Representation: it doesn't need to have a "point"

[Netrigan]

Why is gender and sexuality immune from criticism?

There is a difference between criticism and saying things like "misogynist", "regressive crap", "harm women", "reinforce damaging stereotypes" etc.

That is calling things as not only socially unacceptable but damaging. Unless one has proof of something like that, one should temper their language.

For example I can see how Dragon's crown art can make someone uncomfortable. That is legitimate thing to say. But to attack authors personality based on that is a bit sketchy to me. And to say that it's damaging women is something that really needs proof to be said publicly. Things like that can lead to severe consequences to authors of both the original work and the reviewer. If it's really damaging it should affect the first, but if it isn't, it should affect the second.

I bow to this post. I seem to recall us being on opposite ends of a few arguments on these kinds of issues and it tuns out we're practically on the same page... I just failed to communicate this.

Although I would add that sometimes you have to let this kind of word usage slide. They may not intend their language to be so divisive and don't realize they're shouting when they should just be saying, "I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't set so many levels in strip clubs; I don't think it's important to many game stories". I've gone back and forth with many feminists over the years and once you get past the language barrier (we all use different shadings of common words and it causes no end to misunderstandings), they're usually pretty accepting that, yes, you will be a bit of a sexist pig from time to time, but that doesn't make you a bad person... and they really just want you to curb the worst of your impulses where appropriate.

If they happen to be of the unreasonable variety, you'll figure that out quickly enough.

 

[The Lunatic]

Nothing. The problem is that it makes up 90% of most mediums and that gets boring and hints at a lack of creativity. It's the Bechdel test. The work isn't bad if it fails it, but it's worrying that so many of them do fail it. So I have to ask as a heterosexual white CISgendered male, what is so ruddy interesting about people like me?

Again, the problem is not that a writer doesn't do that, it's that so many of them don't do it. And really, if you're not comfortable in your knowledge about them, you do research on them. Talk to people from that culture. Tumblr I hear is pretty good about explaining other cultures.

No, but in Japan the population is 99% native Japaneses and god help you if you're Korean. And they still say that a lot of their characters are western. In Evangelion, Asuka if half German and raised in that country, there are regular culture clashes in the show because of that, and I'm pretty sure that the amount of Germans that live in Japan is miniscule. The west is a lot more ethnically diverse, especially countries like America where Spanish is basically the secondary language of the country. But you barely see any Hispanic characters in American media, and I'm drawing a blank at main Hispanic characters.

And oddly enough, I can think of quite a few female writers who managed to write male main characters and have their works be brilliant.

Because we come from countries in which at least 90% of the population are white people.

People create content they know people can relate to. At the very least in the case of games, making a game about a small tribe from Indonesia that only a few hundred people in the world are aware of the culture of, isn't going to relate with too many people. Regrettably, in regards to games, the marketability of it is always going to be considered.

So, whilst these stories may have been thought up, they may simply have been cancelled at an early stage.

People write from experience, and what they know. If they feel it's the best way they can deliver a story, what does it matter what colour the protagonist's skin is.

But again, what's the point in this research, to actively want to do this, it basically means from the start of the endeavour, you're planning a character which isn't natural to you, and thus is essentially slipping into tokenism.


As for Japan. That's a different culture, if you look over Japanese history and their interaction with "The West" as they developed as a nation, there's always been a clamour to adopt it, as our power at the time spawned an urge for emulation in the developing Japan. So, it's no surprise there are elements of this still in the present day.

It's a rare blip on an otherwise uniform pattern of people making character of the same skin colour and gender as they are.

 

[Atmos Duality]

The problem I have with this line of thinking is that so many incidental characters have no real value as characters.

Forgive my presumption, but your problem is weakly founded because you're changing the context.
My complaints about Tokenism in relation to the topic, are about important characters and Vault101's comment about how protagonists (or other central player characters) are white males by default.

