Subject: I feel ya, man.
Author:
Posted on: 2015-03-23 16:03:00 UTC
Thanet South is my constituency. Here's the front cover of a local magazine (which reminds me, I need to do another column for that...)
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Also, apropos of nothing... how many black agents do we have?
http://www.themarysue.com/diversity-in-fanfic/
THIS. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT THIS.
If anyone asks you how to NOT show up on our website, just point them to this guy right here. Especially in regards to criticism.
Well, one of the reasons for a lack of diversity in fanfiction is because of the already-present lack of diversity in the fandom being written about. Not everyone makes OCs *gasp* and work instead with what they've been provided. If there isn't any diversity in the original work, what are you going to do, change the characters from their canon selves? It really seems like this was written more for original works instead of fanfiction.
It might be the jargon or it might be me, but I think I lost this guy somewhere in the middle of the article. Can someone please do me a favour and tell me what this guy says...?
The article reads more like a multi-element writing guide than one particular thing, so you kind of need to break it down section-by-section. I suppose the intro is basically about why minorities in fan fiction matter (see below for my take on the subject, the author doesn't really go into as much depth about why *ism in writing is bad and where it comes from), and some of the basis for it (that American culture is saturated with *isms, a statement I can certainly get behind).
Fanfiction is great because we can write anything without publishers and editors breathing down our necks, forcing us to conform with what's considered "normal." So how come we don't try to write more diverse characters/stories/worlds? Sure, we might get some things wrong when trying to write about characters who differ from ourselves, and when we do mess up people are totally gonna call us on it, and it'll suck—but that's okay! Criticism is how we learn to be better. So, as long as you're making an honest effort and doing your homework to avoid stereotypes, why not go for it? It would be super-awesome to see the level of diversity in the real world reflected in fanfic.
... I think that pretty much covers it.
What terms were tripping you up? I apparently speak Tumblr-ese, despite not spending any time there.
~Neshomeh
It's a bit like reading an unclear philosopher. You know the words, you know their meaning, but when they get put together... you go 'whut' and 'I don't get it'.
But seriously, you hit the nail on the head, as far as I can tell.
Let me begin by saying that there were a number of things about this article that I found worthy of either praise or criticism, but that aren't relevant to its focus on fanfiction and instead address broader and somewhat more incendiary topics. Other than mentioning that I find the very heavy "Tumblrese" in which the article is written both constantly aggravating and a bit difficult to fully comprehend (meaning I might be missing or misunderstanding a little of what was actually said), I won't be addressing them here.
The first thing I noticed is that the article does not really address issues relevant to fanfiction specifically:
For one thing, it doesn't deal with the fact that a lot of fanfiction has a highly nonhuman cast (I don't think I've ever written anything with a more than 50% human character list) or is set in a world completely divorced from our own, opening up a whole host of questions even I can't immediately answer about how our concepts of "diversity" and "representation" would apply. Should authors include black Elves? Transgender turians?
Second, the author doesn't really address one of my big questions when it comes to *isms in fanfiction- to what degree we should be "true" to the demographics of the setting we are working in. That question has a lot of dimensions that, again, I don't have good answers for: What if the setting would just naturally be very homogeneous by many of our standards? What if it's a setting that fully acknowledges some sort of bias exists within it? What if it's a setting like Original Trek, one that tried to be more egalitarian in its day but missed a few things?
Without addressing questions like those above, this reads more like a general writing guide for making your work less *ist, and I think it's a reasonably good one. Most of it is stuff I've seen before, but I do particularly like the addition of "don't make this a PSA", "what am I getting wrong?" and "how to take criticism" sections. I would also like to see less focus on "representation" and more on making the minorities you include actually equal, but then we're getting into the external issues I said I wouldn't talk about.
