There's a recurring discussion going on in fandom about which characters people identify with, not least about female readers identifying with male characters. This concept intersects with many other fannish subjects (not least the perennial "Why slash?" question).
For me... it's not about which people I identify with --- I identify as my heart alights, on male, female, human, alien, animal, whatever; I never choose, they choose me --- but about which worlds I identify with. If I'd read The Hobbit first I never would have read Lord of the Rings, because I would have said to myself, "right, this universe has NOT A SINGLE FEMALE CHARACTER -- oh wait, here's one, and she's a bitch! Next!" I wouldn't've felt like it was a world I could inhabit. Simultaneously, universes where the men have agency and the women are merely acted upon, even if they're otherwise artistically important, leave me unsatisfied in the end. (Mr. Miller, I'm glaring at you.)
That's why the commonly accepted sort of 'gen' people often promulgate, with het romances but not a *whit* of any same-sex ones, often leaves me cold. (Part of why Zach's character was so important to me.) Similarly with universes where everyone (or, worse yet, everyone *good*, everyone sympathetic) is from one culture and/or of one skin tone. (So how are you such a big fan of LOTR, Ruby? Well, that universe does have different cultures. Also I have a complex relationship with it, not least in wincing over the Southrons and Haradrim.)
Many people laugh off that sort of thing, say that people like me lack the imagination to identify with characters who aren't like us demographically. It's not that for me (and also, aren't *they* the ones who can't, or won't, identify with those who aren't like them, since they *always* throw that sort of thing out when people ask for more diversity? But I digress) but that a universe has to be large and diverse enough to give my imagination room to inhabit it, and to not make me feel like I'm disqualified from inhabiting it by the lack of *anyone* like me there.
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Why Ruby Likes Diverse Casts of Characters
Date: 2007-01-28 06:04 pm (UTC)For me... it's not about which people I identify with --- I identify as my heart alights, on male, female, human, alien, animal, whatever; I never choose, they choose me --- but about which worlds I identify with. If I'd read The Hobbit first I never would have read Lord of the Rings, because I would have said to myself, "right, this universe has NOT A SINGLE FEMALE CHARACTER -- oh wait, here's one, and she's a bitch! Next!" I wouldn't've felt like it was a world I could inhabit. Simultaneously, universes where the men have agency and the women are merely acted upon, even if they're otherwise artistically important, leave me unsatisfied in the end. (Mr. Miller, I'm glaring at you.)
That's why the commonly accepted sort of 'gen' people often promulgate, with het romances but not a *whit* of any same-sex ones, often leaves me cold. (Part of why Zach's character was so important to me.) Similarly with universes where everyone (or, worse yet, everyone *good*, everyone sympathetic) is from one culture and/or of one skin tone. (So how are you such a big fan of LOTR, Ruby? Well, that universe does have different cultures. Also I have a complex relationship with it, not least in wincing over the Southrons and Haradrim.)
Many people laugh off that sort of thing, say that people like me lack the imagination to identify with characters who aren't like us demographically. It's not that for me (and also, aren't *they* the ones who can't, or won't, identify with those who aren't like them, since they *always* throw that sort of thing out when people ask for more diversity? But I digress) but that a universe has to be large and diverse enough to give my imagination room to inhabit it, and to not make me feel like I'm disqualified from inhabiting it by the lack of *anyone* like me there.