Scribbling Ideas!

At times, Gatwa’s casting in those projects has been dismissed as an exercise in ‘box-ticking’. Gatwa scoffs. ‘First of all, you don’t know anything about me. Secondly, tick fcking boxes! People need to be fcking seen. What are you going to do, tell the same stories? Have the same people fronting things for all of eternity? Representation and inclusivity and branching out… it enriches us all. How embarrassing. You people with your tiny mindsets – open a book, look out the window and then f*ck off.’ (source)

What do I mean by the Third Argument? Well, I'm not sure I've ever made a post about this directly, but as far as I can see it, there are three main arguments for greater diversity in popular media. The first two are the most common, and they go like this:

It is good for media to be diverse because it is good for people to see people like them on screen. That is, the beneficiaries are marginalized people.

It is good for media to be diverse because it is good for people to see and learn about people who are not like them through art. That is, the beneficiaries are non-marginalized people, who then (hopefully) pass on the benefit by treating marginalized people better.

These two arguments are the source of a lot of debate here on ye olde tumblr. Despite both being arguments for representation, they pull in different directions. What counts as 'good' representation for the purposes of Argument 1 often would not be good for the purposes of Argument 2, and vice versa. Authentic versus sympathetic. Ugly or over-sanitized. You see this debate play out constantly. It's really hard for a piece of - say - queer media to do both at once.

But these debates tend to leave out Argument 3, the one that Gatwa is making above. And that argument cuts through a lot of this debate.

3. It is good for media to be diverse because art needs variety. The beneficiary of representation is art itself, absent any social effects that may or may not be present.

For this argument, diverse stories are intrinsically good. It is good to make art that's not just the same thing you've seen a hundred times before. Putting the kinds of people who don't often make it into mainstream media into your art is an extremely efficient way to make that happen. It's not the only method, but it's a really good method.

For representation to be 'good representation' according to Argument 3, all it needs to be is interesting. A story you haven't heard before, at least not in that medium. That which counts as 'bad representation' by the lights of this argument are stock characters, like the Eternally Patient Mother, the Gay Best Friend, the Wise Black Advisor. Perhaps there was a time in which these characters were new, but that time has long passed. There's no art in pulling a bog-standard character trope off the shelf. Show us a new kind of guy. The world is infinitely diverse. You're not going to run out. Telling the same stories with the same voices for all eternity, as Gatwa says, is boring. Even if there was nothing else wrong with it, this would be. Art isn't supposed to be boring.

A character with fire/heat powers massaging a knotted muscle with hot hands, being able to dig in nice and deep as the warmth relaxes the area

A character with ice/cold powers carding their fingers through someone's hair, soothing a headache

A character with hypnotic powers lulling someone into a trance and clearing their mind, easing their anxieties so they can hopefully get some sleep

A character with plant magic keeping a bouquet fresh and vibrant by their friend's bedside, knowing the colors will at the very least cheer them up and give them something beautiful to look at

A character with water magic combining it with a soft cloth washing away tears, sweat, or blood from another character's face

All stories should have more disabled people, honestly, because disability is a basic part of being alive! What am I supposed to think of any given fictional community if I never see any elderly people, any retired people, any injured people, or any disabled people?

Childhood Memory Grief Prompts

⊹ Opening a closet and finding something that still smells faintly like them, and standing there longer than you meant to.

⊹ realizing you remember how their hand felt holding yours, but not the last thing they ever said.

⊹ sitting on the floor where you used to play as a kid and noticing how much smaller everything feels now.

⊹ catching yourself thinking you should tell them about something good that happened, and feeling stupid for a second before it hurts.

⊹ keeping a childhood object because it proves they were real and not just something you made up.

⊹ remembering the way they used to say your name, and noticing no one else says it like that.

⊹ finding an old photo and staring at it, trying to remember what the day felt like instead of what it looked like.

⊹ realizing most of what you remember about them are ordinary moments, not the important ones.

⊹ walking past a place you used to go together and feeling wrong for continuing without them.

⊹ noticing you still think of yourself as their child, even though they aren’t here to see who you became.

⊹ remembering how safe you felt without knowing why, and missing that more than anything.

⊹ finding something broken and instinctively thinking they’d know how to fix it.

⊹ realizing you don’t remember their voice clearly anymore, and feeling panicked about what will go next.

⊹ holding onto routines you learned from them because they feel like instructions for how to exist.

⊹ remembering the house the way it was when they were alive, not the way it is now.

⊹ noticing that the memories you return to are always from before everything changed.

⊹ wishing you could go back to a moment that didn’t feel important at the time.

⊹ feeling like part of your childhood is locked behind a door you can’t open anymore.

⊹ realizing you grew up, but the memories didn’t.

⊹ feeling comforted and sad at the same time when something reminds you of them.

⊹ remembering how small you were when they were still there.