ysabetwordsmith | Reading about Miles Morales

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Reading about Miles Morales

My partner Doug found this wonderful interview with the creator of the Miles Morales Spiderman. It talks about why he made a mixed-race Spiderman and what superheroes mean to the audience. Some thoughts ...

"It's a story with a very strong theme: "With great power comes great responsibility." And that theme is so perfect in its simplicity that you could build a religion around it. As a fan, I carried it around with me, but when you start writing it, you realize, Oh, this is the most important lesson in the world. It's not a superpower lesson. It's a lesson about power, itself. If you have the power to sing, or to grab people's attention, or anything, then with that comes responsibility that you need to identify and raise yourself up to."

Agreed. This is part of my personal code of honor. Your responsibility always matches your power. If you don't have any power, you're not responsible for anything in that area. Wherever you do have power, you are responsible for using it well.

"The most cosmetic change we made, obviously, is a couple of years ago when we made the determination that, if Spider-Man were created today, there's a very large percentage chance that, based on where he's living and who he is, that he would be a person of color. So we made the choice to send Peter Parker off with a heroic death and have a new young man take the mantle in the form of Miles Morales, who’s half Hispanic and half African-American."

I think this is incredibly important. It makes me want to buy the comics, not just because I love the character concept, but because I want to encourage and support that kind of writing -- where someone actually looks at the world, asks what it needs, and also takes into consideration real facts such as demographics. I do this in my writing. It's not just about creating diversity. It's about matching the local color of a specific area if that's what you're writing about. Frex, my Walking the Beat is set in Jamaica Plain, and there are some characters from the Dominican Republic because that's a local trend there.

"Now, you can't make these decisions [to be more inclusive] consciously, because then you're just writing in reaction to things, and that doesn't work out, dramatically. But subconsciously, if you look at the world around you and see your readers, you go, I wanna write something that I know is true. So you start writing women better and you write people outside of your experience better, because you look at pages of other people's comics and you don't recognize it as the world around you."

Actually, you CAN make a conscious decision to write more inclusive characters, or to change any other aspect of your writing. You can do whatever you want with it. If you're only writing to tick a representation box, it'll probably suck. But if you decide that you want to fill a gap, and make an honest effort to find out what's missing and fix that, then it'll probably be at least decent. Some people write intuitively, some logically. Some write things down, others make things up. It all works for somebody. Do what works for you -- and what is meaningful to you.

"Just yesterday, a woman wrote an article analyzing what she thought was a poor comic book cover, and she was met with just a bunch of shitty anonymous people being awful to her online. I think that a huge problem is people who read comics and don't understand the point of superheroes, which is to be the best version of yourself. You love Captain America? Well, you know what Captain America would never do? Go online anonymously and shit on a girl for having an opinion."

This is the whole point of cultural material in any medium: giving us a chance to imagine ourselves in other circumstances and how we would face the challenges that a character does. Stories can show us the best behavior or the worst behavior, and how that works out for a given character. I feel that we need superheroes in general, and the archetype of the Unsullied Hero in particular, to ring the gold bell at the top. And we also need terrifying villains to remind us of how awful people can be. A good story should make us think about the characters' choices, what they did and why, because that helps us make the right choices in our own lives.

Believe me, when you have very little time to make a very important decision, that mental practice matters. If you've done it before in your imagination, you're much better prepared to respond quickly and effectively when real life throws you a curve ball.

I feel that we need heroes for inspiration. They show us what the best behavior looks like. Maybe you can't lift a car like Captain America ... but you can open a door for someone with their hands full, and little things like that help make the world a better place too. Actions matter. Inspiration matters. Stories matter.

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Peter Parker is an archetype. So is Wolverine, or Phil Coulson, or Deathlock, or Felicity Smoak. (Oooh, DC reference, sorry! Ha!)

We've had the discussion about Nick Fury (white) being different than Nick Fury (black), and I think we're circling back to a key idea: do we need /separate/ archetypes for different races, the way the industry has been Ms.-ing superheroes for the last twenty years? (Only recently have they made any significant changes in storytelling, though.)

