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Mar. 24th, 2004 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daemonlunaI thought I could avoid it. But nooo. Can't keep my mouth shut. Er. Keyboard shut? Whatever. But I'm going to have to rant about GLBT YA fiction.
Because after a while, they're all the same. Usually it's all "Oh, I'm oddly attracted to new kid/best friend/school jock, but we're the same sex... oh... I think I'm gay... object of lust almost always turns out to also be in the closet... someone finds out about them... object-of-lust (OOL) a) comes out too, or b) more often, regresses to state of denial. Main character is okay with being gay, though. The end.
Throw assorted soap-opera twists in the middle. Main character of OOL may a) get kicked out by parents, b) have homophobic best friend freak out, c) get harassed and possible gay-bashed at school, d) in some way, shape or form start a gay-straight alliance, etc. or e) all of the above simultaneously. And then there's the sub-categories of one-of-my-parents-is-gay, and my-best-friend-is-gay. Similar plot progessions follow.
And not, by any stretch, that all the books along these lines are bad. It just gets kind of repetitive after a while. At least we've progressed to a point where all gay teen characters don't automatically die 1) tragically through accident or suicide, or 2) of AIDS.
But maybe I'm just bitter because there have been two fantastic YA books with gay male protagonists lately (What Happened to Lani Garver and Boy Meets Boy) and I can't think of a single one with a lesbian main character that made it past good-but-not-great for me.
Hmm. I feel an annotated bibliography coming on. I think I'll go lie down until it passes.
Because after a while, they're all the same. Usually it's all "Oh, I'm oddly attracted to new kid/best friend/school jock, but we're the same sex... oh... I think I'm gay... object of lust almost always turns out to also be in the closet... someone finds out about them... object-of-lust (OOL) a) comes out too, or b) more often, regresses to state of denial. Main character is okay with being gay, though. The end.
Throw assorted soap-opera twists in the middle. Main character of OOL may a) get kicked out by parents, b) have homophobic best friend freak out, c) get harassed and possible gay-bashed at school, d) in some way, shape or form start a gay-straight alliance, etc. or e) all of the above simultaneously. And then there's the sub-categories of one-of-my-parents-is-gay, and my-best-friend-is-gay. Similar plot progessions follow.
And not, by any stretch, that all the books along these lines are bad. It just gets kind of repetitive after a while. At least we've progressed to a point where all gay teen characters don't automatically die 1) tragically through accident or suicide, or 2) of AIDS.
But maybe I'm just bitter because there have been two fantastic YA books with gay male protagonists lately (What Happened to Lani Garver and Boy Meets Boy) and I can't think of a single one with a lesbian main character that made it past good-but-not-great for me.
Hmm. I feel an annotated bibliography coming on. I think I'll go lie down until it passes.
