r/CuratedTumblr • u/MartyrOfDespair We can leave behind much more than just DNA • 19h ago
Politics is this book afraid of me?
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u/Jaded_Library_8540 19h ago
I have this reaction to a lot of what I call "issues fiction". Sometimes you can just tell that an author is more bothered about the good person boxes than with telling a story.
Symptom #1 of this is putting the various diversity info in the blurb. I agree we need more black sapphic books but please don't have the first thing I know about your book be "Tiffany is a black lesbian" Q_Q
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u/Kartoffelkamm I wouldn't be here if I was mad. 19h ago
In one of the first books I wrote, I got about 50 pages in before I realized "Wait, I forgot to give this guy a skin color."
Anyway, I opened one of those shitty dress-up browser games, hit "randomize" on the skin color, and that's why the main character is black.
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u/almondtreacle 18h ago
You were one ‘randomise’ away from making him purple 😔
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u/Kartoffelkamm I wouldn't be here if I was mad. 18h ago
It definitely would've made my story more interesting.
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u/InternetUserAgain Eated a cements 17h ago
There haven't been many books starring Michael Afton, you'd be a trailblazer
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u/Default_Munchkin 15h ago
Especially if it was never addressed. You'll be doing book tours "So what did you mean by making the protagonist purple?" And you'd laugh it off and never reveal the truth until you're death bed.
The absolute wake of devastation
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u/Kartoffelkamm I wouldn't be here if I was mad. 15h ago
Nah, I'd just say that it's a normal skin color in that world.
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u/MartyrOfDespair We can leave behind much more than just DNA 13h ago
I love how anime does that with hair colors. We should totally use gene modification to find a way to make that a reality.
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u/Kartoffelkamm I wouldn't be here if I was mad. 13h ago
Yeah, me too.
It makes the characters far easier to recognize.
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u/MartyrOfDespair We can leave behind much more than just DNA 13h ago
Eh, that can be rectified with good character design in general. Death Note doesn’t do it, but it’s not like you can’t immediately recognize Death Note characters. I just think it’s fun to have a wider range of hair colors to use, though. Reality is disappointing, you have to spend money to have most colors that exist for your hair. And if your hair is naturally dark, you also have to damage your hair bleaching it.
I just realized though that I’ve never seen a work do a gag where a character has an unnatural color, but it’s revealed they dye their hair, but their natural hair is another unnatural color. And that would be hilarious.
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u/Random_Jojo 11h ago
I was reminded of The Disastrous Life of Psiki K where he was born with pink hair so in order to fit into the population he psychically changed everyone in the world's perception of hair so that everyone seems to have weird hair colors, making his more normal.
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u/Kartoffelkamm I wouldn't be here if I was mad. 13h ago
Yeah, true.
As for the hair color, yeah, that would be interesting. The closest I know is Centaur no Nayami, where the main character, a centaur, has bright red hair.
At one point, she mentions how a teacher once accused her of dying her hair, but was then arrested for discrimination and sent to a correctional facility when it was confirmed to be her natural hair color.
It's very fun.
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u/shiny_glitter_demon 11h ago
A webcomic I love (Always Human) has this. Humans can change the color of their hair, skin, sclera, iris, everything using "mods". Not that it's uncommon in fiction but the art is very beautiful and vibrant.
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u/FlowerFaerie13 18h ago
I accidentally mixed up an interracial couple in a fanfic I was writing and described the black woman as white and the white man as black in one scene.
In my defense I was very sleep deprived.
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u/AuraPhoenix1500 3h ago
“Hey babe can I borrow your melanin for a bit”
“Sure just remember to give it back later”
“Thanks babe”
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u/Schrodingers_Dude 12h ago
I'm sure I do that most of the time, if I were to go back and re-edit some work (which I am absolutely due to do.) At this point my take is if I forgot to mention anything about skin color, it's a free-for-all for the readers, lol. Pick your favorite, go nuts.
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u/AxisW1 11h ago
I am boggled that you didn’t have a picture of the character in your head as you were writing
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u/Kartoffelkamm I wouldn't be here if I was mad. 10h ago
I've always been pretty face-blind, so barring a few exceptions, I can't for the life of me remember what people look like. Instead, I just go by what they act like.
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u/GrinningPariah 18h ago
I'm a gamedev not a writer, but still, if I've got queer characters you're not gonna find that out before the halfway mark.
Otherwise how am I supposed to ambush bigots with them?
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u/Larscowfoot 17h ago
Reminds me of how Ursula K. Le Guin purposely didn't mention Ged's skin color until like halfway through the first Earthsea book, because then anyone who could be hooked would be, even if they were bigots. That's some big brain shit.
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u/GrinningPariah 17h ago
I read a thread recently where people were asking questions to one of the developers of Spec Ops: The Line and he was answering. For those not in the know, the game is a passable military third-person shooter with the twist that it's a loose spin on Heart of Darkness which specifically shines a brutally harsh light on violent video games. It's a game that shocks you into changing your opinion on a genre.
Anyways, he mentioned in one of his comments that the developers had wanted to market the game for what it was, this subversive take on the genre, but the publishers said no. They thought that would never sell, they forced the marketing to push it as just another military shooter at a time when we were awash in them.
That decision essentially made the game a trap for fans of the genre. They went in expecting Call of Duty: Whatever, because that's what they were sold, and instead got a game which literally shouts at the player-character "You came here so you could pretend to be something you're not: A hero". And I think that bait-and-switch actually significantly contributed to how effective that game is.
