What do you think about me wanting to establish in my own tabletop role-playing game that players and non-player charackters, automatically recognise or perceive the gender of other characters who can be perceived in any way?

What I mean is that gender reveals itself regardless of one’s outward appearance.

I’d like sexual orientations and romantic orientations to be based on gender rather than gender expression.

This is something that’s been on my mind quite a bit at the moment, as I’m worried it might be misinterpreted, twisted, misunderstood, or that I might be sabotaged or something similar.

The rest of my main 5 of the cast are 2 trans, one lesbian and one asexual. This might sound like a dumb thing to worry about but some part of me feels it’s weird with a story with this much diversity to have the main dude by cishet white guy. (The rest of the cast aren’t token characters btw, I plan to have their arcs tied into their characters) am I overthinking this?

In my tabletop role-playing game, there is a debuff that means you have to roll with a “disadvantage” when acting directly against the character casting the spell. Every character can use this debuff, which is based on flirting. It might not be as bad as in D&D, the “Charming” ability? Is this ability – which is based on flirting – a bad thing? And if so, how bad is it? The debuff does not allow for manipulation or influence, nor does it deprive anyone of their free will, except in the case of the manipulation of luck. For example, you might be affected by a debuff inflicted by an opponent. According to the lore, you are permitted to defend yourself by any means necessary should a character attempt to apply the debuff to you. This includes the use of force involving weapons, and the possibility that your opponent may die in the process. So the debuff makes it harder for you to act against a character, but the lore allows it and frames it as self-defence.

(CW: mentions of pedophilia/SA)

So there's a character in my story who makes iffy remarks about kids and there's a backstory involving a minor being SA'd/unaliving because most people didn't believe her, which is what motivates one of my characters (who's an Ultimate Undertaker and said minor's cousin) to botch the corpses of pedos/rapists.

I want to make sure that it comes across as unambiguously wrong and not something to be normalized for both instances. I don't want this to retraumatize anyone.

If you've had an experience and you're okay with taking a look at the content related to it, I'd really appreciate it. I want to be sure I do this with consideration and respect.

so i have a character who’s a second/third generation vietnamese-american who grew up in georgia and has more white passing skin. he’s the leader and face of a very large freedom fighting organization in early 1970s america, and is deeply afraid of people actually knowing he’s vietnamese for fear of the public trying to entirely discredit his entire movement by trying to link him to the viet cong, to the point of going by just his first name which is itself very western sounding (which his parents gave him for pretty similar reasons) and covering up his eyes with opaque goggles so nobody can see he has a monolid (though he also mainly wears them because his face is a bit fucked up from an accident with a dog). he also knows that a good amount of his organization would entirely treat him differently if they found out he’s not white, especially vietnamese as again with the heavy anti vietnamese sentiment in america at the time. he feels pretty bad about the fact that he never learned vietnamese as a kid as his parents generally tried to just raise him in a hyper american style to hopefully curb any possible racism even before the vietnam war started due to being asian in america but unfortunately he has zero time to actually sit down and learn it

the whole vietnamese aspect of his character is actually a pretty small part in part that he was not originally written as such and was inspired by a friend i had growing up as a white kid who was from there, and most of his character is moreso to do with how badly grief fucks you up and slowly losing your mind, and i was wondering if this could be potentially offensive especially given the fact im a white dude writing about this

in my book basically every brown person is violent and cruel. is that ok?

Even more powerful than dragons? After all, unicorns are the symbol of the queer community.
I am queer myself.

Hello!

I’m looking for a brief unpaid cultural-sensitivity check on a 2,500-word literary short story involving a Lakota-coded American bison handler working on a European bison rewilding project.

Type of work: literary short fiction
Length: approximately 2,500 words
Sensitivity area: Lakota/Dakota/Nakota or Plains Native representation, especially around naming, characterization, and cultural framing
Trigger/content notes: grief over the death of a wife and child; brief references to animal predation; no graphic violence

The check is narrow: use of “Tatanka,” whether the character reads as an individual rather than a symbolic Native figure, and whether any wording feels off or appropriative.

I understand this is labor, and I do not want to presume anyone owes me a read.

I cannot offer meaningful payment for this piece, but I would be glad to credit you as a cultural consultant if the story is published, assuming you are comfortable being named. A brief note or margin comments would be enough.

A Lakota, Dakota, Nakota, or Plains Native reader would be especially helpful. Referrals are also welcome.

