#despite all the ''human culture'' in their settings just being white christian crap

[rjalker]

you can still have gender in a species that's monoecious, reproduces asexually, or even is just physically incapable of the normal means of reproduction, you people are just fucking obsessed with biological essentialism and the white supremacist ideal of gender.

[thedreadvampy]

The further this episode goes the more icky I’m finding this Indo-China business

(setting aside for a moment the fact that aside from the Doctor saying the WORDS Indo-China and referring to a collision between India and China (wtf would that even mean) all the cultural trappings are EXPLICITLY Japanese, a country which is neither in China or really between China and India)

Like I’m white and British so set me straight if I’m wrong cause I’m outside my lane here but smashing together two entirely seperate countries with very different sets of cultures and different histories feels distinctly on the Orientalist side, given a history in media of generic ‘Asianess’ (specially with the Japanese elements). I really don’t think that smashing together, say, Britain and Italy would be treated as blasé as this in terms of world building, even though those countries are at least as close culturally and maybe geographically? (my geography’s crap but Europe’s tiny)

Also they celebrate Maha Shivaratri (Hindu), Oshogatsu (Japanese) and Christmas (Christian), but no Chinese festivals. No Buddhist or Sikh festivals either, but we got Christmas.

If you mean Indo-Japanese then say Indo-Japanese

Also there’s a lot of colonialism talk AND YET no critique of the idea that an Indo-Chinese empire would have a massive work ethic despite the fact that as far as I can tell a lot of the perception of Asian nations as being work obsessed is connected to sweatshopping, a position in the Global South, and the fallout from colonialism (in India particularly) and like. I’m not saying that there AREN’T different approaches to work in other cultures I’m just saying given Western stereotypes of Asian industry it’s suspect to me that this storyline is about commodifying humans as labour producers to the point of self-destruction in a way that totally removes a global perspective on poor work practices in India and China and transplants current economic behaviour into a world apparently dominated by this power and yet leaving the position of labour unchanged.

Anyway this is all just musing it’s just weird to me that the Indo-China thing bugs me so much I’m not even bothered by the fact the monsters are evil eye boogers

[daaberlicious]

The “Because We Need One” Problem

I'm probably not nearly popular enough online for people to start caring about my opinion, yet I've felt the urge before to give it and hear what people have to say about it anyway.

I've been stewing with this topic for a while now, so I've got a lot to say. In the interest of not cluttering your dashboard, you can go ahead and click “Keep reading” when you feel like you have the time instead of being immediately confronted with a wall of text.

Now what is the “because we need one” problem, anyway? It's a little awkward to say, and you have no idea whether I'm referring to reality or fiction.

In this case, I'm referring to fiction, but while this could also apply to the modern USA in many organizations, that's another entire topic I do not feel comfortable with approaching.

To put it simply, the “because we need one” problem is the tendency for authors and creators to insert a minority of some sort, be they racial, sexual, gendered or demographic for the vague reasoning of “because good works must have them”. Now, I do not claim to know of exact dates in which psychological trends start, but I do notice how psychological trends work, so you probably would know what I'm talking about-

“This film's too white. Let's add someone African American into the main cast to make it better.”

“This TV series is too masculine. Let's put a woman into the main cast.”

“This webcomic is too straight. I'm going to put an LGBT character into it to make it better.”

This is a problem because this kind of thought relies on a completely false premise:

If my cast is more racially/ethnically/orientationally/sexually/demographically diverse, then they will be better, more interesting characters.

Personally, I first noticed this was a problem in my somewhat younger teenage years when I had first discovered webcomics. People were telling very deep stories with sprawling arcs, unusual settings and premises and diverse casts... Specifically, there was always at least one LGBT character in it.

Going on a bit of a relevant tangent:

Being a Christian having grown up around other Christians, the sudden exposure to this as a thing that exists and that people were obsessed about was very jarring. I struggled with the morality of such behaviors as displayed in these characters only, to my dismay with Christian doctrine and utter offense towards others who either did not agree with how I interpreted it or reject me for holding such beliefs in the first place, to find that the biblical text was awfully clear.

