My Gryphon Clerks series explores some social issues directly, others indirectly, and still others by showing them simply not being issues.

For example: the earlier books just showed men and women being equal in society. No discussion, really; that was just how it was.

Then I got into the politics of gnomes, and decided that they would have a very clear division of labour between male and female gnomes, and (with them being newly freed from service to the dwarves, and interacting more with humans) that this tradition would come into question. Mister Bucket for Assembly explored that. And, of course, ethnic prejudice against gnomes and the ways in which ethnic prejudice plays out, whether the Other is short and pale with pointy ears or… distinguishable in some other way.

My current WIP takes it further: young gnomes are being cast out of their families and having to live on the streets because they refuse to conform to the gendered division of labour. That doesn’t really happen in our society, but parallel things do.

And also in the current WIP, two gnome women are attracted to one another, and that is Not OK in their society, and they have to figure out how to work with that.

So I read this piece by Kay Solo on different approaches to representation with interest.

Originally shared by Kay Solo

tl;dr, there’s more than one way to confront a societal issue in writing, and it’d be nice to see more that doesn’t do so by using real-world prejudices. And at least for me, who often uses books as an escape from real life, I don’t want that stuff following me into what I read. At least not so frequently that I’m still wanting for media without it.