OF GAMES, REPRESENTATION, AND WOMEN'S CHEEKBONES

OK, once again I am just gonna ignore the dumb argument and just focus on what I'm interested in! (Srsly all y'all kids need to simmer down. When you start going into textwalls and ad homs, you're doin it wrong and need to go play with some cute animals for a while. I know this from experience.)

author=PentagonBuddy
One reason it can seem daunting is that most media depictions of transness focus on external cues, like how someone is dressed or what they look like. This is hard to do without displaying common stereotypes (ah, she's a trans woman so...we need to show her putting on makeup! because women wear makeup!) You run into a lot of gross potential for things like "she looks like a man" and this furthers the idea that there are inherent """"biological"""" aspects that "reveal" someone's gender and like...ugh. It's a minefield. Hard to write.

And even harder to illustrate!

The other way that someone is shown as trans is usually through violence, physical, verbal, social, whatever. This is just depressing, quite frankly. Yes, you can communicate that someone is trans by having another character misgendering them and being corrected, but this is often a sour note for trans folks in your audience. Personally, I would be okay with someone who might not look what you expect for their gender being referred to by correct pronouns by the people around them (and this isn't the punchline to a joke)

Yeah, this is sort of my philosophy in Minority Depiction in general: I want to make stories where the Real World Western views of minorities matter a lot less, basically as a sort of escapist fantasy. (As a wee Sooz I always wanted to see cool fantasy heroes who were girls but pretty much were otherwise the same as the regular dude heroes. I assume a lot of minority types would like the same thing, especially given that most of the depictions are of the A Very Special Episode style.)

It'd be cool to see more things like fantasy Hormone Replacement Therapy, or magic being used for gender-related reasons. There's all kinds of potential to mention mundane details that don't necessarily focus on a character's physical experience. The example you gave, like mentioning a woman who shaves, could work in certain circumstances. Yes, that's a reality for some women, but it's easy to be perceived as a punchline...

Thinking about it, I guess what I need to do is get some more slice of life details. Ugh, I'm gonna have to actually talk to people. Why can't I just magically conjure knowledge from the ether around me?!

But yeah, the problem of things being considered jokes is a big one, since I reeeeeeaaaalllly don't want to make anyone feel like they're being mocked. I guess I'll just have to trust the presentation to communicate my intentions and hope not too many people misinterpret things. AS USUAL. :V

I wish I had something I could point to as a good example of "here's how to show a character is trans when the media in question is not about being trans", but none of us had examples off the top of our head. We did talk about our own work or things we'd like to see more of in theory, and here's some OTHER stuff that came up:

. . . .

Having someone who is trans be a main character, or POV character. There are a lot of aspects to someone's identity that are internal, so having access to their internal thoughts makes it easier to mention in a casual way.

I think this is gonna be difficult for me, since I tend to avoid expressing internal thoughts in my writing.

A recurring thing that came up was essentially "have trans characters exist and talk/think about their experiences that involve their gender". This would be with another trans character, internally, or someone who is cis...but that can fall into sounding like the trans character is having an Educational Moment and eh, it can get awkward and weird and uncomfortable.

yyyyyeah. Especially since I'm super-duper cis. I'd basically have to grab some of my trans friends and beg them to be on tap for consulting purposes every time I write anything personalish. :/ AGAIN with the talking to people what is this bullshit being human is hard

(general stuff about gender/genderfluidity)

I'm just gonna go ahead and admit that the genderfluid stuff is so out of my wheelhouse that I've just decided to leave it to others. I can get a handle on "boy" or "girl," but the more abstruse stuff just goes soaring over my head. It's one of those things like physics or academic philosophy; a little too abstract for my pathetic meat brain to grasp properly, even with proper explanation.

Sorry about how blathering this is! This post is the result of me trying to synthesize/summarize like three separate long conversations. And also inserting just my own personal 2 cents here and there.

Nah, this is all super helpful, and I appreciate the effort a ton! (Especially when the rest of the thread seems intent on crashing and burning around us. :V )

author=Max McGee
@Yellow_Magic:

As a professional writer I realize that this resembles mystical thinking, but to me, characters have an inherent truth to them. So no, white is not the "default" race for a character I think of. The default race for a character I think of is whatever race they are when I think of them. This is not something that I don't think about, exactly, but it's also very much not something that I plan ahead of time.

