Well...yeah, "adult" would indeed imply "adulthood". Similar to the way that "green" would imply "greenness." You're losing me here. What are you saying? What does this have to do with what I was saying? Did you maybe respond to the wrong post?
So @Samuel Lighton you're agreeing with Justin? Here's a question; what the meaning of Buffy's blond hair? Or Harry Potter's black hair? What plot point or metaphor is there in those? Because remember, sexuality is in the same category as hair colour.
No, I was directly responding to you, but I think I lost the meaning of the posts haha. Could you surmise what you were asking/getting at? It's a tad difficult to follow all the posts and get the gist of it.
That's a little baited really. Buffy's blonde hair had zero relevance throughout the story, it was simply blonde, the same with Harry Potter's black hair. But if you had a story where a tribe worshipped blondes as being preists/preistess' because of the rarity of it in an overwhelmingly black haired group, then it would have relevance. I'm saying that these attributes only carry weight if you make them carry weight.
OK, let's imagine that we have a murder mystery. The mystery is solved through knowledge of chemistry, knowledge of psychology, and a surveillance camera. It is NOT solved through anything that is related to race or sexual orientation. Race and sexual orientation affect the character, their home life, their friendships, maybe there are some political issues, but they don't directly affect the main murder plot. Does that it is WRONG to have a black and/or homosexual character as the lead investigator that mystery? Because those attributes are not directly relevant to the main line of the main plot? That's what I'm hearing from Justin. That may not be what Justin is saying. But that's what I'm hearing him say. What are you saying?
But is it permissible for Buffy to have blond hair, if that blond hair doesn't have a direct impact on the plot? Again, I am hearing Justin as saying that no, it's not.
So why are you disagreeing with @ChickenFreak? That's what we're saying to Justin, it doesn't have to matter, some details are just there because they're interesting.
Oh, I don't believe it's wrong to state a character is black just for the sake of them being black. But I do also believe that it's good craftsmanship to include some kind of interaction with that attribute in a story. Casual or real racism, sexism, any kind of bias. But again, it's not necessary to do so. For instance, in that murder mystery the detective/investigator could receive great resistance from the rest of the people on the 'team' because they are black. They seek to undermine them. Or maybe there's a curfew for coloureds/subhumans that adds an element of danger to performing night time investigations. It could also be the opposite, they receive special treatment for their skin colour, or additional help for their sexual preference because a superior has a love interest in them. These aren't exclusive to any of the traits as the story is told how you like it. You could set it in a world where homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuality is shunned. I guess what I'm saying is both are okay in my book, but it's like....well, an irrelevant Chekov's Gun. One that doesn't have to matter at all. But can if you want it to.
My issue with the Chekov's gun analogy is that the gun is a dramatic, noteworthy object. You don't hear "Chekov's toothbrush", for example. So that analogy suggests that non-whiteness or non-straightness or non-maleness is weird and dramatic. And that's problematic. So I don't feel that it applies.
Yes, it's alright for Buffy to have blonde hair. Or ginger hair. Or a rainbow clown wig. Or be bald for that matter, it only carries significance if you want it to, otherwise it's just a meaningless feature, which isn't bad. I wouldn't disagree with ChickenFreak's point, and I don't think I ever said anything along the lines that would disagree with it. I did say it could matter that a character has these traits but you'd have to make it matter as they inherently hold zero value until given one.
Mmmm. I understand Chekov's Gun to just mean "don't put something interesting in your story if it doesn't get used", and I agree with that on a level. My point was that base traits like hair colour or sexuality aren't really interesting things unless made interesting, so it's a pseudo-Chekov's Gun if you state it out loud. You could just want the reader to understand your image of the character, which is a use in it's own, or you could have it mean something along the story.
So I would agree with you more or less. It is also interesting and realistic to explore the relevance of a diversity. You don't have to, and if you do not necessarily in any large amount, but you might want to especially with certain characters/circumstances.
