Male representation

Male characters on Episode are often stereotypical bad boys that wear leather jackets and don’t have feeling until they magically fall in love.

I feel like men are really unrepresented on Episode and was wondering what people would like to see in terms of racial, religious and sexual diversity.

I think bi-sexual and homosexual men, and non-binary and transgender people are unrepresented and I think religion is largely unrepresented among most characters.

Let me know what kind of male characters, or any characters in general that you’d like to see more of.

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Pure sexism. That’s what it is. Male characters often are represented as angry, intimidating, menacing, tough, powerful, jealous, sarcastic and so on. If they are not any of them, then they are labelled either as a “soft boy” or a “nerd”.

I rarely see a male character who is intelligent, thoughtful, caring, knows boundaries etc. These are not seen characteristics attractive enough to be implemented in a male character. I don’t know why so many people don’t find a character with a matured prefrontal cortex and a caring nature appealing to them.

Males, sadly, are often presented with a rare to no character depth at all. We don’t necessarily need to be informed about their religious beliefs, sexuality, ethicity or anything else. But we do need to be informed about anything that the character can define himself as or finds significant to his character.

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I feel like people focus so much on wish-fulfillment stereotypes of men and forget to write a well-rounded character that seems… well, human. People don’t just forget their trauma or miraculously become a good person because they love you, people aren’t either extremely ruthless or kind with no in between, people aren’t excused (or shouldn’t be excused) for their actions towards you simply because they have a “terrible past.” Make your characters human, people.

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I feel you. This is just an insult to the whole gender. Nothing but objectification. If one is writing a character (any character), they have to be mindful. Everyone should be careful and cautious about what they put in the world.

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I think one of the largest problems is that people are less concerned with the characters than they are with the tropes / concepts of the story. If so many stories are written for the MC to be a self-insert (whether you can name yourself or not), then there’s no real incentive to develop the characters believably. You want the bad boy, the mafia boss, the lusty vampire, etc. At that point there’s a lot of power fantasies involved and all the characters are so one-dimensional. The worst part is that in some ways, it’s not completely unrealistic because men are socialized to behave in certain, aggressive ways. But we all know real people have the ability to be far more complex than that.

I would love to see more male characters who are emotional and intuitive without the narrative portraying them as “”""“effeminate”"""" or weak or whatever. I’m fine with “soft” characters because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being soft. I am a huge baby, so those characters are pretty relatable to me. And I think if an author wants a male character (or any gender character) to be kind of aloof or reserved, there are numerous ways to write that without the character treating everyone around them like garbage. Not everyone is or has to be an open book, but there’s a difference between having one’s guard up and being a jerk.

I agree that a lot of different kinds of characters are underrepresented, and when they are part of a story they’re usually a one dimensional stereotypical side character. This is especially true for gay men and trans women. Gay men are always the sassy best friend who are there to criticize the MC’s fashion sense and tell her to chase the D. And trans women are usually there to do much the same thing. And let me tell you, that is no coincidence >.< I think I’ve said this before, but I actually would love to see gender nonconforming gay men who tend to dress more femininely or flamboyantly, but who have actual personalities. That kind of gender presentation is still very visible and stigmatized, but the issue is in Episode stories (and many other forms of media) their whole personality is wearing flashy jackets and calling everyone b*tch.

I think the other issue is the assumption that all men have exactly the same experiences, so they just need to be ~hot~ for wish fulfillment. But realistically, Black men, disabled men, trans men, etc have different experiences (and obviously people can belong to more than one of these categories) and so the characterization for male characters actually could and should be extremely nuanced. Which isn’t to say every character needs to be the Wokest Ever or whatever, but you can always add complexity to characters to make them more relatable, believable, and make readers engaged with the characters and their stories.

As for religion? Heh. I think people sometimes assume all non-Christian people are hyperreligious and don’t do anything besides think about or practice their religion, so they often don’t include characters of different religious backgrounds. But that’s an erroneous assumption. It would be great to include characters whose religious heritage shows up in their day to day lives because that’s one way of demonstrating how people’s different experiences shape them. But it doesn’t have to be like “My name is Muslim Al Muslim and I am a Muslim, and being a Muslim is my only personality trait” or whatever. Big yikes on that.

Tl;dr - Yes, I agree.

Thank u for coming to my TED Talk

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I agree with all of this.

  • I believe that gay men are used a lot, however they aren’t used correctly. They’re always super flamboyant, sassy, and horny, but I know SO many gay people who aren’t like that.
  • I would. LOVE to see a bi man in more stories (I incorporated a bi man into one of my old stories, but I had to stop working on it due to personal issues).
  • Trans women are literally never used outside of side characters. I’ve never seen a trans man or a non-binary person in a story, but I have an unbelievable amount of trans and non-binary friends irl.
  • I think another topic that many people never talk about is asexual. Because every single Episode character has to be a sex freak, except for the MC who is 100% pure :pray:

I wish that authors would be worlds more inclusive regarding the LGBTQA+ community, but at the same time I don’t trust a lot of authors to include these topics in their stories in a respectful and educated manor. We’ve seen what happened with the SA trope.

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I remember in my freshman english class we were talking about books and my teacher told us that there were authors who wrote full-on autobiographies for their characters before they started writing. I don’t think Episode authors should go that far (unless they want to), but give them a list of traits, hobbies, likes, dislikes, etc.

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YES! More bi men! I have a male MC who is bi!

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I totally agree! I see that in a lot of stories. Most of the boys all obviously fit into a category and don’t seem to have their own identities. While character backstories aren’t a focus of a story, I don’t see many people including a person’s religion, gender, or sexual orientation, but it’s good to have that representation and awareness of diversity in the world. It’s frustrating when there’s a best friend whose only purpose is to add diversity, just because they’re a minority or because they’re gay. Being a minority or gay is NOT a personality trait.

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These are usually the LI interests. But there are a lot of different love interest in episode story, for example: There’s one story that I really love called “Ephemeral encounter” ,it was featured a while ago. The MC is male & bi I think, and he’s nothing like these bad boys we usually see. This is one of the reasons why I really enjoy this story, there’s also the MC from “Ten steps to her door” which is absolutely sweet. These two stories are what I know and I highly recommend to check them out.

The reason why most people make the LI bad boys and “cold” or very confident, is because many people find it attractive. (I’m one of them, guilty.) But yeah, good and soft guys are valid too :joy: And tbh I think I’d prefer a guy with a good humor over a guy who’s pretty cold and treats me like shit…

Religion is really barely represented. like I’ve seen jewish characters only in stories that are written by jews. But I get it. The MC of one of my upcoming stories is jewish, and I’m kinda afraid it’ll bother ppl. People don’t really understand that having a religion doesn’t mean you’re religious. I mean I don’t eat Kosher, I drive in Shabbat etc.