So for those of you that had not figured this out yet, I'm a writer. I have been for a really long time, and I love creating and screwing around with worlds and making characters and stuff. A little too much, apparently, because when I recently decided to make a list of all of my active characters (as in, those I actually write about/think about with some level of frequency, who have an established story and personality) I came up with 62 of them. I have clearly deteriorated into schizophrenia.
Rather than dwell on that thought, I decided to take the opportunity to take a count of the number of characters I had that fit into different labels (race, gender/sex, and sexuality to be specific, because I didn't have the time to do this in reality, so I really don't have the time to come up with other categories). The results are as follows.
Of my 62 characters...
41 are female, 21 are male
49 are white/ethnic majorities, 13 are nonwhite/ethnic minorities (One Spanish, three Italian-American, one African, two black, one Latina, one Japanese, two who are ethnic minorities in a fantasy world you do not need explained to you.)
51 are straight, 12 are gay or "other" (Four lesbians, two bisexual, two undecided (as in I'm unsure enough about their sexual identity to not call them straight but I'm not 100% sure what they are), one asexual for all practical purposes, two generally asexual).
There is a lot of room for confusion/variation in here, if you couldn't tell from my qualifying everything, because of the factor of talking about people who do not actually exist, many of whom live in fantasy or science fiction universes. For example, white is qualified technically as any ethnic majority in this list because one of the characters I determined as 'white' is actually dark-skinned, but he lives in a universe where that doesn't actually qualify him as an ethnic minority due to the circumstances. 'Asexual for all practical purposes' comes from Lurline, a character of mine who may or may not be attracted to either/or sex emotionally, but cannot have sexual relations without endangering herself, and since she considers sex to be an integral part of a romantic relationship, she's given up on the possibility of having any sort of romantic relationship, even a celibate one. One of the 'generally asexual' characters is only thus qualified because she actually has no emotions and only a limited capacity to think on her own, being basically a soulless pawn, which invalidates the idea of sexuality entirely (and to some extent race as well, though because she is matched with a male partner gender still plays into her identity).
Still, I thought this was interesting to do. It's clear that the vast majority of my characters are white straight females, which makes some sense - writers usually put something of themselves in their characters, and even though I don't identify as 100% straight I do identify as undecided, and straight is (perhaps unfortunately) sort of a default, so if I'm making a young white woman, I probably won't project my sexuality onto her, since I don't feel very strongly about that sexuality, and she'll end up being straight. Usually if I make a character who's gay it'll be something I think about from the first that they will be gay or bisexual or whatever, but this isn't always the case, as with Axel and Ziba, those listed above as 'undecided.' However, I do try to have the identities of my characters correspond to a relatively accurate population sample, which I think I've done fairly well in, though I could certainly improve. (Not counting the very heavy female balance - I'm a woman, so it's just a lot easier for me get into the mindset of a character who is also a woman, and that's not going to change.) There isn't a lot of liminal space being occupied, though... maybe I'll try that more in the future.
Also, if the length and detail I put into describing fictional beings frightens you, uh... yeah, I don't really claim that this is a sign of sanity or health. Feel free to back away slowly the next time you see me.
You know what Hanna, I do not think you're crazy because I do the same thing (although my sanity is somewhat debatable haha). Yet my characters tend not to be human. Most of them are either superhuman, alien (humanoid and otherwise), robotic, supernatural, or mythological deities. In fact, I tend to make my supernatural or superhuman characters hybrids, like myself. Also, like myself, all of my characters are either, male, mixed or straight (with the exception of the robots or aliens where race does not apply). This is because I find it easier to identify with a mixed race male.
ReplyDeleteI usually write about non-human or "barely" human characters and their struggle to find humanity. Sexuality is a tiny part of that process as most of them attempt to try and find love or a concept related to that at least. Yet at the same time, I do not know why I necessarily write about characters who are not human (or who are barely human). Perhaps because of my fascination with comic books, mythology, and religion. In fact, I know I don't write about their sexuality more because I find that a character's sexuality is not as important as his/her actions (take Dumbledore for example).