After trawling through the previous 8 pages of posts, I can now say that I feel Justin is putting up a strawman argument. It's hardly making a character gay for the sake of being gay. To be completely fair you could say the two love item characters were of hetero genders and it would be the same story, aside from certain -ahem- biological attributes. But the point is that right now this person wants to write a story about a homosexual couple, so they are, and that is fine by me. And I am willing to support the development of that writing in any shape or form as they want, because this isn't about gender studies, this is about supporting someone else in their efforts to craft a story.
More to the point I feel that it's inflating this thread beyond what is even remotely necessary. If the OP wants help, they are more than welcome to ask and I feel obliged to give as concise, honest and helpful answer as I can.
I'm pretty sure Justin is just trolling. He won't give examples of what he's talking about, he refuses to stop with the straw man argument, he seems to be getting positively gleeful with his "slapping a label" nonsense - I think it's time to stop feeding him. He's not making a good faith effort, here.
Well, I've seen the error of my ways. I'm no longer mentioning any detail that doesn't directly affect the plot. Just wrote a new flash fiction piece: A person was at a place. The type of place didn't matter, or what smells and sounds there were, or what the person looked like or felt. An alien craft landed. Person knew it was an alien craft because it didn't look like a human aeroplane but the appearance of the alien craft doesn't matter, just that there were aliens in it. The aliens walked out into the place. Their appearance is also not going to affect the plot except that they had mouths, because they're about to speak. "We don't come in peace," said the mouthed aliens. "Oh dear," said Person. "Yeah. Our technology is much more advanced than yours, so there's not much point fighting." "Mm," Person agreed. "Sounds like a waste of time. And, to be frank, my life is really shitty anyway because I'm not allowed to enjoy anything unless it directly affects the plot. I can't even order a cider unless I have a deep and meaningful reason for it, and I used to love cider before Overlord Rocket came along. I don't have a sex, or a gender, or an age, or an appearance. It bloody sucks, and I'm not allowed to say bloody because that identifies me as probably English and this story could be taking place anywhere." "Wow. Sounds awful. I don't think I'd want to read about your life. No offence intended." Person shrugged, so I suppose I should've mentioned that Person has shoulders. "No offence taken. You know what? Just kill me now." "Okay." The aliens obliged, probably using hands but it's not that important since the story is now over. -- The end --
Who gets to define how a white heterosexual male acts? Or when one is dressed up as someone else for diversity's sake. Doesn't that rely on stereotypes and societal expectations? As I recall, all the characters in Alien were initially written so that they could be filled by either gender. So saying she was first written as a "WHM" is rather inaccurate. Are they in drag, or do they simply not fit your ideas of what it means to be female or black or anything else? I'm sure the people who identify with those characters like being told they're not "really" women, or black, or gay; that they're really just "WHM"s pretending to be what they are.
Buffy intentionally turns the bubble headed bleach blonde stereotype on its head. A great deal of the humor comes from the fact that a vapid cheerleader becomes a vampire hunter. I've only read a few Harry Potter books and those were a long time ago, so I can't speak on that.
As I've said before, different authors are free to write however they want to. I certainly don't want to set myself up as the authority deciding what gets written. But, by the same token, I have a right to say what I like and what I don't. I think calling me a "troll" is unwarranted and unfair.
Here, we get back to verisimilitude. Ideally, the author will have a black lesbian who is believable as a black lesbian, but has also adapted a lot of WHM traits.
Justin is just questioning why one would make a point of mentioning any detail without it having an impact on the overall story. Calling him a troll is very unfair. You can have a lesbian main character, but would you make a point of that being the case if her sexuality has zero influence on the actual story? If we have a murder mystery which is simply a murder mystery, where the detective is a crime solving machine and we're told nothing about his home life, would you mention his being gay? Heteronormativity is a thing, so you may want to from a social justice angle, but looking at the story in a vacuum, would you? You could, obviously, in the same way you may describe the colour of street lamps which are irrelevant story-wise, and that's fine.
How incredibly superficial... "Julia left work early to go home to her wife." She's a lesbian. It's just a detail to make the character into a real person. Influence on the plot is not needed.
Again, what are "WHM" traits? No one seems to be defining this. Something tells me they're steeped in stereotypes, though.
