Believe me this is for Tumblr but they are too stupid to be allowed to have it:

[apiphile]

When I was a child I began making up versions of stories that I read because I wanted to be in the stories and I wasn't in them. There WERE little white girls, but they were little white girls with pigtails and two parents and good manners who never bit anyone, and I had fundamentally a very strong idea that I was the person sitting here and that

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

I don't remember that conversation. But yeah, in a lot of fannish stuff I tend to identify with one character because they're clever and kind of flaky and love travel and want to save people but are also deeply invested in finding opportunities for fun, and in another, it might be the guy who's considered relatively week because he's small, but has both a genuine love for excitement and a desire to prove how tough he is and get people to stop thinking he's so weak. And a character who's more demographically similar can easily leave me not relating if they're an organized person who takes satisfaction in order and routine, or never shows an impulsive side, or naturally gravitates to butch or femme gender presentation (my natural setting for clothing is "What's the easiest thing that counts as presentable and also fits?") or has lots of romantic relationships and regards them as a central part of life, or something like that. I can remember one character I've ever identified with on disability grounds, and she had a significantly different disability, family life, ethnic background, and many other things, but she was an angry adolescent who was rightly pissed off that people kept treating her like she was weak and tended to assume that anything that could possibly be interpreted as pity actually was, because there's only so much "You poor brave dear!" you can get before you think it's going to come from everyone.

Isn't it so much easier to enjoy a character when you're not feeling external pressure to identify with them any more than you do? It lets you appreciate them for what they are, rather than worrying about the whole "But shouldn't I like her because she is officially Like Me?" crap.

[apiphile]

Exactly, I do feel like... most of us don't answer the question "what kind of person am I" with "gay" or "white" or whatever.

[wolfy_writing]

Yeah, if I was going to think of qualities that make me who I am, stuff like race, gender, and disability aren't top of the list.

[apiphile]

People get so irate about that part and start explaining that you know, you exist through the filter of those qualities and it's your reactions and society's reactions to you being X, Y and Z that make you you, but I feel like if it's SOLELY down to your category headings, why are you and I not more similar? We're both Gay Ladies With A Disability Who Are White And Middle-Class-Ish, surely that's all it takes to be virtually identical? And yet.

[wolfy_writing]

We exist through the filter of a lot of things! Yeah, it's always going to influence my perspective that I'm a woman, an American, queer, etc. But it's also always going to influence my perspective that I grew up with a backyard leading to a giant forest park and deer who would run out and eat our garden, that my neighbor who raised wallabies, that I'm a picky eater with a fondness for certain specific flavor categories, that I have weird and vivid dreams, and that in early adolescence I used to stay up late and watch things like Aeon Flux on MTV. (Honestly, that show had a huge influence on how I thought about stories and writing.) Picking out a handful of demographic features and treating them like they're the only important factors isn't respecting my identity, it's trivializing it.

[apiphile]

Picking out a handful of demographic features and treating them like they're the only important factors isn't respecting my identity, it's trivializing it.

Hear hear.

[klgaffney]

Picking out a handful of demographic features and treating them like they're the only important factors isn't respecting my identity, it's trivializing it.

this. i tend to identify way more with characters that are displaying a particular mental wiring, logic, and shared experiences way more than shared physical traits/categories. which for me tends to mean that i'm often identifying with the emotionally repressed guy with the obsessive fixations and little patience for complicated human social dances in most stories except any of the ones played by Shia LeDouche. I hate that guys' face. Hey, I'd have no problem with people acknowledging that there are women that are like this, and writing that too, but it'd also have to be a story I actually want to read, just like the one featuring the guy.

- Given all the fandom stories featuring white dudes with shit social skills, I feel that at least some of the people shouting about this stuff are being extremely fucking hypocritical, or at best aren't adequately expressing what it is they really want when they say "representation." I suspect what they really want is character variety and depth of characterization that reflects our wildly variant, tangled, and confusing reality, but that ends up being distilled down to some tumblr kids reblogging "NO MORE WHITE CIS DUDES" 30 seconds before they go back to posting Avenger gifsets. =|

- I feel it's like this: if you aren't writing a significant population of minorities into your NYC/Chicago/Atlanta, then yes, you're doing it wrong, because that's not even remotely reflecting reality. I'll notice because the absence is glaring. I'm less likely to bat an eyelash if you're writing suburban/rural/western Pennsylvania or whatever, because in my experience many of those areas are almost all white all the time (as I suspect are the areas that many popular published writers have grown up in, given their stories). OTOH, I don't actually expect to identify with a specific black person you're writing in NYC, and I'm not going to tell you're doing it wrong if I don't, that's ridiculous. I also don't identify with every black person everywhere in RL. (it's interesting how "____ is not a monolith" is only applicable when it's convenient).

It still seems to me that what we're really demanding here is 'good writing.' =p

[wolfy_writing]

Yeah, I think a lot of people conflate "More of other types of people" with "Less cis white dudes!" I'm totally in agreement when it comes to expanding the range of characters, but not a fan of "Stop creating/enjoying/identifying with this type of character!"

More good writing!

[apiphile]

I suspect what they really want is character variety and depth of characterization that reflects our wildly variant, tangled, and confusing reality, but that ends up being distilled down to some tumblr kids reblogging "NO MORE WHITE CIS DUDES" 30 seconds before they go back to posting Avenger gifsets. =|

Well that's hit the nail so hard on the head that it's gone through the plank and fallen on the floor, aye.

I also don't identify with every black person everywhere in RL. (it's interesting how "____ is not a monolith" is only applicable when it's convenient).

Exactly this - I feel like a lot of the time I'm being given a queerlady character and told "this is you" and I'm looking at this sensible soccer mom + second soccer mom and her one adopted and one surrogated baby and thinking, "we have literally nothing in common EXCEPT basic physical and sexuality characteristics".