A Single Unified LGBT Character Thread

I have this fanfic of Warrior Cats. Like my usual production, it has lots of queer characters.

In my fic the cats don't really care about your gender identity or sexual orientation and leave you alone, though that can depend on the clan's culture and you might be expected to have kits neverthless especially if there aren't many kits at the moment because they're survivalistic and shun outsider blood.

I'm still making side characters (on the basis of having determined that 38 is a genetically viable population number in each clan and that the sex ratio should be about 21 AFAB and 17 AMAB cats ^note  (in order to avoid the Warrior Cats books' implicit and explict incest issues)).

While at that, i briefly thought about making one of the side characters a gay trans tom. Would it be bad if i did so and made him one of the cats who initially kind of follow Ravencall's regime as a youngster and flees from Riverclan territory after Ravenstar's death? He wouldn't be overtly evil to begin with and would abandon Ravenstar's ideology as he matures^note  (i'm calling it a Heel–Face Turn, though he wasn't terribly enthustiastic to begin with and was largely just following), would go somewhere near Windclan in the next generation's Windclan arc (Arc 2)^note  (Ravencall was at war with Thunderclan and the guy was in the final battle, so Windclan is the nearest viable option and they also don't know who he stood with in Arc 1 because they weren't involved), and eventually have a relationship with a Windclan cat. His transness doesn't have anything to do with anything, it's just a thing.

On the other characters of Arc 1, Splashnose is gay or bi^note (how he reads depends on whether or not i'll have him crush on the female stray, or whether i'll pair him with a female cat during any of the three planned sequels focusing on the other three clans. I've thought he could get on with an european wildcat) and Nightflank/star is trans (Ravencall/star and his minion Goosefoot are also gay, but that's just because Splash's and Raven's thing is a main crux of the plot, and after Splash ditches Raven he tries to replace him with Goose). The same arc also features a two-males-one-female thruple where all three are with each other, amongst the good guys) At least one of the sequels^note  (the only one with any real plot plan right now, the one that's about Shadowclan, while the one with the other characters i'm talking about there being Riverclan) has a gay couple as protagonists (Sunspot and Icestrike; i've mentioned them before somewhere), though at the moment i don't have any other characters who are gay and trans.

Edited by Nukeli on Apr 11th 2022 at 8:53:52 PM

In the same fic of Warrior Cats, there's trans character Nightflank/Nightstar and his (also trans) girlfriend Stork.

Night is a side character and the main arcs are all written from different cats' points of view (not first person though), so i'm not sure how to write in reference to him while he's too young to communicate his gender as a kitten, or when he encounters characters who don't know who he is and who'd propably initially assume him female because cats propably could smell each other's sexes. I don't intend to misgender Nightflank, but it'd be weird if everybody magically knew before he was old enough to speak or when they're just meeting him have never heard about him before. How do i proceed?

This isn't a problem in the other language because neither grammatical gender nor gender pronouns exist in finnish. But english sucks.

I also started wondering what should the cats call transness. I've seen one other person on the internet come up with something, but "changeheart" isn't very translateable (i'm writing the fic series in two languages, one of which is English). Ideas?

So, asking this here for lack of a better thread since it's a storytelling question: How do people realize they are LGBT?

From what little I know on this topic, the age at which people do has decreased over time, probably thanks to the Internet and increasing awareness of LGBT issues, but that's basically all what I know.

If you're gathering information to set ideas for stories, the yack fest thread may get you more sources.

Growing up in a highly conservative country I only got my queerness awareness from slow exploration of pornographic sources. Girls, girls with dicks, boys kinda line.

