Before there’s any trouble at all, I want to make it clear that this isn’t a slight at homosexuals or anything like that in the least bit. This is strictly a thing that has to do with a trend that seems to have gotten worse and worse over my years on the internet, which is basically every since it got to be the popular thing to do.
I remember with some fondness when the Fan Fiction.net site initially launched and it was probably the most glorious collection of fiction I had ever seen. Everything I liked to watch and read and play had stories on that site and possibilities seemed endless. I wasn’t there when Deviant Art launched but I joined in mid 2005 and have been going back every since. But you don’t have to have seen those sites to notice the trend I’m going to talk about although it will help.
What I mean to make mention of is how there is this very apparent trend of turning every set of characters into homosexuals. Characters that have little more to prove there’s any attraction than the fact they hang around each other. Not sure if there’s any numbers, but when it comes down to it I feel like the men on men stories are much more common than women on women, and while there’s nothing overtly wrong with these stories even, the obsession seems unnatural and it even seems to think that there’s some chance that there couple will see fulfillment on screen.
Now I really won’t go into talking about anime because they often add in little gay bits and little bits for every set of possible couples to boost their readership, it’s a bit of a sad trick and a cheap way to get readers, but its what’s going on in things like Naruto where no matter what the writer might do, there will more than likely be no real couples at the end of the story.
When I talk about this I mean shows like Doctor Who and people thinking the Doctor belongs with the Master. Or those people out there who love the Draco Harry pairing, which usually has some kind of abuse attached to it, there are Sonic and Shadow pairings out there and really just about any pair of male characters, good or bad, has a following for their pairing.
Despite most of them having no hint at all of being gay. I can’t get there the idea for this comes from but a lot of the time it seems to say something sort of bad about gays even though the girls who love the stuff (mostly its girls it seems) will swear its positive about gays.
Tell me how is it positive to portray gays as abusive, sex crazed monsters, much of the time the gay relationship is set off by someone evil, the Master, Shadow, Draco or Doctor Moriarty from Sherlock (The BBC show). Granted there were some parts that suggested and joked about Sherlock being gay, but the show creators meant them as a joke. But the internet seems to be filled with art of Watson and Sherlock and Moriarty having threesomes and the like.
The Wikipedia article on Sherlock has this to say:
Some dialogue in the first episode suggested that in this version the character Sherlock Holmes is homosexual. For instance, Holmes responds to Watson's query about his relationship status with "Girlfriend? No, not really my area". Their landlady apparently believes they are a couple, informing them "There's another bedroom upstairs ... that is if you'll be needing one". Steven Moffat denied any sexual relationship is implied between the two, while Cumberbatch says that they "do allude to the idea that there may be a 'misunderstanding' from other people who think we're a couple". Moffat continued, "It's just that thing of two blokes hanging around together living together – in this nice modern world it leads to people saying, 'Oh, are they a couple?' And that's nice. I thought how the world has changed, there is no disapproval. How much more civilized the world has become".
Now I know that its not just a new interpretation thing. In the past people have expressed thoughts that Iago from Othello might be homosexual and there were people who pointed out homosexual tendencies and allusions in the in Victor Frankenstein and his Monster. It seems that in classic literature that there is usually more to go on than there just being two men and in these cases often the character seem as the one with the longing isn’t in a relationship or ever shown to have one that really goes anywhere.
In many of the examples above the characters are shown to be straight and there’s usually not the same kind of duality between them as there is between someone like Othello and Iago.
And more importantly, when you look at the modern examples it seems that the biggest part of the relationship is the sexual aspects. The deepness and spirituality of things rarely makes it into all of these stories and pieces and a lot of the time being gay is treated as all cakes and rainbows and no one in these fictional worlds seems to question how this came about or why there was no sign of it before when it does happen.
Maybe somewhere out there people have really researched this trend and typed up some kind of distinct report about what’s going on and why and where it came from. It would be nice to know that this isn’t something I’ve just imagined, though I’m sure its not. It would also be nice to know I didn’t notice it alone.
Does anyone else think its just some silly trend that will pass or at least come with better writing as and reasons as it goes on? Or will it become more prevalent and totally without reason IE: characters that have never interacted are suddenly commonly gay for each other and recognized as such across the fandom?
