This is mostly a note to myself and lots of rambling.
I want to revamp my character diversity – I have a huge number of characters, but there are a lot of diversity categories not represented or poorly represented (like, there are a lot of Asian characters, but very few black people…) (I don’t know what the breakdown of ethnicities actually is, that’s just an example). My plan is to basically use random numbers to fix this (I already use a random generator to determine relative weights, heights, and some other things).
Percentages I’m going to use: (I’m intentionally inflating numbers to increase representation)
- Intersex: 1%
- Transgender (binary): 4%
- Non-binary: 15% (I truly believe that a lot more people would be non-binary if it was more widely known and accepted – which it is in my story) (I’ve decided Delia is a demi-girl, and one of Wild Rush’s henchmen is going to be non-binary)
- Neurodivergent: ???
- Invisibly disabled: ???
- Disabled: ???
- Race categories… (gonna get the statistics for the US and round up)
- I’m not sure what else?
Plan for the generator:
Have list of categories, with what numbers mean the character fits in that category. For example, race/ethnicity* could be White, Native American, Black, South Asian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, East Asian, etc, and by having a list people could easily be more than one ethnicity.
Like any generator, results will probably be tweaked by hand.
* obviously for this, I’d use the words that fit my actual map, since there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence between my fictional world and the real world.
Diverse characters I know I have:
- Lt. Aurita – cop, black / Pacific Islander, Caling, an ethnic group that whose average height is under 4 feet
Pygmy (I can’t tell from googling if this is an offensive term or if there’s alternatives – she’s not a little person, because she doesn’t have dwarfism, she’s ethnically a Pygmy)(Seriously, if I’m screwing up here, let me know). (Edited 4-27-14) - Mask – Middle Eastern, disabled (I need some Middle Eastern characters that aren’t criminals – don’t judge me for that, the majority of my characters are criminals.)
- Delia Troy Burton – Asian, demi-girl
- Joel Burton (Delia’s son) – Asian, disabled (fictional disease similar to Parkison’s)
- Emily – Latina, Selective Mutism (I’m not sure if that’s neurodivergent, disabled, or both…)
- Charles – (Wild Rush’s henchman) gay, non-binary
- Andre – (Wild Rush’s henchman) gay
- RV – black
- (Since Ostanes is set in the same universe, I can count Iosis & Ostanes and their mom for Asian, and Dr. Maurell for asexual and Latino) (basically I already diversitied-up that story, so I’m not worrying about it)
- (I really need some more asexual characters)
- (I swear there’s more, I just can’t think of them right now)
Characters that I’m not counting as diverse:
- Swordcat – multiple, through alien intervention (I need some naturally multiple people)
- Wild Rush – neurodivergent, mostly likely diagnosis is sociopath (it’s more complicated than that and I don’t want to try to count him as representation of anybody because he’s a really terrible person)
- Tectrix (I think that’s what I’m going to call him) – Middle Eastern (although that might change. He’s currently problematic and I’m trying to figure out how much of that is stuff I need to change about him and how much can be fixed by having other characters as counterweight) (He’s really just kind of a horrible person and I might just make him white, because making white people horrible doesn’t say anything bad about white people.)
I swear I almost should just make all the really horrible people white, because I’m totally racist against my own race. (That’s mostly sarcasm). (Anyone who non-ironically mentions ‘reverse racism’ will get laughed at and banned. Not kidding.)
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