It does not get much clearer than 1st Corinthians 6:9-10.

Still, I will admit that I was making a big mistake with my attitude towards these truths. Nothing visible to others, but plainly visible to me. If I was following something for a while and they suddenly introduced or even hinted at until introducing an LGBT character, I found myself not following that thing anymore, not realizing my hypocrisy: If a character were to have sexual relations outside of marriage, something that is equally rejected Biblically as with all forms of sin, I would not give it the same discredit and call it “not worth my time”, even though the idea earns no more points in my favor than various LGBT behavior.

Going back to 1st Corinthians 6:9-10, there are a wide variety of sins listed in that passage that claim those who do them will not inherit The Kingdom of God (without, as the rest of The Bible says, a complete transformation of heart and sincere, honest attempt to totally cease such sinful acts).

But now that I'm older and wiser, though I can see my attitude was not a good one to have- That of discrediting a story solely because of what I viewed as the bad behavior of its main characters- I can see why I was really so offended by this: Every single one of these works of fiction that I rejected did not include an LGBT character because it was an incidental, not very important part of their character, as would be the case with the titular protagonist of Poppy O'Possum or as I suspect would be the case with certain characters in Tamberlane, but all because the author decided that they required one to make the story better.

The “because we need one” problem.

So get on with it, Daab. Why is it a problem?

Let me illustrate why it is by giving you some examples of stories that didn't harbor the “because we need one” attitude:

First off is The Lord of The Rings.

Think about it. Do you see a single person of African American decent in Middle Earth? I don't know for certain about the books, as while I am somewhat well read, I have not attempted to conquer the behemoth that is J R R Tolkien's original works, but I can say with enough certainty that I did not see a single African American among the entire medieval setting. They may have been present in the movies, but I did not notice them.

And you know what? That wasn't a problem. For one thing, a traditional medieval setting wouldn't have such people not because they were necessarily ostracized if they were even heard of, but because it wasn't the right part of the world to have them.

In the medieval times, African Americans were just Africans. Plain and simple. They lived out their lives in the African countries and Europeans lived out their lives in the European countries. In designing a setting, one must consider the kinds of people within it and have a good reason for why, not worry about diversity-

If you have a good enough reason, even something as simple as “I don't know how to write for/draw them”, or “It doesn't fit the tone of the story”, or heaven forbid, “I simply don't need this group of people in my setting to make it work”, nobody of sound mind is going to complain... And I see very few people complaining in seriousness about The Lord of The Rings not including African Americans.

For another, skin color doesn't matter when there are such gems of character such as these. If you write your characters well, you will come up with moments in your story and lines of dialogue that people don't just relate to or sympathize with, but empathize with and really feel.

Contrast that point about demographics with Dreamworks' Home.

Home prominently features an African American as one of the main characters, so one would think that I'd be saying it's an instance of “because we need one”, but it's actually not.

I don't think of Tip as African American first. She's a young, perhaps tween-age lonely girl that got separated from her family due to an extraterrestrial misunderstanding and harbors a resentment towards these same aliens. Then she's African American. It's incidental and not at all significant to her character.

She was not inserted into the story as African American because it would be a more diverse cast. Heck, she's pretty much one of only two significant human characters in the story, the other being her mother, who would obviously be the same race as her if she were not adopted.

She was inserted into the story as African American as only an incidental design choice, and it's only an incidental part of her appearance to the audience.

Yet people praise it for having an African American main character and saying how much it helps the cause of diversity in media when it shouldn't even be noteworthy! Praise the story instead for it's thoughtful commentary on loss, anger, sadness and love! Praise it for it's understanding of the tragedy of misunderstanding and on how both sides suffer when they fail to understand the other!

See where I'm going here?

