carbonCore wrote:What plot reason does making your character straight, white, able bodied, neurotypical, or various other default serve?
What exactly do you mean by that? Romeo was straight, white, able bodied, neurotypical, and overall an average dude, but I haven't heard much criticism about him being an uninteresting character. That said, there's not much description on how he actually looks. So I'm taking it that you're agreeing with Snoink's point that a boring/average description should be left out?
@carbonCore No, I am not saying that. I didn't say anything about description as a whole. I'm talking about the part in Snoink's post I quoted, which was in a broader context of writing disabled characters specifically. The way the post was worded, I took it as saying you couldn't just talk about a disability for the sake of having disabled characters; the disability had to have a point within the plot. My reply was turning the question on its head and asking people to justify why they make normative choices.
There's this idea you can't make characters different unless they serve a plot point (ie- don't have a gay character unless your story is focused on coming out, don't make a disabled character unless they have a superawesome skill, ect), so I asked what plot point making characters normative served. Why is it that marginalized groups have to justify their existence in a story by being a plot point, and the dominant group just gets to be included without question? Why can't you just have a disabled character because?
As for your example, I'd point out Romeo isn't exactly an average dude. The fact he's part of a family where a huge feud is going on is plot critical. The fact he's interested in women is also plot critical, considering the interest in Juliet is what drives the plot (although, not every academic considers Romeo straight). And finally, he's not necessarily white because there were indeed quite a few high ranking non-white families in Europe at the time it's set.
The way you assumed he's normative brings back my earlier point a few posts up, where I said if you want to include diversity you have to be explicit with it, otherwise people will assume the default.
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