Comment on If Bethesda released Skyrim today, they would have made it woke

flashgnash@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Shapillon@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m still taking that over no representation at all 🤷‍♀️

  Seriously though, representation as a background noise is - imho - one of the most potent tools for normalisation.

  And the persons who did good representation haven’t disappeared. They’re still doing the lord’s work.

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  • flashgnash@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Background noise isn’t an issue for me, if there isn’t an unnatural amount of attention being drawn and the pace of the story isn’t interrupted that’s just adding interest

    The problem lies for me when said character isn’t fleshed out in other ways and their only defining trait is that they’re x, or that they don’t give them any character flaws because they’re too afraid to offend that group. Results in a character that doesn’t feel natural to the story

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    • Vespair@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I see your point and don’t disagree exactly… but…
      I will say it is odd that I hear this kind of criticism of flat gay/female/minority/etc characters but for some reason never hear complaints about the equally-flatly written comic relief characters, or best friend characters, or sage characters, etc. Video games and other stories frequently contain flat characters that are used more as props from the protagonist or other characters to react and respond to, yet complaints about these characters seem to only pop up when said characters happen to represent an under-represented demographic.

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      • flashgnash@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The issue is the intention behind it, if the intention is comic relief they might not add much to the plot, but generally are still relevant in some way and make the film more entertaining

        I’m not a huge fan of poorly fleshed out characters in general if they’ve got any amount of screen time

        If they haven’t got much screen time and aren’t fleshed out it’s even worse if the one defining character trait they have is that they’re gay, black, trans, etc etc

        Imagine if some adventurers go into a tavern, they talk to the generic hooded loner on their own in the corner, they give the adventurers the quest as usual and then for some reason mention that they’re vegan or something, no relevance to the story and it becomes kinda obvious to the viewer that they were only given that character trait to check a box

        Kaos is one of the good examples I’ve seen recently sorry if I already mentioned it, there’s a trans character in the underworld who was part of a female only Amazon tribe and was thrown out and eventually killed for transitioning to male, but they don’t even mention any of that until he’s already been well established for a couple of episodes and they do it in enough detail that it doesn’t feel forced

        I’m all for representation in media I should clarify I just want it to be done well, there are a fair few good examples but also a good number of bad ones

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• Ookami38@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s kinda weird to try to include representation without it feeling shoe horned. The world of TES (of any fictional world) is entirely hand-created. There are no accidents, all of it is intentional.

  This means that, no matter how it’s done, any character deviating from the “norm” was consciously chosen to be so. These things that need representation (disabilities, gender identity, sexuality, race, etc) are all things people don’t get to choose, so there’s an inherent disconnect between the hand crafted world choosing to include diversity, and the real world necessarily having diversity because of chaos.

  Following this thread, there’s never been a case of inclusivity, or exclusivity, that isn’t shoehorned in. It’s always been entirely the will of the author to include or exclude these representations. With that in mind, I think it’s only a good thing to see more diverse authors bringing more diverse worlds and characters into existence.

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  • flashgnash@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It only feels shoe horned when they don’t write the character well.

    There are a lot of cases where the person isn’t allowed to have any flaws or character development because they’re too scared to make them look bad in any way, which also means none of their achievements feel earned, and others where they just don’t care enough to waste screen time on things that aren’t highlighting whatever group they’re a part of

    Have been a fair few shows I’ve seen where they’ve done it right, the character just happens to be whatever group they are and that’s only one of many chatacter traits, rather than that person’s only defining character trait being that they’re LGBT or disabled or whatever

    The recent doctor who special is one of the bad examples, most of the time the woman in a wheelchair is onscreen it’s because they’re drawing attention to the wheelchair (oh no, a ladder, oh no a set of stairs etc etc) and not to develop her character in any way besides that

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  • janonymous@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s kind of a weird argument. I always took “shoe-horned” to imply that it is pressed into something by force where it doesn’t quite fit. So, in my mind just because something is intentional doesn’t mean it is shoe-horned.

    Creative works always come from the authors lived experiences. The reason why we often find representation of minorities missing in media, is because these minorities don’t get to work on them. If there would be more diverse teams working on something we would naturally see more of their diverse experiences represented. However, for this to be the case a lot would have to change in our society. It is way easier to just keep things more or less as they were and let people without minority experiences write and add minority characters. These in turn, feel off, feel shoe-horned in, because they aren’t based of lived experiences and are just there to check a box. Conversely, the reason why it feels like we used to have better (though less) diverse representations in media is because these actually came from people who had these experiences.

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    • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Eh, I think we just have different perspectives on things being short horned. In my view, anything that isn’t critical information to the story, it’s shoehorned in. If you tell me the main characters favorite food is pasta, and then don’t do anything with it, it’s shoe horned in. If you tell me a character is gay, and then don’t do anything they couldn’t have done the same with a straight character, changing a couple of pronouns, it’s shoehorned in.

      To be clear though, I don’t think this is a bad thing. A story with only critical information will… Well, it’ll work, but it’ll be bland. Same if you make all of your characters blond, blue eyed, straight white men. Adding these details tends to be what makes us remember and identify with a character. That doesn’t make it any more strictly relevant to the story. Most characters people would view as “diverse” - even the ones people like - fall into this category, i think.

      I think a better argument is, if these traits ARE shoehorned in, their alternative “normal” traits would be as well. If you go out of your way to state a character is straight, it’s just as shoehorned if everything else is equivalent. Do THOSE characters inspire the same ire? If not, we should examine the why of that specifically.

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      • janonymous@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yeah, I can see our difference in how we defined what’s shoe-horned in. And I get that you’re not saying diversity in media is bad. However, respectfully, I don’t think your definition of shoe-horned makes a lot of sense if you think it through. Is the music shoe-horned in, because it’s not critical to the plot? You said yourself that adding information that isn’t critical to the plot is necessary or the movie will be bland. If it’s necessary to the movie, wouldn’t you agree that it is critical? It may not be for the plot, but it is for the movie. Movies aren’t just plot. A lot of great movies (Nomadland, Patterson, Dazed and Confused, Coffee and Cigarettes, The Straight Story, …) don’t have a lot of plot or tell a great story. Instead they focus on the characters and the mood.

        I think your example with the “blond, blue eyed, straight white men” betrays your perspective. This isn’t describing the default human being. Most people on earth aren’t like that. But it is the de facto default in western media. Why is it that? Because for a long time it was white men who made the decisions. Now that it has become a norm, everything that deviates needs a justification. And that’s kinda fucked up, isn’t it?

        So, I think the question isn’t, why don’t “normal” character traits get the same hate as “alternate” traits? The question is, who defines what is normal?

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