a fannish thing that is kind of bugging me

[mimesere]

where by "kind of," I mean, "it fills me with rage such that I cannot even see straight."

Look, I get that fannishly we do ficathons for a couple reasons. Gift exchanges, remix, kinks, etc. There is a huge amount of awesome fic that came out of the choc_fic characters of color ficathon and the Femslash ficathon is always awesome.

But.

You shouldn't need a ficathon to make you write about women and people of color. You shouldn't. Full stop. For me, the whole point has *always* been that there are amazingly fantastically interesting and wonderful women and characters of color *no matter what your personal character types are* and that there should be fic because they are at least as amazingly fantastically interesting and wonderful as white male characters. It shouldn't be a political statement, it should be an expression of love/interest in the characters.

I understand that these ficathons exist to drum up more fic/fannish product and that they're important and serve a function, but they shouldn't *have* to exist. Like, doesn't anyone else find it kind of hinky that these ficathons roll around and people write fic and then are like, "Well, I've done my good minority deed for the year," and then don't write any other fic?

Also, while I am on the subject? It is *great* to be talking about the problematic portrayals of women and people of color in the media. You know what would be EVEN MORE GREAT? Talking about the things that are done *right*. You want to talk about how Heroes is problematic with how they treat DL? I damn well want to hear about how awesome it is that Heroes *explicitly* took the black deadbeat dad stereotype and said, "HA HA NO." I want to hear about Heroes talked about the difficulties of an interracial marriage and how it brought up the concept of passing. I want to hear about how it is awesome that Heroes said, "Hey, you know who one of our gateway characters should be? A Japanese guy." I want to hear about how Linderman's right hand woman is Ms. Sakamoto and how Nathan's campaign manager is black. I want to hear about how it is awesome that the people of color on this show are the ones who are all, "Hey, you know what would be cool? Using our powers to HELP PEOPLE."

So tell me the interesting things. Write me fic about it. Tell me about how Teyla and Ronon are wonderful, because they are. Tell me about *Wallace*, who showed how Veronica Mars was wrong about the class divisions in Neptune. Tell me about Cristina and Bailey and Callie and Chief. Tell me about how Gunn's storyline is Angel's storyline in all the ways about what the cost of the greater good is and how you can go to the beige place and fight the good fight but WITHOUT THE MASSIVE DOUCHITUDE. Tell me about Wang and Damphousse. Tell me about Mr. X. Tell me about John Stewart GL and how it is amazingly fantastically awesome that Bruce and Diana hid out in a Middle Eastern restaurant when the aliens invaded. Tell me that. Tell me about Ben on Reaper and how he's the one who is the nice guy and who keeps bringing up the issue of free will in terms of the contract with the Devil. Tell me about Morgan and Anna on Chuck. Tell me about how fantastic Emerson is on Pushing Daisies. Hell, I don't even like Who, but tell me about Martha. Tell me the things you *like* about the people of color and the women, 'cause otherwise I'm just left wondering if you see them as interesting people or just as problems for you to fix.

Like, not to get all personal here, except for how I clearly am going to, but every time I read about Oh Noes, the Problematic Treatment of Race and Gender on TV/Comics/Movies/Etc, I just get more depressed. Not because those problems exist -- because they do and I'm not that much in denial -- but because that's *all* I see. Do you know how rare it is to see an Ode to the Awesomeness of such and such a woman/POC? Especially when it's done outside the bounds of IBARW or things like that? Do you know how depressing it is as a woman of color to almost never see anything *positive*? Thanks a bunch for making me feel like the characters that I love and find interesting are just problems to be solved. Thanks a bunch. Really.

If you want the writers on Heroes to deal with the problematic treatment of race and gender, maybe it would behoove you to also point out the things they get right. Because otherwise, I'm afraid that returning the show to the heights of last season will mean returning the show to comments like, "Oh my god, can we skip the family Sanders/Hawkins and get back to the Flying Petrelli brothers?" and "Why does the show keep focusing on Mohinder when it could be focusing on Peter?" You want more people of color and women on your media? Maybe it'd be nice to support the things that have them and that do them right *in addition to* criticizing the things that go horribly wrong.

