"You Shouldn't Have Hurt My Friends."

I haven't talked about Race Fail 09 (link goes a great summery) in my lj because I found out about this from the outside edges in, so I didn't have the best grip on what exactly was going on, and because people much smarter and more articulate than I were doing a massively epic job of giving the polite smackdowns that were deserved.

But with the recent forced outing of people of people, as well as getting caught up in the debate, I had several thoughts I wanted to share.

(Context: I am a white, middle class, liberal, college educated student, and yes, I KNOW the leg up and perks being white in America gives me.)

I had a long conversation about cultural appropriation with smillaraaq  about a year ago and while I know how that sounds (my one Native friend says it's okay, so my work/thoughts/opinions can't be racist!) The conclusion I came to was this: writing characters of a different race is hard. It's risky because it's quite possible to fail, because it opens you up for criticism, because it requires effort to do right.

Yeah, so?

Unless I am writing about a white, female, middle-class college undergrad (and why would I? I already live that life) ANYONE I write about is going to require some element of research. Writing about blacks, Natives, Hispanics, etc is no more challenging than writing about being a naval officer in the Age of Sail or being an Irish farmer during the potato famine.

And unlike that Irish farmer or that navel officer, it matters when there are POC in a work of fiction. It matters because of all the kids who couldn't find books with heroes like them in their library. (For a couple years I only read books with females as either the main character or the second lead. It breaks my head to think of all the children who aren't able to do that with their social identity.) It matters because painting a world where only white people exist is not only racist, not only inaccurate, it's boring.

Boring is the kiss of death for an author.

To give you a superficial example:

I've recently caught episodes of Saving Grace when I'm at the gym and those scenes at the police station are pretty. We have our frizzy haired blonde, we have our attractive black detective and zaftig black captain and our glossy, glossy dark-haired native detective. (Seriously, I just want curl his ponytail around my finger and I mean that in the exact same way I say I want to lick Sai's abs or utterly defile Hugh Jackman.) 

Grey's Anatomy has a lot of critique. I don't recall the attractiveness of the cast ever being mentioned.

Firefly's cast photos are all drool-worthy.

Compare that to Veronica Mars (and I love that show) but was I the only person who spent half a season trying to tell Veronica's blonde, pasty boyfriends apart?

When I started to write my actually good vampire novel, I specifically DID NOT CAST WHITE. I started throwing around names and personalities and guess what? I'm going to need to do research on hispanics and second generation Japanese immigrants and catholism (lightprincess89 , I may need an interview).

Do you know what else I'm doing? I'm reading the original Dracula, so my vampire mythology is classic and from the primary source.

Research, people.

If you don't like it, or even don't understand the necessity of it, what the fuck are you doing trying to write a book?

Now here's the part where this finally starts to effect me in a personal way.

I want to be a published author. I want to make money, at least enough so that I can live off my writings and a part-time job.

I have a lot of people on my friend's list, and don't think I haven't though about the massive self-pimping I was planning on doing. 

Until several experiences in real life made me realize just how much I want my fandom life to be separate from my real life.

Until I saw people getting forcibly outed.

Until I found out (as I write this very post) of a fanfic writer who is contractually obligated to stop writing fanfiction.

Now? I don't think I'm going to be claiming my published works on this space. I don't think I'm going to want publishers, other authors, the random joe on the street to know I call myself redbrunja .

Some of you know me in real life, I've been stupid about contact information before (not badly, but enough to give me a wake-up call), so I'm sure if I piss off some asshole I could also end up outed. 

I know that I will lose readers by not taking advantage of a really good marketing tool, but guess what this outing has taught me about SF/F as an industry?

It's not safe. 

It's not safe for POC and it's also not safe for white, middleclass, female undergrads.

Part of me feels that my gut reaction is wrong; that I'm taking away the wrong thing from this, but you know what? I get to choose (or I should get to choose) who knows what about me. Me. I get to pick who knows that I write fanfiction and who knows about my sexual orientation and my love life.

"Oh, Kakashi, Protect Me! ...With Your Penis."

So say we all, Kurenai, so say we all.

Context:

And yes, Anko, a Kurenai x Kakashi x Anko sandwich would be awesome.