Diversity in Fantasy
Jan. 22nd, 2018 03:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithHere's a post about diversity in fantasy. Now I'm all for diversity, but I'm not in favor of telling people they MUST write a certain way. Let's explore why that's a terrible idea.
Ordering people to write a certain way tends to kill their muse. This is because everyone is called to write different things, which is good. Don't ruin the fun.
Also, intruding on someone's creativity is a good way to make them hate you and/or your goals. Which if your goal is diversity, that is the opposite of helpful.
Implying that something is wrong with everyone who doesn't write the way you do is pretty snotty, too. See above re: people writing all different things and the desirability thereof.
Demanding that people write things they don't want to write, if they follow through, typically leads to lousy writing. Seriously, look at all the shitty representations of women, people of color, etc. stuck in there because someone said they had to be, not because the writer wanted them there or the story needed them there. Do not make tokens pour out of the tokenism machine. Argh. No. A decent editor will just cut that crap anyway. Unless they commissioned it, in which case they are idiots, because if you want good copy then you assign it to someone passionate about Topic X, not someone who finds it boring or distasteful.
As much as it may embarrass modern, progressive folks ... a lot of history was pretty narrowminded. For a long time, the vast majority of people stuck very close to home, which meant there wasn't much diversity throughout large swaths of time and space. This is likely to repeat itself in speculative settings. That doesn't mean, for instance, there were no gay people but rather than they tended to hide for sake of survival. You didn't get a choice of religions if there was only one around you, unless you happened to have your own link to the Divine and/or packed your menu into this life via Farmemory. If you want to tell certain types of stories, you need an iconoclastic background; and if you want certain settings, you have to deal with the fact that they were boringly homogenized in certain ways.
Some other parts of history were really diverse. They often didn't get along with their more isolationist, monolithic neighbors. If you want to write that, great, but be prepared to do a lot of research -- or worldbuilding, if you're setting it in some other world. Because diversity just doesn't look the same every time you make it. People didn't always think about race, religion, sexuality, gender, etc. the way contemporary culture does. Which is actually pretty cool and a reason to write history or fantasy stuff in the first place.
Finally, unless you are paying for the privilege of telling someone what to write, you don't have it, so STFU.
Me, I like diversity, but that doesn't mean I put it in everything. Especially, trying to put ALL the types of diversity together is difficult to do well, unless it is 1) a really big work like a novel or series and/or 2) the kind of setting which is diverse by its nature like an an interdimensional hub. Big issues need plenty of room.
A Conflagration of Dragons is really about two things: race relations and disasters, and following from those, how race relations influence the way people respond to disasters. They all had contact with each other -- except that the dragons just woke up from lengthy hibernation -- but they didn't actually live together very much. Until they stopped having choices about that, because refugees have to take what they can get.
Diminished Expectations has a ton of diversity in body shape and even species, counting the created beings. But it's still a craptastic place to live. Being diverse doesn't necessarily make a society a nice place to live. I think this series has maybe 3 fans.
The Ocracies is a setting that I literally made to play with diversity, specifically in politics. I got bored with all the McMonarchies and started making up scads of little countries with all different governments. Other types of diversity exist in the setting but are largely incidental to trying to show how all these wacky systems could actually work.
Fiorenza the Wisewoman is one of my historic ethnic series, and it's fairytale Renaissance Italy. There's a little bit of racial diversity, but most of that happens on market days or in a city, because backwater Italian villages of the time weren't very mixed. The only religious diversity they really have is the fact that Italy is a palimpsest of old and new traditions, but it's not actually all that mixed because most characters go to church on Sundays and drop offerings at roadside shrines while on the road -- not two different groups each with its own religion. There's a little bit of sexual diversity but it only comes up in a few poems. Most of that just comes from Fiorenza and Giacinto each being just a hair off from strictly feminine or masculine. So there's a dab of diversity, but it's not really what this storyline is about.
