shitty lgbt writing that tries too hard

[Coelacanth]

I’d believe this. Hell slashfic writers used to willingly admit it was what gets them hot. Its when it becomes sanctimonious about it that it hits peak cringy.

I believe it too. 'Scuse me for powerleveling, but there's this forum that I'm a part of which has a fairly active fanfiction subforum and one of the most popular writers almost always has a trans main character. It's the thing that all of her fans praise her for out of everything she writes. That wouldn't be a problem if she didn't remind the readers every other sentence or so that her characters are trans and it really disrupts the mood of the story - which is something a writer should not do if they want to write a good story imo, and it feels less like she's trying to write something and more like she's trying to push her ideology in everyone's faces.

 

[Hummingbird]

This was mentioned on the SJW Art and Extremes thread, but it deserves to be here. A story of an old west sherrif with a dark secret (a woman with gender dysforia) could work, but Mal De Ojo seems to be trying too hard.

 

[friedshrimp]

^honestly that screams more like a fetish.

Also where is my McDonalds McFlurry gay porn.

 

[PoisonedBun]

Fanfiction has been discussed in this thread before, but here’s a fun new trend I’ve seen in larger fandom circles: writing a character as trans, but failing to disclose this in the tags in order to ‘normalize’ trans headcanons. Like, have your trans fics or whatever, but don’t just spring Aizawa from BNHA mentioning his vagina on me two thirds of the way into your story.

 

[Amber the Hedgehog]

Fanfiction has been discussed in this thread before, but here’s a fun new trend I’ve seen in larger fandom circles: writing a character as trans, but failing to disclose this in the tags in order to ‘normalize’ trans headcanons.

I have noticed the same too but I have been thinking maybe it’s not just virtue signaling. I think trans doesn’t get tagged because it’s poison for attracting readers. Most people are getting so sick of trans issues and/or don’t find trannies sexy, interesting or cute. Slash, yaoi, yuri, genderbend charaters, poly and many other identity politics related things do still get tagged and mentioned in summary just fine. Those have readers but tranny shit doesn’t, so you have to trick people in before slapping them with a binder or a feminine penis.

 

[Grimoire Canthari]

Riley Cavanaugh is many things: Punk rock. Snarky. Rebellious. And gender fluid. Some days Riley identifies as a boy, and others as a girl. But Riley isn't exactly out yet. And between starting a new school and having a congressman father running for reelection in über-conservative Orange County, the pressure—media and otherwise—is building up in Riley's life.
On the advice of a therapist, Riley starts an anonymous blog to vent those pent-up feelings and tell the truth of what it's really like to be a gender fluid teenager. But just as Riley's starting to settle in at school—even developing feelings for a mysterious outcast—the blog goes viral, and an unnamed commenter discovers Riley's real identity, threatening exposure. And Riley must make a choice: walk away from what the blog has created—a lifeline, new friends, a cause to believe in—or stand up, come out, and risk everything.
From debut author Jeff Garvin comes a powerful and uplifting portrait of a modern teen struggling with high school, relationships, and what it means to be a person.

Was in Barnes and Noble and saw this in person. Mind stopped at the genderfluid mention, but was already disliking everything else before that (protag already tastes like unlikable cliche). Shame too because I think the title is pretty bitching and wasted on this book.

 

[Hummingbird]

Reminds me of this character template in my copy of Legacy of Lies for Dark Ages Vampire. One of the ready-play characters was a Mongolian warrior who has a shaved side of their head, identifies as no gender and uses "they/them" pronouns all during the Dark Ages. My first thought was "kill it with fire", the other was that a character like this in a patriarchal Asian culture would be laughed at (at best).

 

[keyboredsm4shthe2nd]

Maybe it's just me (and the fact I read a lot of lgbt stuff and am deep in the lgbt writing circles), but I've collected a lot of very specfic examples of tokenism and bad writing lately.

mostly people who REALLY would like you to know they are INCLUSIVE and so rather than handle it with much nuance, kind of slamdunk diversity in your face.

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(found this on twitter being praised, don't know the book, holy shit is it awkward)

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Wattpad! christ! again, my main emphasis being people who put labels and nothing else about their stories and expect that to... be all we need? all we care about? is there, y'know, a plot?
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I've been obsessed with this one post for years and could write a thesis on why it is such nonsense in the name of tokenized diversity

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not from a book, but a reaction to a bad book (27 hours, trishiana wright). exemplifies what im talkin about.

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from 27 hours. ah yes, 200 years in the future, a book published in 2017 references a scam kickstarter based on a tired joke.