Are we talking about gaining ground against cultural inertia, at long last, or are we finally looking at our own /culture/ differently? Neither of us are more than armchair sociologists, but it's a good topic for a more formalized study. My hope is that we're finally seeing our own culture differently, and thus making the media mirror more accurate.

A good friend and I regularly argue whether dictionaries should be prescriptive of language, or descriptive. This is the same notion: should our entertainment tell us more about the world /as/ we see it, or as we /want/ it to be?

>> Peter Parker is an archetype. So is Wolverine, or Phil Coulson, or Deathlock, or Felicity Smoak. (Oooh, DC reference, sorry! Ha!) <<

Individual characters are not archetypes, but may be an example of an archetype. For example...

Unsullied Hero
- Captain America
- Superman
- Faramir

They're all completely different people, but they share a common idealism and an ability to resist temptations that drag other people into disreputable actions.

One challenge in writing is to take an archetype and build a distinctive character around that framework, making them individual without losing the core concept. Frex, I have Stalwart Stan, who is a very classic Unsullied Hero, a boy scout ... and he's bisexual but hasn't really realized that yet, and his nemesis Antimatter has a crush on him. Ancient archetype with a very contemporary challenge in front of him, dealing with sexual identity in a society that is currently questioning how to handle that.

Another issue is just apt handling: knowing the archetypes, choosing the right ones for the story you want to tell, and portraying them effectively. If you try to use the wrong one or you botch the delivery, it tends to be a disaster. Look at how DC has tried to change Superman, the ultimate good guy, into a shady gray killer. It makes people uncomfortable; it makes them say, "That's not Superman." Because that character was already established with a particular archetype that folks are really attached to, you can't just change him around like that and have it work. If you want to deal with shades of gray, terrific, tell those stories; but pick an archetype that specializes in that, such as an Anti-Hero. Do not use a screwdriver to pound nails!

>> We've had the discussion about Nick Fury (white) being different than Nick Fury (black), and I think we're circling back to a key idea: do we need /separate/ archetypes for different races, the way the industry has been Ms.-ing superheroes for the last twenty years? (Only recently have they made any significant changes in storytelling, though.) <<

Race and gender are not archetypes per se, but some archetypes -- or stereotypes -- are particular to a certain race/gender. Uncle Tom is one example of a racial type, which may be considered favorably by a white audience and negatively by a black audience. Mary Sue is a gendered example, although later that developed a masculine version in Marty Stu. And notice that a particularly famous character may lend their name to an archetype or stereotype.

>> Are we talking about gaining ground against cultural inertia, at long last, or are we finally looking at our own /culture/ differently? Neither of us are more than armchair sociologists, but it's a good topic for a more formalized study. My hope is that we're finally seeing our own culture differently, and thus making the media mirror more accurate. <<

I've never had a tendency to privilege the culture I'm standing in, but that's a rare trait. I compare cultures all the time. So I have a much wider base of knowledge than usual when it comes to critiquing what people are doing, or choosing source material as inspiration to write from.

Part of my training is in Women's Studies, which is interdisciplinary but is pretty much a social science/art branch of study. I took classes in sociology, anthropology, and other people studies ... well, okay, I hit almost all the sciences that interested me, cramming in the best I could of a personalized course of study in a school that refused to support that officially.

>> A good friend and I regularly argue whether dictionaries should be prescriptive of language, or descriptive. This is the same notion: should our entertainment tell us more about the world /as/ we see it, or as we /want/ it to be? <<

It's always cyclic, reflexive. Language influences thought; thought influences language. Language is a living, growing thing. We write it down. Other people use that to look it up. But we make up new stuff out of thin air. Whatever of that becomes popular will eventually get written down too.

So too, art influences life; life influences art. If we don't like either of those things, we can use the other as a lever to change it. Sometimes life is stupid. Sometimes art is boring. But they don't have to stay that way. I use art both as a mirror and as a road sign. This is what's happening now, or what did happen; here are some things that could happen, good and bad. I write both inspirational and cautionary tales.