But (and I'm going to sit firmly in Middle-earth for this) you can have black Gondorians - there's historical relations between northern Harad and southern Gondor. You can have transgender elves - no, Tolkien would never have written it, but the same social, genetic, environmental or whatever factors which lead to people feeling their assigned gender is incorrect would still exist even among the Elder Children of Iluvatar. You can have hobbits in wheelchairs (juuuuust about, though I'd suggest looking up what people used before they were invented) and Rohirrim with Down's Syndrome. You can have gay dwarves - heck, given the comments about how, even with the massive minority of women in dwarven society, some females still didn't get married, you could even argue that lesbian dwarves are explicit canon. You can have black Maiar, and poverty-stricken Numenoreans, and Orcs with miner's lung, and Arnorian single mothers, and Doriathrin orphans, and... honestly, the list just goes on and on.
So no, Tolkien's world doesn't justify black Elves. But it doesn't justify everyone you meet being exactly like the protagonists of the books, either. Middle-earth is a world - and worlds aren't homogeneous.
hS
There's nothing stating we can't have transgender Turians. It certainly wouldn't be out of place in a Bioware world.
Plenty of fandoms have the possibility for more diversity, and if you look hard enough you can find the writers writing fanfiction just because they want to see that diversity represented. Honestly, it's worse to me when you see stuff like writing Katniss as white, or ignoring the canonly gay Transformers characters in favor of making them straight. I'd rather see black Elves than read another story explaining how Korra and Asami are just really good friends
I will not say more, because I have capital-O Opinions regarding certain portions of this thread and, despite all the evidence to the contrary, I don't like outright confrontation very much. It's scary. Plus I don't trust myself to remain civil on such matters, which is a problem around here.
...considering that I'm the only one here who hasn't started their post with a variation of "I agree".
I'd still like to hear your capital-O Opinions on the matter if that's OK with you. Hearing from as many different perspectives as possible is important when it's time to weigh in on a subject-- it's also a central component to the Socratic method. Perhaps we could take this up in private?
I don't really trust myself to remain civil regarding the points you made, and I'd rather not antagonise someone from around here.
For one thing, I have to ration that sort of thing. =]
Jus to be clear, in my post I was trying to rationalize why there would be so many protagonists of a certain demographic group. I'm not implying that any other demographic is less important or not worthy of representation.
Again, I invite anyone to disagree with my analysis. As a(n aspiring) scientist I can safely say that we thrive on being proven wrong: it gives us an opportunity to learn. Only through the exchange of ideas can we move forward with a better model for viewing the world. After all, a scientific article with no peer review is worthless!
I 100% agree with this article but I have just one thing to say with regards to the following quote:
"Because the world around us has made every effort to whitewash our brains, we tend to gravitate toward characters who are, you guessed it, straight, white, cisgender, able-bodied men. This is the character at the center centre of the story that we’re supposed to identify with and cheer for, not because we actually have anything in common with him, but because he is the 'Everyman', the default, normal. Oh, and look, all his friends are also straight, white, cisgender, able-bodied men, except for his one non-white buddy, who is there to dispense ethnically humorous wisdom, and the solitary straight, white, cisgender, able-bodied woman who functions as the Sexy Lamp - I mean, Love Interest."
This is an incredibly American-centric worldview. Is it really a big surprise that authors from a majoritarily white country write about straight white people? About 80% of the US population is white-- along with 13-ish% black and 4.43% asian. Furthermore, the Williams Institute reports that 3.5% of the US population is LGBT (with the T component only being 0.3% of the total population). These two factors combined effectively make the straight white person the most statistically average (hence "normal") person in the US: assuming constant LGBT spread across all ethnicities, that's over 246 million straight white people in the US-- 77.2% of the population.
It's not so much whitewashing as just simply Americans writing stories about the biggest demographic. When you start taking into account the authors' social class (because exactly who is given the opportunity to become published writers: the poor or the rich? Remember how wealth is divided in the States...) the statistics start leaning even more heavily towards straight white people. Also considering that the other major source of English media is Europe-- where white people come from-- it's not surprising that we're constantly surrounded by that demographic.
That being said, the article is bang on the money when it comes to the ethnic sidekick character and the cardboard cutout women. Seriously guys: pull yourself together and write some quality characters.
