Gay characters in fiction
[1] In modern English, gay has come to be used as an adjective, and as a noun, referring to the community, practices and cultures associated with homosexuality.
[2] By the end of the 20th century, the word gay was recommended by major LGBT groups and style guides to describe people attracted to members of the same sex,[3][4] although it is more commonly used to refer specifically to men.
In 2018, Star Trek: Discovery aired an episode in which a gay character played by Wilson Cruz was killed.
Immediately after the episode aired, Cruz, GLAAD, and the showrunners released reassuring statements intimating that the character's death may not be final, with specific reference to avoiding this trope.
Media representations of bisexual and transgender people tend to either completely erase them, or depict them as morally corrupt or mentally unstable.
Similar to race-, religion-, and class-based caricatures, these stereotypical stock character representations vilify or make light of marginalized and misunderstood groups.
In 1997, when American comedian Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet on her popular sitcom, many sponsors, such as the Wendy's fast-food chain, pulled their advertising.
[13] For example, on the ABC Family show, GRΣΣK, Calvin Owens is openly gay and many of his storylines, struggles, and plots revolve around his self-identification as LGBT.
There has been a cultural shift from white, gay men being depicted as non-monogamous sex-seekers, stemming from the AIDS epidemic to being "just like everyone else" in their quest to be fathers.
[14] Later, the final episode of the animated Disney Channel show Gravity Falls revealed two male cops, Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland, as a romantic pair.
[15] Additionally, the movie Love, Simon is notable as the first film by a major Hollywood studio to focus on a gay teenage romance.
[17] Cyrus developed mutual feelings for the captain of the basketball team, TJ Kippen (portrayed by Luke Mullen) and in the series finale, these feelings were made apparent and the two held hands, marking the start of the first romance between two male characters and the first gay romance involving a main character in Disney history.
Oshima is a 21-year-old intellectual gay trans man who is a librarian and owner of a cabin in the mountains near Komura Memorial Library.
On a similar note, webcomics like Kyle's Bed & Breakfast, Homestuck, Check, Please!, and Lumberjanes all included gay characters.
centers around a gay protagonist on a college hockey team[27] and Jo, a trans woman of color and an "expert on what it means to be a Lumberjane" to the fellow campers, has two dads.
[51] The Dragon Ball franchise, despite having hundreds of characters, has only two confirmed LGBT, General Blue and Otokosuki (a word that in Japanese means "man lover"), and both are loaded with very negative gay male stereotypes.
They also run their own successful company, Helios Energy, and have been described as a "confident canonically agender queer POC.
