The Character Romance thread (Official)

(Full disclosure, I personally loathed the book)

but it has been held as the part of the highest tier of novels on race relations in the US, and the South in particular, alongside any number of works written by African-Americans, the author however is Harper Lee, a white woman, I believe from Pennsylvania but don't quote me on that.

However, at the same time, the story is through the eyes of young white Southern children, which isn't really representing a different group. It's not pretending to be a novel that represents the POV of black people about race relations and their experiences.

That's not the same thing, is what I'm basically saying.

Dead...Steelcan you posted the link to the Harper Lee book, but didn't read it or you'd know she's from Alabama. One of the few things we are famous for besides illiteracy, Meth, and having at least one church on every block.

I did say not to quote me on her origin.

(also Alabama has football, Forrest Gump, and making SC look good going for it as well)

well that doesn't really sound to me like what Pessimist Panda was calling for, but hey I'm not omniscient

Yes, I'm sure that the archtects of Jim Crow considered black people regular people and part of the normal American public.

I'm assuming that's in case of a hypothetical indie gaming jam project, so I don't know how calls for lgbt+ writers would work, other than how I would imagine it would be like for a publishing house.

If a straight writer did apply anyway (edit; not that I would know they were anyway), I'd think they would've misread that it was meant for lgbt+ writers. Otherwise, I'd have questions.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought that was you making that statement, not the Jim Crow Architects. I stand corrected. Carry on.

Within the context of what I was talking about, I thought that what I said was clear, if its not, I hope I've cleared it up.

The thing is, what I think everyone here has been trying to get at is that LGBT people aren't given as many opportunities as straight people to write about you know, what it means to be LGBT. When we're misrepresented, we're not often given the chance to be able to put out our own stuff into the world to counter those missteps due to how many barriers there are to get gay stuff published/released in the first place.

So we want more LGBT writers to be given those opportunities. And in general, a lot of people seem to be ... idk, hurt by this? As if the industry couldn't use more LGBT voices despite wanting games to get asspats for including any LGBT content at all. If you think it's fine to have LGBT content, then having another LGBT voice shouldn't be a problem, right? I guess people are okay with LGBT stuff if it's obviously not meant for us.

It's pretty hilarious that Walter's post - the one that kicked off this whole mess - involved hiring a straight person who could eventually learn how to write LGBT folks, instead of hiring a LGBT writer who probably already knew how. Most jobs I've heard of try to hire people they won't have to train too much over the folks they will... but if it's straight people, we're willing to bend over backwards to help them eventually become almost as competent as a gay guy already is, because hiring a gay guy who already understands gay guys makes the baby Jesus cry or something.

I never said that they should not write about them. I've said before in this thread, that I'd be fine with straight people writing LGBT content in situations where they get their shit together. Especially if they collaborate with an LGBT writer.

No, no one has directly said "all LGBT stories should be written by straight people," but if your response to "I wish there were more LGBT writers because they often capture the LGBT experience better," is "straight writers can be just as good or better!!" and acting like we're banning straight people or thinking lowly of straight people then you've missed the point.

And I would love to see more empathetic straight people writing our stories, but, from certain responses today, I can't say I'm any more confident about straight people's ability to empathize with our experiences. And, for once, I'm not trying to be mean but trying to be honest about this.