[wrp]

> ...some gay character who is essentially 'straight acting'...

I often see (edit: readers) mention that a story has gay/straight characters, even when (to me) there is no opening in the plot for characters to express their romantic inclinations. What exactly are you looking at when you perceive a character as $orientation?

[bazoom42]

You mean readers read the characters as gay even though it is never directly stated? Traditionally there are certain “tells” which are subtle enough that readers who are uncomfortable by queer characters miss the subtext. This is really a win-win.

Hollywood was also a master of this, althoug these days they tend to do the reverse: explicity show a character is gay but without the tells, since having both would just be cliched or “on the nose”.

[wrp]

Exactly. I see a lot of book reviewers complaining about the presence/lack of characters of some type and I'm baffled, because in my reading of the text there was no revelation of that information. I want to know what particulars they are focusing on.

[NoZebra120vClip]

"Bewitched" is a classic tale of same-sex marriage, men in the closet, and uneasy gay-straight alliances.

"E.T.: The Extraterrestrial" is a classic coming-of-age story of a gay man in the modern world.

Dracula by Bram Stoker is the quintessential gay liberation epic.

[rootusrootus]

> "E.T.: The Extraterrestrial" is a classic coming-of-age story of a gay man in the modern world.

I don't know a single actual person who saw the film in that light. I can find references to the hypothesis online, but it seems like an incredible reach to me. More like an excellent demonstration of the human brain's ability to see patterns everywhere, even when they don't actually exist. E.g. conspiracy theories.

> "Bewitched" is a classic tale of same-sex marriage

Same sex? You mean interracial? Fascinating take.

[NoZebra120vClip]

https://youtu.be/1it8-y4gWwg

Activist cast and crew. Especially Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick Sargent. No mistaking it.

Agnes Moorehead and Paul Lynde are gay icons from before anyone could be gay.

[rootusrootus]

> Agnes Moorehead and Paul Lynde are gay icons from before anyone could be gay.

That may be true, though neither one ever claimed to be gay, and both are long dead. Yes, it was perhaps a bad time to be gay. But it is still just speculation, and seems really unfair. If they died in the closet, then they earned the right to stay there forever.

[foldr]

The person you’re replying to didn’t say that either of those people was gay and that claim wasn’t central to their point. In Paul Lynde’s case, however, it would be silly to pretend otherwise.

You could also consider deleting your ‘perhaps’.

[klondike_klive]

I literally never clocked this but it makes so much sense.

[WesternWind]

They often describe eye color and hair color, which is very rarely pertinent to the plot, but nobody complains about that.

Weird how people love to complain about non straight people existing in stories though.

[prepend]

> They often describe eye color and hair color, which is very rarely pertinent to the plot, but nobody complains about that.

I think because describing external characteristics is something that we all do as we experience the world. “That person has brown eyes. That person has red hair.” Are just part of moving through the world and I perceive this regardless of how consequential they are to the plot of life.

Sharing internal characteristics that aren’t easily knowable is unusual because I wouldn’t necessarily know this without some other information that reveals. If I’m seeing someone, I usually don’t know their sexual orientation so when the author describes them as gay, it can be offputting because that’s not something I would know as an observer. Of course there are many ways to do this properly, so it’s not always offputting, but it can be as it layers on information that’s more than we would normally know.

An example of this that I remember is in Lost, characters describe another character as “the Haitian” without any explanation in story that the person was from Haiti. Somehow, everyone recognized his accent and placed his heritage enough to know his country of origin. And sometimes they would still say “there was a Haitian there” when the Haitian didn’t even say anything so it stood out to me as odd that characters would know this non-observable info.

[foldr]

I don't think it's unusual at all for fiction to describe internal characteristics of characters that aren't easily knowable. That happens pretty much any time a story tells you something about what a character is thinking or feeling. If you object to an author mentioning that a character is gay, it surely can't be because that's not a directly observable characteristic. You could cut The Portrait of a Lady down to about 5 pages if you removed all the descriptions of people's psychological states.

While we're on the topic of Roald Dahl (who perhaps doesn't quite reach the psychological depth of Henry James), here are a couple of examples that I easily found in The Twits:

"Mr Twit thought that this hariness made him look terrifically wise and grand."

"...his evil mind kept working away on the latest horrid trick he was going to play on the old woman."

[prepend]

First, I don’t object to an author mentioning that a character is gay.

And there’s many reasons why an author will describe an internal characteristic and it’s usually either omniscient narrator or first person describing the assumptions that the narrator makes.

I’m not referring to that at all as those are natural and not weird at all. For example “I thought Hernando was gay because I’ve always just had a hunch.” Is different from “I walked into a room and saw four straight people and a gay person.” Without describing why the narrator things one person is gay. It’s as unusual as saying “I walked into a room and saw a person who loved almond milk.”

This is very different from an omniscient narrator and reveals these characteristics because the narrator knows all, internal and external.

In either case, hair and eye color is mentioned to help the reader picture the character in their minds eye. It serves a general purpose other than to serve the plot.

My example of Lost is not because I object to Haitians in tv. It’s because the show has the characters know something they have no reason to know, another character’s nationality. I think the intention was to be nice and not have to say “hand it to the black guy” and replaced it with “hand it to the Haitian.” guy

[fennecfoxy]

Eh except in specific circumstances there's no reason to mention the sexuality of a character; how often do authors point out that their characters are heterosexual? Never, people just assume so and their assumption is often confirmed by the character's actions.

I think it's much better to write gay characters same as any other; it's just instead of pursuing the opposite sex, they'll pursue the same. Pretty simple.

Just like in real life where I only mention that I'm gay if it's relevant to the conversation, it should be the same in media: for example known characters in a later chapter discussing a plan to get their friend, someone they just met, a date. Interrupted by one character in the group who has known said friend for longer, laughing at the others' suggestions of partners and exclaiming, "this won't work!" she exclaims, "but why?" they ask, "she's a perfect match" "but he's gay!" she laughs, "but if she has a brother..."

[foldr]

I guess it would be helpful to have a real example of the kind of thing you object to (in the case of gay characters). I'm having trouble understanding what it would look like in the context of an actual narrative, as I don't think I've ever come across anything like it myself.

[prepend]

I don’t remember a specific example of gay, but I gave the example from Lost so that might help you understand the context of an actual narrative.