Diversity is awesome-- that's why I decided to write about the PPC's Infrastructure and Security departments. I want to show more non-Commonwealth/US agents from all walks of life working in the PPC; something that is difficult to do if you're only writing about one or two agent teams in particular.
I've spent all day trying to come up with a response to this, and especially to [EvilAI]UBEROverlord's reaction, and to be honest I still haven't managed. Therefore, I'm just going to write words and hope something coherent comes out, because I can't let this go without... yeah, opposition.
The purpose of writing fiction is to expose your readers to something new. That's half of what we complain about in badfic: the fact that they aren't doing anything new, just telling the same old stories over and over. And when that happens in terms of, say, genres - when Twilight was successful, say, and the bookshops suddenly filled with supernatural teen romances with artsy black covers - we get annoyed. The most recent one I've noticed is 'dystopic teenagers' - there's at least three recent movies about that one (Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner), and of course we're always going on about how all the movies are remakes and pointless sequels.
My point is, we tend to agree that doing that is bad. A writer has a responsibility to tell a new story - to show their reader something different. Whether it's genre, or plot, or character, you don't want to see them just reusing the same ones over and over. You want them to think of - and show you - something else.
So... why are you trying to give people a pass when they do exactly that over race, or sexuality? If all books are 'straightwhiteman wields sword' or 'straightwhiteman falls in love', how is that different from them all being 'postapocalpticteen is a gladiator' or 'postapocalypticteen is segregated'?
EAUO hit it on the head by using the word 'provincialism'. Writing only your own cultural norm reflects a blindness to the world as a whole; it comes close to outright rejecting the overwhelming variety of stories you could tell, in order to keep safely in your comfort zone; and it deprives your readers of the chance to expand their own worldviews. The most powerful way to help people accept difference - which is the biggest problem in the world today, and I say this as a resident of a constituency which stands a serious chance of voting in a far-right nationalist party to government, good grief - is to simply show them that the 'different'... ain't all that different.
And that, I think, approaches what I'm trying to say.
hS
('But all your agents are-' Yeah, y'know what? My agent who is named after me is gay, despite my being nothing of the sort. I'm doing this, not just saying it)
When you write, you want to write new and exciting; bold and fresh. Keep the reader on their toes with a story that isn't bland or mundane with the similar and used. Adding diversity in your characters can do that... provided you know what you're doing.
Write for the story's sake is one of my mantras. I'm currently working on both Star Wars and a Harry Potter fanfictions. (No worries, I'm keeping them well away from any of the main canon plots or characters.) Both main characters are women. One is manic-depressive. The other is high-anxiety.
While I think these traits add an extra dimension to the story in giving them struggles to fight and overcome, I don't add said traits in for the sake of having them. It works for their backgrounds, because, honestly, if they didn't have these issues from where they came from then the characters would be less believable.
I think writing based on cultural norms isn't harmful, but only if you're writing for believability. Having a tribe of Ewoks on the planet Kashyyyk like it's really NBD will throw everything into disarray, and, from what I can tell, is one of the many continuum issues we resolve in our missions.
Same thing with human cultures. Write to include diversity, but keep it withing socially normative expectancy. If you go against said expectancy, explain how this came to be so it doesn't throw the reader through a loop and out of the story. You have a black Moslem living in a Augustinian convent in the 14th century? Tell (through the story, not as an aside) why/how this came to be, because, for those monks, a black Moslem in a convent is not the norm.
Stay away from completely unbelievable situations.
Probably rambling at this point, but I hope I'm at least being understood. I think diversity is good, but I favor believability more. If done in good taste and without smacking the reader over the head with blatant diverse overtones for the sake of being diverse, and not not actually tell a story (unless that was the point of the story), shakes me out of the narrative and, TBH, annoys me.
Cheers.
~Jas'
Jaster sums up pretty well how I feel about the issue.
Also, seeing as how I brought up Kashyyyk...
IN BEFORE THE CHEWBACCA DEFENSE!
>_>
I'm not familiar with Star Wars canon. Care to elaborate?
Aaaaaand Bam!
Double Bam!
That basically what I was trying to say in all my various posts.