And maybe if all you saw when you looked at DL was a black ex-con and not the dedicated father and family man that he was *clearly portrayed to be*, then it's entirely possible that the problem didn't actually lie with the writers of the show.

And now I am all irritated and must go to work and be nice to people.

Comments

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

No, dude, my reactions to Pushing Daisies are pretty much the same. It's all, "OMG GLEE!" and "AHAHAHA BEES!" and "MUSICAL NUMBER FTW!" and high pitched noises of joy. Especially when Emerson opens his mouth or gives Ned that incredibly disgusted look. SO MUCH LOVE.

My basic theory on DL is that I did not see a body therefore I do not believe it will last. COME ON, HEROES, IF JEAN GREY CAN COME BACK NINETY BAZILLION TIMES, SO CAN DL.

And I think I am just tired of hearing all the criticism and seeing no results. Even if we can't change the show itself, we can change how fandom interacts with that text and aside from the "Oh racism, how so skanky?" thing, I haven't actually noticed a dramatic increase in the number of fan products being made about people of color. Women seems to be getting better, though! I think. At least in what I see come across ye olde flist.

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

FINE. LINK HER AND NOT ME. HELP. I AM BEING PERSECUTED BY THE FOC CABAL. (IT IS SO HARD BEING WHITE IN FANDOM.)

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Yes! That is exactly it for me. I don't want to talk about race in fandom because...uh. Well. I like the characters of color and the women. I just want *more* of them. And I want more of them because people love them, not because of politics.

And hah. Ben is totally the best of them and I love Sock like burning too. Ben's just so...oddball and *nice*. He's a good guy! Sock drew eyebrows on him! He never had a pet! Awwww.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

I was just talking with fox1013 about some of this actually, where we were talking about how it's kind of sketch to be like, "ZOMG Hiro's plotline is stupid because of racism!" while simultaneously being all, "Peter's plotline is stupid because of bad storytelling!" No. No. Both plotlines are stupid because they are stupid. Hiro's isn't any *worse* because he's Japanese. It's just. It's stupid. I'm not going to deny that. I mean, I think it's pretty awesome that, just like in first season, the geeky Japanese dude is the one who is driving the story, but I'm not gonna say that the Meanwhile In Feudal Japan... arc wasn't made of fail.

Anyway, yes. I worry that fandom is looking at women and characters of color and seeing their gender or skin tone before they are seeing them as people and that's just. Rargh.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Yay! I remember liking Angela a lot in the episodes I saw.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

*g* More people who are Norrington-like are always welcome in the pantheon of media awesome.

Also, more joy is never a bad thing :)

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Some ficathons do. I said in the post itself and also in my comment to callmesandy that things like annual Femslash ficathon or the CoC ficathon over at choc_fic or something like Yuletide or Remix are all things that make me go, "YAY!" because it's people getting together to write fic about things that they love and of which they want more. That? Is *awesome*.

But something like, "a New Years' outpouring of fan creativity for POC/minority/female characters. A requestathon or exchange, for stories, art, vids about a set of characters determined by the mods of the challenge" (from technosage's LJ about helping to save Heroes from itself (http://technosage.livejournal.com/218575.html)) makes me go all o_O at people because um. Why aren't these things being done *now*? Why does anyone need a special...thing to get them to do that? Why isn't this fan product coming out because of just wanting to show your love of the characters? Where was all the fic dealing with DL during the first season? How about Hiro? How about non-incesty Claire fic? How about Niki and Jessica? How about fic about Eden and Hana and Dale and Janice? Where was all of that stuff? Where is all of that fic and vids and meta and fanart dealing with how awesome they all are? They were all there during season one. There's a bunch of them still around in season 2. Where's fic about the amazingly fantastically awesomeness of Monica and the family Hawkins?

It really does bother me in a way that I'm terrible at articulating because it feels like tokenism *and* othering all at the same time. Like all, "Hey, we don't do this normally, but we're doing it now because we are better than the show!" and I'm mostly just kind of like, "Not really. No. I'd believe you all more if I saw the fan product before and not just because you are making a statement." Does that make sense at all? Like...why do the women and POC on Heroes have to be treated differently? How is that not problematic?

