Should Diversity be addressed within the narrative or should it be a non-issue?

[Thaluikhain]

I wasn't one of the people that got really upset or angry when Dumbledore was revealed to be gay, but I think that part of the reason why that reveal was so bizarre was that:

a) it happened after the series was already over
b) there was, as far as I can remember, no indication or hints that he was gay in the story other than a lack of mentioning a wife...

It just came off to me as JK Rowling making one of her already defined, written, and dead characters and arbitrarily turning him gay as a show of support for the LGBT community after the fact.

It has been interpreted less charitably as trying to look inclusive after the fact as well.

 

[Netrigan]

If it makes sense to their character and the narrative of the game for there to be diversity then have diversity. but shoehorning in diversity just for the sake of pleasing someone is the wrong way to go about it.

You say that like it doesn't happen a bazillion times with a bazillion other things. Writers are constantly shoehorning in their opinions about this, that, or the other. Action movies often shoehorn in a completely unnecessary romantic sub-plot because they think it'll help them sell more tickets. They'll shoehorn in funny robots because it's 1978 and Star Wars was so cool you have to shoehorn funny robots into anything vaguely sci-fi. Movies shoehorn gun fights and car chases into stories where they stick out like a turd in the punch bowl. The most recent episode of Doctor Who clearly has a new character shoehorned into a plot where she serves no real purpose, probably because the show-runner has big plans for her later.

Shoehorning this stuff in is bad writing, but bad writing is constantly happening all around you. It's not wrong, it's just bad. Diversity is one of those things which takes a while for people to get the hang of. Not only from a writing perspective, but from an audience perspective which isn't used to see X, so therefore X must be wrong. Real world example: an athlete is drafted by a pro team and kisses his boyfriend and his rubbing his sexuality in our faces... straight athlete kisses his girlfriend and no one notices. There's a problem here and it's got nothing to do with the two dudes kissing.

Part of diversity is making those two dudes kissing nothing unusual. It just takes a while for people to get used to it and it often feels like it's shoehorned in there... and sometimes it is. Writers will get better at presenting it the more often they do it. Not too long ago I was talking about Sir Hammerlocke being gay in Borderlands 2 and the guy I was talking to didn't even realize he was gay because it was so casually mentioned.

 

[Sight Unseen]

If it makes sense to their character and the narrative of the game for there to be diversity then have diversity. but shoehorning in diversity just for the sake of pleasing someone is the wrong way to go about it.

You say that like it doesn't happen a bazillion times with a bazillion other things. Writers are constantly shoehorning in their opinions about this, that, or the other. Action movies often shoehorn in a completely unnecessary romantic sub-plot because they think it'll help them sell more tickets. They'll shoehorn in funny robots because it's 1978 and Star Wars was so cool you have to shoehorn funny robots into anything vaguely sci-fi. Movies shoehorn gun fights and car chases into stories where they stick out like a turd in the punch bowl. The most recent episode of Doctor Who clearly has a new character shoehorned into a plot where she serves no real purpose, probably because the show-runner has big plans for her later.

Shoehorning this stuff in is bad writing, but bad writing is constantly happening all around you. It's not wrong, it's just bad. Diversity is one of those things which takes a while for people to get the hang of. Not only from a writing perspective, but from an audience perspective which isn't used to see X, so therefore X must be wrong. Real world example: an athlete is drafted by a pro team and kisses his boyfriend and his rubbing his sexuality in our faces... straight athlete kisses his girlfriend and no one notices. There's a problem here and it's got nothing to do with the two dudes kissing.

Part of diversity is making those two dudes kissing nothing unusual. It just takes a while for people to get used to it and it often feels like it's shoehorned in there... and sometimes it is. Writers will get better at presenting it the more often they do it. Not too long ago I was talking about Sir Hammerlocke being gay in Borderlands 2 and the guy I was talking to didn't even realize he was gay because it was so casually mentioned.

I don't understand your comment... You spend half your post saying that shoehorning things into stories is bad writing and then say BUT WAIT!!!! We should be shoehorning diversity into stories because DIVERSITY!!!

