Now, a lot of people out there who champion for diversity tend to be quite dismissive of people who say that they don’t know how to do it right or that they don’t want to offend people. I’ll admit: I can be quite dismissive of that, too because there are some people who use it as an excuse instead of just saying the real cause of their lack of diversity.
However, it’s not fair of me to assume that all people who struggle with diversity are saying that for the same reasons. In fact, I bet most of the people who say they struggle really mean it. I bet that it’s just a small minority of people jumping on the bandwagon as a way of damage control. Therefore, I want to apologise to any of you with serious questions and concerns if I’ve ever been dismissive of your issues.
With that in mind, I thought that this would be a great place for us to share our genuine issues and anxieties with making a diverse cast.
You can say what worries you about diversity and, hopefully, we can help you find a way to do diversity right or help you through the issue!
Now I can’t promise that you’ll be 100% free of criticism if you do this. Minorities aren’t a monolith and we tend to disagree with each other a lot on these things. Heck, you’re even going to find plenty of unreasonable people who criticise you no matter how hard you try! But my goal is that you’ll get the help you want from reasonable, intelligent people who might not agree with one another but are banned from judging you poorly on this thread.
And you’re not alone! I’m bisexual, but I can say right now that I struggle to write same-sex romances because the pronouns make knowing who did what almost impossible! So let’s all be imperfect together.
Share your anxieties about making a diverse cast and we’ll do our best to help you!
Here is mine and it sucks.
So I’m writing my story Chasing Sparks, and like a lot of my stories, characters are loosely based off people I know. My MC lives with her gramma who is based off my gramma.
My gramma was part Native American and her job was making Native American quilwork and art and stuff. There were parts of my childhood where I lived with her and helped her at her art store, and all of her craft shows, so I really wanted to incorporate that into the story. So I made her and my mc native American. I also wanted to include how crazy my gramma was i had a bunch of stories I planned to include, but later realized she was only crazy and funny because she was always drinking.
I also wanted to include stories from my childhood In the town she lived which was named after the natives who lived there… and they also were always drinking. None of the stories would even make sense if they weren’t drinking.
So now my story is ruined. I can’t have alcoholic Native Americans! So… now I want to keep my story, so I changed my characters to white… cuz I’m allowed to have alcoholic white people.
It’s okay to have alcoholic Native Americans! I’m pretty sure that goes for any race, just as long as it doesn’t define them and you don’t portray them as only that to a person of color.
Personally I think there’s nothing wrong with a stereotype or two If there’s more to the characters than that! I loved what you did with Chasing Sparks and I don’t think anyone can accuse you of racial insensitivity and seem reasonable in any way.
It makes me sad that society has made only white people the safe option
I love writing about people of color but my biggest anxiety is that as a writer I feel like I have to water down my characters because episode readers only like white characters. But I don’t care I’m gonna write about poc because I just can’t not do it.
When reading Episode stories, some people want to be able to choose the gender of their love interest, but I just can’t do that in my story. Why? Because it exhausts me. I basically have to write the story two times, redo the spot directing and replace the pronouns and label names. I understand why some people want to have more options (I want that too!) but for me as a writer, it’s just overall tiring and I’ve lost interest in one of my stories because I let the reader pick the gender of their Li so I just gave up on doing it
In the story I’m currently writing, I have quite a not-so-good father, as well as a couple of antagonists that are POC’s. I also have a loving and caring father who is a POC, as well as quite a few other good characters that are POC’s but I’m still a bit scared that some people may get offended because of some antagonists being POC’s
It’s not like I can’t do it. I’m just always afraid that I disappoint or offend someone. I know that this sounds like some lame excuse but I just really am very unsure about everything I do. When I a POC character I’m happy for about 1 minute and then I start worrying: did I do it right? does he/she look lame? she/he probably offends a lot of people. Am I stereotyping or not? maybe change her to a white person? maybe just take the character out of the story completely?
and all this worrying just makes me stop. I guess that this is just how I am because I tend to worry a lot in real life to the point where I just quit…
I totally get how you’re feeling. I have an annoying POC in my story, and I’ve had people complain that my only POC is an annoying girl, although she isn’t the only one.
I feel the same about allowing someone to choose gender. That would be more than I’m willing to take on mostly because of how much hard work it requires and I already struggle to update quickly.
I’m going to give an opinion of mine as blunt as I can. Please tell me if this is rude or if I should think about this differently!!
But I think it’s also hard to write girl on girl stuff, because I’m not into that at all…
To be honest, girl body parts gross me out, unless they are covered by clothing… If there is clothing, I can find a girl to be totally hot… When the clothes come off, I gag a little.
I do not care what other people do at all, but that’s because I don’t have to imagine it… And you kinda have to imagine it to write about it.
Now guy on guy stuff, sure, because I’m attracted to guys!
For me it’s not the imagining part, since I’m attracted to both guys and girls and I don’t get uncomfortable when thinking about it. It’s just the directing for me. I absolutely hated renaming all the labels and spot directing the Li all over again
PoCs should inhabit all facets of storytelling, just like any white person. So long as your villain isn’t stereotyped and so long as they’re engaging, it doesn’t matter if they’re a PoC. In fact, that’s a good thing. It means we have yet another good case of representation
Yeah I think it’s the most patronising thing ever when people try to say that minorities should all be forces for good. Like, it’s not just white people who can make bad decisions and be evil. Why would we need to pretend that?
My biggest fear when I make non-homosexual character is portraying them wrong, and for far too long I was scared to try. When I finally did give it a shot, I spent over a week perfecting and checking over things. I won’t name anyone, but when I submitted them onto the roleplay sign ups, this one person came down on me about being disrespectful and culturally insensitive. This was never my intention, and I pointed this out to them, which in all honesty just made the situation even worse.
this bit isn't too important, just the story
They were(still are) a very respected member of the roleplaying community over on episode forums. They were openly insulting my work, on a public thread without any reason. I did still make that character, and everyone else involved in that roleplay agreed that it was a good character.
My point is that even if personally you think they haven’t portrayed it right, offer your support, don’t just point out the flaws. This person has at least attempted to make a diverse and unique character, something many are too scared to do. You won’t know until you try, so go for it. If after creating you want someone’s approval, that’s what threads like these are for, or pm a friend.
