Identification...

[xarra.livejournal.com]

Following on from thoughts provoked by missingvolume's last post, I was wondering if other people thought that LKH's characters are all losing their identity too much...

I think I prefer it when the characters are gay, or whatever sexuality, but it's not omg stated every 5 minutes... I have an aquaintance who is gay, and is very blantantly gay and makes a big deal of it, and it drives me up the wall. I'd rather read about guys (or girls) who are gay and just /are/, it doesn't define them... In LKH, Micah, Nathanial, JC, Asher, they all are more focused sexually than what they are... If I say 'Jean-Claude', you're more likely to think 'Anita's lover' than 'Master Vampire of St Louis', if I say 'Nathanial', you're likely to think 'Submissive lover of Anita' - rather than if, for the best example I can think of, I say 'Vanyel' from Mercedes Lackey, you think 'the last Herald-Mage' - not 'gay mage'.

I think it's sad when characters are reduced to their sexuality and I wish we could have a book where the characters are just themselves - I liked JC as a master vampire who used sexuality and sensuality, I liked Asher's past and how it affected him, hell, even Richard's angst over his 'normal' life & pack lfe... But now they're Anita's Lovers (tm) - and have that as a label... Which I find really very sad... While the books are sexual, seriously, most people don't think 'Oh, I'm gay!' or 'Oh, I'm straight!' every few seconds - or identify themselves by their sexuality... And, sadly, that seems to be where LKH's books are going. :(

Opinions? (If you can read the rant!)

Comments

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

I say 'Vanyel' from Mercedes Lackey, you think 'the last Herald-Mage' - not 'gay mage'.

Actually, I think "whiny ball of gay angst", but that may just be me.

[everstar3.livejournal.com]

I always think, "somehow managed to avoid death in the first book even though he really, really should have croaked."

[obsidianwolf.livejournal.com]

It'd be nice but I think it's a lost cause in the Anita Blake books.

Character's can't even keep the same sexuality from book to book. Not to mention how many gay and bisexual men end up sleeping with Anita pretty much exclusively.

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

I'd say it's a global effect of the series turning into "The Everyone Has Sex With Anita Show" -- when there's no more plot going than that, then yeah, all the characters will be defined by their sexuality because that's all that's left for them.

[deadsong.livejournal.com]

That's actually a huge pet peeve for me as a gay man and a writer; I'm gay, but it doesn't define my existence. Hell, writing probably does more than my sexuality. And I may be a gay writer, but I don't write strictly gay fiction or even fiction that gives a rat's ass about what the characters' sexuality is. At the same time, I enjoy writing gay, bi, lesbian, and transgendered characters for whom their sexuality isn't a focus in the story. It often seems like people make their characters anything other than straight just to write the story about that, or turn it into some kind of plot device. For me, some of my characters may be some other sexuality. It's mentioned once as a character trait and then doesn't really factor in, unless a relationship is mentioned regarding another character and it pertains to the plot. They're usually a bit too busy worrying about saving/destroying the world to think about which hole they stick it in.

The whole "gay character" thing is just horribly unrealistic. It's not like at work people identify themselves as "that gay database analyst" or "that gay secretary." Relationships and sexuality are only a small part of people's lives, and to trivialize characters down to their orientation is doing them a disservice and leaving far too many fascinating stories untold.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

This makes me think about all the brou-ha-ha that happened when JK Rowling said that she "always thought of Dumbledore as gay" but never showed that in the books. Really, must it be announced??
In the novel I am writing, one of the main female characters is bisexual, but I don't really have the characters talk about it or explain it much. A mention in passing, a "Hey, have you heard from your ex-girlfriend?" discussion between her and her boyfriend. Her sexuality isn't even a point.

[pith]

That always annoyed me with JKR, especially when she said "Oh, if I'd known it would make people so happy, I would've put it in the books", then goes on to say she was worried about the backlash. WTF? She's already made her millions. Even if the last book had bombed, she'd still be set for several lifetimes. She just made the announcement when it was safe to do so.

(Don't get me wrong: I have no problems with whatever Dumbledore's sexuality is. I just don't like how she made it into a trivia point.)