If the diversity fits well within the narrative that you want to tell and enhances the story and makes the characters meaningfully more deep and interesting then diversity is great! The Walking Dead game is IMO a great example of diversity: strong female characters, strong child characters, lots of racial and ethnic diversity. And it all fit really well because it added to the depth of the characters and therefore the story.

 

[Bruce]

The thing is diversity is not something you address, it is something you use. It is an expanded toolkit of characters, ideas, cultural constructs and suchlike that you use to enrich your worlds.

This is why the issue goes so hand-in-hand with the issue of cliche gaming plots, and bad story-telling. When there is a lack of diversity - things become very samey by definition.

By introducing it, you can give your world more eyes it can be seen through.

 

[Areloch]

This is true, but even if we agree that it's normal to assume heterosexuality, we also know that gay people exist, even if they're not the norm. If you were to look out over a city scene, one could assume that a handful of people in that crowd would be gay, even if they don't explicitly inform you of that.

In the real world, sure. In a totally fictitious world, in a medium with a notable lack of gay people, not so much.

Touche, I suppose.

I recall hearing about the Dumbledore thing, but I admittedly never got to reading the books and didn't particularly pay much attention to the fans, so I was not aware it was a big deal. I read about the "reveal", went 'Huh, interesting.' and that was more or less my experience. Somewhat saddening that it was apparently that big of a deal, but it likely went against people's own personal interpretation of the character, similarly to the hunger games thing.

That's less open for interpretation compared to the Dumbledore situation though, especially if it specifically stated she was black. But yes, if someone consuming a media has their own interpretation of characters or events - a "headcanon" - being informed it was wrong will invariably rile people up, regardless if it was a character's sexuality, race or story development.

Not that I believe it is justified to get mad to the point of an actual controversy, but I think it's normal human behavior when you get invested into something.

Sure, but my point is, if Dumbledore was revealed to be straight, or Rue was white, this would not have been such a problem, because that is the assumed default. Nobody was going to assume he was gay, or she was black because they weren't told otherwise.

I see you're unfamiliar with fan-fiction writers/fandom. A lot of theme assume everyone is gay if they give even a sideways glance at another character.

I half jest, but I have no doubts that there are many people that would be upset with that sort of thing. They tend to not be so loud as the other side, from what I've seen.

But I have several friends that read gay fanfiction (I enjoy talking with them about it. Amusingly, those fan-fictions tend to do better storytelling than many mainstream writers) and they've seen some backlash to a ambiguously gay character in a show turning out to be straight.

So it's not an unheard of reaction, but I will agree it wouldn't be as loud.

Snip for space.

Think of all the little ways people bring up their heterosexuality in public. They argue with their girlfriend. They go shopping together. They hold hands. There's pictures of them together. The dying soldier wants you to let Sally know his last thoughts were of her.

And in the game of inclusion, there's various stages to all this. First stage is usually making a bit too big of a deal about it, as the writer wants everyone to know just how cool he is with this group. Then we get into the quieter version, but still looking for ways to include this stuff in the scene. Then you just get to the point where there's gay couples dancing together or you're the best man at a gay wedding and gay couples of getting blown up by car bombs and people are just being unobtrusively gay in exactly the same way that straight couples are being unobtrusively straight all over the place.

Just to throw in my Doctor Who reference. Since the new series has debuted in 2005, there's only been one companion who didn't have a black boyfriend. At no point has anyone ever made any kind of deal about this. It just is. Clearly that many black boyfriends is over-compensating a bit for the typically all-white main cast, but no one thinks it odd that Billie Piper would have a black boyfriend. It's just completely normal within the world.

As I contemplated, and agreed with thaluikhain above, I would have exactly no problems with seeing that sort of domestic behavior.

Like I articulated, walking down the street in Watchdogs and seeing 2 male charactes holding hands, or 2 girls flirting at a bar and so on would be the sorts of thing I would be completely alright with and would like to see more of.

It's the characters that are there expressly to be gay that are the problem. If you have a character that happens to be gay while existing as a character, then there is no problem. It's when the character exists purely to fill the role of being gay where tokenism arises and I develop a problem with.

 

[Netrigan]

If it makes sense to their character and the narrative of the game for there to be diversity then have diversity. but shoehorning in diversity just for the sake of pleasing someone is the wrong way to go about it.