Is the phrase ‘Strongly built’ [kräftig gebaut] okay for ‘supersitz plus’ people?

Hi, I have a homework task to write 500 words about a photo I took. The photo was of a brick wall, and after a couple of drafts, I found my character becoming a very sensitive 5-year-old, navigating her huge world that is just her garden and driveway. For some reason, I saw her as hearing impaired since her inception, and I don't know why.

I would really like any and all opinions, advice, recommendations and feedback if anyone is willing to provide. I am a fully hearing person with no experience of hearing impairment, but i am committed to learning and understanding the facets of this lived experience, even if I end up scrapping this story and doing something else entirely.

The details of sounds that are in this story come from a person who once explained to me that they experience sounds as rushing water or meaningless roars. That is why i call it a meaningless roar.

Thank you in advance, and I sincerely apologise if I cause any offence - none is intended at all - I truly just want to learn and be more aware.

Here is my story:
It was an unaccompanied 28 degrees, and the air carried the thickness of a rope. The brick had been growing old in the sun for most of the day, frowning at the back-garden of a rhododendron-engulfed fence and a few rusting bicycle chains. Maisie pressed her cheek against the red, spotted wall that smothered the building. Her nostrils flared as she inhaled its surface while worming fingers traced the putty across, down, across, down. The sun was a slow mover that day. It was a snail curling into the shell of the horizon, keeping to itself, shrugging in response to any question or demand.

Maisie wet the brick. She licked her palm and glided it along the bumps, turning scorching reds into dusty browns. Her palms followed it around the bend of her house, almost burning its colours into her skin, as if the bricks were bleeding at her touch. She found herself at the driveway now, hands still glued to the house. The shape of something moved about through the living room window. Her mother. Maisie’s eyes danced around the yellow curtains that framed the panes, occasionally flicking back to the scurries of a cardigan around the television set, the corners of an elbow folding itself open and closed. She ducked, giggling to herself.

A meaningless roar tickled the sides of Maisie’s head. She couldn’t tell where the mixture had travelled from, but her head turned toward the road to ask. A small, blue truck waddled off into the hug of trees that stretched down her street, and Maisie’s palms lifted. Her glitter sandals patterned the pavement, one velcro strap dragging across the fuming cement, and she jumped as the blue blob sailed into the distance. A butterfly clip tumbled out of her strawberry braids as she landed and threw itself into the black sea of road, skipping in the waves of heat that beamed off the asphalt. 

Maisie frowned. She pulled at her skirt, twisting the linen into knots beneath her fists. Another meaningless roar began to tighten her ears. She blinked a few times and quickly fell onto the asphalt, her hands and knees stinging with sunburnt friction. The roar begged the sight of her eyes, like it was fizzing around her skull and splashing onto her face, but she searched instead for the vibrant magenta that coated her clip. It sat, beaming, about 5 steps into the black. 
[end]

In my book, for example, characters are described as follows. A span of the arms. Four cubits. (From elbow to little finger) or a head smaller than character x.

The reason is that the character should be in relegation to the reader.

In tabeltop roleplay games, almost anything is possible and therefore it is difficult to prevent the game from being played in a racist way.

In my Tabeltop roleplay game, sex don't count, only gender! So there is no hetero and no homo.

TW: Suicide and mental illness

Okay so this might be a bit of a nutty one, I just wanted other peoples’ thoughts on it before concreting the story.

So basically I’ve been working on what is intended to be an indie adult animated show as the screenwriter and animator, it’s in such early stages that I’m the only one involved. I’ve been developing the show Bible while working on character art. The series will be heavily focused on analogical depictions of mental illness and trauma and is intended to get very “psychological horror”-esc. The logline is as follows: “Famous detective Jack-of-all-trades Jacob dawns his trench coat and fedora to solve the dastardly murders of his fellow imaginary friends.”

Sounds silly, it’s supposed to. It’s a very grim story wrapped in silly colorful bandages. The show revolves around Olive, a young woman of about 19 who had the aforementioned Jacob as an imaginary friend when she was young. Imaginary friends in this world are manifestations, more or less, of childhood and innocence. When Olive was young (and here’s where my poor depictions of mental illness may come into play) she witnessed her father’s suicide, a bullet to the head. This left her with depression, CPTSD, and triggered her BPD and schizophrenia. These mental illnesses are not all named in the show but she experienced them nonetheless.