Not about incidental characters. Who, in games, are well, INCIDENTAL.
As in, they generally only exist to serve a very limited purpose. And they aren't even much of a problem in popular games; nowhere near as much as the main casting/design.

And this goes into basic casting choices. In the original Star Trek, the racial diversity of the cast was there mostly for the sake of being there. This was an incredibly important thing and eventually the show earned a few of those characters in the sense you mean. But Nichelle Nichols very nearly left the show because her role was so incidental and only Martin Luther King Jr. convinced her otherwise. Simply being on television was important. It mattered and a lot of people have said exactly that over the years, people who saw someone like themselves in a respected position and it inspired them.

Yes, and that has historic significance. Emphasis on HISTORIC, since you might have noticed that culture towards and treatment of African Americans is EXTREMELY DIFFERENT now from when Star Trek was new.

The progress that resulted from the Civil Rights Movement, at the time, required a more blunt approach to attain ANY sort of representation (and I salute Nichols for her involvement).

I won't say "racism is over" (because that's foolish to an extreme), but it's FAR, FAR MORE taboo now than it was during the Civil Rights Movement, at least in western media.

Tokenism was a stepping stone, but a shallow one at that. It had a limited shelf life, and when it failed, big media went right back to the marketing demographics. In Star Trek, we ended up with straight-white male captain Archer (written as a near-racist imbecile no less).
In gaming, that happened to manifest as a parade of grizzled white dudes.

So in media (gaming, film, etc) the next step I see is pushing for nuance and merit-driven casting/writing.
Otherwise, the medium is doomed to remain trapped in this self-fulling prophecy.

{-> Metrics drive expectations -> Expectations drive metrics ->}

Formulaic metric-driven production only works for so long before its forgotten, but solid writing and performances endure the test of time.

I'll repeat something which I said up-thread. If you have money, influence, or power; such things are relatively unimportant. If you don't, they are incredibly important. Sometimes just being present is enough. Sometimes being present leads to bigger and better things. It's hard to tell someone who doesn't have the same representation as ourselves that it doesn't matter.

Representation based on merit will carry a hell of a lot more weight than representation based on arbitrary whim.
Nobody remembers the token black guy except as the token black guy, yet when the most the audience is offered are tokens, they have little to fall back on save their initial presumptions (which includes stereotypes and yes, "-isms").

 

[EyeReaper]

Do many people on the Escapist actively fight for less diversity? I thought we were all kinda on the same page on that one. I don't think an aritst should ever need a reason for making any character (I am debating purely from the naive standpoint that only the creator is deciding these things, without executive meddling or the like). I never got the whole "Token" thing either. If a writer only writes one PoC, or one woman, or anything away from the "default," I don't get why they're admonished for only having one. One is better than none right?

The only time I think you need a reason is when you are adapting an already made characters. I'm not saying you can't change a race, but you should provide justification.

 

[Netrigan]

The problem I have with this line of thinking is that so many incidental characters have no real value as characters.

Forgive my presumption, but your problem is weakly founded because you're changing the context.
My complaints about Tokenism in relation to the topic, are about important characters and Vault101's comment about how protagonists (or other central player characters) are white males by default.

Not about incidental characters. Who, in games, are well, INCIDENTAL.
As in, they generally only exist to serve a very limited purpose. And they aren't even much of a problem in popular games; nowhere near as much as the main casting/design.

And this goes into basic casting choices. In the original Star Trek, the racial diversity of the cast was there mostly for the sake of being there. This was an incredibly important thing and eventually the show earned a few of those characters in the sense you mean. But Nichelle Nichols very nearly left the show because her role was so incidental and only Martin Luther King Jr. convinced her otherwise. Simply being on television was important. It mattered and a lot of people have said exactly that over the years, people who saw someone like themselves in a respected position and it inspired them.

Yes, and that has historic significance. Emphasis on HISTORIC, since you might have noticed that culture towards and treatment of African Americans is EXTREMELY DIFFERENT now from when Star Trek was new.