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that irritated me, too. I felt like she was rushing to make excuses or something.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Agreed wholeheartedly.

[popelizbet.livejournal.com]

Whereas I had no problem with it because there is no way that Dumbledore would have "come out" to Harry - not because GAY IS WRONGGGGG or because kids shouldn't know their teachers' sexual orientations but because seriously, when could it have come up without it becoming a Big Huge Thing?

Most kids don't speculate too much on their teachers' sex lives and kind of find it icky when circumstances force them to spend too much time thinking about it. So I didn't have a huge problem with it.

[pandorasblog]

Yeah; unless Dumbledore had a partner, or there was an anecdote about a former partner, I just can't see how she could've brought it up in the usual context of the books. And as it turned out, his single status and its stemming from the morally defining nature of his friendship with Grindlewald meant that she had to keep that stuff quiet until the final book anyway.

Make his sexuality either a plot point or a background fact, and to some extent you have to figure out how wizarding society views sexuality, whether it's affecting that character's treatment by others or ways that he might limit himself - here we might speculate that it's another reason DD never got into the political game too deeply.

The wizarding world strikes me as having a strongly conservative streak (people marry young, not a lot of wizards seem to want to venture into the Muggle world, they keep the House system even after the War shows what divisions it can create, etc. etc.), and that means that having an openly gay character would be unlikely not to be an issue if the books were to be realistic. Given that the early books were written when the Section 28 debate was still going on, and were marketed to the 9 - 12 age group, this was probably never going to happen.

Do I wish that the factors had aligned which would've made her want to explore that kind of stuff? Absolutely.

In order to drag this back on topic, I have to agree about LKH's tendency to introduce characters as gay. It feels like she thinks she's pointing out her liberal credentials ("See! See how many of my characters Like People Of Their Own Sex!"), yet by making an issue of it she's making the books feel like they're from an earlier social era, when it would actually be considered shocking to a lot of people for a straight type like Anita to know gay people.

I take the point made below by rinkori about how it's off to expect people to only express their identity in a certain way, but what bothers me most in the Anitaverse is that the way gay characters are introduced and subsequently treated, it feels like LKH, while drawing up her character sheets, starts with "GAY" written in big letters and squeezes everything else in around that...

[popelizbet.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Dumbledore was a whole person even without discussing his orientation when there was no clear opening to do so. He was the nonsexual Trusted Adult Figure. Hogwarts lends itself to that "teachers who live at school" thing that sometimes cuts the reader off from the conception that they might have families, although it's apparent that some of them do. But even with his sexuality indeterminate, he managed to be a whole person, just like most people in the real world manage to do. Whereas Laurell throws out two-dee characters with "GAY" stamped on their blank faces, so everyone can see how hip and with-it she is.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Actually, I can think of an opening. It wouldn't have had to be explicit. marauderthesn came up with a very quick way to slip the information in (http://marauderthesn.livejournal.com/263605.html). It would have been in Deathly Hallows, Chapter 35, when Harry and Dumbledore are in the afterlife train station of King's Cross.

"I was frustrated with my family responsibilities," Dumbledore said. "I was desperate to feel as important as I had at school, I was taken with Grindelwald's ideas, I was in love - "

"You were in love?" Harry said, confused.

Dumbledore looked at him and suddenly he understood.

"Oh," he said, feeling stupid. "I didn't know that you and Grindelwald - "

"It felt as though we were compatible in every way," Dumbledore said. "Until the day that - that Ariana died..."

And then go on to the events of Ariana's death. The rest of the chapter wouldn't have to change at all.

She came up with an simpler way to do it, too. The letter that Dumbledore sends to Grindelwald could simply have been signed, "I love you. Albus."

That's all. And it wouldn't have taken much time or effort on Rowling's part.

But you're right. In DD's case, homosexuality would have been just another facet to his personality. In the case of Anita's and Merry's guys, they have no personalities. They are primarily distinguishable from each other based on the color of their hair, the color of their eyes and whether they are allegedly gay or allegedly bi. They are merely penises with people attached. Kind of like life-sized dildos.