Brian Michael Bendis takes a lot of crap, but I think he hit the nail on the head here. Miles Morales caused a great deal of butthurt among Peter Parker fans, but he is unmistakably a Spider-Man for today (as opposed to 1963).

I've so many thoughts on this, this may be a bit jumbled.

I know for myself I did this once I shook out after finding slash. That is to say, once I checked the shock I asked "is this the way this character would handle things?" and that took me to research and find the wide variety of historical and cultural constellations. I've changed how I think about things, and what I know about things, because of reading and writing.

I think of Star Trek and Man from U.N.C.L.E. here. I saw them first in syndication, things my mom had watched prime time and wanted to see again. Remember, this was a time when the world didn't look like what tv showed. TV was very white and very male. They also were hopeful, and the heroes won, not easily, sometimes they questioned. But they did it time after time.

And yes, practice is what makes it much faster to do the right thing when the time comes. There is a character in a Turtledove series, who becomes the first xenolinguistic expert, because he'd been reading the science-fiction magazines as he played minor league ball. (Like Steve, he was 4F. Lost all his teeth during the 1919 flu.) First step? Treat the lizards as people. Second and third are speak your language and listen to what they say.

It's not that race requires separate archetypes. But validating only X, that's going to alienate people. "I do what he does, slower." Sam didn't come out of a bottle. (Neither did Steve, not the part that is the hero.) Steve's MCU background, and the background he's accreted in the comics is radical. Think about it. He doesn't come from space, son of Important Scientist. He's not the heir to vast wealth. He's just a kid from Brooklyn, that wants to stop bullies even more than he wants to live through winter.

Characters aren't archetypes, but they are avatars, striding about showing how things work if Y is done. Well-done diversity gives more breadth of what is done and removes that 'doesn't look like me' bar.

That name, Miles Morales, was a little itch in my mind, and it finally dawned on me: You want an Unsullied Hero? Here's a Moral Soldier ("miles", Latin for 'soldier').

First, thank you for getting from what I was /trying/ to say (and missing) to what I was /thinking/ as I typed.

I really, really need a cautionary light on my laptop. Gah, that was a badly, badly worded comment and I apologize.

A total aside: I think you got a very, very different Women's Studies approach than I did when I tried to take the class. Two weeks of being the only person to call the instructor on her vast overgeneralizations, two weeks of hearing the /entire/ class male-bashing. When the instructor started a class to "prove" --and I quote: "all men are r*pists", I not only walked out of class for the only time ever, I dropped the class and complained to the admin that she was a misandrist.

Oh, and that was me, accidentally posting anonymously. I'm going to go wake my brain up, now.

Thanks for pointing that out! I did know the meaning of "Miles" but hadn't put it together with the last name. Gosh, now I have to wonder if they're writing him that way.

People will always complain when something bad happens to a favorite character, but we still have a Peter Parker Spiderman.

I think it's kind of heroically adorable for Ultimate Parker to die so Miles could have a turn.

Peter: "Here, kid, let me hold this door for you. World needs heroes like you."

Miles: O_O "Now what do I do?" O_O

>> I've changed how I think about things, and what I know about things, because of reading and writing. <<

You are made of so much win! That's the kind of enlightenment I want to see happening.

I honestly think that decades of slash, thank you Gene Roddenberry for giving us Kirk/Spock, have contributed to us having a country that is now beginning to recognize marriage equality. Because it's not unthinkable anymore, it's something a lot of people think is adorable in fanfic and that spills over into everyday life.

>> They also were hopeful, and the heroes won, not easily, sometimes they questioned. But they did it time after time. <<

That's what fed into Schrodinger's Heroes, and to an even greater extent, The Blueshift Troupers. I yearn for positive visions of the future.

>> There is a character in a Turtledove series, who becomes the first xenolinguistic expert, because he'd been reading the science-fiction magazines as he played minor league ball. <<

I remember that! It's one of my favorite scenes in that whole series. It shows exactly how mental practice delivers practical benefits, because you know HOW to solve a certain type of problem. I swear, if we ever get first contact, pray it's with fans instead of diplomats.

