måndag 28 juli 2014

I guess at least it's better than any representation the Moff could come up with

Okay, so in English because this rant is gonna be too long for Twitter and some of my most interactive followers don't know Swedish.

Of course when I wrote the first draft of my story most characters were straight, but as I edited that changed. I switched the gender of a character and never removed the comment of how all they wanted out life was "fame and girls" and suddenly they were a lesbian. I added a subplot where one of my MCs run into a goddess and suddenly she was bi. I actively decided that my other other MC would be ace because there's not enough representation there. It just kinda happened, but it's very different from the very straight first draft.

And still I can't stop wondering if I'm doing enough, if I'm doing it right, if it actually matters since no one's gonna read it anyway (SHUSH, stupid inner self-hater. No time for you now).

With the bi MC I'm worried people will think that she's straight. In book one she kisses two people, one boy, one girl, and there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to a third girl (no one but me will see that, but whatevs). She's never described as bi though, because her sexuality is never discussed (aka I'm not doing this, it's just never mentioned).

In book two she's dating another boy, but quickly dumps him for an on and off-relationship with the boy from the first book. They will most likely end up together in book three. There's also a mention of her having had a crush on a girl a few years back. Basically, I'm takig the "show, don't tell" approach to her sexuality.

But is that enough? Should I say the B-word? Is it bad representation that she will in the end be with a dude? Is it bad that we don't see her with a girl (except for that one kiss) in the rest of the story? I know this is internalized biphobia, that she's not "bi enough", but I can't stop thinking it. (As for the boys, they are both mythological characters and switching their genders wouldn't really work)

Then there's the ace MC, and she's much harder to write. I mean, her sexuality. Mostly because she doesn't know she's ace yet. I wish I could do like Game of Thrones when they revealed that Varys is ace, but since she doesn't know yet it's hard. In book one there's a very quick mention, where the bi MC talks about how awesome being single is and says something like "and now you wonder about sex" and the ace MC thinks to herself that no, she was not wondering about that. Book two has her thinking about how everyone is bothering her to go out and have a one night stand now that she's single, but how she barely liked having sex with her ex, and the thought of doing it with someone else repulses her. I showed this to someone and was told it sounded more like her ex was really bad in bed, which I think is always the problem with ace characters. People are gonna think they just haven't experience good sex yet and it's just a matter of finding the right person.

I think I'll have to state out-right in book three that she has found the term ace and now identifites as it, or I suspect people (yeah, you mean those non-existing readers of yours, Ell? Are those the ones you're talking about) will just assume she's not ace. To be fair even if she says it herself there'll be people believing otherwise, since people don't believe ace is a real thing (and as we all know, neither is bisexuality. Hey, maybe my MCs will learn how to use their invisibility to do good in book three!).

I don't want to shoehorn in a reference to my character's sexuality for no real reason, but I also don't want to Dumbledore them, you know?

Then I have plans on including a genderfluid character in book three, combining two gods into one. Basically, saying humans didn't realize it was the same person in different genders, and assumed it was two different gods. I think I'll stick to one name and change the pronouns accordingly whenever they change in the story, as to make it clear that it's not two different characters. As far as I can tell genderfluid people usually just go by one name, so I'll stick to that.

Oh, and yeah, and no magical body switching. That seems to be most of the representation genderfluid people get, and while I guess it would be fine once in a while, when all genderfluids are magically switching genitals then I see how it can become almost offensive. So she'll just be a girl some days and boy another, probably showing it off by wearing braids when a girl and having his hair slicked back while boy.

Still, I don't know enough about genderfluidity so I'm gonna have to do more research before I write that character. Weirdly it feels easier to show off someone's gender through your writing than sexuality, even though the fact that it's a god/goddess we're talking about might make it seem to "magical" and that way make it not great representation. Like, I don't want to accidentally hint that it's not something that is a thing in humans, by having it only appear in a non-human character.

Not to mention how the bad guys in book three might be lesbians (as the story is planned right now), and I'm afraid that might end up being queer coding since the only lesbian characters would then be bad guys, or working with the bad guy (the girl mentioned in book one). I mean, sure, it's not the only queer representation in the story, so it's not *that* bad, but it still might not be great? Although the first two villians are straight, so it's not only evil queer people.

It's just.... way harder than it should be, you know? Maybe I don't spend enough time worrying, maybe I spend too much time worrying, maybe I don't realize how much bad shit I've internalized that will show in my writing? (Like, a last edit of my first book included changing unneccesary binary comments, such as "I'm hot in both genders" to "I'm hot in every gender" or "women want me, men want to be me" to "women want me, men want me, and all ..." because up until that point I didn't realize that it was bad)

If you were expecting some big pay-off and some profound realization at the end of this rant, I'm sorry to disappoint. I'm still confused, so you're gonna have to tell me something profound about this instead so I don't have to.

True story.

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