Beneath the Family Tree (on the Serial Poetry page) just kind of smears over the whole issue of diversity. They have three possibly different species, possibly quite divergent races who wound up living together just find and not really making a big deal of it. They don't care about sex/gender diversity either. Gullwing seems unattracted to male bodies but happy enough with Cobble, who insists that he is a man instead of one-between. Nobody else is exercised about any of that, particularly once the two settle down together. Is it still diversity if people don't care about it the way we do? Is it even background parity? To me it just feels pre-differentiated.
The Origami Mage is among my least diverse series. It's set in a fantasy Asia, so basically everyone there is Asian, because Asia has had a lot of its cultures go through very isolationist phases. Also the story is very inward, it's about Asian motifs, and mixing in other characters would just be a distraction. It's not big on exploring sexual or religious diversity either. It's about a rather fussy little division between how two young women work paper magic.
So there's a spectrum, and it depends on what I want to write about and where. I love diversity. That doesn't mean it's the only thing that interests me.
By all means, encourage people to try writing about more diverse characters. Prompt for it. Shop for it. Create resources to make it easier for writers to do it accurately. But don't try to force them. You won't make any allies that way, and you certainly won't make good literature. Don't be a dick. Tell ALL the stories.
Ordering people to write a certain way tends to kill their muse. This is because everyone is called to write different things, which is good. Don't ruin the fun.
Also, intruding on someone's creativity is a good way to make them hate you and/or your goals. Which if your goal is diversity, that is the opposite of helpful.
Implying that something is wrong with everyone who doesn't write the way you do is pretty snotty, too. See above re: people writing all different things and the desirability thereof.
Demanding that people write things they don't want to write, if they follow through, typically leads to lousy writing. Seriously, look at all the shitty representations of women, people of color, etc. stuck in there because someone said they had to be, not because the writer wanted them there or the story needed them there. Do not make tokens pour out of the tokenism machine. Argh. No. A decent editor will just cut that crap anyway. Unless they commissioned it, in which case they are idiots, because if you want good copy then you assign it to someone passionate about Topic X, not someone who finds it boring or distasteful.
As much as it may embarrass modern, progressive folks ... a lot of history was pretty narrowminded. For a long time, the vast majority of people stuck very close to home, which meant there wasn't much diversity throughout large swaths of time and space. This is likely to repeat itself in speculative settings. That doesn't mean, for instance, there were no gay people but rather than they tended to hide for sake of survival. You didn't get a choice of religions if there was only one around you, unless you happened to have your own link to the Divine and/or packed your menu into this life via Farmemory. If you want to tell certain types of stories, you need an iconoclastic background; and if you want certain settings, you have to deal with the fact that they were boringly homogenized in certain ways.
Some other parts of history were really diverse. They often didn't get along with their more isolationist, monolithic neighbors. If you want to write that, great, but be prepared to do a lot of research -- or worldbuilding, if you're setting it in some other world. Because diversity just doesn't look the same every time you make it. People didn't always think about race, religion, sexuality, gender, etc. the way contemporary culture does. Which is actually pretty cool and a reason to write history or fantasy stuff in the first place.
Finally, unless you are paying for the privilege of telling someone what to write, you don't have it, so STFU.
Me, I like diversity, but that doesn't mean I put it in everything. Especially, trying to put ALL the types of diversity together is difficult to do well, unless it is 1) a really big work like a novel or series and/or 2) the kind of setting which is diverse by its nature like an an interdimensional hub. Big issues need plenty of room.
A Conflagration of Dragons is really about two things: race relations and disasters, and following from those, how race relations influence the way people respond to disasters. They all had contact with each other -- except that the dragons just woke up from lengthy hibernation -- but they didn't actually live together very much. Until they stopped having choices about that, because refugees have to take what they can get.
Diminished Expectations has a ton of diversity in body shape and even species, counting the created beings. But it's still a craptastic place to live. Being diverse doesn't necessarily make a society a nice place to live. I think this series has maybe 3 fans.
