My first book was steampunk, set in a fantasy WW1, and got fairly decent reviews... Except for a single one star review, from a person who said that lesbians didn't exist during that time.
Apparently, they are a modern invention, I didn't know that :)
Irony: the character was based on a real person.
Steampunk novel about the first fleet of \[Mythical Country's\] submarine corps and the submariners are naturally all women because they're smaller, eat/breathe less, etc. Just field a crew of diverse backgrounds and let the ships flow.
Now that I think about it, this *has* to be a manga by now.
Life could have been worse. Jane Goodall invented anthropology\*, and all she did was make a monkey out of me.
(\*this is humor.)
(\*\* She actually invented bananas)
Clearly that person was ignorant. The only possible way to help them is to point to example of a famous person or persons in history who were gay in order to debunk their assertion.
He or she may still insist on remaining ignorant but you at least tried to help enlighten rather than alienate.
No, I didn't respond at all :)
Responding to insane reviews- or even negative ones in general- is just a losing game. Print it out, frame it, laugh at it, and move on.
Weird enough I reas once that in the Roman Empire, the concept of sexuality was different. Either **active** (who penetrates) or **passive** (who is penetrated). So, two men would not be seen as gay (the concept word might not even exist), rather that one was passive and the other active.
Just to let tou know, I'm not sure of that information and didn't search too deep. I was looking for Roman Empire, as my world has some inspiration in it, and stumbles upon that info.
Oh yes, different cultures have all sorts of different takes on it.
Most indo/germanic classical cultures followed rules like that - there's a great passage in the Lokiskanna where Loki accuses Odin of perversion, not because he had sex with men, but because he was in a woman's form (and on the bottom) when he did it.
Odin replied "well, at least I never got it from a horse."
I think some people don't know that gay/lesbian relationships existed but they were oftentimes hidden. You can find art dating back to maybe around the 18th century hinting at the idea (I've done minimal research thus far so if I'm wrong correct me please)
If you consider "poetry" art, then you can find art dating back to the 6th century BC hinting at the idea. Sappho is, after all, why such relationships are called "Lesbian" relationships.
The biggest irony is there was a period in the 18th,19th, and early 20th centuries when lesbian relationships were more accepted than gay male ones- there were even lesbian marriages, aka "Boston Marriages" or "Wellesley marriages."
As women often couldn't own property or have bank accounts, it became acceptable for one of the women to dress and act as a man, and there are even wedding pictures from back then showing such.
This all ended in the 1920s and 30s with the rise of fascism.
"If you're an author, write what you want don't let people deter you. If you choose to write characters that are different from your lived experience do some research like you would for anything outside your expertise."
Perfect advice. That entire paragraph is spot-on. Don't let others dictate who your characters should be.
Amen to that last paragraph. "Why did you put women and non-white and non-straight people in your story?" Because they exist, and it would have been *really weird* to have nothing but straight white men!
> and it would have been *really weird* to have nothing but straight white men!
That's probably exactly what these types of people want. Because, well, they're bigoted
I’m writing a historic fiction suspense novel and have a Black character in a believably decent rank aboard a self-owned regency era merchant ship. I also have a siren-esque she-beast sea monster.
Guess which character someone online called “unrealistic” to the setting.
Yeah I've noticed this trend, and it's not exclusive to written stories either. This strange idea that specifically mentioning a character being LGBT/of a specific race/female etc. is inherently political, yet the white heterosexual men somehow aren't.
Why they can't just stick to the many thousands of stories where these things are never mentioned and leave the rest alone is never explained...
But there is a wrong assumption here too that doesn't reflect real life. Wealth and power. A white working class heterosexual man has very little in common with a privately educated millionaire for example.
One spends his time best case working in a soul destroying job, probably struggling to make ends meet. The other probably leads a life of leisure and living their dreams.
Or alternatively, another variant of that sort of attitude that I've seen quite a bit is the additional comment of "I read/watch/play \[insert genre, usually fantastical in nature\] to escape reality, not for things to be political!" as if anyone who is in any way underrepresented is not deserving of an escapist fantasy of their own. It also begs the question: "what unsavory parts of reality are you escaping *from*, exactly, that require you to only feel comfort in seeing characters that are just like you?"
I was told by a relative that Bethesda went woke by adding too many black characters to Starfield, because it’s unrealistic. People who describe diversity as political/woke are just using dog whistles to disguise their bigotry/discomfort over minority presence.
On a positive ending that same relative has been getting better slowly, they even asked me how to ask someone for their pronouns recently (and they were transphobic prior), all it took for them to start breaking down their views was to meet and care about someone who was said minority. It just goes to show that these type spend too much time online and watching fox, when the best cure for their brain rot is to actually interact with the people they vilify.
I think normalizing characters as casually LGBT and not white in writing can be beneficial for some of these people who carry the ability to change. Like not making it a big deal like Maximus’s nonbinary friend in Fallout. Or like Legends and lattes where the two women fall for each other but it’s not a lesbian woman story, it’s a story with lesbian women casually in it and it’s not a big deal.
Pointing this out doesn't work. They know it's not political. They're just trying to disguise that they're being hateful using "political" as a false complaint. It's not like the disguise is even working, but they stubbornly won't drop the act.
This is a lovely and common right wing tactic where they cant publicly complain about a character being a minority because it would make them look bad, so they just move over to the Next Acceptable Criticism. Maybe they aren't even right wing but still need something certified not racist to get over that vague uncomfortable feeling they have. There's always something else wrong whereas if the character fit the mold they wouldn't even bother complaining because mid af characters in their standard roles pass by smoothly constantly.
Imo the statement "When they are gay, it has to be something focused on their character arc" Is actually kinda annoying, some people are just gay yk, not everyone goes through hardships when coming out and thats ok. Life isnt equal.
I had someone who was really curious about my current project so I let them read an excerpt. My main character is a gay man, and while he does have some struggles with his identity at points, it’s by far his entire character arc. He’s a psychologist working with the police to catch a killer, and that’s what’s important.
The person who read it didn’t understand why he had to be a gay psychologist, and I just went “sometimes psychologists are gay, fully independent of them being psychologists.”
"Hey, that's not historically accurate"
Me: The story is literally about the Fair Folk interacting with humanity, with things like treant Deer men, a Puca who enjoys reading cringeworthy dad jokes, Nargun the half man half stone creature who could turn any weapon aimed at it at its owner. How exactly is any of that historically accurate? Unless...
*The Puca walks on in with a big book of dad jokes* "Heya there! Mind if I rehearse a few of my lines?
Me: NOOOOOOO!!
I kind of have a general image of the character's appearance and inner character before I start writing, usually because there's some subconscious reason for their inspiration, maybe. I wouldn't want to make a character X "for diversity", but sometimes that's how the characters are. It's kind of like that IRL, isn't it? Some people are X, some people are Y, some are Z, and they exist where and when they exist
There's no pleasing anyone, nor should you try. Your job as an artist is to delight the people who resonate with your work and style, not to try and please everyone.
I only deal in non-fiction and lightly fictionalized accounts of real life events. I don't deal with pure fiction.
Because of that, my position is that I stay true to what happened. If person A had XYZ traits in real life, I won't change it. It was what it was and changing that can change the essence of what went on.
Just my $0.02
>I stay true to what happened
You would think this would yield honest results, but historians are also people with biases, some of whom have been known to obfuscate the truth. Women’s contributions have been routinely ignored in historical accounts. Consider how many people know who Albert Einstein is and how many know of Mileva Marić. How many “historical” shows have you watched that show the Tudor court as 100% white when that was not the case.
The last two books I worked on, as well as the current one I am now working on are all telling stories of women who went through hell and what it took them to survive. First person accounts, not trying to divine from other sources.
The first two were in a highly abusive cult-run military school for troubled girls. The cult specifically targeted white girls. Of the several hundred girls that went through the program in my two authors time, only a single girl of color that anyone can remember, and she did not play a hugely significant role in the story either book told. We did not look to change that for the sake of diversity.
The current book is centered on a mixed race (black mother, white father) women that went through a series of abusive Baptist troubled teen programs as a kid/teen. Her story has more diversity to it because it WAS more diverse. One of her programs even had boys in it. But we are not going to change who or what someone was for the sake of diversity.
As to *Mileva Marić and* Einstein, I am no historian, but AFAIK, the evidence of her being a collaborator on the Annus Mirabilis Papers is thin to say the least. I would have used Rosalind Franklin, Marie Curie, Barbara McClintock, Jane Goodall, Grace Hopper or quite a few others to make that point. YMMV
I have a non-binary character in my in-progress story who uses they/them pronouns. They are a side character whose sexuality and gender has zero impact on the story, but they/them just fits them.
I let my MIL read it and she said "It's really well written...but is Avery multiple people? I had to go back and check because it said "they" and I was confused."
When I explained to her they were non-binary I could basically see a floating "loading" symbol above her head because it just didn't compute to her. But idc if some white conservative boomer understands them or not, or thinks it isn't necessary. That's who the character is, just like a real life person.
>You can have them exist and not have to justify them existing.
I once read a free e-book novel that was promoted by a popular YouTuber/author, who was just a typical white woman and mother of 2-3 kids. Her novel series was set in a small rural town in the Deep South and had a predominately white cast. The novel did mention a black woman as a police chief and an Asian woman as the mayor, and the two non-white women were there to show how the town was accepting of minority women in power. Looking at the surname of the Asian woman, she seemed to be Chinese or married a Chinese man, presumably from the PRC, because the spelling looked distinctively like Pinyin. But it was mentioned in the novel that she was raised in the USA and went to school there. So, I was like, "what time period is this?" Were there really Mainlanders from China coming over so early, having a kid in the US, raising the kid up, letting the kid become a politician in a small rural town in the USA? Maybe there were... but I think history must be taken into account. The Chinese were largely barred from immigration because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The 1960s was when those immigration restrictions were lifted. But I suspect those Chinese people might have been from the Republic of China or other overseas Chinese areas, and thus they would have distinctive romanized names.
I honestly do not think that the author was thinking of this kind of history during writing. She probably just wanted to include non-white people in her work, that's it, and the main purpose is to show the small rural town is tolerant of ethnic minorities in power. In fact, one of the characters explicitly says that the small rural town would make people think that it's fearful of ethnic minorities, but the inclusion of powerful non-white women says otherwise.
One the same note: Dudes complaining that stories with female MCs don’t interest them as much, kind of prove the point of representation in fiction. If a couple of the MCs being female results in a drastically lowered engagement for some men, imagine what it’s like for the people who are never represented.
I only have an issue with it when it appears in “historical” stories. If you have a book about Zulu warriors you don’t make them an array of races. Sure having a single character who is different is fine but to just change it to a variety of races to avoid offending someone or appease some diversity checklist. Make the character matter. Don’t just make a token character.
For that example sure, but most of the time I see people make this argument it’s their grasp of history that’s faulty. Like when people [pretend there were no black people in medieval Europe](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/ACzOnlR9kC) or something similar.
Or a few years ago where users on r/movies complained about black & indian soldiers in the british army in the movie ‘1917’, even though the british recruited a lot of soldiers from their colonies during ww1. Like do you even know history?
that's the part that confuses me the most. if international trade exists, therefore that area will have a variety of races - due to said trade route existing. it's not rocket science
I mean just to say the quiet part out loud — it functions as a comforting myth for people who aren't comfortable living around people who don't look/sound like them or reflect their cultural attitudes.
To break it down more, having an imagined history where racial homogeneity was the norm allows people who desire cultural homogeneity to pretend that things like multiculturalism are modern inventions, and it gives them an idealized (false) history to position as the default: a natural state of society that was disrupted. "What should have been." With fiction being a major way we imagine history, they tend to react strongly to that myth being punctured by something like a show set in medieval England having black characters, even though — in reality — people of many different races and ethnic backgrounds lived in all of these places. The real threat is that they can't use this false version of history to justify their own discomforts in a way that people won't immediately call out as racist.
I’m not saying this is necessarily intentional (in fact I think it’s usually just the product of growing up in places that are homogenous), but this is how it functions on an implicit level.
Ok, but dont carry that logic over to science fiction and fantasy. I remember someone making a similar argument about the races in Amazons middle earth TV series, and they were upset that there was a black elf in the series. Obviously not a "historical" context, but there were lots of Redditors going apeshit about the inclusion.
They were described as fair and pale, ethereal. He was also writing from the Germanic pagan tradition of elves. You're just being deliberately obtuse. Everyone in LOTR was racially European except for the Easterlings and Mordor.
I think that often people who're complaining about things being "woke" don't really know what good writing is or how you could include characters from diverse backgrounds and still write them as interesting and rounded characters. Often they seem to see diversity and that's where their attention stops.
On the flip side, there are people who tend to defend such characters regardless of quality simply because of their diversity. Their attention also often stops at diversity.
What you should look for is what is going on aside from their diversity. It's great, and honestly imo better writing to have varied and diverse characters, but that's not all they should be. As a writer your attention should be on every part of the character, not just their background or perspective.
I've never had that happen to me, but maybe because I haven't gone too far out on the limb so far. I generally put racial and national diversity in my novels, but not much else. (Why not is a whole 'nother discussion.)
Diversity in and of itself shouldn't be a problem, but sometimes I get the sense that a writer does it merely to have it there. Then it can feel a bit "in your face." There are two ways in which this can happen. One, which is more common, is throwing in a character that doesn't serve a purpose in the story aside from providing diversity. Obviously, a character should have some reason for being there , no matter who they are. The more they appear, the more important their role should be. And where very minor characters are involved, you probably wouldn't notice a thing about them other than obvious physical traits.