That's what I've been trying to say, though not as clear as what you did.
I'm usually not that clear with words. But thank you :)
I particularly like write for the story's sake, both the phrase itself and the message behind it. If you don't mind, I would like to appropriate that as a mantra of my own.
(Arguably the most important thing is to write consistently with your world/setting, and deviate from that only if you have a good reason. I'd like to add that if you are completely defining the setting yourself, it's generally a good idea to include the largest possible scope of experience to sample your demographics from (see lower posts), but again stick to that and sample without bias unless you have a good reason.)
It's not an original mantra anyway (I stole it! Hssss!)
I always like to say that it's never wrong to deviate, so long as you do it for the right reasons. Normal is okay. Abnormal can be amazing, but only if done right.
I was not making a judgment on whether or not keeping with the majority demographic was good or bad. Merely remarking that just because someone's main character is Straight White person is not bad in and of itself. It does not mean the writer is racist, subscribes to some kind of provincialism, or what have you. Just merely that it is not inherently bad nor is it inherently good either.
The way I see it is when writing a character you want aspects of two things. First you want to be able to relate at least partially to your character or else it will be truly hard to get into their mind, their motivations, etc. I want to be clear, this does not mean self-inserting yourself as your character. But each character, in my opinion, if well written still contains a part of the author. Be it the author's fears, or dreams, or even the strange verbal tic. The other thing is that you want to have your audience relate to your character, make them care about what happens to him/her, that is what drives conflict and will make the ultimate fate (whatever that may be) hit harder, resound longer, etc. The use of the majority demographic is just a way to do that easily. A truly talented author could make people relate to the character without that, but just because it is easy does not mean it is bad.
You do not need to reinvent the wheel all the time. Tropes exist for a reason. They are tools. The majority demographic approach (in my opinion) is much the same. A tool. It is what you do with the tool that determines skill not just using it.
Namely what, really, minority characters are supposed to add to a work? I agree that it's incredibly provincial and a bit condescending to assume that people won't be able to identify with a character unless that character shares whatever element of their demographic makeup. But I also think that minority characters can act as role models that can help convince minority readers that they can be whatever the characters are too.
I never liked diversity for diversity's sake because it implied that there's something fundamentally, irreconcilably different about the minority in question- that they are being given a minority demographic not because they are people who contribute by their character, but because they carry that inextricable "minority-ness".
I want characters in stories to properly reflect the demographic distribution of wherever the world is set (and partially the outside world too), and to treat minority characters just like non-minority characters because it shows that the world created by the author, and the author personally, are not *ist, and saves me from that vaguely queasy feeling I get when I read, say, Lovecraft, and realize the whole thing is subtly suffused with an ideology completely antithetical to my idea of what is even good in the world.
I'm not directing this at any particular other response here, as it mentions issues brought up in all of them.
That is more or less what I was trying to articulate. And I would agree that demographic of the universe the story resides in should be represented. I would not go so far, however, as to say it should reflect the real world's demographics. If it makes sense in the context for it to do so then absolutely, but if it does not, then it really is just another form of diversity for diversity's sake.
In a world that has humans but is not directly related to Earth in any way (like Middle Earth), I do still think it's a good idea to include some or all of the real Earth's demographic makeup because of the extra investment of the author in the worldbuilding process. In that case, the makeup of the world becomes something the author controls and hopefully has reasons for.
Seeing minorities not included in such a world is usually enough to create the suspicion (not confirmation, but enough to bring the uncomfortable feeling back up regardless) that the author didn't include them because the author had some sort of bias against them.
Note that simple representation does not help with this- indeed, if minorities are included in such a world but subject to the same stereotypes as in ours, it makes it much more likely that the author is biased.
I think it gets to some of what I have been trying to weave through in all my comments on the topic, and that is the lazy writer. Not diversity can be an indication of a lazy writer, but not necessarily a bad writer. Take a look at for example the Asari from Mass Effect. They are monogendered (and lets be honest they look like and appear biologically like female humans) and unless something is very wrong they are various shade of blue. Now throwing in a red skinned male Asari makes no sense in the universe, and so should not be included. Was Drew Karpyshyn lazy for not including diverse Asari? Possibly, but was he a bad writier? I do not think so. I also think Mass Effect's various awards and success indicate that he was not a bad writer.
