![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Short answer: yes.
(very) Long answer: yes, this is something that has actually been on my mind since the very beginning. As I think I’ve mentioned before, I have a whole list of atypical characters that I would love to bring onto the show. But when I first started coming up with the characters that would occupy the first season, there were a few things I had to keep in mind.
Structure. I thought more than three patients would be overwhelming and unruly to manage with the therapy format.
Actors. I was definitely going to be writing a character for myself (Sam) and for my best friend Anna (Chloe). This started out as a way to stay creative and write fun stuff for myself and my friends so that’s what I was considering. I knew I wanted Julia to play Dr. Bright pretty early on and Caleb was the second character I had ever thought of. The moment he was fully formed, Briggon seemed like the perfect fit.
My ability to write it. Girl with anxiety? Easy. Angsty, sensitive teenage boy? Yeah, I can do that (thanks YA fiction/high school au fanfics). Flower child with a heart of gold who is also fiercely intelligent? You bet (Chloe was written with Anna in mind and there are many similarities between them). Intelligent female psychologist? Yes, my sister is one of those, she can help me. Plus each of these characters has a piece of me and my perspectives, so I felt qualified to tell their stories.
The challenges/benefits a superpower would provide. This is a big one. I thought a lot about which power/character combos would be most interesting. Time travel/panic attacks, empathy/teenage hormones, mind reading/bleeding heart, etc. And I have dozens more of these in my list of atypicals. Which brings me to…
Shapeshifting/transgender. One of my first thoughts when planning out atypicals was, “wouldn’t it be cool if there was a trans character who was trying to gain control of their shapeshifting ability in order to change their physical body to what they felt on the inside”.
For those of you following along at home, yes, you have already encountered this person: Patient #6-C-1, mentioned once in Episode 17A and then seen by Caleb and Adam on one of their stake-outs. Even though there is absolutely no indication of this canonically, in my head that person is trans (pre-transition).
So why haven’t we seen more of this character? Well, for all the reasons I just talked about.
Structure. Damien is technically the only other patient we’ve added after the initial three. And he is a necessary foil/antagonist to the rest. All the other characters we’ve added have either been serving an antagonizing purpose or are characters that we’d alluded to in the first season (Adam, Mark, Frank, etc.). Because we only see two or three characters per episode, I’m constantly worried about overstuffing the cast.
Actors. As I said, this has been an exercise in casting my friends. We’ve never held a casting call (mostly because they are time consuming and cost money) and I would obviously want to cast a trans actor to play this role. And I know that if I put in the effort, I could find this person. But the whole production side of this podcast is way more thrown together than it may appear so this is entirely an organizational failure on my part.
My ability to write it. This is the biggest obstacle in having this trans character in the podcast. I am not trans. While I’ve known plenty of trans people in my life in various stages of coming out and transitioning, I can never know what that process is like. Ever since imaging this character I’ve been thinking, “this seems like a cool idea to me, but would it actually be offensive to trans people?”.
There are certain stretches I can make in my writing (for instance, I write male characters and characters with very different morals from my own) but with trans representation being so sparse, as you said, I didn’t feel I was the right voice to tell a trans story. So then it becomes about finding someone to consult with - either a trans writer or even the actor who ends up playing this character. I know it’s not something I can do alone. Even in writing this answer, I worry that I will somehow misrepresent or offend those who are trans. Trying to tackle this subject in the podcast is something that very much intimidates me because I care so deeply about doing it right.
And to go back to the more practical obstacles, we’re only adding two more voice actors this season and that will be it for the foreseeable future. The unfortunate reality is that I am but one person with a very busy life, for whom this podcast is still basically a really fun hobby (not in the sense that I do it in my spare time (because it is all my time), but in the sense that it does not pay my bills). There are a hundred ideas and stories I want to get to, and I simple do not have the time or brain capacity to do so all at once.
So that is the very long-winded, somewhat spoiler-y reply to your thoughtful question. I debated about how much to give away in this answer but I figured full disclosure was best. I’m not trying to make excuses - I know that there are extremely talented trans artists out there that I should seek out. And hopefully, as the world of the podcast expands, I will be able to do so.
