[ SECRET POST #3324 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3324 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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03.
[Dishonored]


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04. [tb #3]
[One Piece]


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05.
[Kung Fu Panda]


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09.
[Music video: Poets of the Fall, "Daze" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di7NMssrqsE)]


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10.
[Digimon Tri]


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11.
(Pokémon)


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 039 secrets from Secret Submission Post #475.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

06. http://i.imgur.com/sdL6Nqj.png

[philstar22]

I kind of agree with this. I mean, the fact that people complain when gender roles are more equal in a fantasy world that bears a superficial resemblance to our own but is still a fictional universe. Dragons and things don't bother you but powerful women and minorities and the existence of gay people does? Definitely something strange there.

I'm less personally bothered by fantasy worlds that don't change up gender roles, if the reasoning makes sense. Either, at the time it was written there were still sexist views and it makes sense for the time of writing like Tolkien where there are clearly gender roles but we still end up with badass, powerful women. Or ASOIAF where one of the things the series is commenting on specifically is gender roles. You have powerful women who either work within the roles they are given to get power or who fight against the restrictions. Now, I do still think there are problems with sexism in ASOIAF (Cersei's punishment for one, the lack of male on male rape in places like the Wall where it would totally have happened historically, etc.). But the existence of gender roles in the world is not something I complain about per say.

[diet_poison]

I would need more context to have an opinion on individual situations, but overall I don't think it's weird that social phenomena throw people out of a narrative more than actual fantasy elements. I think that's actually a normal thing.

[(Anonymous)]

I think this conversation tends to get all freaky because I think there are two distinct points that people don't actively distinguish.

On the one hand, there's the question of whether it is licit to have women / PoC in historical or imaginative settings. Which is the point that you're addressing, and I completely agree with you for what it's worth.

On the other hand, there's the question of whether it's mandatory to have women / PoC in historical or imaginative settings, and further whether it has to be in the same ratios as present day Western society, or what. And I think that's more complicated maybe.

I mean, maybe no one is actually arguing that it's mandatory, I don't know, but I think that's part of the complication of this argument.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh god, yes, especially since these people who bitch the most about women and non-white people being in fantasy/historical movies actually don't know jack shit about history. They'll try to claim that Europe was 100% white (cough, the Moors, North Africans, Arabs, etc apparently did not exist) and women did nothing but sit in houses having babies and getting raped (I could name a couple women that went around murdering people with swords, not to mention lead in war times, run businesses, and generally have quite a bit of agency) but they don't actually care about facts.

Now, in fantasy, I personally am interested in realistic world-building. I can't say I'm severely offended if your fantasy country is predominantly white or whatever, and if women do nothing but sit around, then fine, your world. But don't act like there's a historical precedent for everyone who isn't white and male being invisible. And you're writing fantasy for goodness sake - your characters are fighting dragons but you whine about how unrealistic it is that a woman can wield a sword? pfft.

[(Anonymous)]

Haven't we been over this before? People accept obvious fantasy elements because everyone knows they're fantasy, because that's the point of them. When an author writes about dragons or steampunk airships, nobody assumes the author thinks those things were real. When POC and independent women are included, audiences are more likely to think it's a real mistake that was made because the author is ignorant of history.

[feotakahari]

Every time I think I understand why fantasy fans are so hostile to the existence of characters who aren't white, some other aspect comes up and I realize it's an even bigger problem than I thought. There are so many different issues at hand--whiteness as "default," the stranglehold of Tolkien over fantasy, the stranglehold of Europe over fantasy, battles over what European history was actually like, the categorization of non-European fantasy as "ethnic," actual honest-to-goodness monarchism . . . It's honestly a bit overwhelming, and it's a big part of why I mostly gave up on fantasy novels in favor of fantasy webcomics (which tend not to give a rotten rat turd about "historical accuracy.")

[(Anonymous)]

Jesus fucking christ.

There's only so much suspending of disbelief I can do. And if I'm ALREADY asked to suspend it for fantasy elements (ESPECIALLY fantasy elements in a real world setting) everything else needs to be above board. And yeah, "there was that one woman who killed a shit ton of Nazis before dying!" but she was the exception, not the fucking rule.

[gobbledigook]

Yeah, I agree. When people spout stuff like this it's at best showing their limited imagination and at worse letting everyone else know they have some issues with minorities they could stop and think about for a while.

I personally extend this beyond fiction too, honestly. I remember when there was a gay guy on Mad Men and it was announced he was going to... leave? or be killed? something, I don't remember, and people were saying it made sense that the story would leave him behind because he was gay in a time like that, and I only could think about how a perspective of a gay person was way more interesting -because- he was living in a time like that.

Sad as it is, a non white guy character being put into the focus of popular media becomes a point of interest due to how it's rarely ever done.

[nightscale]

I don't get the knicker-twisting over this issue either. If there are dragons, magic or giant robots and shit in a setting a non-white person/LGBT person/woman being the lead character is the last thing I'd need to suspend my disbelief for.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree that the argument that having POC/female/LGBT characters in fantasy or sci-fi isn't realistic is a stupid and reaching one. And if it bothers people, that is sad.

I will say that when I've seen this topic come up (just in my experience, only what I've seen the few times I've seen it, etc.), it's usually that people break it out in response to conversations where favorite authors (like Tolkien) are criticized for not having these characters.