The Ocracies is a setting that I literally made to play with diversity, specifically in politics. I got bored with all the McMonarchies and started making up scads of little countries with all different governments. Other types of diversity exist in the setting but are largely incidental to trying to show how all these wacky systems could actually work.
Fiorenza the Wisewoman is one of my historic ethnic series, and it's fairytale Renaissance Italy. There's a little bit of racial diversity, but most of that happens on market days or in a city, because backwater Italian villages of the time weren't very mixed. The only religious diversity they really have is the fact that Italy is a palimpsest of old and new traditions, but it's not actually all that mixed because most characters go to church on Sundays and drop offerings at roadside shrines while on the road -- not two different groups each with its own religion. There's a little bit of sexual diversity but it only comes up in a few poems. Most of that just comes from Fiorenza and Giacinto each being just a hair off from strictly feminine or masculine. So there's a dab of diversity, but it's not really what this storyline is about.
Beneath the Family Tree (on the Serial Poetry page) just kind of smears over the whole issue of diversity. They have three possibly different species, possibly quite divergent races who wound up living together just find and not really making a big deal of it. They don't care about sex/gender diversity either. Gullwing seems unattracted to male bodies but happy enough with Cobble, who insists that he is a man instead of one-between. Nobody else is exercised about any of that, particularly once the two settle down together. Is it still diversity if people don't care about it the way we do? Is it even background parity? To me it just feels pre-differentiated.
The Origami Mage is among my least diverse series. It's set in a fantasy Asia, so basically everyone there is Asian, because Asia has had a lot of its cultures go through very isolationist phases. Also the story is very inward, it's about Asian motifs, and mixing in other characters would just be a distraction. It's not big on exploring sexual or religious diversity either. It's about a rather fussy little division between how two young women work paper magic.
So there's a spectrum, and it depends on what I want to write about and where. I love diversity. That doesn't mean it's the only thing that interests me.
By all means, encourage people to try writing about more diverse characters. Prompt for it. Shop for it. Create resources to make it easier for writers to do it accurately. But don't try to force them. You won't make any allies that way, and you certainly won't make good literature. Don't be a dick. Tell ALL the stories.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-22 12:55 pm (UTC)Yes ...
Date: 2018-01-22 09:01 pm (UTC)Individual solutions
Date: 2018-01-22 02:27 pm (UTC)Frex, you alone can solve the water crisis by taking shorter showers, but the shopping center can still flood the parking lot watering their landscaping, and the industrial vineyard down the road can run another well dry without consequence. (I'm in California; I have some grievances.)
Which is a long winded way of saying, I think a lot of the calls for diversity are mistakenly calling for an individual solution to a systemic problem. No one story or even creator should be required to tick off all the boxes. If publishing houses, just as an example, did a better job of seeking out, accepting, and promoting diverse creators and stories, people could have their choice. Then creators could pick and choose what issues they want to deal with. No need to hit everyone with the mallet of "but you didn't include X, you must hate them." I know some houses are working on this, with mixed results.
Underrepresented groups wouldn't feel like an otherwise good story had failed them by not representing them, if they also had piles of alternatives where they got to shine. No single story would be expected to carry the full weight of representation.
Re: Individual solutions
Date: 2018-01-22 07:57 pm (UTC)This is key. As long as there is little diversity in the creator positions, it almost feels like we're given a choice between stories with no diversity or stories with token diversity done badly. (And in Hollywood in particular, if a film with prominent minority characters does badly, it's seen as proof that only white men sell at the box office, never as proof that bad storytelling results in bad films.)
Re: Individual solutions
Date: 2018-01-22 09:08 pm (UTC)Exactly. To have diverse stories, we need diverse creators and consumers. Preferably, we need gathering spots where they can all hang out together.
The latter is harder than it looks. I tried a Carl Sandburg party once. People got to talking about their "black story," the one all the writers of color have done with no white characters. Everyone could name theirs. Their one black story. I named one ... paused, named another ... and another ... and everyone was staring at me. "What?" I said. "Those are all stories set in places that don't have any white people. But I haven't got them sorted that way in my mind, I have to scroll through the list." Apparently nobody else did it that way. They'd written one story about blackness and moved on, instead of writing stories in places populated by black people. :/
Happily, I have a blog where people of all colors, shapes, abilities, orientations, and identities can mingle freely. This greatly improves both the amount and the quality of diversity.
