#the only one i can think of is in the webcomic freefall and that's pretty minor but i'm sure others have done it?

[archipithecus]

We have graveyards and cemeteries for satellites and spacecraft too!

one of my favorite uses of imagery is describing something as a "graveyard" to emphasize its lifelessness when it isn't something you'd think at first to consider as having life to lack in the first place

[ayellowbirds]

42 Webcomics Keshet Reads

I was recently reminded that I currently read a lot of webcomics, or have done so in the past. Here’s an incomplete list, linking to the first page where i can (which will usually mean the worst art). Organized thus:  Title, Author. Genre. Format (long-format stories, short-format & single-page stories, or mixed). Description.

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, by Christopher Hastings. Comedy, Parody, Action. A man from a long line of Irish ninjas has devoted his own life to saving lives as a doctor, disappointing his family. His staff includes a sentient but non-speaking gorilla receptionist, and eventually a boy sidekick who grew a fabulous mustache out of sheer determination. Recurring threats include fast food mascots, ghosts, wizards, ghost wizards, and a disease that turns people into giant lumberjacks. Completed.

BACK, by Anthony Clark and KC Green. Comedy, Adventure, Absurdity, Weird West. Long-Format. A cowgirl comes back from the dead with no memory of who she was or how she died, and is told by a trio of “Cool Witches” that she has to bring about the end of the world—though what exactly that means remains a mystery. Consistently excellent visual storytelling from masters of sequential art; at least one WLW pairing among the characters. 

Bite Me!, by Dylan Meconis. Comedy, Horror, Historic Fiction. Long-Format. A young woman becomes a vampire amidst the chaos of the French Revolution. Featuring immortal angst, a Jewish werewolf, and sacré bleu, the chickens. Completed (website can be slow to load).

Broodhollow, by Kris Straub. Horror, Weird Fiction. Long-Format. By the creator of the original creepypasta that inspired Channel Zero. A young man abounding with neuroses and compulsions comes to a strange little town in order to settle a late relative’s estate. Themes of unreliable memories and differences of perception.

Chainsawsuit, by Kris Straub. Comedy. Short-Format. Three-panel gag comic.

ChaosLife, by A. Stiffler & K. Copeland. Slice of Life, Autobiographical. Mixed-Format. The life of a queer couple and their pets: humor, lgbt issues, mental illness (K. experiences paranoid schizophrenia), cats, and occasional puppets.

Crunchy Bunches, by Scott Warren. Comedy. Mixed-Format. Cereal mascot parody focused on snaggle-toothed feline mascot Munchy and his friends. 

Dead Winter, by Allison Shabet. Action, Horror, Comedy. Long-Format. Zombie apocalypse story with occasional partially-animated scenes, and a relatively low focus on the actual zombies. Infrequent updates, but has a Patreon with weekly content.

DRIVE, by Dave Kellet. Sci-Fi, Comedy. Long-Format. Humanity has taken to the stars, led by a second Spanish Empire that controls the secrets of FTL travel. When the crew of the Machito recover their science advisor and accidentally pick up a mysterious amnesiac alien at the same time, they become embroiled in intrigue that affects the whole of human space and beyond, caught between secret police, mind-controlling invaders, and a species dedicated to invention who have a grudge against humans.

El Goonish Shive, by Dan Shive. Adventure, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Superheroics, Slice of Life, Mad Science. Long Format. Difficult to pin down, once described as “the most squeaky-clean fetish comic online”—lots of characters undergoing fantastic transformations of their bodies. Starts out weak but gradually grew into one of the most progressive webcomics out there as the creator started to really think about the meaning of someone wanting to transform from a nerdy boy into a busty girl. I’ve said more about it, here. Significant LGBT content, including canon gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, genderfluid, and asexual characters.

Family Man, by Dylan Meconis. Historic Fiction, Horror, Romance, Libraries. Long-Format. A learned man of Jewish ancestry takes a position as a lecturer at a small Christian university in the middle of nowhere in the Germanies of the 18th century, and falls in love with the daughter of the head of the university—who has some secrets relating to her mother’s family  On hiatus as of July 2017.

