ɴɪɢʜᴛᴍᴀʀᴇ ғᴜᴇʟ sᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴀᴛᴛᴇɴᴅᴀɴᴛ (kovshei) wrote in lgbtq,
it is a double edged sword. the representation is little--but there's something insidious to me due to the fact that fandom goes full throttle for racebending white faves inventing whole histories and whatnot... and then canon, who has so little, still remains empty.
hmm i think i should widen the fandom to illustrate my point a bit better? i'm part of rick riordan fandom, which started with percy jackson before expanded to heroes of olympus, the apollo books, norse and egyptian mythology books. it is very clear that rick riordan was sat down between the percy jackson series and the heroes of olympus series that he was failing his readers by not being diverse enough. he more or less admitted so, and decided that he wouldn't do that again.
heroes of olympus, all new characters except for one were all pocs: one native girl, a latino boy, a black girl, and a chinese boy (and his heritage is an ENORMOUS plot point). in the expanding apollo books, apollo is a main character who's openly written as bisexual in the books with romances with men and women written about; the norse books has the main hero with a friend who's a mulismah valkyrie, a mute elf, a black dwarf, and he falls in love with a trans latino character. riordan has given all these characters very rich lives, some interesting turns and seems to be doing really well with what he's offered.
i still can't engage with fandom entirely because they keep trying to go back and race bend percy jackson after being given a very strong cast. they'll racebend him or invent trans headcanons and argue that it's because it's not enough. and largely these are the same people who are very racist towards the existing latino characters or who like denying the trans character's pronouns or saying their literal canon relationship with the norse main is "just friends."
and then you have things like star wars--where finn and john boyega get treated badly even by aspects of fandom that state that they love him.