#marginalized characters

January 20, 2025 To some extend, everything is political - wherever people get together, live together, build communities, all of it is political, because there are so many things influencing each other. Also, your private life is political. Don't believe me? Think about health care. About care work for children or the elderly. Who does household work? Who works and under which circumstances? Also think about relationships, even these have political aspects to some extend, just think about reproductive rights in the US and other countries. Think about other human rights which get threatened all over the world.

Even saying you are not interested in politics is a political decision in one way or another. This is mostly done by people who are so privileged that they do not have to care about politics much, because the political system works in their favour.

Likewise, stories are political, because they are reflections of the human experience, of societies, of private life and public life in communities. The existence of queer people and other marginalized people is political, because while there is equality for everyone on paper (or it used to be), reality looks very different. Queer and marginalized people get discriminated, bullied, gaslighted, manipulated, and worse. There is a growing right-wing backlash to progressive politics.

Lately, I have written two fanfictions and I couldn't help myself but bring politics into these. "Beau and the Beast" has anti-monarchist ideas in it and a bit of a queer, inclusive utopia. In "The Story of Alexander Lemtov", which is set in 2024, the Russian protagonist starts to question what to do with his immense wealth and cuts ties with his home country because he can't tolerate and accept the war against the Ukraine.

This is a PSA that simply posting questions like “how to write x character?” is not research. It can be helpful if someone answers, but let’s be honest. For the most part, many people won’t answer. This is because people a) don’t know what info you need. Are you completely clueless? Do you have a little bit of knowelege? A fair bit? What info do you already have? What info are you completely unaware of? We do not know. and b) you are not to entitled to other people’s time and experience. Telling someone about what it’s like being in x community can be personal, and sometimes emotional. 

The other problem is that you’re really not doing the work. It takes all of 30 seconds to write a quick tumblr post and wait for people to fill you in. You might get lucky, but even then, it’s all thanks to the really awesome people who took time out of their day to help you.

So what to do instead? 

Do research on your own. This can include things like looking up “how to write x character.” or it can mean finding someone who’s likely equipped with anwering you questions, and asking them directly, understanding that they are perfectly entitled to ignore your question completely. You can also find lists of questions that you should know about x group before writing a character that belongs to said group.

Shapeshifting Genderfluid Character

Unfortunately I’m only aware of one genderfluid character in literature, and I haven’t read it yet— Mask of Shadows by Lindsey Miller. It’s definitely on my TBR list, though. 

I’d also suggest browsing through Wikipedia’s list of fictional non-binary characters and Marvel’s database of genderfluid characters for more ideas. 

Giant grain of salt: while I had a period where I identified as genderfluid, and I still have a lot of genderfluid tendencies, I’m very firmly two-spirit at this point in my life. If somebody who more strongly identifies as genderfluid wants to speak up, please do!

On Genderfluidity as a Spectrum

I’d be really careful with the concept of a genderfluid shapeshifter. Not only is it a bit obvious, it can reinforce some ideas about gender fluidity and the nature of gender you probably don’t intend. Namely that biology= gender.

Yes, some people who are gender fluid change their appearance drastically to match their preferred gender. Some are subtle, with nail polish or makeup or hats. Some take the concept that their body is gender-neutral, and the individual features (chest, genitalia, hair length, face shape, etc) are any gender they currently feel. You can get genderfluid people more focused on changing their attitude to certain types of posturing and syntax.

There are lots of ways a person can intersect their euphoria, dysphoria, social presentation, and silhouette. Make sure to really break apart all that to see how they would sit on those intersections. 

You also have to keep in mind not everyone goes from “male” to “female” and back. You can go from girl to androgynous, or boy to demiboy, or stay firmly in the “non binary” realm but some days it’s agender and other days it’s demigirl and other days it’s “whatever, just call me they.”

Pronoun use

In a similar vein, genderfluid people can stick with the same pronouns regardless of whatever identity they’re feeling. Others change pronouns with gender. Similarly, others can change pronoun preferences and still maintain their outward appearance as a certain way. 

Genderfluidity is Personal

All in all, you have to remember that genderfluidity varies. Its basic umbrella definition is “somebody whose gender identity changes.” This can mean the changes last days, weeks, months— even years. It can also mean that they stay in a certain realm of identities (ie- ones that are firmly genderqueer, or ones that are all in the realm of “feminine” or “feminine-read”), or they bounce around the whole spectrum of gender.

You’re going to have to really think about how your character expresses their personal genderfluidity in order to do this character justice.

Hope this helps!

Edit- Definitely keep an eye on the notes in this post. Lots of good advice in there.

Taking the quote where I explicitly say equals (ie- a nearly all-black cast like Black Panther) is the exception and trying to put superiority into it is really grasping at straws, here. It’s almost like you’re saying showing a marginalized cast without the dominant group is oppressing the dominant group.

The sandbox is bigger than that, my friend. White boys have the Iron Man and Batman movies to play with. And the Captain America movies. And the Superman movies. … and the Thor movies. …and Spider Man. ….. aaaaaand Guardians of the Galaxy. The majority of the X Men. Deadpool. Ant Man. Shall I keep going?

