Making up for lost LGBTQ+ tropes

The cutting of LGBTQ+ tropes like Bi The Way and Badass Gay for not being tropeworthy have resulted in a lot of concerns that we have fewer positive LGBTQ+ tropes, which makes it harder to find appropriate ways to note LGBTQ+ characters in media if they don't fit another LGBTQ+ trope without throwing it into the description.

There's been discussion about whether we could implement some super trope for cases where being LGBTQ+ is relevant to the story, but the scope of this is difficult to figure out. Can we implement new LGBTQ+ tropes that reflect the significance of LGBTQ+ characters and aren't People Sit on Chairs?

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 17th 2024 at 12:14:40 PM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

We do have Character Death and Meaningful Appearance that cover broad concepts which aren't always tropes, but often have story significance. They might be a good precedent for a broad supertrope. As I've proposed in some discussions on the matter, something like Meaningful Sexuality might work (but need a double check on the name).

Of course, we don't want a "any character that is LGBTQ" trope as it's People Sit on Chairs. But many instances will have story significance, and in older works and works made in countries that are not LGBTQ-friendly there will be cultural implications that might not be apparent in modern times.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I disagree that a character being LGBT is People Sit on Chairs. Specifically, I think it's a sub-trope of Garnishing the Story.

A character having a non-heterosexual orientation does have inherent audience appeal. Whether that's because audience members think it's "cool," or "awesome," or whatever doesn't matter. Many people will consider representation "cool" while others will be repulsed by it (for various reasons, not necessarily from bigotry). The point is that the representation changes how people feel about the work, for better or worse. This inherent appeal to audiences is why Word of Gay exists in the first place (writers/creators see the value of having at least one LGBT character in their work, even though Word of Gay is imo misguided and an element of poor writing).

To the claim that representation of sexuality is noteworthy but not tropeworthy: why are sparkles and spoons more tropeworthy than representing sexualities? Why are princesses more tropeworthy? After all, we have these as sub-tropes to Garnishing the Story. At least in the case of "princesses exist in this work," this was discussed in the Garnishing the Story clean-up thread and they agreed to keep Gratuitous Princess.^note Yes, they got rid of Everythings Better With Princesses, but my point is that they kept the part of that trope of "princesses exist."

So here are a few of the sub-tropes we have of Garnishing the Story, which apparently are more noteworthy and tropeworthy than representing non-heterosexual orientations:

• Sparkles exist in a given work.
• Princesses exist in a given work.
• Explosions exist in a given work.
• Spoons exist in a given work.
• Goggles exist in a given work.
• Various animals exist in a given work and are cute or dangerous. (Bears, bunnies, chickens, dolphins, cows, sharks...)
• Various languages exist in a given work. (Latin, English, Italian, non-native languages...)

These are all barely notable and barely tropeable, and yet we have them. Sometimes it isn't just "X exists in a given work" but has additional criteria of being funny, cute, or dangerous. But somehow "homosexuality exists in a given work (and that's cool/awesome/pleasant to know/etc)" is less tropeable than "spoons exist in a given work (and that's funny)."

By completely getting rid of tropes like Bi The Way and Badass Gay, we have thrown the baby out with the bath water.

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Just to address the inevitable question as to why I'm essentially making this argument again:

In the Bi The Way thread, I guess I just didn't make the point well enough. One person even started arguing that "sexuality is not gratuitous," even though I had never said otherwise. It was pretty clear that there were severe misunderstandings happening. (Apparently there were also people who thought I was trying to keep Bi The Way as it was. As if I just didn't want us to cut the trope or change it in any way.)

I think when the subject is pretty heated like this one, people tend to double down against a given position because of its similarities with another position that they disagree with, regardless of the differences in those positions, and then people start actively looking for ways to disagree on the former because they don't like the thought of agreeing with the latter. Even though agreeing with one would have no effect on disagreeing with the other.

We can remove Bi The Way and Badass Gay and keep a trope about representation of non-heterosexual orientations, just like we can get rid of Everythings Better With Princesses and keep a trope about princesses existing in a given work.