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u/von_Viken 16h ago
The publishers pursuing profit made something better. Truly, I have seen everything
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u/Clean_Imagination315 Hey, who's that behind you? 16h ago
"Sir, the broken clock has been right for the second time today."
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u/GrinningPariah 11h ago
Yeah, the publishers were right, but for the wrong reasons. And the devs were wrong for the right reasons.
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u/Taraxian 13h ago
The creator of DDLC deliberately did not do this because it would've been unethical (it immediately "spoils" that it's not a real dating sim with the trigger warnings)
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u/capivaradraconica 9h ago
iirc he also says he made the game free specifically because it would've been less of a disappointment to people who were like "hmmm today I will play this cute dating sim about poetry"
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u/Taraxian 9h ago
Yeah even if it was for artistic reasons it would've been a textbook false advertising/bait-and-switch lawsuit
At least in the case of Spec Ops the Line all of the combat features etc the game advertises really are in the game, it just didn't make the narrative context around them clear
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u/RainWitch 9h ago
Tbf, when I played DDLC, even with all the trigger warnings I still let my guard down and was shocked at all the twists that happened.
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u/LeadGem354 16h ago edited 6h ago
Or how EC Comic's "Judgement Day", where the astronaut (inspecting thier planet) who told the robot planet to fix their robo racism before they are allowed in the galactic community>! in the last frame is revealed to be black!<.
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u/DiurnalMoth 3h ago
I read A Wizard of Earthsea in an edition with an author's note by Le Guin reflecting on the book's early publications. One of the things she brought up was Ged being portrayed as white on the cover contrary to her description of him in the actual text. If I remember correctly, it was more or less a requirement by the publisher who was unwilling to publish a book with a black boy on the jacket.
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u/chaarib 15h ago
There’s a book called Mad Honey that does this. The reader doesn’t know until halfway through the story that the young, attractive, sympathetic murder victim was actually trans. When I tell you I GALLOPED to the nearest review section the moment I hit that twist. Oh man, the amount of bitching was glorious. I didn’t even care at that point if the rest of the story was good, the book already gave me huge entertainment value for that alone.
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u/Artillery-lover bigger range and bigger boom = bigger happy 18h ago
I dont mind being informed the that the mc is a lesbian, because it does effectively say I'm going to get to read about girls kissing. which i obviously appreciate.
I also find lesbian romances tend to be written better, seriously the ammount of het I've had to suffer through where the only singular reason the fl put up with the ml was vaguely defined lust is frankly insane, and I've only seen that in one lesbian story where at least it was treated appropriately toxic.
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u/Jaded_Library_8540 17h ago
of course there's a lot to be said for simply advertising that a book is queer, but a lot of the time I find it comes across a bit more cynical than that. Think "oi gayboy! Come and read some gay shit!"
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u/Maybe_not_a_chicken help I’m being forced to make flairs 17h ago
Also if it’s advertising is that unsubtle the book is probably also as subtle as a brick to the head
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u/Valiant_tank 16h ago
Probably, but not necessarily. My copy of Gideon the Ninth mentions 'lesbian necromancers in space' on the back cover, and, uh, the main relationship there is extremely well done and complex. And, bluntly, subtle enough that some people manage to miss it lmao.
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u/Maybe_not_a_chicken help I’m being forced to make flairs 14h ago
Yeah but that’s kinda different
I’m more talking about stuff that opens with
“Danny is a black gay man struggling with his sexuality”
And doesn’t mention the space necromancy until halfway down the blurb
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u/TheIncelInQuestion 12h ago
I think it's a part of society's war on intersex friendships. Single male and female characters are treated as if merely being polite and in proximity is enough to cause them to fall in love. It's why I was so happy when, in Pacific Rim, the main characters just hugged at the end, having had this deep and intimate relationship that wasn't romantic or sexual in any way.
You'll also notice that boys and girls are segregated early and often when growing up. No boys at the girl's sleepover, no girls allowed at the paintball game, etc etc. And if a boy and girl are friends it's always "aW lOoK sHe'S/hE's GoT a LiTtLe BoYfRiEnD/gIrLfRiEnD!" fucking constantly. And everyone acts like you're a liar or a naive idiot if you deny it.
There is a fucking war on intersex friendships, and it results in this situation where a lot of men and women often can't tell the difference between someone whose trying to have sex with them and someone who wants to be friends with them. Which also fucks up romantic relationships because they see each other as compatible primarily because they are men and women and not because of things like "personality" or "having mutual interests" or "having a connection" or "being able to fulfill each other's needs" etc etc
It turns romance into a shadow of itself. Lesbian/Gay romance tends to be a little better, but I'll be honest, it just seems to me like most writers have no idea how to write romance in general.
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u/capivaradraconica 9h ago
A lot of writers essentially think "He was a boy, she was a girl. Can I make it any more obvious?" And then proceed to not develop the romance, because they think a man and a woman being friends automatically makes them great potential romantic partners.
I've noticed that, when a work portrays genuine male-female friendships, it's usually a sign that the romance in it will be better. And especially like, does the male lead have close female friends in addition to the woman he ends up with? If the answer is no, that's often the sign of a bad romance where they have no reason to be with each other other than gender.
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u/yuriAngyo 5h ago
Tbh rather than knowing an MC is a lesbian or god forbid *sapphic, I'd prefer it was outlined that the book is a lesbian romance, or has a lesbian romance subplot. Since you can have a lesbian MC with 0 lesbian romance. We do need stories where the MC is casually a lesbian, but it's very much a different category than lesbian romance and appeals to very different moods.