When my mind creates a character, it does so holistically. That character then has a race, a gender, an identity, maybe normative, maybe not, but in any case part of that character's holistic truth. I realize that this is...not a perfectly clear explanation. But thinking that anyone is anything by default is...kind of antithetical to the way I make art? Likewise, so is planning to have a "diverse" and "inclusive" cast...that's anathema to the way I create too. Characters don't exactly come from my brain fully formed, but they do come out with the basic shapes, race, gender, and so forth. There is no default.

The fact of thinking of a character that is a minority is not offensive to me, it's natural. It's the idea of planning in advance that X, Y, Z of your characters will be X, Y, Z minorities for the sake of being perceived as sufficiently "diverse" or "inclusive" to bow to political correctness that I find abhorrent, because it seems very dishonest.

That said, given about 80% of what's written in tumblry circles as critique of works that depict minorities, I totally understand why writers would want to sidestep the entire minefield of an issue by just writing people the same color they are. There doesn't seem to be any way of portraying female characters or whatever, minority x, that won't offend at least an overwhelmingly vocal minority. Look at arch-feminist Joss Whedon getting screamed off of twitter by a frothing mob of rabid radfems.

I'm with Liberty on this one, in that I honestly don't see the harm in just changing a character's skin colour from white to anything and leaving everything else as is. +X% diversity without any real 'pandering'.

An individual is the sum of nature and nurture, their genes + their life experiences...one's race alone does not define them.

I haven't studied any of these things formally, and my vocabulary is admittedly terrible, but I'm still keeping up (granted I have looked up the very basics to what's being talked about prior to now). I think for some (NOT all who're demanding things be "dumbed down") the aforementioned unconscious bigotries are getting in the way of communication as opposed to the OP's language being too obscure/advanced.

These problems manifest in so many ways, from subtle to screamingly obvious.

I guess I'll just say I agree that inaction is pretty much worse than trying (and sometimes failing) to challenge conventions for the better. Because even if you make mistakes in how you portray a marginalized person/group, you're at least questioning why and how they're marginalized, what can be done about that, etc. I mean, this then goes into what was mentioned earlier about researching what you're trying to write about. If you research and try to empathise with and respect people different to you (if you're writing about something you're not a part of, or as said earlier even of something you are) then you're making your own progress, however insignificant that is to the wider world. Because... you're one of many who are slowly trying to learn and better themselves for the benefit of people (including themselves, in many cases) who are discriminated against systematically and want to try to empower themselves and others. "People are going to get angry no matter what I do, so I'll do nothing" is not a helpful attitude.

And I agree that the white knight accusation is a fallacy. I can't articulate it any better than the OP has already done, but I just think telling a group "You're on your own" and that they shouldn't accept help from privileged people because it's condescending or something is ridiculous. How else are the groups responsible for oppressing minorities going to be changed if there aren't people within them working with the oppressed to enact that change? I mean, it's a lot more complicated than that but what is seriously the harm in being genuinely compassionate and helpful?

I'm reading Mattos' argument as saying that we need to portray marginalized demographics differently in fiction because they are treated differently in real life. Portraying a trans or gay or black person as the butt of jokes is offensive, but it might also be offensive to present them as living in a world where everything is fine, and they are treated as equals, because that's not how they're actually treated. It could be seen as a form of erasing their struggle, trying to pretend everyone is equal when they're not.

Just my take.

author=mutherfuckingme
Like I said - if you're writing about historical or modern shit, then racial tensions/gender identification/sexuality can be an issue, but if you're not then you have the freedom to not make that a thing and to just focus on creating a character who is awesome and ignoring the race card.

Also, who's saying I'm making them part of someone else's narrative? Korra managed to be bisexual and kick-ass and dark-skinned and a woman and never mentioned them as negatives. How is she not a good representation for dark skinned people and bisexual people and women?

Main characters in my current game - one gay woman, one bisexual woman, one bisexual man, one genderfluid man who is gay. They don't focus on that - they treat it as normal because in their world it is. Instead they are kick-ass people doing kick-ass things and not bothering to justify their existence to the player. They just are.

Do they have their dark pasts? Sure. One of them is married and dealing with being separated from their spouse after being framed for attempted regicide. Another is dealing with a curse that is slowly killing them. But their sexuality/genders are not their issue.