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Chameleon moon, a character with amnesia who has been in constant stress/danger finds it weird he hasn't found anyone hot yet. it's been 1 day, a few hours really, and he's only met like 3 people. not sure that qualifies him as asexual (but other chara sure marks him as such a few para later)

maybe this is too specific to be a thread but it's a minor love of mine

Good Lord that's not how anyone over the age of 12 builds characters. You put descriptions of body/sexuality when it's relevant. "He stared, murky brown eyes focusing intently", "slender body contorting in a way no body should", "He's hot, don't you think?" "She glanced at him, but couldn't find the same zeal her friend displayed."

Instead it's just:
SHE HAS BROWN HAIR AND EYES ALSO SHE'S AROMANTIC ASEXUAL SO SHE DOESN'T LIKE ANYONE AND SHE'S KINDA CHUBBY. "Lucy walked into the bar."

 

[Hummingbird]

 

[LN 910]

anything by that dyke that dissed tolkein and had to get a fat bitch to send her pictures of cats to calm down from literally shaking rn after blocking everyone who said she was wrong

 

[Coelacanth]

Was in Barnes and Noble and saw this in person. Mind stopped at the genderfluid mention, but was already disliking everything else before that (protag already tastes like unlikable cliche). Shame too because I think the title is pretty bitching and wasted on this book.

Do you remember the title of the book? It might be fun to point and laugh at together if it's bad enough!

Waterstones has really begun pandering to the sjw crowd too - they even have lgbtqawtfbbq pandering books for little girls and boys in the kids' section. They also put a gender politics section on the second floor - most of the books there are extremely dusty, if that gives you guys any indication of how many books they're selling,

 

[Grimoire Canthari]

Do you remember the title of the book? It might be fun to point and laugh at together if it's bad enough!

Waterstones has really begun pandering to the sjw crowd too - they even have lgbtqawtfbbq pandering books for little girls and boys in the kids' section. They also put a gender politics section on the second floor - most of the books there are extremely dusty, if that gives you guys any indication of how many books they're selling,

'Symptoms of Being Human' by Jeff Garvin. I did smush the name under the spoiler title but eh

 

[Piga Dgrifm]

Was in Barnes and Noble and saw this in person. Mind stopped at the genderfluid mention, but was already disliking everything else before that (protag already tastes like unlikable cliche). Shame too because I think the title is pretty bitching and wasted on this book.

I like how the cover for this book looks almost exactly like the cover to a book about Hitler coming back in modern times:

 

[skjora]

I've encountered a "gender fluid" character written well once, though that term hadn't been invented back then. The "Tines" alien species in A Fire Upon the Deep form hive minds of 3-7 beings, and may change identity depending on majority biological sex within the pack. I would be completely unable to read a book with tumblrshit however.

 

[Piga Dgrifm]

I've encountered a "gender fluid" character written well once, though that term hadn't been invented back then. The "Tines" alien species in A Fire Upon the Deep form hive minds of 3-7 beings, and may change identity depending on majority biological sex within the pack. I would be completely unable to read a book with tumblrshit however.

Reminds me of that one Lloyd in Space episode where an alien species chooses their gender when they come of age. It was made a long time before the SJW craze so it was actually pretty decent. Maybe once this idiocy falls out of style, we can start having well written characters who happen to be LGBT instead of virtue signaling trash.

 

[Furina]

I've encountered a "gender fluid" character written well once, though that term hadn't been invented back then. The "Tines" alien species in A Fire Upon the Deep form hive minds of 3-7 beings, and may change identity depending on majority biological sex within the pack. I would be completely unable to read a book with tumblrshit however.

The only well-written gender-fluid characters I've ever read were in Iain M. Banks' Culture series in which humanity is basically so super-advanced and hedonistic that swapping genders back and forth a few times is common and relatively simple. It's even mentioned that most people choose to mother one child, then father another. Likewise, homosexuality is little more than a preference and most people come across as some shade of bi. Player of Games deals with a lot of this in particular because it features a Culture man going to an alien empire where they three genders, males, females and apexes, who are the dominate gender in the empire and repress the other two harshly. Written by a lesser author, it could so easily have devolved into tumblr-tier soapbox preaching about how evil gender is, but it was actually pretty good.

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I was a little uneasy when I read the article about Bloodlines 2 and the apparent progressive themes and mechanics, but still had some optimism for the game. Seeing this kind of writing is giving me a distinct sinking feeling. I'm probably going to give this one a big miss...

 

[eternal dog mongler]

Good Lord that's not how anyone over the age of 12 builds characters. You put descriptions of body/sexuality when it's relevant. "He stared, murky brown eyes focusing intently", "slender body contorting in a way no body should", "He's hot, don't you think?" "She glanced at him, but couldn't find the same zeal her friend displayed."