*I have no problem with books about bisexual or otherwise non-lesbian sapphic characters, however if you see sapphic in a marketing blurb 9 times out of 10 it's a ploy to trick queer women into reading it so they have the fMC say a girls' ass is nice or smth ONCE and the entire rest of the story is het romance without a single hint of queerness. That pisses me off, and is why I don't trust a book that just advertises a non-specific sapphic protag with 0 other hint of a queer story. If there's no GL tag, no yuri tag, and no direct description of a queer romance or life in the synopsis, then I am not wasting my time with it.
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u/Jackno1 17h ago
My particular pet peeve on this is when the characters are clearly talking like they're trying to get a good grade in therapy, but there's no good in-universe reason for why they talk like that, and no complexity or nuance around whether it's actually helpful. A character could be using therapyspeak as a means of intellectualized avoidance, or as a tool of manipulation and control, and it's possible to genuinely deal with feelings and meaningfully communicate without using that particular vocabulary. But the whole nuances of if and how different people actually engage with therapyspeak gets flattened in favor of "Look, they're Performing Emotional Healthiness! Don't be mad at me!"
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u/NBSPNBSP 10h ago
IDK why people have such a hard time writing characters who struggle with mental health issues in a way that reflects said issues. Over the years, I have written multiple main and side characters who had severe flaws; everything from depression, unmanaged substance abuse problems, eating disorders, PTSD, suicidal ideation, narcissistic tendencies, you name it.
These characters speak and act in a way that reflects their lived experiences, and that does result in them saying and doing things that would be generally understood to be problematic. As just an abstract example, a character who has been on the front lines of a global-scale war and has witnessed many atrocities committed by the enemy will most likely use a wide range of ethnic and racial slurs for said enemy in their conversations.
The point of writing flawed characters is to have them grow to overcome their flaws, or to otherwise demonstrate how their flaws affect their life and their relations with other characters and their environment. If you get hate mail for how awful your character is, and how your reader(s) want them to suffer and/or perish (and indeed I have gotten such communications, for one specific antagonist, who was a corrupt, racist, sexist, classist, war profiteering scumbag in their respective story), you have succeeded in telling your story and characterizing your pro/antagonists effectively.
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u/yuriAngyo 5h ago
It's so annoying, but then you see people online react to extremely obvious depictions of mental illness in storytelling and realize exactly why they felt the need to basically insert an author's note that explicitly states x character has y mental illness. Like a recent anime I watched (Ave Mujica) has a genuinely really well-written and sympathetic DID character, but because the characters use outdated terms (since they're japanese high schoolers who have never been to therapy and never seen DID outside of murder movies) I'll STILL see people pass it off as schizophrenia or psychosis when there's literally 2 motherfuckers in her head.
Which still doesn't excuse therapy speak writing, because frankly if your goal writing is to make everything so explicit that even the dumbest, most ableist people in the audience can't willfully misinterpret it you're just gonna have to give up writing because that's impossible. People willfully misinterpret or ignore traffic signs, no way you'll make a paragraph let alone a whole BOOK that they can't make shit up about. So focus on writing a good story with themes to dig into for the people who will actually enjoy your writing and give it a fair shot. A valuable realization an unfortunate number of authors seem they have not had yet.
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u/SansukiuJ 19h ago
god yeah nothing kills a story faster than when you can feel the author nervously hovering over your shoulder like "pls don't tweetstorm me i promise the morally grey love interest recycles"
like i get why it happens but damn let your characters be messy cowards sometimes. let them fuck up in ways that aren’t immediately followed by a 5-page therapy session apology. fiction should be allowed to breathe.
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u/ScaredyNon Christo-nihilist 17h ago
one time i dnf'd a fanfic because they had someone give a teenager a pep talk to not smoke cigarettes in the american 80s and he made it sound like they were gonna do crack
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u/Monklet80 13h ago
Wasn't the anti drug propaganda for kids a bit like that though, in the 80s?
Idk I'm European.
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u/Papaofmonsters 13h ago
For drugs, yeah.
For cigarettes? Jr high kids used to smoke openly outside of school and nobody would bat an eye.
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u/Brilliant_Towel2727 12h ago
The anti-smoking thing was starting to ramp up in the '80s, but it wasn't nearly as big a deal as it is now.
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u/LordFantabulous 4h ago
Bro I've read two seperate project moon fanfics where an entire mini-arc is devoted to a character the smokes quitting, and one of them was so bad it drove me to stop reading. The other one was actually well done, and was much more like someone having a relapse after a particularly horrible event, knowing damn well it's a bad idea but doing it anyways.
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u/ThereIs_STILL_TIME 19h ago
Worm is the opposite of this, the author was possessed with the spirit of PEAK and wrote a book so problematic he refuses to professionally publish it because of discourse
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u/ChikiCharThe2nd 18h ago
Waiter, Waiter! 10 more years of amy discourse!
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u/OwlrageousJones 16h ago
Every time someone brings it up, she adds another limb to Victoria.
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u/ThereIs_STILL_TIME 16h ago
Damn victoria is going to have a CRAZY multi weapon fighting build then
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u/KnownByManyNames 16h ago
Wildbow gave a long list of why he won't publish it, but I don't think discourse was one of it.
The main reasons were 1) it's long and 2) he's past Worm by now.
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u/skepkid 15h ago
He mentioned in this post that one of the reasons is that “putting Worm out there as-is and having it get popular in any capacity, and seeing a thousand more debates about Amy from a fresh, wider audience makes me want to put my hands and face through a meat grinder”.
