Prejudices You've Written

Prejudice is a good conflict-motivator. I use it a lot - mainly prejudice against Half-Human Hybrids, foreigners, and Fantastic Racism (demons against humans and vice versa). Foreigner prejudice, considering my setting is the Geki Jidai, is also heavy against Koreans - which would create legitimate prejudice against my villain (although I'm checking on this to make sure it's accurate.) Part of my own reason for including it as a heavy world-establishing-element is that the work's goal is to be a Deconstruction of many things, not the least of which is prejudice and racism.

What prejudices have you written, and against whom? How has it served your work?

My Sailor Moon fanfic series "Dessert Senshi" has several characters who hold prejudices. There are two characters who are sexist in opposite ways (one thinks in typical gender roles and another has the typical gender roles reversed so she says "Stay in the Kitchen" to the men), there's one who believes a bunch of national stereotypes and specifically hates Arabs/Middle-Eastern people, and the whole 2nd story deals with homophobic villains (and one of the good guys is homophobic but not as evil as the villains, who want to force gay people to become straight under threat of death). The one who thinks men are inferior also is prejudiced against fat people.

There is also a story called "Sailor Moon Gemstone" that has a multi-racial team and thus there are issues of racism in it (mostly coming from one Strawman Political White girl who still has to work with the others as a team since she's NOT supposed to be a villain, just a difficult teammate to work with). Notable possibly because the Senshi team in the story is comprised of 4 families of 3 sisters each, and each family is a different race (White, Black, Latina and Japanese). Given that I give my characters equal "page time," it averts Token Minority but possibly is an example of Five-Token Band (although with 3 characters for each race, I make sure they're not all stereotypes because they have different personalities).

In the Harry Potter fanfic series "The Four Witches", I use the same kind of prejudices that were in the original series, so there are at least a few characters who are prejudiced against muggleborns and things like that (the 2nd story there deals with copycat crime attacks against muggleborns done by someone who wanted to imitate the basilisk attacks from the Chamber of Secrets story).

In general, while I portray being prejudiced as a character flaw, I am aware that there are different levels of prejudice so I do try to show that (most obviously in the Dessert Senshi series) and that I think there is a big difference between holding a prejudice and letting it actively hurt others (difference between the homophobic Senshi who still works with the others vs. the homophobic villains).

edited 2nd May '11 7:30:37 PM by Rainbow

In Endless Conflict Terrans (aka humans) and Preyarans (a High Elf-like species in appearance) do not get along very well and not just because of the on-again off-again nature of the long-running eponymous conflict. Terrans don't like the seemingly arrogant (though more like warrior pride) attitude many Preyarans constantly boast about, and Preyarans don't care for some of the more bizarre mannerisms Terrans can show. Overall the Fantastic Racism is far more prominent from the Terran angle. In the series, if you ever see the term "elf" used in conversation by a character towards a Preyaran, they do not mean it in an affectionate way.

However this is also shown in accordance with one of the themes of the series that the difference between a friend and foe may only be the banner they rally towards. Over time the two races learn a respect for each other based on the experiences of the battlefield and off it. Additionally from the second book on, an enemy greater than themselves forces both parties to take a new look not only at the conflict, but at life itself going from bitter enemies that had been feuding for generations to fire forged friends whom neither side would dare betray.

edited 2nd May '11 7:15:24 PM by MajorTom

Against communism, no exceptions. But granted, it is obviously justified via real life examples. Summer of 1889, China, anyone? The Great Purge? The Cultural Revolution?

Also I have written some extremely xenophobic sentiments to foreign involvements and culture impeding one's nation. But then again in context of that in 'Nightmare' the whole colony has virtually no sovereignty yet runs itself, and has strong local government, where as the Earth nations (at least the developed ones) are extremely centralized, even by today's standards. Put in the cultural stagnation that onset at the beginning of the 21st century, and you get some legitimate reasons for a de-centralized land that is isolated, and culturally developing, to hate people who's culture hasn't changed in 30 years and is extremely controlling and centralized, that is, they control this isolated land that is a beacon of freedom across the sea of space next door to Earth. They still accept immigration and foreigners, immigration is part of their history and the colony is a result of mass immigration, but they are expected to give at least part of their identity to the 'nationalistic' pride and culture of the land.

They (the good guys and their home) are of this variety of xenophobia:

This is NOT the xenophobia demonstrated by the good guys in my book:

Does that sound justified? Or does it make them seem like bigots regardless?

EDIT: I have a thing for stories of nations or people who are oppressed or invaded but become stronger and prouder as a people, and also xenophobic and insular, because of it. Take Dark Elves and their homeland Morrowind from the Elder Scrolls for example... I love Dark Elves. The only non-Dark Elfy thing I ever really did though was free slaves, except in Oblivion there is no slaves.. so lol.

edited 2nd May '11 8:01:21 PM by jasonwill2

Well in Saint Cyprian most witches have non-human heritage, so pure human witches get a bit of snobery aimed at them.

My fanfic series is about chao, so there's a lot of Fantastic Racism between the Heroes and the Darks. I even parodied the Jim Crow laws with an episode.

I don't know about any prejudice from my own characters, but I myself, have some prejudice.

Men should be emotionally reserved and women should be submissive.

Well, guess that's more of an Author Appeal than anything...