>> It's not that race requires separate archetypes. But validating only X, that's going to alienate people. <<

I agree.

>> "I do what he does, slower." Sam didn't come out of a bottle. <<

That was one of my favorite lines in the movie. I love Sam. He is not dissuaded just because Steve can run laps around him. He teases back.

>> He's just a kid from Brooklyn, that wants to stop bullies even more than he wants to live through winter. <<

That's why I made a point of including supernary characters in Polychrome Heroics, along with ordinary people who are friends and supporters of soups and NOT just there to get kidnapped. (Well, I have one kidnap target too, but that's just because Antimatter is too messed up to ask Stalwart Stan on a real date.) I want to show how anyone can do heroic things. It's not about having super powers. It's about having super care.

>> Characters aren't archetypes, but they are avatars, striding about showing how things work if Y is done. Well-done diversity gives more breadth of what is done and removes that 'doesn't look like me' bar. <<

Agreed! Minds me of the part about how anyone could play Spiderman because the suit covers every inch of skin. I've made a note to create a superhero with a full-body costume.

>> First, thank you for getting from what I was /trying/ to say (and missing) to what I was /thinking/ as I typed. <<

You're welcome.

>> I really, really need a cautionary light on my laptop. Gah, that was a badly, badly worded comment and I apologize. <<

It's okay. Both genteel phrasing and clarity take practice, and I've been at this for decades. Plus I have the advantage of some college classes that explored archetypes.

>> I think you got a very, very different Women's Studies approach than I did when I tried to take the class. <<

Some of my WS classes were brilliant. Some were misanthropic and made the testicles not attached to my body very unhappy. It helped that we often had one or two guys in the class, which meant that they and I could anchor discussions to prevent them from going off the deep end.

>> Two weeks of being the only person to call the instructor on her vast overgeneralizations, two weeks of hearing the /entire/ class male-bashing. When the instructor started a class to "prove" --and I quote: "all men are r*pists", I not only walked out of class for the only time ever, I dropped the class and complained to the admin that she was a misandrist. <<

Fortunately I never had a WS class that bad. I'm sorry to hear about yours.

Really, I made my minor Gender Studies before that was even a thing. I think I helped enlighten a lot of people to gender as a social construct as well as a personal identity, and the extreme diversity that's possible. If all you're doing is backlash, that's not really an improvement.

*hugs* It's all fine.

I was sure you knew Latin miles, but didn't want to leave other readers scratching their heads.

Thanks. I really appreciate you adding bits of linguistic trivia for my audience. You put a lot into my blogs.

:-D

Superhero comics started out with broken ethnic misrepresentation as part of the melting pot and the whitewashing afterwards. A couple of Jewish guys hopped up on Doc Savage novels come up with Superman; a Jewish guy creates The Spirit; Jacob Kurtzberg basically makes Marvel what it is. Names like Romita and Perez don't strike me as particularly whitebread either. And yet it's not till the 60s that we get our first openly Jewish superhero to go along with our first batch of Black supers.

I'm now wondering whether 40s/50s vintage readers just accepted that most of their heroes really were that WASPy or whether they were willing to assume politely whitewashed identities.

I get the impression that the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, happening at the same time as a big boom in comics, really opened up this idea that heroes didn't need to be white; I don't see why not open that possibility up to some of the established heroes, especially as an acknowledgement that the guys behind the pencils aren't necessarily white either. What's changing the guy in the suit going to do, make canon more of a mess? I have problems keeping it straight whether or why Charles Xavier can walk at any given time, I don't necessarily need Spidey to be recognizably Peter Parker from the 60s.

>> Superhero comics started out with broken ethnic misrepresentation as part of the melting pot and the whitewashing afterwards. A couple of Jewish guys hopped up on Doc Savage novels come up with Superman; a Jewish guy creates The Spirit; Jacob Kurtzberg basically makes Marvel what it is. <<

Maybe people's fantasies have changed. Some disadvantaged folks want to imagine belonging to advantaged groups, after all. Others want to imagine that people like themselves can be heroes too.

