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.
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