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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.
I'd say this is consistent with other established themes. Do you expect the group of entities literally named "Others" to care about tradition and fitting in in the way human society and human establishment does? Being -phobic is the bread-and-butter of the old Practitioner families. Don't confuse sticking to tradition and sticking to symbolism.
What I dislike about Pale is that the way Wildbow explicitly minds the audience diminishes 2/3 of the protagonists' personal struggles in my eyes. Verona's pet issue is her detachment and lack of trust between her and adulthood. Lucy's is being a racial minority. Avery's is being a sexual orientation minority. All of those are hammered over the reader's head quite a bit.
But while Verona's issues are repeatedly and blatantly justified, Lucy and Avery mostly have to resort to wondering and imagining if their issues are even real. The worst Avery actually got about her being a lesbian is her Finder family ally (briefly) flipping out on her because she kinda sorta led them to believe they have a chance of arranged marriage. I don't recall Lucy actually encountering an explicit racism moment. I'm quite confident that given Wildbow's current main audience, and perhaps his own shifts in political opinion, he will not choose to write the word "nigger" again even inside the head of the most racist character in the novel.
I do not have to see the word nigger in a novel to like it. But I do wish Wildbow was writing for a wider audience than people who "don't want the story to be about that" (referring to explicit examples of minority struggles and -isms as opposed to vague Institutional -Isms).
The Others don't come up with the rules though, it's the spirits (mostly) that do that. And in many ways they seem willing to change--they're adapting OK to new technology--but in matters of morality, they seem utterly set in stone except in whatever ways are most important to "modern audiences". Whoever is coming up with this morality (whether spirits or Others) I think it's silly for them to be totally inflexible on swords being male, but totally flexible on whether a person is male or female. These spirits should be totally racist as well, trying to stick people into well-defined roles based on the type of magic their practitioner ancestors did.
To be clear, I'd be fine with them not being like that if they were not portrayed as so inflexible in pretty much everything else.
I somewhat disagree with this, I think that the intended takeaway is that the issues are definitely real, but so insidious that even their victims are fooled into thinking that maybe they're overreacting. If anything I am a bit annoyed that their issues are so ubiquitous. For Lucy: Paul definitely left the family due to racism, her love interest also stopped trying due to his mom's racism, there was a racist teacher at the magic school, even the primary antagonist (Charles) has done some racist stuff unintentionally; I'm sure there are plenty of other examples. Avery has similarly had plenty of issues, though thankfully her magic stuff is so interesting that those issues get less attention.
I think Wildbow is trying to walk a tightrope because he wants those minority struggles to be a big part of the book, but doesn't want to include anything too cringey or unrealistic, so rather than having a few scenes with deplorable antagonists he litters the entire book with more subtly racist and homophobic characters. I get what he's trying to do but it kind of turns into the worst of both worlds, where you both get tired of all the attention given to these issues, but also don't have any exciting struggles or grave injustices you can watch the characters deal with.
That's... pretty much just isn't true. The spirits don't come up with the rules, they observe patterns and do their part in passing them along.
You're contradicting yourself now. I originally said
To which you responded
I'll grant that spirits "pass rules along" if you'll grant that spirits care a lot about tradition, which was my original point anyways.
I'm saying that what humans call tradition is only a fraction of patterns in reality. The existence of deviations from traditions is just as much a pattern. And Others, aside from those who explicitly represent human tradition, represent deviation.
So yes, spirits do care about tradition, but not exclusively like a human ultra-conservative would.
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First, there is absolutely an effect on how Others see you based on who your ancestors were. Second, you're making a mistake of assuming the spirits are 100% on "sword means dick, no arguments" based on the Implementum book, which is written by Practitioner society who love their rigid categories. Having a bias towards "sword is male" does not mean "totally inflexible".
I disagree, I think they are totally inflexible towards having that bias. It's not like some famous female warrior or even a god will ever convince the spirits that "sword means female". Similarly I would expect them to always say "penis means male" and "XY chromosomes means male" which would always be a handicap towards any trans practitioner attempting to adopt a female role. Not saying it would be impossible, but it would be impossible to lose that handicap entirely.
If anything I think that strategy would also make for a better story because it would mean more needs to be sacrificed to pursue your convictions.
Enough female warriors will. If anything, the fact that it's a bias and not a mandatory requirement even after thousands of years of precedent and symbolism speaks against it being "total". Your "penis means male" example is much more inflexible.
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