That is kind of my bottom line. Lack of diversity is a crutch for either lazy writers, bad writers, or both.
And again, there's a plausible reason for them to be that way other than an *ism. That sort of thing can even help deconstruct our biases- what would a species without sexes, that has developed over most of its history without the concept of males and females, have to say about sexism in humans?
And one thing I'd like to add is that diversity can be the mark of a lazy writer too, a writer who uses the audience's stereotypes to substitute for actually working on characterization.
This is the kind of mentality I was talking about: [O]ur instincts are therefore racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and ableist
Just because someone writes a character that happens to be a White Straight Male who is fully able bodied does not make it wrong. I am saying that might be lazy, but not wrong.
Ultimately it comes down to this. You write for you. If you want to only right about the generic hero that people are accustomed to (like Superman, Luke Skywalker, etc.) you are entitled to do so. One does not need to include a character like Kamala Khan (Current Ms. Marvel) just for diversity's sake. If the author does not with to write a diverse cast that is their write to do so. For example the semi-controversy that surrounded the revelation of the new Thor. Now this is not the best example sense this Thor is actually selling quite well and has been at least accepted throughout parts of the fandom. Though there was a definite uproar when she was first revealed because many people saw it as diversity for diversity's sake.
That is, in my opinion, the bottom line. Diversity is all well and good, but it has to make sense. I think Diversity for Diversity's sake is just another form of lazy. It is saying "Look at me! I have a minority character in a majority role, for no other reason than I'm diverse and forward thinking." A viking raiding party would not have a quadriplegic in it, so unless the author explains it well, and adventuring party should not have one either. It makes no logical sense. Likewise, it would be difficult to explain an African in King Arthur's Court. It can be done. Bernard Cornwell's Sagramore is a shining example of that. He made it make sense that there was a Nubian in King Arthur's time. It was not diversity for diversity's sake.
"Progressivism for progressivism's sake must be discouraged."
I do 100% agree that things must make sense, and changes must have a sensible explanation. I don't think that precludes making things more diverse just because you can, though. In the absence of a reason why not, you don't need any particular why.
For instance, there's no reason the god Thor couldn't be female, because deities can manifest differently if they want to, so why not? Loki got pregnant as a male at least once, from what I know of the mythology, so the sky is pretty much the limit. (Marvel's Asgardians might work differently, I don't know, but if you're gonna draw on a certain source, why not draw on all of it, right?)
~Neshomeh
That was perhaps not the best example. But Thor in all sources of Norse Mythology to my knowledge always appeared as a man. And not just a man, but kind of what would now be seen as the stereotypical man's man. In the Marvelverse it makes sense. Thor the hero does not exist solely because he is Thor Odinson. Thor exists as a hero because of Mjolnir, which in the Marvelverse is only capable of being wielded by the worthy. The issues arose because in Marvelverse Thor exists both as Thor Odinson (Asgardian) and The Mighty Thor (Hero). Asgardians in the Marvelverse follow standard human biology. They cannot randomly change sex. And people were getting confused that Marvel was making both the Might Thor and Thor Odinson female. Because making a male character female really is not well set up. The hero though makes more sense, as it all comes down to worth.
And frankly the argument is moot at this point, because by and large it seems that most people like the Female Thor. As I believe her comic is outselling Thor Odinson.
But it was illustrative to show that there must be reason to the diversification.
There is, actually, at least one reality where Thor was female and Loki was male and they were lovers. Or something. They touched on it briefly in the Loki miniseries at one point when talking about how, no matter what, in all of the realities, even when Thor was a abstract elemental of lightning and Loki was one of fire, Thor always wins and Loki always loses.
Also, Asguardians can shapeshift. At least, some of them can. Loki spent more than a year as a woman and as far as I know the reasoning was "Why the hell not?"