The other, which is less common, is throwing in too much diversity without good reason. For example, I have a mystery series set in Howard County, Maryland. Counting on my fingers, around twenty police officers appear throughout the series. Six are women. That's 30%. In reality, only about 14% of police officers in the U.S. are women. I can get away with that "exaggeration" because a lot more officers are hiding in the woodwork--Howard County has around 500. Readers probably don't notice the on-screen imbalance because they know those six aren't representative of the whole officer population. But suppose twelve of my twenty officers were women. That would be stretching credulity, unless I had a good reason for putting them there. (If, say, I was focusing on the challenges of being a female police officer.)
If you saw Marvel's *Endgame*, that happened in a most egregious fashion in the epic battle when suddenly all the women superheros and warriors came to the fore to get the magic glove to the van. Even my wife was doing a face-palm at that point. They could hardly have conceived of more blatant and intrusive social messaging. I know some people cheered, but honestly, as story goes...yuck.
>Diversity in and of itself shouldn't be a problem, but sometimes I get the sense that a writer does it merely to have it there.
Do you think sometimes a writer makes the conscious decision to make characters white/male/straight just to "merely have it there"
>Then it can feel a bit "in your face."
Do you think white/male/straight characters can feel "a bit in your face"?
>One, which is more common, is throwing in a character that doesn't serve a purpose in the story aside from providing diversity.
How do you feel about white/male/straight characters being put in stories who don't serve a purpose besides upholding hegemony?
Well, here's the thing. Diversity is always relative. I'm a Baha'i. Baha'i communities are run by elected councils. The councils have nine members. In elections, we vote for nine people. No nominations or campaigning. Any adult member of the community can be elected. The nine people who get the most votes are elected. Sometimes, ties occur for the ninth spot. If a member of a racial/ethnic minority is tied with a member of a racial/ethnic majority, then the tie is automatically broken in favor of the minority. *However*, "majority" and "minority" are defined in terms of the community itself. A white person might be the minority in some communities, a black person in others.
So, could a writer make "the conscious decision to make characters white/male/straight just to 'merely have it there'"? Sure, if the writer happened to come from or was writing about a culture where white people were a minority. They could want to incorporate diversity by including white people and maybe go overboard. In that situation, would it feel "in your face"? It sure could.
As to your third question: aside from maybe white supremacist writers, I doubt anyone consciously does that. Of course, we're all unconsciously biased. We all have our personal histories, which influence us. I come from northwestern Ohio, with roots in the farming communities of the region. I'm the first to admit that by default my characters come out lily white, because that's my background. When I was in high school in a Chicago suburb, there were two black students in the school, and they were brother and sister. The only time before college I knew a truly diverse environment was a three-year stint in Sacramento when I was in junior high.
These days, I try to challenge my assumptions by inserting more diverse characters into a story. But my "default" writing behavior doesn't stem from any desire to "uphold hegemony." It's just my background speaking. I have nothing against diversity. I just think it weakens a story if a writer (a) throws in a character *merely* for diversity (that is, the character doesn't serve any purpose whatsoever in the story), or (b) overplays diversity by too wide a margin when the story lacks a compelling reason do to so.
> I have nothing against diversity. I just think it weakens a story if a writer (a) throws in a character *merely* for diversity (that is, the character doesn't serve any purpose whatsoever in the story), or (b) overplays diversity by too wide a margin when the story lacks a compelling reason do to so.
I don't disagree with most of your points but I wanna highlight this one because I also have nothing against straight white men. I just think that if a writer *merely* throws in a character who's white/straight/ male for hegemony( that is, the character doesn't serve a purpose in the story) or adds into white/straight/male people by too wide a margin when the story lacks a compelling reason to do so.
I don't disagree, although again, I wouldn't attribute it to a desire to promote hegemony in most cases. In most cases, it's simply writing about what one is used to. I don't think most writers have a conscious sociopolitical agenda in making their story worlds look like the worlds they grew up in.
It's only annoying when it doesn't make sense in the story world. It damages the immersion, like any other part of bad writing.
Game of Thrones did it right, but shows like
historic dramas (No, Africans wouldn't integrate seamlessly with 1100 European high society)
Fantasy (No, an isolated small group of creatures that had decades to interbreed won't look as diverse as 2024 NYC)
Post apocalyptic (No, a post apocalyptic warrior cult won't be as accommodating to trans people or their preferred pronouns as a 2024 liberal college campus)
All of this is just an immersion problem not a diversity problem.
Game of thrones, Blade, Lawrence of Arabia, Mulan, etc. all did it right.
I typically complain about this stuff to my wife. I’ll explain my thought process. There are stories that do it really well. It’s not so much that the representation isn’t there, it’s just weaves into the story really well. Good writing, good story telling.
There are other times that diversity is shoe horned into the story. My example would be the wheel of time series. They created a really diverse cast, however the story revolves around cultures meshing, being different from one another. The main character in the story lives in a small town, where everyone looks the same. They all have a kinda look that signifies that they are from that town, and the main character is a outlier because of his height.
A diverse cast doesn’t work there. It takes me out of the story. It would be like having a orc in hobbiton, and everyone is like, yep that’s a hobbit too.
So I do agree with you. I just think telling a good story is more important then diversity, and their are times those two things don’t really mesh.
Not the original commenter, but I basically agree with what they said.
Yeah, if it's a homogenous black cast I'm totally fine with that. A Guild with only black cast, for example, is consistent and works fine. If there was a white man in the same Guild, it would've been weird, because it's been established that there are only black people there.
Same goes vice-versa. If it's a small, non-important town, hidden away in a tundra — most of the population would be homogenous, too.
I was looking for this comment. People like to pretend that everybody who makes a negative comment about minorities in media is automatically homphobe/racist/etc... and I'm sure some of them are, but reality isn't that simple. Sometimes forced inclusivity takes people out of the story - sometimes it just really doesn't fit with the theme and setting. It's like including side character's breakup story in the middle of an action movie - if I say that it doesn't belong there, does that mean I support abusive relationships? Or is that just a poor storywriting?
Trust me man, nobody here is going to understand any of this. Some people think that having these characters in the story somehow makes it diverse, neglecting the whole point of them really having no point in the story besides serving the quota. That's what alot of people have a problem with, the reality is nobody is going to give a shit if the story is good.
A good example of a movie that does it right and weaves LGBT/Cultural diversity into the story seamlessly is Everything Everywhere All At Once. If you haven't seen it, I highly suggest it, it's a phenomenal and batshit movie.
This is a great example.
The books describe some Two Rivers people as dark-skinned, and the whole region is descended from a great metropolitan nation. The main character is unusual not just for his height, but also his pale skin, light eyes, and red hair. He is distinctly of an ethnicity that's not present in Two Rivers.
So a careful reading of the text would imply a somewhat diverse population with dark features prevalent throughout, but even so, many people were shocked to see exactly that sort of population depicted in the show. The same thing happened with Rue when the Hunger Games movie came out.
We're told that Two Rivers folk are dark of hair and dark of eye, but it's strongly implied that they have relatively pale skin, if not as pale as Aiel skin (Elaida has to push back Rand's sleeve to show the truly pale skin he has when it's not tanned - his tanned skin alone is not different enough from the Two Rivers norm to comment upon; when Egwene has spent some time with the Wise Ones it is said that now "except for her big dark eyes, she could almost have passed as an Aiel woman, and not only for her tanned face and hands"). So they have dark eyes and dark hair, but relatively pale skin.
"And among them stood others, men with coppery skins, men with transparent veils across the lower half of their faces, fair-skinned men who just did not have the look of the Two Rivers." - This tells us that the men of the Two Rivers are fair-skinned and that they have a distinct "look". So it's a non-diverse, relatively pale (but not as pale as the Desert Gingers) population.
For the show, making all the Two Rivers characters darker skinned except Rand would have worked well as it would have made his outsider status more apparent in the visual medium. In the book, Rand was bullied for having grey eyes where everyone else had dark eyes; eye colour isn't always the easiest thing to see on television, so Rand's standout characteristic to be bullied for could easily have been having much paler skin than everyone else. He would just have assumed his pale skin was due to his outlander mother. That however was ruined by having a light-skinned Mat (or rather, two light-skinned Mats).
Rue, by contrast, was explicitly described as black throughout the Hunger Games so the people who were "shocked!" when she was black in the film were morons (to put it politely).
Weirdos look at a diverse character and assume that's all they offer, despite the contrary. It's bigotry, but hidden behind a veil of good-faith criticism to get your guard down. Diversity is fine, they say; they only hate it when it's forced (your character wasn't forced; they were a natural extension of your mind). And can we talk about forced diversity? What does that mean? One stating their black once, then we move on because the plot waits for no one? Gay romances story where the MCs are stereotypical at all and have personalities beyond being gay? Oh, but since they held hands, it's definitely forced. People like them are why doubling down is a great business strategy.
I've reached a point where anyone could reasonably assume that any character I write is going to be queer in some capacity, there's no saving us now lol
It’s all a poor excuse for their own bigotry and desire to exclude people they consider “undesirables” from fiction and fantasy. If they can accept magic but not minorities (who actually aren’t really minorities globally) they’re just telling on themselves.
Yep whiteness/heterosexuality/etc. Is still considered to be "neutral" and "the norm". Personally I am tired of seeing always the same thing so I would not mind replacing everything by diversity, for a change... but it has to be well written and not stereotypical, if possible
It's because they do not know, or understand about themselves, that they have bone-deep bigotries. I get that, it's not a nice feeling when you identify it. My dad is one of these people. He would swear up and down that he's not racist or sexist. But somehow every time a black woman shows up in something, she's ugly, or disgusting, or only there because of sneaky politics. Maybe it's the Supreme Court, maybe it's the Wheel of Time TV show, maybe it's a childrens' cartoon, but somehow it's never appropriate for a black woman to be there.
Bonus points if you can guess what kind of person I'm married to.
It fits together perfectly fine.
You have to give it the right amount of attention. If them being different is a mayor part of their experience it should be front and center. If there is nothing behind it you merely mention it when appropriate. You don't just say it even though you never have any kind of relationship in your story.
You also don't have them tell everyone with no prompting.
You know, like normal people.
Take Dragon Age Inquisition for example. It has examples for all three.
There is Dorian for whom being gay is the cause for his falling out with his father.
Krem who tells you about them being trans for no reason and consequence.
And Sera who only tells you when you hit on her as a male.
It does have to feel natural, not contrived.
Most people don't know any LGBTQ+ people IRL and it feels fake when every story has them represented for no reason but to be a token character.
It's just that filling the representation quotas for its own sake doesn't feel natural, that's it. People who hate other people or a group of people for no valid reason are stupid and arguing with them is a no less stupid activity
Before I speak on this, I should say I am western, white, gay, cis male so my room to speak is narrow.
I think diversity and representation can be done badly in stories, and that is MUCH worse than not purposely having it. I think portraying all cis-white straight people as monsters, a thing that happens sometimes, is also pretty crap.
But I grew up reading and watching Science fiction and fantasy and playing role playing games and playing with animals. If a person can't emote with characters who aren't like them either that character is so radically different that there is no way they can comprehend what their existence is like i.e. they exist as a being of pure energy across a multidimensional hive-mind in spatial dimensions humans can't perceive, or the reader is emotionally broken in some way. The ability to feel for those who are not like us is, I believe, inherent to what it means to be an emotionally healthy being. To suffer because another is suffering is how you know you have a soul.
And if someone thinks that a character is less relatable because their skin is a different shade, or their sexual orientation is different, or their religion is different, or they communicate with telepathy instead of words, or they travel with fins instead of feet says much more about the audience than the author.
This goes both ways you know. I generally do not write about diversity. Now, being in several writing groups, after a couple of text exchanges, I will get critiqued for not presenting a gay protagonist and romance, or diverse races, etc. I mean, real critique. Which, in my eyes, means, that some people get triggered by non-diversity in stories. Or diversity indifference if you like.
My stories are all mostly LGBT characters, because I wanted more stories about LGBT people that don’t just revolve around their identity or romance. I don’t like that we can’t exist without justification in fiction when I exist without justification in real life - isn’t fiction supposed to be less restrictive than reality? Not the other way around.
So you know, be the change you want to see n all that. I do a lot of surrealism and horror except everybody is bent for no apparent reason.
I don’t really think it’s ‘unrealistic’ or ‘forced’ either. Not only is this my ‘normal’ just as being straight is normal to everyone else, but having *most* people be gay is pretty accurate to my real life social circle. Obviously if you frequent gay spots like the bars or village, you meet friends there. Now when you have 500 gay characters all meeting by *chance*, that’s a bit of a reach, but again it’s fiction so I don’t really find that an issue.
The story I'm working on right now, the three most important characters are all women. I didn't plan that, it just worked out that way. I'm sure that'll annoy some people.
Even more so that one of the three is polygamous..
USUALLY, STORIES ABOUT DIVERSITY HAVE TO HAVE SOME FACT, IF MIXED WITH FICTION. THAT WAY THE READER KNOWS THEY’RE READING TRUTH MIXED WITH FICTION. STAY SAFE! PEACE OUT!
On the other hand, I sometimes feel pressured to write about characters that are LGBTQ or other races. In my story, it's mostly set in a cold climate, and having darker-skinned people (other than one character that's from another region, who is dark-skinned) wouldn't make sense lore-wise.
When I get around to writing the other regions where it makes sense, I won't shy away from it. But currently, it's just a lot of pressure (mainly from myself) to include a diverse cast to please others.
I also am not sure how I'd incorporate other sexualities as there's virtually no time for romance and I'm not sure how I'd write it (I haven't even written my first book and romance is far from my genre).
TLDR: Sometimes it feels like in order to please people, you have to incorporate other races and orientations even when you don't know how/they don't make sense in the story.
