Stereotype: the promiscuous homosexual who's closeted for half the book

[Ranwulf]

Why am I seeing this character so often? The last three works I've read have had him:

The Rainwild Chronicles, Robin Hobb
Nights of Villjamur
Iron Council, China Mieville (only 150 pages in)

After leaving the closet (to the reader) this character's sexual exploits are then mentioned frequently and in detail. Why? I find it rather gross and it takes away from the book for me. It's not even that the character is homosexual, although that does make it even less appetizing for me. The sheer amount of sex described in the books and the detail with which it is described is the real problem and it quickly becomes just plain annoying. Heterosexual sex in most of the stories I've read is described much less frequently.

Hopefully I've just had bad luck and this character isn't the new fad in fantasy authorship.

 

[Mouse]

Um. Who is the 'promiscuous homosexual' in the Rainwild Chronicles?!

That's all I'm going comment, because this sort of thing makes me really angry.

 

[Ursa major]

Aren't a lot of the characters in books closet heterosexuals?

What I mean is that we tend to assume, because of the distribution of sexual preferences in the general population, that characters are heterosexual unless we are told otherwise. Because of this, we don't expect to be told.

So rephrasing my opening question: Aren't the majority of the characters in books in the closet? And don't most of them remain there for the whole book, simply because we don't see them demonstrating, or (if they are POV characters) thinking in line with, their sexual preferences.

When a gay character is revealed to be so, you see them as coming out of the closet. But aren't heterosexual characters (ones whose sexuality has not been mentioned before) doing the same when they first have sex with someone of the opposite sex?


As for the promiscuity: if a POV character is promiscuous, I would expect to see evidence of this, if only in their thoughts, from early in their narration. But even then, a character fighting to save their lives through a series of deadly escapades (for instance) may not have that much time for contemplation on any subjects other than weaponry and tactics.

.

 

[Mouse]

Well said, Ursa.

As for me, I think I'm mixing the Rainwild Chronicles up with the Liveship Traders. Not read Rainwild yet, but it's on my pile. As is Nights of Villjamur.

 

[chopper]

i don't see a problem. first, as ursa says, readers make their own assumptions about characters until the author proves otherwise. second, authors themselves aren't required to state any given character's preferences, and the characters themselves may not be in any position (as far as social or cultural taboos go) to do anything about their thoughts. in fact that sort of conflict usually serves to round out characters, make them more human. thinking about it, fantasy and sf do reflect our own social mores through prisms (of dragonlight, natch), so it shouldn't be any surprise that characters are so varied or promiscuous. i think this variety is a good thing. you may not want to read Tom Arden or Ricardo Pinto if you feel otherwise.

 

[Vertigo]

I confess I sympathise with Ranwulf on this matter. It is not homosexual in particular (though I do find that significantly less appealing personally), it is the way some authors feel the need to put in passages of explicit sex that I simply don't feel is required by the story. Sure I can and typically do just skip these passages but I still find it off-putting.

Some classic examples I can think of are Richard K Morgan who puts quite a lot of unnecessary explicit heterosexual scenes into his Takeshi novels, though in a couple of cases those are important to the plot. And then there is his The Steel Remains with very explicit homosexual scenes that eventually stopped me reading the book altogether (and so the rest of the series as well). Another guilty author is Jean Auel; I have enjoyed her Earth's Children series (so long as I treat them as pure fantasy) but the detailed sex scenes I find totally unnecessary and simply don't fit with the tone of the rest of the story.

I accept that this is always going to be a personal view but I am no prude or homophobe, I just feel that if I want to read that sort of stuff there are plenty of books by that prolific author Anonymous that I can buy. Sometimes it is important to the plot and then fine, but a lot of the time it isn't so I would rather it was left out, just like I don't need a detailed description of the heroes eating their cornflakes or going to the toilet; it just isn't necessary!

 

[HareBrain]

I think Ranwulf has been unlucky in the books he's read recently. I've read reviews on Amazon of two of them a while back, and there do seem to be (according to several reviewers) particular issues with the way their homosexual characters are portrayed. I think there is still a tendency for them to be treated differently by some writers, ie for their sexuality to be made a "point of", which is all a bit 1980s. But I can't see evidence that it's a general trend.