Seeing the recommendation posts and the book discussion posts, I'm actually wonder is there anything produced for or with gay people that's worth it? I can name 3 books of the top of my head, all science fiction, with some gay content, worth reading. The vast majority of it, pure shit. Most of it was produced for and by women who fetishize or treat gays like they do little dogs. The rest is produced by butt-squealing faggots from NYC/LA who are the very definition of plague rats.
Is there such thing as good gay content? That is to say, is there media with a gay person featured as a normal person and not some freak. I'm tired of being demonized by the left for not being a flaming whore who shits a new man's cum every 5 minutes and by the right for not being a super-repressed faggot who kills other gays to score points with some crazy deity for being born a filthy sinner homo. Just some regular person. There's got to be.
Boondock Saints? Willem Dafoe's FBI agent character is gay but hates how effeminate all the other gay men are. Then all the Boston cops he's around think about him what he thinks about all the other gays in the movie: a "fuckin' fag".
Sequel is shit: don't bother with it.
To reiterate, the sequel to Boondock Saints is one of the worst movies ever made. Avoid it like the fake vaccine.
It's so bad despite being written and directed by the same guy that you can't help but wonder if the first one was good by accident.
That's my thought as well. Lightning did not strike twice.
Thank you. I had forgotten that. Willen Dafoe was freaking awesome in that. At least, when he's not under people's beds.
This is probably not helpful, but can you watch a normal TV show or movie without romance and just pretend one of the characters is gay? Because if the character is neither a whore nor a token homo forced into the story for virtue points, you would not even know if they are gay.
That's what fanfiction is for. I do enjoy it as it keeps the original media intact while also providing this perspective. To this end, Eureka, a fucking goofy show, had 2 gay characters like this. One was a in a background shot who only reacted when the sex pollen episode happened, and the second was the town's cafe owner, who might as well have been a regular nerd. I can't recommend the show even for normal people, as it's so damn goofy.
The virtue points are what ruins it for me every time. They can't just have a nice gay character or bi character, they have to turn it into shit. Example: New Doctor Who was great the first season for 9. Jack was fun. Torchwood was fun the first season as well. But as it progressed, Who became shit and Torchwood turned into Queer Ass Faggots. They had to go to the extreme for the progressives, faggots, and hideous fangirls.
Not OP, and not gay, but I do find it interesting when you occasionally see explicitly gay characters, who don't act "Hollywood gay" or whatever. So I think this thread is interesting not for "representation" or anything, but just as a bit of a social experiment or whatever.
Probably interesting to look at a breakdown by year when the the media were released. There was a definite push in the late 90s/early 00s to make gays appear to be "just ordinary guys who just happen to like having sex with other guys".
The neighbors in American Beauty, Oscar in The Office, the "Hot Cops" in Arrested Development. I'm sure there are others but those come immediately to mind.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking to. Late 90s and early to mid 00s sounds about right.
Well, by then it was dead. Got excited about having satellite for the first time. Which came with ShowTime. Tried watching Queer as Folk with my mother because it had Sharon Gless from Cagney and Lacey. We turned that shit off real fucking quick. Showtime got blocked by me.
Exactly. Can Hollywood make a normal person who just happens to be gay? I don't know.
Sounds like the script for some quality gay media, but seriously
Mrs. Doubtfire - Has a gay couple although they are a bit flamboyant and stereotypical
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - Val Kilmer's character is gay and probably fits what you are asking the best
Spartacus - The Starz series from about 10 years ago has a few gay characters and couples
Also, if you enjoy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Shane Black also wrote The Nice Guys, and The Last Boy Scout.
It's hard to believe he is the same guy who wrote The Predator.
It's especially weird since some of his movies are super similar (Nice Guys and Last Boy Scout are basically the same movie!), but then you also have something so different.
Must have been raped by an Indian woman.
You missed his best works Lethal Weapon and Lethal Weapon 2.
True, I just saw more similarities between the others I mentioned but, yeah, Lethal Weapon is good too.
Apparently they're (but not Shane Black, looks like) making a Lethal Weapon 5. I wonder if it will be modern crap or not.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is excellent.
