feuervogel: photo of the statue of Victory and her chariot on the Brandenburg Gate (Default)
feuervogel ([personal profile] feuervogel) wrote 2009-09-02 08:37 pm (UTC)

I agree - how you react to a story is an individual thing, and I can't tell you how to react. (Hooray for tautologies!) Out of curiosity, was this real world (contemporary or historical) fiction? Because I'll agree that setting a story in 2009 America is going to have to deal in some way with homophobia and its results. 1960 even moreso. But 500 years from now? Or in an unreal world?

The problem I had with the first comment I linked was that it read like a value judgement. It's uninteresting & makes a bad story. If he'd said he wasn't interested in it, or didn't like those types of stories, that would be more subjective, and not up for debate. It's not his thing; cool. He can not read it.

Tal's comment made me twitch, though, and subsequent commenters addressed it with varying levels of skill. Isn't it stereotyping to have a black character (for example) listen to gangsta rap and wear low-slung trousers? If that's your character, sure, but saying that a black person who listens to classical music and wears a suit isn't really black ... sounds like calling him an oreo.

There's always the issue of good or bad characterization. If your real world story contains non-[white cis straight] male characters, it's good characterization to think about how X aspect of the world affects them. The aforementioned "oreo" character could perhaps reflect on how his peers consider him, and who his peers are. But if it's a non-real-world story, aspect X may not apply or may apply differently.

*I'm never going to get this novel finished. Hell, I'm never going ot get it *started* at this rate.

ETA: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/09/01/the-big-idea-malinda-lo/#comment-161713 is an awesome comment.

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