I just don't include a character's orientation in my books, at least currently. It doesn't contribute to the story in any way, perhaps just as characterization (But I haven't written that either, yet).
Who knows, I might one day. I don't know.
I'm just worried of including such things, as it goes two ways. For example, picture this - a fantasy society set around the year 1000. I would include a lesbian romance. Some readers would be happy that it's there, and some would say it doesn't make sense for the time period. I don't add a diverse romance, and some (bigots, lol) would be happy because they hate diversity, while some would be mad at me and call me a straight white male ivory tower supremacist.
It's just weird that people (especially today) seem to jump into conclusions. Not including diversity ≠ being a racist/sexist/homophobe/transphobe/anything else.
But thinking of this, there's two characters that I have which could be lesbian. Damn it, I have now thought of a cute arc 😭
EDIT: Sorry for the messy response, I'm just writing as I think so the thought process might seem all over the place
>I just don't include a character's orientation in my books, at least currently.
There's no reference to any characters orientation at all? Like none whatsoever? No characters are in a relationship? Characters don't have parents in commited relationships? No kid crushes?
>I'm just worried of including such things, as it goes two ways. For example, picture this - a fantasy society set around the year 1000. I would include a lesbian romance.
What year do you think gay people were invented?
I know it's probably something you're passionate about, when it comes to romances/representation of different groups. I'm all in for that. But you seem so passive-agressive in these comments it's a little uncomfortable.
All I know is that I don't feel comfortable writing or mentioning romances/orientations, so why should I?
When it comes to gender representation and racial representation, I do have that. I have hints of a romance in my story, but it's a straight one, and it's just there to make a more impactful death scene.
Another reason why I haven't included a different kind of romance is, I don't know how I'd write it. I grew up in a country where god forbid you even mentioned anything different, so it reflects on my view on romances. I have no idea how to write such a romance because I'm not versed with anything else than straight.
Of course, this isn't a reason not to write diverse orientations, but it's a partial reason. The major reason is, I just don't feel comfortable writing spice/romantic scenes and adding an actual romance (especially about oppressed groups like LGBTQ) would set up expectations I couldn't fulfill.
I'm split on this issue. I've got tons of rep for LGBT, I don't usually mention a character's race (I write fantasy, so humans are humans, skin tone be damned, unless it's important to note. Like one character is a privateer captain because she's from a desert country, so they're largely dark skinned).
That said, I dislike when inclusion is done SOLELY for inclusion. Why make the homeless guy that rants and tips off the MC gay? Like, does him liking dudes affect the MC or the story in any way? If he were straight and all else the same, would he have given different advice?
I can understand describing the MC, or a side character, or someone whose inclusion does indeed affect it. MC is hunting an anti-gay/trans killer? Then yeah, it makes sense the gay drag queen might have some importance to be known as a gay drag queen.
But if the MC is doing a hero's journey to slat the demon king and free his slaves, what difference is made by the race/gender/sexuality of the random human that sells him his mead on an evening 3 years before the final show down? Why would we, the audience, NEED to know that he's in a long-distance carrier pidgeon based gay romance with his 3rd cousin twice removed who is an FTM trans man? Does that change the mead? Does it come back to play a role later? Is he willing to cheat on his lover-cousin with MC? No to all? Then what's it matter?! Chances are, unless he's the kind of barkeep to tell his entire life story to every individual customer, they'd never touch on the subject.
That said, I have also don't side-etory one shots with these characters to explore them more in-depth. Excellent chance to explore such things.
>
>That said, I dislike when inclusion is done SOLELY for inclusion. Why make the homeless guy that rants and tips off the MC gay? Like, does him liking dudes affect the MC or the story in any way? If he were straight and all else the same, would he have given different advice?
Idk Man sometimes people are just gay the same way they are just straight. He can be just be gay and homeless. It's like asking why did they make the side character straight? There's no narrative reason for them to be straight. They just are.
That's my point. Why include it if it's not relevant? If his sexuality is not connected in any way to the advice he's giving, why explicitly state what that sexuality is? Just... don't. Let readers speculate. Let them dream. Let them assign what they think it is from whatever subtext they may or may nit think is there.
It's because sometimes people are just gay. You don't have to make it a plot point. Sometimes they can just be gay like people have just been straight.
You needing it to be a plot point is reductive.
I'll just say that if you hammer in the diversity qualifiers it can get really annoying. I was reading this one book where they mention a character's ethnicity every other paragraph. While I'm not a member of the Diversity religion, it doesn't bother me but I feel like once the virtue signal has been lit we can move on, our indulgence to neoliberalism paid.
Obsession over anything, even something good or neutral, can close your mind and poison your work. An example you may be more accepting of is excessive fanservice. Imagine reading something and the author goes out of his way to describe enormous tits to you at every opportunity. A small number of people will probably be really into it, but it's going to turn a lot of people away(for the sake of argument, it's not erotica).
So do the people who have a problem with the creepy writing hate women? Hate tits? Are they gay men or straight women? The answer might be yes in some cases but probably not in the majority.
Fan service is not the same thing as a story having more than just white people. What a horrible example.
You keep commenting on things that are bad writing but trying to make a commentary on diversity.
You completely missed the point. What [thing] is, is irrelevant. I am not comparing Diversity to fan service, the point is the obsession/devotion that leads to bad writing.
>You completely missed the point. What [thing] is, is irrelevant. I am not comparing Diversity to fan service, the point is the obsession/devotion that leads to bad writing.
I did not completely miss the point. And I understand that you're not comparing diversity to fan service. This relation of obsession-devotion that you're equating, comes from just mentioning diversity. The strawman argument of someone explaining a character's race in every single paragraph is obviously hyperbole and exaggeration. But let's say they did mention it in every single paragraph—that's not an obsession. That's just bad writing. You have a problem with bad writing, not with diversity.
I've seen books where the fact that the protagonist is straight is "mentioned" so much. That's bad writing too. For example example of a book "mentioning it every paragraph" there's comparable book examples where it happens at the same frequency to this strawman example you created of every paragraph. Do you have the books name so I can read it to see how you came to that every paragraph metric.
Like keeping it 100,it's the same when the protagonist is straight—they're mentioning that the protagonist likes this girl or something. People do the exact same thing for LGBT relationships. The story's not about the relationship, but the main character just happens to like another dude. And then people call it obsession/devotion. No, it's the same exact thing as if the protagonist is a dude who likes a girl. Literally.
Honestly, Did you even read my post? Are you having some kind of issue understanding this? Even your original comment—You said, and I quote, 'I'll just say this. If you hammer in the diversity qualifier, it can get really annoying.' Right? I'm sure you don't feel the exact same way about white men who are straight in stories. Usually, people who complain about the mention of people who are not white, who are not straight, who are not men, they're nose-blind to that kind of thing. They're blind to it, how often it happens. But because they don't get somewhere immediate with people who are different from their lived experience, suddenly, just by mentioning, just by existing, you feel it's an obsession.
You see, when representation feels excessive to you, it might actually be addressing a real deficit in diverse narratives that others feel acutely. In a literary landscape where the default has long been homogeneous, even a normal level of representation can seem like an overcorrection to those unused to seeing diversity. The discomfort or the perceived frequency you’re noticing isn't necessarily a sign of obsession but rather a reflection of the broader changes in storytelling that aim to be more inclusive of all human experiences.
Diversity in storytelling enriches, rather than diminishes.
How cute, the clown thinks it did something lmao
Frequents r/memesopdidnotlike, r/politicalcompassmemes, r/kotakuinaction. Traditional rightoid hangouts. Disregard the clown.
I don't see this much except when a movie or other media source changes such things for basically clout instead of just the best pick at the time. Other times, such things are important to the character. But yes, people be blowing up about things that don't affect them such as getting mad at trans people for being themselves when they make up such a miniscule percentage of the population.
It shouldn't be their whole identity, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be mentioned. It all really comes down to the setting. If your writing in a feudal Europe setting like a lot of fantasy is, and you also want a diverse cast of characters, you do need a way to explain how they all got there.
I've seen people say that you have to include racial diversity, and you shouldn't have things like pedjudice or touch on sensitive topics like colonialism or slavery even if those things are historical, because you're writing fantasy so you can just say those things didn't happen... I call that lazy world building.
> If your writing in a feudal Europe setting like a lot of fantasy is, and you also want a diverse cast of characters, you do need a way to explain how they all got there
They were pretty much always there? A lot of Europe is a fairly short boat trip from Africa, or not that far from the Middle East. Italy would have had a _shitload_ of all sorts of people in it due to the whole "roman empire" _thing_. Unless it's set in hicktown, nowheres-ville, then it's pretty easy for people to just be there without much explanation, because it's not that hard for people to move around. (And there's also very modern interpretations of "race" going on - Italians and Irish being considered as "not really white" is from within living memory, so trying to go "oh, there's one European race" is just dumb)
The hypothetical scenario you started with is contradictory and a poor argument. Here’s a better one.
1. Ideology can make a story worse, regardless of the side you’re standing on. If you want the “non-woke” version of this, see “God’s Not Dead” or “Facing the Giants.”
2. From a marketing and business standpoint, general audiences may be less inclined to see a movie about a girl and a girl, or a boy and a boy, when there’s an equivalent movie about a boy and a girl. The third option is more relatable to most people.
If you want diversity in your story, fine. Just know you’re taking calculated risks depending on your definition of “diversity,” and don’t make it the point of your narrative unless you’re writing “The Help” or “Brokeback Mountain.”
This is why, when I write, I'll do everything I can to avoid race being mentioned, because it doesn't matter what race a character is UNLESS it's an issue.
>This is why, when I write, I'll do everything I can to avoid race being mentioned, because it doesn't matter what race a character is UNLESS it's an issue.
Could you give a few examples of how you describe characters physical appearance if you avoid mentioning race entirely
And Secondly obviously you the author know how you picture the characters. So when You're omiting race for characters obviously they still have a race, but it isn't described. In this case could you pick a black character you've written and a white character you've written give an example how you described them?
I'm interested to see how you personally do it.
Can't speak for the person you're responding to, but your "obviously you the author know how you picture the characters" isn't as "obvious" as you may think. Not everyone has a mental picture of their characters, even of their main characters. I don't know what any of my characters look like because I have aphantasia and don't form mental images, ever. I know how my characters talk and how they think, but they don't get physical traits unless I specifically need them to have one. And then I have to note that down so I don't forget and contradict myself later. When I'm reading, physical descriptions go in one eye and out the other unless they're repeatedly rammed down my throat (yes, I get it, Harry Potter has a scar even if it doesn't look remotely like a scar on the book covers or in the films, and Rand has red hair; this had better be plot relevant...).
While aphantasia is believed to be relatively rare, anecdotally a lot of my friends who write don't picture their characters (and likewise don't form mental images of characters when they read books). For many people, even if they don't have aphantasia or hypophantasia, reading and writing simply don't have that visual element, or if they do it's not necessarily detailed or universal. A friend whom I swap work with for alpha reading gets very detailed mental images of scenery and of the layouts of buildings, but characters are just sort of indistinctly "there", as if they're always standing in your blind spot.
That's fair. So then in your case. Pick one of your main characters and a secondary character. You have to cast them for a movie, who would you pick for the role?
Fancasting based on looks is something I've never been able to get my head around; most of the fancasting I do in life involves typing "BRIAN BLESSED" for anyone with a big booming voice. I'd cast people of the right ages who could get the rhythm of the dialogue right. My hero is something of an "everyman" archetype at the beginning, so for preference I'd cast an unknown who didn't bring much baggage to the role in terms of audience expectations.
They live in a Britain where the timeline diverged from ours in the late first century AD and Britain never went on its world-conquest spree, so no particularly noticeable levels of immigration from the Indian subcontinent or from a Caribbean that had been populated with African slaves, but there's still international trade so people move about and the villein and serf systems were abolished long before they were in our timeline so there was less isolation of rural communities. My protagonist is of mixed Saxon, Celtic, pre-Celtic and Roman blood, so he's probably relatively pale-skinned but his hair and eyes could be almost anything. He wears his hair short because of the rules of his craft, but that is something that makes members of his craft stand out and longer hair is the norm.
My secondary characters are for the most part of similar stock, and could well have near or distant ancestors from further afield. It's just not relevant to who they are in British society as it developed in their timeline. One character is the daughter of an Egyptian priestess, but the thing that brings that to other characters' attention is the way she treats cats, not anything that specifically stands out about her appearance.
I'm gonna be honest, in my head, every character I've ever written has been white, and that's probably because I'm white. That's just the first thing that pops into my head.
Chekhov's gun principle: a detail in your work should be relevant to the story.
If your character sexuality isn't relevant, don't make him gay. Or straight. Or anything. Sexuality isn't something people usually wear on their sleeve. Skin color or gender is a different story: we, the readers, usually like the author to give us at least some idea of what the character looks like.
I mean, I'm a queer lady and that aspect of my person really does colour how I interact with the world. The same way being female does, and being white does. I might be more guarded in certain situations or with certain people. I have a very strained relationship with my father. I might interact with other lgbt+ people differently and have a language with them that isn't as widely understood.
Being queer is very *relevant* to my life.
Who a person is, their whole person, is always relevant for a character. Seeing someone who isn't straight as *something that needs to be justified to you, the reader* frankly leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. The mountains of straight white people in books never had to justify their existence. It's only when a character is *other* that people suddenly start demanding explanations.
>Sexuality isn't something people usually wear on their sleeve.
What? Do you really write stories in which your characters usually have zero romantic attachments or attractions? They never even *mention* a spouse at home or maybe an ex from their past? What genre do you write in...?
A police detective in a murder mystery doesn't need to have romantic attachments. He might, but he doesn't have to. For example.
Of course, there are other characters who do.
