Episode 37: Be More Gay

In this week’s episode, Crys and JP talk about the do’s and don’ts of writing gay characters. They give some great, and not so great, examples of how gay characters have been portrayed in books and shows.

Show Notes

Official video for “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)” by Lil Nas X

Get episodes early at writeaway.substack.com/subscribe

Schitt’s Creek

– Representation of a world without homophobia.

The Magicians

– Gay and Queer Characters who are allowed to have on screen relationships and they are past their coming out stories.

Orange Is The New Black

– Complicated lesbian and bisexual relationships. Also, excellent trans representation.

One Day at a Time

– Lesbian coming out story.

Queer Eye

– Note the difference between the previous Queer Eye for the Straight guy, which made the 5 gay men into these magical fairy gaymothers, and this new (and better) version that includes a myriad of representation in the clients they help.

A Secret Love

-Excellent documentary and love story about an elderly lesbian couple.

The Old Guard

– Bringing queer characters into high action the right way. A perfect amout of establishing the relationship without converting action into romance, or focusing on the queerness of the characters.

Transcript

JP: Hello, friends. This is episode number 37 of the Write Away Podcast. And it is the 1st of April, April fools, as we are recording. I’m JP Rindfleisch with my cohost…

Crys: Crys Cain. You know, the fact that today’s April 1st and not yesterday, it makes a lot of sense because I thought yesterday was, and I was Googling, what are this year’s April fools pranks and I could not find anything, because it wasn’t April fools. I was so psyched up to not trust anything on the internet yesterday. Now I have to not trust anything on the internet today.

JP: If it makes you feel any better, as I listed the date is when I realized what today was.

I know when I am.

Crys: Oh, it’s a lot of not trusting happening this week. All right.

JP: How’s your writing?

Crys: I finished up the book last week, the co-writing book last week. I’m like, I barely know what today is. Yeah, I did my last words on Friday, and then I went through my co-writer stuff Saturday, I think is when she finished up, Saturday or Sunday, maybe Monday, I don’t know, days.

Then we got it back from the editor super fast so that I realized we didn’t have a blurb, so we couldn’t upload it. But other than that, I have done very well on my taking a break the last few days.

JP: Awesome. Good. I’m glad you’re taking some vacation time.

Crys: Yeah. How about you?

JP: Yeah, you’re going to get real bored of this, but things are going good. I’m over halfway through revisions. I think I might’ve said that last week too, but I don’t know where I am, just over halfway. It was fun, I recently got through a fight scene in revisions, which is I guess one of my favorite things to choreograph in my head.

So, that was rather entertaining. Other than that, we have an outside COVID wedding that we are attending tomorrow, and so we have some family nearby and we’re going to try and take all the precautions we can, but we have been cleaning like a mad people in our house and it has been taking away from everything because I’m just like, Oh, I really want to do this thing.

And I’m like, but I have to clean. So it’s been super great. I’ve just been like sad because I want to do the things, but you know, I’m an adult and I have to clean, which is gross.

Crys: That’s why they hire people for that when they can, anyways, you know, it’s a lot easier to clean a van.

JP: True.

Crys: Okay. Do we have comments, JP?

JP: We do, we have one comment from our friend Lon for Episode 35: How Do I Set Myself Up For Success With Self Publishing? And I believe in this, we asked what things you may have screwed up if you’ve published in the past. And so he is a published author, and he screws up his releases all the time.

He tries to get things set up right, but it never really lands right.

Crys: I don’t know what to say, Lon. I feel ya.

JP: I don’t either, but, yeah.

Crys: One of the things I love that Lon does is he keeps experimenting and pushing himself in there. That’s a double-sided sword. You’re either just throwing spaghetti at a wall, but never looking to see if it sticks, or you’re just trying to push yourself.

And we have lots of conversations and I think that he is more just trying things out a lot of times to figure out what is right for him. And that’s fine.

JP: Yeah. I definitely like his approach and it’s definitely something that I’ve taken note of because he always comes up with some fun ideas that I’m like in my back pocket for later.

Crys: Yes. So we have a fun topic this week.

JP: We do.

Crys: The unofficial title is be more gay.

