“When you create a character whose depth is their race, your character
can only be a statement on race. If you only care about a character’s skin colour, then their character will only be skin deep
”
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard Avery Brooks answer this way to a question about Sisko’s race, and he’s on point every time. He has acknowledged that it was a big deal he was the first black captain in Star Trek, but that wasn’t the only thing he did as Sisko. He was also the first captain of a space station shown, which was a big deal too. And seeing this as I’m watching DS9 was kind of fitting. Also, those comments by the lead from Discovery shows how little she knows of Star Trek because other than the first openly gay character in the TV series, everything the video creator mentions she claims is wrong, especially about the first black lead, as Avery Brooks was. – Purple
If you want people to make characters that aren’t cishet white men, you have to actually tolerate people making those characters 3 dimensional, rounded characters with both good and bad qualities, otherwise you can’t expect more diversity or representation in fiction because if you bitch and whine about every single female/non-white/non-cishet character not being a perfect precious cinnamon roll capable of no wrong, nobody’s going to want to cater to you and nobody’s going to want to create anything if it’ll just be inevitably torn apart by a bunch of wild animals on some blue website.
Want a perfect example? Tracer in Overwatch. She got a fully established backstory, lore, everything. All her relationships between other characters were set up, including unique in-game voice lines. They fully and completely created the character from all angles.
THEN they made her lesbian/bi.
Know what it changed about her? NOTHING.
Know what it changed about the story? NOTHING.
Know how many unique, character specific in-game interactions it added or changed? NONE.
Know how often it’s brought up? Apart from the initial reveal, NEVER.
Know how many plots it has influenced? NONE.
We don’t even know if she’s lesbian or bi, because she never talks about it. Ever. It’s not her defining character trait. She has an entire personality, her life does not revolve around being a homosexual stereotype. The reveal did introduce a girlfriend character Emily, but since she’s not a playable character, we haven’t seen much of her yet. And when she IS there in the comics and whatnot? The dialogue isn’t “lol we’re so gaaaaaayyyy hey guys this is my GIRLFRIEND because we’re DATING because gaaaaaayyyy. NOSE KISSES FOR GAYNESS!” It’s “pass the bread, please.” It has absolutely, 100% NO effect on the story any more than it would if Emily were a man.
That’s how you write an LGBT character. By making her a PERSON first, and her sexuality SECOND. And I can just hear someone screaming at the screen right now “THAT SOUNDS AWFULLY DON’T-ASK-DON’T-TELL TO ME”. No. That sounds like a realistic fucking person. Because if YOU treat your sexuality as your most important, interesting, and defining character trait, if everything in your life revolves around it, well, you’re a pretty boring ass person.
One thing I learned only recently about designing characters is that their personality DOES NOT lie in the extremes. It’s super fun to think about what pushes them to their limits, and how they express themselves when strained to the utmost… but that’s not how they’ll be acting most of the time.
Their personality is in how they behave under more casual circumstances. Their morning routine, their hobbies, their sense of humor, how they interact with others on the daily… their normal lives and the ranges of emotions they feel day to day.
Beware the temptation to linger on the extremes. Anger, sadness, elation, lovedrunkenness – those are fun extremes to explore, but most people are not at those points 100% of the time, and to spend too much time on them in stories winds up making them lose all emotional significance… because that’s how they ALWAYS are, so it doesn’t feel as extreme as it should.
Remember: the extremes are only interesting BECAUSE they are extreme. To make them the norm makes them no longer interesting.
say what you want about woobifying villains, but i think tragic backstories and redemption via love are staples for good reason. we want to believe that people are fundamentally good, just hardened by a harsh world. that suffering earns you a happy ending. because then it means something, then pain isn’t just senseless and futile.
people don’t ‘excuse’ the actions of villains because they just don’t take those actions seriously. i think it’s a kind of projection – we forgive them because we want to forgive ourselves, and we look for the good in them because we want to see that in the world, even in people who have wronged and hurt us. because earth is a goddamn terrifying place if other humans really are evil, if they’re really monsters.
and idk, i just think it’s kind of beautiful that we all want to believe that the scariest mass-murdering motherfucker alive can be brought down by something as pure and innocent as love. that love is the answer, not violence. i don’t think that’s cheap or ‘problematic’ or a bad influence. i think it’s human, and profoundly optimistic in a way that few people are brave enough to be.
If I didn’t hold the hope that love could make a difference, my world would be cold and bleak.
People who ONLY ever like “pure, cinnamon roll” characters and try to buff away every flaw and every morally grey dimension and reduce stories to pure heroes and pure villains give me the creeps, because it seems to me like those are people who refuse to acknowledge their own capability to do terrible things, the inevitable fact that they have done things that hurt others in the past and will do so again (because that IS inevitable if you interact with other humans), who never question themselves, who think incredibly harsh standards of judgment are just fine because of course THEY would never need forgiveness or mercy.
THOSE are the people who are most likely to stomp on your face with a boot while being utterly convinced they’re doing the right thing and you deserve it. And they will never admit they were wrong and they’ll never apologize, because only bad people do bad things, and of course they’re not a bad person, so if they did it, it must have been good.
Give me friends who are honest about their own capacity to harm, who know where their own darkness lies, and can see it played out in characters good, bad, and – best of all, somewhere in between. Who understand when to rage, when to forgive, and when to just walk away. Who understand that other people, just like them, are ever-changing bundles of contradictions. Those are people I feel I can trust.
^This last comment. I’ve been thinking about this, and it’s not just that “every villain is a hero in their own mind.” I think it’s that act of making oneself into a hero in one’s own mind, of giving up self-criticism and clinging to an identity that’s based being Good, that opens the door for a person to do truly horrible things to other people. I honestly wonder whether philosophies or faiths where good is a thing you ARE rather than a thing you DO are more prone toward instigating violence in the name of said philosophy.
Skipping back up a few points in this discussion: this is the underlying logic of a whole set of medieval saints lives. The prostitute saints (who are usually depicted as promiscuous beyond financial concerns – yeah, you have to accept the premise that sexuality is bad and chastity is good, but a fair chunk of the audience WOULD have). The set of incestuous saints who not only committed incest but a whole smorgasbord of acts of sexual and other violence before being DRAMATICALLY REDEEMED.
The logic here is: look at how depraved and evil St Whosiface was and yet STILL REDEEMED. May St Whosiface bless me because I too am problematic and yet hope for REDEMPTION. Etc. Some of the St Whosifaces started out good and got too cocky in their own virtue, and consequently were brought low. Some of them started out depraved and got worse, or were born to depraved parents, and so on. These stories revel in the evilness of the protagonist but also bathe him or her in pathos, the better to deliver an emotional payoff when they are finally REDEEMED.
You find these tropes bleeding out into non-saints stories, too – Sir Gowther was a very bad knight, a very bad knight indeed, and is consquently cursed to live ass a dog and undergo various humilations until, as a dog, he defends his master and thus is able to ascend to Good Knighthood by the power of Homosocial Bonding. Yes really. That’s a thing.
There’s a psychological thingumy going on here, and it’s not new.
People who want no ugly in their characters don’t necessarily think they’re above doing bad. It could just be they’re tired of ugly and want something clean for once. Plus, you have to have some ugly in order to claim it’s excusable for that particular character.
I can understand the first part of your reply, but what you mean with “plus, you have to have some ugly in order to claim it’s excusable for that particular character.”?
PiraticOctopus 