My current WIP, of the romance genre, includes two non-heterosexual main characters, for which are in a relationship. I am looking for general public reactions from forum-goers on this concept. Please comment below or feel free to private message me if you'd like to talk about the idea or my project specifically. Thanks, - T
My reaction is a non-reaction. I've read and seen plenty of stories about gay and bi couples of whatever gender, and as a hetero male I can connect with them, so long as they're well written. If some people have issues reading or watching such characters they can go read or watch something else. Culture should reflect society and all of the people who live in it.
The primary romance arc in my story is gay, so my reaction would be ... yay? Carry on! I'm curious, what kind of reactions are you expecting or hoping to see? I mean, gay romance isn't exactly controversial, although that does depend where you live. It's not controversial generally on the Internet, at least not where I hang out.
Post-Sia-videos, oddly angry, almost crotch-shot that I'm not really interested in seeing Shia LaBeouf notwithstanding, I agree wholeheartedly with this statement.
Use italics and then revert afterward to a TNR 12, the aroma from their cigarettes drifting cross the chapters.
I'm afraid I can't make head or tail out of this sentence. What does Shia LaBeouf have to do with being shot in the crotch? Is that what makes you not stand with him? Do Greta Van Fleet videos qualify as Post-Sia? They're kinda sexy, but I understand if they make you oddly angry.
I have a feeling all this was meant in fun, but in case there's a genuine question herein... Shia LaBeouf entered into a strange faze after having stared in a couple of videos for musician Sia. Little boy Shia wanted to be seen as Gruff Man LaBeouf and hit the gym, dumped the razor along with a lot of his personality, in order to engage in a Shia LaBeouf Rennesaince, for lack of a better term. The once modest actor now enjoys showing a lot more skin than one would expect from an actor not known for skin. His interviews are difficult to follow; he engages in arcane trains of conversation clearly intended to intone a new status, a welcoming into inner realms and circles, none of which seems to be reflected in any real-world sort of way. I actually used to really like him as an actor. Now he's trying way too hard to be special, edgy (vomit sound), different, which rarely pans out.
Queer readers like me are experts at empathizing with cis/straight main characters. We never get the chance not to be. If cis/straight people are unable to do the thing that every queer person is able to do, it's because they haven't practiced enough.
My MC is a ghost, trying to impersonate an Incubus, on a distant future space-going tugboat full of gay women... You have no problems.
I think gay/bi romances are half the reason I write. I’ve read some fantastic stories including: The Tiger’s Daughter, Karen Memory, and the mirror empire saga. It’s possible to write without romance but I feel like it adds a nice layer to the story.
Write it like you would any other romance. I don't really understand what makes writers think that it's so hard to write gay romances? Everyone knows what it's like to love, or be turned on by someone (unless you're asexual), so just apply that experience to a gay romance. Problem solved.
I'm sorry, do you know the line "Being bisexual gives you twice as many chances to get turned down at the bar every night"? That has never happened to me edit for clarity: Because I'm asexual. My life is easier because I never have to worry about the stress of "I'm attracted to that person, but they're not attracted to me" that Nariac was saying I'm allegedly missing out on.
Given that they're literally the main characters of a romance novel, chances are that it's going to mention something like this in the blurb on the back jacket and anyone that would take issue with this probably wouldn't pick up this story to begin with. I very much doubt you'll get a "you tricked me into reading gay porn! Raise the torches and pitchforks," kind of reaction from anyone. And even if you did, screw them. Actually more than that, because a goodly portion of girls that find you attractive will find you surprisingly less so after finding out you've knocked boots with another man. There are also some guys that think they're going to catch second hand vagina cooties (or something) from you if you haven't completely rescinded your attraction to women. There are also women who get offended because they think that if you're attracted to them, that means you think they're somehow mannish, and then there are people who don't really have a problem with any of that, but still won't give you the time of day because being bi means you're "twice as likely to cheat" on them.
Well, it was meant in fun, but there was definitely a question in it. That being, I had no idea what you were talking about. Then it occurred to me that the guy in the "Just Do It" video must be Shia LaBeouf. I wouldn't recognize him if he fell on me (or I on him) from a great height. I could follow his own dog until said dog licks his face and still not know who he was. But once that little fact hit me, I understood your sentence. BTW, the only video of Sia's I've seen was for a song called Chandelier, and it features a young girl in a leotard dancing up a storm. I figured that wasn't Shia, but you never can tell because they can do lots with movie makeup these days.
Nope, the young lady in the video in question is Maddie Ziegler. The video where Shia appears is for the song Elastic Heart.
Try entering into and sustaining a long-term relationship with a person who's not bi (maybe you have.) It was never a problem at the club, and it's not an problem with other bisexuals most of the time, but it's been a major issue in multiple relationships over the last twenty years or so. I'd like to see a book about that: the tribulations of a monogamous bisexual. Maybe I'll write one. It would be semi-autobiographical and involve the difficulties in finding a male or female partner who doesn't mind in the slightest, and at least one incident involving a girlfriend who was fine with it initially but later started to freak out about the MC's past as if he told her he'd sex with two-thousand people and a circus monkey or something and also suddenly believed he was one-hundred percent guaranteed to cheat because all her gay friends convinced her that's just what bisexual men do. Pregnancy hormones and BPD played a big part in this too, as it happens. Damn. I do need to write this book. ETA: It would also involve all the club fun I mentioned, obviously. The only readers you'd alienate automatically are ones you shouldn't care about anyway. There's a growing market for and a desperate need for good LGBTQIA+ literature. Gays, etc. are still woefully underrepresented in other genres, but it's heavily used in both adult and YA romance (as well as erotica, of course,) so you're in an especially safe zone there.
You won't get listed on dangdang* but that's a loss we can mostly live without... other than that who cares (*dangdang is basically the Chinese version of amazon - you access them via publish drive, however being Chinese they are subject to government censorship, and my book 'Darkest Storm' got rejected - I suspect because it revolves around a gay protagonist and his friend's efforts to rescue him from a government 'treatment' facility )
... My comment — in response to @Nariac commenting about how much asexuals/aromantics are missing out on and how sad our lives must be — was about how asexuals/aromantics like me don’t have to worry about the same things that allosexuals/alloromantics* are always stressing themselves out about. I may need to edit for clarity. * it means someone who feels sexual and/or romantic attraction to others. And no, you are not the first person to make the “They’re attracted to allosaurus?” joke.