In terms of protagonists, black people have Black Panther, black boys have Cyborg, and black girls have A Wrinkle in Time. Girls have Wonder Woman and Ghostbusters. Polynesian men have Aquaman. Jewish people have Ezra Miller’s Flash. There’s Rogue One’s diversity. That’s about it for current or 2018 releases, and I’m counting people who don’t have their own movies yet, or all-marginalized casts.

Ever hear homophobia is the fear men will treat men like men treat women? Play mad libs with that and see what you get.

I’m excited to be part of this Mythcreants episode on avoiding fridging characters!

“Fiction has a long history of sacrificing marginalized characters to further the arcs of privileged characters, but these days we have a name for that: fridging. Most of us understand that fridging is bad, but why is it bad? And once we understand that, what are we supposed to do instead? Glad you asked, because that’s what today’s episode is all about! We discuss better ways to introduce tragedy, how to make the audience care, and of course, how to define a sandwich. How is that last one related? Listen and find out!“

Aka, emotional labour personified, usually in a feminine-appearing woman.

Usually played: Straight

Best played: Straight*, Subverted

*We’ll get to that in a bit

The Chick is a sadly still popular trope, usually as the only girl in the Five Man Band. While there’s nothing wrong with having a feminine woman who is nurturing and comforts others, this character archetype becomes a problem when she is the only woman in the group.

An unfortunate side effect of how the Chick does most of the emotional labour is her own emotions are swept aside. One of the larger critiques of Star Wars is how Princess Leia’s reactions to finding out her father destroyed her whole planet, killing everyone she knew and loved, was completely glossed over (she provides the trope image for the page).

It is possible to play the Chick well, but usually in one of two instances:

1- Her emotional life is just as valued as the other characters

2- She isn’t the only girl, and other girls fill other roles

One of my favourite metas about representation is how Sailor Moon would never in a million years work if any one of the Sailor Scouts was the only girl. All of the characters are lacking a streak of likability, when you break it down— boy crazy gets annoying, quiet and introverted gets annoying, temperamental gets annoying, the list goes on. But because all of them are one of nine female main characters, they have room to breathe and be themselves.

This means: having a Chick be the only girl while still following point 1, where her emotional life is just as valued, is slightly more difficult. Because the thing about emotional lives is not everyone’s emotional life is compatible with another person’s, and if they don’t have another character to relate to, it can alienate them to a fairly extreme degree. It’s unfortunate that revealing her depth of emotions would be considered a subversion, but such is life.

Now, it’s worthwhile to value the emotional lives of all your characters— female and male!— but it’s understandably nerve wracking to feel like your representing Just One Type. This is an anxiety that usually doesn’t happen if you’re writing the dominant group (aka male, straight, cis, neutortpical, able-bodied) because you’ve subconsciously realized that because you have more than one (usually), there’s no one person being The Representation for their group. Or there’s so much other representation that if people don’t like it, they have a dozen other places to go (like Chris Hemsworth in Ghostbusters).

It also involves thinking about what sort of emotions are running through the people who do emotional labour for us, which gets uncomfortable. Supportive people, caregiving people, they experience fatigue. They burn out. They often have to put their own stuff aside to deal with the emotional crisis at hand, which means you rarely see it… until it breaks. This, again, could count as a subversion, simply because her emotional labour stops.

To be clear: The Chick’s traits aren’t bad traits. They’re very good traits, and having somebody be a loving force on a team is important. The problem happens when there’s only one girl and she plays the Chick at the same time.

Add some variety to your female characters (yes, more than one per— at least try to pass the bechdel test) and a Chick will be just another character. Have her be in a room full of men and watch your characterization weaken.

Sometimes, a work relies on having the privileged group as certain members of the cast. Diversifying those works/roles? A terrible idea.

Lord of the Flies is a critique on the assumption British boys are the panicle of civilized behaviour. Rebooting it with an all-female cast misses the point.

Heathers is a story of how a clique of rich white girls run a school. Rebooting it with an all-marginalized group of Heathers misses the point.

While my list of works that are super bad ideas is short, since 1- Hollywood has only recently decided to expand their cast away from white bread (let me know if you have more!) and 2- I tend to try and forget bad examples, these ideas point to a very, very troubling trend:

Taking works whose whole point is lampooning privilege and assuming they’d work the same way if you removed the core concept.

If we actually reached parity between marginalized representation and privileged representation, those types of reboots might be safe ground to tread on. But right now marginalized people are still very much marginalized, and as a result their cultural systems are different from the privileged group.

Rich white people have a wildly different frame of reference from rich black people. A rich black person will usually have a living relative who wasn’t allowed to own a house in a certain area because of skin colour, or whose parents weren’t allowed to. Meanwhile, even a new-money white person doesn’t have the recent historical racist barriers that actively tried to prevent their upward mobility.

The two groups are going to think about money differently. While both can flaunt it for the same reasons— it’s new, and they want to show it off— the sheer amount of ex-legal baggage a black person is carrying around is something I can’t speak about, but know is there.

