Metacolour and other matters

[winter]

I'll be acquiring a fyrie this evening for a week, so LJ presence will be sporadical (though I'm planning to post some backlogged fic). Still, I thought I might as well ramble now:

I've been following the kerfuffle over writing "characters of colour" on metafandom for the past few days, and my eyebrows have slowly headed upwards. Okay, I get the attitude of the "fans of colour" like thete1 - they look at fandom and even if there are characters from their own culture in the source material, those characters are underutilised or mischaracterised in fandom. I get this: I also squee each time someone in a creative work has Polish or Russian roots, and facepalm if said character is stereotyped.

What I don't get is the defensive attitude of the other side. The whole approach of "I don't write characters of colour because as a white person I can't write them". The hell? Last I checked, the fact no-one on LJ is an elf didn't stop a whole lot of great LOTR and Silmarillion fanfiction from being written. I'm not a man, but my characterisation of males has been praised by Actual Guys. We do this kind of thing all the time.

And yet, for some people skin colour is a different characteristic. Which might stem from oversensitivity and being guilt-tripped to hell, but seems kind of like a racist attitude to me. Why should skin colour matter at all?

What matters to me is the cultural background of a character. If writing Gunn, say, I'd consider the impact poverty had on his life, the vampires, and yes, being part of a minority that's discriminated against. But those are the exact same issues I consider when writing Dima, a Roma thief who will appear in Roses for Lucifer. And I don't assume I know exactly how to write someone just because they're white - for writing British characters I research that culture, for writing Spanish people I tackle their popular tropes. Culturally conditioned responses are what I'm interested in, not skin colour. The members of a certain culture might have a skin colour in common, or be conditioned to respond in a certain way to one, but it's just one characteristic among many.

I guess what I mean is this: if we let skin colour be the end-all and be-all for a "character of colour", that seems racist to me. We're all human, people.

And part of the Polish culture is drilling Latin sentences into pupils. One from Terentius has just occurred to me:

Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.

I am human: nothing human is strange to me.


And on that note, I'm going back to writing about a mad and repressed Austrian crown prince being molested by a graphomaniac vampire. Peace, all.

Comments

[winter]

Rudolf's plenty crazy enough for me, thank you. And I'm afraid I'm kinda stuck. A certain Johannes von Krolock is extremely indecisive as to what he should do with this opportunity. All I know is that Rudolf will be on his knees at one point, because I've watched the Essen choreography one too many times, and this is firmly Jesper Tydén as Rudolf :>

[alice_montrose]

Rudolf on his knees = GOOD!

Um... I really don't know what to tell you, mostly because I don't know what Johannes wants - to feel, to f**k, or to mind-control Rudolf into doing something. ^^;;;

[winter]

All of the above, though it's the sex that's giving me problems. Logistics of it - he maintains that pushing the boy face-down has its appeal, but so does watching the anguish, and then Rudolf has a lovely mouth, too. I think I might have to make him write out the pros and cons of each approach before he's able to decide.

*facepalms* Me and lemon-writing. I always end up doing graphs.

[valancystar.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* Oh, isn't it difficult when you just can't choose?

[winter]

I think I have the beginning of it, at least. And to think that it was meant to be such an innocent scene...

[valancystar.livejournal.com]

Innocent? A scene with von Krolock and Rudolf?

[winter]

Well, not that much of the "sex in every anatomically possible position" thing, then ;) I think I prefer for von Krolock to have the POV, at least he's vague about the sex bits. Rudolf's all @.@ and wanting to describe it in graphic detail.

[valancystar.livejournal.com]

Yes. Sounds like it'll be distracting enough even without graphic detail. ;-) Am trying to decide whether I should feel sorry for Rudolf.

[alice_montrose]

Okay, how about having Rudolph on his knees first, and then when he's got enough of that he can proceed to push him face-down. Given that he's a vampire, he should have enough stamina to make Rudolf a very, very happy bottom-boy, right?

[winter]

I think that's more or less what will happen :> With twists, of course.

[alice_montrose]

Of course! Where would the fun be, otherwise!

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

Everything except what Rudolf wants! :D EVERYTHING! With fangs scraping in mock-promise and making him beg ;)