Making up for lost LGBTQ+ tropes

But is it an audience reaction that we can track? I guess we could have a reverse version of Ethnic Scrappy, about characters whose popularity is bolstered because they are seen as a good representation of a group.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Sep 12th 2020 at 7:58:40 AM

No, it isn't. Some things are not really tropable. LGBT Fanbase is, I guess... even though it's a bit reactionary. We could document every time a work has a special-interest fanbase, and it would only lead to bloat. Heck, I'd throw out all the "x work has y fanbase" articles if I could. They serve no purpose.

I guess I'm torn with this idea that excluded groups need affirmative representation not only in media but in tropology as well. If we lived in a world without inclusion issues, it wouldn't even come up. Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Language applies here.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2020 at 7:58:53 AM

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

Okay, I wanted to post in this thread since I woke up (actually, since I first thought it would be created, which was right after the T5 incident, but it needed to exist first, so...), but I had to get gas and groceries first, so this is something of a thread hop, since I've already collected my thoughts and just want to get them out there.

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Speaking as a straight male who likes to read (non-smutty) lesbian science fiction and fantasy and is editing his first written lesbian fantasy story (and working on his second. Hey, the idea appeals to me), I don't pretend to know what the LGBT community thinks about this, but I can guess, though I may be wrong.

First off, the deletion of Bi The Way and Badass Gay can kinda come off as queer erasure (even if it really isn't) and a slap in the face in that it makes it seem like more stereotypical and negative portrayals of LGBT (such as Camp Gay and Depraved Bisexual) are more worthy of being on the site than more normalized or positive portrayals such as the aforementioned deleted tropes. After working so hard for so long to get proper, positive representation in media, I can see why getting rid of positive tropes like badass gay would raise hackles with the LGBTQ community. I also don't think it was handled as well as it could have been and the whole T5 incident certainly didn't help in this regard (and I am so glad that my only participation in THAT mess was saying that people were coming off as dicks, and not just because I avoided the banhammer). How it should have been handled, I don't know, but the way it was doesn't leave TV Tropes looking very good, IMO.

Also, I do personally see having queer characters in general being a way of Garnishing the Story, especially because for a time they were (and still are? not sure) so damn notable. Also, coming up in certain genres and cultures (country music and religious fiction for the former, homophobic and heteronormative cultures [which also ties into the time element to extent] for the latter) would also be very notable, and possibly tropable under garnishing the story. On those grounds I do see the potential for tropes like Badass Gay and the like, as long as they're handled correctly.

My troper wall

I don't anything is "worthy" of being a trope. It's not an honor, it's an analytic classification.

Off topic, but I'd like to apologize for dismissing your concerns back on the ATT thread. I wasn't thinking that night and while I wasn't intending to be a dick to you or Mareon, I can see how it could've come off like that, and mob mentality, stress, and sleep deprivation is a bad combination. So yeah, you were on the money and I wish I'd listened to you.

Back on topic though, while it sucks that these things were beloved as positive representation, they were misused and poorly-defined tropes which made them impossible to actually, properly trope. We need to find more positive concepts that don't get too murky or easily-misused.

And is right that there's no such thing as being "worthy" of having a trope; we're just analyzing trends in fiction, not creating or praising/bashing them.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 12th 2020 at 8:13:10 AM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Wow, this thread proves a major reason why what we did at the Second Scottish Draft was so wrong.

Content Warning: My posts may involve my actions dealing with R-rated or Not Safe for Work content. Same for my edit history.

Maybe a trope/article on the Lesbian Pulp Fiction of The '50s? Basically served the same purpose as the Yuri Genre back then, and quite a few of the authors were WLW.

Or bisexual lighting, when the colors of the bisexual flag are lit in a club for Homoerotic Subtext.

Meaningful Lighting? I still do think I could adopt that draft below.

Edited by ccorb on Sep 12th 2020 at 8:21:11 AM

Rock'n'roll never dies!

We've actually got a draft for bisexual lighting. Looks like it's been inactive for three months now.

Trouble Cube continues to be a general-purpose forum for those who desire such a thing.

Bisexual Lighting has been discussed a few times, the main problem being that it might be too new of a concept to get enough examples to launch a page for it.

Also, I almost wrote "Bisexual Lightning" and that sounds like a cool name for a rock-band

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 12th 2020 at 8:18:34 AM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

If it had just been that one person's Single-Issue Wonk then I probably would have shrugged it off and assumed the decision to cut Badass Gay and the like was largely accepted as reasonable. But to see two people question the decision and discuss more broad LGBT tropes within a week of each other? That convinces me we should seek out more ways to represent LGBT tropes. (I still think the cutting was fine, though, hence why I named the thread "making up for lost LGBT tropes" not "bringing back lost LGBT tropes.")

I think the concern is largely that the tropes we do have tend to be very negative, which is just sadly what's more common in media at this moment, but results in positive representation being...well, underrepresented. We don't need to talk about everything but as more works come out with LGBT representation that doesn't fall into stereotypes, we should keep an eye out to document any trends popping up. I notice the "alternative/loner queer girl" concept coming up a lot, for example, and that's something I might want to note.

Also, re: earlier discussions of an Audience Reaction based around representation: I think that's unnecessary as a) it's too vague and debatable a concept, and b) bad representation is covered by Unfortunate Implications and good representation by a lack thereof.