JP: I enjoyed writing that title down, just be more gay

Crys: Be more gay. And this has actually been on our list since day one of JP joining. Absolutely. And we have been putting it off a little bit, because we want to bring on some other authors from other genders and sexualities to talk more about this topic with us.

But like, this is a topic we can basically talk about forever. So here’s episode one of us, well, that’s not even episode one of us talking about gender and sexuality, it’s a topic of interest. And particularly prompted by the fact that right now on the internet, people are having a furor one way or the other about Lil Nas X’s new song, “Montero, Call Me By Your Name.” We will link to the music video in the show notes, because it’s not even the song, it is the music video that people are in a furor over. We will link it below. Content warning, not appropriate for small children, in any way, shape or form. And probably some of our conversation talking about it, not appropriate for small children as we discuss this.

Not that we think it’s bad, just not for little ears.

JP: Oh my gosh. So good. I’m sure we’ll talk about it shortly, but one, watch the video for those that are listening, and two, there’s some part in there that I just cannot stop laughing over it because of how good and hilarious it was.

I’m still laughing.

Crys: Yeah, you wanna give like the short outline of what happens in the music video for anyone who does not want to go watch it.

JP: Yeah. So ultimately Lil Nas X came out as gay after his cowboy song, I think in 2019, which I can’t remember the name of… “Old Town Road.” And so in this music video, every character is him and he starts off in the garden of Eden and I believe he is portraying, I guess Eve, and then the snake seduces him. And then he gets judged in a crowd of people. He dies by martyrdom, or they kill him, and then he ascends into heaven, and then he takes a stripper pole straight to hell, kills satan, and becomes the devil.

Crys: After giving Satan a, um, wow. I forgot the word.

JP: Lap dance?

Crys: Lap dance. Thank you.

JP: Indeed. So very sexually charged video.

Crys: And one of the reasons that this is so amazing, controversial, important is that heterosexual relationships have been portrayed this way for years in the media.

And this is the first time where someone with as much clout, as much of a big name in a particularly toxic industry has been unabashedly gay, and celebrated that in the same way that we’ve had Madonna, Britney, I can’t even name them all because I don’t know.

JP: Don’t ask me. I don’t know.

Crys: And it’s important.

Like you don’t have to like it to know that this is important, like that all of the ranges of sexuality of openness. You don’t have to be dancing half naked, giving Satan a lap dance on the screen to prove any level of sexuality, but it’s important for people who do want to be very out and are more sexually inclined that they see representation of who they are and know that it is acceptable.

JP: Yeah. So for me, I’ve been following some of the gay music singers, like Todrick Hall and Troye Sivan, and you know, I’ve seen them rise more and more into fame, but this is the first like very sexually charged video aside from Todrick Hall’s, “I Like Boys,” that hits a bigger audience. Because I mean, with his “Old Town Road,” everyone knew that song. And so when they see his name, they’re probably going to click on the music. So, I just think that as much as I may or may not like the video, I think that this is just a really good opportunity to show that we do have this kind of stigma for sexually charged videos to always be portrayed by women who are seeking a man, and this is just slapping that in the face, in the best way possible.

Crys: Yeah. The male gaze, the straight male gaze, has perpetuated advertising, media, music videos. If you haven’t heard of the male gaze or the female gaze before, I definitely encourage you to Google it.

One of the most popular representations of the female gaze that I read quite a bit about a while ago was a couple of the sex scenes in Outlander. The short version of it is that most things are written to titillate straight men, to draw their attention and not women. For instance, lesbian porn is written for men most of the time.

And you will rarely find women, lesbian women, straight women, watching lesbian porn, because it is created for the male gaze. It is not what women are interested in or assigned female at birth. But you will find a lot of women, a lot of straight women, watching gay porn.

JP: I think that, especially when you talk about lesbian porn or straight porn and it being associated towards the whole heterosexual male gaze, that’s unfortunately the representation that the majority see, and it’s not even written or produced generally for, or by, the actual people that it’s representing.

So when we have something like Lil Nas’s video who is a gay man who produced, or is at least a part of creating gay content, we see through the lens of those minority groups as to what they are or what they want to see in the world. And so, I feel like I’m starting to see this more in media, which is fantastic.

