Talk:Aunt Holiday and Auntie Lofty/@comment-35708331-20190729215747/@comment-25563752-20190814233548

I think it's great that there are more LGBT characters appearing in shows and movies. There should be characters like that, because there are people like that. However, I find that I do have a problem with it when there is an LGBT character forcibly stuck in for the sole purpose of the show being able to say that they have LGBT representation. That feels disrespectful to the LGBT community, like they're not worth actually having a substantial character and are only a way for the creators to say "Hey look, we're progressive".

Let me explain what I mean. Having Holiday and Lofty being LGBT characters was good thing, and nicely represents the LGBT community. But has anyone seen the show True Blood? In it, one of the main characters is this girl Tara. For 6 seasons, she was a straight girl who had a few different boyfriends and never once showed an interest in other girls. Then, completely out of the blue and with no explanation, the first epiosde of season 7 (which had a time jump from where season 6 ended), she's suddenly in a relationship with another girl. At first I'm thinking "Ok, interesting. I wonder what they're going to do with this". But it went nowhere. They're realtionship was never addressed, and both Tara and her girlfriend were killed that episode and never mentioned again for the rest of the series.

This, I feel, is a bad or false representation. I thought it was extremely disrespectful to the LGBT community and was there for the sole purpose of the writers being able to claim that they're progressive (granted, the show did have other gay characters). And this seems to be happening in a lot of shows and movies. Like The Legend of Korra for example. That show got a lot of hype because it had LGBT representation, but the representation that was so greatly praised was the main character being implied to be romatically involved with another girl literally during the plast 10 seconds of the final episode (it was so vague that the wroters had to confirm it in an interview). This relationship came completely out of the blue, with the only implication that Korra, and even Asami, were bi was Korra blushing when Asami said that she liked her new haircut. If they were going to go that route, then they should have gone that route.

To me, representation like this this isn't proper representation, and is disrespctful to the LGBT community. If you want to have representation, then have it in there, don't just barely sneak it into the show or shoe-horn it in there just so you can "claim" to be progressive. It's not showing you're progressive, and is actually quite rude to the LGBT community, as it's basically you saying that they don't need anything more than a passing mention. Lofty and Holiday are LGBT representation done right, and I applaued the writers for it. We need to see more representation like this.

BTW, they should also just come out and confirm Lyra and Bon Bon are a couple in the show rather than just an interview.