TheOneAndNagrom

Yeah, you know you can't just make all your characters white men anymore (well, you probably can but you shouldn't.) But how do you add diversity into a story without it being the dreaded Tokenism? Well...

A. What Is Tokenism?

Tokenism in a story is basically when the author looks at their white canvas, wants to put a dot of color in there, literally puts one single dot of black, and calls it a win.

Aside from that metaphor, expect:

Characters we are meant to either dislike or just plain not care about are the minorities.

Plot Irrelevant. The author made the barista Ida Davis and gave her braids! Wow, all the protagonists, secondary characters, and antagonists are still white.

Decorative. The protagonist might be black, or Hispanic, or whatever. It doesn't really change the story. They'll probably be whitewashed. It's added to make the story more profitable since "Wow, representation!" without having to actually make a minority. They're so decorative, often fandoms can even forget what minority they're actually a part of.

So, yeah, most people really don't like when it feels like their representation was kinda just thrown into the ocean and that they're meant to clap because the author was so "brave" and they even added one black classmate in their slice-of-life.

So what can we do?

B. What to Do: Some Quick Steps

Make at least two of your main/secondary characters a minority and add a lot more diversity in minor roles.

Why? It removes the token "special minority" aspect from them and lessens the load of having to have one "good" character be the torch holder - now they're not just "the diabetic character' or 'the black character'. Bonus Points: make sure multiples of each minority exist so that way if you write a feminine gay male character or a submissive Asian character, having the opposite of that character forces a dynamism to that race/disability/gender/sexuality portrayal. (BE WARY!)

Actually, keep in mind that character's race/disability/sexuality, whatever! when you are writing that character.

Don't write a scene where your woman character is like "I've never even seen blood before!" or your black character "quickly washes their hair, brushes it out, and ties it up in a quick bun before running after the bus".

There are a surprising number of people who forget that having a black character is not like a cosmetic thing but also impacts EVERYTHING. You can't just take your white, blonde girl named Cindy that goes to a private school and paint her brown. I've literally seen people write out "I brushed my platinum blonde hair out of my face as I look up and see James" or say that their parents are pale and not realize that their protag. is literally black.

This is especially true with disabled characters. Please, for the love of God, don't write your diabetic characters saying that they need their insulin shot after saying they're hypoglycemic. No, that's stupid. Or that they need their insulin "urgently" after eating a candy bar. No, people can sit with high blood sugars for a while, otherwise my mom would die after eating her 90% daily allotment of added sugars in her tea every day.

Make the place accessible, or choose a different disability

Imagine throwing a character that uses a wheelchair due to Mysterious Paralysis into Hogwarts.

If you want to write a character into an either already existing world or just from your own world, you need to think about if they can even get in it at all. It's not that hard just look up "accessibility devices in hospitals/houses/schools/work" and whatever in order to just write "the metallic bars in the hallway shimmer underneath glow of what feels like a hundred lights"

If it's just impossible to do so, just choose a different disability. There are some cases where trying to fit a disability and chopping it up in order to fit the rectangle into the circle is more harmful than finding a circular shape.

Non-Disability Related: Obviously there are a lot of professions (like OBGYNs) and environments (such as prison or some private schools) that are going to be focused on, like, all-one gender or mostly one gender establishments. In that case, try to incorporate diversity in secondary roles, like the protagonist's wife is planning to break her husband out of prison because she hates being a single mom or the OBGYN is welcoming in a new male nurse.

Ask someone.

Just ask someone, someone of that minority, and then ask someone else (maybe even ask a third person). If one person has a problem with it and the other person(s) don't, think about it. If all of them say that it's a problem, change it up.

Dont’ Like, Don’t Read

or DL; DR

You are responsible for curating your own online experience.

If something upsets you, makes you angry or queasy or triggers you, stop reading/looking at it. Avoid things that might make you feel that way.

Learn to use the Sort and Filter function on AO3, especially the Exclude tools.

On social media, block and mute accounts / tags / words when necessary.

If you hated something, you don’t need to tell that to the creator or start pointing fingers at them publicly.

The Back button is free. Use it.

Addendum:

Yes, for this to work, creators need to tag their works accordingly, so that people know what sort of content they are about to engage with and can nope out if necessary.

