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Elheru Aran wrote:I think it's obvious that people aren't *asking* for badly-written, ham-handed gay characters. A more likely explanation is that people are thinking that that's what may happen given Hollywood's not-great track record (anybody remember that shitty "Chuck and Larry" movie?). It's improved in recent years, and Star Wars is a big enough tentpole property that Disney will treat it with extreme care, but there's still a certain fear, because people do remember such abominations as the Holiday Special and the Ewoks show...

Anyway, I concede that there are nuances of relationship behavior that straight people may not notice, and that having the default relationship type being strictly heterosexual is exclusionary. I don't really think it's deliberate (most of the time), though. That doesn't make it right, of course.

My fear with this is that Lucasfilm executives rush in a poorly written LGBT character to "shut up" the critics (after all Hollywood doesn't have a great track record when it comes to these things).

While an LGBT character shouldn't be treated any differently from straight character, lets face if a gay character is killed there generally is an uproar (especially if said character is male) and often it's not totally unjustified either since all too often LGBT characters would get "punished" by killing them off. However you can kill straight characters without anyone caring too much about it, since killing off a straight character doesn't have any unfortunate implications attached to it.

EDIT:What I mean by that last paragraph is that, killing off LGBT character in a story shouldn't have the "they got what they deserved" implication, but rather their sexuality shouldn't matter in that (unless it was the motivation of the killer and that should never shown to be good thing, since it's not).

I guess they could make Rey a lesbian. Then her transformation into a fan fiction character would be complete.

I doubt the dude bros would react negatively to it, and you could really pander to that internet "male lesbian" demographic.

APlayerHater wrote:I guess they could make Rey a lesbian. Then her transformation into a fan fiction character would be complete.

I doubt the dude bros would react negatively to it, and you could really pander to that internet "male lesbian" demographic.

Bad writers tend to use lesbian characters to titillate male audiences. I observed this myself in the worst of Marvel Comics- see lesbian (or bisexual) Electra in Punisher Max: Homeless.

Unless the story in question is PORNOGRAPHIC, such characters should NOT exist solely to titillate the audience, or to serve as a "token gay person" with which to appease Social Justice Warriors (kindly ignore the opinions of Joshua Bell and others who propose doing just that).

Turning Rey lesbian to give guys something to wank to would cause a massive outrage and for a good reason.


I don't have to be gay to see why that would be seen as massively insulting basically the message would be "LGBT people don't exist unless they serve the needs of straight people", needless to say this would taint the SW franchice for a very long time and seeing how protect Disney is about their IPs they're more likely to have no LGBT characters then to willing commit such a PR disaster. Even the accusation of this would be major PR-blow to Disney and dispite what you might think they're a)not that stupid b)going to listen to rantings of the scum of the internet.

One thing I liked about the character of Korra in the Legend of Korra series was that she was either bi or lesbian (it was never made clear) without falling to the trap of having lesbian character be either conventionally attractive and lesbian to be used for fanservice or conventionally unattractive with the implication that said character was lesbian "they couldn't get a man". With Korra while quite attractive was not used that much for fanservice dispite having more then enough screentime to have be possible (being the main character) and the same sex attraction was definetly not intentionally used for fanservice as what was in the series was quite sudtle and open to interpitation.

Crazedwraith wrote:"Oh yes, we're very progressive. We have gay people. It's just they are hidden away so you never ever see them."?

As a point of fact, there are a fair number of gay people in the new EU books, which I guess is hiding them in plain sight...?

I do not like this argument people seem to be forwarding that every movie with a large ensemble cast needs to have a (well-written) gay character. It smacks of just a new kind of tokenism.

Balrog wrote:

Crazedwraith wrote:"Oh yes, we're very progressive. We have gay people. It's just they are hidden away so you never ever see them."?

As a point of fact, there are a fair number of gay people in the new EU books, which I guess is hiding them in plain sight...?

I do not like this argument people seem to be forwarding that every movie with a large ensemble cast needs to have a (well-written) gay character. It smacks of just a new kind of tokenism.

fair number? I've only heard of the female moff.

as for the second part I'm guessing it's result of the world we live in, you need the LGBT character to show you're not homophobic and loose people due to that. Eventually it will most likely become unneeded once the fact that gay people exist and are normal people becomes accepted but we're not there yet.

Balrog wrote:

Crazedwraith wrote:"Oh yes, we're very progressive. We have gay people. It's just they are hidden away so you never ever see them."?

As a point of fact, there are a fair number of gay people in the new EU books, which I guess is hiding them in plain sight...?

I do not like this argument people seem to be forwarding that every movie with a large ensemble cast needs to have a (well-written) gay character. It smacks of just a new kind of tokenism.