And then I sort of flail at people and go back to conducting my fannish life on the phone.

But regarding your squee? Darling, you are one of the people that I associate *most* with celebrating women and people of color.

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

You know that you and sheila are linked the exact same number of times in the newbieguide, right?

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

S2 Heroes has Monica and Micah who are both all, "Wooo powers for helping people!" and wanting to rise above their circumstances; it has Mohinder being pretty awesomely active, even if it is in incredibly stupid ways that are matched by the incredibly stupid crap the white men are doing; Hiro's plotline -- again, stupid but not more stupid than anyone else's -- seems to a) be the primary motivator for Adam/Kensei being an angsty privileged annoying white dude and b) setting Hiro up to be a mover and a shaker (again); I think Niki's plotline is interesting in a lot of ways, especially as a metacommentary *about* the roles of women in comic books/media, but that's probably just me; I think it's fantastic that Mohinder was the one to help the Haitian; I love watching the Haitian and going, "HAHA he doesn't think you all deserve to know his name!" and then mocking everyone for it, because they so don't. I also think it's pretty hellaciously funny that the bad guys on this show are the white guys.

My problem with the politicization of ficathons is twofold. 1) I really, truly am afraid that people will write fic, say, for a PoC and women ficathon and then be like, "Look! We have written fic/produced meta/art/vids about women and POC!" and be very happy about that and then go right back to not regularly writing those things without actually examining the overall fannish contribution to the long-term lack of (positive) fic/art/meta/vids about women and POC. And this bothers me a *lot*, because it's all, woo, woo, criticize the media we consume and then utterly fail to turn that critical lens on ourselves as fans. And this is different from calling shenanigans on fans who are being outright racist jerks, because dude, yes, I would expect people to do that because um, they have manners and not because of any particular enlightened stance. But calling outright racist jerks on being outright racist jerks or calling shenanigans in the source text is not the same thing as addressing the invisibility of or lack of focus on women and POC characters *in fandom*.

2) It really does bother me that it has to be separate from the regular run of fandom. the ficathon in choc_fic didn't bother me at all because that's a community specifically for producing fan things about characters of color. But running a ficathon within a fandom solely for the purpose of writing women/PoC treads really uncomfortably close to tokenism for me.

[linabean.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of things in your post, and I'm just going to address one of them, to confine my comments to refer to people who are genuinely pretty learned about the racism/sexism/etc stuff. Often, I think people in that group really do start to get negative about a show's portrayals of people of color/women/etc when the show overall has lost its shine for them. I think a lot of anit-racist, anti-sexist fans are willing to put up with a lot of icky issues in portrayals of people of color and women if the show's hitting other fannish needs just right. So, even as they'll note where the show's being problematic, it's much easier for them to celebrate all the things the show's doing right--they like the show. They want to celebrate it.

In a sense, then, it might make sense for fans to just decide to stop engaging with a show if they can't find anything to celebrate about it anymore. That's a big reason I'm not posting much about Supernatural. I still watch it because I'm kinda obliged now to sit and make fun of it with my brother, after getting him hooked on the show, but I can't muster up a lot of fannish enthusiasm for it now. There's just a lot of things about what I see as a change in tone and about how the storylines are being put together that don't appeal to me. I'm sure it's in connection with this that the show's issues with gender and race--which it's always had--seem much more glaring to me. It's possible that the show's being objectively worse about misogyny this season; I haven't tried to go about measuring that objectively. It certainly feels worse to me, though--but it's also true there isn't as much other stuff I'm enjoying to distract me from the misogyny. But, right, when it gets to a point that the main reaction I want to post to an episode is about sexism issues--I feel more inclined to skip writing the thing, because I feel like what that really means I've decided is that the episode wasn't worth much of my time.

