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
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What about some sort of Audience Reaction trope involving a work's diversity? We could use that to discuss positive examples of diversity while making it clear it's not an actual trope- but still something worth discussing.
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LGBT Fanbase includes the audience reaction to media that includes LGBT representation, right? Or is that excluded if it's Queer Media anyway?
The discussion in the comments of the discarded TLP draft Even The Villains Aren't Homophobic
is relevant here. Copy-pasting selections from my own comments there:
(ETA: I'm mostly including the first part here as context for the second part; feel free to skip to that part.)
[…]
Another example, Lovestruck. As a Romance Game with Gay Options, LGBT people are part of the target audience. Within the stories, the modern world is generally portrayed as accepting of all LGBT identities. The villains can be awful terrible people, but they never treat LGBT identities as anything other than normal. The romance genre already tends towards escapism, so this is just an extension of that keeping a specific audience in mind.
Another way this can show up is through Speculative Fiction LGBT works. If you're showing a world that is very different from our own, one of the ways those differences can be portrayed is through completely different societal attitudes on LGBT issues.
Another example, this time concerning race/ethnicity. The original Star Trek series included a black woman, a Japanese guy, and a Russian on the crew, which was pretty progressive considering when it was made. The reason for the inclusion is that it is set in the far future, and is meant to be an optimistic look at humanity, showing how they could better themselves over time.
The problem arises when that purpose cannot be pinned down without over-assuming author intent. For example, representation. People will have different ideas about what counts as representation, and without Word of God about the intent, a trope about that would likely quickly devolve. The only way I could see that working is if a Word of God statement was required (would that make it trivia?)
But yeah, as long as there's a purpose behind it, as in the examples I've discussed, then it has narrative meaning. The challenge is in getting to the core of that meaning and expressing it in a way such that other people will be able to identify it in new examples while not "identifying" it in non-examples.
Edited by Twiddler on Sep 12th 2020 at 3:33:49 AM
I feel you didn't finish reading my comment... my main focus was the second of the quoted comments. I included the top part for context.
Edited by Twiddler on Sep 12th 2020 at 3:14:19 AM
That also has the problem of being entirely about something not happening. You can get tons of examples out of that, but those example won't form any meaningful pattern because they're grouped by something they don't have (in this case homophobia) rather than something they do.
Edited by TheMountainKing on Sep 12th 2020 at 6:14:31 AM
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Isn't that just Politically Correct Villain or Equal-Opportunity Evil
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
Again, please read the entire post, or at least the bottom part.
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I think the bottom quote (despite referring to "as I said above") stands on its own and th first quote isn't needed for context.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Can you do mean by that post?
Alright cool, I'll just stick the top part in a folder then.
What do you mean?
Edited by Twiddler on Sep 12th 2020 at 3:32:11 AM
I'm just not getting what you mean, or what point your trying to bring to this conversation? Is it a defense of tropes like "Not Even The Villains Are Homophobic"? Because that trope seems to be an obviously terrible idea.
Edited by TheMountainKing on Sep 12th 2020 at 6:39:54 AM
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Twiddler I do think I understand what the quote is pointing at, but it's hard to really explain and discuss- as it says, pinning down intent, especially behind representation, is hard.
For example, in the story my friend and I are writing, we're going pretty over-board on all sorts of representation, from races to sexualities to gender identities and all else. But we're not adding these things so much for audience appeal or even to really make a statement, but just because we both want a diverse setting and, my friend being a Lesbian (I'm straight, personally, but my friend group is so gay I'm basically the token straight friend so that should tell you how I feel about LGBT stuff), we want to represent these groups while not making these things a major part of the story.
For example, a character of mine is gay for example and this is relevant mostly because she's forced to be in a Fake Relationship with her male best friend (who, in turn, falls in love with her for real but tries to respect her boundaries). Otherwise though it only really pops up when she's interacting with her love interest or joking about her sexuality being so overlooked by everyone that her bed comforter literally being rainbow still doesn't tip people off. The emphasis here is more on this character being forced to play a role she doesn't feel comfortable in while her attempts to be herself and express herself just get completely ignored or dismissed- a recurring theme with her specifically. Her being a lesbian isn't as important to the story as the effect it has on the plot, so I could've replaced it with any number of things and it could've still made sense- so she's in there as representation but I didn't add her specifically to be representation, I just made a character who is gay and built off of that in the narrative.