In all the gajillion realities implicit in the Marvelverse, it doesn't strike me as at all implausible that at least one of them contains a female Thor. So again, the question becomes "why not?" rather than "why?"
Granted, I don't know whether the female!Thor series is taking place in the same universe that has until now been occupied by male!Thor, but comics reboot things all the time, so I can't bring myself to see that as a problem either.
I'll admit that I keep wondering why they kept the name Thor when in Norse the feminine form would probably be Thora, but I can just imagine the backlash from that. They probably did the right thing by not changing it.
~Neshomeh
Female Thor is in Earth-616 or the main Marvelverse. And in the comics there is Thor the Hero and Thor the person. They changed Thor the Hero. Thor the person still exists as just an Asgardian. Mjolnir makes Thor the Hero through worth. Wich is why there was the Beta Ray Bill HorseThor from I think the 80s and now Female Thor. They have not, as far as I know, introduced her alter-ego. Thor was both Thor the Hero and Thor Odinson. All I know about the new Thor is that Thor the Hero is now Female.
What I was getting at is people saw it as diversity for diversity's sake which upset quite a few people, because it was a fundamental change in the Status Quo. Since then however, it seems that it actually makes sense. So it has turned into how to do diversity properly. She isn't there just to have another female hero. She is there as an independent character that makes sense.
Is this notion that people are incapable of relating to characters who are different from themselves. I understand how it could suck to never see people of your gender/sexuality/race/ability/etc. represented as a hero, but empathy is not limited to these things. Here I am, a woman, and most of my heroes are men. Is this kinda unfortunate at the societal level? Sure. Did it stop me from relating to them? Hell no.
What makes a character relatable is going through struggles that we recognize as analogs for our struggles, having emotional experiences that reflect our emotional experiences, and finding the inner strength to overcome their obstacles, which lets us believe we can overcome our obstacles. The exact nature of the struggle doesn't matter. The journey is what matters. And since that journey takes place entirely in the mind, the externals... I don't want to say they don't matter, because they do, but I'll never understand how they could be any kind of barrier. It just baffles me.
~Neshomeh
If I was not clear, I was not saying that the majority demographic is the only way to create a relatable character. I was saying that it is an easy and in some cases lazy way to do it. It is applying to the lowest common denominator. There are far better ways to do it than just shooting for the lowest common denominator.
I was more so getting at the idea that it is a tool. And it is how the author chooses to use that tool that determines if it is good or bad. And your point that it should not matter I agree with. As a whole I do not use the majority demographic approach when creating a character. It is better to challenge your abilities than work on what you know. But as a character to make it believable I feel there needs to be a closer nexus between the writer and the character than the audience and the character.
If the writer is not skilled, a White Male writing a Chinese Female, might come across as a great number of things that the author did not intend.
...wouldn't that fall under the article's section 4?
The way I see it, even if you're not part of the Chinese female demographic, it shouldn't forbid you to write that Chinese lady character. As hS said in response to my OP, " 'different'... ain't all that different".
I was just using it as an example. And I was not trying to imply that you had to be part of the Chinese Female Demographic to write a female Chinese character. I was saying that for some trying to do that might seem artificial at best, and may even stray into misogyny at worst.
It is more of a talent think. An unskilled writer writing a demographic they do not belong to may come across in a very improper way. That was more or less the point I was trying to make with this set of threads. Again it all goes back to the Majority Demographic is merely a tool. It is how the writer chooses to use it that matters.
[EvilAI]UBEROverlord seems to be claiming that it takes a 'truly talented author' to make someone of a majority culture relate to a character who isn't. I can't agree with that, frankly.
But the other way round - people of a cultural minority having trouble relating to majority characters - I can somewhat see. Yes, you're right, the externals shouldn't be a barrier - but when every single character you read or see is different from you in the same significant way, I can see you'd get into a 'what's wrong with my sort of person, then?' attitude. Either in a despairing or an angry tone, depending on the thinker. And when that makes every new instance of a 'not-me' character just another brick in the wall of Something Wrong... yeah, that.