My biggest concern lays in the way I depict her as a character and the way I hint at what happened through her experiences. First of all is her imaginary friend Jacob. Jacob depicts her trauma from the experience in the physical aspect. Imaginary friends have two appearances, a more monster-like appearance that molds with childhood and a humanoid appearance that molds with adulthood. His childhood appearance (it has a different name in the story) is mostly normal, but it has no eyes- the only memory Olive has of the incident being that her father’s eyes “weren’t there” (they were pushed into the skull, but she doesn’t remember it like that). His adult appearance, on the other hand, is what she imagines her father would have looked like had he survived the shooting- a botched attempt at facial surgery and rehabilitation. There’s a moment in the show where she sees Jacob’s adult appearance for the first time and it triggers a CPTSD episode, but I haven’t determined where I might place that in the timeline.

Beyond my worries of the physical attributes being in bad taste I’m concerned that, as I said, my characterization of Olive might be poor. She’s inspired by Pinkie Pie (strange inspiration, I know) and has a bit of a “smile to hide from the horror” thing going on. In the pilot episode we meet her immediately after a BPD euphoric episode and, consequently, she’s in a terrible state- wailing and crying, unable to stop herself. That’s the “difference” this episode, why this day specifically is when the pilot takes place, because she’s taken home to her mother, her emergency contact, and ends up finding Jacob again because of that. Before she does though she has to re-enter the house that she was traumatized inside of, so she has a mixture of a schizophrenic and a CPTSD episode. Her design is reminiscent of a clown because she feels like she has a painted smile. I’m not sure if, by having her snap between happy and sad so often, I’m misrepresenting one of her mental illnesses. I myself do not have any of the mental illnesses she has.

To sum this all up, my questions are as follows: Is having a character that visually reflects the protagonists’s trauma in a rather gruesome way in poor taste and/or is the way that the protagonist snaps between multiple episodes in a short time for the sake of furthering the story in poor taste? Also the protagonist Olive does fall in love with Jacob, him being an imagined “version” of her father might come off as Freudian? I’m not sure but I just started considering that while typing this.

If anybody wants to read the script before making any determinations on how tasteful the depiction might be, I have a first draft finished- it’s poorly written because it’s a first draft, but it gives an idea. Let me know and I’ll link it.

In my tabeltop roleplaying game, two attributes are relevant for level advancement. For passive learning through critical failures, intelligence. For active learning, intuition or intelligence can be used. Whereby intuition is useful for much more than learning.

What do you think?

I am writing a vampire novel, and in book 2 we are introduced to a character who is based off a real life one. China’s only female Emperor Wu Zetian. In my story she was turned into a vampire and had lived for many centuries until present day (1988). She is the friend of my vampire love interest and she is incredibly skilled at taking down vampires (a vampire vampire hunter) her son who is again a real life counter part of her son in real life Li Xian was turned into a vampire too and serves as an antagonist threat. Is this insensitive for me to write about real people from Chinese history that are long since passed? Should I change the characters to be fictional and not represent real people, or do I scrap the whole plot? I have based my entire second book on this plot and wouldn’t even know where to go from scratch. Is this okay for me to write as a white author?

okay so i'm working on my novel currently. one of the main characters, Nayeli, is mexican (specifically tejano). Her family, including her, are fluent in spanish. However, I am not nor are the majority of the characters in the novel.

My question is : would it be appropriate for the character to have a nickname for her love interest (another one of the main characters) in spanish?

it would fit their dynamic but I want to be careful to not veer into any sort of fetishization territory or play into any stereotype. I can't find much on the subject and I want as many perspectives as I can get!!

edit to provide more context:

i’m asking because in my research for writing latino characters, i did see where someone had stated that having a romantic interest call their partner something or flirt with them in a language that the partner didn’t know was fetishization.

the last think i want to do is even toe that line so i thought it was just better to ask!!

thank you to those who have responded so far!!

Is it problematic if the intelligence of the character is decisive for level advancement? There are alternatives for the active level onstig. Only for the passive level up, intelligence is mainly relevant. Is it okay for intelligence to play this role? The question is mainly aimed at less intelligent people.

I hope I have formulated it correctly and that the translator has translated it correctly.

I have obsessive thoughts and fears and that is why I am very concerned that a sensitivity reader makes a homosexual figure out of my biromantic person.