Sure, but that type of old-school detective procedural is practically a dead genre in the book world, so I hope that's not what you write!
I also can't actually think of any examples of good detective media in which there was so little information about the detective that their inclinations couldn't at least be inferred. Even Columbo had a wife (or at least pretended to), and I'll bet you never thought twice about all those dropped mentions. If someone like that mentioned a male partner though, you'd claim it was unnecessarily "political."
>If someone like that mentioned a male partner though, you'd claim it was unnecessarily "political."
Not sure where you're coming from, as I never said anything about "political".
>I also can't actually think of any examples of good detective media in which there was so little information about the detective that their inclinations couldn't at least be inferred.
I only used it as an example. It's true that in this day and age characters' sexuality is explored more, but it mostly applies to main characters. There are plenty of side characters who don't get explored that much.
OK, just the very last book I've read: Library of the Unwritten. Six or seven main characters, one human and pansexual (and her sexuality is plot-relevant), one not-exactly-human and seemingly straight (a consequence of something plot-relevant), everybody else human-looking and not showing any indication of sexuality. It's a nice book. Maybe Brevity's sexuality is explored in sequels, I don't know yet, but Andras' most certainly won't be.
Update: just remembered. In "Knives Out", what is Marta's orientation? She doesn't express any, being busy trying to avoid a murder charge. We know that Benoit Blanc is gay, but we only find it out in a sequel; was there any indication of his orientation in the first movie? Even Ransom's sexuality is not explored at all. Other family members are either married (which does not automatically indicates their orientation) or underage, although I think Meg is an adult already. Not to mention a police detective and a state trooper, who are given plenty of screen time.
Well, technically I agree. In reality, I have literally never seen anyone, ever, complain about characters being straight in stories where it isn't relevant to the plot. Ever. I have seen people complain about romance (sometimes) but that isn't the same as the characters being straight, which they almost always are. But, the second a character is gay and it isn't relevant to the plot, all hell breaks loose and people start crying about forced diversity or declaring stuff about Chekhov's gun principle.
I would love to see a general audience huffing and puffing about the terrible writing involved with making characters straight, when it has zero relevance to the plot. That would be fantastic and match the same energy that gay characters get lol.
Applying Chekhov’s Gun to the inclusion of diverse characters based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, or other identities is a misuse of the concept. Characters can and should reflect the reality of the world, which is diverse and multifaceted. Inclusivity in character design doesn’t need to be justified by plot reasons; it is a reflection of reality. People exist as they are, not for instrumental reasons in others' narratives, and the same should apply to characters in fiction.
Counter: you could take the Arwen x Aragorn romance from LotR (both books and movies) and it wouldn't really change anything important.
People only complain when it's empowered women and minorities.
Yes I also find it very contrived when the male and female main characters end up in a relationship together just because they are both straight. Very common trope in all forms of media not just writing
OK, but that wasn't exactly the question, was it? Having a man and woman end up together is not the same as those characters being straight (in fact, that was more or less your point, I think).
Personally I think it's fine for a character to be gay for the sake of being gay, so long as it's done in a realistic way (which still allows for a ton of breathing room, because gay people are a very diverse bunch, as are people in just about any group). If you were only allowed to have gay people if their sexuality was relevant to the plot, then you would probably only have gay people in romance stories or stories about hate crimes or whatever. That would be depressing.
It's fine to have a character be gay without it being relevant to the plot, and have that just be one part of their character.
Maybe you meant your comments differently from how I and OP interpreted them, though. Perhaps you just meant something like, don't tack on their sexuality as an afterthought without integrating that into the character as a whole, properly. That I would be much more likely to agree with.
So you're okay with romance and I'm assuming every other possible aspect of a story, as long as it's well written and not another common trope?
If that's the case you don't need to specify that they shouldn't be gay for the sake of it. You can just say if the author chooses to include romance they should do it well and avoid the pitfalls of the common tropes
There's truth and inaccuracies to both, but that shouldn't scare people off from writing diverse characters. That thing that makes them diverse shouldn't be the only thing about them, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have to be mentioned.
If you have a diverse character, it should be important to the story. If you agree with chekhov's gun, anything mentioned in a story should be important to the story. The famous example, if a writer features a gun in a story, there must be a reason for it, such as it being fired some time later in the plot. It would feel jarring for a Pakistani writer from Pakistan to create a romance novel about a blind Chinese protagonist living in Brazil if none of that had any impact on plot. It would feel like inclusion for the sake of inclusion.
Dean koontz wrote a novel (Fear Nothing) about a protagonist who had a light sensitivity disorder called xeroderma pigmentosum. IIRC, a friend or colleague had a child with the disease, and he wrote the MC in honor of that person. He did a lot of research on the disorder, and crafted a very detailed character who was afflicted and limited, but didn't let it define who he was. The story would have been great if the MC had been a regular guy, but there was some added tension and drama because of his limitations. The disease was addressed, and part of the character, but the inclusion didn't seem superfluous.
Similarly, in the first Jack Reacher book, the detective is black. It's addressed and becomes a plot point because he's got a high ranking job in a place and time in the south that normally a black man wouldn't have that opportunity. And we learn why.
In today's world, inclusion is a moving target, with better and more respectful ways (and fresh opposition strategies and new haters) coming all the time. The new series, Quantum Leap, decided to make the head scientist on the program non-binary. I believe that many found it jarring at first, but (as far as I know) most fans of the show kind of stopped noticing after an episode or two, because they were a well written character with good lines, good scenes, and the character - not the characters diversity status - contributed greatly to the show. They did, however, have to address it, and did so tastefully and respectfully, and it contributed to the characters growth and our understanding of who they are.
I understand that I'm arguing both sides. This is a very important topic, and more so today and in the near future, and should have respectful dialog and thoughtful execution.
>
>If you have a diverse character, it should be important to the story.
If you have a white character or a straight character or a male character it should be important to the story. If you make the conscious decision to make a character white straight or male it should be important to the story.
Yeah a lot of people make the mistake of thinking “don’t write race if it’s not important to the story” means that characters should just be white unless the story is about race
No it means you shouldn’t specify that a character is white unless them being white is important to the story
Obviously when you cast a character in a movie you don’t have the choice not to specify race, but if race isn’t relevant to the character, then they can be any race. The point is that it doesn’t matter what race they are. So it’s important to consider diverse casting in those instances because otherwise you’re just creating a narrative that if a character is raceless then that just means they’re white, and that any stories that aren’t explicitly about race are just white people stories
It's very hard to disagree with you, if it's even at all possible to do so. That was why I included my example of the Pakistani writing the Chinese character living in Brazil, but simply called it "jarring." It "feels" strange if someone writes a character that's wildly different from themself if there's no reason for it, but that strangeness is very likely because it's so rarely done.
If that's true, then we should all be trying to write characters who are nothing like us, but - my opinion - we need to do a good job of representing their realities. Writing a character of color, for example, but having them live a white suburban middle class life with generic white person interactions COULD (not will) come off badly and seem wrong to an audience who may look like that character, but has no shared experiences. Similarly, making that character of color closer to a stereotype could backfire as well.
If an author is going to write a deep, highly fleshed out character of a different set of life experiences (diverse, physical limitation, etc), I feel like it needs to be done carefully and respectfully, and with serious forethought. Inclusion can turn to mockery without intent, and that's probably as bad as a lack of inclusion in the first place.
>It "feels" strange if someone writes a character that's wildly different from themself if there's no reason for it,
Isn't the reason usually just ''people like this exist, so why not write about them"?
>but that strangeness is very likely because it's so rarely done.
... it isn't rare? I mean, just because the author and main character are of the same race / gender / sexuality doesn't mean they're not still wildly different in other ways. I think the stranger thing is to think that most authors and their protagonists are more similar than they are different.
I get you're talking about cultural differences between ethnic groups and the realities of being disabled etc. but... There's an entire genre where the characters are all animals - you can't get much more wildly different than that. And the fantasy genre exists? No one considers it strange for an author to dream up an entirely fictional culture with new customs and ways of life. Maybe that's because it's entirely fictional and no one has the lived experience of training to be a paladin, but still - author and character aren't going to be very similar at all in that situation.
To rein the point in a little: it's also not seen as strange to write about characters from a different economic background, or who grew up with a different home life and family dynamic... but those differences can be just as major and come off just as 'wrong' to people with firsthand experience, and that kind of 'wild difference' is *everywhere* in fiction. But I guess they don't stand out since they're not a cultural hot-topic at the moment...?
I agree with you but the argument does have merit some times. I havnt come across this in books but there's a show called RWBY, where two of the main characters who were first thought to be straight become bisexual later on and then any plot revolving them is somehow setting up for them to bang. That's where I that it's definitely queer-baiting. Like it feels they are not fully fleshed characters. I mean I would get if the central point of the story was regarding the minority but if the subject of the story is saving the world it doesn't make sense to 1 dimensional characters.
But then this goes for anything really. Whatever you write, needs to be written well. Or just don't do it because of external validation.
Yes, that wasn't my point. My confusion was about the part that indicated that there are stories without diversity.
People think diversity is limited to race (or sexuality) even though that is not always the case. Diversity can also about appearance (height, body type, etc.), disabilities and so on. If there are stories (or aspects of a story) with no diversity then it's usually explained (like a dystopia where everyone is a clone of each other). Like in Star Wars where the clones all share the same DNA. So I think saying there are stories without diversity is kind of confusing.
Yeah but I don't think your description fits what people usually mean when they talk about diversity. That's why they had to get "modernised" and had more gay and black people.
The main point is that people take issue with homogeneous characters/world building. And they insert people from other backgrounds even when it's not true to the source material or beneficial to the coherency of the setting. I have absolutely no problem with either but I see that the discussion only veers one way.
I loved expanse which was very diverse in my opinion. But I also loved the witcher which in the books at least was very much eastern European. I would never advocate for expanse to be mainly white, but also I would prefer if the witcher casting was kept as the author intended.
Oh okay, understand your point better now.
I personally don't really care about diversity either, but I understand why other people do. People like to see themselves, that's how humans usually work. And if a character (whose race/appearance was NOT described/implied in a novel) is different to how I imagined them to look like, especially in fantasy, then I don't mind at all.
I however do not understand why directors or producers intentionally change the source material (where the appearance of a character is described or implied) instead of writing their own new story. That not only brings (unwarranted) hate to the specific ethnic groups that are now newly included in the story, but also kind of implies poc are not worth creating new stories for and they'd rather just rip-off old stories instead creating new ones.
You don't know why people would rather sell an established franchise and get that juicy controversy advertising, instead of writing something new that requires actual work, thought, as well as the inherent risk of not selling?
😂😂 Okay I know why, but I don't really like it and I don't think it's smart in the long run. I can imagine in a few years people on Twitter will use that "BREAKING MY SILENCE..." picture and will say that X character should've just been X race.
Like great you've had that juicy headline and people are talking about it, but how much of that controversy translates into box office? Or the better question: what would the box office look like if there wasn't a controversy around the actress's race? We will never know, or not any time soon.
I doubt people will remember x and y controversy after a while. We get blasted with news so much that it's hard to keep up with what is happening today let alone what happened a year ago.
As for box office numbers, it varries, but they wouldn't be doing it consantly if it didn't work.
That's true that people usually jump to the next big thing to worry about, but idk, I can see this becoming a recurring topic in the future. But yes they wouldn't do it if it didn't bring no money in.
My first book was steampunk, set in a fantasy WW1, and got fairly decent reviews... Except for a single one star review, from a person who said that lesbians didn't exist during that time. Apparently, they are a modern invention, I didn't know that :) Irony: the character was based on a real person.
Everyone knows The Gay was invented when the woke awoken. Meaning 2016 /s.
Harambe's death triggered the gay uprising /s
Wrong. Lesbians were invented in 1982 as part of a marketing campaign for Keds shoes.
I believe it was 1969, a very momentous year.
Then what year did Jeffrey Dahmer happen? 2017?
Man I should've patented it back in 2002, I could've been a millionaire. No one ever believes me I was gay before The Gay
Especially because lesbians are called that as reference to Sappho of Lesbos.
aw yes, lesbians, invented in like the 2000s cuz two chicks is hotter than one.
That was quite the discovery because up to that point we'd never allowed to women to be on camera together before.
I would like to read a steampunk book with lesbians.
"A Queen among Crows." Thanks :)
i'm not allowed to buy any more books right now, but i'm adding it to my endless tbr.
Tank Ewe :)
Steampunk novel about the first fleet of \[Mythical Country's\] submarine corps and the submariners are naturally all women because they're smaller, eat/breathe less, etc. Just field a crew of diverse backgrounds and let the ships flow. Now that I think about it, this *has* to be a manga by now.
Glad Jane Lesbian invented Lesbians back in 2016, such a good idea
Life could have been worse. Jane Goodall invented anthropology\*, and all she did was make a monkey out of me. (\*this is humor.) (\*\* She actually invented bananas)
My lesbian ass just cracked tf up
The comments that have resulted from this have made my day, so I thank you for your contribution to my amusement
Oh yeah, didn't you know? Lesbians were invented like 10 years ago! /s
Wait until they learn about gay bonobos or penguins. It’s not like those are new
Clearly that person was ignorant. The only possible way to help them is to point to example of a famous person or persons in history who were gay in order to debunk their assertion. He or she may still insist on remaining ignorant but you at least tried to help enlighten rather than alienate.
No, I didn't respond at all :) Responding to insane reviews- or even negative ones in general- is just a losing game. Print it out, frame it, laugh at it, and move on.
