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Alternate History General Discussion

I do think treating all critics as Cranks is a real waste of time. I think if someone tries to include a queer character and gets pushback its about the nature of the portrayal rather then the portrayal existing. It's more then fair and very reasonable for someone who wrote a First Nations character as a "Noble Savage" to get rough pushback, the problem isn't the fact there is a First Nations character but what they did with it. If your Queer character is some male fantasy bisexual or lesbian woman, or if your Jewish character is obsessively greedy or if women can't talk about anything but men, or for that matter if its a Disney blink and you miss it piece of representation to be cut out for the Chinese Market, critiques are going to come.

If someone has a problem with the depiction of a Trans character that doesn't mean a Cis Person shouldn't write a Trans character, it means that they should probably do some more work to make sure that depiction works, or is reasonable. And if that pushback means that you're going to complain how unfair it all is and that there's no way to do it, well that just seems lazy to me.
 
And if the pushback is explicitly that it is offensive for you, as a non-LGBT+ person, to write an LGBT+ character, there isn't much actual criticism to get hold of.
 
It's very easy to end up running out of fucks to give.

When you are, for example, the group whip for a political grouping, who are putting forward a pro-trans-rights motion, and you have to be the one in the middle trying to talk down a bunch of middle-aged women who have swallowed a load of the gender-critical lines, and, say, you spent virtually every spare moment last week doing such, you tend to get a bit hair-trigger on all this. Yes, I got through chairing an all-evening online debate on it on one of those evenings (after driving home for work) and whilst I missed out having any dinner or family time, I did it because there are people out there who are having a hell of a time, non-stop, and without sight of any end.

I know that I'm going to continue to get grief on this motion from the same people in RL. I know that I've got to come up with a hell of a speech (yet again) to try to minimise the inevitable rebellion on the motion. I know that whatever I do say will be archived on Youtube (because all our council meetings go up on Youtube) and thrown at me forever, by pro- and anti-trans rights people.

I know I'm burning away a whole bunch of votes, but, fortunately for me, I no longer give two fucks about getting re-elected next time, anyway.

And knowingly facing being told how bad a person I am for having the temerity to include LGBT+ characters if I do, well, I haven't got the emotional bandwidth right now.

Anyway, I've got to go and try to talk down two more potential rebels. I think I've got the rebellion down to 2-3 voting against and a handful not turning up to the meeting, but that can easily slip. And I also know I shouldn't let that frustration slip through to here, but the implication that I'm either lazy in not bothering with helping those who do need the help or that I'm out of order in trying to empathise with them does really fucking grate at times like this.
 
There's obviously ample scope for potential criticism of how media (Media in the world in general I mean, not just AH) depicts certain groups. I've talked before on here about how gay men tend to be fetishised, which is just one aspect of it. There's some media which is just a write-off in this respect, but there's also lots of well-intentioned stuff which can very readily be criticised too.

There's also absolutely some people who take this reality and then conclude that gay characters should only ever be written by gay men and, if they're ever depicted on screen, should only be played by gay men, too. I'm sure this type of view would also have advocates across the various LGBT groups.

If someone is coming from that second type of POV then as a writer there's really not much point in engaging with them. It's certainly not a view they're going to modify due to someone from outside the group disagreeing with them on it, and the writer is probably just going to get agro for even responding to them on it.

Just do your research, have good intentions, and listen to the serious feedback about detail and character. 'You're a bad person who should feel bad about even attempting this' can be safely ignored.
 
SenatorChickpea said:
The general absence of people who aren't straight, cis, or male is also something that the genre needs to address, of course.
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I remember the articles covering the vast horde of AH romance written by women, but written elsewhere, often as fanfic, so it feels less there's an absence and more the genre has a vast wall between parts of it & talk of the genre ignores the other part. That's true of other genres but they're more likely to know the other group exists, even if they're less interested in that subgenre.
 
David Flin said:
As one who falls into those categories, I've come across one reason (and I have no idea how significant a reason it is - possibly it is insignificant) why the genre (and many other genres) lack characters who aren't straight, cis, or male.

