Subject: Re. values and more categories
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Posted on: 2024-02-19 07:02:26 UTC

> choosing to highlight only certain characteristics does imply that one values those characteristics

Sorry, can't let this bit pass. {= )

The point to highlighting the underrepresented is to make people who are often excluded feel seen. The value is in letting real people who have those characteristics know we proudly include them in our world where we can imagine anything. Those of us who are white, straight, and cis don't need help with that; you can't swing a cat without hitting one of us in media. (Not that you should be swinging a cat at all.)

I guess the Welsh might want help with that, IDK. And now I'm wondering if Dafydd Illian counts. And what about the Sato kids who (I think) are technically from Cardiff in the Torchwood continuum? And what about people from alternate–World One Wales-es? Pretty sure there's at least one of those. ... I think national origin might be even harder to capture accurately than gender. {X D

Re. Asian, Middle-eastern, etc., the advantage to "of Color" is that it captures ethnic minorities across continua. "Asian" doesn't apply in universes where there is no continent of Asia. Also, from a purely structural perspective, there are only 50 pages in "Agents of Color" at the moment; it's not exactly such a sprawling mess that it needs to be further broken down. If that changes in the future, though, awesome!

As for fantasy identities, yeah, there are some interesting cohorts there. We could definitely do elves, Time Lords, maybe dragons, maybe Vulcans... But we might want to leave the three Andalites, for example, to be covered by "Non-human Agents" (plus the Animorphs article, where there's also the one Yeerk nothlit and jeez, look, he's biologically 100% human, but culturally Yeerk, and if you asked him he'd still say Yeerk, so even the fantasy stuff gets complex!)

TL;DR, nothing is going to be perfect, so we should prioritize what we find most interesting and/or worthwhile for the benefit of real people.

~Neshomeh even hesitates to file Jenni under "non-human" because she spends so much time living as one.

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