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There is a phenomenon i notice in media but never hear named. Call it, "Representation As Inherently Problematic."
Examples: There are no mentally handicapped people or trans people on shows that are not specifically about these topics. The reasons for this for mental disabilities are fairly obvious: mental handicaps are considered intrinsically undignified. If you show a mentally handicapped person doing or saying something dumb on a show, this counts as mocking a protected group. Thus: total absence.
Similarly: If you have a trans person on a show you need to make it clear to the audience they are trans, which either requires it to be a plot point (making it a sort of Very Special Episode) or making the trans person not pass (which is undignified and thus opens the writers up to criticism.) Thus: total absence.
Similarly, morbid obesity is undignified, and the morbidly obese are close to being a protected class (being as it is a physical disability). Thus, having them on a show is undignified and opens up the writers to criticism. Thus: total absence.
Another example: land o' lakes mascot, a native American woman, gets criticism for being stereotypical, which is synonymous to being visually identifiable as a native american. So she was removed from the labeling.
Another: Dr. Seuss gets criticism for visually identifiable depiction of a Chinese villager; book gets pulled as a result.
A similar-feeling phenomenon is This Character Has Some Characteristics Of A Protected Group, Which Is Kinda Like Being A Standin For That Group, Making That Character's Poor Qualities A Direct Commentary On That Group. Examples: criticisms around Greedo and Jar Jar Binks being racist caricatures; criticisms of goblin representation in Harry Potter as being anti-semitic caricatures.
Some of the (very left/progressive) authors I follow do talk about how sufficient representation is necessary for them to have more complex diverse characters, as opposed to aggressively averting tropes/stereotypes. To the point of one author saying they definitely were never going consider killing off $SPECIFIC_REPRESENTATION (in a book where the majority of the named characters died) because meeting those representation points was so rare. Having characters match stereotypes too closely is a lot less problematic if there's enough characters around in those categories that there's some around that don't match those same stereotypes.
This is part of why "token" representation is considered problematic, although calling representation "token" usually also implies that no real though has been put into the representation past sticking a label on a character that would otherwise be indistinguishable from a character without that label.
Are you talking about Wildbow? I remember him saying something along these lines a little while ago, specifically his breakdown of the backlash he received forthe "Avery is dead" arc in Pale.
Also, if there's sufficient interest in it, I have a jumbled mess of thoughts I might be able to kludge together into a top level post describing why I think he peaked with Twig, from the angle of someone who is very much in the visible1 minority (not trans, not a furry, not squeeing over various characters, not socially liberal) of his fans.
1Based purely off of a cursory examination of the online communities that bother discussing his writings in the first place.
That was sad. On the one hand he has a great attitude (in some ways) towards representation, believing that characters need to be real characters etc. and not perfect cookie-cutter superheroes.
On the other, despite what he said I knew that none of the characters were in real danger. Even knowing that Wildbow has killed viewpoint characters in the past, Pale has just gone a bit too far for that. The main characters (14 year old girls) are always talking to each other like you'd expect characters in a modern therapy textbook to talk, including frequent discussion of boundaries by name. Maybe to him this seems like good communication, but to me they seem like aliens born from Milquetoast Modern Progressivism vats rather than from mothers, who will continue gargling the detritus of their own afterbirth for the rest of their lives in order to train themselves to never have any opinions not exactly 100% conforming to the party line.
I have many other objections, but what it boils down to is that Wildbow is a fantastic author, but chooses to make his story a vehicle for progressive ideology without meaningfully challenging even its smallest detail.
Some examples:
They live in a universe where all gods exist and are quite powerful and genuine faith is a strong protection, but there are no Christians to be found anywhere. I get that this can be a tough issue (you are essentially "fictionalizing" God by lumping him in with greek gods etc) but you'd expect at least one Christian character given all the much more fringe types of people being represented.
The universe in general seems perfectly fine with sexual progressivism where I would expect it to be extremely strict. For instance, the universe is quite traditional in interpreting a sword as "masculine" and a chalice as "feminine" and will partially define your role in the universe according to which of these you choose, and the corresponding gender, but then has no issue with anything else you'd expect. A universe so rooted in tradition would have little patience for female breadwinners, let alone something like transgenderism.