My current story is largely a deconstruction of Fantastic Racism logic. Namely, the reason that racism is wrong in real life is because races are not inherently different from each other in any meaningful way. However, fantasy races often are, so it's nonsensical to portray Fantastic Racists as being universally equivalent to real-life racists. The story centers around a character who's "prejudiced" against an alien race that requires human death to survive. The other characters invoke What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?, despite the fact that in context it's utterly nonsensical.

edited 4th May '11 9:07:58 PM by PDown

In Milo's story, there's a lot of prejudice against carls. The Fantastic Slur of choice is 'rat' or 'demi'. Mainly because they're considered to be much weaker, cowardly, unreliable, that sort of thing. It goes the other way as well, but in that case I think it's probably a bit more justified.

In Forgotten Lore Zaran is slightly prejudiced against humans. She gets along with humans just fine, but does consider herself to be superior to them (to be fair, in some ways she is. In others, not really).

The world of the Zaran comic is supposed to have quite a lot of Fantastic Racism, altho so far that is not an element I've dwelled on. The two sapient species living in the Netherworld, fae and demons, hate each other (due to the latter almost erradicating the former several thousand years ago), demons from different Legions hate each other (due to constant inter-Legion war), demons of different types or social standing are prejudiced against each other (due to good old fashioned racism and elitism).

I've only addressed real-life prejudices in the form of humor (e.g. an argument in which it turns out that one character isn't gay Not That There's Anything Wrong with That, one character is gay but considers it a problem to work through, and one doesn't know what "gay" even means and is confused as to what would get stuck up what.) That said, anything I've written with a nonhuman species in it has at least one moment of racial conflict, and it's usually a product of mutual ignorance rather than necessity.

One of my characters is usually an unbelievably nice, warm, caring person. Unless she finds out you work for the government. In that case, run.

^Reminds a bit of Izumi Curtis and the people from the mining town from Full Metal Alchemist.

As for mine, well there's two way prejudice between the Psi and the Mundanes. The Psi like to think they're morally superior to the "untrustworthy close minded muns". Some mundanes (non Psi) think of the Psi as freaks.

Also the Psi have a lot of prejudice against empaths and telepaths. It's a common practice for parents to abandon their kids if they find out they have those abilities.

A bit, but pretend that they shot any government guys on sight and you'll have a slightly better idea of what I'm talking about.

Oh..wow....yeesh what did the government do?

In one story I have, the majority are prejudiced against mages, and mages are prejudiced against magic-stealers (who have the innate ability to drain magic and use it themselves). The protagonist always thought she was a death mage like her mother and brother, but it turns out she's a magic-stealer instead. Part of the prejudice in this world is made up of true facts exaggerated - for example, death mages are statistically more likely to be serial killers (though it's still rare) and fire mages can cause great destruction if they loose their tempers. In general, mages are feared for their power, which is also precisely why mages fear magic-stealers.

In another story, the protagonist, a vampire, is prejudiced against her own kind for religious reasons. This leads to a lot of self-destructive behavior, like starving herself and 'forgetting' that it's daytime.

In another story, everyone's afraid of EmotionEaters because the most well-known Emotion Eater was the former Big Bad. He was incredibly sadistic, mainly because he wanted to feed on fear and suffering. He was also frighteningly powerful.

Another story, which I'm not sure if I'll write, has the protagonist being 'mercy-killed' by her mother because her mother thinks autism is a Fate Worse than Death. (The story would open with her death, written from her mother's perspective, and then develop her character a bunch through flashbacks to various events in her life written from the perspectives of people who knew her, and then finally end by retelling her death from her perspective. But I find the thought of writing it really upsetting.)

I tend to like to write prejudice. But I have a rule that I'll only write it if I can understand the prejudiced person's perspective, so I don't write a Straw Man.

I've written about sexism, racism, prejudice against and because of religion, prejudice pertaining to economics, prejudice against single parents, against divorcees, against the mentally ill, prejudice against gays and lesbians, prejudice against teen mothers, and prejudice against people who've been in jail.

For obvious reasons I won't go into detail about each one, but most of these take place in Slice of Life stories.

My current work has scope for the characters' prejudices to show through - in fact, I'm going to have to work hard to prevent every single one of my characters being as tolerant of different lifestyles, sexual orientations and family groups as me .

But I've also got to write them in such a way that they don't break the story - no matter what they might think of one another, they're going to have to rely on one another to survive.

So murderous hatred and berserk buttons are out.

Have I written prejudices in my stories? Yes, absolutely. Just from my comics (which are mostly comedic):

In probably the biggest example, the qrtxians, being an attack on Space Elves and associated tropes, can be generalized as having a smug, paternalistic attitude towards other species. The main qrtxian character is more progressive, but even she has it in for humans. The species that Uplifted the qrtxians is even worse.

Matter of fact, this can really be extended to all aliens depicted. Most of the major galactic powers have at least one other species who they're prejudiced against, and the etis-tra hate everyone, although they are parodies of the "Space Nazi" idea, so that's to be expected. Most of them also have some other form of prejudice going along with them as well. Some of those are justified along the lines described by P Down above - for instance, the kaorrl gender-biased society makes more sense when you consider that kaorrl females really are about as twice as smart as their males. Most of these prejudices, though, don't have any sensible reason behind them and are just plain old Fantastic Racism (or fantastic chauvinism, fantastic homophobia, etc.).

In fact, my personal twist on the "Humans Are Diplomats" trope is that while humans are probably worse at diplomacy then the galactic average, the fact that we're new on the scene and don't have any of these long-standing issues makes us the best at it (at least until the aliens get to know us...) And I'm not even going start on the human characters, or anything else in the melding of genres I have going.

My other works, being less comedic in nature, have even more prejudices to deal with. But that's another story.

edited 4th May '11 9:07:45 PM by nrjxll