I guess a question that might help is, how easy would it be for your character to find out they are gay? Like let's say the LGBT Awakening moment is something simple like "I have weird feelings for a same-sex classmate." Someone in a relatively progressive area with a lot of online access and a supportive inner circle would have a much easier time finding out and coming to terms with that than someone in a very repressive environment with not a lot of resources to look stuff up with.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jul 19th 2022 at 4:50:11 AM

Going by that, given the parameters of my setting it would be difficult - most youngsters there tend to be not online and there isn't much of a LGBT "culture" on the outer islands of the Mountain Archipelago. I actually think that parents and friends would be the most likely pathway, there.

I think there are two components:

1. The person's awareness of their own feelings.

2. Outside knowledge to contextualise them.

For example, I had plenty of what would be called "egg" feelings for my entire life.

Once in a restaurant, when I was like 8, and was asked to order ice cream for dessert. I asked what the most popular ice cream was. The waitress said chocolate for the boys, and strawberry for the girls; I asked for strawberry. Then asked my parents "Why did the girls pick the best flavour?". My favourite was vanilla.

In class, the teacher said "we'll let the gentlemen leave first". I stood up to leave. One of the girls said "...you aren't a gentleman [deadname]..." (I don't know if this was an insult, or if she meant this, mind you), and I was thinking about it to this day for a week.

I was strangely happy when I had an excuse to pick a girl character in the third gen pokemon games. I got feels from the one trainer in the poison gym in the second game (when you revisit Kanto) who was the only guy in a gym of girls who disguise themselves as the (girl) gym leader. And talked about how cute his disguise was.

A lot of trans people would recognise those as signs you're trans (maybe not externally, but certainly if I were to explain what was going through my head at the time).

But I didn't come out until I was in my mid-20's, because I simply didn't know I could just be a girl if I wanted to. Even when I came out, I was worried I was just faking/mistaken (because the obvious truth that cis men don't want to be women just wasn't available to me).

The nearest was stories (which I found myself drawn to) themed around Gender Bender plots.

Information about trans people, and that you, too, might be trans just wasn't available (thank you very much, Thatcher).

Figuring out you're LGBTQ+ is sort of like a skill; even if you have the gear (self awareness), you need the training (information) or you can't do anything with it, and vis versa.

Knowledge doesn't need to be formal, mind you; there's plenty of trans people my age who came out younger because they knew other LGBTQ+ folk, not because they saw trans people on TV or learnt about them in school.

Edited by Bisected8 on Jul 20th 2022 at 2:55:27 PM

I think that is a good take although I suspect that for gay/lesbian/homosexuals/bisexuals the reckoning would work somewhat different.

OK, so in my scenario the boy that is my LGBT character would probably need some help with #2, say by his brother (who does have some exposure to LGBT issues), friends or parents (his father is a very perceptive person and a politician with major contributions to LGBT causes).

One idea I had almost 10 years ago is a story involving the parallel lives of two trans people, one an MtF football player and the other an FtM ballet dancer, who still want to be in their respective masculine and feminine fields. The lesson would be that even the most "manly man" and "girly girl" could have gender dysphoria and that their interests would not change when they make the transition.

Think that could work?

Edited by DS9guy on Oct 28th 2022 at 8:48:13 AM

So is having a fit Trans girl character that happens to have some muscles on her transphobic?

Been thinking of genderbending this high schooler character from an old story of mine who has plays basketball as a hobby and thus quite fit and also thinking of making them Trans as well. However I heard that muscular Trans women is a (probably negative) stereotype. The character in question, while fit and certainly somewhat more muscular than the average high schooler, doesn't have the same muscle mass as say a Hollywood superhero movie actor. So I'm not sure if I should make this character a Trans girl cause they're gonna be fit and play basketball regardless of their gender.

Lots of women have muscles. Some of those women are trans. It's fine.

I'm writing up some premade characters for a TTRPG I found (specifically Sonic Tag-Team Heroes), and I'm curious about how to handle a potentially non-binary character whose nature is chosen by their player.

