They might be the best people for the job so they absolutely could have, Trans doesn't make you more talented than Cis.
This is arguably my biggest issue with this mentality. The idea that you can't speak to or from a perspective unless you are the type of person you're representing. It's absurd. I don't get where it comes from.
I'd like to hear Heather respond to this more specifically, but as she's not here, I'll paraphrase the article: as a transwoman, it matters to her an awful lot that trans characters not only be represented in games, but also designed and portrayed by trans creators.
I'm a straight white cis guy. I can only imagine what it's like to not be a member of the "default" demographic depicted in the games I play. While I don't have specific experience to inform my sympathy, I disagree that the importance of this issue to Heather is absurd. She wrote an article about it and hung a bullseye on herself in doing so--it's obviously a big deal for her.
@shaanyboi: No one is stopping women (or transwomen, or transmen) from getting into the games industry. There are no barriers preventing them from getting involved.
Though, I have to admit, I'm not sure what you think this has to do with a voice actor's gender.
Given the copious reporting over the last few years on the difficulties faced by women in the tech field generally, I think it's possible that you are under-informed. And perhaps that many commenters here are similarly under-informed.
@privatemalarkey: The only valid metacriticism of a character's portrayal is one of honesty and believability. It's not valid to complain that the character wasn't voiced or written by a person with a similar background.
If this is your opinion, then it's difficult to understand why you're typing full paragraphs here instead of very short sentences. Basically everything being discussed here is invalid to you--why even engage?
Why do people care who voices a character? Shouldn't whoever sounds most like the creator's vision for that character be picked, whether it's a black woman playing a white character or a white woman playing a black character?
No.
Really rational and well thought out response, good job. The comment above is correct; It shouldn't matter who voices the character. The only thing that should have any bearing on choice of voice actor is whether the developer feels they fit the role.
This is another issue worth addressing on its own. A lot of commenters have said things similar to the bolded sentence, and it's not really fair to state such a thing as fact. Some would argue differently!
If Aziz Ansari was cast as Abraham Lincoln, it wouldn't seem crazy to hear a straight white cis man say "I don't care what the director of this film thinks. I disagree with this casting choice. Abraham Lincoln was a white guy and it's ridiculous that he's being portrayed by an actor who is not." It feels unfair to hear so many people disregarding Heather's opinion that Krem should have been voice acted by a transman.
Maybe authorial approval of the performance is more important. Maybe the approval of a member of the community represented by the character is more important. That's a judgment call. But dismissing the issue out of hand is disrespectful.
There's a lot of different issues being conflated in this discussion, to its detriment. We'd be better served if we unpacked a few of them and made sure they didn't get fudged together. I'll focus on the core issue with this post.
"Everybody should be represented in fiction, and everybody should be involved in its creation. So why should we allocate any special effort to making sure that, for example, trans individuals are specifically involved in the representation of trans characters?" This is the main rebuttal a lot of folks are using to respond to Heather's core argument: that the intermediate step Heather wants to see in games is an unnecessary intermediate step.
In a truly utopian scenario, sure, every type of character would be represented in games and every type of person would be involved in their representation. But we're not there yet, and more importantly, we're not even close to there. An out-of-shape person doesn't say "it would be great to run a marathon" on January 1 and then run a marathon on January 2. There is discomfort, effort, sacrifice and pain involved along the way. Even if every developer agreed on Monday morning that it would be great to achieve this scenario, it won't just immediately happen without intermediate steps along the way.
A more apt, and less conversationally comfortable, analogy might be the difficulties faced by black Americans in 2016: slavery was outlawed in this country a hundred and fifty years ago, and the Civil Rights Act was passed fifty years ago. But it's pretty clear we haven't reached a utopian conclusion to the issues faced by black people in America. Simply saying "it would be better if this was all behind us" doesn't work. Intermediate steps are necessary.
Now, if you think Heather's specific request--to see trans writers and trans actors involved in the portrayal of trans characters--is a poor one, and you've got a better idea for a next step, suggest it. But pretending it's possible to simply skip to the end goal is naivete.
I still have a small pad of paper full of notes my mom wrote herself on how to use work-related software. Looking at something as simple as that is like a punch in the gut every time. I can't even imagine what it must have taken you to write this piece.
It's a consistently confusing trend in this comments section how frequently I see people saying, basically, "You shouldn't have written this article."
"I disagree with you." is one thing. But "You shouldn't have written this in the first place." is on a different level. What else do you folks think Heather does for a living?
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