344 posts
bits
he/him
Nothing is true, everything is permitted...We work in the dark to serve the light
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Post by desmondmiles on Nov 3, 2020 19:29:14 GMT
I play a very niche fandom and genre (harvest moon). With the last attempt at a public site, I wanted to find a way to show that were LGBT+ friendly/positive without like, making it our selling point or an advertising point, because I know how label gets treated by others. I did not include a sexuality field, or even a gender field on the profile. Instead, I just asked for character pronouns.
But then, inside the guides to the rp, I included the following into our relationships and marriage section:
Because despite the large LGBT+ fanbase, the harvest moon games (up until this point), are overwhelmingly heteronormative. And "straight/cis passing" ships make up the majority of ships on past sites. So, I had hoped that by wording this guide in this way, it was a better friendly/positive signal than straight up putting a label on it. It may not seem like much on the outside, and I'm sure there's more I could do, but it's definitely a model I would use again in the future.
That's just my example though!
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papa edgelord
152 posts
bits
she/her
I feel so alone Gonna wind up a big ole pile a them bones
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Post by bex on Nov 3, 2020 20:00:14 GMT
as someone who (unfortunately) grew up in the animanga rp community and is also an lgbt person, i think it's important to note how much we (as a collective community) have improved and progressed in the last decade. when i was younger, it was rare on a lot of sites to see any lgbt character who wasn't conventionally attractive, cis, white-passing and gay. and a lot of times, it was literally only a handful of characters in a sea of cishet characters. the only time you would see lgbt characters as the majority would be on the fetish-y bl/yaoi & yuri sites (tho let's be real here, they were predominately yaoi sites)
and i tend to err on the side of caution when i see a site feel the need to advertise that they're "anything" friendly tbh. because at least in my observation, it crosses into the weird, uncomfortable and/or fetish-y type stuff really quickly. and that's not just as far as lgbt characters go, either.
i love that me and my friends are no longer in the minority of making lgbt characters, or that a lot of us who have (again, unfortunately) grew up in the community have grown comfortable with being open with our identities. it's been really cool to see more and more diverse characters of all gender expressions + sexualities. i know when i was a kid, i wasn't comfortable playing trans, nb and gnc characters because i really didn't have any sort of frame of reference and was afraid of doing something wrong. i still have some of that fear bc i'm pretty much cis, and i always want to portray my characters who are different than me as accurately and respectfully as possible; but i think with more and more trans, nb & gnc becoming more comfortable with talking about themselves and how they express themselves, it makes it easier for us who want to try and make more diverse characters.
tldr;; personally i think explicitly labelling a site as "lgbt friendly" means nothing, like a lot of other people said. i love that slowly the community as a whole is growing and changing, and i hope every day yaoi/bl and yuri sites die in a fire
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praise the cats!
587 posts
bits
he/him
accidentally fell in love with hawks and i now can't get out please send help.
Summer Bingo Completionist
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Post by utter hawks trash. on Nov 3, 2020 20:08:50 GMT
Kuroya this is going back to ur initial reply alskfks but abt the t in lgbt+ - in my experience, playing trans n-b characters is less uncomfortable than playing a trans binary character. even on that site where i mentioned i played 8/20 of the n-b characters, it wasn’t smthing that rlly bothered me at all? opposed that w playing trans binary characters, and i’ve kinda found that i prefer to just. not say anything. imply for those astute enough to notice, but all implication. which works w me since rp is a bit of escapist fantasy and i personally don’t feel i need to know if another character is trans or not because they’re still who they are if that makes sense? but also idk i don’t see any trans binary characters period who don’t pass, and ofc me rping smthing like that would be putting my neck out there to a degree i’d be rlly unsure abt but also alskdkdksl it’s just not a thing and eh? it’s a little saddening orz orz look i love vicariously thru other ppl’s characters i feel my pain thru them let my pain be realized— anyway that’s all a long way to say that nobody rlly bats an eye at trans n-b characters but it’s pretty uncomfortable to specify ur character as trans binary when ur one of two trans on the site lmao. but also about em saying there are some sites that just don’t have a romance focus and therefore orientation is not necessary as a field, i do think