Coming out...or not

[sistermagpie]

Recommending a nice post by bluefall here on characters leaving the closet. There's nothing I can really add to it, but the basic idea is just that slash so often deals with ostensibly straight characters, and so writers often deal with the characters themselves coming to the realization of being gay, but sometimes the process of coming out to other people

Comments

[teratologist]

Completely nothing to do with your post, but as Todd and I were coming down Manhattan last night we passed a pet shop that had an African Crow and a Kookabura in the window, and I was thinking, that must be the one you were telling me about?

[sistermagpie]

Was it on Amsterdam? That's where this one is. It could be!

[mbeasi]

Having spent most of my fanfic-writing life in fandoms where there *was* the freedom to choose how the society views homosexuality (I actually include HP in this, because the wizarding world is not ours), I found myself a bit unsure of what to do when I started writing in xxxHolic, which takes place in modern Japan, and in which I signed up for a lgbtfest prompt that left me no choice but to tackle coming out in a realistic way. I think I did okay with it in the end, but I was *so* nervous about getting it all wrong. In the style of the source material, though, it probably ended up too light to be really real, and now I wonder if I used humor to cop-out a bit.

This is what your post is making me think about. A great feat, by the way, since I haven't thought about fanfiction in a long time. :)

[sistermagpie]

Heh. Well, really it applies to all writing since even if it's not a question of keeping it in character you want people to act like real people. But it's got to be even harder when you're talking about a real society that's modern, but you're not actually a part of!

I always took the WW to be not ours too. Which mostly affected Purebloods. Some people might decide that Draco should be homophobic since he's bigoted in other ways. Someone else would decide as an aristocrat he's got very different views on sex than the middle-class Weasleys.

[mbeasi]

Yeah, I read as much as I could about homosexuality in Japan before writing it, but it was really difficult. And then even more difficult to make it work in the style of that manga.

[neotoma]

This is interesting, because I am dealing with this right now...

I have a character who basically jumped forward 15 years or so, and was a rather conservative person back then. He's not dealing well with the changes is society or his family. Especially because his nephew/protege has a best friend who has come out of the closet in the meantime.

I'm trying to keep him sympathetic to be fair to his fans, but he's going to say embarrassing things rather often. It's hard to keep him tolerable as a protagonist even though he's being casually offensive.

[sistermagpie]

Is this Barry who's coming back after 15 years? I was just reading a story today where he was being conservative compared to Ollie.:-D

But I love that he would say embarassing things--good for you having him do that things that are casually offensive. I hate it when people deal with an issue, especially when you're dealing with people from a different time period, where everyone starts out knowing the correct view and the bad guy only forces himself to be offensive to get taught a lesson. I would look forward to seeing a nice guy from 15 years ago be an idiot. And probably his nephew would be too--not because he's a jerk but because he'd probably be jumping on him for things you just can't expect from somebody out of date!

[neotoma]

Yeah, it's Barry. He's making Wally *facepalm* with embarrassment, and if you know Wally, you know *he* has a track record of saying dumb things out loud, so Barry is being especially offensive.

But I'm working on a scene where Barry says something insulting about Piper in front of most of the Justice Society of America, and gets *glared* at by Alan Scott (the JSA's Green Lantern) who is basically as conservative as you can be -- but Alan's son is out, and even though Alan refers to his son's lover as "Todd's good friend", he won't tolerate someone actually being rude about it.

[neotoma]

Also, what story did you read? One of the issues, or a fanfic? Either would be worth it for me to track down, because I know Wally, and Barry only through Wally's flashbacks and weird time traveling encounters with him.

Wally obviously idolizes him, but Wally tends to put people in boxes and not notice that they've changed, or that he's categorized them wrong to start with.

[saylee]

This is really intersting. I don't have much to add, except to note my preference for fics that don't deal with the coming out, or where it's just backstory. Partly, this is because many authors don't seem to grasp the nuances that exist, but even more so, it's simply that as someone queer, I am incredibly bored with the whole coming out narrative. Everyone has their coming out story, and when you meet a new queer person, of course you have to exchange stories, and everyone wants to know if you're out. It just gets old, really quick.

[sistermagpie]

That totally does not surprise me. And I think it's one of those things where it's interesting when you're talking to a real person but less so when somebody's inventing a story for two characters just because they figure they have to do that. In a lot of slash stories the whole coming out process is sometimes just something the author feels like they have to do because the character would do it, but they're not that interested in the other characters or their relationships with them and it shows.

[anehan]

Maybe I'm too new to the queer thing, or rather, I haven't met very many queer people before, but to me the fictional coming-out stories haven't grown old for me.

But I don't like the stories Magpie talks about above, where the coming-out process is just tacked on and where the author doesn't really care for it. I'd rather the author just left it out, if they possibly can, rather than make me read second-rate stories.

Though sometimes you get really brilliant descriptions of the consequences of coming out. I remember this fic where Dean would no longer change (or was it shower) in Harry's presence after Harry came out to his dorm mates. It rang really true.

[sistermagpie]

It's probably like most things--anything can be made interesting if the author has something to say about it, or if it says something about the characters. As long as whatever the character's doing comes from inside the character instead of some outside idea of "this is what people say when somebody comes out" it's going to be interesting--even if what the person is saying has been said a hundred times before, you know?

[ishtar79]

For instance "Ron loves Harry--he would never hate him for being gay." Or "Hermione's intelligent and sticks up for other groups' rights--of course she'd totally accept Harry being gay!"If only life were so simple

[sistermagpie]

Out of Harry's friends, I do think Ron is more likely to have an issue with it, because of the heteronormative Weasley family stuff you mentioned, and because Hermione strikes me as someone likely to be plagued with a degree of middle-class liberal guilt and eager to show herself as non-bourgeois and open-minded as possible. She'd probably take up the cause of gay wizard rights with much enthusiasm and embarrassment for all those involved.That's probably the way it seems most easy to me too. That's why I always think it's funny when people act like it's ridiculous for Ron to have any problem with it. Sure it's ridiculous for Ron to turn into some hateful fundamentalist who curses Harry to hell. But his family actually does seem to consider certain behavior "proper" when it comes to sex, so why is it impossible for him to be casually insensitive? (Frankly, although I know JKR would never write her this way, I could believe Ginny being just as nasty about it, and to show herself "heroic" by standing up to people teasing the gay person