I will probably make another PSA about the importance of proper tagging later.

Ship And Let Ship

or SALS

You are allowed to ship whatever you want.

Everyone else is also allowed to ship whatever they want.

You are entitled to dislike or even hate a ship. If you want to do this online, in public, don’t use the ship tags for hate posts.

If you see someone posting about a ship they like and you don’t, there is no need for you to start arguing with them in their replies / comments / QRTs / reblogs. Don’t throw your hate in their face.

Do not harass fan creators or fans for shipping something you disapprove.

All of this also applies to liking / disliking an individual character.

Addendum:

”I agree with this, except when…”

No, then you are NOT agreeing with this.

Let me make this VERY clear. There are NO exceptions. None.

You don’t EVER harass real people over pixels.

If you disagree with this, kindly block and move on.

Your Kink Is Not My Kink

or YKINMK / YKINMKATO

The longer version is ”Your Kink Is Not My Kink And That’s Okay”.

People have different tastes. Not everything is for everybody.

Even if you don’t like a specific kink, other people are still allowed to use it in their creations.

You are entitled to dislike kinky content and think that it’s ”weird”.

Don’t kink shame or judge people based on their kinks.

This goes both ways: your kink is not someone else’s kink, so don’t push it onto those who are not into it.

Be Kind

or Don’t Be An Asshole

Focus on the things you like instead of the things you hate.

Create and unite instead of destroying and dividing.

Don’t harass real people over fictional things.

Stop stirring up petty drama just to get some attention on social media.

Stop trying to ”win”. Fandom is not a competition.

sleep apnea is more common in people who are fat.

society decided for some reason that this meant that being fat causes sleep apnea. its often difficult to get referrals for sleep apnea treatment if you are fat, because some PCPs will tell you try losing weight first.

turns out!! having untreated sleep apnea causes weight gain in a not-insignificant number of people. it also makes it fucking impossible for many people to lose weight.

my husband worked out the same amount before he got a cpap as he does now. there have been no major diet changes either. yet he has been losing weight -- and gaining muscle tone -- consistently since he started using a cpap in january.

also, his blood pressure -- which was high, which docs blamed on his weight/diet -- went down significantly within one month of starting cpap treatment, before his weight changed significantly.

ANYWAYS. this is getting long. two final thoughts.

- I Want To Strangle Medical Fatphobia With My Bare Fucking Hands

Looking at eg. House of the Dragon last year, which spaced out 10 episodes over 10 weeks (that is 2 1/2 months) and the fandom content production and fandom discussions over multiple platforms were so high! It gave fans time to speculate, to produce and to wait for. It held the anticipation high and invigorated the fandom over a long time.

In the traditional broadcasting structure, you have an episode a week at a set time - you sit down and you watch it, maybe make a family thing out of it. The next day you go to work, and your coworkers have seen the episode too, and you talk about it - because a tv show is a safe topic (not political, not too personal), so you have something to bond over/socialize.

You are expected to "relate" to some characters and stories. Yes. That is not the same thing I keep witnessing, where people will decide a given character is literally everything they are the very instant they have anything in common, or an antagonist is exactly like a real person who hurt them, and emotionally invest SO much into this that they can feel actually betrayed when the events deviate from exactly the catharsis they hoped for.

This seems so normalized by some people, I suspect they assume by default that this is basically what fiction is "for" and it never even crossed their minds that you're supposed to enjoy most stories as an outside observer rather than as some sort of guided roleplay session.

This is why creators get harassed and abused more than ever by entitled fandoms.

before you say "4% isn't that big of a difference between the US and China"

Men make up 93% of the US prison population, but despite this, the US accounts for 30% of the GLOBAL population of incarcerated women.

Housing insecurity is the most significant predictor of incarceration with 22% of state prisoners experiencing it shortly before incarceration.

12% of state prisoners in the US were unhoused before their 16th birthday.

68% of US state prisoners were first incarcerated before their 16th birthday.

More than half of people in prisons and jails in the US have a mental illness.

Cognitive learning disabilities occur in state prisons at nearly 500% the national rate.

Meanwhile this was what various medical professionals in that reddit thread had to say about it.