Indeed. Besides, I'd think human homosexuality would be as banal a subject in the Star Wars galaxy as interspecies relationships are. Speaking of which, I'm wondering when Disney will cross that line and finally let Kanan and Hera be together.

In the old EU, Corran Horn fucked a Selonian.

Balrog wrote:

Crazedwraith wrote:"Oh yes, we're very progressive. We have gay people. It's just they are hidden away so you never ever see them."?

As a point of fact, there are a fair number of gay people in the new EU books, which I guess is hiding them in plain sight...?

I do not like this argument people seem to be forwarding that every movie with a large ensemble cast needs to have a (well-written) gay character. It smacks of just a new kind of tokenism.

There's a new EU? People read the new EU?

More power to them. It's just more proof that actually including gay people in the films is not the big, amazingly difficult task people seem to claim.

Personally I never said they had to, I just object to the idea that the films were inclusionary because for all we know there were gay people just off screen the entire time. Don't show if you don't want to but you don't get credit for it.

Crazedwraith wrote:There's a new EU? People read the new EU?

Yes, and it's quite good. Especially the new comics.

https://marvel.com/comics/list/coreissue/?id=327

I'm sure somebody will be destroying fleets of ships with force storms in no time

Lord Revan wrote:

Balrog wrote:

Crazedwraith wrote:"Oh yes, we're very progressive. We have gay people. It's just they are hidden away so you never ever see them."?

As a point of fact, there are a fair number of gay people in the new EU books, which I guess is hiding them in plain sight...?

I do not like this argument people seem to be forwarding that every movie with a large ensemble cast needs to have a (well-written) gay character. It smacks of just a new kind of tokenism.

fair number? I've only heard of the female moff.

She was the first, and they made a big deal about her being the first one too, but they've had more, and not all of them have been good guys either

as for the second part I'm guessing it's result of the world we live in, you need the LGBT character to show you're not homophobic and loose people due to that.

Which is such a bullshit assumption to have in the first place; not commenting on a social issue does not mean you condone it. Besides, the number of people who self-identify as LGBT are in the low single digits; triple that number and you still get at most 10% of the population being in that category. And given the way statistics works, that doesn't literally translate to a guaranteed gay person in any random group of ten people.

Crazedwraith wrote:There's a new EU? People read the new EU?

The EU is eternal, it will never go away.

More power to them. It's just more proof that actually including gay people in the films is not the big, amazingly difficult task people seem to claim.

People don't care about introducing new gay characters, they care about taking preexisting characters and changing fundamental aspects of them solely to appeal to teh social justice. Like the whole New Coke fiasco.

Balrog wrote:

Lord Revan wrote:as for the second part I'm guessing it's result of the world we live in, you need the LGBT character to show you're not homophobic and loose people due to that.

Which is such a bullshit assumption to have in the first place; not commenting on a social issue does not mean you condone it.

that it may be but the seeing as the LGBT community has been shat on (possibly even literally) for quite some time, after all it wasn't that long ago that being gay was seen as a mental illness, a crime or both. So you can understand why members of the LGBT community could see not getting repesented as a form of repression. Even if it wasn't intentionally intended as such.

As I said it's fault of the world we live in. Tbh having gay people have disportionate repesentation is rather small price to pay for a better world eventually wouldn't you think.

Lord Revan wrote:

Balrog wrote:

Lord Revan wrote:as for the second part I'm guessing it's result of the world we live in, you need the LGBT character to show you're not homophobic and loose people due to that.

Which is such a bullshit assumption to have in the first place; not commenting on a social issue does not mean you condone it.

that it may be but the seeing as the LGBT community has been shat on (possibly even literally) for quite some time, after all it wasn't that long ago that being gay was seen as a mental illness, a crime or both. So you can understand why members of the LGBT community could see not getting repesented as a form of repression. Even if it wasn't intentionally intended as such.

As I said it's fault of the world we live in. Tbh having gay people have disportionate repesentation is rather small price to pay for a better world eventually wouldn't you think.

I said so myself in the Should Spider-Man be "pansexual"? thread, in reply to Jub's comments regarding Andrew Garfield's idea that Spider-Man should be "pansexual" (using the actor's own words).

Sidewinder wrote:

Jub wrote:

Lord Revan wrote:another thing that when depicting minorities, especially sexual minorities the comic book companies want to "show" how progressive they are so more often then not you end up with characters (even when making a new one) whose characterization is dominated by their sexuality to the point that it becomes their sole defining characteristic.

You have to start somewhere and even if they're shaky first steps they're steps that should be taken. If you never try for fear of failure you're never going to go anywhere new.

Jub wrote:They just need one of these characters to take off, and that means throwing more darts. If we get a minority or openly gay character and something about them grabs people then we'll get more of them.

