Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
Two events that have likely shaped my history on this issue:

1.) At one point in the past, I did a very short-lived comic for Wizards of the Coast called "Five Foot Steps." Unlike OOTS, it took place in the real world, among a group of D&D players. The cast consisted of two white men, two white females, a black man, and a brown-skinned man with non-specified ethnicity (who happened to also be in a wheelchair). Almost the exact same breakdown as the Order, if you happen to read V as female. Only one character, one of the white men, had any portion of their sexuality discussed during the comic's five-page run (and he was straight).

The reaction, universally, was that the cast was ham-handedly diverse; that obviously, Wizards had forced me to include people of color and the differently-abled because they were a huge corporation and had to be politically correct. This was not true—they gave me no input whatsoever on the content of the strip. But the very existence of a group of D&D players with three races in it was enough to confuse people.

That made me angry and annoyed, and I resolved to bring even greater racial balance to OOTS from that point on, just to prove the point. Unfortunately, I didn't have such a learning experience with LGBT inclusion. In fact, I had almost the opposite...


2.) Back when Roy put on the belt of gender-swapping, I went to a convention. At that convention, I met a man who told me that he had enjoyed the comic up until recently. I asked him what had changed. He told me that he, himself, was transgendered, and he found the inclusion of the "cursed" magic item offensive, that the idea of gender-swapping should not be used for comedy, and that it had permanently reduced his opinion of the comic.

I was shocked, because it had never occurred to me that anyone would see it as any sort of allegory for real-world transsexuals. It was an overtly magical situation, based on a magic item that already existed in the source material, that was forced on a character with no inclination toward it. In the same way that I would not have expected that one of the characters being paralyzed by a ghoul would be offensive to people who are quadriplegic. But maybe it is. At any rate, the situation surprised me and has, most likely, contributed to my gunshy nature about LGBT issues in the comic.
That makes sense. The one thing I wonder about is female characters. Not meaning to put you on the spot or anything, but is it easier to get into the head of a female character as opposed to a LGBT one? Or do you already find it more taxing to write Haley as opposed to, say Roy, and the extra weight of a gay character would just compound that? Or some other explanation I didn't think of? No pressure to respond, of course.