if the creator has to say “yeah this one vague line was refering to this character being gay” it doesnt count as representation. if it’s a punchline at the end of the movie, it doesn’t count as representation. if the writer announces it outside the work but never in the work it doesnt fucking count as representation
You know, it’s worth noting that until very very very recently, and in many places still, representing gays in your work can be very hard to get past publishers, executives, censors, ect. particularly in works aimed at children. Frankly I was always happy when prominent characters in popular works were revealed to have been gay in one of the above manners, because it hammered home the whole point, both to gays who need affirmation and potentially bigoted straight people that ended up identifying with a gay character, that being gay does not prevent you from being important and does not have to be your sole defining characteristic.
Now, as Society becomes more accepting of gays and we slowly scrub away the bigotry it is absolutely good to push for more representation and straightforward representation that really shows us as gay from the get-go, but that doesn’t mean that works that have used these methods in order to get shit past the censors, or the authors and writers that tried to increase representation despite them, should have their role in helping our community discounted simply because it doesn’t hold up to the standards we have in the more progressive parts of the world right now.