I can’t talk much about it because you haven’t finished it, but Schitt’s Creek has such great representation, especially in the later seasons. And Dan Levy is a gay man. And so him being able to bring that voice out and speak a little bit more onto it really brought life into it. That it wasn’t about hate crimes or it wasn’t about coming out because those are like the go-to for whenever a gay character is on screen is they’re either going to die, because that’s just such a huge trope, or they suffer some sort of terrible hate crime, or they’re coming out, and it’s someone at some point is not going to respond well. And in Schitt’s Creek, homophobia doesn’t exist. And it’s just an accepted form of love. And that’s basically what the undertone of the whole show is, is just love. So being able to see more of these things written by these underserved communities sheds light as to what we’ve been missing when we let the heterosexual male gaze lead the way.

Crys: Yeah. I don’t know if Rachael Herron’s talked too much about this on her podcast. She has on her Patreon. It’s public enough that I don’t feel like we can’t discuss it, but she is a gay woman, very out and proud about that. And she wrote heterosexual romances in her getting started. And until her most recent book that comes out next month, she had never written a gay main character.

And that was a desire of hers. She really wanted to do it. And one of the reasons she didn’t was because she was in mostly traditional publishing, but we are not. And this is one of the reasons we’re not, because we’re not confined by incorrect assumptions about what the readers want.

JP: Yeah. And it’s really funny because I had to, in the past couple of months, take a step back and realize that, I’ve been writing most of my fiction with a female main lead because I’ve been trying to pander to some invisible force. Because I’ve just been fed this information that no one wants to hear about gay characters. And I’m like, mm, no, that’s not what I want to do. So in my own personal fiction, my value that I’ve been trying to promote is shedding light on these LGBTQI characters and giving them their proper due because I’m part of that community and I want to represent it.

Crys: I really liked what you said about Schitt’s Creek like not having homophobia, because this is a thing that’s argued about a lot. About how real, quote unquote real, we ought to be in our fiction. And here’s my take on that. I think that Schitt’s Creek and the lack of homophobia is just as real as the persistent homophobia that people face in real life.

And then it’s not wrong to choose one representation or the other. It depends on what your goal is. I personally love to write worlds because I don’t like writing contemporary, and I love that Schitt’s Creek is a contemporary example of this, I love to write worlds where there isn’t human racism, there isn’t homophobia, and there isn’t misogyny in general. I like to write worlds without those, because I want people to imagine a world where those don’t exist because they don’t need to exist. We don’t need them. The thing is those problems only have those specific targets in our world, but humans are humans and they’re going to have those hatreds and those fears of other things.

So you transpose the fear to something else. So for racism, it’s like xenophobia. Fear of aliens, you know, other aliens, et cetera. And I just love when I don’t have to be confronted with that particular part of reality, when I don’t have to be confronted with homophobia, when I don’t have to worry about the only girl in a show getting fridged, or all of the gays dying. One of the things that I had against Star Trek Discovery, because I loved their happy gay couple –spoiler alert people– I love their happy gay couple in the very beginning. And then they killed one of them. And I was like, really, could we just have a series where the gays don’t get killed? The only other gay on the show, her wife died years ago.

I’m like, let’s just have some happy gays for once.

JP: Well, and that’s the thing too. So her wife died off screen, right? So she never existed. Correct?

Crys: Yep, so you’re never confronted with her actually being gay.

JP: Yeah. You just know this character who happens to be gay, but you never get to actually see that side of them because their love interest is gone and is always off screen.

And that’s a common trope too, that was even in The Happiest Season, which portrays a lesbian couple.

Crys: I’m invisibly vomiting at this movie, anyways.

JP: But the side characters, one was a lesbian and one was gay, they didn’t actually have relationships.

They just claimed they did, but we never saw them. And it was almost to make the movie a little bit more palatable to the broader audience because we can only handle one actual relationship in a show that isn’t heterosexual.

Crys: Blahg. That’s my response to that.

JP: And so to bring back to your point where we want to quote unquote, represent the world the way it is, and so these things exist. I feel like that is a really good barrier that people set up for themselves. And I actually, I’ve seen this in the role-playing world, where they play in this medieval fantasy kingdoms with dragons and orcs, and they’re like, but racism exists.