>> (And in Hollywood in particular, if a film with prominent minority characters does badly, it's seen as proof that only white men sell at the box office, never as proof that bad storytelling results in bad films.) <<
Yeah, but that's because they've not studied storytelling. They think computer animation sells movies, too, and don't realize it's more about Pixar's excellent storytelling fostered by geek culture. They'd do better to hold paper airplane contests than splurge on new software.
Re: Individual solutions
Date: 2018-01-22 10:59 pm (UTC)That is abusive nonsense. Individual solutions cannot solve such problems, or indeed, even lessen them very much. That is because individuals are not causing those problems. Household use of water in California is only a tiny fraction of the total. You could remove all of it and not make a meaningful improvement. The lion's share of the demand comes from agricultural, business, and municipal uses in roughly that order depending how you classify things. The plain fact is, California has a water shortage because people are growing things they shouldn't grow in a desert, and they're spending water they don't have to do it. But nobody wants to talk about that, because farming and business are powerful lobbies.
>> Which is a long winded way of saying, I think a lot of the calls for diversity are mistakenly calling for an individual solution to a systemic problem.<<
There are two aspects to this one, individual and institutional. At the individual level, you CAN solve "There are no good stories about X" by writing a good story (or several) about X. But you can't solve "Publishers won't buy stories about X" from the writer or reader end, only from the publishing end; that's institutional.
>> No one story or even creator should be required to tick off all the boxes.<<
Agreed. Not even a publisher should be, because many of them like to specialize; there are black presses and women's presses and those are valuable. For a big publisher, though, I heartily encourage the use of lines so they can cover different interests.
>> If publishing houses, just as an example, did a better job of seeking out, accepting, and promoting diverse creators and stories, people could have their choice. Then creators could pick and choose what issues they want to deal with. No need to hit everyone with the mallet of "but you didn't include X, you must hate them." I know some houses are working on this, with mixed results.<<
When I was running magazines, I did my best to promote diversity. It was hard! I really had to hustle for male writers in PanGaia, because Paganism leans female. Finding writers of color was challenging too. But I wasn't satisfied with a more homogenous table of contents.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-22 03:18 pm (UTC)Well ...
Date: 2018-01-22 08:13 pm (UTC)If you want people to behave better, you have to show them that, not just rag on them. I've taken classes for improving gender relations, but they were a lot of work and by no means appealing to the masses. I'd look for something more like Sankofa Club -- a way to entice people into the same space for fun social activities.
Re: Well ...
Date: 2018-01-22 10:01 pm (UTC)I think we need *both* the organisations in place that teach people like Shiv and Kincade and Sanquez - and Calliope and Vagary, and Mallory, how to deal better *and* rules that when they get crossed you get invited to work someplace else - or perp-walked like Warden Daley if you cross them badly enough. (See also Travis Kalanick, who didn't get perp-walked but did get sued...)
That's a good idea, though. I'm not sure *how* to get a big melting pot of folks together in a reasonably safe space and show them how to live together... but I know *where*. University towns. Both big ones (Seattle, Boston, NYC, the Georgetown section of DC) but also small ones... your own Urbana-Champaign; Clemson, SC; College Station, TX; Moscow, ID... that last one may be tougher than usual, but... the combination of education (and the resulting openness to diversity), the extra brainpower, and the nimbleness of young minds can more than likely come up with the right ideas where this aging ex-goody-two-shoes isn't coming up with the ideas...
Something tells me music is the right approach, but... never was much good at design.
Re: Well ...
Date: 2018-01-22 10:31 pm (UTC)We already have laws against sexual harassment and so forth. They aren't solving the problem. If laws won't, then rules are unlikely to do any better. I've seen this with conventions adding harassment policies, and they run into exactly the problems I predicted when the whole craze started:
* People think that making a rule solves the problem. Tick the box and move on. It doesn't work that way.