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

Gratuitous Princess is not "princesses exist", though. It is "princesses exist when there is no reason to". I said in the Bi The Way thread that I just do not see putting princesses, or penguins, or sparkles, in a work just 'cause you can as comparable to a character's sexuality, as this is an attribute of real people that is weightier than those. Too far in one direction and you get tokenism, accusations of forced representation, or poor representation overall. It's overall tetchier and should be done with more thought than equating it to those.

I had no issues with Bi The Way getting cut, as I really do think it was too far gone for a retool. I have consistently said since then that a 'casual sexuality reveal' trope might make up for it. The thread for Suddenly Sexuality has collected examples that are relevant to 'surprising sexuality', although it is no longer going along with the retool.

Edited by Synchronicity on Sep 12th 2020 at 2:38:33 PM

And my personal issue with calling it GTS isn't necessarily that these things aren't appealing but that the entire point of Bi The Way was that it was done casually. It wasn't added specifically for audience appeal. Audiences certainly find these things appealing but they aren't added with the intent of appealing to the audience, or they'd be more blatant about it, not super casual like Bi The Way was.

Basically, the way I see it is, would a network be able to market the work based on that thing being in it? Did the producers put it in solely because these things are cool or liked? I don't think they can't be a GTS thing but Bi The Way wasn't- because it was added to be a very nonchalant and subtle form of representation, which seems at-odds with calling it intentional Audience Appeal.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 12th 2020 at 3:20:47 PM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

There's definitely some media that gets hyped up for having LGBT characters, but claiming a character is only LGBT for gratuitous audience appeal has Unfortunate Implications of a "forced diversity" narrative.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Yep, which is why I said I could see LGBT characters being a sort of GTS thing, but claiming that they are just by virtue of being in the story is wrong.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Maybe Plot Relevant Sexuality?

Rock'n'roll never dies!

I'm going to throw in what I said in the moderator chat about this. Bear in mind that I am cis-het, so I'm not trying to sound patronizing or pretend like I'm taking anyone's point of view. This is entirely my opinion.

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I've been tormented for a while by "sexuality-as-a-trope". Someone being gay or bi or trans or straight is just a thing that happens. It is not a trope.

The desire to have these things be tropes is rooted in, I believe, their general lack of representation. Someone who is seeking validation for themselves wants to highlight every case in media. Conversely, someone who is prejudiced against those traits wants to call them out as offensive.

Tokenism is a trope. So is stereotyping. This is why we have things like Uncle Tomfoolery, Camp Gay, Depraved Homosexual, and so on. Those tropes are fine. If a sexual (or racial, or religious, or gender) minority is included in a work just for the sake of having one or to play out a cultural stereotype, that can be identified as a trope because it carries meaning... in this case, Token Minority.

What's important is that these attributes be connected. If a character exhibits camp mannerisms, that is specifically and pointedly either about their sexuality or about someone imitating it for effect. It's not the random juxtaposition of two traits. Badass Gay, on the other hand, is. A character's sexuality has nothing to do, inherently, with their bravery or prowess.

"There's a gay person in this work, and they act heroically." Unless the work sets out to deliberately subvert the idea that all gays are cowards, there's no trope there. That said, if there is a cultural stereotype that gay men are weak or cowardly, and that is played straight in a work, that could be a trope, with the badass variant a subversion.

This same misunderstanding about how tropes work is behind almost all of the issues with appearance and "weapon of choice" tropes.

Baked in assumptions and prejudices are still tropes if they affect a story's narrative. When a gay character is associated with being effeminate and weak, they will act in ways that express those traits. That is a trope, whether conscious or not. The writer wrote that into the story.

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Random adjectives and nouns matched together do not make viable tropes. Neither do random attributes of people. There must be some narrative intent, even if it is unconscious cultural bias. "There is a bi person in this work" is not a trope, unless it expresses some form of narrative intent.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2020 at 4:09:50 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I do feel it's important to say that I don't know what a GTS sub-trope for this would look like exactly. It would need a draft and discussion. It's just that the claim I'm arguing against — that representations of non-heterosexual orientations cannot be a trope — is begging the question. It assumes that such a concept cannot be a trope and then the argument revolves around that premise (which it eventually then concludes). There is, in my opinion, a valid trope in the concept.