You say that like it doesn't happen a bazillion times with a bazillion other things. Writers are constantly shoehorning in their opinions about this, that, or the other. Action movies often shoehorn in a completely unnecessary romantic sub-plot because they think it'll help them sell more tickets. They'll shoehorn in funny robots because it's 1978 and Star Wars was so cool you have to shoehorn funny robots into anything vaguely sci-fi. Movies shoehorn gun fights and car chases into stories where they stick out like a turd in the punch bowl. The most recent episode of Doctor Who clearly has a new character shoehorned into a plot where she serves no real purpose, probably because the show-runner has big plans for her later.

Shoehorning this stuff in is bad writing, but bad writing is constantly happening all around you. It's not wrong, it's just bad. Diversity is one of those things which takes a while for people to get the hang of. Not only from a writing perspective, but from an audience perspective which isn't used to see X, so therefore X must be wrong. Real world example: an athlete is drafted by a pro team and kisses his boyfriend and his rubbing his sexuality in our faces... straight athlete kisses his girlfriend and no one notices. There's a problem here and it's got nothing to do with the two dudes kissing.

Part of diversity is making those two dudes kissing nothing unusual. It just takes a while for people to get used to it and it often feels like it's shoehorned in there... and sometimes it is. Writers will get better at presenting it the more often they do it. Not too long ago I was talking about Sir Hammerlocke being gay in Borderlands 2 and the guy I was talking to didn't even realize he was gay because it was so casually mentioned.

I don't understand your comment... You spend half your post saying that shoehorning things into stories is bad writing and then say BUT WAIT!!!! We should be shoehorning diversity into stories because DIVERSITY!!!

If the diversity fits well within the narrative that you want to tell and enhances the story and makes the characters meaningfully more deep and interesting then diversity is great! The Walking Dead game is IMO a great example of diversity: strong female characters, strong child characters, lots of racial and ethnic diversity. And it all fit really well because it added to the depth of the characters and therefore the story.

The reason stuff gets shoe-horned into things is because someone has a reason. It may be stupid, it may be noble, but there's a reason. The big-breasted lawyer wearing a dress two sizes too small was shoe-horned into said movie for a reason.

It's just bad writing.

It happens. It happens all the fucking time. It's the default setting in video games where they shoehorn in another crappy sewer/warehouse level because, shit, we have to pad this game out somehow. And let's shoehorn in a shitty boss fight even though it doesn't make any sense, because you have to have a big epic boss fight.

And I don't always disagree with the underlying reasoning. That big boss fight at the end of the game makes the finale seem more epic... but can we figure out how to make it epic *and* fit in with the rest of the game. And I love seeing big boobs in too tight clothing, but can we make that a character who should look like that. And, yes, getting rid of outdated prejudices is a noble cause and it would be super-great if you can do that in a way that doesn't stick out.

But it's video games. The writing is kind of notorious for sucking. If we waited around for them to get their act together, we may never see another AAA game released... ever. The writing has been steadily getting better, but 75% of Hitman: Absolution still feel shoehorned into the plot... why are we in a strip club? Why are we in a wrestling match? Why are their Fetish Nuns here?

I'm not going to recommend setting up special rules for not shoehorning in diversity. It's part of the learning curve. Writers figure out how to do a better job by writing. Mistakes will be made. It's part of the process.

 

[Netrigan]

Snip for space.

Think of all the little ways people bring up their heterosexuality in public. They argue with their girlfriend. They go shopping together. They hold hands. There's pictures of them together. The dying soldier wants you to let Sally know his last thoughts were of her.

And in the game of inclusion, there's various stages to all this. First stage is usually making a bit too big of a deal about it, as the writer wants everyone to know just how cool he is with this group. Then we get into the quieter version, but still looking for ways to include this stuff in the scene. Then you just get to the point where there's gay couples dancing together or you're the best man at a gay wedding and gay couples of getting blown up by car bombs and people are just being unobtrusively gay in exactly the same way that straight couples are being unobtrusively straight all over the place.