«Some were misanthropic and made the testicles not attached to my body very unhappy.»

I'm pretty sure you meant to say "misandristic". See dialecticdreamer's usage.

Dr. Whom
Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoëpist, and Philological Busybody

Edited 2014-05-16 02:20 (UTC)

One of my biggest bitches against the Lord of the Rings movies is that they had Faramir betray Frodo.

Yes, exactly! Faramir and Boromir were perfectly balanced in the original literature. Boromir was corrupted by the Ring while Faramir resisted. That's crucial to the story balance, and changing it did a lot of damage.

The first movie was brilliant. The second was flawed. The third was a clusterfuck.

The Hobbit is frankly canonized fanfic.

You mean the Hobbit movie, right?

The trilogy of Hobbit movies currently in production, yes.

(Facepalm)

Heh. I should get you to debate this with Russ. I'm with you -- IMO, that decision blurred the distinction between Boromir and Faramir.

Russ, OTOH, says that this is something Tolkien got wrong, and that the scene in the book was a wall-hurler for him. He says that Faramir, as a military leader in the field, would never have agreed to let the Ring go -- although he still didn't try to take it for himself -- until it was proven to him that he could not prevent Sauron from taking it. I don't agree with him, but wotthehell, it's only a movie.

What Turtledove book is that? Now I'm curious!

If I remember right, it's in the first of the Worldwar series:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwar_series

Yep.

I can't figure out if the series would be too triggering for Steve or if he'd like it.

"I give thanks that the Chitauri didn't come while I was on the European front."

Chitauri arriving to find Steve and Bucky on the European front: "Yahoo! We got 'em on the ropes!"

Chitauri arriving to find Steve alone: "Hey, Howard, how's that Manhattan thing going? Can I have it?"

I think it's a question of how one imagines America, and thus where one can find space to see oneself. Comic books and early film have a lot in common, and it can be unsettling just how navigating identity worked. Groucho remarked that America was a wonderful place, how else could his brother become Italian while hanging around him and Harpo?

Read some of the writings from the Harlem Renaissance and...

It's complicated and you don't even need to see Casius Clay being amazed at the pilots (rumble in the jungle, Ali vs Foreman, sorry that I'm spacing which African nation was the venue) decades later.

A history denied is a history that's going to bite coming and going.

"Jet engines."

Yes, Steve would have figured something out. But, he knows how to be thankful for trials he was not asked to surmount.

Though, he'd probably have contacted Rommel and told him it was time to really piss off Hitler.

I agree with you completely. This is what I say to people. It's not the changes that they had to make to the story to fit the change in medium, it's the complete character rape that they committed, which was in no way necessary, and ruined the story. Faramir represented the best of Gondor, he was the epitome of what they should be. Denethor was the pride of Gondor corrupted by itself, and Boromir was the pride of Gondor corrupted by an outside influence. Aaaand, I'll shut up now, otherwise we'll be here all day talking LOTR.

It's time for a re-read.

>> It's not the changes that they had to make to the story to fit the change in medium, <<

Well, there are plot concerns. Tolkien was a master of hurt/comfort. If you look at the structure of the original novels, you can see a very meticulous pattern of stress and release. This makes it possible to crank the tension much higher without burning out either the characters or the audience. The methods of comfort, like the nature of the hurt, tell us more about the characters and the world; some of that is load-bearing material. Cut most of the comfort out, however, and the structure destabilizes in addition to risking overload. It no longer functions as effectively as the original.

>> it's the complete character rape that they committed, which was in no way necessary, and ruined the story. <<

And not just this, but also a fundamental change in message. Tolkien's work is very much about the blind stupidity of war. While the earlier animated versions echoed that beautifully, the later live-action movies have replaced it with glorification of violence like every other action flick on the screens. You can't do a complete reversal of message without butchering the material.