Finally, let's take a look at one of my favorite webcomics, Freefall.

Freefall is a playful yet insightful distant future science-fiction webcomic featuring a cast that is not just racially diverse, but also includes robots, some organic artificial intelligences, and even a singular alien, as well as its own culture and plenty of references to other cultures including our current cultural trends.

Yet George Peterson has made it clear through his writing that Freefall doesn't give a crap what race, gender, or even species its characters are. Yes, some of those things are addressed though pretty much always as a thought experiment, and a major arc is dedicated to AI rights on the small colony of Jean, but nowhere does it shout to the heavens “LOOK AT THIS STORY! IT'S SO DIVERSE IT'S EVEN GOT AN INTERSEX ROBOT!”

Instead, it looks at all these various components of diversity through the lens of what it means to be an intelligent creature (or robot, as the case may be), and never once switches out of this lens.

Freefall is all the better for it. It playfully acknowledges people's quirks, vices and virtues, explores the happy, sad, and strange components of the thinking brain, and when the story gets serious, it can even make you empathize with and root for its character Florence as though she were just another person, despite the fact that she's a wolf given human capabilities and a human level of thought.

This is because every character is what they are incidentally, and anything arising from that, either dialogue, story elements or entire arcs, also feels incidental despite its importance to the story.

Ultimately, the “because we need one” problem is a problem because it fails to make diversity or lack thereof incidental. It puts way more importance on skin-color, gender, sexuality and demographic than any American/European/Swede/whatever or any child of God should. And by putting the “diverse” genders, races, sexual orientations, demographics and citizens of other countries on such a pedestal, you are letting all else of those same characters just die.

If you make your character's most important trait be that he is gay, then that is the only thing he will be. It won't matter to me if he goes to Starbucks every day after work because it's the one place he can relax after working under a boss that's mean to everyone because of how much you want to tell me he's gay.

If you make their most important trait be that they are black, Hispanic, Jewish, or Asian, that is all they will be. It won't matter how loyal they are to their best friend, the protagonist, because all you're showing me is that they are black.

If her most important trait is that she is french, she's only going to be french in the eyes of your reader. I won't care about the tragedy she experienced when she was three if all you're showing me is she's french.

Religious diversity isn't off the hook either. If they are first Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Celtic or Atheist, your reader will only see those things. I won't care what they do for fun because you're throwing their Scientology in my face and expecting me to complement you for your deep writing.

Deep writing does not require diversity, nor does it punish it's presence. Diversity, or lack thereof, should sit at the bottom of the character you're building as a foundation that is firm.

Nobody looks at what the ground is composed of unless they're actually doing something with it.

Seriously, do you expect an architect to make such grand emphasis on how his ground is composed of hardened earth? What about soft sand? Rocky soil?

Absolutely not! He wants you to look at what he's put there, and like any building, its supports , groundings and foundation all the way up to its roof will will be influenced by the soil he chooses to build on, but in the case of the greatest architects, it's never made of that soil! It's made of wood or stone, steel or concrete, glass or ice.

Likewise, when you write a character, what you will love the most about them is what makes them cry or laugh, get angry or give up, strengthens them or gives them hope. You will pour your love into what kind of things they do for fun and what kind of things they do to get by, their history and their future, their life and sometimes even their death. You will want your readers to like their quirks, pity their vices and applaud their virtues.

You must never expect your readers to look at the earth you build on and love that your character is gender-fluid, or demi-girl or demi-boy, or Arab or Native American, or Christian or Jewish or Muslim, or even that they're alien, or animal, or mythical creature or species.

This is very hard to accept, as we are creatures that recognize what is superficial first. It is what initially draws us in or pushes us away. But just like we can't expect a long relationship with someone just because they're handicapped, we can't expect someone to stay with our creation just because our characters are twins.

When you compose a story, or make a movie, or write a novel, put people where you need people, not demographics.

After all, the stories that really matter are about people.