Category talk:LGBTQ+ characters

Reasoning for category creation
Hi all, First of all, thank you again for giving me such a warm welcome and your hard work on the wiki throughout the years, making it such an amazing place :) When I first started reading up (though binging might be a better word here) on the Forgotten Realms lore on the wiki and found the Gender and sex article I was absolutely blown away by how many references to LGBTQ+ folk there were within the official media, and how much support they have gotten from FR media authors (such as Ed Greenwood himself most notably!). I would perhaps even that as far as fantasy settings go, this one is the most inclusive I've seen. With the release of Baldur's Gate 3 I imagine a lot of people flocked here, and seeing how the game turned up the amount of queer content to 11, I imagine a significant number of them fall within the queer/LGBTQ+ category (myself included). Because of this, in order to further increase inclusiveness and visibility of such content within the universe, I wanted to start to start marking characters who are anyhow lesbian/gay/bi/trans etc. I generally feel (some might disagree with me here) that the fact that things like same-sex relationships seem so mundane and accepted within societies in the realms (such as both random, insignificant NPCs casually dropping the fact that they have a partner of the same gender, and also such cases as the relationship of Aylin and Isobel Thorm) makes the universe feel so refreshing and appealing to people like me. Thus, I feel like outright stating that a character is homosexual/trans/bi directly within the body of the article might seem a little bit out-of-place, unless it is directly tied in with the way their character arc is presented (for instance in case of Mizhena or Nocturne). I think that starting a simple category with LGBTQ+ characters might be a good, balanced approach from my point of view. Would be very happy to hear thoughts from other people on this :) PS: I tend to use the term "queer" in personal life a lot more often than LGBTQ+ since it's just more handy and is more and more prevalent nowadays, but since in some places (especially within the anglosphere) it was used as a slur in the past and can make some people incomfortable, I've named the category "LGBTQ+ characters" and will create a redirect to here from "Queer characters". -EngineerDali (talk) 18:12, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I saw that the category page was removed for the term being out of universe (which is fair) - would something among the lines of "Sildur characters" be more appropriate, at least for highlighting trans people within the realms? Likewise "Thruss characters" for lesbian women etc. -EngineerDali (talk) 18:15, 1 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi! We considered something like this some time back during a Pride Month (when we just quietly try to improve coverage where we can), but felt it would be impractical or inappropriate; the 'gender and sex' article was actually written as an alternative. We didn't want to inadvertently handle this badly, even if it meant doing nothing was the better approach. I'll try to lay out my concerns.


 * First, the name. 'LGBTQ+', 'gay', 'lesbian', 'queer' are real-world cultural terms and groupings. Since Toril shouldn't have the social issues and history that led to their creation and present usage, they don't have the same meaning or relevance to Realms characters, and we don't need to group 'gay' and 'transgender' together. OTOH, while terms like 'sildur' and 'thruss' exist, they are obscure even to fans and people would not think to search for them, so they're not practical. However, 'transgender' and 'homosexual' are mundane technical terms that should work well enough, similar to our Category:Inhabitants by gender categories.


 * Second, while some characters are 'out', for lack of a better word, others are not and are only coded, hinted at, or speculative. For example, while Mizhena and Fala Lefaliir are confirmed as trans, Raulauvin Oregh and Andalara only become so through error and Coril and Tracker might be but can't be confirmed—the old trope of a woman disguising herself as a man isn't a bad one, nor can it be ignored. (Ironically, and disappointingly, more characters have been made trans on the wiki through typos and errors in the 1e/2e/3e eras than have been published in recent years.) Similarly, we could well ship pairs of characters like Vhondryl and Raella Hiess (I did), their relationship can't be confirmed as it has been with Yanseldara and Vaerana Hawklyn. I don't want us to have to interrogate edge-case characters to decide who is transgender or gay and who is not, as that should not be our role to decide, even though I'd welcome fans reading them as such. Although, admittedly, we've already done this by varying pronouns and applying Category:Inhabitants of masculine gender and the others to the trans-coded characters.


 * So, any special category risks being too strict and having too few entries or being too vague and having too many false-positives. I guess we'd want to have something like 'Inhabitants who live as a different gender but don't necessarily identify as such' but maybe that's a bit wordy. :D Maybe 'transgender' with some qualifying notes that it can include non-transgender characters would work better?