Just to throw in my Doctor Who reference. Since the new series has debuted in 2005, there's only been one companion who didn't have a black boyfriend. At no point has anyone ever made any kind of deal about this. It just is. Clearly that many black boyfriends is over-compensating a bit for the typically all-white main cast, but no one thinks it odd that Billie Piper would have a black boyfriend. It's just completely normal within the world.

As I contemplated, and agreed with thaluikhain above, I would have exactly no problems with seeing that sort of domestic behavior.

Like I articulated, walking down the street in Watchdogs and seeing 2 male charactes holding hands, or 2 girls flirting at a bar and so on would be the sorts of thing I would be completely alright with and would like to see more of.

It's the characters that are there expressly to be gay that are the problem. If you have a character that happens to be gay while existing as a character, then there is no problem. It's when the character exists purely to fill the role of being gay where tokenism arises and I develop a problem with.

I have a Mistakes Will Be Made attitude to all this.

You really can't expect someone to figure out how to perfectly nail diversity without a lot of trial and error. If you're a writer who believes there should be more gay characters in fiction, then you put them in there and try to make it work. People see your work, respond to, praise the bits worthy of praise, point to mistakes, suggest corrections, etc. You try again, hopefully doing a better job of it.

If you get noticed by your peers, maybe they decide to give a go, too. They bring a different sensibility to it. They get feedback after it's published.

Maybe a gay professional thinks, "no, no, no, that's not how it is at all" and they come in with their perspective. People in the audience get inspired by it, they come in and open up their brains. Everyone is learning and growing and getting better at portraying gay people in fiction. Some folks aren't confident about their ability to write gay characters, but are on board, so they make sure they put gay characters in the background of their work.

What you call Tokenism might be the thing which inspires someone to write. Maybe it's because they felt included for the first time in their life. Maybe they're just insulted by it and want to show how it really is.

This stuff just doesn't spring forth fully formed. It's a long arduous process involving tons of different people, often riffing on one another's work. Yes, I can point to works where a gay character is horribly shoehorned in and say "if you're a writer, you don't want to be doing that", but that doesn't mean that wasn't a valuable step in the learning curve. Hell, that might be a valuable lesson in What Not To Do... like the movie, Cruising.

 

[Silvanus]

I have to wonder.

If you were to go about your normal day, doing the things as you do - getting ready for work, hit the grocery store, maybe see a movie after dinner and so on - but every day, you have a random person come up to you and soliloquise about how they are gay. Would that serve any purpose for function to your day other than confirming that "Yes, gay people exist"?

Nobody is suggesting this.

People are suggesting that gay people be portrayed, occasionally, in precisely the same way straight people are already. Straight characters do not soliloquise about their sexuality, but relationships are very, very common in media (as are mentions of relationships).

Again, nobody has suggested some highly unnatural focus on the sexuality. Oddly, nobody finds it particularly unnatural or forced when a straight relationship pops up, as they do all the time, in every medium.

 

[Areloch]

I have to wonder.

If you were to go about your normal day, doing the things as you do - getting ready for work, hit the grocery store, maybe see a movie after dinner and so on - but every day, you have a random person come up to you and soliloquise about how they are gay. Would that serve any purpose for function to your day other than confirming that "Yes, gay people exist"?

Nobody is suggesting this.

People are suggesting that gay people be portrayed, occasionally, in precisely the same way straight people are already. Straight characters do not soliloquise about their sexuality, but relationships are very, very common in media (as are mentions of relationships).

Again, nobody has suggested some highly unnatural focus on the sexuality. Oddly, nobody finds it particularly unnatural or forced when a straight relationship pops up, as they do all the time, in every medium.

Indeed, no one in this thread has suggested such a ham handed approach, but I've seen people demand gay characters added, even hapazardly, as long as they are "represented" and I think that approach would do more harm than good. It seems I may have unintentionally implied I was referring to people in this thread. I was actually referring to the extreme side of this demand of diverse representation, not the more reasonable requests.

A Lot of the normal domestic representation, such as people holding hands, a peck on the lips as they walk out the door, flirting at a bar, or a picture on a nightstand are all things that could easily be integrated into development of a game with a little of forethought and minimal cost.