There are no caricatures of any kind--for instance, no native american shaman practitioners--even though I'd expect that sort of archetype to have a lot of power in this universe.
Going back to point #1, no paladins or priests even though they should be quite powerful.
No extremely traditional / homophobic / transphobic / etc. Others, except for perhaps some misogyny, though I'd expect the other categories to be much more rooted in tradition
Lots of hand-wringing about pedophiles going after 16 year olds, but also celebration of a 14 year old's sexual awakening, as well as countless references to extreme sex acts around a character who is mentally ~10 years old.
No in-universe attention, no matter what, given to the possibility that someone could use Practice to change their mind rather than their behavior, even though things like "spirit surgery" are major plot points so it's clearly possible. Zed sacrifices a lot to be a man rather than a woman rather than just snipping that desire in the bud. Given the book's internal logic I don't think that doing so would be a good idea, but I do think the possibility should at least be mentioned even if rejected immediately.
If I'd kept a list while reading through the book I'm sure I'd have dozens to hundreds of better examples, but for now this will have to suffice.
What's funny is, in the loose pantheon of supplemental writing and even a brief mention in one of his interludes, there are actually "paladins" or Christian style priests who hunt down and bind and/or exorcize literal demons in the name of God. It's just never been brought up again or made relevant to his Pactverse stories.
Yeah, there has been some mention of that, but do they exorcize demons in the name of God? My recollection was basically that they have all the trappings of Christianity but mostly believe in Christian virtues and traditions rather than the actual Christian theology. Like, they will gain holy power by remaining celibate, but without any admission or belief that the Christian god actually exists.
I think generally part of the issue is that modern priests do not jive well at all with the setting. Every other type of priest can literally channel divine power, but we expect modern-day normal religious priests to lack similar power? Nah, if it were consistent, normal Christian (and other religions, but there's a Christian church in Kennet) priests would literally have divine power, and more of it than they could use.
"Faith" in the Pactverse clashes somewhat with the Biblical definition, at least as laid out in Hebrews 11:1. When you can perform a given ritual, utter the right words, and invoke the might of a higher power it can be difficult to frame that as "belief". One doesn't need to believe when you can know, a problem inherent to the setting and as such one I'm willing to forgive.
The POV of that particular chapter is also one belonging to a literal apostate, so I can accept there being no deference paid to the Supreme Creator, whether he thought there was one or not.
Agreed, but this does make you wonder why gods work at all in-setting. What does belief in a god mean? Everyone in Pact knew that Dionysius existed but I don't think he gained any power from that. Seems like it's something closer to "love and obedience" than it is to "confidence level that this deity is real". If we redefine faith like that then we're back to the issue of "why does nobody love and obey the Christian god?"
I would prefer some kind of in-universe explanation like, obviously he's real, but he hasn't visited in ages and people need to have faith that his reasons are good. This would neatly allow the story to continue without interference from the actual God, but still allow for many different types of belief and genuine religious people, just like real life.
Was it mentioned in Pact/Pale at all that gods need belief? Sounds like they gain power from acts of worship, particularly ones that sacrifice something or give them claim over something (a mark on the body, for example).
Based on the knowledge on Pactverse gods and the divine practices shared in the story, I'm led to believe that the vastness of Abrahamic religions works against their God(s). "I am what I am", what kind of definition is that? Here on this forum, when that kind of definition is applied to the concept of a woman, people laugh it out of the room.
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The relationship Jeremy Meath has with Dionysus, where you don't know exactly how much Relationship Points you've got with your patron and how much would be demanded for the next miracle you ask for (and of course a shrewd god would not give specific promises easily) - that's something closer to belief than to knowledge in my books.
I had the impression that was due more to Dionysus' status as a deity of, in part, madness (introducing a degree of unpredictability) and because his power was vastly diminished due to his now-miniscule base of worshippers. Other god-believer relationships are portrayed somewhat differently, though this is primarily in Pale and are arguably non-central examples. Point taken though.
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