And it’s like, does it? Because orcs don’t exist. So why are you bringing racism into this? And they try to argue some historical context about dragons and I’m like, well, dragons didn’t exist in this world, so why does racism exist in that one? And we’re starting to see in our society–I don’t remember the numbers, I’m not going to look them up, I’m sorry– but a larger percentage of people in the US are more accepting of gay relationships now that it has become legalized. So it is not a leap to make an imaginary world where there is no date claimed, so for example, Schitt’s Creek, in which a small town community is just 100% accepting.

That’s not really a big leap. You don’t have to always add in these pieces of hate into your writing. You can always take them out and imagine a world as a better place.

Crys: And I just Googled this because I knew it was really high, but Gen Z, Gallup just released a poll that says that one in six Gen Z adults is LGBT.

Like it’s not a super minority. It’s never been a super minority, but it’s not swept under the covers anymore. Like people are already out and proud. And it’s not too far abridge to imagine a world where this actually doesn’t exist and portray it.

JP: So what you had said there, I would hope that none of our listeners would think this, but maybe someone does, where they think, well, it’s because the Gen Z are more gay or something along those lines.

And it’s not the case. They’re more accepting. So gay people have always existed and it’s just the fear of coming out or the fear of not being accepted in the community. I have friends who are in their fifties or sixties who didn’t come out until they were in their thirties, married to someone of the opposite sex and had children.

There’s a movie on Netflix called, A Secret Love, in which two women are about to move into a nursing home. They’ve lived together for decades and their whole family didn’t know that they were a lesbian couple because they were afraid of coming out until finally this movie, they actually came out to their family and they got married.

So it’s just the fact that it’s become more accepting and because it’s become more accepting, people are more comfortable showing their true selves. And so I think like we as writers, when we’re a little bit older in the generations, we need to catch up with the times because people want this content.

I can say, I want this content.

Crys: Yeah. I definitely lean toward authors who do portray a wider variety, and one of the main reasons being that when you stick to straight characters, you unconsciously steep your story in toxic masculinity. And that’s not a place I want to be in.

JP: Yeah, a hundred percent.

And I’ve said this before, where write a character that just happens to be gay, but unfortunately, I have to step back and say, well, things don’t just happen. Unfortunately, you do have to do a little bit of research in this. You have to figure out what stipulations it takes in order for a character to be gay.

There are certain things that I know that I can’t do out in the real world without being judged, without getting those weird stares. So like I don’t hold the hand of my partner in the area I live in because I know that it could lead to some either microaggressions or potential aggressions.

So there are just things that people in different minority groups have to be aware of in order to be part of that group. And I think that it’s just important to take in the media from the actual writers who are part of that community, learn from it, and then see what you can do with your writing.

Crys: You make me cry every time you say stuff like that. I hate the world, because it’s true. I did have a pertinent thought though. Even if you are not going to write a world where homophobia exists, it is important to know what the repercussions of homophobia are, so that you’re writing the opposite or the healing answer in it.

One of my recommendations for folks who identify as CIS straight, when they are writing outside of what they know, besides all the facts, all the suggestions we gave in the gender episode on how to write other people who aren’t like you, is this is a really great opportunity when you are writing characters who aren’t like you to explore a world without.

What would it look like without misogyny? What would it look likewithout homophobia? How would you be different personally if those weren’t the things? There’s a trend on Twitter going around that is a question that women answered, and it’s what would you do if there were no men on the planet for 24 hours? And 99.9% of women are like, I would walk at night. I would go for a long run at night without mace, without a rape whistle, without my little key chain defense mechanisms. And that’s only if you go out,

JP: Right? This is maddening to think that that’s the case, but unfortunately, there are some privileges that people have and if you have them, you don’t see it all the time.

I know that I have privileges that I am well aware that I am blind of, but I’m trying to learn them. And the most important thing to do is just take in the content from the people that are part of that group. And to do a little bit of research behind it, because you don’t want to take in that content about the group written by the people in your group. Because it’s not gonna fly. Like you have to actually listen to the voices.

Crys: Yeah. And you don’t have to jump into having full fledged main gay characters or trans characters or non-binary characters. Just having a character be gay is a really good start. Like everything is baby steps. It is part of the learning process.