Freefall, by Mark Stanley. Comedy, Sci-Fi, Furry. Long-Format. A larcenous alien and his naive robot pal living on a human colony world acquire the services of an uplifted humanoid wolf as their ship’s engineer under less-than-legal circumstances. As time goes on, the crew becomes caught up in the struggles and politics of the artificial intelligences of the colony. Binge-reading page here, colored strips here.

Girl Genius, by Phil & Kaja Foglio. Gaslamp Fantasy (Not-Steampunk), Action, Comedy, Mad Science, Alternate History. Long-format. A young woman discovers that she is the latest in a line of mad scientists including the vanished heroes of Europa as well as some of its most terrible villains.

Goblins, by Ellipsis Hana Stephens. Fantasy, RPGs, Action, Body Horror. Long-format. A tribe of goblins go from being mere MOBs to taking levels as adventurers themselves, facing ambiguity about alignment, morality, and the place of "monsters” in a world that seems to favor humanoids. Can get very gory at times. Light LGBT content including a prominent gay male character; transgender creator.

Goodbye to Halos, by Valerie Halla. Fantasy, Adventure. Long Format. Forced through a gateway to another world for her own safety, Fenic finds herself in the “run-down queer district” of a city of animal people—and spends a few years coming into own identity as a trans lesbian, forging a new life. But the reasons she was forced into this world are catching up to her, and she’ll need to turn her protective streak towards defending herself. Heavy LGBT themes; often not safe for work. The only work i can think of where a trans girl’s underwear bulge is treated as a completely nonsexual and innocent thing.

Grrl Power, by Dave Barrack. Superheroes, Sci-Fi. Long Format. Probably Not Safe For Work. Comics nerd Sydney Scoville winds up becoming a superhero herself after circumstances force her to reveal her powers and join up with an agency providing training and oversight. While consistently funny and clever with the use of powers, it can be very centered on the male gaze; the art starts out being pretty . I actually first started reading it because I recognized one of the characters from years prior when the artist was posting softcore smut to furry websites.

Guilded Age, by T. Campbell & Phil Kahn, art by John & Jason Waltrip and Erica Henderson. Fantasy, RPGs, Action, MMOs. Long-Format. A group of adventurers face off against threats to their world—such as the CEO of the company that programmed their world in the first place. Strong themes of intrigue, the nature of violence, and the concept of good and evil in fantasy settings. Completed, now running extras & side stories, including annotated repeats of the original pages.

Gunnerkrigg Court, by Tom Siddell. Fantasy, Sci-Fi. Long-Format. A young girl attends a strange boarding school specializing in matters of the supernatural and obscure, making friends with classmates, a ghost, robots, psychopomps, living shadows, fairies, and eldritch horrors in the form of silly woodland creatures while exploring the mysteries of the school and her own ancestry. Shows remarkable art progression; the style of the first storyline is unrecognizable from the present. Especially rewarding if you’re into alchemy. LGBT content, including prominent WLW characters. Warnings: unreality is a recurring theme, and there is a bit of “suicidal” fairies desperate to be reincarnated as humans. Boxbot is rubbish.

Johnny Wander, by Yuko Ota & Ananth Hirsh. Autobiographical, Fantasy, Humor, Mixed-Format. A mix of slice-of-life autobiographical pages, and short stories, including the longer format “Barbarous” and “Lucky Penny”.

Kevin & Kell, by Bill Holbrook. Comedy, Slice-of-Life, Furry. Mixed-Format. Extremely long-running strip (daily updates since September of 1995). In a world of anthropomorphic animals where predatory species can legally & without repercussions hunt & consume other species, a businesswoman wolf (Kell) and her uncommonly large rabbit husband (Kevin) make their blended family work in spite of social stigma against predator/prey relationships. Far more light-hearted than it sounds, though it often touches on social issues and drama. Light LGBT content from some minor recurring characters.

Kill Six Billion Demons, by Abbadon. Fantasy, Metaphysical, Martial Arts. Long Format. A college student’s attempt at heterosexuality is interrupted by the arrival of a legendary king of all reality. Thrust into a battle over the greatest power of all worlds, Allison faces devils, angels, and the city at the center of the 777,777 universes. It’s a lot to take in. Occasionally not safe for work. Frequent LGBT content, including WLW.

