Reflection and Analysis

Entitled to Rep - I think Not - (8/25/21)

Today I'm reflecting on a conversation from last NaNoWriMo which majorly irked me. Of course, when people see that word, they may think that I'm super angry at the incident, but the word irked actually doesn't mean "to make angry". According to Merriam-Webster, the word irk means "to make weary, irritated, or bored" while the online dictionary says it means to "irritate, annoy, or exasperate".

There's no getting around the fact said conversation was irritating, said conversation about representation.

Mind you.

Before we get into a conversation regarding why a conversation about representation pretty much sucked, I'd like to bring up the fact I get the importance of representation within the media we consume, but I've also got to question this idea of a lack of representation people keep talking about and what they really mean about the lack "there of" of representation, let alone what they mean by meaningful representation.

And right there was I think the crux of the problem, the source of my irritation last NaNoWriMo as someone came in complaining that they basically wanted the second movie to be more obvious about Dumbledore being gay than the Mirror of Erised, but this was actually my first introduction to the idea of that not being enough, when Dumbledore clearly explained in the books that the mirror, "shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desires of our hearts."

A couple of us who write original fiction decided to ask the question of what actually amounts to "good representation" as we honestly wanted to know.

The answer we got – it was less than satisfying, because the individuals kept saying they wanted the representation to be more explicit within the media they consume, yet when asked how this would be implemented within the above context – aka, showing Dumbledore more explicitly gay within the context of the series – they skirted they issue by pretty much claiming it was narratively possible without actually giving examples of how they would do it.

Which, people, is not an answer.

In fact, claiming something is narratively possible isn't the same as proving it is narratively possible, and having spent a very long time critiquing fanfiction, what with my ffnet account where I first started having been around for fifteen years now, I've seen a lot of people claim something to be narratively possible when in reality its not, or more specifically it is not any where near as possible as they claim and really something that only a super skilled writer who has the talents to pull off could.

And that's what bothers me – this asking for impossible representation within the media we consume and pushing for unrealistic demands regarding representation upon those creating the media we consume.

There's no getting around the fact this feels like fan entitlement, and not actually a real claim of not being represented.

Except, this wasn't the only reason this conversation was so frustrating.

I recollect there being two individuals with one being louder than the other, though there might have been a third person trying to convince us that their claim of injustice was actually a real claim of not being accurately represented. Because one of the individuals was louder than the other – to the point the mod had to step in for the simple matter this individual kept asking myself and the other writer to disengage yet kept engaging us, the two blended together.

Actually, the fact this person kept engaging despite asking us to disengage was therein a problem, as the truth of the matter what this person really wanted was for a conversation they disliked and disagreed with to stop entirely because it was supposedly triggering, having others disagree with their opinion.