[popelizbet.livejournal.com]

Yep.

And you're correct about the HP7 thing, but don't you think she would have taken criticism for that too? That she "slapped it on there"? I mean, the fandom went batshit when they had to accept that Blaise Zabini was Black, I can't imagine it would have been any less batshitty if she'd held onto that until really really late in the book.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

It's the Potter fandom. It's batshit by definition. I should know, I spent enough time there.

[rinkori.livejournal.com]

I am uncomfortable with telling others how to express their sexual orientations. Having heard way too much from inside and outside the queer community about "omg let's all just settle down and stop having pride parades so we can look like the nice 'normal' straight people"... Ugh. Often people who have come out recently cling very hard to their sexual identity--while to others it may seem like "blatantly flaunting it," some people need to publicly express all the stuff that may have been locked up tight for years. Some people use it as a gimmick, but there are plenty of straight folks who play their sexuality as a gimmick too.

That aside, Anita herself is pretty much the embodiment of her sexual orientation at this point. For once I'd like to see an interaction with another adult character that didn't involve at the very least sexual tension or (in the case of interaction with other women) sexual competition.

[pith]

I don't remember being annoyed with how Sylvie (and Gwen, by extension) were originally handled. It seemed to be "Hi, I'm Sylvie. I'm a werewolf, I don't have hair down to my ass because I know that's ridiculous. Oh, and by the way, I'm into girls." It's been a LONG LONG TIME since I've read any AB, but I don't recall that being Sylvie's defining feature, except that it prevented her from being Richard's Lupa. (But even there, I took that more as a "Look how ridiculous and antiquated this system is!" rant.)

So yeah, I agree. Sexual orientation is a facet of every person, but it's not the ONLY facet. I define myself by geekery and by writing far more than I do by gender or orientation.

[artemis-rex.livejournal.com]

I loved Sylvie back when she was gay. I'm not sure if LKH made her that way so she would't be competition for Anita, but I loved that she was out, didn't care what other people thought about it and was comfortable in her own sexuality.

Then, of course, she was raped. I think LKH was punishing her for being a strong woman in the Anitaverse, even if she wasn't competing for the men.

[pith]

We could throw LKH's books. It would be like recycling. Hell, they'd probably be magnetically drawn to stupid people.

[christraven.livejournal.com]

That'd be fun: stand in a crowd, throw one of LKH's books into the air, and see which random way it flies.

Aside from that, pretty much everyone else here has voiced my opinions on how LKH handles sexuality.

[sfph.livejournal.com]

The problem of having a character defined by his or her sexuality is hardly restricted to LKH. One of the (many, many) things that drove me crazy about Jaqueline Carey's Kushiel series is the way that almost all of the characters in that were defined not only by their sexuality, but even more specifically by their kinks. Pretty much all the character development you ever got from half of them were "This guy was rough and whipped me, whereas this guy was incredibly delicate and patient and cut on me with a knife, whereas this guy wasn't actually into BDSM, he was just so frustrated that it came out that way". The main character was defined by her sexual habits just as much as Anita is by the ardeur.

...and I lost track of my point in favor of ranting about those books. I was afraid that was going to happen. Anyway, my point is that I agree with you, but it's hardly just LKH's problem.

[jeza-red.livejournal.com]

Well, one thing I like about Tanya Huff's books is the way she's handling characters who are gay/bi. I'm not talking ablout "Blood" series, but about "Smoke" series, where main character Tony is gay, but besides that he's a good guy, a wizard in training and a PA on the set. I've got warm fuzzy feeling reading her "Fire Stone" novel where two out of three main characters are bisexual *and one of them falmboyantly soXD*, but it's not their defining feature. One of them is full of angst, other one is charming, skilled in swordfight and drunk out of his ass half the time.

Huff's characters are funny and charming and their orientation is just there somewhere, not stapled on their foreheads with red ink.

BTW when I hear J.C. I think "BAD fashion sense* XD
And when I hear Vanyel I think "FIRESONG!" 'Cos that's about the only good thing that came out of him-__-