* The people who make the rules usually have no idea what they're doing. They are neither trained in gender relations nor in policy formulation. This leads to poorly constructed rules. What's worse, once a few sets of such rules exist, most people will simply copy someone else's rather than make their own, which quickly propagates low-quality polices.
* And then what? What do you do when someone reports harassment? The people to whom it is reported are almost never trained in either survivor support or investigation. Why are we even trying to do this in every school and business? We have people trained for investigation, police. (If survivors don't want to talk to police, will they really be that much more willing to talk to someone else charged with policing sexual behavior?) We have people trained in survivor support, counselors and gender activists. Shall we engage them? Generally people do not wish to do this, as it costs money. So what happens when someone reports harassment tends to fall in one of three unsatisfactory categories:
** They can't prove the allegation, so they ignore it.
** They can't prove the allegation, so they summarily ban the accused without attempting to sort out what actually happened.
** They can't prove the allegation, so they ban both parties.
I've seen all of that play out at conventions. I'm not really eager to see it spread all over Hollywood too. I would greatly prefer to see more competent solutions, but nobody else seems eager to invest the hard work and money required to do it right. They just want to tick the box. That won't solve the problem, so it goes unsolved, and over the years it is picking up a lot of cruft from poor solutions that get dragged along for the ride.
>>I'm not sure *how* to get a big melting pot of folks together in a reasonably safe space and show them how to live together<<
Montessori does it by breaking things down into baby steps at preschool level. It works great. That's a hardcore scientific approach, though, and not everyone can afford it.
A club is a great way to start because it's simple to set up. The trick is finding a good mix of people to do it. Then you just do presentations on different interesting topics.
For living together, yes, colleges are the place to try that. Offer classes in homesharing skills. Gods know people need it, and few colleges teach that. Then they wonder why people fight. Get someone to teach intentional community, that's solve a LOT of problems.
>>Something tells me music is the right approach, but... never was much good at design.<<
For that, drum jams. All you need is at least two drums, and preferably some cheap things for random people to bang on. We like PVC drums because they are cheap and sound surprisingly good, especially en masse.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-22 08:06 pm (UTC)Or they fill it with disgusting opposite-of-helpful tropes, like The Magicians did, or they intentionally destroy the token characters because they can or because they don't know what else to do with them...
This reminded me of some post going around on Tumblr... oh, ages ago. It was a poster with a queer couple, advocating for LGBTQ+ rights... And everybody was heaping onto this post to criticize the couple being white, until somebody none-too-gently said that not every country is mixed as the US - the particular country this poster is for (it may have been Italy) is very white so it actually *is* representative of the target population, and they're struggling with queer rights at the moment so anyone complaining about the couple's race can kindly shove it.
- Cadence
Yes ...
Date: 2018-01-22 09:15 pm (UTC)This happens a lot in comics, and then they claim that diverse comics don't sell. >_< Well maybe they should try hiring more people of color and women to make comics.
>>until somebody none-too-gently said that not every country is mixed as the US - the particular country this poster is for (it may have been Italy) is very white so it actually *is* representative of the target population<<
\o/
And you can't really put Sicilians on that kind of poster because they're even touchier than, say, folks around Rome -- that's begging to get your tires slashed. Italy's racial issues are different than America's, but no less a powder keg.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-23 01:04 am (UTC)I live in Oregon. It's super white. I intend to have some racial diversity in my planned stories, but those threads will be based on my experiences on the East Coast. I can't imagine growing up here and trying to write POC. I know people who grew up here and they never have had POC in their acquaintance group. What are they supposed to do? Base their writing off some 'woke' Tumblr tirade?
If I get established as a creator in the ways I want to be, I am going to need to find ways to get POC feedback on my stuff. It'll likely be a financial arrangement. As it is, I am worried that some of what I might write might be a bit dated because it's been a while since I lived in more diverse places. I can't just go and make a Black Friend(tm). The attention some African Americans get in geeky spaces in Portland is downright creepy at time. So many liberals wanting to befriend them. At one particular con I've seen holdover hippies try to hug them to 'heal our divisions'.