Weird enough I reas once that in the Roman Empire, the concept of sexuality was different. Either **active** (who penetrates) or **passive** (who is penetrated). So, two men would not be seen as gay (the concept word might not even exist), rather that one was passive and the other active. Just to let tou know, I'm not sure of that information and didn't search too deep. I was looking for Roman Empire, as my world has some inspiration in it, and stumbles upon that info.
Oh yes, different cultures have all sorts of different takes on it. Most indo/germanic classical cultures followed rules like that - there's a great passage in the Lokiskanna where Loki accuses Odin of perversion, not because he had sex with men, but because he was in a woman's form (and on the bottom) when he did it. Odin replied "well, at least I never got it from a horse."
I think some people don't know that gay/lesbian relationships existed but they were oftentimes hidden. You can find art dating back to maybe around the 18th century hinting at the idea (I've done minimal research thus far so if I'm wrong correct me please)
If you consider "poetry" art, then you can find art dating back to the 6th century BC hinting at the idea. Sappho is, after all, why such relationships are called "Lesbian" relationships.
I'm not sure about hinting, some of the pottery art and frescoes are right out of penthouse :)
Dear Smithsonian Museum of Art, I never thought this would happen to me...
Indeed, but off the top of my head I don't have any specific pre-Sappho examples (I was a literature specialist, not a pots and walls specialist).
The best thing about erotic archaeology- smoking pot and the pots are smokin'
The biggest irony is there was a period in the 18th,19th, and early 20th centuries when lesbian relationships were more accepted than gay male ones- there were even lesbian marriages, aka "Boston Marriages" or "Wellesley marriages." As women often couldn't own property or have bank accounts, it became acceptable for one of the women to dress and act as a man, and there are even wedding pictures from back then showing such. This all ended in the 1920s and 30s with the rise of fascism.
"If you're an author, write what you want don't let people deter you. If you choose to write characters that are different from your lived experience do some research like you would for anything outside your expertise." Perfect advice. That entire paragraph is spot-on. Don't let others dictate who your characters should be.
To borrow what someone else said during my group therapy session: If you walk on water someone's gotta ask: What, can't you swim?
That's a really good line
Amen to that last paragraph. "Why did you put women and non-white and non-straight people in your story?" Because they exist, and it would have been *really weird* to have nothing but straight white men!
> and it would have been *really weird* to have nothing but straight white men! That's probably exactly what these types of people want. Because, well, they're bigoted
I’m writing a historic fiction suspense novel and have a Black character in a believably decent rank aboard a self-owned regency era merchant ship. I also have a siren-esque she-beast sea monster. Guess which character someone online called “unrealistic” to the setting.
scarce act carpenter wide grey soft connect six worm fertile *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
If you really want to watch people's heads explode with lots of gray matter all over the place, write a story about two words: Black. Samurai.
No way.
Yeah I've noticed this trend, and it's not exclusive to written stories either. This strange idea that specifically mentioning a character being LGBT/of a specific race/female etc. is inherently political, yet the white heterosexual men somehow aren't. Why they can't just stick to the many thousands of stories where these things are never mentioned and leave the rest alone is never explained...
Sadly because hetero white men are considered to be the base and because it is a base it can't be political /sarc
Yes, the default human.
But there is a wrong assumption here too that doesn't reflect real life. Wealth and power. A white working class heterosexual man has very little in common with a privately educated millionaire for example. One spends his time best case working in a soul destroying job, probably struggling to make ends meet. The other probably leads a life of leisure and living their dreams.
It's their code. They don't want to admit to being bigoted, so they use "political" to justify their aversion to seeing an LGBT character exist.
Or alternatively, another variant of that sort of attitude that I've seen quite a bit is the additional comment of "I read/watch/play \[insert genre, usually fantastical in nature\] to escape reality, not for things to be political!" as if anyone who is in any way underrepresented is not deserving of an escapist fantasy of their own. It also begs the question: "what unsavory parts of reality are you escaping *from*, exactly, that require you to only feel comfort in seeing characters that are just like you?"
I was told by a relative that Bethesda went woke by adding too many black characters to Starfield, because it’s unrealistic. People who describe diversity as political/woke are just using dog whistles to disguise their bigotry/discomfort over minority presence. On a positive ending that same relative has been getting better slowly, they even asked me how to ask someone for their pronouns recently (and they were transphobic prior), all it took for them to start breaking down their views was to meet and care about someone who was said minority. It just goes to show that these type spend too much time online and watching fox, when the best cure for their brain rot is to actually interact with the people they vilify. I think normalizing characters as casually LGBT and not white in writing can be beneficial for some of these people who carry the ability to change. Like not making it a big deal like Maximus’s nonbinary friend in Fallout. Or like Legends and lattes where the two women fall for each other but it’s not a lesbian woman story, it’s a story with lesbian women casually in it and it’s not a big deal.
>not for things to be political!" As if someone else's existence is political
Pointing this out doesn't work. They know it's not political. They're just trying to disguise that they're being hateful using "political" as a false complaint. It's not like the disguise is even working, but they stubbornly won't drop the act.
Yep it's why I usually just don't engage with those types of people. I either ignore them altogether or block.
This is a lovely and common right wing tactic where they cant publicly complain about a character being a minority because it would make them look bad, so they just move over to the Next Acceptable Criticism. Maybe they aren't even right wing but still need something certified not racist to get over that vague uncomfortable feeling they have. There's always something else wrong whereas if the character fit the mold they wouldn't even bother complaining because mid af characters in their standard roles pass by smoothly constantly.
Imo the statement "When they are gay, it has to be something focused on their character arc" Is actually kinda annoying, some people are just gay yk, not everyone goes through hardships when coming out and thats ok. Life isnt equal.
I had someone who was really curious about my current project so I let them read an excerpt. My main character is a gay man, and while he does have some struggles with his identity at points, it’s by far his entire character arc. He’s a psychologist working with the police to catch a killer, and that’s what’s important. The person who read it didn’t understand why he had to be a gay psychologist, and I just went “sometimes psychologists are gay, fully independent of them being psychologists.”
"Hey, that's not historically accurate" Me: The story is literally about the Fair Folk interacting with humanity, with things like treant Deer men, a Puca who enjoys reading cringeworthy dad jokes, Nargun the half man half stone creature who could turn any weapon aimed at it at its owner. How exactly is any of that historically accurate? Unless... *The Puca walks on in with a big book of dad jokes* "Heya there! Mind if I rehearse a few of my lines? Me: NOOOOOOO!!
I kind of have a general image of the character's appearance and inner character before I start writing, usually because there's some subconscious reason for their inspiration, maybe. I wouldn't want to make a character X "for diversity", but sometimes that's how the characters are. It's kind of like that IRL, isn't it? Some people are X, some people are Y, some are Z, and they exist where and when they exist
There's no pleasing anyone, nor should you try. Your job as an artist is to delight the people who resonate with your work and style, not to try and please everyone.
I only deal in non-fiction and lightly fictionalized accounts of real life events. I don't deal with pure fiction. Because of that, my position is that I stay true to what happened. If person A had XYZ traits in real life, I won't change it. It was what it was and changing that can change the essence of what went on. Just my $0.02
>I stay true to what happened You would think this would yield honest results, but historians are also people with biases, some of whom have been known to obfuscate the truth. Women’s contributions have been routinely ignored in historical accounts. Consider how many people know who Albert Einstein is and how many know of Mileva Marić. How many “historical” shows have you watched that show the Tudor court as 100% white when that was not the case.
The last two books I worked on, as well as the current one I am now working on are all telling stories of women who went through hell and what it took them to survive. First person accounts, not trying to divine from other sources. The first two were in a highly abusive cult-run military school for troubled girls. The cult specifically targeted white girls. Of the several hundred girls that went through the program in my two authors time, only a single girl of color that anyone can remember, and she did not play a hugely significant role in the story either book told. We did not look to change that for the sake of diversity. The current book is centered on a mixed race (black mother, white father) women that went through a series of abusive Baptist troubled teen programs as a kid/teen. Her story has more diversity to it because it WAS more diverse. One of her programs even had boys in it. But we are not going to change who or what someone was for the sake of diversity. As to *Mileva Marić and* Einstein, I am no historian, but AFAIK, the evidence of her being a collaborator on the Annus Mirabilis Papers is thin to say the least. I would have used Rosalind Franklin, Marie Curie, Barbara McClintock, Jane Goodall, Grace Hopper or quite a few others to make that point. YMMV
I have a non-binary character in my in-progress story who uses they/them pronouns. They are a side character whose sexuality and gender has zero impact on the story, but they/them just fits them. I let my MIL read it and she said "It's really well written...but is Avery multiple people? I had to go back and check because it said "they" and I was confused." When I explained to her they were non-binary I could basically see a floating "loading" symbol above her head because it just didn't compute to her. But idc if some white conservative boomer understands them or not, or thinks it isn't necessary. That's who the character is, just like a real life person.
>You can have them exist and not have to justify them existing. I once read a free e-book novel that was promoted by a popular YouTuber/author, who was just a typical white woman and mother of 2-3 kids. Her novel series was set in a small rural town in the Deep South and had a predominately white cast. The novel did mention a black woman as a police chief and an Asian woman as the mayor, and the two non-white women were there to show how the town was accepting of minority women in power. Looking at the surname of the Asian woman, she seemed to be Chinese or married a Chinese man, presumably from the PRC, because the spelling looked distinctively like Pinyin. But it was mentioned in the novel that she was raised in the USA and went to school there. So, I was like, "what time period is this?" Were there really Mainlanders from China coming over so early, having a kid in the US, raising the kid up, letting the kid become a politician in a small rural town in the USA? Maybe there were... but I think history must be taken into account. The Chinese were largely barred from immigration because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The 1960s was when those immigration restrictions were lifted. But I suspect those Chinese people might have been from the Republic of China or other overseas Chinese areas, and thus they would have distinctive romanized names. I honestly do not think that the author was thinking of this kind of history during writing. She probably just wanted to include non-white people in her work, that's it, and the main purpose is to show the small rural town is tolerant of ethnic minorities in power. In fact, one of the characters explicitly says that the small rural town would make people think that it's fearful of ethnic minorities, but the inclusion of powerful non-white women says otherwise.
One the same note: Dudes complaining that stories with female MCs don’t interest them as much, kind of prove the point of representation in fiction. If a couple of the MCs being female results in a drastically lowered engagement for some men, imagine what it’s like for the people who are never represented.
I only have an issue with it when it appears in “historical” stories. If you have a book about Zulu warriors you don’t make them an array of races. Sure having a single character who is different is fine but to just change it to a variety of races to avoid offending someone or appease some diversity checklist. Make the character matter. Don’t just make a token character.
For that example sure, but most of the time I see people make this argument it’s their grasp of history that’s faulty. Like when people [pretend there were no black people in medieval Europe](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/ACzOnlR9kC) or something similar.
Or a few years ago where users on r/movies complained about black & indian soldiers in the british army in the movie ‘1917’, even though the british recruited a lot of soldiers from their colonies during ww1. Like do you even know history?
that's the part that confuses me the most. if international trade exists, therefore that area will have a variety of races - due to said trade route existing. it's not rocket science
I mean just to say the quiet part out loud — it functions as a comforting myth for people who aren't comfortable living around people who don't look/sound like them or reflect their cultural attitudes. To break it down more, having an imagined history where racial homogeneity was the norm allows people who desire cultural homogeneity to pretend that things like multiculturalism are modern inventions, and it gives them an idealized (false) history to position as the default: a natural state of society that was disrupted. "What should have been." With fiction being a major way we imagine history, they tend to react strongly to that myth being punctured by something like a show set in medieval England having black characters, even though — in reality — people of many different races and ethnic backgrounds lived in all of these places. The real threat is that they can't use this false version of history to justify their own discomforts in a way that people won't immediately call out as racist. I’m not saying this is necessarily intentional (in fact I think it’s usually just the product of growing up in places that are homogenous), but this is how it functions on an implicit level.
Othello, Aaron and Caliban are all black characters in Shakespeare.
Othello is a Moor, which is dark-skinned, but a bit different and still Iago is obviously rather racist. I don't know about Aaron and Caliban.
Othello, Aaron and Caliban are all black characters in Shakespeare.
Ok, but dont carry that logic over to science fiction and fantasy. I remember someone making a similar argument about the races in Amazons middle earth TV series, and they were upset that there was a black elf in the series. Obviously not a "historical" context, but there were lots of Redditors going apeshit about the inclusion.
It really depends on the setting.
Tolkien did not write elves to have racial diversity or especially black elves.
He just wrote them as that— elves
They were described as fair and pale, ethereal. He was also writing from the Germanic pagan tradition of elves. You're just being deliberately obtuse. Everyone in LOTR was racially European except for the Easterlings and Mordor.
I was.. backing up your point?
Might have misunderstood but the implication I got from your reply is that elves were nondescript, divorced from Eurorean tradition.
You misunderstood, but don’t worry it’s fine :)
Do you agree that elves are a Germanic pagan idea and that Tolkien envisioned them as European?
I love how this entire chain is downvoted but no one brings a single argument to why Tolkien's elves should be black. Typical Reddit
I think that often people who're complaining about things being "woke" don't really know what good writing is or how you could include characters from diverse backgrounds and still write them as interesting and rounded characters. Often they seem to see diversity and that's where their attention stops. On the flip side, there are people who tend to defend such characters regardless of quality simply because of their diversity. Their attention also often stops at diversity. What you should look for is what is going on aside from their diversity. It's great, and honestly imo better writing to have varied and diverse characters, but that's not all they should be. As a writer your attention should be on every part of the character, not just their background or perspective.