>> Faramir represented the best of Gondor, he was the epitome of what they should be. Denethor was the pride of Gondor corrupted by itself, and Boromir was the pride of Gondor corrupted by an outside influence. <<

Beautifully put, thank you.

One of the things I loved best about the Worldwar series was how it outlined that each group of humans hated some other group of humans more than they hated the Lizards -- who in fact got a foothold in Poland via the Jews. I can't say I blame the Jews for that.

>> A history denied is a history that's going to bite coming and going. <<

Agreed.

>> I'm with you -- IMO, that decision blurred the distinction between Boromir and Faramir. <<

Yes, it did.

>> He says that Faramir, as a military leader in the field, would never have agreed to let the Ring go -- although he still didn't try to take it for himself -- until it was proven to him that he could not prevent Sauron from taking it. <<

Ah, but Faramir wasn't really a military leader. He only did that because it was expected of him. He's the bookish one of the pair, and that's why he's the family scapegoat while Boromir is the golden boy. They simply do not think alike. Faramir recognized that the Ring was a hazard and that the best way to protect the land was to get the Ring as far away as possible. The Fellowship had a good plan in terms of destroying it with a stealth attack. Faramir was far too thoughtful to have fallen for the same fool idea that Boromir did.

Of course, the Lizards didn't much want Poland. Arizona...

Actually, it's been interesting how Captain America fandom is exposing the way that even that fairly recent past has been hidden by the way 'history' is taught. The past has been made up like a theme park made safe for Dick and Jane from their suburb.

Just as it is dangerous to misunderstand the Shoah, to think there was something peculiar that caused it leaves us in danger to walk that same path whapping historiography with Progress... leaves us patting ourselves on the back just getting back to where someones been before.

Now, considering how leery schools are about race in history, how does sexuality take a more accurate shape? Funny the things Steve Rogers growing up in a Red Light district leads to.

>> Actually, it's been interesting how Captain America fandom is exposing the way that even that fairly recent past has been hidden by the way 'history' is taught. <<

Yes, that's true. I love how entertainment can make people look into things and discovery new ideas or buried truths. I love that people are using this character -- the heart of America -- to explore questions of history, race, gender, and sexuality.

And class.

I'm waiting for 'Birthers' to claim Steve's not American.

Someone over on Tumblr pointed out that in Steve's world, Captain America would have ripples in popular music. The question would be how he'd have been leveraged.

I'd like to see what Gabe got up to in his classes after the war.

>> I'm waiting for 'Birthers' to claim Steve's not American. <<

*laugh* Oh the fail.

>> I'd like to see what Gabe got up to in his classes after the war. <<

That would be interesting.

They keep demanding someone to affirm they witnessed his birth.

Oh that is just begging for the Winter Soldier to show up and offer evidence. Watch them wet their pants. Especially when they realize the only thing between him and them is Steve.

Now that would be 'amusing' for some of their most high profile members. Though, Bucky could only attest to them being boys during Prohibition.

But, he's persuasive in other ways.

This sounds solid. I haven't read the article, just your post. I don't write fiction, or hardly ever, and I didn't feel much connection *as creator* with the lessons for writers. One thing did ring with me, but in contradiction - in the particular context of what I do write: songs and lyrics.

"Now, you can't make these decisions [to be more inclusive] consciously, because then you're just writing in reaction to things, and that doesn't work out, dramatically."

That sentence made me think immediately of a couple of times I've done just that, and it has worked *in its context*. E.g.: a humorous song about the calamities that can and do befall a smof - one of the (jokingly self-called) Secret Masters of Fandom, those who volunteer to run fannish conventions, as I did for filk music at Arisia for a number of years. Halfway into it I thought "Hey, wait! Why 'he'?" All I needed to do was change the pronouns, and my hapless Filkmeister became a hapless Filkmeisterin.

I did it because I wanted to be inclusive. I could do it that easily because the narrative was brief and had nothing in any way specific to one sex or gender, or to those aspects of person-ness or society.

That's all.

