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

[channonyarrow]

It's hugely reductionist to make the argument that you can pick one aspect of a person and now everyone who shares that characteristic must identify with the character and The Writer Has Done Their Job. I mean, I still think there needs to be more diversity on fiction, but not for the sake of saying "Look! I put in a character in a wheelchair! All you disabled folks can go identify with them and if you don't you can suck it!" Which I think is sort of where Tumblr would go with that, minus the suck it part

[wolfy_writing]

Yeah, there's a lot of reasons to encourage diversity in fiction which aren't "Look, there's one of Your Kind for you to relate to!" Diversity can make the parts that are meant to be realistic more realistic, it opens up the range of stories that can be told, and it can help push people's thinking further from categorizing Default Human as white, straight, male, cis, etc. None of that means that people in general, or people of a certain demographic, should feel obligated to identify with the disabled lesbian character, or to not identify with the nondisabled straight male.

[channonyarrow]

Now if people would stop giving themselves asspats for getting a "minority" character front and center in a book, it would be helpful. And stop assuming they've done their job by so doing. I MAY WANT TOO MUCH

[apiphile]

Pratchett just does such a good job with drawing characters who exist on multiple levels in multiple areas, who aren't defined by their flaws but aren't capable of obscuring them - I'm really grateful I grew up on his work, on a moral level as well as a creative one, I think - you learn a lot about the human condition from reading about the Discworld.

And now I know another reason Racefail pissed me off so much.

You mean APART from the bit where people started frantically attacking people of colour who didn't agree with their "this is how to feel about a thing" line as part of suddenly being champions of racial politics? :P

[wolfy_writing]

Yeah, sticking in characters from a range of backgrounds appropriate to the circumstances is only the beginning of the job. You still have to write them well!

[apiphile]

EXACTLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. I do not understand why I spend time listening to such frustrating idiots.

and, somewhat uncomfortably, both of them are British

Eh, we have our fair share of small-minded bigots too.

[channonyarrow]

Every society does. But it was shocking to realise that this wasn't a case of Americans Doing It Wrong, it was a case of Brits Doing It Obtusely, evidently.

And I have no idea why you listen to the idiots either! There is much intelligence in the world!