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So then, wouldn't "a character is a homosexual in a given work when there is no reason to mention / imply / address their sexuality" comparable? Or would the inclusion necessarily have more meaning than that? I feel like both of these add to the tropeability of the concept, whether that's Garnishing the Story or something with more weight to it than GTS.

That's part of my point. We have tropes for spoons and sparkles but not one for sexualities. If it's inherently weightier than other GTS sub-tropes than how is it not at least a GTS sub-trope?

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I think this goes towards the "severe miscommunication" point I made above. Back then, I wasn't talking about how Bi The Way was a GTS sub-trope but rather that this concept, which is not the same as BTW, could be a GTS sub-trope.

So, two things:

1. LGBT in media has a long history of subtly and coded messaging. Flowers, handkerchiefs, etc. have been used for a long time to allow audience members "in the know" to inductively reason that a character is gay.
2. I think it's the fact that a given sexuality gets explicitly mentioned at all is enough to show it to an audience. It isn't like we're talking about there being a sex scene, since being homosexual is (obviously) more than just having sex with members of the same sex.

I mean, there are plenty of ways to show that a character is gay.

I don't see how this is a good test for whether something is at least tropeable enough to be GTS. Nobody markets the fact that there's a funny spoon in the work, or that there are cool goggles. That doesn't seem like it factors in to tropeability.

This is why I mentioned Word of Gay. There are creators who "reveal" their characters as being LGBT because they see that their audience likes such representation. And one a common complaint of Word of Gay is that the creators only mentioned it after the fact not because they actually wanted their characters to be gay but because they thought others would think it was cool.

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The problem with an argument like "It has unfortunate implications" is the same problem with Unfortunate Implications (the trope) itself. Anyone can see unfortunate implications in anything for any reason. Where you see a "forced diversity" narrative, I see a "corrupt homophobes trying to cash in" narrative. There's no reason to prefer one of those narratives over the other. The "It has unfortunate implications" argument doesn't go anywhere, for anybody.

Also, a GTS sub-trope for representation might not be about "X exists for no reason" or "X exists just because." There are other GTS sub-tropes for "X exists (and it's cool)" or "X exists (and it's awesome)."

Edited by WaterBlap on Sep 12th 2020 at 3:18:47 AM

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

I just want to bring this to attention here. The fallout of Badass Gay and Bi the Way being cut is becoming more prevalent now. Another TLP draft related to LGBTQ sexuality was created: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=lkl0pkxqakdm4npuipy61x29.

Edited by DivineFlame100 on Sep 12th 2020 at 1:25:17 AM

That goes back to what I said before: there's this long-standing argument against characters being gay when there's no "reason" to make them gay, and the "gratuitous gay character" idea feeds into that. Suggesting that characters are only LGBT for gratuitous purposes comes across as discouraging casual representation, and I don't think that would fly, especially because I can see so many Edit Wars over whether a character is really gratuitously gay or if they have a "point" to being gay. For characters that are said to be gay but don't get to do much with it, we have But Not Too Gay and But Not Too Bi.

Your point about gay coding makes me wonder: do we have a trope about specific ways to code a character as gay, like with flower/handkerchief coding, or does Ambiguously Gay cover that enough?

Edited by mightymewtron on Sep 12th 2020 at 4:26:02 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

There is never "a reason for LGBT people not to exist" in a work such that having one would represent an oddity, other than inherent cultural bias. Therefore "an LGBT person exists in a work" is not a trope, unless it is explicit tokenism or otherwise used to create or emphasize a point.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2020 at 4:27:53 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I believe what some of the others have been getting at is that some examples of characters being LGBT may be a subtrope of GTS, but not all of them. Distinguishing the ones that are from the ones that aren't may not always be possible, and there would likely be shoehorning and debate over what counts with such a trope.

I thought of a replacement trope for them: "Orientation Reveal". It's when the reveal of their orientation in-work is used as in a story as a plot impotent or minor detail as opposed just being stated as x orientation. Characters introduced as x orientation are exempt for the reasons the old tropes were cut, and revealing already established orientations in-universe is Internal Reveal.