Edited by mightymewtron on Sep 12th 2020 at 8:33:15 AM

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

Why do we "need to represent positive LGBT tropes"? That's prescriptivism. We represent actual tropes that exist in media, not tropes we wish existed in media. We are under no obligation to bend reality to fit anyone's agenda, even if we agree with that agenda. If there are "positive LGBT tropes" that are real tropes meeting our standards, then let's have them. Inventing buckets in order to cram things into them, on the other hand, is bad troping.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 12th 2020 at 8:35:26 AM

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

I think they meant that we need to find more positive tropes in media and document them, because right now it's overwhelmingly negative. It's not about making tropes we wish existed but finding ones that aren't yet documented.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

That's what I mean, yes. To repeat myself: "We don't need to talk about everything but as more works come out with LGBT representation that doesn't fall into stereotypes, we should keep an eye out to document any trends popping up."

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

Asking this again, I'm just curious

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.

We can never truly eradicate the coronavirus, but we can suppress its threat like influenza

Perhaps looking through the former examples of Bi The Way and Badass Gay would help to pick up on tropes we previously haven't identified. If they don't match to something already on Queer as Tropes, what as-of-now-undefined tropes are we missing?

(Lesbian pulp fiction, for instance— How Did We Miss This One??! While I devour the covers yet have never actually read the insides, I'd be happy to help with that)

I'm lesbian myself, and I'm in the "People Sit On Chairs" camp regarding "Character Is X" being a "trope" because of my understanding of what constitutes a trope. Then again, my youth involved a lot of "devouring every bit of positive representation I could find", so I understand why the outcry— especially since it wasn't really announced or well-explained for people who weren't following the discussions. I can see why it would be mistaken for some form of erasure even though we're continuing to propose more LGBTQ-related tropes.

Covered in Star Wars Cleanup, Deadpool, and Web Video sand. I'm not coarse and rough, but I get everywhere.

That sounds vaguely similar to our proposed rewrite for Suddenly Sexuality, but that trope might get cut like Mountain King said. So maybe that concept could help pick up the slack?

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

As someone who loves to see casual positive LGBT representation, I'm still of the opinion that documenting it doesn't suit a trope. A list, maybe, for people seeking representative works (if even feasible), but no, not a trope. We frown upon appearance tropes that have no narrative slant, and someone simply being LGBT has no angle to be troped, and sometimes can't be discussed beyond a ZCE. Most times LGBT people's queerness is integral to their portrayal, it's to talk about their struggle or it's done for a narrow or demeaning purpose. There aren't really a lot of "positive" stereotypes surrounding them that have reached the media, a queer person with another trope as a trait isn't really its own trope, and if it's not being played up, it's probably not tropeworthy. Above all, I fail to see how a character's sexuality or gender identity is in danger of going undocumented if there isn't a trope to link it to. Descriptions exist for a reason, and surely other moments that are tropable and bring it up casually can be cited in the trope list for the tropes they apply to. (e.g. N-Word Privileges: Bob makes a lot of gay jokes and uses words considered homophobic slurs, but does so as an out gay man.)

I understand why it may feel like a loss of representation on this site, but we simply document what media is doing; we can't say something is a trend or a trope if it's not.

Edited by 8BrickMario on Sep 12th 2020 at 6:27:26 AM

We should remind people that The Other Wiki does keep lists of LGBT representation, so if we lose a trope that's basically a list of bi/trans/ace/etc characters, you can find it there. Here's their bisexual one.

My point is that we don't need it because Wikipedia has it for anybody who does want to see this.

Edited by mightymewtron on Sep 12th 2020 at 12:45:49 PM

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

Wikipedia also has lists of fictional animal characters by species. We don't keep track of those, do we?

Content Warning: My posts may involve my actions dealing with R-rated or Not Safe for Work content. Same for my edit history.

An issue that has surrounded efforts to get more diversity representation is that to make it a casual part of the character with no direct impact on the character or the plot may help normalize it but falls into tokenism and loss of an actual diverse "voice" in the work. But to make their unique voice heard and represent their struggles falls into an issue that their existence amounts to just these exact problems rather than being more than just their orientation/race/gender. That's why so many works get criticism for doing diversity wrong either way you go.

As related to TV Tropes, we can only trope something that the work draws attention to in some way. Tropes tend to fall apart because it specifies something so abstract that all you can really do it point out it exists, and little about how this impacts the story. Badass Gay was a trope that fell apart with the examples, which offered little more than "character is gay and also a badass" because it didn't find the root cause of the work needing to imply that the two aren't normally connected. In contrast Asexuality may have a similar problem in concept, but the examples largely expand on identifiable parts of the work that shows evidence of the character's asexuality (direct confirmation, Not Distracted by the Sexy, confirmed virgin, uncomfortable with romantic prospects), rather than becoming "they don't have any love interest" type of speculatory examples.

Right, I believe that is why they shared a link. We are "narrative conventions", not "lists of chairs", so mightymewtron suggests that we direct people to Wikipedia's list since they're doing something we aren't.

Edited by crazysamaritan on Sep 12th 2020 at 12:44:04 PM

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I can see potential for, say, an index of LGBT characters, but only if we ever hit 2.0, as apparently they'll do something with the character pages and have each character have data to connect tropes to or something? So in that circumstance it might make some sense to have an "LGBT characters" index.

Until then, though, no, especially since we don't really have the means of linking specific characters, meaning it'd be a bunch of random characters/ pages, or even random work pages.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

So what are the other "problematic" LGBT tropes that we have? There's Asexuality and Trans Sexual but I dunnobof any others.

We can never truly eradicate the coronavirus, but we can suppress its threat like influenza

We have character indexes? And we do have Queer Media which covers a lot of works with prominent LGBT characters.

By "problematic" you mean chairsy, right? I think it's odd that Transgender and Asexuality seemingly don't have the same issues Bi The Way did, as I think they've been proposed at TRS already without any action.

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

We don't, I'm saying if we ever get to 2.0 we might end up having indexes for specific characters. We have "character page" indexes but no "character" indexes.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness