First of all, thanks,
@Taxouck, for taking the time to make explicit what you meant even though you felt uncomfortable about it. I also wasn't thinking you were jumping at shadows, I just genuinely didn't understand. Your post helped with that and I can see where you're coming from now although I do have to admit that I probably wouldn't agree with everything.
Anyway, I'd like to add that I don't feel that this has anything to do with calling somebody out. IMO in a discussion, there are always lots of assumptions people make both about what others meant and about what they think their own threads definitely say while others might not be able to get that. So I always find it important to explain these things so everyone knows what's up. Otherwise, people will just end up with big misunderstandings that can't be cleared up anymore which is often a pity.
On that point, I'd also agree with
@AliceShiki: This has been a rather polite discussion so far. In fact, I'm really enjoying having it (otherwise, I probably wouldn't have bothered asking and just walked away ...). It's an interesting subject and it's nice that there are differing opinions.
Speaking of that let me get to the actual discussion part. Let me preface that with two things:
- I had a tough day and my thoughts might be a bit jumbled up. I hope you can still make sense of this. If there's anything you feel doesn't make sense in the way I wrote it, please feel free to ask. I'm willing to try and explain myself tomorrow when I've gotten some hours of sleep in.
- (This is important later in) I'm queer as well. Not bi, but aro-ace (aromantic-asexual, in case you never had to deal with that ). To summarize first because I tend to write long-ass posts: This has shaped a lot of my beliefs on subjects related to representation etc. etc. and also my personal tastes.
Starting off, I've realized that I actually haven't said anything about my personal opinion on the original question
As an author, I actually do have bisexual characters with one being a main character (I'm writing multiple POV so there's not really 'the' protagonist there). It's
not a massive plot point, there's also just two important relationships (both same-sex) but it's shown (never said) that he's bi in some shorter scenes.
As a reader, I would theoretically be alright with a bisexual protagonist but I honestly can't remember ever reading about one
So even if there was one, it couldn't have been a major plot point.
Now, since the start of this discussion I've been wondering about one thing that was said rather far in the beginning:
i always steer clear of girls' love stories if they have bisexual protagonist tag. i came there for girl on girl romance and i don't want some guy involved.
Tbh, I think this fits my own thoughts pretty well. I have never paid attention to it up until now but maybe I would indeed choose not to read a novel if I noticed this tag exactly
because I would expect it to be a major plot point and the likelihood of a relationship with somebody from another gender being high. (Like, why would somebody make an extra tag for bisexual protagonist if it's not something that majorly influences the story?)
The thing is that I physically cringe (for lack of a better word) when I have to read romance with women. It's not as bad when seeing it on TV, for example, but I just can't read it. It makes me feel unwell and I do have the assumption that it's because of my own orientation. I probably feel so far removed from the romantic/sexual experience of other women that I just can't stand it. (It's something that got worse over the years. Right now, I can't pick up any novels with female MCs. It's actually a pity because I'm quite sure there are good ones out there.)
Unfortunately, I still love reading romance and even if I don't read romance, I still want the stories I read to have at least a romance subplot. It's just a personal preference of mine. This also means I'm exclusively reading gay romance right now (so I'll rather often refer to examples by assuming I'm talking about men here, pardon me for that). Problem is: If the guy was bisexual and he'd get into a relationship with a woman, this would destroy my enjoyment of the story
So even though I'm theoretically alright with a bisexual protagonist, as soon as I'd see them act that out, I might actually drop the story
I would not if it's just mentioned. Like, you can say a hundred times your protagonist is bi, that won't change anything for me as long as I don't have to see that female romance.
This somewhat ties in with my thoughts about representation.
I've also been thinking about this since it came up here. As I said before, I do find representation extremely important. Like, speaking from my own experience, I've never
once in my life seen an asexual protagonist (or even side character) in any novel I read or series or movie that I watched until I effing went to search for them last year. I'm not sure how the situation is with bisexual representation but probably not that good either?
Anyway, especially because of what I said before about the distinction of whether a character's bisexuality is just mentioned or shown and if shown how (like, major plot point or from smaller details), I have been asking myself: What do we actually count as representation?
Like, a bisexual person might notice if the character's sexuality is mentioned (I know I sure would if I saw an ace character). So to them, that alone might already be representation. (Then again I often saw stuff like "bad rep!" in reviews when I did go to find novels with ace protagonists so there's that.) Anyway, I think that a person of another orientation might not. E.g. I do
not take note of it if some character is
just said to be bi. If I exclusively saw said character be with a man for the whole story, I might even assume he was gay if I ever think of that story again. I do know that that's wrong but I wouldn't be able to remember something that was only mentioned once vs. something that I've "experienced" by reading. If I had to compare this with something I'd say that, for example, I'd often be able to recount the plot of a story after thinking about it but I would seldom remember the names of places or sometimes even characters. It's good enough if I still know what the MC was called.
Btw, I can say from experience that this "just mentioning once" thing is different with actual people: A friend of mine is bi and has only ever talked about their girlfriends. I still remember they're bi though despite the one conversation about that being years ago. It's just that the conversation we had is more of an experience than just reading something. The latter doesn't leave as strong of a mental note for me.
So, overall, I'm currently pondering that
if anybody was putting bi (or other) characters in their stories for the sake of representation (whether or not they themselves are bi (or something else)), then there could be two different goals with this that might need different methods:
If representation was just about holding up a sign for the group of people that are being represented, then mentioning the characteristic would be enough.
If it's about more (like, let's say slowly making the group known to people outside of that group and maybe even furthering their acceptance), then this characteristic might need to be a major plot point to drive the point home or at least be shown sporadically so people will associate the term with something.
As an afterthought: There are dozens of subgroups for some sexualities since they're on a spectrum. For example, even as an ace person I couldn't tell which ace-identity means what. So even inside the community (and I don't even mean the big one but just the small one), showing these things might be important to actually identify what is being meant. This might also tie in with those "bad rep" reviews I mentioned before. Like, what's bad rep? If there are, like, 20+ ace identities on that spectrum, then they'll likely have different experiences as well. What's bad for one doesn't have to be bad for another.
And also (dang it!), what about the setting of the story? In a modern setting, you do have the terms for these things. But what if you're writing some fantasy epic that's inspired by ... some ancient kingdom that did not? You'd definitely have to show to get any representation in there.
Adding onto the last few points:
While I'd be happy about everyone holding an ace sign my way, I'd actually prefer the latter way of showing the orientation and not just mentioning. I mean it doesn't even need to be a major plot point but I'd at least like it to be one memorable part of the story. Like, not just something that is mentioned once or maybe twice but something that does indeed have an impact.
And - this is something I feel we haven't actually gotten around to discussing yet - if we're talking about bi or ace people, then does this something always need to be a relationship? Like, I obviously can't speak about bisexuals and I wouldn't even dare to assume that I can speak for any ace person other than myself (not even in my subcategory) but I do assume that for a big part of them their lives simply differ from people of other orientations. So even without talking about/showing their actual sexuality through relationships, you could probably make a character feel relatable (typing this right now I feel like this was what I was searching for before when I was going on that thought-spree about representation: relatableness) to the group of people it's supposed to represent just through shared experiences.
I ... think that was everything I wanted to say
At least it's everything I can think of right now. I'll go sleep now ...