On the other hand, I don't feel like I can blame fans who decide to focus on those rant-making aspects of a show, at least for a while. Even if they're pretty much coming to the conclusion that the show's not worth their while anymore, it takes time to decide that after putting in fannish investment. A lot of fans want their show to be as good as it should be, and shows really should be doing better on race and gender by now. So it can be hard not to want to point out where the show's gone wrong. And I do think those rants can be beneficial for the folks who aren't quite as learned on why those issues can set off rants, but do want to be less ignorant. I've seen lots of people comment on rants with a "Geez, I'd had no idea X was problematic, but now that you've pointed it out, I see how that's really egregious. I'm going to make sure to avoid replicating that myself now." I've been in the position of commenters like that more than once. So I really appreciate the people who are willing to take the crap that so often comes along with posting a "squee-harsing" rant, because it does so often also lead to at least some people who otherwise wouldn't have known to figuring out that certain tropes or portrayals really are offensive.

Still, though...eh, I think I need to continue below about the awesomeness of Ronon [g]

the awesomeness of Ronon

[linabean.livejournal.com]

Still, though, I have felt put out when I see people complain about portrayals in a show I'm fannish about, when it doesn't seem like they've been willing to extend the fannish courtesy to characters of trying to see how a portrayal might actually make sense for a character. When people are willing to do that, they can still turn fannish reception of a character on its head, and probably in a way that will resonate a lot more with more people than a rant would. For example, I'm all for calling out Stargate for its issues with race. But it makes me kind of twitchy when, for example, people complain about Ronon being presented as the dumb hulking savage. From the first moments he was introduced in canon, I thought it was obvious he was smart and came from a sophisticated culture--it was there in the way he talked, in the decisions he made, in the flashbacks they showed to his homeworld. Yeah, if people wanted, they could focus on traits they thought backed up the hulking-savage impression--he's brilliant at fighting (yeah, well, he was in the military and was good at his job; also, he'd just be dead by now if he wasn't that good); he's curt and has a quick temper (it's frankly amazing he's not curled in a snarling ball after the way he spent the seven years before he got to Atlantis); he was found in a cave with dirt on his face (he was shielding himself from killer UV radiation, much as the show's resident genius was); he had to be told to eat with a fork instead of with his hands (there are just so many reasons why he might not be using a fork). Do I think the show should feature more characters of color who aren't from other planets? Oh, and should maybe some of those other planets also have some more people of color, besides just Ronon and Teyla? Yes, definitely. But to complain about one of those characters from another planet getting set up as a hulking savage, without considering all the other canon-based reasons to see him in other lights...it does make me feel that people are just being influenced by the fact that he's a big guy with brown skin and dreadlocks. Canon really does give us a lot more than that. And while it's really unfortunate that fans with race issues might be kind of guaranteed to ignore all that other canon, I do think more fans are likely to catch on to how great the character is if other fans just take for granted how great he is and keep presenting him that way to fandom (ETA: and, you know, also keep pointing out as much as they're willing to take on that there's icky race issues in ignoring so much canon to conclude Ronon's a hulking savage. I agree with Hth above that the way lj has been disseminating those kinds of discussions has also been making a big and positive difference in terms of fannish reception of characters of color).

[wemblee.livejournal.com]

You know what would be EVEN MORE GREAT? Talking about the things that are done *right*.

Hells to the yeah.

I will say: normally, I'm more, "Yay, critique!" than "Yay, let's talk about the positives" when it comes to stuff like this... BUT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HEROES! Not, I don't know, Friends or some other show with a blindingly white cast that isn't even trying.

I have this weird feeling where on the one hand, I think lefty critique is always good, and on the other hand, I'm like, "But... but shouldn't Heroes at least, like, get a coupon (tmfox1013) or something?" It's been sort of baffling me, honestly. And I've been afraid to say anything about it, like that would make me some reactionary dick or something. So thank you for writing this.

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

But how am I to claim persecution NOW? You ruin all my fun!

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

It is sooooo hard being white. You can never win in the racial oppression sweepstakes!

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

It totally is. It's like walking barefoot in the snow. And then having someone waiting for you with hot cocoa every block or so. DIFFICULT OMG.

And you ruined my ONE chance to win racial oppression sweepstakes. I usually don't even get the chance to enter!

I really need a Navajo princess great grandmother. You've met me, would you believe that I had Cherokee ancestors?

[callmesandy.livejournal.com]

yay! is your hiatus over? I miss anna!

(your ice dancers in the compulsory for the WIN!)