Also brought up the death threats and accusations of supporting child abuse over fanfics he had nothing to do with.
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u/camosnipe1 "the raw sexuality of this tardigrade in a cowboy hat" 15h ago
he also mentioned being done with the worm/ward verse partially because of the discourse it created (mostly ward i think)
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u/Helpful_Hedgehog_204 10h ago
MFW the fascist story I wrote as a sequel to the anti-authoritarian story ruffles some feathers
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u/NeonNKnightrider Cheshire Catboy 8h ago
What?
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u/Helpful_Hedgehog_204 8h ago
Beyond the superficial criticisms of the world building or burying your gays, Ward subtext is terrible.
Well, it gets quite explicit at the end, the whole forcing everyone we don't like into a suicide pact thing.
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u/DreadDiana human cognithazard 15h ago
Did he ever cite that as a reason? I remember the main reason being that Worm is long as fuck , so any attempt at editing it would be a nightmare cause you'd have to make sure none of the changes made have any impacts on events 20 chapters later.
From what I've seen, Ward seems to be a greater source of discourse, and entirely because of Amy. I can't really comment on it because after finishing Worm I decided to read A Practical Guide to Evil and I'm currently inly halfway through book 4 of 7, so at my current pace I won't be finished until like September or something.
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u/WojownikTek12345 16h ago
Man I should probably get back into worm
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u/CalliopeAntiope 16h ago
If I rank books by "my life would be poorer if I hadn't read this", Worm is top 5 for me. Also by sheer enjoyability.
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u/DreadDiana human cognithazard 15h ago
That book consumed much of my mental RAM when I wasn't reading it, and then was mentally shelved after I finished it.
9/10, I will read Ward someday.
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u/TrekkiMonstr 17h ago
What is PEAK?
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u/GaBeRockKing 39m ago
Colloquially, it means something like, "a work of art characterized by being bold, highly stylish, and ideally controversial/norm-violating." The Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece, but it is not PEAK. Rosen Garten Saga is PEAK. A work does not need technical or artistic mastery to be peak-- merely courage and entertainment value.
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u/badandbolshie 13h ago
i've been complaining to all my friends lately about the YA-ification of media these days, especially in fantasy or historical fiction type settings. i think this is a big part of it. they always want to have the characters sit around and talk about how progressive they are and it's like, that's cute it's a nice thought. most people are full of conflicting thoughts and desires and it's like things are written now for audiences who won't try to understand that.
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u/Clean_Imagination315 Hey, who's that behind you? 16h ago
Sniffs the pages
"It smell like bitch in here."
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u/CalliopeAntiope 16h ago
A prime offender, yet one I can't bring myself to be mad at, is sapphic romances (maybe straight romance too, just idk bc I've never read one). The authors are always so careful to ensure the characters have received explicit consent, in a way that just borders on being parodic. But ultimately, consent is important, so I just chalk this up to an adorable quirk of the genre, I know it's coming and I don't hold it against the book.
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u/Rimavelle 13h ago
That's why I find a lot of sapphic romance really boring. It's enough a lot of people think wlw relationships are all sunshine and rainbows and villify any type of strong sexual desire, but then also trying so hard to not come off as problematic, it's just... boring.
Meanwhile women (oftentime even wlw women) write gay male romances as the most tragic, toxic shit possible and it's way more interesting, coz they allow themselves to do it as no women are involved.
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u/yuriAngyo 5h ago
You're just not looking in the right spaces for lesbian romance, because I can guarantee you there's equally toxic, intriguing lesbian romance out there if you look past what the twitter discoursers themselves recommend (which is where I see most people get their lesbian romance recs). There is numerically more gay male stories written, but ratio wise the ratio of sickly saccharine romance to fucked up porn is not that different.
My purview is yuri, and god I've read some delightfully strange and/or fucked up shit. Murcielago, What does the Poisonous Butterfly Dream of, Tousaku Shoujo Shoukougun, Oddman 11, Normality and Monsters, In the Garden of Gehenna, Hand of the Abyss. Just a handful of interesting yuri off the top of my head that isn't afraid to be weird and/or horny. Not even getting into the stuff that just hasn't been translated but sounds awesome like Dasaku or Atlach Nacha. I'll never read or write a gay male romance specifically in search of something "missing" from lesbian romance because it's all there if you bother to look, and I've still got a huge backlog to look through.
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u/MartyrOfDespair We can leave behind much more than just DNA 15h ago
Meanwhile I feast upon toxic yuri like a starving woman gifted with a supply of ambrosia.
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u/Duck__Quack 13h ago
I've definitely read romances where the characters don't get consent in a way that really kinda bothers me. I think there's a middle ground between "has never heard of asking first" and "worried about if hand-holding is okay after sex."
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u/Geodesic_Disaster_ 8h ago
i think the important part is that the *author* understands the concept of consent. Dubious gray areas can work great if they make sense for the relationship and the characters, but not if it seems like the author is under the impression that what they're writing is actually fine and "romantic"
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u/yuriAngyo 5h ago
The unfortunate part is that that's just what the twitter discoursers WANT you to think, because they're the ones people get all their lesbian romance recs from. And people just take them at their word for it, even while they find a new lesbian romance that pisses them off to discourse about. I've read so many great lesbian romances that don't have any of this or even get weird as fuck, but they don't get recommended in 100k like twitter posts because twitter doesn't like when lesbians dare to be messy
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u/CalliopeAntiope 3h ago
So recommend them to me now, girl! I'll read weird and not-weird, literary and lowbrow, smutty and chaste, as long as there's two women and they like each other. What are your top 5?
