Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-28776596-20161010231008/@comment-26018514-20161024030845

The Bespectacled Guy wrote:

Don't guilt-trip people for criticising RT for a lack of representation. The writers have had a myriad of opportunities to present even the slightest shred of evidence pointing to the existence of LGBT relationships in Remnant, yet have neglected to do so every time.

The most egregious example is the dance scene in Volume 2. If they don't want to write romance stories, that's fine (though I'd like to know what the fuck they'd call Jaune and Pyrrha's relationship), but this scene would have been the perfect opportunity to subtly display a couple or two dancing together (apart from Blake and Yang of course, but that's another matter entirely). Instead, every single pairing was male/female.

LGBT representation doesn't just mean telling stories about gay people, nor does it necessarily require realistic, multi-faceted characters who are not solely defined by their sexuality being displayed onscreen. All that you really need to do is show the audience that they exist. Convince any LGBT people watching that they have a place in this world. If you can't even do that, despite repeatedly promising that you will, then I think it is fair to label your actions as "queerbaiting". That was not my intention... I was purely referring to those calling for the already claimed existing character representation NOW, Background characters and other general LGBT issues didn't enter into what I was posting.

I agree you could refer to that as queerbaiting... if it wasn't for the likelihood that those background characters were pre-generated by an RNG, likely using datasets separated by binary Male/Female Yes/No descriptors... look at how many background Ruby's there are and you'll see what I'm talking about.

If RT's staff are not living in circles where day to day LGBT issues crop up they won't know enough to insert them... considering that if they flub them(by blowing them out of proportions or underestimating their importance) it can just make everything worse for them... why should they force it?