One character, "Victor"^note Quotation marks are due to concealing their true name, is a masked anarchist akin to V that uses their heroic actions as propaganda of the deed. On a lark, I've been batting around the idea that "Victor" could be "Victoria" under the hood, with the player deciding their "canonical" biological sex and/or gender identity. Building off that idea, I'm also considering going further and making "Victor" canonically non-binary.

Since the player will decide the character's actions and details beyond "furry V", should I use the first option and let the player decide which gender they are in a heteronormative sense, or make them officially non-binary and let the player decide which gender they currently express? Also, should I denote their name as "Victor"/"Victoria" on the character sheet's name space, or put their current chosen name in the namespace and mention their alternate identity/identities in their characterization notes?

Edited by Negacube on Dec 2nd 2022 at 11:15:58 AM

I'm not sure I understand exactly how much you need to provide and how much you can leave open. But I think I would actually list "Victory" as a suggested neutral name alongside "Victor" and "Victoria", and then let the player decide what name and pronouns they want to play as. (Those would be two separate decisions - someone picking "Victoria" and he/him, for example, would be unlikely but possible.)

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Dec 3rd 2022 at 9:52:51 AM

Good point on the name/pronouns separation thing. Going by your suggestion, I think I'll use "Victory" in the main namespace, then put "Victor" and "Victoria" in the description block. Besides, Sonic characters tend to have "cool" names anyway, so it isn't a stretch in-universe. I also might not use the quotation marks, if only because the point may wear thin over time.

It might be worth being careful about making a big deal about their AGAB. It could lead to Unfortunate Implications about enbies, especially if you do something mechanical with it.

It's strictly a fluff thing. From a gameplay standpoint, they're meant to be a Fragile Speedster/Sneaky Guy, so their non-combat "talent" will work off a "too fast for the naked eye" idea rather than something involving their gender. Think of Espio the Chameleon and you won't be far off.

Edited by Negacube on Dec 3rd 2022 at 9:15:53 AM

I have a Transformers fic I've been working on for a while, and there is a canonically transgender character involved in it (it's Anode if you were wondering). I was wondering if there was a way to seamlessly show that she was trans without breaking Show, Don't Tell, since this fic is basically a revenge thriller where she and two other bots are trying to survive on a hostile corporate world filled with guards and a rouge military drone, but the only idea I have is writing a smaller side story as a flashback.

Any ideas?

Perhaps she might bump into someone who last knew her pre-realisation, whose reaction (whether positive, neutral, or negative, to be clear) might indicate the fact?

It might work, but there's one problem with that, none of the main characters could possibly know that she transitioned. All of them served in the military, but they were in separate branches with very little possibility of overlap between the three.

The only person who could know would be Arcee, since in this continuity she worked as a teacher along with Anode's wife, except in this story I highly doubt Lug would've told Arcee that her wife is transgender. Especially since Anode is trying to bury her military past for character reasons I haven't fully fleshed out.

(The way I imagine being transgender in the universe I wrote, is that it's roughly analogous to something like dental surgery since Cybertronians are essentially mechanical lifeforms and doing something like integrating a cannon into one's body or changing one's gender would be practically the same thing.)

The characters needn't have been placed within the same branches together—they need at minimum only have met, and Anode to have left enough of an impression to have been memorable.

Of course, better yet if they spent more time around each other.

Or at least, so I imagine—I don't know much about Cybertronian military culture. If that absolutely precluded any interaction, even outside of duty, between members of different branches then indeed, it may not work.

Two of the main characters were in completely separate spec ops forces while Anode was just in the regular army.

I'll name the other characters to make this easy for me to write future posts: Silverbolt served in the Fateweaver Corps (an intelligence agency/paramilitary outfit set up to destabilize and destroy all enemies of Eukaris), Arcee served in the Wreckers Battalion (breakthrough force meant to punch through enemy defenses and accomplish whatever action needed on the battlefield), and Anode was just in the army.