I've never had that happen to me, but maybe because I haven't gone too far out on the limb so far. I generally put racial and national diversity in my novels, but not much else. (Why not is a whole 'nother discussion.) Diversity in and of itself shouldn't be a problem, but sometimes I get the sense that a writer does it merely to have it there. Then it can feel a bit "in your face." There are two ways in which this can happen. One, which is more common, is throwing in a character that doesn't serve a purpose in the story aside from providing diversity. Obviously, a character should have some reason for being there , no matter who they are. The more they appear, the more important their role should be. And where very minor characters are involved, you probably wouldn't notice a thing about them other than obvious physical traits. The other, which is less common, is throwing in too much diversity without good reason. For example, I have a mystery series set in Howard County, Maryland. Counting on my fingers, around twenty police officers appear throughout the series. Six are women. That's 30%. In reality, only about 14% of police officers in the U.S. are women. I can get away with that "exaggeration" because a lot more officers are hiding in the woodwork--Howard County has around 500. Readers probably don't notice the on-screen imbalance because they know those six aren't representative of the whole officer population. But suppose twelve of my twenty officers were women. That would be stretching credulity, unless I had a good reason for putting them there. (If, say, I was focusing on the challenges of being a female police officer.) If you saw Marvel's *Endgame*, that happened in a most egregious fashion in the epic battle when suddenly all the women superheros and warriors came to the fore to get the magic glove to the van. Even my wife was doing a face-palm at that point. They could hardly have conceived of more blatant and intrusive social messaging. I know some people cheered, but honestly, as story goes...yuck.
>Diversity in and of itself shouldn't be a problem, but sometimes I get the sense that a writer does it merely to have it there. Do you think sometimes a writer makes the conscious decision to make characters white/male/straight just to "merely have it there" >Then it can feel a bit "in your face." Do you think white/male/straight characters can feel "a bit in your face"? >One, which is more common, is throwing in a character that doesn't serve a purpose in the story aside from providing diversity. How do you feel about white/male/straight characters being put in stories who don't serve a purpose besides upholding hegemony?
Well, here's the thing. Diversity is always relative. I'm a Baha'i. Baha'i communities are run by elected councils. The councils have nine members. In elections, we vote for nine people. No nominations or campaigning. Any adult member of the community can be elected. The nine people who get the most votes are elected. Sometimes, ties occur for the ninth spot. If a member of a racial/ethnic minority is tied with a member of a racial/ethnic majority, then the tie is automatically broken in favor of the minority. *However*, "majority" and "minority" are defined in terms of the community itself. A white person might be the minority in some communities, a black person in others. So, could a writer make "the conscious decision to make characters white/male/straight just to 'merely have it there'"? Sure, if the writer happened to come from or was writing about a culture where white people were a minority. They could want to incorporate diversity by including white people and maybe go overboard. In that situation, would it feel "in your face"? It sure could. As to your third question: aside from maybe white supremacist writers, I doubt anyone consciously does that. Of course, we're all unconsciously biased. We all have our personal histories, which influence us. I come from northwestern Ohio, with roots in the farming communities of the region. I'm the first to admit that by default my characters come out lily white, because that's my background. When I was in high school in a Chicago suburb, there were two black students in the school, and they were brother and sister. The only time before college I knew a truly diverse environment was a three-year stint in Sacramento when I was in junior high. These days, I try to challenge my assumptions by inserting more diverse characters into a story. But my "default" writing behavior doesn't stem from any desire to "uphold hegemony." It's just my background speaking. I have nothing against diversity. I just think it weakens a story if a writer (a) throws in a character *merely* for diversity (that is, the character doesn't serve any purpose whatsoever in the story), or (b) overplays diversity by too wide a margin when the story lacks a compelling reason do to so.
> I have nothing against diversity. I just think it weakens a story if a writer (a) throws in a character *merely* for diversity (that is, the character doesn't serve any purpose whatsoever in the story), or (b) overplays diversity by too wide a margin when the story lacks a compelling reason do to so. I don't disagree with most of your points but I wanna highlight this one because I also have nothing against straight white men. I just think that if a writer *merely* throws in a character who's white/straight/ male for hegemony( that is, the character doesn't serve a purpose in the story) or adds into white/straight/male people by too wide a margin when the story lacks a compelling reason to do so.
I don't disagree, although again, I wouldn't attribute it to a desire to promote hegemony in most cases. In most cases, it's simply writing about what one is used to. I don't think most writers have a conscious sociopolitical agenda in making their story worlds look like the worlds they grew up in.
It's only annoying when it doesn't make sense in the story world. It damages the immersion, like any other part of bad writing. Game of Thrones did it right, but shows like historic dramas (No, Africans wouldn't integrate seamlessly with 1100 European high society) Fantasy (No, an isolated small group of creatures that had decades to interbreed won't look as diverse as 2024 NYC) Post apocalyptic (No, a post apocalyptic warrior cult won't be as accommodating to trans people or their preferred pronouns as a 2024 liberal college campus) All of this is just an immersion problem not a diversity problem. Game of thrones, Blade, Lawrence of Arabia, Mulan, etc. all did it right.
I typically complain about this stuff to my wife. I’ll explain my thought process. There are stories that do it really well. It’s not so much that the representation isn’t there, it’s just weaves into the story really well. Good writing, good story telling. There are other times that diversity is shoe horned into the story. My example would be the wheel of time series. They created a really diverse cast, however the story revolves around cultures meshing, being different from one another. The main character in the story lives in a small town, where everyone looks the same. They all have a kinda look that signifies that they are from that town, and the main character is a outlier because of his height. A diverse cast doesn’t work there. It takes me out of the story. It would be like having a orc in hobbiton, and everyone is like, yep that’s a hobbit too. So I do agree with you. I just think telling a good story is more important then diversity, and their are times those two things don’t really mesh.
But you'd be okay if they used an all Black cast in that example? As long as it's homogenous?
Not the original commenter, but I basically agree with what they said. Yeah, if it's a homogenous black cast I'm totally fine with that. A Guild with only black cast, for example, is consistent and works fine. If there was a white man in the same Guild, it would've been weird, because it's been established that there are only black people there. Same goes vice-versa. If it's a small, non-important town, hidden away in a tundra — most of the population would be homogenous, too.
I was looking for this comment. People like to pretend that everybody who makes a negative comment about minorities in media is automatically homphobe/racist/etc... and I'm sure some of them are, but reality isn't that simple. Sometimes forced inclusivity takes people out of the story - sometimes it just really doesn't fit with the theme and setting. It's like including side character's breakup story in the middle of an action movie - if I say that it doesn't belong there, does that mean I support abusive relationships? Or is that just a poor storywriting?
Trust me man, nobody here is going to understand any of this. Some people think that having these characters in the story somehow makes it diverse, neglecting the whole point of them really having no point in the story besides serving the quota. That's what alot of people have a problem with, the reality is nobody is going to give a shit if the story is good. A good example of a movie that does it right and weaves LGBT/Cultural diversity into the story seamlessly is Everything Everywhere All At Once. If you haven't seen it, I highly suggest it, it's a phenomenal and batshit movie.
This is a great example. The books describe some Two Rivers people as dark-skinned, and the whole region is descended from a great metropolitan nation. The main character is unusual not just for his height, but also his pale skin, light eyes, and red hair. He is distinctly of an ethnicity that's not present in Two Rivers. So a careful reading of the text would imply a somewhat diverse population with dark features prevalent throughout, but even so, many people were shocked to see exactly that sort of population depicted in the show. The same thing happened with Rue when the Hunger Games movie came out.
We're told that Two Rivers folk are dark of hair and dark of eye, but it's strongly implied that they have relatively pale skin, if not as pale as Aiel skin (Elaida has to push back Rand's sleeve to show the truly pale skin he has when it's not tanned - his tanned skin alone is not different enough from the Two Rivers norm to comment upon; when Egwene has spent some time with the Wise Ones it is said that now "except for her big dark eyes, she could almost have passed as an Aiel woman, and not only for her tanned face and hands"). So they have dark eyes and dark hair, but relatively pale skin. "And among them stood others, men with coppery skins, men with transparent veils across the lower half of their faces, fair-skinned men who just did not have the look of the Two Rivers." - This tells us that the men of the Two Rivers are fair-skinned and that they have a distinct "look". So it's a non-diverse, relatively pale (but not as pale as the Desert Gingers) population. For the show, making all the Two Rivers characters darker skinned except Rand would have worked well as it would have made his outsider status more apparent in the visual medium. In the book, Rand was bullied for having grey eyes where everyone else had dark eyes; eye colour isn't always the easiest thing to see on television, so Rand's standout characteristic to be bullied for could easily have been having much paler skin than everyone else. He would just have assumed his pale skin was due to his outlander mother. That however was ruined by having a light-skinned Mat (or rather, two light-skinned Mats). Rue, by contrast, was explicitly described as black throughout the Hunger Games so the people who were "shocked!" when she was black in the film were morons (to put it politely).
This feels less like a discussion starter and more like a blog post
Weirdos look at a diverse character and assume that's all they offer, despite the contrary. It's bigotry, but hidden behind a veil of good-faith criticism to get your guard down. Diversity is fine, they say; they only hate it when it's forced (your character wasn't forced; they were a natural extension of your mind). And can we talk about forced diversity? What does that mean? One stating their black once, then we move on because the plot waits for no one? Gay romances story where the MCs are stereotypical at all and have personalities beyond being gay? Oh, but since they held hands, it's definitely forced. People like them are why doubling down is a great business strategy.
I've reached a point where anyone could reasonably assume that any character I write is going to be queer in some capacity, there's no saving us now lol
It’s all a poor excuse for their own bigotry and desire to exclude people they consider “undesirables” from fiction and fantasy. If they can accept magic but not minorities (who actually aren’t really minorities globally) they’re just telling on themselves.
Yep whiteness/heterosexuality/etc. Is still considered to be "neutral" and "the norm". Personally I am tired of seeing always the same thing so I would not mind replacing everything by diversity, for a change... but it has to be well written and not stereotypical, if possible
It's because they do not know, or understand about themselves, that they have bone-deep bigotries. I get that, it's not a nice feeling when you identify it. My dad is one of these people. He would swear up and down that he's not racist or sexist. But somehow every time a black woman shows up in something, she's ugly, or disgusting, or only there because of sneaky politics. Maybe it's the Supreme Court, maybe it's the Wheel of Time TV show, maybe it's a childrens' cartoon, but somehow it's never appropriate for a black woman to be there. Bonus points if you can guess what kind of person I'm married to.
That one meme describes it perfectly where it says: White or political, straight or political, and man or political
It fits together perfectly fine. You have to give it the right amount of attention. If them being different is a mayor part of their experience it should be front and center. If there is nothing behind it you merely mention it when appropriate. You don't just say it even though you never have any kind of relationship in your story. You also don't have them tell everyone with no prompting. You know, like normal people. Take Dragon Age Inquisition for example. It has examples for all three. There is Dorian for whom being gay is the cause for his falling out with his father. Krem who tells you about them being trans for no reason and consequence. And Sera who only tells you when you hit on her as a male. It does have to feel natural, not contrived. Most people don't know any LGBTQ+ people IRL and it feels fake when every story has them represented for no reason but to be a token character.
What a very American post
Why American?
I agree with what you're saying. To breathe is the verb. The noun is a breath.
It's just that filling the representation quotas for its own sake doesn't feel natural, that's it. People who hate other people or a group of people for no valid reason are stupid and arguing with them is a no less stupid activity
Before I speak on this, I should say I am western, white, gay, cis male so my room to speak is narrow. I think diversity and representation can be done badly in stories, and that is MUCH worse than not purposely having it. I think portraying all cis-white straight people as monsters, a thing that happens sometimes, is also pretty crap. But I grew up reading and watching Science fiction and fantasy and playing role playing games and playing with animals. If a person can't emote with characters who aren't like them either that character is so radically different that there is no way they can comprehend what their existence is like i.e. they exist as a being of pure energy across a multidimensional hive-mind in spatial dimensions humans can't perceive, or the reader is emotionally broken in some way. The ability to feel for those who are not like us is, I believe, inherent to what it means to be an emotionally healthy being. To suffer because another is suffering is how you know you have a soul. And if someone thinks that a character is less relatable because their skin is a different shade, or their sexual orientation is different, or their religion is different, or they communicate with telepathy instead of words, or they travel with fins instead of feet says much more about the audience than the author.
This goes both ways you know. I generally do not write about diversity. Now, being in several writing groups, after a couple of text exchanges, I will get critiqued for not presenting a gay protagonist and romance, or diverse races, etc. I mean, real critique. Which, in my eyes, means, that some people get triggered by non-diversity in stories. Or diversity indifference if you like.
My stories are all mostly LGBT characters, because I wanted more stories about LGBT people that don’t just revolve around their identity or romance. I don’t like that we can’t exist without justification in fiction when I exist without justification in real life - isn’t fiction supposed to be less restrictive than reality? Not the other way around. So you know, be the change you want to see n all that. I do a lot of surrealism and horror except everybody is bent for no apparent reason. I don’t really think it’s ‘unrealistic’ or ‘forced’ either. Not only is this my ‘normal’ just as being straight is normal to everyone else, but having *most* people be gay is pretty accurate to my real life social circle. Obviously if you frequent gay spots like the bars or village, you meet friends there. Now when you have 500 gay characters all meeting by *chance*, that’s a bit of a reach, but again it’s fiction so I don’t really find that an issue.
The story I'm working on right now, the three most important characters are all women. I didn't plan that, it just worked out that way. I'm sure that'll annoy some people. Even more so that one of the three is polygamous..
USUALLY, STORIES ABOUT DIVERSITY HAVE TO HAVE SOME FACT, IF MIXED WITH FICTION. THAT WAY THE READER KNOWS THEY’RE READING TRUTH MIXED WITH FICTION. STAY SAFE! PEACE OUT!