(Obviously I say this as a straight white male with money and a house and children and, uh, basically the only ways I've ever not been cultural majority through and through are a) being a geek, and b) being for a time in a small, 'weird' religion. So, y'know, take it with a grain of sodium chloride)
hS
I've overly complicated my original points. What I'm basically saying is that using the Majority Demographic is neither bad nor good. It is a tool. I think it is a tool of a lazy writer, appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Rereading what you said I claim to be saying I realize I really over-complicated things. What I am saying is that a talented author can make anyone relate to their character regardless of majority, minority, etc. What I am saying is an easy way to make character relatable in some capacity is to pander to the lowest common denominator. At a minimum the reader (presumably in the majority) can say, "That character looks sort of like me." Instant relatability. Is that good? Well probably not. At a minimum it shows a risk adverse writer.
I do not personally like that. I enjoy pushing the envelope when I write. Be it a specific character, genre, location, etc. There is a reason my original fiction is sui generis. I switch the genre up every time I write. And even in my fanfiction I do the same. The only active, the term is used loosely, story I am working on at this point in Potterverse stars a (among other things) female American born to French and Russian expats.
And in the event I further over-complicated things, I will try to make this clear at this point. Using a majority character is a tool, nothing more nothing less. It is the idea that one must have diversity for diversity's sake that bothers me. As long as there is both a) a good reason for it, and b) it makes sense. Diverse characters are great. Ultimately what I am saying is A good writer can make anyone relate to their character regardless of the race, gender, orientation, or ability and the use of a majority character is not inherently bad. But it is inherently lazy.
I hope that clarifies what I was trying to say.
Mostly what I was thinking of is the sort of people who insist that boys are incapable of relating to girl characters, which is insulting all around. Same goes for anyone who might try to insist that straight people can't relate to bi or gay characters, white people can't relate to black characters, etc.
But yeah, fair point re. cultural minorities and the mainstream. I tried to acknowledge that Something Wrong, but may not have succeeded.
~Neshomeh
I guess that I forgot a key sentence in my original post-- people take the "write what you know about" rule a little too literally.
I categorically do not condone the lack of diversity in writing. It is, as you said, boring and close-minded. My statistics-based post is an attempt at explaining the "why" and not the "is it right" of the situation. I apologize for any misunderstanding.
I didn't realize that the UK was starting to lean to the far right. It's happening here in Canada too: our current Conservative government is trying to scare people into believing that there are terrorists lurking around every corner and that the only way to beat them is to submit to the Harper-Overlord. His party has been involved in the robocall scandal, doing pointless things such as renaming government buildings that were formerly Liberal to Conservative party members, removing restrictions on gun control, and trying to encourage US-style pride in Canada's military. We're being turned into an annex of the US over here and nobody is complaining!
Thanet South is my constituency. Here's the front cover of a local magazine (which reminds me, I need to do another column for that...)
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Also, apropos of nothing... how many black agents do we have?
http://ppc.wikia.com/wiki/Tish_Jameson
As for my own cast, let's see...
- Jenni Robinson, pansexual white woman who is also a shape-shifting ethereal godlike being in her off-time. She could theoretically look like anything, but she picks her forms to blend in and has spent a lot of time in mainstream fantasy, sooo....
- Supernumerary, let's call him functionally asexual and aromantic. I almost exclusively play it for laughs, though, so I don't know if it counts.
- Ilraen-Aroline-Fothergill, a blue centaur-alien finding himself in a mostly-human society. I kind of think of him as an adopted kid being raised by parents of a different race. Picking which parts of his two peoples to identify with and adopt for himself is part of his arc. Andalites prefer blondes, this is canon.
- Derik is Pernese, and as such I imagine he's pretty mixed going way back, but since he also looks like Gerard Butler he's basically a dark shade of white. Suffers from mental trauma due to the loss of his dragon... maybe sorta-kinda PTSD-like? I dunno. Also straight and a guy.
- Gall is a HtTYD-verse Viking, but I keep wanting to make her more like a real-world Viking. *shrug* Either way, about as white as they come, and I think straight. If not, she hasn't told me yet.