However, readers might see her and think I added her for representation, because she's a cool, compassionate, sympathetic heroine who gets unfairly judged by society and repressed by her parents- traits not intentionally linked to her sexuality, note but someone can easily draw connections I didn't intend to make when writing her.
Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 12th 2020 at 6:53:46 AM
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Hmm...do we have an audience reaction for "Gay Icon" or something? When the fandom connects to a character as positive representation even if they aren't canonically LGBT? Sort of a subtrope of LGBT Fanbase but it singles out specific characters (and celebrities, as this is extremely common in real life too) that the LGBT fandom attached to. That could cover some of the issues with wanting to document what the fandom perceives as good representation, intended or otherwise.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
LGBT Fanbase is the closest I can think of. Also, Rainbow Lens for when a storyline is viewed as a metaphor for being LGBT.
Edited by Synchronicity on Sep 12th 2020 at 6:03:14 AM
Yes. Thank you.
@ everyone else, please note my original post has been edited for clarity. The actual draft was never the point.
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Don't forget, we also have Rainbow Lens.
But yeah. I think positive representation is very noteworthy, but it's not always tropeworthy, and that's the trouble.
Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 12th 2020 at 7:07:39 AM
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So much traffic here...
I've seen LGBT Fanbase be used for specific characters. I.e "this character has gay/lesbian fans." Especially back when it was called "Fan Yay".
Maybe relevant to this discussion: do we have a trope for "someone being (revealed to be) of a certain sexuality for the shock value"? I.e as an Intended Audience Reaction.
The more I think about it, the less I deem Badass Gay as a trope. Perhaps it was the issue of "representation" as people said, that certain people of Tv Tropes (and only Tv Tropes, not any other audience) want "someone who's a badass and gay" as a trope because they can then prove that "gays can be badass" and see the whole list of them.
Edited by 4tell0life4 on Sep 12th 2020 at 4:15:33 AM
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Which is exactly why we disambiged it.
And what’s tropeworthy is not always tropeable from a practical perspective (which was part of my point).
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Also true.
It really depends on how much stock we need to put on author intent.
Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 12th 2020 at 7:23:05 AM
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Lost in Space
That's a whole other can of worms. I come down on author intent being important because tropes are included by authors. They don't happen by accident; someone doesn't trip over a desk and spill a bunch of tropes into a script. Tropes don't retroactively appear in works because the audience imagines them.
Now, tropes can be subconscious or enforced. They can be inherent to the medium, demanded by audiences, and so on. But every single trope in a work is there because someone put it there, whether they meant to or not.
This is one of the major reasons why we keep audience reactions and YMMV separate. Sometimes an author may attempt to convey an idea to an audience, but the audience doesn't agree, or interprets it in an unintended way. This is totally real, but it needs to be clear that it's the audience's interpretation of the work, not the author's intent, that governs in these cases.
All this is to say that having (or not having) LGBT characters in a work is a decision, conscious or not. An author could simply not think about minorities when writing a work and only include heterosexual relationships because it's what they know about; this need not be malicious. Conversely, an author could add a gay character to pander to a gay audience, to satisfy their own interests, to gain "representation" points, because they think gays are bad, and many other reasons... or sometimes just because they want to have a gay character.
Audiences can then interpret that however they like. None of that changes the intent.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2020 at 7:33:48 AM
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Right; so for my example with my own character, I didn't intend to make add her specifically for the sake of representation. She is representation, as is a lot of characters in the story, but she's not gay because I wanted representation.
Fans however might interpret her as being representative, especially since some of what she goes through might resonate with people even if it's not intentionally linked to her sexual orientation. That doesn't change why she's in the story but people might see her in ways I didn't intend. However, she wouldn't be any sort of token nor would she fit any "LGBT character added for representation" trope- if we're going by my intent.
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Interesting take. I can see what you mean but I'm not sure I'd agree, as from my perspective those are essentially synonyms and I think there are examples of characters being added intentionally for the sake of representation, but you could argue that's just my perspective as an audience member, so hey.
Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 12th 2020 at 7:49:25 AM
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It is my opinion that "representation" is an audience reaction. If intended by the author, I would call it "inclusion" instead.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2020 at 7:46:32 AM
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