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David Gillon ([personal profile] davidgillon) wrote2016-02-15 07:46 pm

Linkspam: On Tragic Queerness in SFF and The Politics of Presence

Storify of Foz Meadows tweeting what she called a rant, but which I call eminently good sense, and which I've been trying to put into practise this afternoon.

On Tragic Queerness in SFF

TLDR: Stop killing your gay characters
Slightly Longer TLDR: If you're writing queer characters while straight, for god's sake read some queer fanfic where being queer is normal.

So, given the backburner WIP has a lesbian couple as protagonists,  I went to Foz's tumblr, where she has a list of favourite fanfic, and I've started reading.

I 'm not sure it makes all the points Foz wanted, but I really enjoyed this MCU piece about all the Captain America films that got made before his reappearance, and what happens when Cap and Bucky find out about them:

Steve Rogers at 100: Celebrating Captain America on Film


And I also found this on Foz's blog: The Politics of Presence, which has some very wise things to say on the necessity of having diverse characters in your novel.

cloudsinvenice: "everyone's mental health is a bit shit right now, so be gentle" (Default)

[personal profile] cloudsinvenice 2016-02-15 10:06 pm (UTC)(link)
I really like the point about needing to reboot our ideas based on fic that centralises lgbt characters and viewpoints - and the great thing about fic is that it's freely available. It's not like this is something nobody has a way to find out about, so that helps to lower the entry barrier for people who want to improve this aspect of our writing.