A Single Unified LGBT Character Thread

x3 Perhaps, but you made me realize I don't really think about the sexualities of my women in sapphic relationship other than "they're compatible sexuality wise". IK what their sexualities are but I just don't account for them in the relationships.

So um, I'm not sure if you should take this with a grain of salt or not.

Speaking bisexually, just write it as you would any two characters dating, depending on how relevant issues like homophobia/biphobia/etc are in your narrative. Some queer people may have attraction similar to a straight person, but others distinguish it by finding attraction to specific things, like how queer women are more stereotyped to find masculinity in women attractive (that's not that straight men can't find that attractive, but it goes against what's usually considered the Male Gaze).

question, would writing an asexual character as inmune to a succubi's powers be offensive? I feel that would be a logical immunity but I want to make sure it would be ok.

Depends what kind of Asexual they are. Some might be, some might merely be resistant.

There's a lot of kinds of asexuality, and not all of them include sex repulsion.

Nah, I wouldn't find that offensive.

It's worth noting, however, that not all aces are sex-repulsed (I myself am sex-indifferent) so theoretically, they could still sleep with the succubus but not be sexually attracted to them.

Doesn't feel any less offensive than writing a gay character as immune to a succubus. Which I don't think is offensive.

And yeah there are some non-sex-repulsed aces but the sex-repulsed ones deserve representation too.

Co-sign.

I've seen other acespec people make the same joke before, too. (I remember a thread about sirens happily realising they don't have to sing a love song for once, eventually luring Captain Asexual into the water with an enchanting song about spaghetti instead.)

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Aug 19th 2023 at 5:23:45 PM

Can confirm; I'm ace (and possibly also aromantic) and would definitely jump in the ocean and drown myself if I heard an impossibly alluring song about spaghetti.

I think a gag about an asexual person no-selling a succubus's charms would be pretty funny.

I remember a Tumblr post or something about a succubus and an asexual becoming friends, back when any story idea that played off a queer identity would go viral. Or maybe I had the idea myself when I was 14, I just remember drawing art of it (which I think may now be lost).

Val and Isaac has that as a gag, there is an "omni-seducer" character that can seduce anything including inanimate objects, and one of the main characters is asexual. They're friends, her powers don't work on him (she tries once for the joke). I've seen enough approval from ace people in the audiences.

Edited by Adannor on Aug 20th 2023 at 10:23:48 PM

I'm sure I've seen a post on Tumblr or Reddit about a siren luring an ace person in with garlic bread.

Yeah, I see something similar in D&D and other fantasy TTRPGs; asexual characters can be tempted in other ways (or platonically).

I met this You Tube video about asexual and succubus a few weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muBGXZyyIkg

I dont interpreted sirenes primarly sexual. Honestly, they are big birds with female heads - are you interested? I always thing, thart their singing so good, that sailors swim to death just for better sound.

You're confusing Sirens with Harpies.

In the original myths Sirens did also have bird parts, but less, and in modern fiction they're usually presented as mermaids or entirely human-looking (at least as a glamor).

On the contrary, Sirens were sometimes depicted as being entirely birds, but with human heads—although other depictions gave them human chests (and thus breasts) as well, I believe.

(See this Wikipedia article for more.)

As you say, Sirens are commonly portrayed as mermaids these days—but then, that sort of thing is I feel not uncommon in modern fantasy. (See also: Ghouls being depicted as undead (rather than as demons), vampires dying in the sunlight (instead of merely being forced back to their graves, etc.)

Don't mistake me: Harpies were also bird-women.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Aug 25th 2023 at 4:59:19 PM

I have a character that happens to be transgender and I want to write her in a kind way and avoid making her insensitive for my webcomic as a supporting character.

I'm not trans myself but I've been researching for a whole year since I considered making her transgender to make her a little more unique.

I've been wanting to make her an extroverted girly girl that loves with her accepting grandparents and has recently came out as a girl.

This is what she looks like:

Man.

After finishing my current webnovel and several other planned works, I'm planning to write another alternate history WWII webnovel.

That time around, I'll actually mention Magnus Hirschfeld and his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or Institute of Sexology, as well as the fact that one of the first things the Nazis did was persecution of LGBT community.

Edited by dRoy on Sep 4th 2023 at 11:23:00 PM

Oh, i'm also writing a WWII alternate history thing. Red Revenge.

Or more accurately i'm on a concept level because i haven't come up with full even arches for everything. And i haven't yet done much research about the military decisions/situations, potential different strategies, or the large amount of real people who appear in the story or exist in the background making the decisions.

I'm propably also going to mention the institute, though Red Revenge only starts when the nazis march to Paris in 1940. However there's a lot of backstory and flashbacks, and the main resistance characters are mostly german and largely queer, so somebody having had something to do with the institute isn't unlikely. The Allies keeping the nazis' anti-gay laws and putting gay Holocaust survivors in prison also comes up as one of the reasons he Allies are also bad^note  (alongside Project Paperclip and its equivalents, and how they just put the nazis back into the government and the police, and gave then intelligence jobs).

Edited by Nukeli on Sep 21st 2023 at 12:29:32 PM

If you're looking for research material, there's a documentary about how the queer community was persecuted by the Nazis. It's called Paragraph 175, and made by the same guys who did The Celluloid Closet.

So I have something to ask about a character I'm planning to write for a project. Because I realize it touches on a trope that's getting a lot more scrutiny lately.

Non-Human Non-Binary

Basically, this character is a mass of sentient grey matter that memories can be poured into. Though, they're unaware that that's what they are as they've been fashioned into the form of a person and had all memories of their true nature removed. Their memories are a collection of different memories from other people's lives, so a day from one person, a week from another person, etc. And when combined they create what's essentially a new person, formed from all the experiences and emotions of those who make them up. They're not a hivemind, but a person made up of snippets of dozens of other minds. Like a jigsaw puzzle made of single pieces from a thousand different jigsaw puzzles.

Now, I envisioned this character identifying as male and female at different points, seamlessly switching between them because they have memories of being both male and female. So maybe they wouldn't be non-binary so much as Gender Fluid. But I wonder if this kind of idea is potentially offensive at all. I'm aware that it's a common and sometimes critisized trope for characters who don't fall within the gender binary to be inhuman in some way. Or if it is workable then what kind of pit falls should I avoid if I want to write a character like this?

Edited by GNinja on Sep 23rd 2023 at 4:38:40 PM

Speaking as a genderfluid person, I'd be more worried about it being a parallel to dissociative identity/plural (or whatever the right word for it is). After all, the character seems to be summed up as "a load of people's memories in one head". Fortunately, there seems to be a few systems who could give feedback, including site moderator wingedcatgirl.

If you want advice with writing this character as genderfluid, I have a fairly easy solution; give them memories from a genderfluid person! That's where they could get the idea from, and it makes it clear that genderfluidity is a human thing.

I think the problem is less "a non-human character is non binary" and more "the only non binary character isn't human", so as long as there's at least implied to be non binary sorts who aren't this character, there shouldn't be an issue.

Co-sign.