that’s valid. this is not most sites, but some shounen sites are like this. in this case, sexuality really isn’t probably gonna come into play outside of very specific romantic plots that i’m honestly not sure where they came to the conclusion to plot that shit out but it exists somehow?? and i guarantee u there’s like at least ten different overarching plots to take over the world thru power couple power. or... smthing... idk basically tho i think some sites don’t rlly have an interpersonal plot focus and if it’s a site that doesn’t even fill out the fields half the time, at that point u rlly can only sus things out thru interaction. i do think the inherent nature of u know shounen sites being shounen you are more likely to have the cis male variety memberbase more than the typical rp site, but yknow that’s just smthing u gotta judge but it’s rlly not a thing where sexuality fields are particularly relevant in any degree whatsoever to the ppl rping so ig to tie it up, shounen sites, while capable of having queer characters, are by their nature catered toward a more cis/het male audience. this does not mean a queer person would be uncomfortable so long as nobody is u know obviously being bigoted, but often time the focus of those sites are not even on romance, so i don’t think it’s a thing that usually even comes up in the first place. i might rp an lgb character but it wouldn’t be smthing that i would make matter unless i found someone else who rped a queer character and we decided to plot tgt, but otherwise, yea tbh. edit god this is such a mess of a reply but seconding cae in the end so long as ur not being bigoted...? but also i think shounen sites for me i do expect that its not gonna be as interpersonal focused so queer characters are probably just gonna be there lmao, whereas on other sites i do want queer rep so when i see more than half are cishet i get pretty eh |
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Post by yum yums on Dec 9, 2020 0:58:12 GMT
Honestly, as a queer person myself (bisexual male here), I just...want to be seen as a person, without being demonized or objectified. I won't call out any specific people, but I've seen an insane amount of obviously-fetishized bisexual characters (mostly female) in the community and it's always made me profoundly uncomfortable. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't fall into that trap in the past, but I've actively been trying to get better.
I think that (as people have mentioned earlier) the community is making huge strides in LGBT+ representation in general, but I'm of the mind that RP/fanfiction sites have always been a safe space for queer folks trying to explore their identities. So that's where the genuine drive to improve comes from.
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184 posts
bits
They/Them
so take the tarot card and tell a fortune gold...
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Post by nightlock on Jan 3, 2021 22:01:30 GMT
VERY late to this discussion, ftr, but i wanted to voice out some thoughts too.
asexual lass here, bi romantic styles, but i'm of the impression that action > talk. i tend to do a hard swerve on sites that advertise as LGBT+ friendly for much of the same reasons stated already bc imho that shouldn't exactly be an advertising prompt? its like when media promotes their content with diversity clickbait, essentially. if its part of the site culture, then its part of the site culture. no need to force the matter down someone's throat. want to show you're lgbt+ friendly? respectable representation alone is enough. i'd be more than happy to join a site that has active diverse characters. all the more grand if the ooc community itself has a pool of players of varying sexualities, genders, etc. but you don't hammer it consistently—or, more like, wave it around like a banner. just do.
on the note of sexuality + pronoun fields — honestly everyone else voiced my thoughts on that. theyre cool and a good way to really figure out characters, how to approach them, the tendencies of players, etc. even if the site isn't romance or ship-oriented, that kind of stuff is just pretty integral to people. its nbd including them imho. when rp and plotting is about relationships and dynamics formed between characters—well. only seems to check out to me for them to be there.
the biggest,,,,, Uhm that have turned me off sites, tbh, is when "lgbt+ friendly behavior" or lgbt+ relationships come across, more or less, as fetishistic or objectifying? that's a massive redflag for me, especially when the players behind these aren't in that spectrum, such as a man writing a heavily sexualized wlw relationship, or a woman writing a heavily sexualized mlm one. it just rubs me the wrong way and ive been burned out far too much by sites with so much emphasis on the latter, in particular. (so, agreed with what was said about yaoi/yuri sites. imma rejoice if theyre purged, thanks.) sex, sexual attraction, and etc. are fine, this isn't meant to slutshame. but when that's the only investment for the characters—fetishizing and such. objectification? a big Yikes for me, fam!
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