If you’re starting to think about tossing in a little diversity into your cast, look very hard at the social structures you’ve put in place. Are the villains relying on wealth? Social power? How about the ability to act with impunity? All of those are highly tied to privilege— the type of privilege somebody marginalized simply would not have.

It’s different if you’re doing a single-marginalized-group cast. Black Panther doesn’t suffer from having rich and power-hungry black people as villains because there’s a bunch of rich heroic black people as protagonists, to name one example. In those situations, you’re dealing with equals. The same thing would apply in a secondary world fantasy where everyone in the cast is of the same or similar ethnic groups, or if you had a group of characters who all shared the same axis of oppression in general.

It’s also different if the power structures don’t rely on privilege. All female Ghostbusters? Awesome, because Ghostbusters was primarily about stopping ghosts. The amount of black girls and women in A Wrinkle in Time? Lovely, because we need more stories where the important figures are not white.

But if you’re recreating any sort of power imbalance where one group relies on privilege, and you have multiple ethnic groups in the cast? Take a good hard look at making too many villains marginalized, especially if they’re kingpins within the organization. Also consider what they can get away with, and if they have to use different tactics from the privileged villains; chances are, they’ll have to. 

This applies for both works set in the real world and in secondary world fantasy. Because secondary world fantasy is still read in the real world, and you can reinforce some extremely toxic ideals if you recreate real world marginalization.

Sometimes, diversity is a very bad thing. Keep that in mind when deciding what group plays what role.

Sometimes you have to code characters, either because the terms they use to describe themselves don’t exist (like secondary world fantasy), or because they haven’t found the words themselves yet (undiagnosed illnesses and disabilities). But if at all possible, you should make it clear who these people are and own that you’re putting them in the story.

Even if you actively can say that somebody is part of a certain group, you still have to make sure you’re not -washing them in the narrative. Be it whitewashing, straightwashing, abledwashing, or any sort of situation where you say one thing, but the story itself doesn’t reflect that.

Here are some things to consider that will help you make it obvious that…

This character is PoC

Describe:

Skin tone (just don’t use food metaphors)

Hair texture/colour (especially black hair)

Most commonly eaten foods at home

Microaggressions

Cultural clues that they would have (either assimilated or not, because both will have tells)

Their opinion of white people/things outside of their experience

This character is LGBTQA+

Describe:

Who they’re attracted to (or lack thereof)/past crushes (or lack thereof)

Their circle of friends (seriously, we travel in packs, I know like five straight people)

For trans characters: hormones, binders, packers, breast forms, tucking. Also, for more subtle clues, pronoun asking, euphoria at gender affirming things (like them being proud of their particularly dapper, feminine, or ‘I have no idea what gender that is but I like it’ style), dislike of off-gender things (like complaining about somebody getting them something that doesn’t match how they like to present)

The actual orientation that they are, for crying out loud

Their opinion of straight people/things outside of their experience

This character is disabled

Describe:

Their disability. Preferably in the actual labels, or make up your own labels for a secondary world fantasy

Any mobility, hearing, or speaking aids

Behaviours that come with the disability (ie- stimming such as rocking or flapping for autistic/ADHD people, navigating through appropriately wide paths for wheelchairs/walkers, sitting on one side of the group conversations to make sure their good ear catches it, etc)

Levels of aid needed and any accommodations

Avoiding things that trip them up (like somebody autistic not wanting to go where it’s crowded, a wheelchair user avoiding curbs, a Deaf person making sure there’s a sign language interpreter at a concert, somebody with celiac avoiding gluten like the plague)

Plan cancelling because it’s a bad day, or having to leave early because the environment is bad

Medications, doctors, etc, if applicable

Self care rituals for after a long day or during a flare up

Their opinion of abled people/things outside of their experience

This character is mentally/chronically ill

Describe:

Their symptoms, from good to messy, consistently

Their energy levels, as many of us use the spoon theory

Self care rituals they practice during flare ups or after hard days

Medication, doctors, therapies, etc

Cancelling plans because a bad day came up, or having to leave early because the environment is bad

Triggers and their individual reaction to their triggers

Their opinion of well people/things outside of their experience

And so on. These lists are not meant to be exhaustive at all, but they are meant to get you thinking about how you need to go about describing representation.

One thing to note: you can go about establishing representation in one of two ways. Either have the characters noting their differences, or them nothing others’ differences. Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys describes white skin when it appears, because within the narrator’s world, black skin is the norm. But others note their own differences. It’s all about their character.

Either one requires a lot of careful thought and sensitivity readers, but both are valid* options for owning** representation.

Followers, feel free to add more!

*Do be aware that some groups are chronically under-represented when it comes to the actual word of their identity. Bisexual people hardly have characters say the word as their identity. Autistic people also hardly have characters say the word as their identity. Be very careful of not having characters talk about themselves if the group is prone to being coded but not explicitly represented

**You have to actually own it and say they’re that when people put all the clues you left together