[callmesandy.livejournal.com]

Awww, cool. I just worry. I think there have been times when celebrations of f/f in fandom have been that kind of "i do this once a year!" and I don't want femslash06/7/8 to be that, at all. And I feel okay saying mosca as co-mod does not either.

And, yeah, politicization of ficathon vs love is ... weird to me.

[ficangel.livejournal.com]

I was reading Sheila's post and having this exact same thought. Glee!

[ficangel.livejournal.com]

I love this whole post and have been shyly lurking around your journal for a while, do you mind if I friend?

[ficangel.livejournal.com]

I am eagerly awaiting the inevitable Victor Puts It All Together episode. Because, c'mon, you know that if he can dissect Dean's entire life within thirty seconds, he can figure out that Sherri the bank clerk doesn't actually have a twin.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

I think there absolutely is a tendency in fandom to be all hat and no cattle when it comes to issues of race and gender and my problems with some ficathons -- the choc_fic ficathon, the Femslash one, Yuletide, remix, I Saw 3 Ships, and the other gift/exchange ficathons are all ones that I specifically mentioned as not being covered under the terms of my criticism -- is that I feel they are statements of politics rather than of...love for the characters.

And I'm totally glad that your fannish experience is one such that you see the positives being celebrated in addition to the criticisms, but that's not my experience. It never actually has been. The people sharing the squee are always the same people as the ones producing the content and that's *fine*, but the people providing the criticisms don't...balance it and that bothers me. Like, I know there's reams and reams of criticism about the portrayals of race and gender on Heroes. What I *don't* see is the fic that says that these characters are being treated like anything but problems. So then, when I see a ficathon specifically for women and POC on Heroes, I'm left wondering *why that fic doesn't exist already*.

So no, I don't get to see the positives that make the criticisms worthwhile. Everyone talked a fantastic game about Gunn being interesting and awesome but the fic/vids/meta/art isn't there in proportion to the people talking. People can say Teyla is the awesomest all they want, but I'm not going to trust that until I see the fan product backing that up. I don't see these characters show up in McKay/Sheppard fic as being fully realized characters. I do get to hear, "Oh, Teal'c doesn't have a lot of backstory so I don't write him." Really, fandom? REALLY?

Anyway. That was beside the point. When I see a ficathon designed for the express purpose of generating fan produced content for women and POC, I am going to look at that and ask why they need a ficathon to do it and why that product doesn't already exist. Whereas if it were a ficathon where someone said, "Hey, you know what the world needs? More DL fic. We should have a DL ficathon!" then I would expect to see the same old DL fans writing fic. But that does assume that the content exists *already* and that's not the case with some of the things that I'm talking about.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

I don't mind at all! I am not normally ranty! I mean. I *am*, but I'm trying to be more "Woo!" and less "GRAR!" in general.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

I'm totally with you in that normally I'm all for criticizing a text and I think Heroes has a lot of things that can and should be criticized and I absolutely don't think it should be given a free pass. But a coupon? Yes. I think it should get a coupon because it has done an awesome amount of stuff *right* with race, not the least of which is making a person of color one of their gateway characters.

And I really don't mind criticism, but I think it really does need to be more balanced. I don't know. I'm all grar about it all.

[wemblee.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I get the feeling.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

Yes! That is exactly it for me. I don't want to talk about race in fandom because...uh. Well. I like the characters of color and the women. I just want *more* of them. And I want more of them because people love them, not because of politics.

Yeah. In Heroes I want more Hiro/Ando fic, and Monica in fic and canon, and I want DL and Niki to trade places (because his problem in s1 was largely being too caught up in her storyline to have one of his own).

On the good side, I think Mohinder and Hiro are major players on the show (certainly more important at this point than Sylar or Nathan). Plus, the show's one of the few I've seen where a minority of the good guys are white men, and only two at this point are WASPs - Bennet and West, and that's assuming either one of them counts as a good guy. (I'm still very suspicious of West.)

And hah. Ben is totally the best of them and I love Sock like burning too. Ben's just so...oddball and *nice*. He's a good guy! Sock drew eyebrows on him! He never had a pet! Awwww.

Ben needs fic. Is there Ben fic? Is there Reaper fic?