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We're supposed to be having an internet blackout protest in Australia today to protest against the proposed internet filter (annoying pop-up but good explanation at the link). I don't really know how that will help, though - Senator Conroy and co would love for us to be posting less and, I don't know, shopping more. Or wearing Australian flag t-shirts. Or watching the cricket.
***
I've been conducting a writing experiment over the last year or so. Just before Yuletide 2008, I made a pledge to myself to try everything I wrote from a female PoC perspective first, if such a character was in the fandom, then a female perspective, and then a male perspective only if the other possibilities weren't working, and even then to try a PoC male perspective first. If I enjoy media more when there's a better representation of the real world - more women and more PoC compared to the "standard" white men - surely I can at least make an effort to think of those characters first when I'm thinking about fic?
Not every story worked out this way, but I've just done the numbers now for the last year-and-a-bit. If I counted my Nano novel there'd be a few more women of colour, but I conceived this idea for working in pre-made canons, so that's what I'm counting here. I've counted white and Jewish characters such as Kitty Pryde as white for the purposes of this survey.
Out of a total of 12 fics:
POV character is
female, PoC: 4
female, white: 4
male, PoC: 1
male, white: 3
non-human female-identified: 0
non-human male-identified: 0
Secondary lead is
female, PoC: 0
female, white: 6
male, PoC: 1
male, white: 3
non-human female-identified: 1
non-human male-identified: 1
By contrast, the year before I wrote 1 fic with a woman of colour as the POV character (a Wendy Watson drabble), 6 with white women, 2 with white men, and none with a man of colour.
It's a good start, I think, but I need to work on more PoC in the background - one problem being that many fandoms only have one woman of colour. Still, X-Men, at least, is a huge fandom, and I can always have cameos from comics characters in the movieverse. And that one long Supernatural fic really didn't help. It was quite surprising, when I had made myself aware of it, how often my brainstorming automatically started with the white characters. I think I'm going to keep doing it this year, not just because it has increased the number of different characters I have written, but because it helps me not be lazy when I'm thinking about perspectives and the shape of canon itself.
***
I've been conducting a writing experiment over the last year or so. Just before Yuletide 2008, I made a pledge to myself to try everything I wrote from a female PoC perspective first, if such a character was in the fandom, then a female perspective, and then a male perspective only if the other possibilities weren't working, and even then to try a PoC male perspective first. If I enjoy media more when there's a better representation of the real world - more women and more PoC compared to the "standard" white men - surely I can at least make an effort to think of those characters first when I'm thinking about fic?
Not every story worked out this way, but I've just done the numbers now for the last year-and-a-bit. If I counted my Nano novel there'd be a few more women of colour, but I conceived this idea for working in pre-made canons, so that's what I'm counting here. I've counted white and Jewish characters such as Kitty Pryde as white for the purposes of this survey.
Out of a total of 12 fics:
POV character is
female, PoC: 4
female, white: 4
male, PoC: 1
male, white: 3
non-human female-identified: 0
non-human male-identified: 0
Secondary lead is
female, PoC: 0
female, white: 6
male, PoC: 1
male, white: 3
non-human female-identified: 1
non-human male-identified: 1
By contrast, the year before I wrote 1 fic with a woman of colour as the POV character (a Wendy Watson drabble), 6 with white women, 2 with white men, and none with a man of colour.
It's a good start, I think, but I need to work on more PoC in the background - one problem being that many fandoms only have one woman of colour. Still, X-Men, at least, is a huge fandom, and I can always have cameos from comics characters in the movieverse. And that one long Supernatural fic really didn't help. It was quite surprising, when I had made myself aware of it, how often my brainstorming automatically started with the white characters. I think I'm going to keep doing it this year, not just because it has increased the number of different characters I have written, but because it helps me not be lazy when I'm thinking about perspectives and the shape of canon itself.