 * Third, the appearance of special treatment could also be a problem. Mizhena has been a repeated target of vandalism, which is why she's permanently protected, so such categories could offer fresh targets to bigots and vandals, who go on to attack other editors. Such things can be bigot bait, unfortunately. Moreover, special treatment is itself a form of bias and inequality—put someone on a pedestal and you get someone who wants to knock them off the pedestal, someone who wants to keep them on the pedestal, and someone who doesn't want to be on a pedestal—so we preferred to simply treat everyone the same and not have special categories for anyone. (The obvious counterbalance is 'heterosexual' and 'cisgender' categories, but that would be a bigger mess, given the current 16,959 characters to recheck.)


 * I'm not against it, if we can find an appropriate approach; I'm just being cautious. I'll invite the other regular editors to share their thoughts. ~ BadCatMan, Chief Scribe 10:10, 2 October 2023 (UTC)


 * PS: I removed the 'Sildur characters' category as we haven't settled on this system yet, and 'characters' is also an out-of-universe term that doesn't fit our existing category structure, where we've settled on 'Inhabitants'. ~ BadCatMan, Chief Scribe 10:21, 2 October 2023 (UTC)


 * I don't think we need sexuality tag. It is largely out of universe destination and is mostly irrelevant IU as no one cares who has sex with whom. This information simply needs to go into the body of the articles. For example i would absolutely not name all companion characters in bg3 as gay or bi – they are simply available to be romanced by game design to any race/sex/gender as a game mechanic. I can see how trans category (using IU terms) would be important, but it needs a definition as many editors are trigger-happy to assign it to beholders or mind flayers - sexless creatures who occasionally take on certain genders, or if it would be considered as such if the character is only known to cross-dress but there are no mention of their identity or pronouns. -Artyom.pavlov (talk) 12:21, 2 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Thank you both for your answers and thoughts! I agree with the sentiment that sexuality labels seem somewhat redundant in the sense that any form of homophobia does not seem to be present IU (as far as I'm aware) and same-sex relationships seem to be accepted and normal to the point where nobody thinks anything of them. I also agree with Artie's point that the companions in BG3 are more mechanically bisexual (playersexual), than straight up bi (and I say this as a bi person myself).


 * To raise another example from BG3, the prominent sapphic couple of Aylin and Isobel, do not exactly state that they are only into women, hencewhy either using the label bi or lesbian would be technically incorrect here. A potential solution would be to use the aforementioned "sapphic" label (and likewise, "achillean" for men), but both the terms are not that frequently used IRL just yet and there's no equivalent within the universe either as far as I can tell, so that would complicate things further.


 * After rethinking all of this, I do concede on the point on the topic of sexuality that its better to let the articles themselves do the talking. In a sense that would be in line with the general  mentality of the people of the Realms that such relationships are accepted and are not seen as anything out of the ordinary. It kind of reminds me of how, despite clear and numerous evidence of same-sex love in the ancient times in the real world, the modern labels simply are not applicable as the general attitude and way of thinking in the long-past societies seemed to have been much different. Of course, that doesn't mean that cases of people being in homosexual relationships in the Realms are not to be celebrated by the community, but I see how that should be done through a lens outside of the lore.


 * On transgender inhabitants though, if you also agree that it's worth having a category for them, then in my head the best definition would be "inhabitants that have rejected the gender assigned to them at birth", though as you mentioned, a sidenote would likely have to be done to not include agender-by-default inhabitants (such as mindflayers).


 * As a final note, I guess my initial aim with creating this category and starting this discussion was to further highlight the universe as a place where, in Ed Greenwood's words, "transgender and non-binary folk can live comfortably and accepted in the Realms, though they may have to pick their neighbors and friends to do so.", especially since there are still swathes of bigots hell-bent on trying to prove that such people would be something that would have no place in a fantasy world full of so many wonders, horrors and weirdness. I'm very happy to say that the recent FR media seem to be doing a decent job of doing that themselves and there's no sign it's going to be anyhow different in the future :) -EngineerDali (talk) 11:22, 3 October 2023 (UTC)