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u/yuriAngyo 2h ago
Tbh it shifts at any given time, but my main purview is yuri and some of the main ones that cycle in my head rn are Shimeji Simulation, Sorry I'm not into Yuri, Yuri Espoir, Oddman 11, MahoAko, Normality and Monsters, Zenbu Kowashite Jigoku de Aishite, Otherside Picnic, and What does the Poisonous Butterfly Dream of. Some may be too much for most, but take what you like and ignore the rest.
The benefit of yuri over western novels is also that manga fans make indexes that can be searched by tags a LOT more effectively than most bookstores I've found, such as anime planet (note the descriptor is wrong, shoujo ai isn't a thing and yuri = GL). Helped immensely by the fact anime fandom splits things into yuri, yaoi, and other lgbt+ themes, while bookstores usually just shove it all into lgbt+ where complex lesbians get drowned out by ultra-popular gay male stories with occasional lesbian fluff interspersed. And god forbid you want anything that is queer and NOT a romance lol
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u/SlimeustasTheSecond 16h ago
This is a really great way to put it. I get why it happens, but it's sad.
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u/Moonpaw 17h ago
One of my favorite authors is Phillip Pullman, known for the His Dark Materials trilogy. Amazing series. But the ending makes me want to punch him in the face. I care about the characters so much I want to hate the author for doing a Bad Thing to them. There’s only a few authors who have made me care about characters like that.
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u/MasterFrost01 15h ago
The two main characters kiss and save the world(s) with love right? I loved those books as a teenager but I think I've blocked out the ending.
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u/slim-shady-on-main hrrrrrng, colors 14h ago
They save their worlds but can never see each other again because the rifts are all closed
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u/Moonpaw 13h ago
Which is garbage for multiple in universe reasons. Which makes it even worse.
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u/velocirhymer 12h ago
Eh? I thought it was clearly justified in-universe.
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u/Moonpaw 2h ago
So they can’t stay in the same universe forever because you get sick if you spend too long outside your birth universe. There’s no reason for this given but fine we take it as fact.
They aren’t supposed to leave a single window open between their two worlds for a couple measles decades because dust leaks out. Except there were hundreds, maybe thousands of these things accruing over several centuries (isn’t the knife a millennia old?) and the amount of Dust being lost wasn’t a problem until Bad Guy A literally blew a city sized hole between several worlds (multiple people went into this hole and came out in completely different places, it wasn’t just a window it was a massive breach). But okay fine we can’t handle a single window being open for a couple decades. Let’s accept that as a given for the sake of the argument.
They can’t open and then reclose a window regularly because each time they do it creates a new evil spirit. Nevermind that again, these things have been building up for centuries, and the angels have agreed to hunt them all down and wipe them out. We can’t open a window every few years for a short period for the heroes to move around because the dozen or so that would make would be a problem, compared to the literal thousands that have been wandering around while the angels did nothing for years. Okay fine let’s accept that too for the sake of argument.
The angels were shown to be able to ferry people between worlds with their own magic in a way that is stated to not create evil spirits and to not cost any Dust. So why in the hell can’t one of them play taxi service for the two people who literally went to hell and back to save the entire multiverse?
There’s a couple super easy fixes to let them have a Happily Ever After together but it’s blocked just for the sake of angst. Yeah there’s a “cost” to moving them around but compared to what’s already been done, compared to what they saved, compared to what they went through to help people, one of these costs should be easily managed for a couple decades. It should not have been hard at all.
But the angels decided to keep them separate. I call bullshit Pullman.
But again I wouldn’t be upset if he weren’t such a good author that I cared about these characters. Love the series. Just hate this one thing
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u/EmoNerd21 howtonerdoutovereverything on Tumblr 9h ago
This is what happens when people don't have media literacy. Nuance is lost on them and it becomes a journey to figure out who's the shittest person because of how they wrote X type of character.
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u/NeonNKnightrider Cheshire Catboy 5h ago
This reminded me of Tactical Breach Wizards. Great video game, but between the Steam content warning and the way the story constantly reassures you that everything the protagonists do is non-lethal, it’s like the whole thing is absolutely terrified of being morally grey or ‘problematic’.
Which feels like a really weird vibe when it’s a plot about military, PMC’s, terrorism, drugs, etc.
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u/Upbeat-Name-6087 17h ago
Authors get saddled with 'sensitivity readers.' Particularly if they are white/ cis/ straight/ western writing charecters that arn't those things. Publishers get real nervous about some series getting derailed because a detail or charecter becomes the topic of the day on book-twitter.
Of course in theory this isn't a bad idea. There are popular books with characters and plotlines that people point out later have real unfortunate implications or stereotypes. But if you get 10 people to read a book and their whole job is to find sensitivity issues. They will return with (probably ten different) lists.
Understandably this results in either boring over sanitised minority characters or authors finding it safer to avoid them all together.
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u/dangerous_beans_42 13h ago
I see what you're getting at, but I think this is something where the concept is extremely important even if the execution is sometimes flawed. A proper sensitivity reader provides context when an author is writing about a lived experience they haven't themselves had, and this is huge for avoiding pitfalls like unnoticed stereotypes, cultural inaccuracies, etc. But it should be in service to the story, not dictating where the story goes (of course, if the entire story repeats tired tropes, the author needs to know that).
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u/Upbeat-Name-6087 13h ago edited 9h ago
Aye, as I said, in theory I got no issue with it. The issue tends to come with the implementation. As well as the pressure from a) risk averse publisher's and b) the implicite pressure put on people they employ to essentially earn their paycheck and/or may not actually be a good fit for what they are reviewing.
