I think people are saying they don’t want characters who have had alot of lore and stuff that would indicate that they’re not of the lgbt lifestyle, there is evidence that Vol was highly tempted to bed a zandalari woman and such and he had children. Now most people seem to like the night warrior stag couple, so creating original characters that fit that is better.
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Sure, I get that. While I’m not actually on the Vol’jin Gay train, it’s worth noting, purely for the sake of argument, that bisexual men still exist.
I think speculation threads like this that come totally out of the blue about random characters are just funny. Because the most logical response to the question “What if Vol’jin was gay? He doesn’t flirt with women.” is “Whatever dude, maybe”, but instead people lose their minds and here we are hundreds of posts later.
I crave the drama. I’m like a parasite that sticks to troll threads to suck up the juice without actually trolling people myself.
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Oh, I do understand more then you’ll know and for many LGBT people, poor or contrived representation can be just as bad as no representation.
When there’s no development and a character is just changed in such a massive way out of the blue for ratings is worse then if they just never had any representation at all. It’s pandering and only ruins the overall narrative (Which is honestly more important to me then being represented.)
Oh, no question is draws in fans… just the question is WHO those fans are and why it draws them in.
There’s good ways and bad ways to reveal a character is LGBT. You seem like you’re lumping all representation into the category of “dumb pandering”. I would say that revealing a character is LGBT “out of the blue” is no worse than any non-foreshadowed character reveal. Can be a little silly, sure, but I don’t think all unexpected additions are always bad.
Also would love to know what even counts as pandering nowadays. Seems like people gesture to the idea of “pandering” any time an LGBT character exists and does anything.
Depends. Teased M/M ships tend to draw in young women more often. (I don’t have a lot of experience in whether those attract gay men.) F/F tends to attract almost exclusively lesbian attention, at least the kind of attention that comes with fandom: fanfiction, fanart, discussion, etc.
In my experience, a good litmus test for F/F ships that are popular with actual LGBT fans (rather than dudes with a fetish) is whether the fan content produced for them is engaged with the story and characters and isn’t exclusively NSFW. Bear in mind, that doesn’t say anything to the quality of the representation. Only the fan demographics.
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Not at all. I was specifically referring to the case of Willow, of which was an example of such pandering. Because she was specifically made a lesbian to appeal to fetishists who wanted to see more girl-on-girl.
That change wasn’t made for actual Lesbian fans, despite managing to still appeal to them. Because I did watch this show when it was current and believe me, that was the demographic it most appealed to.
And you know, I don’t totally object to how she was done either.
There are two ways this tends to go.
Either the Girl (or guy) suddenly realizes “Hey, I’m gay. I’m going to go out and find myself a girl (or guy.)”
Or they do the “Every Girl’s Spaghetti” prn-trope and is “turned by the right girl.”
So them NOT doing either of these was a big plus for me. But still bothers me a bit because they never addressed the sudden change until 2 seasons later.
I only read through this whole thread because I wanted to know at what exact point it got thrown over here by the intern.
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I it got thrown here a good bit ago.
Or maybe it’s a troll thread trying to stir people like you up.
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Maybe, but there are people that are oblivious to the fact that you can simultaneously be gay and obnoxious and that if you are both of those things then ‘gay’ isn’t why people dislike your ideas.
No such thing!
The answer is yes, at least it has always attracted a certain subset of it.
It is sort of funny that lesbian romance doesn’t attract as much attention from guys short of it being borderline pornographic.
I would say representation quality is at least a lot better now. Netflix has probably perfected the formula. There are actually quality BL shows now. Yuri on Ice or Given would top the BL anime drama. If you want live action, watch Gameboys/Pearl Next Door.
I personally disagree, but your interpretation isn’t unreasonable. We can leave it at that.
I agree.
I think I understand your stance a little better, and I appreciate you explaining in more detail, but ultimately this is a subjective argument. Willow could’ve been done better, believe me I agree with you. I think I just have a defensive reaction to criticisms of certain LGBT representation when I don’t know the motives of the critic.
Like I said before, many people who complain about “pandering” or “tokenism” are only using that as an excuse to avoid saying what they ACTUALLY want, which is for there to be zero representation at all. You know, the classic “white/straight/man = normal, POC/LGBT/woman = political” thing.
I’m not using this as a debate point, just wanted to share my perspective. There’s a quote from the documentary The Celluloid Closet that feels relevant:
Susie Bright: (on Johnny Guitar) It’s amazing how if you’re a gay audience and you’re accustomed to crumbs, how you will watch an entire movie just to see somebody wear an outfit that you think means that they are homosexual…The whole movie can be a dud, but you’re just sitting there waiting for Joan Crawford to put on her black cowboy shirt again.
Sometimes the value of a given piece of representation is what the audience puts into it.
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I’d rather people get the representation they want through new and interesting characters, that’s just me though.
I think men in American society are just encouraged to have lower empathy for women and less of an interest in emotional intimacy overall. The media that’s crafted to appeal to men might have romance, but not a lot of screentime is dedicated to the characters getting to know each other as vulnerable human beings. There’s also an element of entitlement to the attention of women I think, so when an emotionally-anchored, clearly committed lesbian relationship is depicted, it might rouse some mens’ insecurities about being inherently excluded in a way that a shallow “sexy” depiction doesn’t. I’ve seen my fair share of the whole “girl on girl is hot, but if they’re actually lesbians then that’s gross” thing.
I agree! Always room for growth, of course.
I think it’d be okay for some current characters to be revealed as LGBT. I mean, many characters’ preferences have never been confirmed either way.
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