My Thoughts on Representation

celticpyro:

There’s such a fine line in representation because on the
one hand, I really do get the need to see someone similar to yourself in media,
especially presented in a positive light.

On the other hand, I feel like there’s so much pressure for “representation”
and finding a character who represents a certain demographic that these characters
don’t get to be individual people, but rather, have to represent every single
member of that demographic. The Smurfette Principal basically runs on the
notion that this One Female Character represents Every Girl On The Planet
(hence why early examples especially just made her the blandest and most boring
character to exist).

That’s also how we got a bunch of Positive Discrimination,
where the Token Minority Character doesn’t have any humanizing flaws and is
just there to be good at everything without much depth of character. And
further enforcing the above trope today is the backlash against ANY kind of
negative trait in a ‘representative’ character (even if it’s just with a female
character, there’s always an article complaining about why this one character
being a bad person or having bad qualities is misogyny, which is dumb!)

That’s also how you end up with Inspirationally
Disadvantaged, their whole character just being reduced to a disability and how
“brave” and “strong” they are for “overcoming” it (and really, these characters
are mostly there for non-disabled people, able-bodied and neurotypical).

And on this website in particular (but elsewhere as well),
there’s this trend of focusing on the idea of representation purely for the
sake of “making the cis/het/white/male fans angry.” It runs into the same issue
as Inspirationally Disadvantaged, albiet with a different emotional response –
they’re just there for the in-group, just to evoke a reaction from them. That’s
why there’s this new trend of changing up characters who are white so they can
be nonwhite, or genderbending characters into women, or giving them a different
sexuality from established canon. Because it’s not actual characters that are
important, it’s the minority status that is, and now you’ve turned that
minority status into some kind of accessory for your customizable player
character.

Just. Write. People. Because that’s what these “minorities”
are – people, just like you and me. With faults, and shortcomings, and hopes
and dreams, and talents, and a favorite flavor of ice cream.