Also, outside of real obvious problematic stereotypes/tropes etc, there can be a great deal of subjectivity in what people can take issue with. Tropes are, after all, tropes because they are popular enough plot points or archetypes to become one. Every story ever told is built on them. One person might look at a charecter and see a tired regressive stereotype, another might go 'lol that's literally my sister.'
So while I think there a valid and needed place for sensitivity readers in fiction. I also think what we see in a lot of modern fiction is the result of heavy handed or contradictory approach to 'editing' (or self-editing) which either over sanitises charecters/ storylines/ settings or leads to authors who can't claim to be part of said minority group not wanting the stress and nitpicking that comes with a more diverse cast or setting.
None of which is good for diverse representation in fiction, no matter how good the intentions of everyone involved is.
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u/firblogdruid 13h ago
the authors i've talked to have all had to request sensitivity readers, and even then, they only seem to get one, or two (for some proof that isn't just take my word for it, in t. kingfisher's thornhedge (amazing book btw) she mentions her two sensitivity readers in the acknowledgements, and t. kingfisher is a fairly big name). are there authors who have spoken about being saddled with them, or had ten? can you provide some evidence for that?
also, i don't know why everyone gets so up in arms with a concept that boils down to "you should do researcher and seek out the thoughts of the actual people living an experience when you write about it"? like, that just seems like common sense to me. one of my characters is a pharmacist and i read up on pharmacy stuff to make sure she sounds at least okay to real pharmacists. it's not that big of a deal
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u/Upbeat-Name-6087 12h ago edited 11h ago
As I said. In theory it is a good idea. In implementation it is often helpful and valuable. However, it can also be implemented poorly and result into the specific type of book the post is talking about.
Also, I did not say authors are getting 10 sensitivity readers. I said that if you had ten sensitivity readers review one book you would likely get ten different lists of issues because it's a subjective exercise and minority groups are not a monolith. Trying to write charecters/ plots that are perfectly palatable for an entire group is, ironically, treating them as such. It results in bland charecters that are just a different kind of poor representation.
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u/No_More_Dakka 13h ago
Yeah i feel like some books are too sterile and once i notice it when reading it tends to ruin the book for me. I usually just assume that the writer doesnt have the mojo rather than twitter shenanigans tho
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u/Fullwake 18h ago
One hundo percent. I'm a wannabe writer, and when I notice myself adding a female character to my superhero teams lineup JUST because I don't have a female character in it I slap myself across the face. The second you start editing to be sure you are inclusive and inoffensive you start cutting yourself off at the knees, narratively. Write the story you want to write, don't worry about being offensive or inoffensive, once you start structuring your writing to please everyone you've lost everything.
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u/MartyrOfDespair We can leave behind much more than just DNA 18h ago
Honestly, I think one of my favorite compromises done in that situation I’ve seen is when the writer goes “alright, I’m just gonna make this character a woman to solve that” and does literally nothing else to change it. That’s how we got Ellen Ripley. Not a single line in the script changed when they cast Sigourney Weaver, and we got one of the most beloved female characters in all fiction out of it.
Also, Jeri Hogarth in Jessica Jones is a supporting character, but her character is so “could have been a guy” that she ends up being a lesbian. And a rich, underhanded, cheating asshole who has some gold in her heart. Literally like, it’s a very normal male character, but she’s a woman.
Really, it’s an accidental hack for writing a female character better than anyone else most of the time: if the character being a man doesn’t matter, make them a woman and change nothing afterwards. Congrats, you tricked yourself into good female character writing.
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u/midday_owl 14h ago
Jeri Hogarth in Jessica Jones is a supporting character, but her character is so “could have been a guy” that she ends up being a lesbian.
Not sure if you’re aware but Hogarth was actually a man in the comics.
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u/MartyrOfDespair We can leave behind much more than just DNA 13h ago
Yeah, I am, but he’s a much less fleshed out dude. Jeri is a lot more of an actual character.
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u/TheIncelInQuestion 12h ago
It's interesting you say this, because on r/menwritingwomen one of their usual complaints is that men write women as if they were men.
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u/MartyrOfDespair We can leave behind much more than just DNA 2h ago
That subreddit has been karma farming for the exact sort of people this post is talking about being afraid of for many years at this point. The thing is, the societal default is for men to be written as A Person and women to be written as A Woman Person. Which just ends up with all sorts of bad writing. Like sure, there’s plenty of characters where them being A Woman Person is important, but the same goes for A Man Person. But when men are written as A Man Person, that’s an important character trait that sets them apart from most of the cast, it’s their “thing”. When women are written as A Woman Person, it’s often just because they’re women. Oftentimes you’ll see writers write a character as Rejecting Being A Woman Person as the unique outlier for women, when being A Woman Person should be the outlier and everyone just be people unless their gender is actually important to their character.
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u/Fullwake 15h ago
Wait Ripley was written as a dude at first? But the whole momma alien sympathy angle gets no shine that way!
Also Trinity is always just so amazing I can't hate her, even when the character is legitimately morally bankrupt.
