As I work on my NaNoWriMo project for this year I am reminded of a conversation that occurred a few years ago in the Pet Peeve forum regarding LGBT rep.
One of the things that came up was an LGBT rep, but there was an individual who claimed the rep we've been getting isn't "good enough." When asked for clarification regarding what this meant and how they expected the rep to be implemented, they, in turn, attempted to shut down the conversation by playing the victim card; they argued that because they were triggered, the conversation should end.
Except, that wasn't quite it -- what this person actually wanted was to shut down the side of the conversation that disagreed with their stance that, in effect, DEI should come before good storytelling.
But at the center of the conversation was Dumbledore and the Fantastic Beast movies with this person and perhaps one or two others claiming what fans got in the movies regarding his and Grindenwald's relationship wasn't "good enough"; the obvious questions a writer would then ask are, "Why isn't it "good enough?" and "How should a writer go about making it "good enough" without compromising good storytelling?"
Their answer?
To paraphrase, we should just know.
Looking back, what they meant was we should understand that we writers shouldn't even be asking questions about how to avoid compromising good storytelling because in the mind of the woke titillating DEI should always be placed about good storytelling, good storytelling be damned; I use the word titillating because that is the kind of representation the woke are asking for.
Case in point, Dumbledore and Grindenwald -- what certain people mean when they say the movies didn't handle the relationship well enough is they wanted shipping material, but this particular ship isn't just titillating because it's LGBT; it is also titillating to "thirsty shippers" because it is a toxic relationship. Shipping material, of course, means making it explicitly there that Dumbledore has the hots for Grindenwalkd, rather than using beautifully crafted subtext.
Which, using beautifully crafted subtext was the way to go with this one, for on top of being a toxic relationship that a movie which will have a younger audience shouldn't be promoting -- and to be clear, toxic not because it is two gay men, but because Grindenwald uses Dumbledore's feelings to manipulate him to the detriment of Dumbledore and others Dumbledore cares about -- it's also combating the issue of the time period the work takes place in.
-- But fiction!
I'm tired of the "But it's fiction, so the writer can do whatever they want!" argument; while I can't argue writers who do this aren't writers, I can argue they don't care about their target audience. A fundamental problem with this argument is outright ignoring an audience's willingness to suspend disbelief, the reasons behind which have nothing to do with homophobia.
No, I'd take things further and say the reason behind not being able to suspend one's disbelief lies with caring about the characters in question and disliking who said character is presented to them. They don't want moments that draw them out of enjoying their character, nor do they want characters to exist only as their labels.
And yes, I know some LGBT people just want to escape reality, yet--
It's not as if anybody in the conversation argued that Dumbledore should face homophobia in the Fantastic Beast movies; the argument was that within the narrative, how he is presented as being a gay man needs to not draw the viewer out of the work. There are ways to do this, but they have to be done right and with care, yet the answer given to how the person complaining would do it--
Well--
It should be self-explanatory, they said.
Aka, going back to the, "to the hell with the narrative for the sake of diversity" because that's how a small minority of people escape reality while the rest of us want the narratives we encounter to make sense when we escape.
Yet, I can't end this without noting another woke behavior of this individual, the throwing of what came before under the bus. They outright claimed rep didn't count if the rep was revealed through "word-of-god," but putting aside whether it would work for the narrative part, it didn't count if the character was created before a writer could be out about their character being LGBT, nor did it count if the creator or one of the creators was themselves LGBT.
Which I saw this attack of what came before with one of the IP I love, where the showrunners of the reboot I'll leave unnamed, felt they were being groundbreaking by being the first LGBT person to work on the IP, which directly spit in the face of many of the staff who worked on the original version who were LGBT to the point that was a place many of the LGBT staff felt comfortable being open about their sexuality if it came up.
Like, how not awake to the issues surrounding your given IP can someone be? And hence why the woke aren't actually woke as they're not actually awake to the issues they claim to be aware of.
YOU ARE READING
Fellowship of the Fans
Non-FictionWhat is the criticism surrounding Rings of Power really about? Is it really just a bunch of white racists and misogynist men? Or are their valid criticisms, and is race and misogyny being used to deflect criticism?