The progress that resulted from the Civil Rights Movement, at the time, required a more blunt approach to attain ANY sort of representation (and I salute Nichols for her involvement).

I won't say "racism is over" (because that's foolish to an extreme), but it's FAR, FAR MORE taboo now than it was during the Civil Rights Movement, at least in western media.

Tokenism was a stepping stone, but a shallow one at that. It had a limited shelf life, and when it failed, big media went right back to the marketing demographics. In Star Trek, we ended up with straight-white male captain Archer (written as a near-racist imbecile no less).
In gaming, that happened to manifest as a parade of grizzled white dudes.

So in media (gaming, film, etc) the next step I see is pushing for nuance and merit-driven casting/writing.
Otherwise, the medium is doomed to remain trapped in this self-fulling prophecy.

{-> Metrics drive expectations -> Expectations drive metrics ->}

Formulaic metric-driven production only works for so long before its forgotten, but solid writing and performances endure the test of time.

I'll repeat something which I said up-thread. If you have money, influence, or power; such things are relatively unimportant. If you don't, they are incredibly important. Sometimes just being present is enough. Sometimes being present leads to bigger and better things. It's hard to tell someone who doesn't have the same representation as ourselves that it doesn't matter.

Representation based on merit will carry a hell of a lot more weight than representation based on arbitrary whim.
Nobody remembers the token black guy except as the token black guy, yet when the most the audience is offered are tokens, they have little to fall back on save their initial presumptions (which includes stereotypes and yes, "-isms").

Let's just say I accept tokenism as a temporary imperfect solution.

A place-holder, a way of saying "we'll get better at this, we promise".

No one should pat themselves on the back for meaningless inclusion, but, as I said, I think it's better than meaningless exclusion. I'd even recommend not trying to write a "black character", just write a character who happens to be black. It'll probably be much truer to reality.

 

[Netrigan]

Do many people on the Escapist actively fight for less diversity?

This is part of my recent conversion away from negativity. I think if you had all of us sit down and explain exactly what we mean when we use the words we use, we'd probably find there's not a huge amount of difference between us. I get why some people say "no tokenism" and I don't disagree exactly. I'm sure if me Atmos compared notes more thoroughly we'd find we agree far, far, far more than we disagree. It's just we're emphasizing different words and are using slight different meanings of words. I think it's more a failure to communicate than a disagreement.

 

[Erttheking]

Nothing. The problem is that it makes up 90% of most mediums and that gets boring and hints at a lack of creativity. It's the Bechdel test. The work isn't bad if it fails it, but it's worrying that so many of them do fail it. So I have to ask as a heterosexual white CISgendered male, what is so ruddy interesting about people like me?

Again, the problem is not that a writer doesn't do that, it's that so many of them don't do it. And really, if you're not comfortable in your knowledge about them, you do research on them. Talk to people from that culture. Tumblr I hear is pretty good about explaining other cultures.

No, but in Japan the population is 99% native Japaneses and god help you if you're Korean. And they still say that a lot of their characters are western. In Evangelion, Asuka if half German and raised in that country, there are regular culture clashes in the show because of that, and I'm pretty sure that the amount of Germans that live in Japan is miniscule. The west is a lot more ethnically diverse, especially countries like America where Spanish is basically the secondary language of the country. But you barely see any Hispanic characters in American media, and I'm drawing a blank at main Hispanic characters.

And oddly enough, I can think of quite a few female writers who managed to write male main characters and have their works be brilliant.

Because we come from countries in which at least 90% of the population are white people.

People create content they know people can relate to. At the very least in the case of games, making a game about a small tribe from Indonesia that only a few hundred people in the world are aware of the culture of, isn't going to relate with too many people. Regrettably, in regards to games, the marketability of it is always going to be considered.

So, whilst these stories may have been thought up, they may simply have been cancelled at an early stage.

People write from experience, and what they know. If they feel it's the best way they can deliver a story, what does it matter what colour the protagonist's skin is.