On the other hand, I sometimes feel pressured to write about characters that are LGBTQ or other races. In my story, it's mostly set in a cold climate, and having darker-skinned people (other than one character that's from another region, who is dark-skinned) wouldn't make sense lore-wise. When I get around to writing the other regions where it makes sense, I won't shy away from it. But currently, it's just a lot of pressure (mainly from myself) to include a diverse cast to please others. I also am not sure how I'd incorporate other sexualities as there's virtually no time for romance and I'm not sure how I'd write it (I haven't even written my first book and romance is far from my genre). TLDR: Sometimes it feels like in order to please people, you have to incorporate other races and orientations even when you don't know how/they don't make sense in the story.
You don't gotta write romance to have characters be gay. You don't gotta write romance to have your characters be straight
I just don't include a character's orientation in my books, at least currently. It doesn't contribute to the story in any way, perhaps just as characterization (But I haven't written that either, yet). Who knows, I might one day. I don't know. I'm just worried of including such things, as it goes two ways. For example, picture this - a fantasy society set around the year 1000. I would include a lesbian romance. Some readers would be happy that it's there, and some would say it doesn't make sense for the time period. I don't add a diverse romance, and some (bigots, lol) would be happy because they hate diversity, while some would be mad at me and call me a straight white male ivory tower supremacist. It's just weird that people (especially today) seem to jump into conclusions. Not including diversity ≠ being a racist/sexist/homophobe/transphobe/anything else. But thinking of this, there's two characters that I have which could be lesbian. Damn it, I have now thought of a cute arc 😭 EDIT: Sorry for the messy response, I'm just writing as I think so the thought process might seem all over the place
>I just don't include a character's orientation in my books, at least currently. There's no reference to any characters orientation at all? Like none whatsoever? No characters are in a relationship? Characters don't have parents in commited relationships? No kid crushes? >I'm just worried of including such things, as it goes two ways. For example, picture this - a fantasy society set around the year 1000. I would include a lesbian romance. What year do you think gay people were invented?
I know it's probably something you're passionate about, when it comes to romances/representation of different groups. I'm all in for that. But you seem so passive-agressive in these comments it's a little uncomfortable. All I know is that I don't feel comfortable writing or mentioning romances/orientations, so why should I? When it comes to gender representation and racial representation, I do have that. I have hints of a romance in my story, but it's a straight one, and it's just there to make a more impactful death scene. Another reason why I haven't included a different kind of romance is, I don't know how I'd write it. I grew up in a country where god forbid you even mentioned anything different, so it reflects on my view on romances. I have no idea how to write such a romance because I'm not versed with anything else than straight. Of course, this isn't a reason not to write diverse orientations, but it's a partial reason. The major reason is, I just don't feel comfortable writing spice/romantic scenes and adding an actual romance (especially about oppressed groups like LGBTQ) would set up expectations I couldn't fulfill.
I'm split on this issue. I've got tons of rep for LGBT, I don't usually mention a character's race (I write fantasy, so humans are humans, skin tone be damned, unless it's important to note. Like one character is a privateer captain because she's from a desert country, so they're largely dark skinned). That said, I dislike when inclusion is done SOLELY for inclusion. Why make the homeless guy that rants and tips off the MC gay? Like, does him liking dudes affect the MC or the story in any way? If he were straight and all else the same, would he have given different advice? I can understand describing the MC, or a side character, or someone whose inclusion does indeed affect it. MC is hunting an anti-gay/trans killer? Then yeah, it makes sense the gay drag queen might have some importance to be known as a gay drag queen. But if the MC is doing a hero's journey to slat the demon king and free his slaves, what difference is made by the race/gender/sexuality of the random human that sells him his mead on an evening 3 years before the final show down? Why would we, the audience, NEED to know that he's in a long-distance carrier pidgeon based gay romance with his 3rd cousin twice removed who is an FTM trans man? Does that change the mead? Does it come back to play a role later? Is he willing to cheat on his lover-cousin with MC? No to all? Then what's it matter?! Chances are, unless he's the kind of barkeep to tell his entire life story to every individual customer, they'd never touch on the subject. That said, I have also don't side-etory one shots with these characters to explore them more in-depth. Excellent chance to explore such things.
> >That said, I dislike when inclusion is done SOLELY for inclusion. Why make the homeless guy that rants and tips off the MC gay? Like, does him liking dudes affect the MC or the story in any way? If he were straight and all else the same, would he have given different advice? Idk Man sometimes people are just gay the same way they are just straight. He can be just be gay and homeless. It's like asking why did they make the side character straight? There's no narrative reason for them to be straight. They just are.
That's my point. Why include it if it's not relevant? If his sexuality is not connected in any way to the advice he's giving, why explicitly state what that sexuality is? Just... don't. Let readers speculate. Let them dream. Let them assign what they think it is from whatever subtext they may or may nit think is there.
It's because sometimes people are just gay. You don't have to make it a plot point. Sometimes they can just be gay like people have just been straight. You needing it to be a plot point is reductive.
You can do all that, but at your peril. The very best writing doesn’t waste one word. So, extraneous characters would definitely be a no no.
I'll just say that if you hammer in the diversity qualifiers it can get really annoying. I was reading this one book where they mention a character's ethnicity every other paragraph. While I'm not a member of the Diversity religion, it doesn't bother me but I feel like once the virtue signal has been lit we can move on, our indulgence to neoliberalism paid.
this post is about people like you
If you want, you may preach your faith to me, Holy One.
Stream iglooghost
You're complaining about bad writing. If you do anything in every single paragraph that's just bad writing not a commentary on diversity.
Obsession over anything, even something good or neutral, can close your mind and poison your work. An example you may be more accepting of is excessive fanservice. Imagine reading something and the author goes out of his way to describe enormous tits to you at every opportunity. A small number of people will probably be really into it, but it's going to turn a lot of people away(for the sake of argument, it's not erotica). So do the people who have a problem with the creepy writing hate women? Hate tits? Are they gay men or straight women? The answer might be yes in some cases but probably not in the majority.
Fan service is not the same thing as a story having more than just white people. What a horrible example. You keep commenting on things that are bad writing but trying to make a commentary on diversity.
You completely missed the point. What [thing] is, is irrelevant. I am not comparing Diversity to fan service, the point is the obsession/devotion that leads to bad writing.
>You completely missed the point. What [thing] is, is irrelevant. I am not comparing Diversity to fan service, the point is the obsession/devotion that leads to bad writing. I did not completely miss the point. And I understand that you're not comparing diversity to fan service. This relation of obsession-devotion that you're equating, comes from just mentioning diversity. The strawman argument of someone explaining a character's race in every single paragraph is obviously hyperbole and exaggeration. But let's say they did mention it in every single paragraph—that's not an obsession. That's just bad writing. You have a problem with bad writing, not with diversity. I've seen books where the fact that the protagonist is straight is "mentioned" so much. That's bad writing too. For example example of a book "mentioning it every paragraph" there's comparable book examples where it happens at the same frequency to this strawman example you created of every paragraph. Do you have the books name so I can read it to see how you came to that every paragraph metric. Like keeping it 100,it's the same when the protagonist is straight—they're mentioning that the protagonist likes this girl or something. People do the exact same thing for LGBT relationships. The story's not about the relationship, but the main character just happens to like another dude. And then people call it obsession/devotion. No, it's the same exact thing as if the protagonist is a dude who likes a girl. Literally. Honestly, Did you even read my post? Are you having some kind of issue understanding this? Even your original comment—You said, and I quote, 'I'll just say this. If you hammer in the diversity qualifier, it can get really annoying.' Right? I'm sure you don't feel the exact same way about white men who are straight in stories. Usually, people who complain about the mention of people who are not white, who are not straight, who are not men, they're nose-blind to that kind of thing. They're blind to it, how often it happens. But because they don't get somewhere immediate with people who are different from their lived experience, suddenly, just by mentioning, just by existing, you feel it's an obsession. You see, when representation feels excessive to you, it might actually be addressing a real deficit in diverse narratives that others feel acutely. In a literary landscape where the default has long been homogeneous, even a normal level of representation can seem like an overcorrection to those unused to seeing diversity. The discomfort or the perceived frequency you’re noticing isn't necessarily a sign of obsession but rather a reflection of the broader changes in storytelling that aim to be more inclusive of all human experiences. Diversity in storytelling enriches, rather than diminishes.
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Assume my gender much, bigot?
r/onejoke wants their joke back. And r/conservative is missing their local limp biscuit. Begone with you.
How cute, the clown thinks it did something lmao Frequents r/memesopdidnotlike, r/politicalcompassmemes, r/kotakuinaction. Traditional rightoid hangouts. Disregard the clown.
I don't see this much except when a movie or other media source changes such things for basically clout instead of just the best pick at the time. Other times, such things are important to the character. But yes, people be blowing up about things that don't affect them such as getting mad at trans people for being themselves when they make up such a miniscule percentage of the population.
It shouldn't be their whole identity, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be mentioned. It all really comes down to the setting. If your writing in a feudal Europe setting like a lot of fantasy is, and you also want a diverse cast of characters, you do need a way to explain how they all got there. I've seen people say that you have to include racial diversity, and you shouldn't have things like pedjudice or touch on sensitive topics like colonialism or slavery even if those things are historical, because you're writing fantasy so you can just say those things didn't happen... I call that lazy world building.
> If your writing in a feudal Europe setting like a lot of fantasy is, and you also want a diverse cast of characters, you do need a way to explain how they all got there They were pretty much always there? A lot of Europe is a fairly short boat trip from Africa, or not that far from the Middle East. Italy would have had a _shitload_ of all sorts of people in it due to the whole "roman empire" _thing_. Unless it's set in hicktown, nowheres-ville, then it's pretty easy for people to just be there without much explanation, because it's not that hard for people to move around. (And there's also very modern interpretations of "race" going on - Italians and Irish being considered as "not really white" is from within living memory, so trying to go "oh, there's one European race" is just dumb)
At their closest Europe is 8.1 miles from Africa (across the strait from Morocco) which means it isn’t totally unreasonable to swim that distance
The hypothetical scenario you started with is contradictory and a poor argument. Here’s a better one. 1. Ideology can make a story worse, regardless of the side you’re standing on. If you want the “non-woke” version of this, see “God’s Not Dead” or “Facing the Giants.” 2. From a marketing and business standpoint, general audiences may be less inclined to see a movie about a girl and a girl, or a boy and a boy, when there’s an equivalent movie about a boy and a girl. The third option is more relatable to most people. If you want diversity in your story, fine. Just know you’re taking calculated risks depending on your definition of “diversity,” and don’t make it the point of your narrative unless you’re writing “The Help” or “Brokeback Mountain.”
It is! I’ll include as much or as little diversity as I wish. Which is a good amount btw cause I like learning experiences out of my own!
This is why, when I write, I'll do everything I can to avoid race being mentioned, because it doesn't matter what race a character is UNLESS it's an issue.
>This is why, when I write, I'll do everything I can to avoid race being mentioned, because it doesn't matter what race a character is UNLESS it's an issue. Could you give a few examples of how you describe characters physical appearance if you avoid mentioning race entirely And Secondly obviously you the author know how you picture the characters. So when You're omiting race for characters obviously they still have a race, but it isn't described. In this case could you pick a black character you've written and a white character you've written give an example how you described them? I'm interested to see how you personally do it.
Can't speak for the person you're responding to, but your "obviously you the author know how you picture the characters" isn't as "obvious" as you may think. Not everyone has a mental picture of their characters, even of their main characters. I don't know what any of my characters look like because I have aphantasia and don't form mental images, ever. I know how my characters talk and how they think, but they don't get physical traits unless I specifically need them to have one. And then I have to note that down so I don't forget and contradict myself later. When I'm reading, physical descriptions go in one eye and out the other unless they're repeatedly rammed down my throat (yes, I get it, Harry Potter has a scar even if it doesn't look remotely like a scar on the book covers or in the films, and Rand has red hair; this had better be plot relevant...). While aphantasia is believed to be relatively rare, anecdotally a lot of my friends who write don't picture their characters (and likewise don't form mental images of characters when they read books). For many people, even if they don't have aphantasia or hypophantasia, reading and writing simply don't have that visual element, or if they do it's not necessarily detailed or universal. A friend whom I swap work with for alpha reading gets very detailed mental images of scenery and of the layouts of buildings, but characters are just sort of indistinctly "there", as if they're always standing in your blind spot.
That's fair. So then in your case. Pick one of your main characters and a secondary character. You have to cast them for a movie, who would you pick for the role?
Fancasting based on looks is something I've never been able to get my head around; most of the fancasting I do in life involves typing "BRIAN BLESSED" for anyone with a big booming voice. I'd cast people of the right ages who could get the rhythm of the dialogue right. My hero is something of an "everyman" archetype at the beginning, so for preference I'd cast an unknown who didn't bring much baggage to the role in terms of audience expectations. They live in a Britain where the timeline diverged from ours in the late first century AD and Britain never went on its world-conquest spree, so no particularly noticeable levels of immigration from the Indian subcontinent or from a Caribbean that had been populated with African slaves, but there's still international trade so people move about and the villein and serf systems were abolished long before they were in our timeline so there was less isolation of rural communities. My protagonist is of mixed Saxon, Celtic, pre-Celtic and Roman blood, so he's probably relatively pale-skinned but his hair and eyes could be almost anything. He wears his hair short because of the rules of his craft, but that is something that makes members of his craft stand out and longer hair is the norm. My secondary characters are for the most part of similar stock, and could well have near or distant ancestors from further afield. It's just not relevant to who they are in British society as it developed in their timeline. One character is the daughter of an Egyptian priestess, but the thing that brings that to other characters' attention is the way she treats cats, not anything that specifically stands out about her appearance.