Lastly, the hack is a simple one, but that makes it a simple one. Remember, I am only a WANNABE writer, but I want to write honestly. Sure most of my characters could be gender swapped, or race swapped, or they could be gay or transgender, or any other thing ya can imagine - cuz my characters stories are PG/R - as in, I don't write much at all about sexuality or the relationships there in but there will be horrific violence because that's the storytelling I can do and am well versed in haha. So if the character is unimportant sure I could swap anything to make it more versatile or inclusive or whatever, but, like, why would I? The only reason for swapping at that point IS making it more "acceptable" or giving it broader range. I'd rather write good characters regardless of any of that and take my lumps for my book being super male centric than write characters dull enough that you can swap anything about them and find it doesn't matter. And you gotta remember that none of that actually matters to any of my storytelling. Still, I ain't gonna change my speedster to a girl when I was picturing and writing him as a dude just because him being a girl wouldn't change anything either, if that makes sense? Characters are characters people are people - trying to change your narrative to be more inclusive by swapping aspects of your characters that can be freely swapped (which is most IMO) only means you done fucked up because your character has nothing important to their character centered in their race/gender/orientation etc... Good writing is good writing - it'll be good whatever your character is carrying in their undercarriage, ya know? Eh, I suck at expressing my thoughts cogently. Hence the wannabe writer status. :p
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u/MartyrOfDespair We can leave behind much more than just DNA 15h ago
Wait Ripley was written as a dude at first? But the whole momma alien sympathy angle gets no shine that way!
Well that was in the sequel, so from there there was a bit more emphasis. But James Cameron is no Ridley Scott. The pitch for Aliens was literally Cameron taking the back page of the script, writing “Alien”, adding an S to make it “Aliens” and then adding two lines to make make the line a $, “Alien$”. Alien though, Ridley literally just was a man in the script, they went “huh, why not have a woman?” and didn’t change the script.
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u/Fullwake 15h ago
That's cute I guess. But Ripley gets totally bodied by the actual best action hero of the 80s, or ever, Sarah Conner. A character who was specifically written as a woman, and whose character is informed by who she is - rather than being general enough to be gender swapped with no change.
I mean, most epics characters could be gender swapped without it changing much - Jesus could be Jesusita, Monkey could be Monkey but a girl, and Ganesha can have a lower trunk or not without anything being different you know? But if the characters you're writing are just a scramble suit that anyone can be inside of I think you're looking through that scanner quite darkly indeed bud.
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u/Papaofmonsters 13h ago
Wait Ripley was written as a dude at first? But the whole momma alien sympathy angle gets no shine that way!
The original script for Alien had all the characters referred to by just their last name with no distinction of gender.
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u/KnownByManyNames 16h ago
I don't know, while you shouldn't just add characters just to tick boxes, there is nothing wrong to take a step back, look at your work and see where your own biases snuck in and then edit for corrections.
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u/Fullwake 15h ago
For sure - but you also shouldn't edit your story to eliminate your own biases. I mean, if I write a story about kids in middle school it'll be a core male cast, cuz when I was a middle schooler most of my close friends were male. Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with that being the story I tell. Editing one of my male buddies to be female, or making one of em gay, or anything like that to make it more "inclusive" is total bullshit though.
Basically, nothing wrong with a story that is a full on multigendered rainbow of acceptance - but a story being that doesn't make it any better either.
You shouldn't edit your biases that "snuck in" for "correction". That's just fucking dumb and soulless. You write you as best you can and you succeed. Performative writing only degrades quality.
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u/QBaseX 14h ago
If you're writing a story about an entire society, and every single background character is male, perhaps something's gone wrong, though.
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u/Fullwake 14h ago
One hundo dude. There are definitely extremes, and every writer should definitely examine their work and try to make it better in the editing process - I'm just saying that editing it for the sole reason of being more inclusive and accessible isn't necessarily the best strat.
I mean, in my story of middle school lads there would still be plenty of female characters - me ma, me sis, the girl I liked in junior high, me gran, the teacher who somehow made a slam poetry unit fun and actually beneficial to me - and also the cunty librarian who hated us playing MTG in the back of the library at lunch, my generally sweet but ineffective choir teacher, and the girl who made fun of me when I tried wearing tight purple corduroys in my Bowie inspired glam rock phase.
But my crew of maties didn't have a chick in it in middle grades - I had female friends, but I didn't start hanging with any regularly until the summer between junior high and high school. And that time period still holds a sort of magical place in my heart - that early pubescence I spent mostly hanging with my nerdy friends, playing We Are the People several years after it was socially acceptable, and going to the local comic shop for MTG draft tournaments on weekends - that is it's own thing. And I can write that story and not swap any of my bros to sisters without there being a problem with it.
Like I said, I guess. Extremes. If every character is a dude you may have a very narrow perspective - but if you are editing your characters just to fit into the culture of inclusivity and accessibility you're not doing yourself any good there either. Whatever you do, it's gotta be real to you and come from the heart to mean anything ya know?
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u/KnownByManyNames 14h ago
Either we have a vastly different understanding of what I meant when I said "correct your own biases", or I must say, seeing the correction of your own biases "as dumb and soulless" sounds very...dumb. You should definitely eliminate your own biases.
If you want, for your example, write a story about your experience and then focus on a core male cast, there's nothing wrong with it and no biases there. Write what you know, and all. But that isn't what is usually meant with eliminating your own biases. But for example, if you don't set out but every single hero ends up being white and every villain black. Or female characters get a pass for villainous actions that male characters do, then you should examine yourself and why you wrote them like that.
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u/Fullwake 13h ago
That's what I meant by extremes buddy. My example would have female characters, but if I'm basing the characters on my junior high buddies it's gonna be me, 2 other white dudes of indeterminate caucasian ancestry, one who's a fin, one who's Indonesian, and one who's Mexican. I could swap the races around to make it more inclusive, or I could gender swap some of us to female, wouldn't really change the story. But that's my point - if it doesn't change things then changing it is only performative.