There's a character in the Building Jerusalem series (SPOILER ALERT) who is Trans. I tried to make the character no more or less sympathetic than any of the other main characters. He's got quirks and foibles, but he is unquestionably central to the story.

Of course, this brought criticism from some Trans readers. How could I, a straight male, possibly understand and write sympathetically about a trans character. I don't have the necessary experience and any portrayal is bound to be insulting. The critic became quite heated about the subject, especially when I pointed out (gentle reader: read criticism, there may be a valid lesson in there, but never, ever engage with a critic) that if straight writers didn't write trans characters, there would be damn few trans characters in fiction. It was quite sobering to be on the receiving end of such vehemence.

Now, the simple way for me to avoid such criticism is to avoid including any trans characters. Which leads directly to the complaint you raise.
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So reading through this and subsequent posts you made, and I have to ask: is this all about the response of literally one critic? Because if it is then I think you're way overreacting. If you were to say that you'd written a trans character and a bunch of people had said that cis men can't write trans characters and called you a cunt for writing it, you would have an argument. But I simply can't see a legitimate argument that something is too difficult to write about based on one critic being a dick.
 
Charles EP M. said:
I remember the articles covering the vast horde of AH romance written by women, but written elsewhere, often as fanfic, so it feels less there's an absence and more the genre has a vast wall between parts of it & talk of the genre ignores the other part. That's true of other genres but they're more likely to know the other group exists, even if they're less interested in that subgenre.
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The thing is if I read an AH romance the romance is gonna be what I'm reading it for, the AH is just cool backdrop so I don't really think of it as that. Turtledove or w/e is the opposite.
 
napoleon IV said:
So reading through this and subsequent posts you made, and I have to ask: is this all about the response of literally one critic? Because if it is then I think you're way overreacting. If you were to say that you'd written a trans character and a bunch of people had said that cis men can't write trans characters and called you a cunt for writing it, you would have an argument. But I simply can't see a legitimate argument that something is too difficult to write about based on one critic being a dick.
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It depends on the critic. You can get one person being a massive PITA; screaming at you, belittling you, generally smearing you to all and sundry and ... well, at some point, you just run out of fucks to give (as someone said above). It is monumentally demoralizing to have to deal with even one such [CENSORED] and it sours you on anyone who has the same points, even if they handle it in a far more effective manner.

Chris
 
SoldierOfChrist said:
The thing is if I read an AH romance the romance is gonna be what I'm reading it for, the AH is just cool backdrop so I don't really think of it as that. Turtledove or w/e is the opposite.
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Feels this is dependent on how much the AH counts towards everything, like how a romance subplot doesn't make Jurassic World a dinosaur survival romance but it would be if the bulk of plot, themes, character drives etc focused on the couple (and they didn't suck and I wanted Raptors to eat them)
 
napoleon IV said:
But I simply can't see a legitimate argument that something is too difficult to write about based on one critic being a dick.
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I can see people being legitimately worried about being jumped on by multiple consistent dicks, as Andy outlines - it's probably not likely but we've all seen that sort of thing happen online at random, sometimes over a possibly legitimate issue that got buried and sometimes weird internal turf wars. (And not just us cis straight blokes, there was a Hugo-winning expose of one woman doing this in writer's groups in the name of fighting racism who turned out to be overwhelmingly doing it to women of colour) It seems to have become almost an Act of God that just might happen and might not, you don't know*, and I'm not surprised some people at the lower ends of the writing scale would rather not.

Which is sad but there it is.

* There's a sanguine quote from Garth Ennis when asked if he was concerned he'd face criticism for being a white man with a white artist doing a Tuskagee Airmen comic, as 'as white men they shouldn't be doing this story at all' was a thing said about Mark Waid & J.G. Jones doing a sci-fi historical on Deep South racism: "My attitude to that is that it's going to be what it's going to be; it's so far beyond my control that there's no point worrying about it. I'll write the best and most honest story I can, with appropriate attention to detail in terms of historical research. If you think I have no right to tell the story because I'm white, don't read it." But in the end nobody did say the same criticisms, there was no big discussion online if he had the right, it just arbitrarily happened one time and not another even though one is about a real event
 
I think one of the issues with the framing of all this is the assumption that there is a majority 'marginalized opinion,' when those not of a certain demographic assume that all those of that demographic have a single unified opinion on a certain issue. To the great consternation of many, they often do not.

