Lord Foul wrote:Hmmm . . . I know that in the fantasy series
A Song of Ice and Fire that one character,
Loras
, is gay. It doesn't say for sure but there are strong hints, and there's also the fact that he was a member of the Rainbow Guard and was called the "Knight of Flowers". Maybe that's my imagination running wild, but, heh, it's a funny thought.
For that matter Renly was possibly of the same persuasion...I tend to think that he simply had little sexual discretion in either direction.
In orson scott card's earth series there's a sort of weird portrayal...a gay man who marries a woman and has kids with her. It's pretty weird, actually like a "sympathy fuck" where she wants kids and he loves her, just not sexually.
It's not a book, but the main character of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Ike, is the first fire emblem character who has no "special endings" with any female characters. The only ending he has is with his best friend and advisor, Soren, where they leave the continent and everyone on it behind to go on a journey. They have a pretty chaste conversation (hug, and soren cries) but since it is a video game rated everyone you have to keep things in perspective. Fans seem to be split between saying it's platonic and it isn't, as well as discussing whether the pairing makes sense or it's just fangirl material.
(I lost my memories of you. But… despite that, I was happy. I only wanted to meet you just one more time. Only that one person. …I only wanted to meet the boy who had held out a warm hand to me.)
My own take...I don't like soren much as a character, but the pairing is more substantiated than any Ike/female pairing, and the fact that he's the first main who doesn't have 3 or 4 girls to get hitched with seems like a pretty strong indication. Frankly I'm surprised so many fans are surprised because I saw it coming in the earlier game (path of radiance).
There's a similar thing in the original american FE between Lyn and Florina, but that felt like fanservice, not an honest attempt at a pairing.
burgs wrote:I used to read much more SciFi/F than I do now, and when I was reading more of it I recall most gay characters being portrayed in a negative light. It really ticked me off. Most of them were pederasts or rapists, like
Gilbur from MD
.
I'm tempted to look into some of these books and see if any of them do a better job, and if they're accurate portrayals, for that matter.
Lest we forget, in The Gap Cletus Fane is described as having a pedosmile (i believe it says he smiles like a pederast).