End OTW Racism stuff
For anyone who's missed it so far, ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
end-otw-racism has put out a call to action and manifesto.
I'm planning to at least change some fic titles. I've been thinking slightly of writing and posting an actual fic entitled "End Racism in the OTW", but uh. Hmm. I'm not entirely sure how to do so without accidentally being racist myself?
Like, the general advice in writing is, when it comes to telling stories whose plot revolves around an aspect of marginalization ("issue" stories), those stories should be left to people who share that identity to tell. So, for example, anyone can write a story about a trans character, but cis people probably shouldn't be writing a story about a trans character that focuses only or primarily on the character dealing with transphobia.
I am a white person. My first thought was to write about Alya (Black character) doing what she could to set up an alternative fanfic hosting site after dealing with France's premiere fanfic host ignoring some racist bullshit, but would that count as Issue Fic? Or would it depend on how I handled it in the story itself? Would it be appropriate to instead write a story about Adrien (white character) learning about racism in fandom and trying to be an ally, or would that end up making it all about a white character instead? Could that be mitigated at all?
The safest thing to do would probably be just... not write and post a fanfic like that. Or turn it ultra meta, and have the characters break the fourth wall to talk about the campaign. Which might feel cheap, but on the other hand, much better to go cheap and not hurt people than put my whole heart into something only to end up doing the opposite of what I intended.
More thinking to be done, I suppose.
I'm planning to at least change some fic titles. I've been thinking slightly of writing and posting an actual fic entitled "End Racism in the OTW", but uh. Hmm. I'm not entirely sure how to do so without accidentally being racist myself?
Like, the general advice in writing is, when it comes to telling stories whose plot revolves around an aspect of marginalization ("issue" stories), those stories should be left to people who share that identity to tell. So, for example, anyone can write a story about a trans character, but cis people probably shouldn't be writing a story about a trans character that focuses only or primarily on the character dealing with transphobia.
I am a white person. My first thought was to write about Alya (Black character) doing what she could to set up an alternative fanfic hosting site after dealing with France's premiere fanfic host ignoring some racist bullshit, but would that count as Issue Fic? Or would it depend on how I handled it in the story itself? Would it be appropriate to instead write a story about Adrien (white character) learning about racism in fandom and trying to be an ally, or would that end up making it all about a white character instead? Could that be mitigated at all?
The safest thing to do would probably be just... not write and post a fanfic like that. Or turn it ultra meta, and have the characters break the fourth wall to talk about the campaign. Which might feel cheap, but on the other hand, much better to go cheap and not hurt people than put my whole heart into something only to end up doing the opposite of what I intended.
More thinking to be done, I suppose.