A Guide to Queer Tragedy

@Sir Basil
I agree with @Kestrel in that it's just misleadingly titled. I don't think what you've written is the expected thing to see when following a link to a "guide."
I feel the same way about your Gender guide as well...

You have good information, I don't think anyone's particularly debating that. But the context it is posted under is misleading and left me not only disappointed, but a little agitated when your guides don't give many alternative options other than "I don't like these things, think about not doing these things."

Now if you had titled it "What not to do" or "Top X reasons why your Queer Tragedy is Harmful" then maybe more people (myself included) would come away thinking "Damn, Basil writes amazing stuff and I can't wait for their next topic."

But after this and your last one, well, basically +1 to everything @Kestrel said.
 
I also agree with Kestrel. If this a blog or a discussion thread in GC I wouldn't bat an eye. But it definitely feels more like a societal/political thought piece than a guide.
 
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lovely work! i always thought the idea of tragedy being based on a flaw was aristotelian. oedipus's flaw, i thought, was his arrogance in treating with laius.

some rl peeps just talked about how queer representation is lacking, especially over here in the philippines, so though i don't normally care about that issue, i think this is gonna be important in developing a more complete vision of the world for whatever it is i'll try and write.

i don't think it's the actions in and of themselves that are criticized, but the context in which they appear, both within the text (gay characters dying *for their sexuality*) and outside of it (the percentage of gay deaths versus total number of deaths). the problem i think, and the problem that my rl peeps noted, is that the full diversity of the lgbt experience is not detailed by having most lgbt characters take their sexuality or gender preference or whatever as a source of trauma, just as it's problematic to portray most (again, not all) black characters as x, or most jewish characters as y. and i think this works as a guide, even if the practical aspects of it are scant -- it's effectively an outline for how the scheme of tragedy can be applied to queer characters, with the point being that the source of tragedy for queer characters need not always be their queerness.

i also think that good writing isn't just well written with more believable characters, but that it's also writing that actually works within the context in which it was written -- all writing, whether intended or not, ultimately has some social or political function (for example, blackface comedies didn't intentionally comment about racial issues, but with the genre's distasteful treatment of the african-american experience, it still had some effect on how its white audience viewed and treated blacks), and understanding how this works would help the writer in making his piece more attractive and accessible to his audience. there is of course the assumption that the writer and the audience both think that accepting the full diversity of the lgbt experience is important, but of course it's easy enough to subvert that if one happens to be on the more conservative side of history. thus, this is a guide, a guide specifically to queer tragedy, but instead of a practical guide (which the title of the forum, i believe, does not specify), it's a more general guide to a more general (and, if you're not an aesthetic, more important) issue -- thus, i think to complain about this not giving out practical bits is more than a little unfair.

although here's an interesting thought -- if one of the theses of this guide is that queer tragedy should not so often be restricted to queerness being the source of the tragedy, thus that queer tragedy's poetics and psychology should for better writing be ultimately similar to *regular, heterosexual* tragedy, then why all the clamoring for practical guidelines? why ask for the piece to repeat other, more practical, more comprehensive guides (assuming guides to tragedy in general already exist) -- unless you want specifics on the queer experience, specifics which you wish to integrate in a more plot-relevant way to your tragedy, in which case you may have missed the point. or perhaps a list of don'ts, although the don'ts for the issue are pretty general as they are, and are already detailed in the guide. my suggestion would be to add a corollary to this: first, this guide on how queer tragedy should not be so gayngsty, second a guide on how to make queer characters. there are definitely character traits specific to queer characters (or rather, character traits that would otherwise be taken for granted, with the one obvious character trait, and perhaps the only character trait in the first place, being their sexuality) -- what are they, and how could they be used (in a sensitive manner) in a plot? but the idea of "plot" in this second guide should be far more diverse, should include romance, irony, and comedy, as well as tragedy, to hammer in the point, and perhaps should be reflective on how they're effectively on the same ground as other heterosexual characters. i'm not qualified to do that -- i bet i have some impolite wordings in this very post, even if the idea of political correctness is a bit obsessive -- but OP seems to be.
 
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