Intensity (scale)

Intensity is a scale developed by the founder of the Internet Gay Fiction Database to rate an item's relevance to a reader's request for a "gay novel." That is, the Intensity Rating will give potential readers some idea about how important, or how relevant, sexuality is to the item in question. For instance, a book about the main character's coming out process will have a higher rating than a book about an openly gay character's attempt to secure a job, because the former book tackles issues relating to sexuality directly while the latter, even though it may have a gay romance subplot, doesn't deal with sexuality as the primary focus.

Scale
At some point, I will try to flesh out this idea more fully, so that I actually have a scale here to use. Here is a vague idea of what I'd like it to look like:

10 - everybody's gay, gay issues are the prime and secondary issues at hand, almost to a fault; the 'gayness' overshadows any plot or characterization


 * e.g., most gay erotica

9 - main characters AND main focus of the book is gay

8 - main characters are gay, main focus of the book is at least partially related to sexuality

7 - main characters are gay, main focus of the book may not be gay

6 - secondary characters are gay; they, and their gayness, plays a large part

5 - secondary characters are gay; they play a large part, but their sexuality does not

4 - tertiary/quaternary characters are gay

3 - no explicity gay-relevance; relationships are homosocial, no characters are openly gay

2 - no explicit gay-relevance; any relevance is "between the lines" or "coded queer" and may be argued by conservatives as nothing more than passionate friendship

1 - no explicit gay-relevance; any relevance is deeply "between the lines" or "coded queer" and may exist more in the minds of queer theorists and English professors than in the average leisure reader