Joke's on me. I just spent a half hour thinking about an essay I want to write about how "Your MC lacks agency" is inherently racist and ethnocentric LMFAO https://twitter.com/EmeryLeeWho/status/1293771181401620480

I really could write whole VOLUMES about how wanting "Eastern mythos" while decrying Eastern storytelling conventions as bad writing is just fancily clad appropriation.

Or how diversifying publishing needs to begin with accepting diverse narratives beyond diverse characters.

But LOL when I finally lay out a complex piece like that, it won't be in a Twitter thread. Imma make that shit Scholarly.

Adding this context since I'm already losing followers: I'm not saying "giving your characters agency" is racist.

I'm saying that assuming the MC of every story needs to constantly be pursuing wants for a story to have value inherently devalues many great Eastern stories.

The idea that all good stories are driven by the MCs wants is a Western construct, yet it's taken as a universal truth. It's not.

Until publishing is willing to reexamine what it posits as universal storytelling devices, it will always be racist and exclude Eastern stories.