All three were involved in completely different avenues of the war effort on Junkion, and thinking back on what they did after the war most pretty much remained isolated from each other: Arcee worked as a teacher, Anode worked as a pediatric surgeon, and Silverbolt worked in the Fateweaver Corps/doing part-time acting gigs in theatre.

I don't really see any possibility of any of the main trio meeting up with Anode before pre-transition. If there is a possibility I'm open to suggestions.

I don't know the source work in question (beyond a general knowledge of Transformers and exposure to other iterations of it), but my thought is simply that they might have met off-duty, or in some official capacity that happened to overlap.

So, for a few examples:

Perhaps Silverbolt has recently returned from a mission, and is waiting to receive new orders. While relaxing somewhere in this brief halcyon, he bumps into a similarly-on-leave Anode, and they talk a bit.

Or perhaps Arcee has a mission to take on enemy lines, and they use as an initial staging point the camp in which Anode is stationed.

Or perhaps Anode was assigned to escort Silverbolt to an exfiltration point after a mission by the latter went poorly.

Or perhaps Arcee was injured in some dramatic mission on the frontlines, leading to her taking a brief time in a field hospital. At the same time Anode was sent by her commanding officer to relay a message to the bot in charge of said hospital, resulting in her bumping into Arcee.

Admittedly I may have hampered things by not fully giving out details of the entire continuity I was setting up, so I may have unintentionally left out crucial details to clarify things.

Those are good ideas, but thinking about them in conjunction with the backgrounds I thought up of them, honestly, I don't know if any of them would fit. Maybe for other characters but not this trio.

Here's some snippets of the work in question, just so you can get an idea of how much of Anode Silverbolt and Arcee knew about her beforehand:

Arcee and Silverbolt kept moving, albeit more slowly than before as they looked at her, trying to figure out who this new person was or why she would be on this planet, let alone inside the sewer tunnels. Silverbolt struggled to recognize her, if at all; Arcee made the connection quicker, which still took several nano klicks.

"Frag frag- get off me- don't-" Anode was struggling underneath Arcee's grip, trying to pry off her servo with one arm while trying to reach for a non-existent pistol with the other.

"Fraggin' Primus- I'm not here to hurt you!" She shook Anode's shoulder in the middle of speaking. "Look, just go with us and we'll help you, OK?"

Anode stared at Arcee with a blank unfocused stare and an open mouth, still trying to pry Arcee's servo off her shoulder with both hands, having realized that her pistol wasn’t with her at all and deciding to use both her arms to free herself, still with little success.

"Hey, Lug told you about me right? From Iacon Academy?" Arcee said, this time with more restraint than before. Anode continued to stare at her, mouth agape, all while her death grip against Arcee's servo briefly lessened from those words.

I mean, those were just examples of ways in which members of differing branches of a military might nevertheless interact.

Okay, based on what you have there, it sounds like Silverbolt and Arcee may have seen, but not met Anode. So perhaps, say, at some stage someone pointed out Anode to Arcee—perhaps at some stage pre-transition.

I could see something like this happening:

~

Inside Arcee's memory-banks a rapid sorting, classification, and re-classification was happening. New connections were being sparked to old, and her mind was thus drawn to a momentary interaction many, many years before:

She had been on base at the time, between missions, and visiting with a friend in the neighbouring barracks. That friend had pointed out another bot to her, confiding in a jovial tone: "That bot over there? That's Anode. He's the one that saved Wheeljack in the middle of enemy fire last week*. All the base is talking about him."

Arcee looked at the bot in front of her. "He"? But this bot's chassis was different, this bot's demeanour was different...

Yes, she thought. The humans had a term for such changes, didn't they? Something about a human's true self being expressed. Something like that...

• [Replace with other memorable event as appropriate]

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Dec 17th 2022 at 11:09:35 AM

That can work, the only problem is that given how I write and how surprisingly fast-paced this story is going so far, adding a flashback may slow the story down a bit too much for my liking.

Thanks for the help, though.