On Diversity and Inclusivity in Little Burned Maiden

Clickbait Title: I Cancel Myself Before I Get Cancel Cultured #Rekt #WeLiveInASociety

We live in a society. Before we formally begin, I want to acknowledge I am a part of that society and I have inherited all of its blindnesses and stigmas, even if I seek to fight them. I am only one person. While I endeavor to learn more about the vast array of human experiences that exist in the world, I do not wish to write about something I have not authentically experienced--That is for other historically underrepresented voices to do. If you are a creator from some kind of marginalized group or if you have otherwise struggled to see yourself in art, I encourage you to tell your story because I cannot do it for you.

Inclusivity and Diversity. They threaten to be dirty words, even though the concept of "represent a wider swath of humanity to expand your creative horizons" or "appeal to people who don't usually get stuff about them" should be no-brainers to corporations and individual creators alike. I full-heartedly believe all work should include a lot of different types of people--it is simply more interesting and more people will relate to the work. But while one can misrepresent lawyers and doctors and knitting and cats in one's story and people will overlook this, to misrepresent a historically misrepresented demographic is harmful. As such, the manner in which these characters must be portrayed is analyzed under a higher level of scrutiny that can, at times, be damaging to the very groups trying to simply get marginalized peoples to be represented at all.

Everyone says it's easy and you should do it. (I agree with the second part.) But actually, when trying to appeal to a mass audience, it isn't. This is due to the fact that typically undeserved demographics, such as BIPOC, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, physically disabled people, and other such under-served groups are not SPEAKING in larger works. Attempts to appeal to them by people outside of these groups often come across as pandering. To compound this issue, the lower number of pieces with their voices mean that even should they "make it", they are often more heavily scrutinized--making such voices appear risky monetarily. Remember what happened to The Last of Us II? It got slammed, voice actors got death threats, men became armchair nutritionists... what a mess. The entire reception of The Last of Us II, even beyond the mess and drilling down to the criticism specifically, demonstrates an increased expectation when it comes to fiction involving LGBTQ+ individuals. Last of Us I was critically praised and everyone loved Joel, despite him being a bitter, mean, gruff, poorly emotionally adjusted man. People weren't so forgiving towards Abby or Ellie.

Another example of this increased sensitivity: Amelie Wen Zhao, a female Asian author, wrote a book about the human trafficking issues in China and Asia more broadly in her fantasy novel. But her book was delayed for being "Anti-black" because it was "colorblind" to the issue of slavery. That was someone trying to talk about something that represents a historical and cultural topic relevant to them--and the Chinese government which is erasing this history--and how they were shut down due to increased sensitivity. How do I know I know the sensitivity is increased? Well, I've got a friend writing a fantasy novel and it isn't about slavery at all. And she isn't receiving any criticism for being anti-Black and "erasing racism from our history". As a female Asian myself, I would have loved to hear in a story in a voice like mine, so I confess to being potentially biased in this case. But I think my point stands--this dichotomy in our expectations is dangerous to both creators from underrepresented groups, as we silence ourselves, and as well as to creators who are outside of ourselves who we seek to represent us better.

With this cultural context in mind, here is my process for ensuring my cast was adequately diverse and where I think I fell short (or, as I'd prefer to think of it, where I can expand more in the future to balance the scales of representation):

To begin, I tried to have an even number of female-presenting and male-presenting characters in speaking roles. They were of various ages, but I definitely had a higher concentration on "young people" given my target demographic. My random mooks are all men, unfortunately, but people were already struggling to see who the enemies were so I didn't want to throw more people at them to remember. In the future, I want to adjust how the enemies are targeted, selected, and perhaps add some sort of shift in the way the game is presented during battle to alleviate this issue and increase the diversity of my enemy design.

