Realistic or Progressive?

So. Is it better to write realistically or progressively?

For example, many men learn that emotions = bad. Do not show that tenderness, do not cry, etc. etc.

Is it better to have your male characters act this way (within reason, of course, no need to stereotype or strawman), or perhaps have them act in a more neutral way, so as to be an example?

Or go from realistic to progressive?

Neither one is better or worse. Just write for the individual.

Well, that's not always so easy.

For example, in Captain America, when segregation was in full swing, black people were shown mingling with the non-black people.

No "individual" here, just some extras that were used.

Seconded. While a character's behaviour is dependent upon you as a writer, it need not be dependent upon one's ideal of how someone should act. And even putting that aside, people exhibit different degrees of openness naturally, regardless of conditioning.

Crap, ninja'd again...

Once more, it depends heavily upon context. For example, there were a number of cities in the North at the time that were not segregated. The South, on the other hand... yes, that would be more than a bit unrealistic.

edited 9th Sep '11 10:50:57 AM by JHM

Depends entirely on the rules of the world you're writing in? I mean, discrimination going "poof!" entirely is perfectly acceptable (if a bit idealistic, but that's another problem) if the rules of your world say it is so for whatever reason.

And even then, quite a few people in the North and South were ambivalent towards matters of race relations or integration, while some were more passionate on either ends of the spectrum.

How you want to portray it depends on the story you're trying to tell. Realistic or progressive can work, or neither can work.

So yeah, context is everything.

edited 9th Sep '11 11:11:43 AM by BetsyandtheFiveAvengers

Yej: Very well. "Realistic in terms of the world that is set up, or Progressive?"

I don't think it's particularly progressive to pretend that common prejudices and discriminatory societal roles don't exist.

Equally, though, stereotypes are not reality. If all your male characters were entirely stoic, for example, I'd find that rather implausible and uninteresting because large groups of people do not tend to perfectly conform to how society expects them to be.

I prefer realism, personally. When I wrote my World War One story, the vast majority of the cast consists of straight white males, because anything else doesn't make sense.

You don't have to condone the status quo, though. I got an interesting side-plot out of showing a segregated unit (i.e. all black) and its interactions with the white people they have to defend. And the narrative doesn't really treat the various bad thinking processes shown well, so...

In that case, why not make them the same thing?

Yej: Because the answer isn't always "change entire world that was created so one minor fact will be justified."

USAF: Inaccurate. They could be very very closeted.

edited 9th Sep '11 1:25:26 PM by MrAHR

Is the question you're trying to ask "Is it a writer's job to try and promote a better society?"

If you've already designed the world to one interpretation, then...why is this a question? Go with what you have.

But in a general sense, you don't have a responsibility to set an example. Your responsibility as the writer is to your story, what improves it and what does not; and even that is negotiable to a degree.

Well, that is part of it, yes.

True. But I don't write them like that. It's not relevant to the story, since, you know, war drama, not romance...

Well... this wouldn't even apply to a conworld. A conworld can be whatever it wants to be, so long as it's consistent. Granted, super-happy-perfect-ideal-utopia wouldn't be realistic either way, but Crapsack World might not be either, without a good reason for it.

In the real world, however, I think it's better to accurately reflect life and disparage what you don't like than to basically lie to the readership or just look like you just didn't gave a damn.

Writing is a means to multiple ends.

One end can be that of showing how a better society would work; or, in microcosm, how a better individual, family, group, company, school, town, or nation would work.

I don't think it a writer's duty to do so.

I also think that if one is careless in doing that, it breaks suspension of disbelief. It also can fail to show how doing better is, well, better; or show how better could be practicably achieved; or how doing better would be an advantage; or many other useful things.

A writer gets more leeway, in the main, to pick their viewpoint characters. After all, the choice there is explicit: "there are millions of people in the world, but I chose this one to star in my story". Thus the viewpoint characters and/or protagonists can be any ideal you wish, as long as you write them well. They in turn get to choose who they associate with, to a degree.

It also, I think, depends on whether what you're depicting is an extrapolation; for instance, just because you have a black character who passes through the American South doesn't mean they are guaranteed to encounter serious racism. It's certainly possible not to, and you can make the decision that that's not part of the story you want to tell, and thus you will assume that everyone they meet is on the better end of things.

My characters tend to develop progressively. For example, Justin and his older Expy Joel are extremely introverted and shy, Finn is clumsy, Scott is in a Genki Girl Savvy Guy duo of sorts, Kevin is ditzy and childish, etc.

In short, they go against what their gender is often seen as.

But other characters react to them in a more realistic way. All but Finn are outcasts, and Finn avoids social interaction for academics, never playing sports like "boys are supposed to do". Really, it's all about what makes both the character and the plot more interesting. Man vs Society conflicts, especially those perceived internally, are interesting.

edited 9th Sep '11 2:21:49 PM by chihuahua0

I fail to understand the question.

I disagree that conworlds can be whatever the writer wants them to be.

Many of the features of our past emerged from biological facts, often basic-level biological facts, and even in a conworld the characters will still be biologically human, and thus constrained by the same biological facts, from which dynamics disturbingly similar to those of our past will - must - emerge.

That said, one must be mindful of the slight variety that did exist between historical societies. All were not exact clones of each other.

This is where you went wrong, by the way.

It's a mistake to assume that a progressive person can't be realistic. I'd like to think that I'm an example of that.

(Personally, I feel most comfortable writing people who, in one way or another, are alienated from the society they live in. Making them progressive is one way of achieving that.)

edited 10th Sep '11 3:04:42 AM by feotakahari

No, seriously, what is the question?

^ Roughly, is it better to make characters conform to the behavioural standards expected by society, or should your stories portray a liberal, egalitarian world where such stereotypes are completely ignored?

There's nothing wrong with a progressive character (I'll refrain from getting into a tizzy over how "progressive" is basically meaningless here... for the thirtieth time...), but a progressive society that isn't justified will come across as too perfect.

Every society—even the society of the future—will have its prejudices. Today it's racism and sexism. Tomorrow it will be anti-transhumansm or attacks on AI or bias against clones or some other such science fiction thing. It may not have the same problems, but it will still have a metric fuckton of problems.

So, I guess, if you want your politically "progressive" character, there's nothing wrong with that, but society should react accordingly...

Why not both?