The facts:
This character's sexuality wasn't important when I started writing this novel, and for the first half of the first draft, it never came up. Then I introduced a character who just fit as the antagonist's girlfriend. And I didn't even flinch at the idea of her being gay--that was just her, and like a loving parent I accepted it and embraced it and was excited at the idea that these LGBT characters weren't being shoehorned into my story, that they materialized from the ether just the way they were meant to be. I always found that writing gay characters should be treated as normally as any other character, because that's just the way it should be in my mind. I like to imagine a world where no one thinks differently about gay people or gay couples for that matter, so that's the world I write.
So I'm comfortable with the sexuality part of this...
The part I'm struggling with is the message it sends that the two explicitly gay characters in this story are the antagonist and her girlfriend (who is by association also an antagonist). She's seen as the "bad guy," but as the title implies, those two things are completely unrelated. She's not gay because she's bad and she's not bad because she's gay. Also she's not actually "bad" because she's not a cartoonishly evil character only driven by being evil--her stakes are just as important as those of the protagonist.
I like to think I'm in-tune with things that do not represent me as a white cisgender straight male. I'm a feminist and I support gay rights. So I don't want this story to come off as demonizing gay people. I don't want it to offend people with whom I agree and sympathize nor do I want to empower hateful rhetoric from the other side.
This is meant to be a series, and in the second installment, this antagonist becomes an ally. So I've thought about addressing it there instead and leaving it out of the first book. But if I do that I feel like I'll be doing a disservice to the character and the story, and I'll feel like I'm wimping out because I don't want to deal with this balancing act.
I'm not sure what my question is here. I think I just want some feedback on this issue from people with greater insight. This is me admitting my relative ignorance of these issues and asking how to be sensitive about it.
- My antagonist is a gay woman.
- The story is a YA Fantasy novel from multiple POVs.
- I did not set out with an agenda.
This character's sexuality wasn't important when I started writing this novel, and for the first half of the first draft, it never came up. Then I introduced a character who just fit as the antagonist's girlfriend. And I didn't even flinch at the idea of her being gay--that was just her, and like a loving parent I accepted it and embraced it and was excited at the idea that these LGBT characters weren't being shoehorned into my story, that they materialized from the ether just the way they were meant to be. I always found that writing gay characters should be treated as normally as any other character, because that's just the way it should be in my mind. I like to imagine a world where no one thinks differently about gay people or gay couples for that matter, so that's the world I write.
So I'm comfortable with the sexuality part of this...
The part I'm struggling with is the message it sends that the two explicitly gay characters in this story are the antagonist and her girlfriend (who is by association also an antagonist). She's seen as the "bad guy," but as the title implies, those two things are completely unrelated. She's not gay because she's bad and she's not bad because she's gay. Also she's not actually "bad" because she's not a cartoonishly evil character only driven by being evil--her stakes are just as important as those of the protagonist.
I like to think I'm in-tune with things that do not represent me as a white cisgender straight male. I'm a feminist and I support gay rights. So I don't want this story to come off as demonizing gay people. I don't want it to offend people with whom I agree and sympathize nor do I want to empower hateful rhetoric from the other side.
This is meant to be a series, and in the second installment, this antagonist becomes an ally. So I've thought about addressing it there instead and leaving it out of the first book. But if I do that I feel like I'll be doing a disservice to the character and the story, and I'll feel like I'm wimping out because I don't want to deal with this balancing act.
I'm not sure what my question is here. I think I just want some feedback on this issue from people with greater insight. This is me admitting my relative ignorance of these issues and asking how to be sensitive about it.