Petition Seeks to Make Orlando Victim First LGBT Star Wars Movie Character

[CBR News]

Comics journalist Joshua Yehl has started a petition for the "Star Wars" franchise to name its first LGBT film character after his late best friend.


Full article here.

[Sighphi]

first of all, no SW has not taken any new step to be more inclusive, Stop it. They didnt do anything new in TFA.

Second, do they even have permission for this from the family of the victim?

Third, really? Reeeeeeeaaally? You are going to use this to try to get Disney to add a gay character. That's messed up. You are going to use this event?

[lolgaxe]

Make him a Gungan.

[Teek]

Intentions are probably good, but this seems to be in really poor taste.

[FlashingSabre]

This seems in poor taste. And I'm not a huge fan of forcing the creators to change the story do to outside influence.

And, and I don't mean to offend anyone with this, what happened was an atrocity, and I'd prefer not to be reminded of it in my escapism, let alone kid friendly escapism. The world sucks. I'd like to get away from it for a little bit sometimes.

[ComiCop]

Seriously? While it's sad that his friend died, there is honestly no reason why Lucasfilm should name a character after him. There's been many worldwide tragedies over the year and the shooting is hardly one of the worst. No character has been named after, I don't know, a poor, starving African kid who died during a famine. This is just another example of first-world silliness.

Secondly, there already are LGBT characters in Star Wars.

[Pauul]

This seems in poor taste. And I'm not a huge fan of forcing the creators to change the story do to outside influence.

It's noble that this guy wants to honour his friend.

Hell, it might even be a good idea to petition Lucasfilm to include a gay character in the franchise at some later date.

As to naming a character after his friend, using his likeness... why not? It's been done before in the Expanded Universe. Characters based on real people. If this was a petition about naming a background character after his friend, that's definitely something I could get on-board with.

But asking Lucasfilm to put a gay character in the film, to presumably explore his sexuality (otherwise you just have the situation that you did in Star Trek: First Contact where Lt. Hawk is supposedly meant to be gay, but it's never referenced), thus making him a central character, and to base that character on his friend...

You're intruding into the creative process.

It's the same weird ownership that fans seem to be making recently that spawned the whole, give Captain America a boyfriend trend.

That was wrong too. Requesting Marvel launch a series with a heroic gay character, that to me, would be entirely reasonable.

So, I'd say while the intentions here are good, it is probably asking too much.

And, and I don't mean to offend anyone with this, what happened was an atrocity, and I'd prefer not to be reminded of it in my escapism, let alone kid friendly escapism. The world sucks. I'd like to get away from it for a little bit sometimes.

This, on the other hand, is something I do need to disagree with a bit.

I mean, firstly, if the folk at Lucasfilm could do something to make the world a more tolerant place, wouldn't you want them to? It should certainly be less intrusive, but if it could be done in a way that fit the Star Wars universe, would you be open to it?

And secondly.... Stormtroopers. The Stormtroopers in Star Wars are based on Hitler's storm troopers. Star Wars directly draws from World War II and the Holocaust. Science fiction and fantasy often draw from the real world and the ugliest parts of it.

Star Wars in not unique in this. The Lord of the Rings directly pulls from World War II as well.

I think there are ways in which Star Wars or something like Star Wars, can explore real world issues like this. I just think it should be up to the creators involved to decide if it should be done and how it should be done.

[zhris]

What do you mean "first"? Bib Fortuna was queer as a three dollar bill.

[Pauul]

Seriously? While it's sad that his friend died, there is honestly no reason why Lucasfilm should name a character after him. There's been many worldwide tragedies over the year and the shooting is hardly one of the worst. This is just another example of first-world silliness.

Secondly, there already are LGBT characters in Star Wars.

This was a serious incident directly related to hate crime. I get what you're saying about there being other tragedies out there, but that doesn't lessen how horrible this was. Creators should be doing things to make the world a more open minded place where hate crimes do not happen.

People should not be attacked or persecuted based on their sexual orientation, and that is a serious issue that was at the heart of this event.

[Username taken]

first of all, no SW has not taken any new step to be more inclusive, Stop it. They didnt do anything new in TFA.

Second, do they even have permission for this from the family of the victim?

Third, really? Reeeeeeeaaally? You are going to use this to try to get Disney to add a gay character. That's messed up. You are going to use this event?

There were very prominent gay characters in the last cannon Star Wars novel.

That being said, I agree that using this tragedy to persuade Disney to include a prominent LGBT character and explore said character is kind of unnecessary.

[Pauul]

As for wanting to see gay character represented in fiction, well, positive representation should hopefully encourage people to be more open minded and help society evolve to the point where one day people aren't persecuted.

Also, because of homophobia, suicides are still very common among young gay people. By creating characters who are gay in popular fiction, young people will hopefully be able to identify with them and by doing that more people will be able to come to terms with who they are and such tragic consequences can be avoided.

Again, I don't think there is anything wrong with requesting that Lucasfilm does something in the wake of this tragedy but they shouldn't be dictated to on what form it should take. Reaching out and asking should be enough.

This petition takes things just a little bit too far.

[Awonder]

49 people died. It would be pretty tacky for Disney to single out one and forget about the other 48.

[DebkoX]

Hmm, given how some believe that Poe may be gay, theres no need to force changes for the sake of it. I support all rights and equality but I don't believe in forcing change for the sake of it.

[KidGetNice]

We need to stop focusing on equal treatment in movies and focus on the fact that people are still killing people in record numbers.

[Ambaryerno]

GOD I wish people would stop trying to politicize media like this. Someone tried to do the same thing with the new Zelda because of that singer who was shot and killed.

It's one thing if the creator seeks to address a topical event from the start, but this becomes forced and ham-fisted.