When Victor Frankenstein created life, he was unprepared for the consequences of it. The monster he created needed a parent, a teacher, a caregiver, but instead he abandoned it. The monster, learning to fear and hate through the necessities of survival, dedicates its life to vengeance upon its creator. But what if the doctor hadn’t left his creation to fend for itself? Would it have been better? Or would it have brought up a host of other uncomfortable issues and power dynamics?
In the last site news, I talked about how simply including people of various identities in your work isn’t enough. Creators have an increasing awareness that representation of marginalized identities in fiction is important, but lacking good examples, many don’t know what good representation actually looks like. This leads to an effect where creators fill their work with as many different identities as possible without giving those experiences the depth of treatment or culturally competent touch they deserve. Such works can feel like they were cast by checklist: “Okay, we’ve got a lesbian character, a trans woman, and a trans man, we just need a gay guy and a bisexual. Flip a coin for the bisexual’s gender.”