Creating characters from the LGBTQ+ spectrum

Sometimes some of my work can be controversial. I once wrote a horror piece where the main character was heavily repressed by his father and abused by his mother. The story involved a lot of stern religious beliefs. The main character was gay, he was horribly tormented by his father because of his sexuality. It's a horror story the main character is a serial murderer. He ends up killing half a dozen homeless people in his teens. The concentration isn't on his sexuality though, it weighs heavily on the religious repression and abuse. I got flak because people were not happy that I portrayed the main character as gay. Perhaps, I was on the wrong forum? Sexuality isn't something that's rooted in my mind on a daily basis. People are well... People. Why can't a main character be LGBTQ+ in a story? It's not like I was recreating Dahmer.

 

I'm asexual/aromantic.

I didn't know I was aro/ace as a kid because I didn't know that aro/ace was a thing that a person could be. Sexual and/or romantic attraction was portrayed in my world as being as intrinsically human as eating, drinking, or breathing, and I was convinced from the ages of 12 to 15 that I was broken. Finding out that gay and bi were orientations didn't help: that just reinforced the notion that everybody feels attraction to some people, even if not necessarily the people that society deems the "right" people to be attracted to.

Imagine being the only penguin on an ocean planet full of fish, never hearing the words "air," "penguin," or "mammal" because everybody takes it for granted that everybody is a fish who breathes under water.

Imagine trying not to drown when you don't know what drowning is. When you think that you're supposed to stay underwater with everybody else.

My dad had to out me as "asexual" to me when I was 15 because I'd never heard the word "asexual" until that point. For a while, knowing that I wasn't just a broken heterosexual was an incredible relief.

Then came the loneliness of being the only asexual person that I knew about as existing in the world, either as a real person or as a fictional character. I didn't think that there was anything morally wrong with asexual/aromantic orientation, but I thought that my life would be easier personally if I could make myself straight, so from the ages of 16 to 17, I tried to make myself be attracted to the girls at my school.

And then I read A Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle. In particular, the scene where Dr. Watson remarks on how beautiful their new female client is, and Sherlock Holmes making it abundantly clear that he hadn't made the same observation, then going on for a while about how attraction to other people is not an aid to his work and that he did his best to ignore it.

In a vacuum, somebody who's not asexual/aromantic wanting to make themselves be asexual/aromantic is just as unhealthy as the inverse.

In my case, reading that the universal symbol of genius in literature made a conscious effort to be more like me – because it made his life easier, not harder – became one of the most important steps in my accepting that I didn't need to make myself straight.

Fahrenheit 451 told me that literature is important for the effect that it has on real people in the real world.

A Sign of Four showed me.

 

Oh, I don't think that anyone says, "Nobody here is married! Nobody has parents! I can't tell their orientation! Forget this book!"

I'm just saying that most books do mention sexuality. There must be some that don't, but I can't think of any offhand.

 

A little late to the party, but I'll go ahead and answer anyway. For me, characters' sexuality is usually decided by what feels right. It's almost never a conscious decision. However, I do consciously strive to avoid stereotypes.

Thinking about this topic, I realized I've got more LGBT+ characters than I thought.

From my Watcher stories I have Knight-Sister Elain Bowen and Knight Brother Robert de Vannen. Elain is lesbian, and Robert is asexual. Making that clear in an organic way has been a little tricky, since the stories don't usually deal in sexual or romantic matters. Elain flirts with the series's MC a few times, but it's subdued enough to be missed. And Robert hasn't been in a situation relevant to his sexuality yet. Once I get around to writing novels in this story world, I hope to remedy that.

From my Silver Shrike project, I've got three.

Gregor Strauch/Goldenback--a professional thief and love interest of my female POV character--is pansexual. "I care about the wine, not the label" describes Gregor pretty well. He's a perfect example of a character where the orientation just sorta...happened.

Antony Fucile/Tinker Tony--a brilliant inventor and general renaissance man helping both my protagonists and the main antagonists--is gay. He's also an ex of Goldenback's. That wasn't originally part of the plan, but I think it added depth to both characters.

Cerona--a Hercules-like mythical hero who lived far before the current story--is lesbian. She's one of the few where orientation was a conscious decision. The short story starring her was originally planned to feature a male character, but I ended up gender swapping the protagonist and leaving all the other characters the same. It worked better than the original would've, I think.

Writing almost exclusively in secondary worlds gives me a bit more latitude to follow the same approach as Moose, with sexuality being but one facet of the character. It's not a difference the societies of my worlds put a lot of focus on. They tend to be more worried about magic ability or airing out old grievances against neighboring cultures than with who people are intimate with.