A Single Unified LGBT Character Thread

>Petting-Zoo People as trans analogue

Huh. That sheds a new light on that story I tried writing as an egg.

Wanting to be a catgirl is a stereotypical trans girl thing for a reason. Probably.

As an aside, I don't know how SR's 6th edition is yet (the brand new one), but 5e is a lot better about it (to the point they were clearly at least trying); the resident magic expert invokes Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person, and there's some other trans positive asides. We'll just ignore that one of the powers of evil technomancers is to give people a condition called Dysphoria.

Try to avoid token minorities, including token LGBTQ characters. I guess. I'm not that good at writing advices, to be honest.

Yeah, a lot of the missteps are easily avoided by just writing several characters of that demographic and letting them be individuals.

Yeah. For instance, my protagonist is lesbian and my deuteragonists are a bisexual trans girl and a heteroromantic asexual boy. They are just some other facets of their personality, not brought too much to the forefront.

Edited by TheWhistleTropes on Aug 26th 2020 at 11:23:02 AM

Hey, thread. Just realized one of my characters (a trans guy) basically infodumps a ton of stuff onto this kid who is trans (also a trans guy) and just... has never heard the word before and hasn't known there were other people out there like him. I'm not sure if this would make it a justified Info Dump, but I would like to avoid infodumping for the sake of... well, trans people like myself, who have probably heard the definition a million times over. I feel like the scene itself is crucial and setting the info out there feels very, very in-character for the infodumper, and the infodumpee is definitely someone who needs it, but at the same time, I'm worried it'd get tedious. Does anyone have tips for... well, basically a character giving a kid the trans talk but not making it tedious? (Also, if I managed to say something incorrect in here, lemme know.) The passages are linked here and it's not Pt. 1 I'm worried about, it's Pt. 2. Heck, I might even end up adding more to part two with details I may have forgotten...

(cw: brief discussion of potential homophobia and transphobia)

If it's important for the characters, but not for the readers, you can skim over it with something like "and then he explained how all the rules of gender were actually fake nonsense".

... I haven't read your draft so adjust tone as necessary.

Sometimes the simplest advice is the best advice. Thanks much. I realized I could summarize the info in there pretty quickly. Thank you again!!!

Yep Exposition Cut that shoot!

I seriously am wondering whether this makes my character too focused on being trans or not. I'm thinking her character arc would be going from thinking she's a pretender to truly accepting herself. Her bully ex-girlfriend (who didn't know she was trans) constantly deadnaming her certainly wouldn't help, especially when they've had bad blood since the ex got kidnapped.

Also, curious as to whether it would make sense for female dragons to have four limbs (two arms, two legs) whereas males have six (two arms, two legs, two wings). I don't know if it would make evolutionary sense... but at least it would give me another trans character!

Female dragons would still have vestigial limbs or something (consider mammaries in humans), but it's plausible.

Yeah, that could be interesting. At least then I'd have two trans characters in my novel, not just one.

But even still... I am wondering how Liz (my trans woman cat) could try to have an aesop other than being herself—since I think that would get transferred onto Eco (my trans man dragon). Perhaps Liz's ex could learn that it's OK to be who she is, while Liz herself learns to let go of her past.

Is it a good idea to gender spirits? (e.g forest spirits, water spirits, etc.)

I would ask the spirits that.

e: ... Okay this is the character thread, but I'm gonna stand by my answer anyway.

Edited by wingedcatgirl on Sep 25th 2020 at 9:19:39 AM

Seconded that answer.

But plenty of spirits are nonbinary or even genderfluid. You can check out Overly Sarcastic Productions' LGBT folklore video if you want to.

Cool. I'm just checking if that's a good idea or not.

There is no rule they can't be gendered, so yes you can do that if you want. Or do anything else with them, the concept casts a very open net for presentation.

I plan to make a Tweeny Witches fanfic about trans people. The show takes place in a sex-segregated world, which means that trans women and AMAB non-binary people would culturally live as warlocks while trans men and AFAB non-binary people as witches. What is it like for a trans person to live in places like the show's setting?

Edited by IukaSylvie on Oct 26th 2020 at 9:01:29 PM

I was thinking about how often women characters get damseled because the bad guy has a magical or mad science plan that specifically needs a woman, and I got to wondering if a trans character would provide an interesting wrinkle to that, but there's probably a very very narrow way to do that that wouldn't be horrifically insensitive, right? And the bad guy misgendering people because they're the bad guy is definitely not on that narrow path.

Makes me think of Magical Boy, which is about an AFAB transboy who is required by the universe to inherit his mother's mantle as the Magical Girl-like Goddess's Descendant, in order to hold back an evil god. As he comes to accept his destiny, his battle regalia evolves from a traditional frilly dress and wand to a belted tunic with actual pants and a sword. I haven't read the comic in full, and I thought that was an interesting take, but as someone who is mostly cis-female, I'm probably not qualified to speak on how well it handles magically-mandated gender requirements and being transgender.

[redacted]

Edited by IukaSylvie on Nov 3rd 2020 at 5:06:32 AM

Does anyone know of any specific pieces of literature on writing LGBT characters?

I've been having a lot of ideas for characters lately, and I want some guidance on writing them properly. I wanna know what pitfalls to avoid, and how to more accurately capture the way a person who's queer or non-binary sees the world and themselves. I wanna be respectful about it, but I'm really bad at researching this kinda stuff.

Edited by GNinja on Nov 2nd 2020 at 6:10:16 PM

x4: The best way to look at that is Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person

I can confirm the page was largely written by a trans woman

Ohhh, that's a nice trope that I gotta throw an example at.