Most importantly to me after that was sexualities of the characters. I struggled with my relationship with sex a lot growing up, so now, trying to understand how various other people find things sexually attractive (or not, in the case of ace and aro folks) is fascinating to me. However, sex was not the primary center point of the story so I didn't want to delve terribly deep into the topic. Thus, I tried to have people simply reference it offhand--as they would in real life. For instance, lonely and gossipy Celia mentions how she doesn't "get" relationships--especially not "thruples or whatever [her sister] has". Celia is intended to be ace and aro, though not necessarily sex-repulsed, while Lucienne is polysexual and polyamorous. But Celia and Lucienne are also both catty, bitter people--and both learned it from their terribly abusive father. They're the "mean girls" archetype, along with the youngest sister, Derecina. Initially, this may seem like I'm demonizing non-straight people, but that's not all there is to these characters. Celia seems to genuinely care for her sisters' wellbeings and is just mimicking Lucienne because everyone seems to like Lucienne. Lucienne is really bitter after the death of her abusive father (and subsequent loss of her engagement) and acts out. Everyone likes her except the one guy who she wants to like her, so she doesn't know how to handle herself. Derecina (ace but not aro) is just happy to get away from her family, but puts on a face to appear like them because... it's all she knows, even though she doesn't know why they do it. So is this good representation or bad? I don't really know--I just tried to create multifaceted characters with a lot of layers. I just tried to recreate the deeply flawed human beings I see in my friends and in myself. Which is, I hear, the goal of inclusivity so I hope I have done well in this department.

Sidebar of the other characters: Arlasaire is bi but she's monogamous and in a relationship with a man. Cleiv is gay. The Puppetmaster is ace but experiences aesthetic attraction. The rest are passing-straight though they also live in a world where marriage is between a man and a woman to continue the family bloodline and monogamy isn't really expected, so please imagine them as you want--my canon does not have to be yours.

I want to briefly address the issue of gender because I've discussing gender as a binary and it is not. To be honest with you, it is only recently that I have learned about--let alone have met--people who are out about not-conforming to their assigned sexes at birth. Since this is new ground for me, I have been scared to write from their perspectives. That isn't to say I can't "look up people on the internet" or other such research, but that's not a lived experience. And I have almost no experience in questioning my gender--only in fighting gender roles. If I'm going to write about something, I want to understand it MUCH deeper than the vague rhetoric I find on the internet and the memes my not-cis friends post. So, to the lovely individuals who exist beyond the gender binary in whatever way--trans, fluid, agender, NB, or more--I recognize I am unfamiliar with your experiences still, but please know I am listening. As an individual creator, I don't know how to represent you respectfully yet--but when I can, I will. In the meantime, if you can and feel safe to do so, I encourage you to share and tell your own stories--whether as yourselves or wearing the masks of characters. My work will never do justice to your lived experience--but YOU can do much better. The world doesn't just need more white guys in writers' rooms with empathy, it needs more people in writers' rooms (or whatever form of creation with which you engage). Thank you for your patience with my ignorance.

Next, I want to address the inherent whiteness of my work. I could maybe give you a smarmy answer about how "Thuillean is a fantasy face and isn't real" but they look and will read as white. As an Asian female, I really REALLY relate to any girl with black hair almost immediately--Especially if she isn't a slut-shamed bad guy. As such, I gave a lot of characters black hair. Otherwise, they have "anime" syndrome... in that there are some ambiguously brown, lower class people and otherwise are white. I feel like I should address this issue:

Nouveau Thuille is set in much wider, broader world with a specific geography. Geography-affected biology is a HUGE cornerstone of how I like to world-build--it adds a lot of authenticity to the work for me. In some parts of the world, an upper continent blocks out the sun. In the North, this is the case. As such, the Thuilleans are pale, dark haired, and would hopefully have other features that traditionally people who evolved to live in mountains would have. The pixel art does not show this but that would be the dream. In the South, where the game is NOT set, however, there is a more-diverse Empire of people who get sun. I plan to create more work that explores this area more next. This sounds like prime real estate for a lot of fantasy BIPOC characters, right?

When I first started building this world, the Black Lives Matter movement was not in the cultural forefront of our brains. I live in the United States. At the time, President Trump was building a wall to "keep out the Mexicans". I thought, showing a bunch of darker skinned people invading the North and stealing everyone's money would be horrible and playing into this racist narrative. In order to divorce myself from it, I decided to make them albino and vaguely Grecian. This would reduce the real-life allegories, I had hoped at the time. Furthermore, in a different part of the story, which I was unable to cover in the course of this small experience, the Emperor of the North was black--but he was not visually featured in this work. I hope to get to his story next, but I probably should have done more for this experience.