There are other kinds of diversity besides racial. Those are less challenging for me, mostly. Certain minefields are a whole 'nother topic.
Thoughts
Date: 2018-01-23 08:40 am (UTC)True.
>> I'd rather read a POC writing a white person than vice versa. <<
It's easier for a disadvantaged person to write an advantaged character accurately, because they have to know the advantaged routines just to get by.
>> I live in Oregon. It's super white. I intend to have some racial diversity in my planned stories, but those threads will be based on my experiences on the East Coast. I can't imagine growing up here and trying to write POC. <<
Good point.
>> I know people who grew up here and they never have had POC in their acquaintance group. What are they supposed to do? Base their writing off some 'woke' Tumblr tirade? <<
This is where the internet comes in handy. I have plenty of online friends with traits I have not met locally. When I read their blogs, and they give me prompts, their experience then influences what I write. I find this very helpful. I'd rather have higher local diversity of all kinds, but I'll take what I can get.
>> If I get established as a creator in the ways I want to be, I am going to need to find ways to get POC feedback on my stuff. It'll likely be a financial arrangement. <<
That's one option.
>> As it is, I am worried that some of what I might write might be a bit dated because it's been a while since I lived in more diverse places.<<
Point.
>> I can't just go and make a Black Friend(tm). The attention some African Americans get in geeky spaces in Portland is downright creepy at time. So many liberals wanting to befriend them. At one particular con I've seen holdover hippies try to hug them to 'heal our divisions'.<<
Yikes. O_O
Well, what about trying to attract more black geeks to the area? Or encouraging black students to take up STEM careers? With more people, it wouldn't be such a crush. Volunteering at organizations with a largely African-American service footprint would be another idea.
>> There are other kinds of diversity besides racial. Those are less challenging for me, mostly. Certain minefields are a whole 'nother topic. <<
Also true, and well worth pursuing.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2018-01-23 09:42 am (UTC)Volunteering with organizations is a good idea, if you can find the right fit.
I can't just attract certain people to move here, especially when the POC who do live here peace out of the geek spaces really fast. Making other white people chill and making them listen to POC is the problem. It's one I never solved while I was more involved with cons. I guess I just can't understand it, having grown up with POC classmates.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2018-01-23 10:18 am (UTC)Yeah, it takes practice and a good bullshit detector. For novices, I'd recommend starting with well-known public sources. Read the NAACP articles or black magazines, and at least you'll get familiar with the current issues. From there, go to websites of people who are referenced in the public sources. You can start interacting with other readers in comments. A decent site will have enough moderation to preserve civility.
>> Volunteering with organizations is a good idea, if you can find the right fit.<<
Sometimes you can find a local clearinghouse for volunteers, or a place that lists the open organizations. If you can't find anything locally, try national ones -- or travel, that's becoming more popular as a volunteer activity.
>>I can't just attract certain people to move here, <<
It's not simple, but there are programs aimed at improving diversity by getting more POC into STEM work and/or encouraging them to move into heavily white locales important to their field. The goal is critical mass. It takes about 25% of population to make a big impact. But you absolutely need at least two of a kind, or the token problem is all but impossible to avoid even if they're in a position of power. Clusters matter.
>>especially when the POC who do live here peace out of the geek spaces really fast.<<
Yeah, that indicates some kind of serious problem, which is probably hard to find and solve if the other folks are trying to be welcoming (even if they're klutzy about it).
>> Making other white people chill and making them listen to POC is the problem. It's one I never solved while I was more involved with cons. I guess I just can't understand it, having grown up with POC classmates. <<
Yeah, that can be hard too. There are a few good programs for teaching the value of diversity in the workplace, how to use different perspectives to solve problems and how to cope with friction between different mindsets -- but they rely on having some diversity to begin with.