Does this make them bad representations? No. Not at all. And that is where my issue with you lies - because you're saying that to be a good representation you need to show the sad, horrible journey but for a lot of people, seeing a journey like that is... not great. Why write about that when you can give hope by showing that there is nothing wrong with them, that they are capable of wonderful things and being happy and doing great stuff - that they are not a genital. That they are more than their gender and that it gets better.

With sad-sack stories like you put forward as good representation it's no wonder the suicide rate for trans-teens is so high - they don't see the hope in a future (that and they don't think they can transition well past a certain age. Yes I read tumblr, too). If all they're fed is stories of the tragedy of their own being how can they grow to think of themselves as a normal person, as someone who is equal to everyone else and who deserves just as much as everyone else? How can they hope that in 30 years they'll be happy and doing kick-ass things?

They can't, because all that kind of representation feeds them is pitying their sad fate instead of actually giving them an aim. I'd rather never write stories like that, thanks very. You're free to read them - that's your right - but you don't have the right to demand that everyone write them because that's 'what representation is'.

Honestly, you don't have to write x thing. It's not a requirement at all, but it is a good idea to experiment (even if you never show it off) and play with new themes, ideas and the like - if only for experience.

I mean, I'm not big on sci-fi settings but I'll give them a go (I'm much more a fantasy person). There are some things you can play with in sci-fi that you can't in other genres.

Guys, Mattos is from Brazil and likely isn't a native English speaker (although I have no idea.). Let's relax a little.

author=Liberty
Honestly, you don't have to write x thing.

Oh, yeah, word, I was just bringing it up in reply to the advice I was getting, to avoid someone wasting precious calories on typing out something that I wouldn't be using.

(Though technically speaking, it's probably useful to SOMEONE reading, so yeah. SOOZ YOU ARE NOT IN ACTUALITY THE QUEEN OF EVERYTHING.)

author=Solitayre
Guys, Mattos is from Brazil and likely isn't a native English speaker (although I have no idea.). Let's relax a little.

If you're not good at communicating effectively in a particular language, you probably shouldn't try to get into complicated discussions in that language.

Also if it's about an insistence on generally accepted grammar rules... Portuguese has p. much the same rules as English about things like capitalization.

ETA:

author=Alichains
It's not even that. It's pretty a naked attempt by bigots to shut down any discussion of bigotry.

OK guys, seriously. Don't do this. If you wanna talk shit about other people in the discussion, do it in PMs or something. Don't stage whisper this shit like you're some cliche mean girls clique. NOBODY is going to change their attitude about you and what you're saying if you're acting like a bald-faced douche.

Liberty
With sad-sack stories like you put forward as good representation it's no wonder the suicide rate for trans-teens is so high - they don't see the hope in a future. If all they're fed is stories of the tragedy of their own being how can they grow to think of themselves as a normal person, as someone who is equal to everyone else and who deserves just as much as everyone else? How can they hope that in 30 years they'll be happy and doing kick-ass things?

They can't, because all that kind of representation feeds them is pitying their sad fate instead of actually giving them an aim. I'd rather never write stories like that, thanks very. You're free to read them - that's your right - but you don't have the right to demand that everyone write them because that's 'what representation is'.

I didn't plan on getting involved in this discussion- I'd much rather be an outside observer, but, I think I need to add my two cents about this one point.

I think that wettmatos isn't necessarily saying that the stories have to be downtrodden, but, I think both of your methods are valid- I don't consider it offensive to portray marginalized people as living in a world where things are okay, but there is merit to writing a story about the tragedy of self as it were.

A story where everything is fine and dandy can be very uplifting, speaking personally as a Xenophile/Furry, stories where Humans and Aliens/Furries coexist and love each other without a second thought are extremely comforting and something I enjoy a lot, as rare as they may be. It's escapism, and sometimes we all need escapism in our lives- some people more than others.

At the same time, a story about the more tragic elements associated with living as a marginalized person and depicting the life experiences involved can be therapeutic in the same ways, by reinforcing the strength of one's conviction through it being tested in a less harmful place- sort of the same principle as war games like COD being helpful in treating PTSD. It's less of an issue of needing to make things sad and more of an issue of needing to promote media that accurately portrays and analyzes the world we live in.

That being said, I'll re-iterate that I don't personally find it offensive when things are portrayed as hunky-dory in fantasy based media, because that's what creative fantasy is for. It would be wrong to suggest that people shouldn't do it or that it's wrong.