Instead it's just:
SHE HAS BROWN HAIR AND EYES ALSO SHE'S AROMANTIC ASEXUAL SO SHE DOESN'T LIKE ANYONE AND SHE'S KINDA CHUBBY. "Lucy walked into the bar."

This crap is everywhere in actual published genre fiction as well. Characters are told to you rather than shown to you.

 

[Y2K Baby]

This was mentioned on the SJW Art and Extremes thread, but it deserves to be here. A story of an old west sherrif with a dark secret (a woman with gender dysforia) could work, but Mal De Ojo seems to be trying too hard.

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Leave my cowboys and Indians alone. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

 

[SN 385]

The only well-written gender-fluid characters I've ever read were in Iain M. Banks' Culture series in which humanity is basically so super-advanced and hedonistic that swapping genders back and forth a few times is common and relatively simple. It's even mentioned that most people choose to mother one child, then father another. Likewise, homosexuality is little more than a preference and most people come across as some shade of bi. Player of Games deals with a lot of this in particular because it features a Culture man going to an alien empire where they three genders, males, females and apexes, who are the dominate gender in the empire and repress the other two harshly. Written by a lesser author, it could so easily have devolved into tumblr-tier soapbox preaching about how evil gender is, but it was actually pretty good.

I'll second this; in my experience science fiction is literally the only place you can pull off "different" gender/sexuality norms because it's reasonable to assume that in a futuristic/alien society things aren't gonna be like what we're used to (and, y'know, aliens having vastly different biology that can open the doors to some genuinely interesting ideas from the rare good writer). There's another two occurances of 'good' genderfluid characters that I know of, in 'A Long Way To a Small Angry Planet' and the sequel 'A Close and Common Orbit' by Becky Chambers. In both cases the characters are aliens who simply change sex at certain points in their lives for reproductive purposes. Other than the world of the books having 'xhe/xyr' as a commonly used genderless pronoun (never mind how the fuck you're supposed to pronounce it) they're surprisingly good, especially with its worldbuilding; not nearly as much of a glorified soap box as I was worried about when I first picked it up.

But we're not here to talk about good stories. On the other end of the scale when it comes to sci-fi, the most recent Transformers comics of 2011-18 (yeah comics aren't real books but it's the worst offender I know of that hasn't already been mentioned) pretty much shove so much woke down your throat I think it should be classed as oral rape and turned the most popular and well known female robot into a gay trannyformer. There's also another godawful book called Ultraviolet that I very vaguely remember being touted by someone as 'asexual representation' cause one character was out of nowhere revealed to be an alien near the end, but since it happens so far into the book it probably isn't worth mentioning (I remember more about being pissed over the murder-mystery plot taking a backseat to explaining the main character's synthesia in as much purple prose as possible). Maybe it's more obvious in the sequel book but no one gives a shit about people who care so much about not fucking.

 

[Piga Dgrifm]

I'll second this; in my experience science fiction is literally the only place you can pull off "different" gender/sexuality norms because it's reasonable to assume that in a futuristic/alien society things aren't gonna be like what we're used to (and, y'know, aliens having vastly different biology that can open the doors to some genuinely interesting ideas from the rare good writer). There's another two occurances of 'good' genderfluid characters that I know of, in 'A Long Way To a Small Angry Planet' and the sequel 'A Close and Common Orbit' by Becky Chambers. In both cases the characters are aliens who simply change sex at certain points in their lives for reproductive purposes. Other than the world of the books having 'xhe/xyr' as a commonly used genderless pronoun (never mind how the fuck you're supposed to pronounce it) they're surprisingly good, especially with its worldbuilding; not nearly as much of a glorified soap box as I was worried about when I first picked it up.

But we're not here to talk about good stories. On the other end of the scale when it comes to sci-fi, the most recent Transformers comics of 2011-18 (yeah comics aren't real books but it's the worst offender I know of that hasn't already been mentioned) pretty much shove so much woke down your throat I think it should be classed as oral rape and turned the most popular and well known female robot into a gay trannyformer. There's also another godawful book called Ultraviolet that I very vaguely remember being touted by someone as 'asexual representation' cause one character was out of nowhere revealed to be an alien near the end, but since it happens so far into the book it probably isn't worth mentioning (I remember more about being pissed over the murder-mystery plot taking a backseat to explaining the main character's synthesia in as much purple prose as possible). Maybe it's more obvious in the sequel book but no one gives a shit about people who care so much about not fucking.