But again, what's the point in this research, to actively want to do this, it basically means from the start of the endeavour, you're planning a character which isn't natural to you, and thus is essentially slipping into tokenism.


As for Japan. That's a different culture, if you look over Japanese history and their interaction with "The West" as they developed as a nation, there's always been a clamour to adopt it, as our power at the time spawned an urge for emulation in the developing Japan. So, it's no surprise there are elements of this still in the present day.

It's a rare blip on an otherwise uniform pattern of people making character of the same skin colour and gender as they are.

According to Wikipedia, America is only 72% white. It's 15% Hispanic and 13% black. And 50% woman. And leaving that aside, I never got that argument. Do representations in media need to reflect the statistics of people in society exactly? It seems like pointlessly limiting your writing and just making up excuses for people who refuse to write anything other than heterosexual white men.

So what? White people can't relate to Hispanic or black people? Men can't relate to women? Heterosexuals can't relate to homosexuals? Because there's no other way for me to interpret that sentence. It's a very poorly worded argument. It will if the developers can make it interesting. Heck, I'm interested in buying Far Cry 4 for the asian protagonist, because it shows to me that the series is getting away from "rich American 20 year old saves tribe of foreningers by becoming their savior" cliche that was hanging over the last game. It's made even more interesting that despite the fact that the main character lived in America his whole life, the land being threatened by warlords is his ancestral homeland. So he's an outsider, but he still has emotional tied to the place. I know nothing about the Himalayas and I'm still excited for that game. Because you can ride elephants. A game could be about people from a country I never heard of and I wouldn't care if it had fun things in it. Like riding elephants. (And I know that Far Cry 3 was supposed to be subverting the white guy saves tribe cliches, but it did a lousy job of doing so)

Why can't they just write a person they knew very well and change their skin color. In mixed culture countries like the United States, there is no black way to act or asian way to act or hispanic way to act. They can write hispanic characters based on their experiences with white people if they're not trying to show them in their home country.

You didn't seem to mention that when you said that Asian people only wrote Asian characters.

It's called getting someone out of their comfort zone. If you let someone stay in their comfort zone their whole writing life, they never grow as writers. I as an author have been challenged to write different kinds of characters that I wasn't familiar with. I wrote them and I learned from the experience. Writing the same character over and over again is not the sign of a good writer, you need to learn to write new kinds of characters.

I dunno. Women seem to write quite a few male characters outside of mediums where it's focused mainly on women. And even in stories where the male character is female there's a healthy number of male secondary characters.

 

[rgrekejin]

And very few games actually involve any exploration of the main character's sexuality at all

Unless they mention a girlfriend/wife, or they're saving someone similar, or they hit on a member of the opposite sex...This is pretty common.

If gays showed up the way straight dudes showed up, people would complain that they were having their faces rubbed in their sexuality. But because it's heterosexuality and we're so accustomed, it "hardly ever shows up."

Is it really? I don't think that it is. Sure, we have a handful of hypermasculine characters for whom their straight-ness is an integral character aspect (Duke Nukem, Dante, Kratos), but the vast majority of characters we just don't have any information on at all. Not even tangential mentions of girlfriends. Especially in most of the modern shooters where the main character is a blank slate by design, and it's up to the NPCs to provide interesting characterization.

Think about it like this: Why don't we have more Jewish characters in gaming? I mean, I can think of a handful of gay characters, but I literally can't think of any Jews, despite the two groups making up an approximately equal portion of the US population. Not a single one. And very few Muslims... or Christians... or, come to think of it, characters of any religion at all, unless it's a sword and sorcery game and they're a cleric of a made-up deity. I mean, let's face it: Religious diversity in gaming today is pretty damn near zero. Why is that? Religion is a major part of many people's identity. Why exclude them? Shouldn't they have characters they can relate to and play as?