Some examples that can go under this:

• Funny.Justice League Dark Apokolips War: John Constantine spots Harley Quinn hanging around with King Shark, and exclaims "oh, bollocks, it's my ex!". Raven assumes he's talking about Harley. He isn't. (Constantine had a girlfriend and his being bi is treated as a surprise which has the narrative purpose of being used a a joke.)
• TheLegendOfKorra.Tropes S To Z: Wham Shot: The final has Korra and Asami joining their hands and gazing lovingly into each others eyes. (A watershed moment for representation that's plot relevant in it recontextualized their prior interactions, shows they earned their happy ending moving on from all the hardship they went through over the series, and capped the series theme of challenging convention (the villains were motivated by criticisms with the settings status quo, Korra's development was from the Avatar's traditional role of action hero(ine) to diplomat first)).

Thoughts?

The current TRS for Suddenly Sexuality was leaning towards something like that, renaming the trope to Sudden Coming Out and making it more about casual but surprising revelations about a character being LGBT. The former would qualify for that, but the latter probably wouldn't since it's been built up by the narrative.

Associating Ass Pull with an objective trope was part of the issue and, again, the trope is still in TRS, where the definition is likely to be redone entirely.

Edited by mightymewtron on Sep 12th 2020 at 4:56:30 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Suddenly Sexuality is when a character that has never been hinted at as gay or bi or whatever suddenly comes out. The abruptness is part of the trope, and gives rise to the suspicion that the writers pulled it out of their nether regions. Sorry, I'm Gay is the "blink and you'll miss it" version.

I would think that revealing one's sexuality would certainly be a trope in a general sense, suddenly or otherwise.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2020 at 4:37:54 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I can see your argument now. That's a fair point, and I can see Edit Wars happening over that too. I hadn't thought of that. There being a "for no reason" criterion would probably fail as a helpful criterion.

We do have But Not Too Gay / Bi. That's specifically about not including sexual / romantic acts between people of the same sex, but it's a trope because the lack thereof is tropeable. It's certainly tropeable and helpful to the discussion of troping LGBT characters, but I don't think it covers the tropeablity of LGBT characters being included in a work.

This can't mean what I think it means. Because it sounds like you're contradicting yourself. It sounds like "If an LGBT person exists in a work, it is because of inherent cultural bias." But you also said that "There must be some narrative intent, even if it is unconscious cultural bias." Which implies that it is tropeable.

You can't have meant that, given your overall disagreement with me. So what are you trying to say? (I understand what you're trying to do with the form of the argument, but the content of the argument just seems to contradict your earlier point.)

There's also the problem of "If 'an LGBT person exists in a work' as explicit tokenism or otherwise used to create or emphasize a point, then it is a trope." Can "LGBT people are normal" not be a point to emphasize?

On top of all of that, I disagree that having an LGBT person in a work would not be an oddity. (We more than likely are in completely different circles of people, but I have argued with plenty of people plenty of times that non-heterosexual orientations actually exist. There are reasons not to include LGBT people in a given work. Do I agree with them? Generally no. But those reasons still exist regardless of if I agree with them.)

I have come to agree with this. We can't have a trope for something like "non-heterosexual orientations exist in a given work for no reason." But I disagree that there can't be a positive / negative portrayal (e.g. "and it's cool/awesome/pleasant" vs "and it's repugnant/depraved") GTS sub-trope.

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I sponsored and launched Queer Flowers (based on another draft called Lesbians Love Violets). I don't think anyone is in disagreement over the tropeability of that sort of gay-coding trope. (I have no idea about the handkerchief one.)

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

I am saying that not having LGBT characters in a work is a sign of cultural bias, just like having no black, Asian, or Latino characters. Human diversity is People Sit on Chairs. Not having diversity in a work is an aberration, explained in terms of prejudice, unconscious bias, or something similar, unless it is inherent to the context. (A work set in fourth-century Scandinavia could be excused for not having a lot of Asian characters.)

Conversely, when a work includes an LGBT character but does so in a token or stereotypical manner, it's a trope because that also reflects some form of bias (even if it is anti-bias) and is, moreover, an affirmative decision. In the same way, if the LGBT character is the one with emphasized or exaggerated sexuality, it's noteworthy, especially if the cis-het characters aren't snogging visibly on screen.