A few? Every other person in that fuckin show was gay, lesbo, or bi.
Thank you for the recommendations.
I forgot about Uncle Frank and Aunt Jack! Great people, goofy fucking movie.
I had heard about KKBB, but never watched it. I think I must give it a try. Thank you. As much as I enjoyed the camp of Mrs. Doubtfire, I grow tired of that shit.
I have Spartacus, I want to watch it, I just can't bring myself to do it. Lucy Lawless is god damn gorgeous and I love her characters, even if she is a bleeding hearted Kiwi.
I realize that I misunderstood what you were asking for after I wrote this, so I apologize.
Probably the most potent use of homosexuality I've encountered in media is in the book The Forever War. It's almost a spoiler to even mention it, so I'll say that anyone who wants to read this good and relatively short book, stop here.
The central theme of the story is the protagonist becoming more isolated the longer he is a soldier. Not just from the world and people around him, but from reality as a whole. This is manifested literally as time-dilation's effects forcing him ever further into the future after every relatively short tour. He is missing time compared to Earth, losing a number of years (despite it being only months for him) and coming back to a post-economic collapse country that is unrecognizable and alien to him.
Deciding that the society they re-entered is not theirs, he and his close friend from his first tour re-enlist for another tour and despite assurances to the contrary are separated within seconds of signing their names and sent to opposite ends of the war theater.
After a few more stops and long-distance highspeed travels, he emerges after multiple generations of a centralized human government's heavy-handed implementation of eugenics. To ensure no unauthorized breeding at any scale, everyone alive at this point have been heavily and relentlessly indoctrinated into homosexuality. He is now the only straight man in a deployment of men and women who see him as an incarnation of a dark and evil past due to their education and state encouraged belief structure. For various political reasons related to PR and war veteran placation over time, he has been promoted in transit to a base commander just because of how long (in real time) he has served.
Because they knew this would be a problem for him, the military assigned him a lieutenant who is much younger, but had his nuts shot off in a battle. So they can be eunuchs together, or something. Their reasoning is extremely wack and it just further serves to show how shockingly unempathetic and incapable of not being dicks to their enlistees the military brass are.
So now this relatively young man, who has lost all tether to home, reality, and even the ability to make new friends or relationships, is put in charge of a population who have been taught to disdain the era he was born in and he for being straight as the reason why.
The author manages this psychological isolation and oppression carefully and effectively, while having many other interesting ideas that play out fairly rapidly due to the framing of jumping ever forward in time.
I found the book excellent and do recommend it.
The Venture Bros - Shore Leave is one of the few I'll defend, despite his being camp.
What season was that? I watched the first and tried watching the second, but I couldn't stick with it.
He appears around season 3, the tipping point where VB gains its creative momentum and acclaim.
Not sure if you like sitcoms, and it's been a decade since I saw it, but Happy Endings had a gay dude who was just a dude. It stuck out to me because it was so unusual. Everyone in the show was basically some level of loser or weirdo, and the gay guy was no different. He's just an overweight slob with a lousy love life, who happens to be gay.
I always suggest Bill Williamson from Red Dead Redemption 2. It's pretty heavily implied that he's gay, although they don't straight out say it.
Is that a fun game you can play on PC?
You can get it on PC, yes. You need really good specs though. I think it's a great game but it is pretty slow paced, which may or may not be your cup of tea.
It's on PC but I dunno about fun. I might get some flag for this but I preferred the first game by far. Second one is just too slow is all.
Get me a cross, garlic, and napalm. Those girls ruined Gundam Wing.
Or any other series. Fujoshi ruin everything. "Two guys who are bros?they probably bang." according to those people men cannot have friendships.
Torchwood it fits in to that and games like DA Origins has one of the characters a bisexual elf you can romance as a dude, his sexuality fits him being an assassin.
Southland, Michael Cudlitz' character is gay without it being a big thing.
The series Black Sails is really good (but also really degenerate) and has what is arguably one of the only legitimate plot points about gayness that isn't shoehorned in just for virtue signaling.
Spartacus, also degenerate, but still a pretty amazing spectacle has gays treated as completely normal.
