[ SECRET POST #6875 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6875 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 42 secrets from Secret Submission Post #982.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know anything about this poster or any drama (?) that may have arisen from her opinions... but I will say that "playing as a generic middle-aged white man again" is the #1 reason why I have no interest in playing this game, no matter how many great things I hear about it.

[iff_and_xor]

I think the use of "generic" is interesting there. It makes me wonder what traits would be required to sufficiently distinguish a middle-aged white male character in a way that would make his story interesting/appealing to you or this poster or whoever else.

[(Anonymous)]

For me, personally? Nothing.

It's not their personality or story that makes them generic, it is the fact that they are the face of 85% of media.

I don't care about their stories any more. I could barely bring myself to care about them before I experienced ten million video games and movies and TV shows telling me how unique and interesting their specific middle-aged white man is, and I care even less now.

[iff_and_xor]

Thanks for explaining, I can get that even if it's not quite how I naturally think about characters or stories.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

I think saturation works against them in this regard. There are plenty of middle aged white male characters that I like, but I can also name a dozen dozen others that are similar to them in theory that exist. When there are so many, it kind of can't be helped, since uniqueness or genericness is dependent on comparing them to all the others.

What's the most unique middle aged white male character you can think of?

[iff_and_xor]

I do get what you're saying about saturation.

I think I'm realizing that I don't naturally group characters at that level. It's much easier for me to say what a "generic" grizzled detective is like. Or a depressed suburban husband. Or a workaholic father. Or a quirky private investigator. Those are character types that I can feel I'm sick of when I see too many of them that don't distinguish themselves from the average. Age, race, and gender doesn't feel like a narrow enough category to be a natural grouping in my head.

The most unique middle-aged white male character off the top of my head? Of course, as soon as you ask, I feel like I'm just forgetting huge swathes of what I've read and seen. But of things I've talked or thought about recently... maybe Cadfael, as a Crusader-turned-herbalist monk with shockingly idiosyncratic ideas about theology. Maybe Alfie Solomons from Peaky Blinders, as a Jewish gangster caught between Italians and Brummies, who has very odd but very fervent politics and morals and (huh, again) religious beliefs.

But maybe I'm also thinking about character "uniqueness" in weird way that isn't what others mean.

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly? harry dubois.

[(Anonymous)]

Simply put: name one middle-aged white male character whose story would not be made a hundred times more interesting and unique if they were literally anyone else.

Middle-aged white man is the default for every single form of media. Change any part of that descriptor, and your character automatically becomes more interesting.

'Generic' in this case, means the default, the standard, the done-to-death. A character's personality or story might change, but the baseline state of being for "middle-aged white man" is the same again and again and again. Make the same character a middle-aged woman, an elderly black man, a Mexican teenager... that character is already more interesting by virtue of not being an exact carbon-copy of the single most commonly depicted experience.

[(Anonymous)]

I'd say 30ish is more common than middle aged. But yeah, 30ish brown haired white dude with stubble has been done to death.

[iff_and_xor]

Okay, so you're with anon above on using "generic" not as a type of middle-aged white man, but as a descriptor of the whole demographic.

I can understand that take. The nature of adjectives just makes it a little ambiguous.

[(Anonymous)]

SA.

Yeah, I think adjectives are the real villains here. It's hard to have a good-faith discussion when every party is attributing the same word to a different part of the sentence... and doubly so when none of them are technically wrong.

[(Anonymous)]

for your information SA is same anon as in "same anon of immediately above post is replying to their own post", mostly used when adding to the post, clarifying or adjust something wrong (like a typo).

What you wanted to use here is AYRT, anon you are replying/referring to.

(sorry I just wanted to point it out. anon covos are difficult and if we don't use these correctly it can become quite messy very easily)

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Appreciate the clarification. I'd (obviously) been using them interchangeably, misinterpreting 'SA' as 'Same Anon (As Above)'. It did seem weirdly superfluous, having two abbreviations for the same concept, so thank you for clarifying that they are, in fact, different.

I'll use them correctly in future.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess I just don't understand this mindset at all. To me, what makes a character interesting isn't what they themselves are, but what their story is. I don't find a character inherently more or less interesting because of their race/gender/age/what have you because you can have a unique character with a boring story or a generic character with a fascinating story.

[(Anonymous)]

It's the double-edged sword of A) having a less-than-zero interest in men in general... which in itself wouldn't be a problem when it comes to finding characters interesting, if not for the fact that B) they are the central character in absolutely everything.

Give me someone else’s story. Literally, anyone else at all.

[(Anonymous)]

SA, to add: I will gladly take a "unique character with a boring story" because, to me, the fact that they're starting out from a different worldview and perspective than Yet Another White Dude makes their story more interesting by default.

I can fill in the gaps of a weak story myself for an otherwise unique character. I am never going to want to do that for Yet Another White Dude, because I might as well just move on to one of the other five million white dudes.

[(Anonymous)]

I think I might have phrased it as "Yet Another White Guy" (YAWG?).