Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT: Strips 3336-3340 (24-28 October 2016)

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Morituri:
Yes.  Yes, it is.

Tova:
I agree with Morituri, but to take the question more literally than it was probably intended, I think that the exhibit was created within the last decade or so.

The sculptor was male, in case you were wondering that.

MONA does like to provoke. Is it art, or is it provocation as a substitute for art rather than as a consequence of it? I'll leave you to work that out.

MrNumbers:
I go off on a really long ramble about how artists shouldn't shy away from writing characters like Claire, because Jeph's comment on today's comic hit a particular nerve. However, it's long and vehement, so I'm going to hide it away under a spoiler bar. Have a great day.

(click to show/hide)Jeph's notes on writing a trans character reminds me of a girl once knowing I, a straight-cis-male, wrote lesbian characters and taking me to task for it. I couldn't possibly understand what it's like to be in those circumstances, it's insulting for me to even attempt to write them because it's disgusting for a man to even attempt it, the LGBT don't have a platform in the arts and are underrepresented--

"Hang on. LGBT are underrepresented in the arts?"

"Yeah. Name one, one LGBT author."

I mean (Oscar Wilde) it's not like (Hans Christian Anderson) the LGBT aren't (Homer) marginalized. It's just that (Virginia Woolf) saying (Cole Porter) they're not represented (Walt Whitman) in art (Tennessee Williams) is a little bit (T.S Elliot) bullshit (Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train in cinemas now)) in my humble opinion. (Herman Melville, Gertrude Stein, Chuck Palahaunik, Virgil, Edna St Vincent Millay (Author of First Fig, my favourite poem of all time), Horace, John Donne, etc. etc. etc.)

So I'll state my case here, rather plainly;

If an artist is too scared to portray a marginalized member of society in their art, whatever that art may be, they choose to not give them representation. If it is out of fear of offending them, then they do that group a disservice, whatever group that may be, and seem worried that these groups are so different and alien to themselves that they cannot empathize with these people well enough to portray them. We are all human beings with human experiences, and at some fundamental level it should be no harder for an author to write a character who is incidentally gay or trans or of another race than for them to write any other human being with careful enough consideration. We write about literal alien races too with far less trepidation.

To not portray them in your work is to normalize their non-existence, their omission, to your audience.

Fallout: New Vegas did an excellent job of this. I guarantee that, if you have only played without the Confirmed Bachelor perk, I can surprise you with how many characters happen to be gay. Because it doesn't define them, it's just incidental to their characters. Zach Wiener, of SMBC, does a fantastic job of this in using same-sex and multiracial couples fairly equally and without ceremony whenever he just needs to make 'a couple' joke. So much so that it does not draw attention to what it's doing.

That normalizes it. Which is really what we want, here.

So yeah. Don't be scared of writing trans characters or gay characters because you aren't one. Because that just continues the alienization and 'otherfication' of those groups, which is incredibly counterproductive. Just do your best to write them well, as you should anyway.

Source: Guild-registered screenwriter with a media degree.

Addendum: Writing them as a novelty or a gimmick, mind, is a different thing entirely and I will fight you.

Neko_Ali:
Bubbles... stop being so cute. Do you know what happens to female cast members when they becomes to cute. The Floof sets in.  Then it will grow... soon we will have reached Floofical Mass, and then no one will be spared.

Tova:

--- Quote from: MrNumbers on 24 Oct 2016, 21:44 ---Addendum: Writing them as a novelty or a gimmick, mind, is a different thing entirely and I will fight you.

--- End quote ---

As far as I can tell, that very difference you've mentioned here, the difference between writing the character well and writing her as some kind of a gimmick, is the main thing Jeph is nervous about. Can you see from your own statement why he'd be nervous? Luckily from us, he hasn't shied away from writing Claire because of that.

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