This is at least in part because, in a crowd of people who are not engaging in sexual behavior or sex-motivated interactions, there is nothing to make an LGBT individual stand out. Dora could be lesbian for all we know; it's irrelevant to the context of the work, and frankly a little presumptuous to suggest. ^note Other than to illustrate a point, obviously.

So, again, if there is an LGBT character in a work, what do they bring to it other than just being LGBT? Are they camp, are they excessively sexualized, are they an example of positive discrimination (like Magical Native American), are they the focus of a Very Special Episode? They need more context than just being gay or bi.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2020 at 5:27:36 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Are you proposing a GTS sub-trope of "character is LGBTQ and it's good"? What would an example for that look like? And do you mean good from an audience perspective or in how the narrative frames it?

What counts as "good representation" is a minefield and hugely dependent on personal emotional reaction. This wiki has no business listing characters as "good representation".

You bring up one of my chief discomforts with the GTS idea: would ethnic diversity also count as "enhancing the work" and thus all non-white ethnicities could also have there own "tropes"?

Also, because somebody brought it up, Suddenly Sexuality is probably going to get cut because not enough examples worked under the new definition. Most were either horribly written or pure complaining, and many relied on potentially offensive assumptions.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Sep 12th 2020 at 5:34:37 AM

You've got it. "OMG, there's a black person in this film" might have given high-class ladies fainting spells a century ago, but nowadays it would seem insulting to bring up.

We shouldn't be in a situation where "OMG, there's a bi person in this work" is remarkable enough to be tropeworthy in and of itself. It must have some additional context, and the context is the trope.

I keep trying to emphasize this in all of these discussions, but it's so much that I can't keep track of them all. THE CONTEXT IS THE TROPE, not the storytelling element that conveys the context to the audience.

"Why is this character in the work? What do they represent or demonstrate? Does it have anything to do with their inherent or secondary characteristics (gender, sexuality, race, clothing, etc.)?" If you can't answer the question, then there's no trope.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2020 at 5:37:49 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

This is the bit where I can sort of understand where the issues are coming from, because all of these are (usually) not ways people want to see themselves represented - which does lend some emphasis to why people want a trope like Bi The Way where it's just "yes, bi people exist and it's normal" without requiring any stereotypes or the like. I feel the discussion about launching a Meaningful Sexuality trope, in this light, is actually pretty much actually the opposite of a solution.

At the same time, though, I also very much see the position that "LGBT people exist" is not actually a trope, and even defining it in regards to homophobes going "they don't or shouldn't" is just potentially perpetuating those ideas. I think part of the problem is here is really the same one that we're constantly dealing with in regards to shoehorned Real Life sections and drama-filled YMMV pages: people seem to want TV Tropes to cover everything that can possibly be tied to fiction, even though it's got a more specific purpose than that.

On the gripping hand, though, I'm a straight person, so I'm not sure if I'm really the best-suited to talk about this in the first place.

This is my feeling as well. While it's understandable for marginalized groups to want representation, the mere fact of representation is not a trope.

People keep wanting to use TV Tropes as a therapy site.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2020 at 5:48:02 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

For what it's worth, I'm currently trying to work out more positive LGBT tropes. I had an idea to cover the association of LGBT with "outsider" or "loner" characters here though I'm still struggling with scope there. Someone else in the Sounding Board also pitched an idea for plots where a character questions their own sexuality, whether it turns into a Coming-Out Story or they turn out to be straight.

Note that I'm a bi person and I've seen other bi people sad about losing Bi The Way, which is why I sympathize even though I know why it was cut. Hence why I'm trying to find more tropes that cover how LGBT people are portrayed in media.

I think part of the issue is we still have Transgender and Asexuality which kind of are "trans people exist" and "ace people exist" right now. We could work on more specific tropes to cover those experiences because if those get cut for being PSOC, we'll likely have a similar issue.

Edited by mightymewtron on Sep 12th 2020 at 5:50:32 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Both Transgender and Asexuality were brought up in the past, and I had the same problems with those as I do with Bi The Way, etc. I also voice the same objections with appearance tropes, by the way, so it's not about sexuality but about what makes a good trope.

A good trope is not simply "this exists", or "this happens". That is the definition of a bad trope, and "representation" is not a valid argument for keeping them.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"