And the answer to this should be obvious: It isn't that every character in videogames is completely areligious, it's that religion almost never matters to the things they do in the game, so bringing it up makes no sense. And, like sexuality (but unlike gender or race) it isn't a visible characteristic. Thus, we know nothing about the religious preferences of any of these characters, and can read whatever we want into their actions. No one is being discriminated against, and no one is being excluded. After all (and I feel this point doesn't get made enough), not being deliberately inclusive to everybody at all times is not the same as excluding people.

 

[Agayek]

does this feel a bit odd?

[b/]....yeah...a little[/b]

I'm a little confused by this, to be perfectly honest. Upon reading, my immediate gut response to this question was "No, it doesn't seem weird at all. Why do you find it odd?", and it set me somewhat off-kilter for the rest of your post. I think I get what you're going for overall, but if I'm reading it right, this message seems... kinda pointless I guess.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who's against a character being something other than a straight white male for no particular reason. I've seen people against randomly changing an existing character in such a way, which makes at least some degree of sense (even if I disagree) given the presumed attachment to said existing character, and I've seen people against just bad characters in general, but neither of those seem to be what you're talking about. If I understand your point correctly, you're basically saying "it's alright for characters to be different from 'the media norm' for no apparent reason", and I can't help but see this as either preaching to the choir, or missing the point about previous objections to "inclusivity for the sake of inclusivity".

Though I'll freely admit I could easily be wrong. Do you have any examples of people getting up in arms over this stuff when it's not an established character?

 

[Something Amyss]

Is it really?

Well, my first thoughts go to Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto 5 (IV, for that matter), Gears of War (The first three at the very least), Mario, Prototype, Katos, Nathan Drake, the Duke, Borderlands, Double Dragon, Assassin's Creed, Tomb Raider....Off the top of my head. And I skipped anything that ties into other media (comic book games, for example) because that makes it too easy. It's not hard to find examples, and I doubt the "vast majority" claim is even remotely true unless you basically include every rudimentary tic-tac-toe game made by a student.

So is it really? Well, the claim was it's pretty common. There's a pretty good case to be made for that.

 

[rgrekejin]

Is it really?

Well, my first thoughts go to Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto 5 (IV, for that matter), Gears of War (The first three at the very least), Mario, Prototype, Katos, Nathan Drake, the Duke, Borderlands, Double Dragon, Assassin's Creed, Tomb Raider....Off the top of my head. And I skipped anything that ties into other media (comic book games, for example) because that makes it too easy. It's not hard to find examples, and I doubt the "vast majority" claim is even remotely true unless you basically include every rudimentary tic-tac-toe game made by a student.

So is it really? Well, the claim was it's pretty common. There's a pretty good case to be made for that.

Well, if we're just comparing lists, off the top of my head I've got Resident Evil (like, all of them), Assassin's Creed 1, 3, and Liberation (though I suppose the framing narrative does require that they have children, there's nothing in the game itself one way or the other), the Tomb Raider reboot, Bioshock 1 and 2, the Dark Souls series, the Portal series, and most games not rated "M". And that's not even including all the games where "is the protagonist straight or gay?" isn't even a sensible question to ask, like RTS games, simulators, mech and driving games, or games where you play as a non-human character.

Also, I just want to be clear - are we comparing protagonists only or all the NPCs in the game?

 

[Vault101]

If you're talking about Yahtzee's review- it's pretty likely he did mean it as lesbian, because that's all carpet muncher means here (Britain). Besides, he was just being Yahtzee
.

*siiiiiiigggghhhhh* really?

because if he did it that way then...that's kinda homophobic and mysoganistic...and no I don't care the [I/]oh its Yahtzee you know what he's like![/I] that said it

maybe I'm being overly sensitive...

I'm a little confused by this, to be perfectly honest. Upon reading, my immediate gut response to this question was "No, it doesn't seem weird at all. Why do you find it odd?", and it set me somewhat off-kilter for the rest of your post. I think I get what you're going for overall, but if I'm reading it right, this message seems... kinda pointless I guess.

I meant it more in a "that's not something you see often" way

funnily enough my description there basically described the film "The heat" a buddy cop movie with two women and no romance, I read about how they tried to promote it as "for everyone and not just for chicks"

People always seem to forget that where the player is given the choice to be or not be is a much bolder statement for the developers.
.