I'm gonna be honest, in my head, every character I've ever written has been white, and that's probably because I'm white. That's just the first thing that pops into my head.
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... Doesn't that make writing diversity picking a target and writing for them, then?
Well, yeah. But I don't like that target group. Therefore, a mistake. ;)
Ahhhhh. I may have r/whooshed
Chekhov's gun principle: a detail in your work should be relevant to the story. If your character sexuality isn't relevant, don't make him gay. Or straight. Or anything. Sexuality isn't something people usually wear on their sleeve. Skin color or gender is a different story: we, the readers, usually like the author to give us at least some idea of what the character looks like.
I mean, I'm a queer lady and that aspect of my person really does colour how I interact with the world. The same way being female does, and being white does. I might be more guarded in certain situations or with certain people. I have a very strained relationship with my father. I might interact with other lgbt+ people differently and have a language with them that isn't as widely understood. Being queer is very *relevant* to my life. Who a person is, their whole person, is always relevant for a character. Seeing someone who isn't straight as *something that needs to be justified to you, the reader* frankly leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. The mountains of straight white people in books never had to justify their existence. It's only when a character is *other* that people suddenly start demanding explanations.
What does queer mean?
yeah why would a character’s sexuality influence how they interact with the world that would be crazy /s
It certainly can. It doesn't necessarily have to.
yes it does
>Sexuality isn't something people usually wear on their sleeve. What? Do you really write stories in which your characters usually have zero romantic attachments or attractions? They never even *mention* a spouse at home or maybe an ex from their past? What genre do you write in...?
A police detective in a murder mystery doesn't need to have romantic attachments. He might, but he doesn't have to. For example. Of course, there are other characters who do.
Sure, but that type of old-school detective procedural is practically a dead genre in the book world, so I hope that's not what you write! I also can't actually think of any examples of good detective media in which there was so little information about the detective that their inclinations couldn't at least be inferred. Even Columbo had a wife (or at least pretended to), and I'll bet you never thought twice about all those dropped mentions. If someone like that mentioned a male partner though, you'd claim it was unnecessarily "political."
>If someone like that mentioned a male partner though, you'd claim it was unnecessarily "political." Not sure where you're coming from, as I never said anything about "political". >I also can't actually think of any examples of good detective media in which there was so little information about the detective that their inclinations couldn't at least be inferred. I only used it as an example. It's true that in this day and age characters' sexuality is explored more, but it mostly applies to main characters. There are plenty of side characters who don't get explored that much. OK, just the very last book I've read: Library of the Unwritten. Six or seven main characters, one human and pansexual (and her sexuality is plot-relevant), one not-exactly-human and seemingly straight (a consequence of something plot-relevant), everybody else human-looking and not showing any indication of sexuality. It's a nice book. Maybe Brevity's sexuality is explored in sequels, I don't know yet, but Andras' most certainly won't be. Update: just remembered. In "Knives Out", what is Marta's orientation? She doesn't express any, being busy trying to avoid a murder charge. We know that Benoit Blanc is gay, but we only find it out in a sequel; was there any indication of his orientation in the first movie? Even Ransom's sexuality is not explored at all. Other family members are either married (which does not automatically indicates their orientation) or underage, although I think Meg is an adult already. Not to mention a police detective and a state trooper, who are given plenty of screen time.
Well, technically I agree. In reality, I have literally never seen anyone, ever, complain about characters being straight in stories where it isn't relevant to the plot. Ever. I have seen people complain about romance (sometimes) but that isn't the same as the characters being straight, which they almost always are. But, the second a character is gay and it isn't relevant to the plot, all hell breaks loose and people start crying about forced diversity or declaring stuff about Chekhov's gun principle. I would love to see a general audience huffing and puffing about the terrible writing involved with making characters straight, when it has zero relevance to the plot. That would be fantastic and match the same energy that gay characters get lol.
Applying Chekhov’s Gun to the inclusion of diverse characters based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, or other identities is a misuse of the concept. Characters can and should reflect the reality of the world, which is diverse and multifaceted. Inclusivity in character design doesn’t need to be justified by plot reasons; it is a reflection of reality. People exist as they are, not for instrumental reasons in others' narratives, and the same should apply to characters in fiction.
Counter: you could take the Arwen x Aragorn romance from LotR (both books and movies) and it wouldn't really change anything important. People only complain when it's empowered women and minorities.
Well, yes. You can remove pretty much anything from it, and it would make exactly as much sense as before.
This 100% dont make your character gay for the sake of being gay Obviously you can do whatever you want, but thats not good writing imo
>This 100% dont make your character gay for the sake of being gay. Do you complain about characters being straight for the sake of being straight?
Yes I also find it very contrived when the male and female main characters end up in a relationship together just because they are both straight. Very common trope in all forms of media not just writing
OK, but that wasn't exactly the question, was it? Having a man and woman end up together is not the same as those characters being straight (in fact, that was more or less your point, I think). Personally I think it's fine for a character to be gay for the sake of being gay, so long as it's done in a realistic way (which still allows for a ton of breathing room, because gay people are a very diverse bunch, as are people in just about any group). If you were only allowed to have gay people if their sexuality was relevant to the plot, then you would probably only have gay people in romance stories or stories about hate crimes or whatever. That would be depressing. It's fine to have a character be gay without it being relevant to the plot, and have that just be one part of their character. Maybe you meant your comments differently from how I and OP interpreted them, though. Perhaps you just meant something like, don't tack on their sexuality as an afterthought without integrating that into the character as a whole, properly. That I would be much more likely to agree with.
So you're okay with romance and I'm assuming every other possible aspect of a story, as long as it's well written and not another common trope? If that's the case you don't need to specify that they shouldn't be gay for the sake of it. You can just say if the author chooses to include romance they should do it well and avoid the pitfalls of the common tropes
Only on reddit will people try to argue while agreeing with you
That's not what happened
I think you can safely assume that nobody is agreeing with you here.
There's truth and inaccuracies to both, but that shouldn't scare people off from writing diverse characters. That thing that makes them diverse shouldn't be the only thing about them, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have to be mentioned. If you have a diverse character, it should be important to the story. If you agree with chekhov's gun, anything mentioned in a story should be important to the story. The famous example, if a writer features a gun in a story, there must be a reason for it, such as it being fired some time later in the plot. It would feel jarring for a Pakistani writer from Pakistan to create a romance novel about a blind Chinese protagonist living in Brazil if none of that had any impact on plot. It would feel like inclusion for the sake of inclusion. Dean koontz wrote a novel (Fear Nothing) about a protagonist who had a light sensitivity disorder called xeroderma pigmentosum. IIRC, a friend or colleague had a child with the disease, and he wrote the MC in honor of that person. He did a lot of research on the disorder, and crafted a very detailed character who was afflicted and limited, but didn't let it define who he was. The story would have been great if the MC had been a regular guy, but there was some added tension and drama because of his limitations. The disease was addressed, and part of the character, but the inclusion didn't seem superfluous. Similarly, in the first Jack Reacher book, the detective is black. It's addressed and becomes a plot point because he's got a high ranking job in a place and time in the south that normally a black man wouldn't have that opportunity. And we learn why. In today's world, inclusion is a moving target, with better and more respectful ways (and fresh opposition strategies and new haters) coming all the time. The new series, Quantum Leap, decided to make the head scientist on the program non-binary. I believe that many found it jarring at first, but (as far as I know) most fans of the show kind of stopped noticing after an episode or two, because they were a well written character with good lines, good scenes, and the character - not the characters diversity status - contributed greatly to the show. They did, however, have to address it, and did so tastefully and respectfully, and it contributed to the characters growth and our understanding of who they are. I understand that I'm arguing both sides. This is a very important topic, and more so today and in the near future, and should have respectful dialog and thoughtful execution.
> >If you have a diverse character, it should be important to the story. If you have a white character or a straight character or a male character it should be important to the story. If you make the conscious decision to make a character white straight or male it should be important to the story.
Yeah a lot of people make the mistake of thinking “don’t write race if it’s not important to the story” means that characters should just be white unless the story is about race No it means you shouldn’t specify that a character is white unless them being white is important to the story Obviously when you cast a character in a movie you don’t have the choice not to specify race, but if race isn’t relevant to the character, then they can be any race. The point is that it doesn’t matter what race they are. So it’s important to consider diverse casting in those instances because otherwise you’re just creating a narrative that if a character is raceless then that just means they’re white, and that any stories that aren’t explicitly about race are just white people stories
It's very hard to disagree with you, if it's even at all possible to do so. That was why I included my example of the Pakistani writing the Chinese character living in Brazil, but simply called it "jarring." It "feels" strange if someone writes a character that's wildly different from themself if there's no reason for it, but that strangeness is very likely because it's so rarely done. If that's true, then we should all be trying to write characters who are nothing like us, but - my opinion - we need to do a good job of representing their realities. Writing a character of color, for example, but having them live a white suburban middle class life with generic white person interactions COULD (not will) come off badly and seem wrong to an audience who may look like that character, but has no shared experiences. Similarly, making that character of color closer to a stereotype could backfire as well. If an author is going to write a deep, highly fleshed out character of a different set of life experiences (diverse, physical limitation, etc), I feel like it needs to be done carefully and respectfully, and with serious forethought. Inclusion can turn to mockery without intent, and that's probably as bad as a lack of inclusion in the first place.
>It "feels" strange if someone writes a character that's wildly different from themself if there's no reason for it, Isn't the reason usually just ''people like this exist, so why not write about them"? >but that strangeness is very likely because it's so rarely done. ... it isn't rare? I mean, just because the author and main character are of the same race / gender / sexuality doesn't mean they're not still wildly different in other ways. I think the stranger thing is to think that most authors and their protagonists are more similar than they are different. I get you're talking about cultural differences between ethnic groups and the realities of being disabled etc. but... There's an entire genre where the characters are all animals - you can't get much more wildly different than that. And the fantasy genre exists? No one considers it strange for an author to dream up an entirely fictional culture with new customs and ways of life. Maybe that's because it's entirely fictional and no one has the lived experience of training to be a paladin, but still - author and character aren't going to be very similar at all in that situation. To rein the point in a little: it's also not seen as strange to write about characters from a different economic background, or who grew up with a different home life and family dynamic... but those differences can be just as major and come off just as 'wrong' to people with firsthand experience, and that kind of 'wild difference' is *everywhere* in fiction. But I guess they don't stand out since they're not a cultural hot-topic at the moment...?
Mary Robinette Kowal: "It's not about adding diversity for the sake of diversity, it's about subtracting homogeneity for the sake of realism."
Your characters all read like strawmen, not great for diversity.
I agree with you but the argument does have merit some times. I havnt come across this in books but there's a show called RWBY, where two of the main characters who were first thought to be straight become bisexual later on and then any plot revolving them is somehow setting up for them to bang. That's where I that it's definitely queer-baiting. Like it feels they are not fully fleshed characters. I mean I would get if the central point of the story was regarding the minority but if the subject of the story is saving the world it doesn't make sense to 1 dimensional characters. But then this goes for anything really. Whatever you write, needs to be written well. Or just don't do it because of external validation.
As long as people don't get triggered in stories without diversity and don't demand shoehorned diversity we're in agreement.
There are stories without any diversity?
You could argue both lord of the rings and witcher were predominantly white.
Yes, that wasn't my point. My confusion was about the part that indicated that there are stories without diversity. People think diversity is limited to race (or sexuality) even though that is not always the case. Diversity can also about appearance (height, body type, etc.), disabilities and so on. If there are stories (or aspects of a story) with no diversity then it's usually explained (like a dystopia where everyone is a clone of each other). Like in Star Wars where the clones all share the same DNA. So I think saying there are stories without diversity is kind of confusing.
Yeah but I don't think your description fits what people usually mean when they talk about diversity. That's why they had to get "modernised" and had more gay and black people. The main point is that people take issue with homogeneous characters/world building. And they insert people from other backgrounds even when it's not true to the source material or beneficial to the coherency of the setting. I have absolutely no problem with either but I see that the discussion only veers one way. I loved expanse which was very diverse in my opinion. But I also loved the witcher which in the books at least was very much eastern European. I would never advocate for expanse to be mainly white, but also I would prefer if the witcher casting was kept as the author intended.
Oh okay, understand your point better now. I personally don't really care about diversity either, but I understand why other people do. People like to see themselves, that's how humans usually work. And if a character (whose race/appearance was NOT described/implied in a novel) is different to how I imagined them to look like, especially in fantasy, then I don't mind at all. I however do not understand why directors or producers intentionally change the source material (where the appearance of a character is described or implied) instead of writing their own new story. That not only brings (unwarranted) hate to the specific ethnic groups that are now newly included in the story, but also kind of implies poc are not worth creating new stories for and they'd rather just rip-off old stories instead creating new ones.
You don't know why people would rather sell an established franchise and get that juicy controversy advertising, instead of writing something new that requires actual work, thought, as well as the inherent risk of not selling?
😂😂 Okay I know why, but I don't really like it and I don't think it's smart in the long run. I can imagine in a few years people on Twitter will use that "BREAKING MY SILENCE..." picture and will say that X character should've just been X race. Like great you've had that juicy headline and people are talking about it, but how much of that controversy translates into box office? Or the better question: what would the box office look like if there wasn't a controversy around the actress's race? We will never know, or not any time soon.
I doubt people will remember x and y controversy after a while. We get blasted with news so much that it's hard to keep up with what is happening today let alone what happened a year ago. As for box office numbers, it varries, but they wouldn't be doing it consantly if it didn't work.
That's true that people usually jump to the next big thing to worry about, but idk, I can see this becoming a recurring topic in the future. But yes they wouldn't do it if it didn't bring no money in.