I am speaking this as a Chinese-American, a member of the minority you claim to represent.

As a child, I wanted to see more Asians among the superheroes in the cartoons I watched and the comic books I read. Unfortunately, not only were these characters often token, but they were also INSULTING STEREOTYPES, due to hack writing. I'd rather not see an Asian superhero AT ALL, if all the comic book companies and animation studios could offer, were such stereotypes.

In pushing for a "pansexual" Spider-Man, you will likely make Marvel Comics push the job of creating a "pansexual" superhero, into a hack writer who will reinforce the idea a bisexual person is a sex-crazy and out-of-control "swinger" straight from a porn addict's most lurid fantasies. The result will be a Broken Aesop so bad, it'll poison comic book fans' (and comic book fans' parents') opinions of bisexual people, for a decade.

A topic we hold so personally, must be handled with the respect and sensitivity it REQUIRES, or the effort will be counterproductive.

Shockingly, those who supported the idea of a bisexual Spider-Man all voted to make Peter Parker so, instead of simply REPLACING Peter Parker with a bisexual Spider-Man. The second option makes bisexuality a critical character trait, while the first makes Peter Parker act OUT-OF-CHARACTER, which is serious business.

Well, obviously if you wanted to make spiderman bisexual, you would make spiderman bisexual, not kill him off and replace him with someone else who happens to be bisexual.

There should be a galactus-style Marvel villain who kills characters off and replaces them with bisexual spidermen.

APlayerHater wrote: There should be a galactus-style Marvel villain who kills characters off and replaces them with bisexual spidermen.

This being Marvel, they could just create still another Spidey clone for that. And, what would be the point?

U.P. Cinnabar wrote:

APlayerHater wrote: There should be a galactus-style Marvel villain who kills characters off and replaces them with bisexual spidermen.

This being Marvel, they could just create still another Spidey clone for that. And, what would be the point?

Recently, Marvel Comics seems to specialize in pointless gestures- see the identity theft of Thor (I'm okay with Jane Foster becoming the Goddess of Thunder, but NOT with her claiming Thor's name, and thus, his identity), the "unsolicited opinions on Israel" meme, Iceman coming out of the closet, etc.

Sidewinder wrote:...the "unsolicited opinions on Israel" meme...

Ah, Angela. Still as shit as ever, I see.

Does iceman still have a human body or a biological sex anymore? Or am I thinking of Age of Apocalypse alternate future iceman.

Edit: although I suppose an iceman isn't defined by whether he is ice or man.

Lord Revan wrote:that it may be but the seeing as the LGBT community has been shat on (possibly even literally) for quite some time, after all it wasn't that long ago that being gay was seen as a mental illness, a crime or both.

That doesn't condone actions which don't help and may actually be counterproductive to the cause though.

So you can understand why members of the LGBT community could see not getting repesented as a form of repression.

No, it's not, especially not when there are a growing number of 'positive' gay characters appearing in media. The type of people who think like that are the type of people who see anything which doesn't adhere to their orthodoxy as being "repressive" and that way of thinking shouldn't be encouraged.

Even if it wasn't intentionally intended as such.

Which is an excellent way of losing people who could have been swayed to their way of thinking, as has happened with some BLM actions.

As I said it's fault of the world we live in. Tbh having gay people have disportionate repesentation is rather small price to pay for a better world eventually wouldn't you think.

That same argument is what created the token trope in the first place. It wasn't all that helpful for race issues, what makes you think it'll turn out better for sexuality issues?

Balrog wrote:

Lord Revan wrote:that it may be but the seeing as the LGBT community has been shat on (possibly even literally) for quite some time, after all it wasn't that long ago that being gay was seen as a mental illness, a crime or both.

That doesn't condone actions which don't help and may actually be counterproductive to the cause though.

So you can understand why members of the LGBT community could see not getting repesented as a form of repression.

No, it's not, especially not when there are a growing number of 'positive' gay characters appearing in media. The type of people who think like that are the type of people who see anything which doesn't adhere to their orthodoxy as being "repressive" and that way of thinking shouldn't be encouraged.

Even if it wasn't intentionally intended as such.

Which is an excellent way of losing people who could have been swayed to their way of thinking, as has happened with some BLM actions.

Are you referring to "Black Lives Matter"?

I mean, Luke/Spiderman/IceMan could have easily realized they were gay later in life. Fair enough.

Just seems too easy to just say someone like Luke was gay offscreen while no one was looking. I know ice man was an OG xmen character but I don't know much about his personality or romantic history.

Well, going by canon, I'd lean toward Luke being heterosexual (or possibly bisexual), but the primary evidence for that also points to him being into incest, so...

Incest does equal double the midichlorians...
Technically leia kissed him. I've read enough incest... Literature- to know that makes him off the hook.