this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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Well when the character makes sense or it really doesn't matter, it works. But when it's shoehorned in and there is that one scene where they tell their backstory or explain their identity and it's out of the blue and takes you out of the story at hand it's bad and really ruins the movie.
I haven't experienced this at all, but I might not be viscerally bothered by a trans person existing to the point of ruining the movie for me.
It's not the person it's how the scene is portrayed and how last minute added the scene feels.
What you're saying is a good point, even if it's being downvoted to hell. The shoehorned is the difference between say:
Snape and Dumbledoore supposedly being gay lovers despite it not being hinted at even once in the entire film's chronology up to the point JKR said so.
Vs. Something like Modern Family where they came right out the door with Mitchell and Cameron being gay, and then used that as an actual story element throughout the series rather than just shoehorning it in to appeal to the LGBT crowd then never bringing it up again.
One feels like a tasteful, meaningful addition to the story, the other feels like a marketing gimmick.
The harry potter thing isn't shoehorning if it was never originally in the story, that's retconning
You do understand that something can be both shoehorned in and a retcon right?
It is a retcon shoehorned into the lore to appeal to the LGBT market - and if anything is worse than that, because again this is never brought up in the main movies (not sure about the spin-offs). It's literally just marketing.
Exactly, like in the Witcher they made the bard have a gay love scene even though it was not in any of the games or books. That scene was not needed, we knew he was a horny fella but the scene felt out of place.
I mean, I don't know if he's gay, but in Witcher 3 he made a drunken pass at a cross-dressing male elf, who rebuffed his advances and told Dandelion that he wasn't into men. So...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO7dTrOoO6Y
This being said, I hate it when they crowbar that shit in. You can tell it's not been written by a gay man, and often they really play to stereotype. Inevitably they make a character that is gay, rather than make an interesting character who is also gay.
Although, and let's be honest here, the reality is that people complaining about gay characters are more often than not low-key homophobic.
Jaskier (dandelion) did have some male partners, hinted at in 3 even with an elf in drag who is one of dandelions lovers.
Not something I found in the books, but it does seem to be in the games
I feel that way about left-handed people.
They're so sinister aren't they?
Do you think a male or cisgendered person can be “shoehorned in”, or is this something that you believe can only happen with women or trans people?
Yes, any time they throw a dude in and make him super stupid or overtly "manly" or a horn dog it is the same feeling. Any time a character is a super exaggeration of a human trait it ruins a movie/show. The characters trait does not progress the story so it feels forced
It seems like your issue has more to do with stereotypes, as opposed to “shoehorning someone in” that happens to be a particular demographic.
Do you have any examples for comparison?
There is one in every season of Star Trek Discovery. But also the Quantum Leap reboot the nerdy tech person, they stop everything in their quest to rescue Ben to give the traumatic backstory theirs. It was very loosely based on the episode and felt really not with the flow of the story. I'll have to look up the episode and timestamp.
For movies there was one I watched recently but I can't remember the name.
I know what you mean that some aspects in Star Trek Discovery felt a bit forced, but on the other hand a 100% cishet crew would have been even more forced, especially with non-human crew members or human-like ones from different solar systems.
I think you're being downvoted for this because, even if it's a good point in isolation, it's in the direction of "trans person bad", and thus indistinguishable from a transphobe adopting the point without believing it. You gotta include a few instances of "_____ did it really well. We need more like that." to balance it out.
The problem is that it isn't a good point in isolation, it's a point uttered only by people who are bothered by the presence of queer characters
Sorry my fist sentence was meant to be a positive one. ST Discovery did it well with the Trill, Trell? Character.
Also USA Shameless had a character that flowed well with the story line.
Shoehorning is a lie. queer people exist IRL wherever they want to and movies need to reflect that
Yes, but there is a difference between a protagonist that happens to be queer and a protagonist whose whole persona is that they are queer.
It gets worse when them being queer is the only justification for why they are good instead of the movie showing us they are a good person (or strong, or charismatic, or whatever).
The same can apply to female protagonists as well.
Some people in real life make their sexuality their entire persona.
Those people exist.
Why shouldn't they be allowed to be a protagonist?
Because in a story you generally don't want your characters to be as vapid as a puddle of water, like people who make one trait their entire personality.
Having a character with a varied personality makes it easier for people to view them as an actual person, rather than just a narrative tool, which makes them take the characters struggles more seriously.
The other person said it better than I ever could.
But also: they can be a protagonist. It's just that these movies are usually pretty shit.
The difference between real life and fiction, is that real life doesn't follow a story. Things happen because things happen.
But if you're going to introduce an element into a story, it should have some kind of impact on that story - more than just a drive-by "I'm queer" that never gets elaborated on.
I used this as an example elsewhere, but tell me which feels more shoehorned in:
Snape and Dumbledoore supposedly being gay lovers despite it not being hinted at even once in the entire film's chronology up to the point JKR said so, and is never brought up again (at least in the main movies, never saw the spin-offs).
Mitchell and Cameron in Modern Family where not only is their relationship introduced right away, but also used as an actual story element throughout the series.
Which one feels like it was a meaningful addition vs. a marketing gimmick?
That's what shoe-horning is. It's adding a trait to a character just to make them more marketable, or to make them seem deeper than a puddle of water, without ever eluding to that trait anywhere it actually matters.
Does "I'm straight" have to have an impact on the story?
If you're going to make a character's straightness an explicit character trait, then it should have impact.
