It’s kinda weird to try to include representation without it feeling shoe horned. The world of TES (of any fictional world) is entirely hand-created. There are no accidents, all of it is intentional.
This means that, no matter how it’s done, any character deviating from the “norm” was consciously chosen to be so. These things that need representation (disabilities, gender identity, sexuality, race, etc) are all things people don’t get to choose, so there’s an inherent disconnect between the hand crafted world choosing to include diversity, and the real world necessarily having diversity because of chaos.
Following this thread, there’s never been a case of inclusivity, or exclusivity, that isn’t shoehorned in. It’s always been entirely the will of the author to include or exclude these representations. With that in mind, I think it’s only a good thing to see more diverse authors bringing more diverse worlds and characters into existence.
It only feels shoe horned when they don’t write the character well.
There are a lot of cases where the person isn’t allowed to have any flaws or character development because they’re too scared to make them look bad in any way, which also means none of their achievements feel earned. Ohers where they just don’t care enough to waste screen time on things that aren’t highlighting whatever group they’re a part of
Have been a fair few shows I’ve seen where they’ve done it right, recently Kaos had a trans character who actually felt like a human being instead of a token “hey look we have a trans person”
The recent doctor who special is one of the bad examples, most of the time the woman in a wheelchair is onscreen it’s because they’re drawing attention to the wheelchair (oh no, a ladder, oh no a set of stairs etc etc) and not to develop her character in any way besides that
That’s kind of a weird argument. I always took “shoe-horned” to imply that it is pressed into something by force where it doesn’t quite fit. So, in my mind just because something is intentional doesn’t mean it is shoe-horned.
Creative works always come from the authors lived experiences. The reason why we often find representation of minorities missing in media, is because these minorities don’t get to work on them. If there would be more diverse teams working on something we would naturally see more of their diverse experiences represented.
However, for this to be the case a lot would have to change in our society. It is way easier to just keep things more or less as they were and let people without minority experiences write and add minority characters. These, in turn, feel off, feel shoe-horned in, because they aren’t based off of lived experiences. They are just there to check a box.
Conversely, the reason why it feels like we used to have better (though less) diverse representations in media is because these actually came from people who had these experiences.
Eh, I think we just have different perspectives on things being short horned. In my view, anything that isn’t critical information to the story, it’s shoehorned in. If you tell me the main characters favorite food is pasta, and then don’t do anything with it, it’s shoe horned in. If you tell me a character is gay, and then don’t do anything they couldn’t have done the same with a straight character, changing a couple of pronouns, it’s shoehorned in.
To be clear though, I don’t think this is a bad thing. A story with only critical information will… Well, it’ll work, but it’ll be bland. Same if you make all of your characters blond, blue eyed, straight white men. Adding these details tends to be what makes us remember and identify with a character. That doesn’t make it any more strictly relevant to the story. Most characters people would view as “diverse” - even the ones people like - fall into this category, i think.
I think a better argument is, if these traits ARE shoehorned in, their alternative “normal” traits would be as well. If you go out of your way to state a character is straight, it’s just as shoehorned if everything else is equivalent. Do THOSE characters inspire the same ire? If not, we should examine the why of that specifically.
It’s kinda weird to try to include representation without it feeling shoe horned. The world of TES (of any fictional world) is entirely hand-created. There are no accidents, all of it is intentional.
This means that, no matter how it’s done, any character deviating from the “norm” was consciously chosen to be so. These things that need representation (disabilities, gender identity, sexuality, race, etc) are all things people don’t get to choose, so there’s an inherent disconnect between the hand crafted world choosing to include diversity, and the real world necessarily having diversity because of chaos.
Following this thread, there’s never been a case of inclusivity, or exclusivity, that isn’t shoehorned in. It’s always been entirely the will of the author to include or exclude these representations. With that in mind, I think it’s only a good thing to see more diverse authors bringing more diverse worlds and characters into existence.
It only feels shoe horned when they don’t write the character well.
There are a lot of cases where the person isn’t allowed to have any flaws or character development because they’re too scared to make them look bad in any way, which also means none of their achievements feel earned. Ohers where they just don’t care enough to waste screen time on things that aren’t highlighting whatever group they’re a part of
Have been a fair few shows I’ve seen where they’ve done it right, recently Kaos had a trans character who actually felt like a human being instead of a token “hey look we have a trans person”
The recent doctor who special is one of the bad examples, most of the time the woman in a wheelchair is onscreen it’s because they’re drawing attention to the wheelchair (oh no, a ladder, oh no a set of stairs etc etc) and not to develop her character in any way besides that
That’s kind of a weird argument. I always took “shoe-horned” to imply that it is pressed into something by force where it doesn’t quite fit. So, in my mind just because something is intentional doesn’t mean it is shoe-horned.
Creative works always come from the authors lived experiences. The reason why we often find representation of minorities missing in media, is because these minorities don’t get to work on them. If there would be more diverse teams working on something we would naturally see more of their diverse experiences represented.
However, for this to be the case a lot would have to change in our society. It is way easier to just keep things more or less as they were and let people without minority experiences write and add minority characters. These, in turn, feel off, feel shoe-horned in, because they aren’t based off of lived experiences. They are just there to check a box.
Conversely, the reason why it feels like we used to have better (though less) diverse representations in media is because these actually came from people who had these experiences.
Eh, I think we just have different perspectives on things being short horned. In my view, anything that isn’t critical information to the story, it’s shoehorned in. If you tell me the main characters favorite food is pasta, and then don’t do anything with it, it’s shoe horned in. If you tell me a character is gay, and then don’t do anything they couldn’t have done the same with a straight character, changing a couple of pronouns, it’s shoehorned in.
To be clear though, I don’t think this is a bad thing. A story with only critical information will… Well, it’ll work, but it’ll be bland. Same if you make all of your characters blond, blue eyed, straight white men. Adding these details tends to be what makes us remember and identify with a character. That doesn’t make it any more strictly relevant to the story. Most characters people would view as “diverse” - even the ones people like - fall into this category, i think.
I think a better argument is, if these traits ARE shoehorned in, their alternative “normal” traits would be as well. If you go out of your way to state a character is straight, it’s just as shoehorned if everything else is equivalent. Do THOSE characters inspire the same ire? If not, we should examine the why of that specifically.