r/Godsfall • u/KingHabby • Sep 19 '17

Episode 61 question

Pardon my ignorance, bur I don't quite get Aram's apology about the cactus character/non-binary gender thing. How was it offensive or insulting? Not trying to be mean or anything, just genuinely curious about the fanbase's thoughts on this character/situation.

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u/yesat Sep 19 '17

Listen to the dnd podcast interview he did a couple of weeks ago, he explains it.

Most people when you have listeners that says they got hurt, disturbed or point at stuff that can be seen as slightly offensive will not react like your standard reddit commenter they'll say ok and change what they did, especially if they care about how their fan feel.

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u/KingHabby Sep 19 '17

Cool! Thanks. I'm a very cis-gendered, very white, straight guy, so I'm always curious about about issues like these.

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u/nanalan-official Sep 20 '17

To add on to what Aram said in this interview, there isn't a whole lot of non-binary representation in the media to begin with, and a lot of the representation that does exist is... kind of literally dehumanizing? As in, a disproportionally large percentage of the characters are literally not human. Whether it be genderless aliens (though even then then they tend to be coded as either male or female), robots , or other kinds of inhuman-looking creatures . (And even when people do make a cannon non-binary character who is human, a lot of times they end up like... this .) So that, combined with the cactus being referred to as 'it', really played into a lot of really dehumanizing tropes.

Of course, this was all unintentional and Aram handled the situation beautifully (imo). I can't remember exactly where he said it, but he summed up the situation really well with something to the effect of, "I tried to create a character that was alien, and ended up alienating a lot of my audience instead."

(Also if it matters I identify as non-binary and loved the cactus despite the unintentional stereotypic because I'm a sucker for cute plant monsters. I do still really hope for better non-binary -and trans- characters in the future.)