically (though I did think of a few).

Well, speaking as an autistic trans person, I'm significantly more likely to mention being autistic to someone I just met (constantly being encouraged to growing up probably had something to do with it), so it's not unreasonable for them to just mention they're on the spectrum (it worked for Symmetra).

I checked out her comic: it's part of Symmetra's internal monologue that occurs throughout the comic. She says "Sanjay has always said I was... different. Everyone has, asking where I fit on the spectrum." Note that this is set years in the future, where many people likely understand autism to some degree, at least to the point of recognising autism as a spectrum. It helps that the comic portrays a very nuanced and fleshed out personality that also fits many autistic traits, making her different from a neurotypical character without any insult.

In this situation, Symmetra was talking to herself, and it flows naturally from the storytelling. Now, applying this to a trans person...

Is it a society where trans people are understood and respected as equals, or one where they still have to hide the fact they're trans? What would be a natural way of showing a character is trans? Photos of them when they were a child? Medical records saying they have certain body parts e.g. prostrate/cervical cancer checkup? A stash of hormones?

Moving away from items, a man who never uses the urinal at public toilets? (Not a sign on its own, but could be part of a transman's characterization, much like how autism isn't defined by any single symptom). Would it be too much to have a transwoman complain about unsticking her balls from her legs when she walks?

edited 2nd Jul '17 8:45:28 PM by hellomoto

You know that trope when two gay parents want a kid? How can I make it so that it isn't offensive? I'm asking for the same of one thing, two of my characters end up protecting a android girl from the Eden guard, a task force of Angel like androids. The two guys begin to develop a somewhat family bond with her as the story goes on.

edited 2nd Jul '17 7:25:40 PM by ewolf2015

Just... write a couple who happen to be same sex that want a child? I'm not familiar with any derogatory tropes.

As I recall, there is the All Lesbians Want Kids trope, but that's for lesbians, not gay dads.

Raised by Dudes would be more relevant. Avoiding that trope means making sure your child doesn't become more 'masculine' or 'more messed up' just because she's raised by two dads.

Also, I just realized that in your case, it's not literally a family. I don't know much about your android girl or why she has to be the 'daughter' to your two characters, but that's probably my personal bias.

edited 2nd Jul '17 8:56:14 PM by hellomoto

Spoiler time. Eve, as I'll call her, fell from the sky after being accused of treason against Architect. She use to be known as hope, one of the elite group of Android guardians called the Virtues Before getting reprogrammed. After those events, she was reduced to a child like state of being unless her previous protocols were activated.

Well, I figured this was going to be an awkward idea to discuss, but at least there's a dedicated thread for this sort of thing. But I do need to know how good an idea it is in any case (especially since it involves Rape as Drama), so here goes.

So the setting is a tabletop RPG-esque fantasy, with the story being about an adventuring party working to collate and write a compendium of useful and practical information for adventurers. During one of their outings, the party ranger suddenly has a trauma-induced 'episode' of sorts due to circumstances. When the rest of the party understandably ask about it, she tells them her backstory. She's a biological hermaphrodite and bi-gendered leaning on female, and formerly male, due to an unexpected encounter with Mind Drainers, a variation of the Mind Flayer/Illithid species from D&D, except these creatures only eat brains when they're otherwise "spent" - as in, they've decided on a more sustainable method of acquiring sustenance from sentient beings, by feeding off their mental energy, which they've discovered the easiest way to get out of their prey is through sexual stimulation and pain. At the time, he was too low-level to fight back, and like the rest of his party, was brainwashed, his body warped through magic and concoctions into a feminine hermaphrodite, and raped and tortured repeatedly, being conditioned to enjoy it.