Think "How I Met Your Mother" for example. You have three guys in the main cast (Ted, Marshall, and Barney), all of whom have their straightness pointed out right away, but pursue it throughout the series in different ways due to their other characteristics. Marshall the married man, Ted the hopeless romantic, and Barney the bachelor/player (ironically played by Neil Patrick Harris)
Or the James Bond movies, almost infamous for having heterosexual romantic subplots (lacklustre plots IMO, but still). Those subplots alwayd tend to have some impact on how the movie plays out - whether he gets tricked by her, has to rescue her, or is even rescued by her, his romance with the Bond girl always affects the story in some way or another.
Given we live in a hetero-normative society, of course most heterosexual romantic plots are going to focus purely on the romance aspect rather than the intricacies of being straight, but could you replace the Bond girl with a guy? In theory you could, but in reality Bond's sexuality is so well defined in canon at this point, you would be told you shoehorned it in if you tried, as it has had not just an affect on the movies, but also people's perceptions of Bond.
This is to say that a character's sexuality is a fundemental trait of a person, something that paints their dynamic with other people (sometimes subtly, sometimes very unsubtly). Just tacking that sexuality on as an afterthought in such a way that you could take any and all mention of sexuality away and it'd have literally no affect on the character dynamics or the story being told is just bad storytelling no matter the sexuality being exploited for marketing.
It's wild that you pick 2 of the most egregious, sexist womanizers in fiction as if that's a meaningful precedent against the countless heterosexual characters and relationships that just exist, as homosexual characters and relationships should be allowed to. Sexuality can be an important trait of a character, but acting like it has to be is absurd.
One, I could give you that for James Bond, but are you really telling me you think How I Met Your Mother is sexist?
Two, I pulled two prominent examples out of my head, I apologise if they weren't perfect examples by your definition.
You want other examples, pick basically any media where relationships are a thing:
Friends, exploring the on and off again dynamic between Ross and Rachel, the more stable relationship of Monica and Chandler, or the rather innocent bachelor lifestyles of Joey and Phoebe. The characters heterosexual traits have a huge effect on how the series pans out.
Superman, in almost every iteration of Superman, he falls in love with and pursues Lois Lane. Every iteration handles the dynamic differently, but him falling in love is nearly always subplot.
Spiderman, his first relationship with Gwen Stacy, or rather how it ends plays a large part in how Peter handles being Spiderman, and that's without mentioning how MJ influences him in most iterations.
All three of these, the character's heterosexuality is explicit and has an impact on the story.
When I say it has to have an impact on the story, I'm not saying it has to have a huge impact and be a deep introspection into being LGBT, I just mean that if you're going to say a character is LGBT, it should have at least a minor impact on the character in the story, i.e. you should actually show them acting as such rather than mentioning it and going nowhere with it as if it's just a throwaway line.
That's not their heterosexuality having an impact, it's their relationship with other characters. Literally all of those would be no different as same-sex relationships.
Regardless, they again don't hold a candle to the countless hetero characters and relationships that just exist in fiction without being some big character trait. My point isn't that romance can't be important, it's to question why an LGBT character has to justify themselves just existing in media when nobody holds heterosexual characters to the same standard.
And now you're missing the forest for the trees. I could say exactly the same for any homosexual relationship in media... But it wouldn't be the same, because someone's gender/sex is also an important defining trait.
The dynamic between two men, two women, or a man and woman in a relationship, or the pursuit of one, will be different simply because of the different sexes involved.
I've given you examples to prove my point, give me examples where heterosexual character's "just exist", where their relationships have no effect on their story. You'll struggle, because when a character's relationships are pointed out, it almost always has some effect on the story.
Because when you define anything about a character, the audience rightfully expects the character to be shown expressing that defined trait, or for that trait to have some kind of impact on them.
It's not just being LGBT that has to have some justification to it. It's any explicitly defined trait a character has.
So if you point out that a character is LGBT, the audience will expect for that to bleed through in how the character acts, or for it to have an impact on the story - and it's not like that doesn't apply to straight people.
Without elaborating on that trait, it feels shoehorned in simply because it would've changed nothing if you simply never defined that trait in the first place. The trait was tacked onto the character, not made a part of them.
The arguement you just made about heterosexual relationships, while wrong in that specific instance, uses exactly the same logic that you're fighting when I say it to justify the view that creating unelaborated, throwaway character traits is shoehorning.
Considering I'm talking explicitly about relationships that aren't pointed out or are a key plot point, I'd say you're the one "missing the forest". Hetero-normative characters are just that - the norm. They aren't pointed out because everyone will assume it already, and none of them apparently need intricate explanations to you to just be straight. But if a character is just gay, it's all of a sudden something that needs to be justified? Get out of here.
Firstly, I find it hard to believe you could even provide me an example where a character is in a relationship without that relationship ever being pointed out.
Secondly, I didn't say the relationship had to be a key plot point. In my examples they are, because those were the easiest for me to remember, but they don't have to be.
The core of what I actually said is it's shoehorning if you give a character a trait but never use it, or make that trait their only reason to exist in the story. It stinks of being added for marketing, and is bad story-telling.
That's why my first example was a shoehorned in retcon that absolutely only exists because marketing, cause explain why else JKR never once touched upon it until that point.
As to hetero-normative people assuming a character's sexuality. You are right, but that's the same with literally any normative trait - race, relgion, gender, etc.. If you don't name it, people will assume it.
You get around that by defining that trait, and when you do define that trait, people will expect that your character affirms that trait in how they act.
You act like people want an essay for why an LGBT character is LGBT, when what most people want is just for the character to actually be seen acting like they are, and not for that to be the only reason they exist in the story.
I could say I'm the President of the United States, but if you never see me acting like it, I might as well have made it up - that's the crux of it.