>> Halfway into it I thought "Hey, wait! Why 'he'?" All I needed to do was change the pronouns, and my hapless Filkmeister became a hapless Filkmeisterin. <<

I think things like this are important. I also know some songs that have no gender markers, but sound very different if sung by male or female performers; and many more where the markers are just in the pronouns or a few pet names that can easily be swapped, again shifting the effect.

Yeah, I noticed the same when writing not-connected-to-anything flashfics.

I remember another writer saying they decided in one work to default to female and only make a character male if there was a reason (with a really low bar for "reason", such as "it makes this scene easier to write because the two people in it will use different pronouns"), and among the feedback was asking if it was set in a matriarchal dystopy, because all the men were gone. What does that say about the usual male-default fare we're offered...

>> among the feedback was asking if it was set in a matriarchal dystopy, because all the men were gone. <<

Creepy.

But then I freaked out the entire population in the Carl Brandon party at Wiscon once: Someone asked what stories we'd written with no white characters. Everyone named one or two stories right off the top of their heads, or in a few cases, several stories. I named one, paused, named another, paused, and kept going like that. And then they were all staring at me. I had to stop and explain that I did not file my stories by character race and had to mentally sort through them all. Apparently that's not what everyone else was doing. Then it came out that their stories with no white people were all "about" race in some way, whereas most of mine were like that because I'd set them in places where there simply weren't any light-skinned people around. I was kind of bothered that nobody else seemed to be doing that. Everyone else was looking at me like I'd grown another head.

I've done the same thing with gender. I've written stories with all guys or all girls or all some other gender, or a mix that leaves out this or that. Some settings are mixed-gender and others are genderspace. It depends on the needs of the story. Once in a while I'll do a story "about" gender but usually I am just writing about people of uncommon genders who are having adventures the same as more typical gendered characters. I have a handful of characters with uncommon gender traits in Polychrome Heroics, but Calvin/Calliope is the only one I can think of for whom that is a primary focus. For the others it's just part of who they are, which may come up occasionally but not all the time.

>> What does that say about the usual male-default fare we're offered... <<

That we're living in a dystopic patriarchal rape culture?

Yeah, my first thought, too.

I don't write nearly enough, but at least the probably best-developed corner of one of my worlds is a country where light-skinned people are a tiny majority, so a lot of stories taking pace there not featuring any of them would be likely.

I'm reminded of comments I've seen on people asking for more inclusive books, that characters of color, or QUILTBAG characters, should only be in a story when them being "that" is important to the plot, otherwise it's just distracting. I just... Damn, I should write up a blog post comparing that with demanding no protagonist may be male, unless the story is about him grappling with the whole male gender role nonsense, such as in Billy Elliot.

>> I'm reminded of comments I've seen on people asking for more inclusive books, that characters of color, or QUILTBAG characters, should only be in a story when them being "that" is important to the plot, otherwise it's just distracting. <<

It's okay to say that's the only kind of story they want to read, because taste is personal. It's not okay to say "should only be" because nobody -- not even an editor -- has the right to make declarations for the whole of literature.

>> I just... Damn, I should write up a blog post comparing that with demanding no protagonist may be male, unless the story is about him grappling with the whole male gender role nonsense, such as in Billy Elliot. <<

Go for it. It's time somebody talked about the damage of default. If you write it, let me know and I'll link.

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Reading about Miles Morales

Archetypes

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Thoughts

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Unsullied Hero

Re: Unsullied Hero

Re: Unsullied Hero

Re: Unsullied Hero

Re: Unsullied Hero

Re: Unsullied Hero

Re: Thoughts

Re: Thoughts

Re: Thoughts

Re: Thoughts

Re: Well...

Re: Thoughts

Re: Unsullied Hero

Re: Unsullied Hero

Re: Thoughts

Re: Well...

Re: Unsullied Hero

some spoilers included Re: Thoughts

Re: Well...

Re: Well...

Re: Well...

Re: Well...

Re: Well...

Re: Well...

Spoilers? Re: Well...

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Yes...

no subject

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Re: 0_o

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