And it's not just that it would be nice if those characters were in there but that the work is inherently wrong and bad for not having it. The sense is that you absolutely MUST have POC/female/LGBT/etc. to be worthwhile and that if you as a reader do like these kinds of stories (not to say you DISlike other kinds of stories or that this is the ONLY kind of story you consume) you are left feeling attacked for enjoying them. If you are okay with the story as is and you don't feel the need to genderbend or racebend characters, you're clearly racist and sexist, etc. (To be clear, this is separate from discussions regarding racism/sexism in Tolkien, etc.)

Is this a repeat?

[herpymcderp]

I could swear I've read this before on here.

Or at least, if not exactly this something that was worded in an incredibly similar manner.

[(Anonymous)]

I think... part of what's associated with an specific historical time is its society and by changing that the only thing left is the aesthetics.

At that point is not fiction-in-a-historical-setting, but fiction that's inspired by the aesthetics of an era. For people interested in the former, the later is inaccurate and wrong.

OTOH, adding something is just... that, so it's easier to accept as fantasy in *insert here historical time*.

Of course, SF that's no supposed to take place in an specific time or even in earth as we know it is something completely different, but I assume that's not what you're talking about.

[(Anonymous)]

WE WUZ KANGS AND SHEEEEEEEEIT

[ketita]

To me part of the issue might be (and I say this as somebody who does want more diversity) that these issues need to be worked into the worldbuilding. Like, you can make up flying ships and I go okay, fine. Flying ship.
But if you have a small town in the middle of nowhere with a racially diverse population, I expect an explanation of how they all got there, because racial populations tend to be grouped in different locations. To me, the geographic issue is greater than the cultural. You can make a culture where disenfranchised groups aren't - that's fine.
But spend ~2 minutes considering why/how your incredibly racially diverse groups got that way, what their original cultures are, why they traveled, where the major culture centers of the world are, etc.
Obviously none of these are actual reasons not to include more diversity. It just demands, y'know, worldbuilding and consideration of these issues.

[(Anonymous)]

My only argument would be that you have it a little backwards-- personally, I have seen very little 'this person shouldn't be black/female/etc' coming from fans of period setting properties, but I've seen a lot of people defending the decision not to include said minorities, or defending the treatment and position of said minorities. It might seem like splitting hairs, but it's a very different stance to take. One is defending an author/artist's decision because to them it makes sense for the setting, the other is someone objecting to a character anachronism that already exists, quite likely because they are bigoted in some sense. I hope anyone here can tell the difference.

It's like saying 'I don't think the amount of rape and misogyny in ASOIAF is out of place, because it's a medieval setting' versus 'I don't think Brienne should be a knight because she's a lady, and ladies weren't knights'

[(Anonymous)]

This especially bugs me in fantasy set in imaginary worlds. "It's historically inaccurate!" No, it's not, because... there's no real history. Fantasy worlds that are Thinly Veiled Medieval Europe are boring, too, so I'm sick of hearing that excuse. "There are dragons and unicorns and airships and sky pirates and... everything is still sexist, racist, and homophobic because reasons!!!" Yawn.

[(Anonymous)]

I think the issue comes from there being an establishing setting. If you want a place to be more diverse than it really was, then either establish an alternate history, write a different place that really was that diverse, or make up your own location.

It's not about limits to what readers will accept. It's about there being rules to settings, and if you're setting something in our world or a place resembling our world, we expect at least the setting to work. Introducing fantasy elements is an entirely different aspect.

And can we in the comments not be so Eurocentric? Damn man you'd think nobody else but white people made fantasy stuff. I don't see people complaining that Chinese fantasy isn't diverse despite there being 50+ ethnic groups and a very diplomatically open history.

cool art!

[(Anonymous)]

I think I've seen that on Deviant Art before. Gotta find tgat artist again.

[wpadmirer]

I think you make an excellent point.

[(Anonymous)]

My favorite example of this is that with all the wank about Frozen having to have a WHITE matriarchy because Historical Accuracy, no one had a problem with it being a matriarchy at all. Even though that's just as 'Historically Inaccurate'

Someone even said that's because dark skinned people like Inuits have to live near the equator because otherwise they'll die from a lack of vitamin D.

*grabs popcorn*

[(Anonymous)]

>

[(Anonymous)]

I'm just really impressed that the thread has gotten this long with no frozen comments. Way to go F!S!

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

If you are trying to say a Victorian steampunk society would have complete equality for women and gay people because airships and dragons exist, then I want to know why the advent of airships and dragons would totally change the course of women's and gay people's rights, because as others have said, if it's set in an alternate version of the Real World, then the non-fantastical parts will be held up against Real Life for comparison.

Basically, I want the non-fantastical parts to make a tiny bit of sense. I don't expect a whole chapter to explain it, maybe just one sentence, somewhere.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not going to go so far as to say "women and PoC can never do anything, ever"... but I just cannot buy that a society would exist without prejudice. Sexism and racism is human, and every society has had its own types of prejudice.

What I find annoying is the same type of 1950's sexism copypasted into every fantasy culture, because historically speaking, sexism hasn't always been the same. Like, there was a time when women were considered more sexual and men were the pure ones. So I think yeah, you need to think about how you portray prejudice, but I'm not going to ever buy into a completely equal society.

For example, I really enjoy the webcomic "Unsounded," but I find it mysteriously and oddly egalitarian. There's fantastical racism going on versus various magical creatures, but nobody seems to even comment about women or blacks or anything or even notice that their skin is a different colour. I feel like the setting needs to explain that sort of thing - why are these peoples' skins different colours, what are the backgrounds of these ethnic groups? Why is there no racism? Why is sexism nonexistent? What's the social background of this world?

I do feel these things have to be justified in the narrative, and a lot of the time, they aren't. I guess what I'm trying to say is, the setting has to make sense.