Was there anything on the pay channels that wasn't degenerate?
Sometimes all you want is trash that treats you like one of it's own, though.
The Birdcage was funny. It had Robin Williams playing a gay club owner in Florida.
I recently read a book called Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. One of the three principle characters is a gay Catholic priest named Matthieu (and before you ask, no, he's not a pedophile). Because he lives in 14th Century France, he has a lot of self-loathing, which has only gotten worse as the Black Death has ravaged his village and he is left wondering if it's some sort of divine punishment on him, or a result of his congregation mostly abandoning him after finding out about his homosexuality. It takes the coming of a disgraced knight traveling with a girl who claims to commune with angels to get him somewhat out of his funk.
That sound maudlin, but worth a read. Thank you.
Neither the book nor the character is a whiny angst-fest, if that's what you're worried about. Matthieu doesn't air his grievances out loud and handles his issues stoically (as do the rest of the main characters). But yes, it's a very good book and worth a read if you like historical fiction and/or dark fantasy (it's kind of both).
Soap. Billy Crystal plays Jodie as a normal human being. No campy shit, unless he's trying to get Burt's goat.
Warehouse 13 had a good gay character. I love murder mystery and cop drama books so I’ve read some with gay characters where it isn’t constantly mentioned. Unfortunately with modern entertainment I’m very wary of any show with female/minority/ lgb characters because it’s almost a given you’ll be beaten over the head. I liked Captain Jack and Torchwood was great. I fast forwarded over the romance scenes but it was a really good series.
I liked Jack in Doctor Who. Torchwood was just some degenerate slut.
sopranos hahahaha
Please share what you think is good with gay content. For myself, I think the good portryal of a gay man is in this TV series - Dig (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3597606/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_50_act). The gay protagonist is normal focusing on his duties as a police officer. The gay part is incidental. Like shots of a supporting character and his family.
Another one I think is good is a Married with Children episode (https://youtu.be/uuQF7QQ8htw?t=67).
The problem with identifying "gay" characters in books and movies is that the writers / producers think they have to emphasise the "gay" part of the character instead of making the character normal. I guess this is an outgrowth of feminist ideology that prevades all creative works nowadays.
The Still and The King by David Feintuch. The main character is a bit of a selfish dick, but he is the only son of a royal family who is denied being able to fuck women or he will lose the family's inherited power, the Still. He's a very reluctant bi, which seems tropey, but is so well written.
The last was something I can't remember and can't find. Something like "Alone in the Dark", about a generations ship out on a manned mission to explore and find life. The main character wakes up, unable to remember and thinks another character drugged him. The secondary bi character is a lech and has fucked several people with dubious methods (gets them drunk/high and they are embarrassed to have fucked the ship's slut the next day, he doesn't rape.) When the MC sleeps with the slut it's more implied what's going on and he's "Oh, well, yes, hmm."
As for gays on tv, other than campy shit I enjoy because it's funny, there's nothing I can recommend. The recent Andromeda Strain had a gay character that literally only said something like "Oh, yeah, I'm gay." That was more diversity shit than actual gay. He was a sexless soldier in the background, so, just done to give them kudos. There was no point to it, he had no reason to say it, the whole exchange was forced.
There was one tv movie that's not Scifi that was surprisingly not-queeny shit. John Stamos and the gay guy from Firefly starred in a movie about them being brothers, one was gay and the other straight. Both were in relationships that they were cool with. It was before the supreme court case, so gay marriage wasn't legal. I really liked it because they took a nuanced approach to how families deal with it. Because Stamos' character was fine up until his bother wanted to get married. It ended with them debating whether it was right and Stamos' character still hadn't changed his mind. This one was a good movie of the week, but boy did it set the community into full-frothing fucking fits. By community, I mean the queers (straight women with stupid hair who claim not to be straight) and their purse dog-type queens. This was at the end of my involvement with the community because these people were going mainstream and I pulled the cord on the gay train as the next station was my stop.
That episode of Married...With Children was the freaking highlight of my young gay life. A normal person was gay. And Al didn't instantly hate him showed what real life could be like. It was super fucking funny too.