Even when her party was rescued thanks to the party mage using a sending spell to alert the guild of what was going on shortly before being captured, the damage is already done, and even with over a year's mental and magical therapy, she's still a damaged individual, if in a much better shape than her former party members, if partly because the familiar she got after the incident also acts as something of a therapy dog for her. She did actually get a sex change back into a male, but then realized that it simply didn't feel right anymore, and after some further experimentation with magical sex change, she decided on being a hermaphrodite with a feminine gender identity, finally able to reclaim her agency with choosing her sex and gender. While she's still more than capable of handling herself nowadays, her psyche is still traumatised to some degree, as demonstrated by the aforementioned "episode" and nightmares from time to time. Fortunately, her current party is not only respectful of her choices and sympathetic about her backstory, they also do what they can to help with her trauma when applicable, though everyone in the party is "damaged" to some degree (the party fighter was witness to a horrific near-wipe of her old party, the mage was an orphan who once was forced to live on the streets and regularly abused until he came into the care of two loving adoptive parents, and the priestess had a Crisis of Faith after a nasty incident involving a run-in with her pantheon's resident trickster deity).

Yeah, if you haven't noticed, the setting has some shades of Dark Fantasy. So, yeah, aside from the question of whether this is actually a good idea to begin with, there's also questions of how a medieval society would treat LGBT people in general, nevermind people who had their sex/gender changed against their will and subjected to such horrific trauma. I do think it's an interesting concept, but I'm worried that it could turn out real badly if not done right, but I guess that's the case for any form of LGBT representation these days.

edited 11th Aug '17 9:42:07 AM by Cronosonic

If you plan to have a rape happen in your story, always ask yourself these questions:

• Why does it have to be rape? (If the answer for this is "shock value," throw it out immediately)
• Can something else replace that rape to achieve what you want?
• Does the rape actually add anything meaningful to the story and character?
• How do you plan to explore the effect rape has on the character?
• How do you plan to have the character deal with it?

To paraphrase something Lewis from Atop the Fourth Wall said: a mature story focuses on the rape itself and show how it affects the character that suffered the rape. A story trying to look mature uses the rape for shock value.

I actually went and re-watched that episode, which was helpful for going over those questions and mulling things over. Well, going over those questions in order...

• This was the most difficult to really put into words, and it ties into the second question. Simply put, one way or another, the character was robbed of their ability consent and dehumanized against their will, and a large part of their character is the result of what happened and how it affects their behaviour in the present story, and how they partially recovered from the experience but are still mentally scarred.
• Honestly, I really couldn't think of any alternatives that would get a similar end result.
• Yes. Again, it affects their personality and how they behave, and how they equip themselves, and it also fuels their motivation to achieve their goal of writing the compendium, in hopes that other people will be less likely end up in a similar situation as a result. Though it helps that the effect is on one of the main characters who actively drives the plot.
• The overall trauma results in PTSD-esque "episodes" in particular circumstances, mainly due to their brain being magically mucked up, though that's a result of the trauma as a whole and not just the rape. They also find it awkward to even talk about sex, as it makes them feel vulnerable (and more involved stuff runs the risk of triggering an episode), even though they eventually would like to be more intimate with one of their party members, which affects their relationship.
• By the time of the story they have already gone through a lengthy period of therapy, as well as adjusting how they equip themselves to make themselves feel safer, but they also have long decided that they don't want the incident to define what they do with their life, hence why they're still adventuring, and they also are able to reclaim their agency for their choice of gender.

This took quite a bit of time to think about, and I'm not really sure I'm satisfied with it, but I do want to make sure I don't have any alternatives to get the same result for what I'm going for before I go through with it. Maybe someone else has some ideas, I dunno.

Here's an Extra Credits video that you might want to check out; it talks about how Injustice 2 handles Harley Quinn's trauma survival.

The highlights of the video are:

• The game doesn't portray trauma as something someone "just gets over."
• The game focuses on the psychological parts of the trauma.
• Working through issues doesn't automatically make the person okay and free from trauma, but gives them the strength and tools to pull back if trauma tries to draw them back in.
• Harley acknowledges that a part of her still has positive feelings toward her abusive relationship despite knowing it was horrible, which doesn't oversimplify the abuse she was put through.

While it might not be the same thing as the story you want to write, I think there's quite a bit in that video you can use to help write your character when it comes to dealing with trauma survival in a meaningful way.

That last bullet point is probably something you'll want to use if your character was "conditioned" to enjoy the rapes. Sadly, some people in real life try to use the "if you had an orgasm, it doesn't count as rape because an orgasm means you enjoyed it" bullshit. It's bound to be something that your character will probably dwell on, and it's something you really don't want to mishandle.

edited 11th Aug '17 1:18:41 PM by dragonfire5000