I feel rather than demanding an amorphous 'DIVERSITY' goal, just having background characters do these actions and let the game randomly assign character models to be male or female for those pairings would be well sufficient for any character that isn't the main focus of the story. It presents a realistic, honest image and is as important as background characters need to be.

Obviously characters that are the focus of the story should be handled more directly.

Snip for space.

I have a Mistakes Will Be Made attitude to all this.

You really can't expect someone to figure out how to perfectly nail diversity without a lot of trial and error. If you're a writer who believes there should be more gay characters in fiction, then you put them in there and try to make it work. People see your work, respond to, praise the bits worthy of praise, point to mistakes, suggest corrections, etc. You try again, hopefully doing a better job of it.

If you get noticed by your peers, maybe they decide to give a go, too. They bring a different sensibility to it. They get feedback after it's published.

Maybe a gay professional thinks, "no, no, no, that's not how it is at all" and they come in with their perspective. People in the audience get inspired by it, they come in and open up their brains. Everyone is learning and growing and getting better at portraying gay people in fiction. Some folks aren't confident about their ability to write gay characters, but are on board, so they make sure they put gay characters in the background of their work.

What you call Tokenism might be the thing which inspires someone to write. Maybe it's because they felt included for the first time in their life. Maybe they're just insulted by it and want to show how it really is.

This stuff just doesn't spring forth fully formed. It's a long arduous process involving tons of different people, often riffing on one another's work. Yes, I can point to works where a gay character is horribly shoehorned in and say "if you're a writer, you don't want to be doing that", but that doesn't mean that wasn't a valuable step in the learning curve. Hell, that might be a valuable lesson in What Not To Do... like the movie, Cruising.

That's a reasonable outlook. I personally would prefer for people to put forth a minimum of effort up front as I mention above and most of this issue would disappear for basic representation in media. It wouldn't resolve the lack of main character representation, but it would alleviate them not appearing at all.

That said, while it's reasonable and definitely how media advances, I do like to retain my right to cringe horrifically at bad representation, ha ha.

Also, as I'd mentioned prior, I don't like it when you have the "obligatory love interest" trope even when it's a heterosexual pairing, so I'm not going to like it when it's a gay couple shoehorned in either. But you are correct. That awful representation may motivate someone that actually has any idea what they're doing to step in and show people how it's done.

 

[Netrigan]

I have to wonder.

If you were to go about your normal day, doing the things as you do - getting ready for work, hit the grocery store, maybe see a movie after dinner and so on - but every day, you have a random person come up to you and soliloquise about how they are gay. Would that serve any purpose for function to your day other than confirming that "Yes, gay people exist"?

Nobody is suggesting this.

People are suggesting that gay people be portrayed, occasionally, in precisely the same way straight people are already. Straight characters do not soliloquise about their sexuality, but relationships are very, very common in media (as are mentions of relationships).

Again, nobody has suggested some highly unnatural focus on the sexuality. Oddly, nobody finds it particularly unnatural or forced when a straight relationship pops up, as they do all the time, in every medium.

Indeed, no one in this thread has suggested such a ham handed approach, but I've seen people demand gay characters added, even hapazardly, as long as they are "represented" and I think that approach would do more harm than good. It seems I may have unintentionally implied I was referring to people in this thread. I was actually referring to the extreme side of this demand of diverse representation, not the more reasonable requests.

A Lot of the normal domestic representation, such as people holding hands, a peck on the lips as they walk out the door, flirting at a bar, or a picture on a nightstand are all things that could easily be integrated into development of a game with a little of forethought and minimal cost.

I feel rather than demanding an amorphous 'DIVERSITY' goal, just having background characters do these actions and let the game randomly assign character models to be male or female for those pairings would be well sufficient for any character that isn't the main focus of the story. It presents a realistic, honest image and is as important as background characters need to be.

Obviously characters that are the focus of the story should be handled more directly.

Snip for space.

I have a Mistakes Will Be Made attitude to all this.

You really can't expect someone to figure out how to perfectly nail diversity without a lot of trial and error. If you're a writer who believes there should be more gay characters in fiction, then you put them in there and try to make it work. People see your work, respond to, praise the bits worthy of praise, point to mistakes, suggest corrections, etc. You try again, hopefully doing a better job of it.