I'm gonna disagree here....making it optional is "safe" because you don't have publishers breathing down your neck in terms of marketing/sales

hell just look at how EA marketed Mass Effect...dudebro shepard right on the cover

 

[Vault101]

And this goes into basic casting choices. In the original Star Trek, the racial diversity of the cast was there mostly for the sake of being there. This was an incredibly important thing and eventually the show earned a few of those characters in the sense you mean. But Nichelle Nichols very nearly left the show because her role was so incidental and only Martin Luther King Jr. convinced her otherwise. .

...heh I almost did a double take there

Star Trek I think is very good in its "ideas" on inclusivity but not its [I/]execution[/I]

in TNG I think Dr Crusher got the best deal out of all of them, Yarr could have maybe come into her own but Crosby bailed...in fact I think that's what did it, with Yarr gone a "female cast remember slot" was open. I noticed how Crusher seemed to go on away missions more

and poor old Deana Troi....less said about her the better

{disclamer: I've only started season 5 this is just my impression thus far)

that also repeated to my OP in that even though you have more than one female character there's no Garuntee they'll turn out tell written

 

[McMarbles]

This might be out of place but it just hit me that I don't know this but I am interested in knowing. So if anyone knows please share

Anyway, people usually write what they know. As far as books go, my experience is this

White authors write white characters, genders somewhat inconsistent but mostly same gender.

Asian authors write Asian characters, never run into gender swapped main.

I can't remember any specific black, latino etc authors. How are they in that regard? Do they feel the need to whitewash their characters (although i don't see whitewashing as necessarily bad, it's stupid from practical reasons to me)?

You know, I'm unaware of any famous alien, elf, or vampire authors, yet people seem to have no problem coming up with hundreds of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror novels every year. Well, George R. R. Martin MIGHT be a dragon. I've never met him. But still... I suppose you could come back with "Well, aliens, elves and vampires don't really exist, but black, asian, and hispanic people do!" And I suppose you have me there.

If only there was some convenient way you could access tons of information from the comfort of your chair...

 

[Agayek]

You know, I'm unaware of any famous alien, elf, or vampire authors, yet people seem to have no problem coming up with hundreds of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror novels every year. Well, George R. R. Martin MIGHT be a dragon. I've never met him. But still... I suppose you could come back with "Well, aliens, elves and vampires don't really exist, but black, asian, and hispanic people do!" And I suppose you have me there.

If only there was some convenient way you could access tons of information from the comfort of your chair...

To be fair, it's exceptionally rare for any of those aliens, elves, vampires, or whatever other characters to think or behave differently than humans. The perspective of such characters is, largely, the same as the author, because it takes a special kind of person to be able to properly convey a mindset, perspective and/or worldview that's alien to their own.

I'm not saying it's impossible (it's most definitely not), but, by Sturgeon's Law, 90% of such characters will fail to be anything but 'normal people', for whatever value the author has of 'normal', with some cosmetic changes.

The same holds true for properly representing the experiences and perspective of someone of a different race. As an upper-middle class white male, for example, I'll never be able to understand the kind of hardship or discrimination a poor black woman has to deal with. I have an intellectual understanding of it, but I lack the emotional understanding that is required to form a complete perspective. As such, I'd probably write a poor black woman very poorly, as I'm just not tuned to understanding why some things that seem so trivial to me would be difficult for her.

 

[wulf3n]

maybe I'm being overly sensitive...

Not overly sensitive. Potentially hypocritical if you're fine with him insulting some groups but not others, but not overly sensitive. Some people just don't like insult comedy.