Love Me Nice, by Amanda Lafrenais. Comedy, Hollywood. Long Format. Set in a world shared by cartoon characters and ‘real’ people (think Roger Rabbit), where TV star Mac T. Monkey Jr. struggles between his irresponsible instincts and his attempts to build a life as an adult and a relationship with fellow protagonist (and manager) Claire. Some LGBT content; infrequent updates. Occasionally Not Safe For Work. 

Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, by Coelasquid. Comedy, Videogames, Parody. Mixed-Format. The staff of a temp agency for “ludicrously macho guys” tries to help the protagonists of video games, TV, and movies deal with their testosterone-addled brains in a constructive fashion. Occasional LGBT content—mostly MLM, naturally. Keep an eye out for the fluffy little velociraptors, and Mr. Fish the Gyarados. On indefinite hiatus since June of 2018.

Narbonic, by Shaenon K. Garrity. Comedy, Sci-Fi, Mad Science, Gerbils. Mixed-Format. Comp Sci. grad Dave needs a job. Helen B. Narbon, cute blonde mad scientist with a gerbil fixation, is hiring. Story arcs feature action-packed forensic linguistics, a worldwide conspiracy of guys with the same name, rodents uplifted to sentience, time travel. Some awkwardness around gender transformations, light LGBT content. Completed, with author annotations.

Nedroid Picture Diary, by Anthony Clark. Comedy, Absurdity. Short Format. Short comics that very quickly come to focus on the antics of the anomalous ursine orb Beartato and his friend/roommate Reginald, a bird who is just terrible. 

Not Drunk Enough, by Tess Stone. Supernatural, Action, Horror. Long Format. A survival horror styled webcomic by a creator with a history of exceptionally dynamic page composition and lettering. Expect lots of magnificently weird body horror.

O Human Star, by Blue Delliquanti. Roboticist Al Sterling died. Al Sterling woke up an android body mimicking his own. As he reconnects with his former partner-in-several-senses, he explores a world that remembers him as one of its greatest innovators. Major themes of identity, the definition of humanity, and gender and sexuality. LGBT themes including MLM and transgender characters. Warning for some discussion of self-harm.

Outsider, by Jim Francis. Sci-Fi. Long Format. Beautifully-illustrated science fiction story that is painfully slow to update. If you watched a lot of 80s and 90s sci-fi anime, you’ll get the vibe that this has—including its arguable weak point of being centered on a man who finds himself among an alien race dominated by warrior women. 

Patrik the Vampire, by Bree Paulsen. Supernatural, Slice-of-Life. Long Format. The unlife and history of an exceptionally awkward vampire and the mortals around him—book club, knitting, coffee shops, violent murder. Some LGBT content.

Poppy O’Possum, by I. Everett. Fantasy, Furries. Long Format. A single mother in a world of animal people where only opossums lack magic, Poppy just wants to settle down in quiet and safety with her daughter Lily. The world has other ideas—but fortunately, Poppy is mind-blowingly strong. On hiatus. Some LGBT content.

Questionable Content, by Jeph Jacques. Slice-of-Life, Comedy, Sci-Fi. Mixed-Format. Starts out focusing on indie rock fan Marten and his robotic “anthroPC” Pintsize. As the art evolves, so does the subject matter, focusing more and more on the rest of the cast and topics like the nature of personhood and identity for artificial intelligence. Eventually comes to feature significant LGBT content, including bisexual and transgender characters in the main cast.

Rae the Doe, by Olive Brinker. Comedy, Slice-of-Life. (Mostly) Short Format. If Garfield was a transgender doe and wore clothes and also there weren’t any jokes about Mondays or lasagna and the comic was constantly assumed to be autobiographical in spite of its creator frequently asserting otherwise and the comic was still genuinely funny. But otherwise just like Garfield, really.

Selkie, by Dave Warren. Sci-Fi, Slice-of-Life, Comedy, Drama. Long-Format. Former adoptee Todd becomes a father himself to a strange young girl who turns out to be a refugee from a secret underwater civilization. While the public gradually becomes aware that humans are not alone, family forms and is redefined as secrets from both Todd and Selkie’s past are revealed and dealt with, and kids confront issues of inclusion and exclusion. Also, for some reason two of the kids from Evangelion are Todd’s neighbors.