If you get noticed by your peers, maybe they decide to give a go, too. They bring a different sensibility to it. They get feedback after it's published.

Maybe a gay professional thinks, "no, no, no, that's not how it is at all" and they come in with their perspective. People in the audience get inspired by it, they come in and open up their brains. Everyone is learning and growing and getting better at portraying gay people in fiction. Some folks aren't confident about their ability to write gay characters, but are on board, so they make sure they put gay characters in the background of their work.

What you call Tokenism might be the thing which inspires someone to write. Maybe it's because they felt included for the first time in their life. Maybe they're just insulted by it and want to show how it really is.

This stuff just doesn't spring forth fully formed. It's a long arduous process involving tons of different people, often riffing on one another's work. Yes, I can point to works where a gay character is horribly shoehorned in and say "if you're a writer, you don't want to be doing that", but that doesn't mean that wasn't a valuable step in the learning curve. Hell, that might be a valuable lesson in What Not To Do... like the movie, Cruising.

That's a reasonable outlook. I personally would prefer for people to put forth a minimum of effort up front as I mention above and most of this issue would disappear for basic representation in media. It wouldn't resolve the lack of main character representation, but it would alleviate them not appearing at all.

That said, while it's reasonable and definitely how media advances, I do like to retain my right to cringe horrifically at bad representation, ha ha.

Also, as I'd mentioned prior, I don't like it when you have the "obligatory love interest" trope even when it's a heterosexual pairing, so I'm not going to like it when it's a gay couple shoehorned in either. But you are correct. That awful representation may motivate someone that actually has any idea what they're doing to step in and show people how it's done.

I think one of the problems (both writing and audience) is there's so much pressure on the early adopters. We're just starting to see transsexual characters popping up and because there's so few examples of trans characters, there's pressure for those characters to be all things to all people. It's not enough for the lawyer to be a transsexual, we need to show how being a transsexual affects their lives in numerous ways.

And next thing we know we're getting exposition dumps about transsexuals where exposition dumps just do not belong.

You can see gay characters starting to get over the hump of having to represent everyone. For a while every gay character felt like a statement. There was just no casual way to put a gay character into a story without having to address it. In the last ten years or so, things have really started to snowball, so Doctor Who can have a gay couple dancing in the background at a wedding and it's just there. Captain Jack can flirt with the boys and it's just Captain Jack being Captain Jack. The whole thing gets less and less awkward as we're exposed to the idea more and more.

Seeing how little emphasis is put on the soldiers in Call of Duty, I wouldn't recommend anyone making a big deal out of one of those guys being gay, because these guys don't really exist much beyond Holding A Gun; but what if Dom's lost love in Gears of War had been a man? To me, that seems like the kind of thing which should be happening just a bit more often than it does.

 

[Silvanus]

Indeed, no one in this thread has suggested such a ham handed approach, but I've seen people demand gay characters added, even hapazardly, as long as they are "represented" and I think that approach would do more harm than good. It seems I may have unintentionally implied I was referring to people in this thread. I was actually referring to the extreme side of this demand of diverse representation, not the more reasonable requests.

A Lot of the normal domestic representation, such as people holding hands, a peck on the lips as they walk out the door, flirting at a bar, or a picture on a nightstand are all things that could easily be integrated into development of a game with a little of forethought and minimal cost.

I feel rather than demanding an amorphous 'DIVERSITY' goal, just having background characters do these actions and let the game randomly assign character models to be male or female for those pairings would be well sufficient for any character that isn't the main focus of the story. It presents a realistic, honest image and is as important as background characters need to be.

Obviously characters that are the focus of the story should be handled more directly.

I can happily agree with that. In open-world RPGs, particularly, the approach you described above could work quite well.

 

[visiblenoise]

My thought is that I don't know many gay people, and are good friends with zero. So I'm not very interested in learning about the perspective of a gay person per se, and any sort of book, movie, game, etc. that singularly focuses on that will likely bore me. And given the low percentage of homosexuality, I'd guess that lots of people feel the same way as I do, resulting in a really small market for this kind of thing.