Subject: Thanks, Des. But...
Author:
Posted on: 2016-06-22 23:51:00 UTC
Natalie is supposed to be my avatar, and that phobia is not mine - at least, it hasn't been for awhile. So I'm kinda uncomfortable with it and I'm not sure what to do with it now.
Natalie and Za'kiir take on another Harry Potter mission.
I...didn't realize that Natalie was a homophobe, though. Not sure how I feel about that :/
And, yeesh--the things people do to justify their weird plotbunnies.
I thought it'd be an interesting trait...
To my mind, you hadn't previously established Natalie as uncomfortable with gay relationships or even mentioned it in a Board discussion, so it kinda came out of left field.
You're right in that it's interesting, if only because most of the rest of us have no problem with gay people. Is it just male/male pairings that set her on edge?
See, now I have this whole problem of it that came out of nowhere, and I just tried inventing a resolution for it in the interlude - that's the best way I know how to deal with it for now. Don't expect any more development, because it's a topic I'm not comfortable discussing for a long time.
Some mission with Chakkik in it. That's as much as I remember.
~DF
There's a really good place to put a genuinely homophobic agent. One who is jaded and disgusted by the whole thing, one who can't help but view it as unnatural, damaging, disgusting, and just plain wrong: Bad Slash. Where poorly written gayness is such an integral part of the job description that it slowly warped the agent's mind.
That, I think, would be an interesting direction for a spinoff to take. Your homophobic ex-Slasher gets reassigned after a godawful mission somewhere, and their new partner is in the LGBTQQIA+ spectrum in some way or another. They have to deal with each other's thought patterns and internal biases and try to be better people. It's just an idea, but not one totally without merit. =]
Well, that's not exactly what I've been trying to do, but it's weirdly close (the agent is homophobic not because she worked in Bad Slash previously, but because her home continuum was a variant of medieval Scotland, but they're both in Bad Slash now). I guess I need to actually write this thing instead of sitting around planning like I've been doing for the last three months. . .
Really, first hS came up with that detail I was going to use, now this. . . it's getting ridiculous.
--Key
I stand by my gut reaction: it's not realistic to expect each and every PPC staffer to be tolerant of gay people, so there shouldn't be a problem with Natalie being homophobic. Further, and frankly: "it's an interesting trait" is a legit reason when it comes to experimentation with characters — I made the Librarian racist just because, and if that's nothing to complain about, then neither is Natalie's homophobia. To address the marginalisation point, I'd like to say that homophobia can be a marginal trait of a character, just like every other trait. Not all people will make it or have it made central to their character and I don't think it's realistic to expect that to be the case here.
Aside from this whole thing:
-There's a weird grey thing in the background that makes the mission a bit hard to read.
-The execution scene is well-written, in my opinion.
-I like the shout out title.
Natalie is supposed to be my avatar, and that phobia is not mine - at least, it hasn't been for awhile. So I'm kinda uncomfortable with it and I'm not sure what to do with it now.
This is me, pure and simple. I'm honestly scared to post this, but I feel like I should come clean regarding my own beliefs on this. Jesus, give me peace and courage...
---
Natalie sat on the red sofa, deep in thought, staring at the book in her lap.
Za’kiir entered the RC, giving out a cheery, “Hello.”
“Hi,” she replied softly.
Za’kiir stopped, sensing something was wrong, and then his eyes fell on the copy of House of Hades that he had just finished before her. “Oh.”
“I just finished it,” she said in that same distant tone.
A short, awkward silence hung between them.
“Are you okay with...the twist?” Za’kiir asked.
“Took me a bit of thinking.”
“And?”
She sighed and turned to face him. “And, well, I realized that despite Nico’s orientation, I still like the character. And that the author wouldn’t put that in there unless he had a point to make. See, I grew up in a sheltered home before coming here, but I realized that orientation does not automatically mean bad things. You can still like the person. Sure, talking about orientation for an extended period of time is gonna make me uncomfortable, but I hope I can deal with it in a better way. And... “ She sniffed, as if trying not to cry. “I’m sorry to everyone who I gave the wrong impression to. That was my stupidity. But I’m going to do better.”
Za’kiir walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her in a hug. “I’m sure they’ll understand. And as long as you keep working at it, you’ll already be doing well.”
“Thanks.”
After all, with those hundreds, if not thousands of agents and staff members active, what chances are that all of them would have the same, or similar, tolerant believes and practices?
But I believe what people mean is that you throw this just like that out of nowhere: "Oh yes, she's homophobic, I didn't mention?", as if it wasn't a big deal. I know it's not the first time this was brought up (For the reference here's Natalie's wiki page and this mission where it's mention), but it looks like you are marginalizing something that is a serious issue to a large group of people here, myself included.
I'm sure nobody is gonna shun you because of that, and if you have an idea how Natalie would resolve this problem of hers - good for you. If you don't have anything important connected to that, now you've got something to think about.
The PPC, both in and out of universe, has a higher-than-average number of people who are LGTBQ. Throwing in a homophobic agent because it would be "interesting" comes across as kind of... hm, what would be a good analogy? Not unlike throwing Donald Trump into a Mexican mosque just to see what happens.
Of course, it all depends on how you handle it, but including it "just because" comes off kind of the wrong way.
But some errors did creep in:
1) disregarding the years that they had not been Animagi, and therefore there would have nothing to calm Remus down
Missing word: there would have been nothing
2) Harry snuck out to the Whomping Willow under cover from the invisibility cloak
Shouldn't "Invisibility Cloak" be capitalized?