Skin Deep, by Kory Bing. Fantasy, Coming-of-Age, Monster Girls (and Boys). Michelle discovers the secret world of mythical monster people after a small medallion unlocks her own heritage as a sphinx—supposedly long-extinct, according to the other monsters. Michelle must explore who she is and her family history while also trying to avoid completely upending nonhuman society and maintaining secrets within a culture already used to the use of magical illusions and transformations. Light LGBT content.

Skin Horse, by Shaenon Garrity.  Comedy, Sci-Fi, Mad Science, Zombies, Canadians. Mixed-Format. Set in the same universe as Narbonic (see above), “Skin Horse” follows an organization of  the same name dedicated to providing social services to beings only recognized by the secret shadow government—staffed by a patchwork zombie bioweapon, a talking sled dog, a cross-dressing pansexual psychologist, and a receptionist in the form of an immobile Victorian robotic weapon of mass destruction, all overseen by a sentient swarm of bees. Frequent LGBT content.

Something*Positive, by RK Milholland. Comedy, Slice-of-Live, Parody. Mixed-Format. Very long-running comic that gradually grows from a dark and misanthropic sense of humor into a dark and misanthropic sense of humor with a warm and gooey center. Earlier comics can be pretty weak and handle many subjects very poorly (the first strip, linked above, features an abortion “joke”); gradually improves.in terms of LGBT representation to the point that it’s one of the better webcomics in that regard. I might recommend skipping ahead in the archives to the current decade (the “1937″ and “1938″ are strips flashing back to the previous generations).

Spacetrawler, by Christopher Baldwin. Sci-Fi, Comedy. Long-Format. The naive but brilliant alien race known as the Eebs are enslaved by interplanetary society at large, depending on their servile nature to maintain the high standard of technology and transportation across the void of space. A group of utterly incompetent aliens come to Earth to seek help in freeing the Eebs... and generally fuck everything up for the best with their terrible choices of sample humans. Currently in the midst of a sequel series focusing on new intrigue and antics, including a talking, murderous kangaroo.

Spinnerette, by Krakow Studios. Superheroes, Comedy, Sci-Fi. Mixed-Format. A grad student develops spider-themed superpowers—including extra arms—and attempts to navigate both concealing her transformation, and becoming a superhero in a world where super-powered vigilantes and criminals are a fact of life. Not Work-Safe due to suggestive artwork including improbably form-fitting costumes over improbably large bosoms. Recurring LGBT content.

Val & Isaac, by @tredlocity​. Sci-Fi, Fantasy,  Comedy. Mixed-Format. A space mercenary, her wizard buddy, and the cyborg fish girl who keeps all their technology functional, occasionally featuring their shapeshifting assassin friend Space Dread. Major LGBT content, including WLW and MLM, and a prominent transgender character.

Vattu, by Evan Dahm. Fantasy, Worldbuilding. Long-Format. Born to the Fluters of the grasslands, Vattu finds her traditional subsistence lifestyle torn away as a multi-species empire asserts a claim over her people’s lands. A fantasy epic with several major arcs; see also the creator’s earlier completed works Rice Boy and Order of Tales.

XKCD, by Randall Munroe. Science, Parody, Comedy. Short Format. Stick figures and scientific silliness. Make a point of checking the alt-text of each comic by moving your cursor over the strip. Early pages are much more along the lines of experimental sketches; link above directs to a random comic in the archives. Some comics are more along the lines of interactive games!

Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic (YAFGC), by Rich Morris. Fantasy, Comedy, Parody. Mixed-Format. Not Work-Safe. The inhabitants of a world heavily based in Dungeons & Dragons go about their lives as monsters, humanoids, and soul-searching mixes of the two. Begins with a romance between a beholder and a goblin, gradually builds up to battles between nations and the gods themselves, while also finding time to explore family, loss and love, and whether kobolds count as sapient. Moderate LGBT content including recurring gay & bisexual characters (it’s a very large cast); new readers guide here.

[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.