Instead, I ensured the selkies appeared in the story, as they are darker skinned (though some may not notice due to their red hair...) It has since come to my attention that black people with natural hair colors are the rarer image in fiction. Thus, my representation is likely continuing to be more harmful than I would hope. So, I will do better. When I get around to representing the Southerners, I will simply make them an assortment of apparent races. (Makes sense for an Empire!) My work is not trying to make a statement on the effects of racism specifically--at least not real world racism--but rather, it's trying to create a world where our forms of racism don't exist. It seeks to be about how the stories we tell about ourselves affects how we view the world--and how others have different stories and no story can say everything. Whether I have successfully done that or not is up to you--the author is dead. My intent is irrelevant.

Lastly, I want to tackle mental and physical disabilities in this work. Mental is likely shorter, so we'll begin there--The Puppetmaster isn't a good representation of a neurodivergent person. He's a thirteen-year-old's edgy, creepypasta boyfriend. He is a trope, with a slight subversion on the trope--in that, if you talk to him, you discover he's not actually dangerous, he just doesn't understand how to interact with people. I don't think that all neurodivergent people are like this, I just like this trope and I hope others find him to be interesting.

Now, the big one--the thing I cannot change, the titular character... the Little Burned Maiden herself.

In my research of how people want disability to be represented in fiction, what I found most frequently is that they want to be treated like "everyone else, except they just so happen to be disabled". They do not want to be pitied, they don't want their disability to give them superpowers, and they do not want to be used as inspiration porn. They want the character to be more than just their disability. (This could be a statement on how to write diverse characters in general...) I did my best to follow these rules. Arlasaire is not shown to be less capable than anyone else--in fact, while all the other houses have many goons running around, Arlasaire seems to be the only hitman of House d'Magnia. Arlasaire's inability to speak very much is portrayed as a hindrance to her BUT people seem to understand her well enough nonetheless--they take a bit of extra effort to read her expressions and such. Nonetheless, they also take advantage of the fact she can't talk and talk at her (and the player) a lot. I chose to do this in an attempt to reflect realistic human behavior and I tried to show that these characters are wrong about this--mostly by having them be wrong about other things as well so the players know they cannot trust anyone to give it to them straight. Some of these people are repulsed by her disfiguring scars, and sometimes, this gets Arlasaire down. But Gil seems to unabashedly adore her. This is yet another example of how her disability impacts her negatively but is not the center point of her life.

However, I do portray Arlasaire as someone who is admirable and someone worth emulating in parts--mostly through her status as "protagonist" and her traditional heroic qualities, such as her physical prowess in battle and her loyalty to her family. Furthermore, her family holds her up on a pedestal and she has the TITLE in the world--the Burned Maiden of Thuille. In certain readings, this may seem as inspiration porn--the girl who overcame her burns! But the people who do this are also shown to be wrong--threatening to throw her out on the street in old letters and calling her a "dog". She also isn't perfect--she is sometimes shown to be petty and wrong, like when she goes and assassinates (temporarily) Lucienne because she's jealous. The player is punished for this in the same way all the assassinations are punished--dialogue designed to make the player feel guilty after killing the victim. In this way, I hope to portray a multifaceted but generally positive human being.

To summarize, my work is deeply flawed--a reflection of a flawed society. But I did my best to create a bunch of interesting characters and hit a wide spectrum of people. It's genuinely hard to know if I'm doing a good job representing people who aren't me because I AM me. So all I can do is create a world of imperfect individuals who are never what they seem on the surface. That is, in my opinion, the essence of how people are. It's that and then get more sensitivity readers. But even then, the above cultural context continues to haunt me and every other person who walks my path; No one will criticize the umpteeth boring white guy for being a bad representation of white guys. They'll say, "He was a boring character." I can only hope that I am moving in the right direction and doing the characters I create justice, rather than allowing them to be tokens of virtue signalling, harmful representations of stereotypes, or other such nonesense.

But as I said before, the author is dead. How well I did and what I learn from this reflection is now up to you.