Speaking to you as a mixed-race Filipino-American who is also autistic, none of those three groups have unified opinions on much of anything.

People not living a certain experience often assume those experiences change people uniformly; really, they change people in all sorts of different ways. What is perfectly acceptable to one person in this group may be hideously offensive to another.

This is not helped by the people in activist circles who claim to speak on the behalf of demographic groups. You may be surprised to learn that activist 'woke' positions are oftentimes nowhere nearly as popular among the affected groups as certain people may have you believe.

All a writer can do is to proceed with goodwill; it's all we can really do.
 
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Charles EP M. said:
Feels this is dependent on how much the AH counts towards everything, like how a romance subplot doesn't make Jurassic World a dinosaur survival romance but it would be if the bulk of plot, themes, character drives etc focused on the couple (and they didn't suck and I wanted Raptors to eat them)
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Know a romance when I see it, AH is less clear.
 
Charles EP M. said:
Feels this is dependent on how much the AH counts towards everything, like how a romance subplot doesn't make Jurassic World a dinosaur survival romance but it would be if the bulk of plot, themes, character drives etc focused on the couple (and they didn't suck and I wanted Raptors to eat them)
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The "Romantic Suspense" subgenre has this problem in that it's frequently very hard to balance the "romance" and "suspense" parts. If not done right, it ends up feeling like a plain romance novel with shoved-in thriller elements (which can still be enjoyable the way a thriller with iffily done romance can).
 
AndyC said:
It's very easy to end up running out of fucks to give.

When you are, for example, the group whip for a political grouping, who are putting forward a pro-trans-rights motion, and you have to be the one in the middle trying to talk down a bunch of middle-aged women who have swallowed a load of the gender-critical lines, and, say, you spent virtually every spare moment last week doing such, you tend to get a bit hair-trigger on all this. Yes, I got through chairing an all-evening online debate on it on one of those evenings (after driving home for work) and whilst I missed out having any dinner or family time, I did it because there are people out there who are having a hell of a time, non-stop, and without sight of any end.

I know that I'm going to continue to get grief on this motion from the same people in RL. I know that I've got to come up with a hell of a speech (yet again) to try to minimise the inevitable rebellion on the motion. I know that whatever I do say will be archived on Youtube (because all our council meetings go up on Youtube) and thrown at me forever, by pro- and anti-trans rights people.

I know I'm burning away a whole bunch of votes, but, fortunately for me, I no longer give two fucks about getting re-elected next time, anyway.

And knowingly facing being told how bad a person I am for having the temerity to include LGBT+ characters if I do, well, I haven't got the emotional bandwidth right now.

Anyway, I've got to go and try to talk down two more potential rebels. I think I've got the rebellion down to 2-3 voting against and a handful not turning up to the meeting, but that can easily slip. And I also know I shouldn't let that frustration slip through to here, but the implication that I'm either lazy in not bothering with helping those who do need the help or that I'm out of order in trying to empathise with them does really fucking grate at times like this.
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Having somewhat hijacked the discussion here with my own situation, I should both apologise and update.
The Full Council meeting was tonight. The becoming a trans-inclusive council motion passed by 20-2 with 6 abstentions. I was told by two of the abstentions that it was what I’d said in the group meeting that turned them from against to abstain, and the other four abstentions were the Tories who were present. Two more who had been against elected not to turn up rather than vote for or against, so we managed to landslide the motion through.

Feeling quite pleased overall.
 
I do feel like alternate history, or just historical fiction doesn't really explore the history of sexuality. I mean, the commonly known terms to refer to the LGBTQ+ community were created in the 19th century, so having characters just straight up referred to as straight or gay is really anachronistic and doesn't feel right as it was a rather fluid thing in pre-modern times.

I think it mentioned by people more knowledgable than me that 18th century Frenchmen recalled in letters having had sexual relations with men as kind of a youthful exploration, but I don't really remember who said that.
 
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