Don’t feel like you have to jump into the deep end.

JP: Because I love TV and movies, and I have more references to that than I do books. Another example, even though, as Crys says, the show is like, someone smoking into your soul, is The Magicians. Basically they have about seven main characters if you really want it to count, and one of them is gay and the rest of the group, that’s not a problem to them. And a couple of other characters in that group are actually queer and the fact that the show doesn’t hide it, he’s allowed to have relationships, but it’s not this like spotlight. I think that that’s a great reference for people to potentially use as like how they could portray a gay character without having to dive head in and just try to throw everything at them and whatnot.

Yeah. I’ve got others, but I’ll stop.

Crys: Do you want to throw them in the show notes?

JP: Sure.

Crys: With links?

JP: Sure.

Crys: Excellent. Do you have any closing thoughts, or are we even near closing thoughts, JP?

JP: I don’t know because, so there’s so many things that I could say about this topic because I’ve run into a lot of straight people who make a lot of presumptions about who I am in the sense of from their heterosexual standpoint, to the point where like, well, who’s the man and the woman in that relationship, which makes me laugh.

Because we’re both men, like that’s literally, literally what I don’t want. So I think that it’s just always approach a topic–and I do this too, so I’m not just, speaking for other people to do this, I do this too–Always approach a topic that you do not live in, in the sense of, I do not know what I am talking about, and maybe I need to check my bias. This is a whole scientific thing that people need to approach is that you will always have a bias regardless of where you’re approaching, if the thing you are approaching is not something that you are used to. So as long as you recognize that, you can approach a topic and you can say okay, well, what kind of things am I thinking that may not apply to this group?

So for example, in this conversation, it would be: what kind of heteronormative things am I thinking and trying to apply to groups that are not heteronormative?

Crys: Internally yelling at JK Rowling in my head right now, actually. Like just complete side bunny trail, don’t have a character be gay, but only because you, the author has said so.

JP: Yeah, so that’s a, great example. So, Dumbledore ended up being gay and he was a nice calm character who seemed very grandfatherly, but there was never a picture at his desk with a previous lover. He never talked about a previous lover. He never did any of that. So we didn’t know until after the books had come out and then he just happened to be gay. And that is a perfect example of someone who just happened to be gay, but it was never shown. And it could have been as simple as showing a picture.

Crys: And this wouldn’t have been a problem if there were other gay characters. Because that is a true representation of a very small portion of gay people. But when that’s your only gay person, it’s problematic.

JP: I agree. I think I’m done, otherwise I’m just going to keep going.

Crys: Yes. Clearly this is going to be a topic that comes up pretty regularly for us in some way, shape, or form.

JP: Yeah. I would love to have some more people in on this topic because like I’m gay man, I’m a queer man, but I would love to have a little bit more of the other members of the alphabet mafia join us and talk about their experiences and how we can portray different groups.

Crys: So if you know us or if you don’t and you do listen and you would like to come on the podcast and info dump with us, please message.

JP: Hit me up.

Crys: What is their question this week, JP, because we didn’t start with a question. We just started with a declaration of excitement, be more gay!

JP: With this information, do you think that you will be able to approach writing LGBTQIA characters and what things are you concerned about portraying? Because I think that the most important thing that we want you to know is we want you to write more gay characters.

What are your stop gaps? Because we want to be here to discuss this and to help you through them.

Crys: Excellent. If you would like to get episodes early, you can follow us on a Substack for $5 a month, where we also do our monthly tarot business episodes. We’re doing a year of tarot and every month, we have pulled a card already, we did a year spread, we pull a card for a month ahead and discuss what we think it means for us. So far, they’ve been annoyingly on point and so you can hear us lament about that. Links for that and to leave a comment will be in the show notes.

JP: All right.

See you later.

Crys: Good job.

JP: Good job. So do I tell people now or later that when you come out as gay, you get a complimentary unicorn?

Crys: I didn’t know this. I’m going to be gay. So it’s like, I don’t know what I am, so I’m going to be gay now.

You know, that’s going to be here.

JP: I know, I thought you hit the stop record and you didn’t. So.