[b/]but developers/writers are terrified of creating female characters in case they get them "wrong" and garner criticism![/b]

and that brings me to something else "tokenism" much like the smurfette principle, you make one female character, you dust your hands and say "alright...I'm done"

tokenism doesn't just come from doing female characters "wrong" it comes from the fact that EVERYTHING rides on that one character, she can't be too feminine or butch or sissy or brave or mean or nice, she can play the role of the "team mum" the "killjoy" the "straight man" the "love interest" all at once

of coarse you never get her "right" not when she "carries the torch"....your damn right Lara Croft is going to be looked at with a magnifying glass and fine tooth comb...when she's one of the few PLAYABLE NON-OPTIONAL female characters in a AAA game were all going to hold our breath

An interesting point, though I fear it does more to explain why games are more likely to default to a straight white male protagonist than it will persuade them to create more diverse protagonists.

 

[Vault101]

Not overly sensitive. Potentially hypocritical if you're fine with him insulting some groups but not others, but not overly sensitive. Some people just don't like insult comedy.
.

like I said...I'm hesitant to give a free pass just because its Yahtzee...if it meant what I think it meant in context it didn't really fit nor was it funny

 

[Brennan]

Well, if we're just comparing lists, off the top of my head I've got Resident Evil (like, all of them)...

I've only played RE4, but in that I distinctly remember 1) Leon tentatively trying to chat up his female handler a couple times (can't remember her name), and 2) massive overt foe-yay between Leon and Ada Wong, with occasional references to a previous relationship between the two.

 

[wulf3n]

like I said...I'm hesitant to give a free pass just because its Yahtzee...if it meant what I think it meant in context it didn't really fit nor was it funny

I don't think the "it's Yahtzee" thing is about giving him a free pass, but rather that his whole bit is about insulting people and crudeness. If a persons not into that sort of thing that's fine, it just that all to often people are fine with insult comedy... until it insults them or someone they know, then it's awful.

On a side note I found the ZP [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/5-Tomb-Raider-Anniversary] video the statement was from.

 

[mecegirl]

You know, I'm unaware of any famous alien, elf, or vampire authors, yet people seem to have no problem coming up with hundreds of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror novels every year. Well, George R. R. Martin MIGHT be a dragon. I've never met him. But still... I suppose you could come back with "Well, aliens, elves and vampires don't really exist, but black, asian, and hispanic people do!" And I suppose you have me there.

If only there was some convenient way you could access tons of information from the comfort of your chair...

To be fair, it's exceptionally rare for any of those aliens, elves, vampires, or whatever other characters to think or behave differently than humans. The perspective of such characters is, largely, the same as the author, because it takes a special kind of person to be able to properly convey a mindset, perspective and/or worldview that's alien to their own.

I'm not saying it's impossible (it's most definitely not), but, by Sturgeon's Law, 90% of such characters will fail to be anything but 'normal people', for whatever value the author has of 'normal', with some cosmetic changes.

The same holds true for properly representing the experiences and perspective of someone of a different race. As an upper-middle class white male, for example, I'll never be able to understand the kind of hardship or discrimination a poor black woman has to deal with. I have an intellectual understanding of it, but I lack the emotional understanding that is required to form a complete perspective. As such, I'd probably write a poor black woman very poorly, as I'm just not tuned to understanding why some things that seem so trivial to me would be difficult for her.

But do you have the ability to listen and the patience to learn? Most writers write about someone who isn't like them in some way, and thus they have to do research in order to get it right. They also have to practice their writing skills in order to properly convey what they have learned. The rest is up to human empathy and imagination.

Do you think George R.R. Martin knows what it's like to be a king? Or a mother? How about knight or a cold blooded murderer? His books are full of characters that are not like him in some way and yet he's managed to create some unforgettable characters.

It seems to me that with elves and aliens one never has to worry about being criticized. But a writer can't escape criticism when they write about humans different than themselves. And that human can either be another race, or even have a different profession, but some members of that group are bound notice when details are wrong.

However, modern writers have plenty of resources at their fingertips. They can read an entire backlog of books written by and about whatever demographic that they want to include into their stories. They can even reach individuals from that demographic via the internet in order to get first hand accounts about their experiences. So the hard part is empathy and imagination.