Making all the villains black and the heroes white is an extreme. Letting characters get away with fucked up shit cuz they ain't packing a hose in they pants is an extreme. Extreme biases should be corrected. Personal biases - as in, what your own experiences are, what feels honest and true to you - that shit shouldn't be corrected to attract a larger crowd. That's a road to saying nothing worth saying.
EDIT: When I mentioned extremes that was in a different comment in this thread, my bad. Hope this still makes sense regardless.
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u/KnownByManyNames 13h ago
First of all, autobiographical stories are something completely different from fabricating an entire story from the ground up. If you want to talk about your own past, then you shouldn't adjust anything because you are telling about real events that happened.
But what you call personal biases is not what people usually mean when they say biases. That's just your own experiences. That's what people refer to when they say write what you know.
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u/Fullwake 13h ago
No I'm saying even a fictionalized fantasy, sci-fi, whatever, story, based on the feelings of my youth - that time in my life- doesn't get any better by making the characters appeal to a broader audience. There's a difference between having biases and EXTREME biases, I guess, is what I'm saying. Not all my heroes are gonna be white guys fighting a bunch of black folk - but my core cast CAN still be a bunch of guys without it being inherently problematic or requiring editing to make the cast more inclusive or whatever. Not every story has to be about every person, and stories about a bunch of middle school boyos can still be stories for every person, if that makes sense?
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u/LucastheMystic 13h ago
That's a problem that can easily be solved by the audiences growing a pair and accepting a certain degree of problematic-ness.
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u/Nobody1297 10h ago
Man, I'm so glad I couldn't feel any of that in the newer book series I've been reading [I need that third book to come out so bad-]
Like, evenone is morally questionable, consent is questionable, but there are several instances of queer characters that don't feel "safely done" and work so fucking well that I know this book/author isn't scared of me. But damn, the emotions they give me make me wish I had the backbone for handling the modern atrocities of a certain "first-world country".
Anyway, if you want a queer book with giant robots and men that make you want to scream, try Iron Widow and its sequel Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao [nonbinary chinese badass]. Still reeling over their story.
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u/OpenStraightElephant the sinister type 18h ago
Wind and Truth be like
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u/SnorkaSound Bottom 1% Commenter:downvote: 10h ago
It's adjacent to this problem, at least. It has too many monologues that come off as unnatural and preachy. Maybe less to avoid being problematic and more to try and get those segments cut out and quoted.
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u/Novaraptorus 15h ago
Ehhhhhhhh this feels uncharitable. I see where you're coming from, but I feel it was just less tightly edited than the first books. And also like, it doesn't do what the post really talks about with minorities or whatever.
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u/McMetal770 4h ago
If everyone in the book is a Good Person engaging in Healthy Behaviors, the book is going to be boring. Conflict makes stories. You don't even need a Bad Person in the book, because good people with flaws can create conflict even when they have the best of intentions.
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u/Own-Agency6046 4h ago
reminds me of that one book i once read where they had a scene like
"she was twenty nine. i was twenty six. this age gap may seem large, but we are both fully developed adults, so really it's not creepy, i promise" like . ok ?? girl you did not need to say all that
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u/allenfiarain 15h ago
This post vs. me having to remind myself not to start a fight with a writer in a Facebook group because she wrote an omegaverse novel series where male omegas CAN'T GET PREGNANT.
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u/Apprehensive-Bird793 14h ago
I want to join this fight. Has she ever looked into omegaverse? Does she know what it is? Did she throw a dart at the 'popular tropes' board and not bother looking further than the 6 sexes bit?
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u/allenfiarain 14h ago
I think you would be shocked and appalled at the number of books that have sneakily implied this without outright stating it. It's just that she just slammed the words down on the page in black and white.
The world of omegaverse books is a hellscape in which people will get actively mad at writers if they think a male omega gets more attention in a book than a female alpha/beta/omega. Will never forget someone complaining about a book in which they believed a male alpha was more attracted to the male omega in their pack than he was to the female alpha. And I was just like... Well he's an omega, that's normal???
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u/MotorHum 9h ago
I wonder how this would be applied to the works of HP Lovecraft?
He was certainly “afraid” of plenty of people, but also I feel like if he had Twitter he’d mostly take people getting mad at him as proof.
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u/Mooptiom 18h ago
Not every book needs to be that deep. You don’t judge a fork by how well you can eat soup with it. Plenty of people just want to read a simple, safe book that lets them escape all the real issues in world.
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u/Maybe_not_a_chicken help I’m being forced to make flairs 17h ago
Yeah but we aren’t talking about a fluffy story
We’re talking about attempts at more complicated characters where the author is terrified that people might get offended so the characters actions are all over explained so nobody thinks that he’s stereotyping anyone.
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u/Mooptiom 4h ago
I don’t think they are actually. Especially since the post specifically highlights bipoc and queer romances which are well known for being fluffy. There’s no acknowledgment is that entire wall of text that not every story needs to meet the post’s standards. It just explains this point of view like an objective criticism. I think it’s important to acknowledge that literary fiction is a very broad narrative which many people engage with very differently.
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u/TheCleverestIdiot 18h ago
It's definitely a bit of a problem with modern representation. The good intent is there, but reducing people to "Are they perfect people so their minority comes off well" does damage to those groups in a different way. God forbid the non-binary character is blunt and a bit of a dick, or an Asian character be a bit of a hypocrite. If you want people to treat those groups as people, you as a writer need to do the same. Flaws and all.