Frustrating relative lack of LGBT NPCs in this game

[Oizen]

Someone hasnt completed the Eden story line.

[Hurlstone]

Are you part of my community? aka do you benefit my life in any way, would it be inconvenient if you were gone? If the answer is yes then I would respect you. If the answer is no then I wouldn't cry if something happens to you.

Whilst its nice that you at least have respect for the NHS... that is a very sad way to view the world. I suppose it does explain the lack of empathy and your willingness to so quickly mock others and belittle people though.

[Packetdancer]

I've said this in more than one thread, often enough I'm pretty sure some of you have seen me do so. But...

It's normal to want to see yourself represented in the media you consume. For a whole variety of reasons.

And it's super unfortunate -- and, arguably, unhealthy -- that "straight, white, cisgender male" seems to be taken as a "default" state for characters, where people are often asked to justify why a character should be something other than that.

But adding characters whose sole defining characteristic is to represent a given group? That goes wrong more often than not. Even if the character themselves doesn't end up being a cliche, by virtue of being the only instance of something the character ends up carrying a lot of baggage. When your entire cast has only one woman ("the girl" on any given Sentai team, for instance), they end up narratively representing all women, whether or not they're intended to. When your entire cast has only one non-straight person, they end up narratively representing all the alphabet-soup categories (LGBTQIA+).

(This becomes an even more dangerous scenario if you then do something unfortunate to the character; kill off a character that you've let represent an entire class of people in your narrative -- even if it's an act of self-sacrifice that made narrative sense -- and you end up with the "bury your gays" trope.)

It's always struck me -- as someone who writes fiction, among other things -- that the better way to do things is to force yourself to ask not "should this character be [something other than straight/white/cisgender/male/whatever]", but rather "should they be a straight, white, cisgender male." You can change nothing else about the character -- their narrative role, their personality, etc. -- but if you give them other characteristics at the beginning and do let that inform a bit of how you write them, it helps the world to feel more alive.

Your gay character doesn't need to be in an open relationship, any more than a straight character does. But... well, you have straight characters sometimes have chemistry or flirt with someone. Maybe your gay character should do the same?

It doesn't need to be in-your-face -- in fact, it's a lot better narratively if it isn't hurled aggressively at the reader/viewer/player -- but those elements should be a factor in how they interact with the world, just like with any element of a character's personality. If you have a character who doesn't trust easily, that informs how you write them; not insomuch as they sit down and go "HI I HAVE TRUST ISSUES SO I DON'T TRUST YOU THIS IS ME NOT TRUSTING ANYONE IN THE PARTY", but in terms of how they might still be a bit wary of the other characters, and how that influences the ways in which they interact with those other characters.

The example I always like to give in these threads is Alec Hardison from Leverage. (Which, again... if you've never watched it, do. I still think it's one of the best television series ever made, and so much fun.)

The show centers on a team of criminals who become vigilantes doing a Robin Hood routine, running cons and heists against corrupt rich folks; as the show's own tagline goes, "The rich and powerful take what they want. We steal it back for you. Sometimes bad guys make the best good guys; we provide... Leverage." And Hardison is the hacker of the team; he's the smartest member of the group, the nerdiest (down to at one point making false IDs for the team with the names of Doctor Who cast members), and also arguably the most gentle and caring of all of them.

Hardison is also black.

It is not a defining part of Hardison's personality that he is black, most of the time; he's not there for some sort of deliberate representation. Literally, from everything I've read about the show, Hardison was not written to be black. But the best actor to audition for the role was Aldis Hodge. And when he auditioned so well, they asked, "Well, is there any reason the character should be white?" And there was not. So Aldis Hodge got the job. (And the world was better for it, because he's so good in that role.)

Still, there are times it comes up, where it proves to be a social factor in some situation. Because it is part of the character.

And that's the way representation should be handled; not because you create a character specifically to represent something -- which can go wrong so, so easily and so often -- but because whenever you sit down to write a new character, you challenge your own default assumptions. Not going "should I make this character gay / trans / ace / black / Southeast Asian / etc.", but rather simply asking "is there any reason this character should specifically be a straight, white, cisgender male?" And if the answer is -- as it often will be -- "no", then maybe just change up some of those traits a little, and let those differences influence how you write the character just as they would with any other personality traits you deliberately set out to give them.

That's how you create a world with natural diversity.

And if you have some level of natural diversity in your world, characters also stop needing to carry the weight of representing all of a thing; no one needs to ask where the [whatever] are in the world, because the diversity is simply baked in; even if you don't have a given characteristic represented in your main cast, things feel diverse enough that you can easily just take it on faith that they're out there in the wider world, doing things.

And if you feel that asking yourself that question -- whether a character should be a straight, white, cisgender male -- is "forcing" things into a story unnaturally... then I do think that says that maybe you need to examine your own prejudices and preconceptions. Because humanity is a gloriously blob-like shape plotted on more axis than any of us can likely count; it's a failure of imagination if any story or world you can conceive of is restricted to one tiny little point within that overall nebula of humanity.

(And note that even people within a given group can suffer from that same "default" preconceptions, due to the prevalence of Western media which has historically portrayed "straight, white, cisgender dudes" as though they were a default setting for humanity. There are some excellent interviews with the late and much-missed Dwayne McDuffie, where he notes that even he suffered from that preconception; some of his best-loved characters, like Virgil "Static" Hawkins, required him to push himself outside of that box.)

On another note...

So who here likes Iron Bru? We need something to talk about if we want it at 100.

Holy crap I love Irn Bru. I got addicted to that stuff when I was in Scotland, and let me tell you it is very hard to get here in the Pacific Northwest.

[Doc_Seraph]

"Everybody is LGBT at some point in Limsa" - Kupo <3

[IdowhatIwant]

Man this thread sure did degenerate.

[Theodric]

I think that those who have very little knowledge of foreign countries and cultures should take a step back and cease demanding that those very same countries and cultures cater to their every whim. Equally that goes for anyone who has become so disillusioned with their own country or culture that they cannot advocate as an unbiased individual.

[deadman1204]

Amazing how we filled 40 pages in 2 days with soo many furious about the idea of adding like a single side quest somewhere in the game. Soo much hate from soo many people here (ignoring the outright trolls too).

[DezereDawn]

Man this thread sure did degenerate.

it was oh so clearly a thread to bait out bad apple responses from those who take issue with people of that stature that i'm astonished it hasn't been removed as a whole yet.

[BokoToloko]

it was oh so clearly a thread to bait out bad apple responses from those who take issue with people of that stature that i'm astonished it hasn't been removed as a whole yet.

In all honesty, I believe that was only at the start. Ever since, it's just people from both sides wanting to get the final say with a "gotcha" moment full with slander and getting touchy when the other responds in kind.

And something fun I've just noticed is how useless the showing sexual preferences as inappropiate for this game is given the ESRB warnings shown just at the very end of the page.

Otherwise I already made my point about this... 13 pages before or so, so I'm not going to bother repeating myself. Packetdance also made a very good point. When creatings character, minor aspects such as sexual orientation or race should be taken into consideration AFTER the character's foundations are built, not used as the foundation themselves.

[Jybril]

No one has yet to tell me what exactly they want this LGBT character to do or say.
Anyone in this game could be LGBT but they don't go screaming it in everyone's faces.
No one even in real life goes, "HELLO I'M GAY." So what do you want them to do so we know?
I'm actually being serious with the question...but then again no one cares about what sexuality you are.
I'm very sorry to break news. Just RP what you wanna do lmao.