- Nurse Parwill is an agendered white person from Starfleet. Dunno about their sexual preferences.
- Nurse Elms is a straight white gal who can kick your ass with a frying pan.
- Nurse Immac is dark-skinned, though not black-dark, and from somewhere on the Disc, though I have no idea exactly where. Four-ecks, maybe? I doubt she could've survived to adulthood in Ankh-Morpork....
- Nurse Mirrad is a Minbari from the Babylon 5 universe. Minbari sexuality at least sometimes involves three people, IIRC, but I haven't explored that at all.
- Intern Alex is some flavor of Scandinavian, so like Gall, pretty darn white. I guess he's straight?
I think that's everybody. Some types of diversity are easier than others, I guess.
~Neshomeh
He hasn't admittedly had many appearances yet, but James Pittman is black. Gremlin had a Chinese father and a white mother, although that hasn't really gotten a lot of play due to her also being a metahuman. As for the rest (that have yet been introduced), I've written two white women, one white man, and an artificial intelligence that projects itself as male.
Bulldog-- South African.
The Guardsman-- sticks to dark-skinned regenerations.
And not quite black but still not white:
Frédéric De Grasse: full-blood Chinese (Canton region).
Gaspard De Grasse: mixed-race (white-Chinese).
Nasir Beydoun: Arabic (Lebanese).
Penny Chang: anime!Chinese (Beijing municipality).
Meryem Balbay: Turkish (only mentioned in the recent Rudi's RP).
other than the ones people already listed. Oh, and the Notary, but does that count since she's a Time Lord?
Rina's me, so she's white, but Zeb in human form looks Japanese since Pokemon's a Japanese franchise. Then again, he's not human, so I dunno if that counts, either.
I know Indemaat's Agent Tasmin is black. Um . . . Keily Shinra is Asian, although, like Selene, her author is, too.
Yeah. Lot of white agents. I'm sure there are more non-white ones, but . . . well, I fall into the same trap of defaulting characters to white in my mind. :(
I've been trying to work on this in my spin-off. Doc is me, so he's white, but Vania is at least partly Asian. Séverine is New Caledonian, so of course she's black, and I've decided that Yoof has brown skin under his fur (as opposed to John Candy's brown fur over white skin in his role as Barf in Spaceballs). The kids I recruited from my Epic Mickey mission were initially going to be white, but then I realized since I was going to play with Mollie potentially having "ink powers" from her fic of origin, it made more sense for her to have dark skin anyway. and since she was black, might as well make Ollie black too!
Zee, though he's yet to get a published mission. You'd think after four and a half years with permission I'd have actually finished my first mission, but I keep changing it.
For that matter his current partner, Ecks, is half-Hispanic. Technically half-Mexican, but his family has lived in the States since the 1950s, and he's from the 2070s, and he's never even been to the country now known as Aztlan.
Terri Ryan (Dept. of Personnel, DOGA Archivist) is black, despite what the Multiverse Monitor would have you believe (though I think that did get updated in the end). I also have Selene, who's Chinese, but probably doesn't count because she was created by a half-Chinese girl.
I don't know of any others off the top of my head, though I'm sure there's at least some. Bear in mind, though, that most agents are either 'that really cool fantasy/scifi species' or 'me', so there's quite a bit of selection bias in there.
(Oh, wait, yes I do: Architeuthis is black. I don't know whether her author was or not, but I made an arbitrary decision to make her so)
hS
It's still very possible for people to write stories that are whiteer and straighter than the United States, and they tend to forget that half the population is also female, but I certainly agree with your point and myself have major problems with the Tumblerverse's focus on "representation".
There's also the fact that a lot of stories aren't set in the United States, and wouldn't have the same demographic distribution to start with- one would think it wouldn't require much, if any, cognitive energy to change the distribution of your characters to match, but time and again one would apparently be proved wrong.
Your analysis is spot on. Too many people are too willing to jump to this idea of whitewashing or racism or provincialism or what have you. They often forget the majority demographic. In the United States as you pointed out it is straight white, and even if one were to take Hispanic out it still is majority white.