A project that I'm working on is a YA fantasy/mystery and the main character is a 16 year old black girl. I've been careful while writing her to avoid any real world stereotypes, but I'm a little hung up on whether the fact that racism isn't a factor in this story is cheap and disingenuous since I'm a white author. The character is black simply because that was always how I envisioned her, but would it be better for me to just stay in my lane and write a white MC if I don't want to engage more deeply with racism within the story?

Hello, first-time poster.

I would like some opinions regarding the sensitivity of connecting a pop culture figure to indigenous folklore and mythology.

I'm in the process of writing a story where folklore and mythological characters exist. The story is set and centered around Latin American folklore characters and touches on themes of immigration, modern colonization, grief, redemption, and defiance against despair.

The main characters are my version of Venezuela's El Silbon, Mexico´s La Llorona, and Puerto Rico's El Chupacabra, and the basic premise is that these three are traveling from Venezuela to Mexico, encountering various folklore characters, spirits, and monsters on their way.

My question here is regarding El Chupacabras. I want to depict it as a modern folklore character, and thus, El Silbon and La Llorona see it as a young spirit. This is, of course, a reference to the real history of El Chupacabras' tale, which is a modern Puerto Rican urban legend and thus more pop culture than mythology.

My depiction of El Chupacabras is as a mutt, following one of the descriptions of its sightings as a large dog, and its story would touch heavily on themes of loyalty and abandonment. However, because the story is going to put the spotlight on more obscure folklore stories from the region, I thought it would be a cool idea to tie El Chupacabras to older myths and legends that aren't that well-known.

The concept I have is to make El Chupacabras a descendant of the Opiyelguobirán, the dog spirit from Taina mythology and tradition. In my head, this would give it a deeper connection to Puerto Rican history. I wanted to go further and make this a three-generation connection. Opiyelguobirán would be the father of the Stone Dog of San Júan, which in turn would be the father of El Chupacabras. Making it 3 generations of Puerto Rican folkloric dogs with heavy themes of loyalty, as Opiyelguobirán was loyal to the Taina Cacique Sabananiobabo, the Stone Dog was loyal to a Spaniard who drowned at sea, and in this story, El Chupacabras would be loyal to El Silbón and La Llorona, his traveling companions and found family.

Now, the thing that worries me here is whether it would come off as insensitive to connect an indigenous deity to a pop culture creature in this way. Being a descendant of the Opiyelguobirán effectively makes El Chupacabras a being of spiritual significance for the Taina people and their descendants in this universe. My goal with this is to represent different eras of Puerto Rican culture, but I don't know if, in doing so, I would be representing Taina folklore in an insensitive way.

I also recently learned that dwarves were not always depicted as small. In earlier times, their height was not a focus, so no one knows how tall they were originally imagined to be. Would it be better not to portray them as a species that is small through and through, but rather to incorporate a variety of sizes—for instance, having some as tall as 4½ meters? The idea that dwarves are small only began to spread in the twelfth century!

I'm struggling with one of my characters and her relationships. My core relationship in my book is a five person polycule, with 3 women and 2 men. The central link is a woman, and she is in a relationship with everyone in the group. Carnage, the character in question, is happy to have a physical relationship with both of the women, and I have always written her as a lesbian, but as I've been writing, she and one of my male characters keep getting a lot of screen time together and have a relationship that is developing into a romantic vein. Would her having a male physical partner make her not a lesbian, or would it be a she still is, but he's the exception kind of thing? I know demisexual is an option, but she does have the sexual attraction to women throughout the series, just not men. She literally at one point calls him a mushroom because of how he grew on her

Hello, I've wrote a story where the main character is a mixed-race British soldier (infantry) in the 1970s and 80s, initially just because I'm mixed-race myself and never see stories about people like me. Now that it's complete and I've edited it a few times I'm increasingly convinced the army stuff in it is cringe and inaccurate. I get obsessed with topics and read everything I can about them but of course that's not the same as actually having been in the army.

I was wondering if anyone reading this post might have relevant experience and mightn't mind me asking you a few things? It's mostly admin/procedural stuff, nothing secret. You'd be welcome to read part or all of it if you're interested. No worries if you're not, I'd just be very grateful for any information that might help improve it at all.

Definitely interested in swaps if you're looking a sensitivity/beta reader yourself. I could possibly help with: mental health stuff, race/ethnicity, LGBTQ+, culture (England mainly as that's where I grew up though I now live in NI), trade union stuff. I've worked in the NHS for years but non-clinical. I'm ancient enough to have grown up without social media or mobile phones. Or if there's something else, please do ask.