Characters, Creators, and LGBTQ+

 

It is always cool when creators are willing to acknowledge the historical LGBTQ+ roots of their characters. For example in some of the marketing material for the upcoming Loki show Marvel/Disney seem to be acknowledging that the mythic character Loki was always gender fluid or nonbinary or something else beyond simply a male persona. 

Now the show has not come out yet so I am not sure if:

• Marvel/Disney is going to handle Loki being gender fluid well (I have discussed the complexity of non-LGBTQ+ individuals trying to write LGBTQ+ characters especially without LGBTQ+ input.) It can be easy to give a character an identity but write it in such a way that is not nuanced and sometimes even toxic.
• Marvel/Disney is going to mention Loki being gender fluid beyond the marketing, or if it is going to be like a lot of Disney references where they brag about being inclusive but somehow unless you are going frame by frame you don't actually see much on screen. 

Seeing the news that Marvel/Disney is at least admitting that Loki is gender fluid feels nice and randomly connects to an conversation I had with my roommate after an episode of Legends of Tomorrow and makes me think about the BBC version of sherlock.

As part of the plot of the Legend's episode there was a Love God and everyone on the ship was dreaming love god dreams. Our conversation was around how it would have been interesting to see what these dreams would have looked like for someone who was Ace, or for someone who was Ace/Aro. 

And the fact that both of us, one asexual, and one allosexual, thought that would be interesting to see/explore reminds me of creators who don't seem to understand the LGBTQ+ roots of their characters such as Stephen Moffit and Sherlock Holmes.

Historically many aces have interpreted Sherlock Holmes as ace, and in the original stories sex sure does not seem to be something Sherlock is overly concerned about. Since there was no language around being ace when the stories were being written we are never going to get a clear statement from Sherlock saying he is ace. 

So different interpretation of Sherlock Holmes is fine, what was an issue was when Stephen Moffit said that Sherlock in the BBC show could not be ace because that would have been "boring". Which does not make sense because taking a character who does not care about sex, with super observational skills, and seeing how he observes the physical reactions of those around him, or how he responds to the physical reactions of his own body while not being connected to those reactions would have been fascinating.

In general seeing the world through the eyes of characters who have a different identity is fascinating. So if Loki's show represents Loki's gender fluidness well it will be wonderful to see since all too often these LGBTQ+ roots of characters are forgotten on the side of the road.