I’m glad that you find The Bright Sessions to be a place of diversity and I am constantly striving to improve it on that front. I just want to make sure that I do it right.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2g4W4OV
via IFTTT
(very) Long answer: yes, this is something that has actually been on my mind since the very beginning. As I think I’ve mentioned before, I have a whole list of atypical characters that I would love to bring onto the show. But when I first started coming up with the characters that would occupy the first season, there were a few things I had to keep in mind.
Structure. I thought more than three patients would be overwhelming and unruly to manage with the therapy format.
Actors. I was definitely going to be writing a character for myself (Sam) and for my best friend Anna (Chloe). This started out as a way to stay creative and write fun stuff for myself and my friends so that’s what I was considering. I knew I wanted Julia to play Dr. Bright pretty early on and Caleb was the second character I had ever thought of. The moment he was fully formed, Briggon seemed like the perfect fit.
My ability to write it. Girl with anxiety? Easy. Angsty, sensitive teenage boy? Yeah, I can do that (thanks YA fiction/high school au fanfics). Flower child with a heart of gold who is also fiercely intelligent? You bet (Chloe was written with Anna in mind and there are many similarities between them). Intelligent female psychologist? Yes, my sister is one of those, she can help me. Plus each of these characters has a piece of me and my perspectives, so I felt qualified to tell their stories.
The challenges/benefits a superpower would provide. This is a big one. I thought a lot about which power/character combos would be most interesting. Time travel/panic attacks, empathy/teenage hormones, mind reading/bleeding heart, etc. And I have dozens more of these in my list of atypicals. Which brings me to…
Shapeshifting/transgender. One of my first thoughts when planning out atypicals was, “wouldn’t it be cool if there was a trans character who was trying to gain control of their shapeshifting ability in order to change their physical body to what they felt on the inside”.
For those of you following along at home, yes, you have already encountered this person: Patient #6-C-1, mentioned once in Episode 17A and then seen by Caleb and Adam on one of their stake-outs. Even though there is absolutely no indication of this canonically, in my head that person is trans (pre-transition).
So why haven’t we seen more of this character? Well, for all the reasons I just talked about.
Structure. Damien is technically the only other patient we’ve added after the initial three. And he is a necessary foil/antagonist to the rest. All the other characters we’ve added have either been serving an antagonizing purpose or are characters that we’d alluded to in the first season (Adam, Mark, Frank, etc.). Because we only see two or three characters per episode, I’m constantly worried about overstuffing the cast.
Actors. As I said, this has been an exercise in casting my friends. We’ve never held a casting call (mostly because they are time consuming and cost money) and I would obviously want to cast a trans actor to play this role. And I know that if I put in the effort, I could find this person. But the whole production side of this podcast is way more thrown together than it may appear so this is entirely an organizational failure on my part.
My ability to write it. This is the biggest obstacle in having this trans character in the podcast. I am not trans. While I’ve known plenty of trans people in my life in various stages of coming out and transitioning, I can never know what that process is like. Ever since imaging this character I’ve been thinking, “this seems like a cool idea to me, but would it actually be offensive to trans people?”.
There are certain stretches I can make in my writing (for instance, I write male characters and characters with very different morals from my own) but with trans representation being so sparse, as you said, I didn’t feel I was the right voice to tell a trans story. So then it becomes about finding someone to consult with - either a trans writer or even the actor who ends up playing this character. I know it’s not something I can do alone. Even in writing this answer, I worry that I will somehow misrepresent or offend those who are trans. Trying to tackle this subject in the podcast is something that very much intimidates me because I care so deeply about doing it right.
And to go back to the more practical obstacles, we’re only adding two more voice actors this season and that will be it for the foreseeable future. The unfortunate reality is that I am but one person with a very busy life, for whom this podcast is still basically a really fun hobby (not in the sense that I do it in my spare time (because it is all my time), but in the sense that it does not pay my bills). There are a hundred ideas and stories I want to get to, and I simple do not have the time or brain capacity to do so all at once.
So that is the very long-winded, somewhat spoiler-y reply to your thoughtful question. I debated about how much to give away in this answer but I figured full disclosure was best. I’m not trying to make excuses - I know that there are extremely talented trans artists out there that I should seek out. And hopefully, as the world of the podcast expands, I will be able to do so.
I’m glad that you find The Bright Sessions to be a place of diversity and I am constantly striving to improve it on that front. I just want to make sure that I do it right.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2g4W4OV
via IFTTT
