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I've stayed fairly quiet on RaceFail09 because I was fairly sure my voice wasn't going to be valuable or helpful in the chorus of people who have more right and reason and skill to speak up, but since a call has gone out for white people to stop being silent:
Hi! So, all you people who don't see what Bear and Shetterly and Cramer and TNH and company did and are doing so wrong, who think that there is no need to listen to all the voices speaking up for racial awareness in the SF community, because you know better? I'm one of the lurkers who doesn't support you in e-mail. Or in any other way.
(I do have a post written - that I've been tweaking and adding to for a month - on how this discussion has actually helped me as a white writer start to figure out how to write stories that handle race in a least-harmful way. Someday when the discourse reaches a point where that might actually be productive rather than derailing, I may even post it. Or I may just keep writing stories about race, and keep trying to get better at it.
I also kind of wish somebody would start a fest like![[journalfen.net profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lgbtfest for characters of color - low-pressure, open for everybody to write, for submitted prompts that have to be about characters of color and specifically dealing with race, just as a way to encourage people to write those kinds of stories. Only I suspect that it would get far, far less participation than lgbtfest, and that would just be depressing.)
***
Speaking of lgbtfest! As of last count, about five of my [insert ridiculously large number here]lgbtfest prompts have been claimed (two of them twice!) Going by last year's results, that means I will probably get about four stories written for me, and about three that are good.
(Okay, it's not any sort of an exchange, so the only way they're technically being written "for" me is in that they are being written by somebody else, instead of me. That is brilliant enough though, yay, I get the stories and I don't have to write them!)
I'm still dithering over whether I'm going to claim any prompts. If I do, the possiblities are a) the Barrayar story about By and Bel and Donna that I signed up for last year but never got written, b) the prompt I posted this year where Rachel Maddow meets Raven Colbert and gets confused, because that's been trying to write itself anyway, and also, hello my kinks, or c) the PRT fic that combines one of my prompts and one of Sarken's, in which Uncle Pat outs himself to Rachel, Rachel tells Keith (secretly), Keith can't resist telling Stephen, Stephen can't resist hinting about it on his show, Pat gets twitchy, Rachel gets angry and kinda outs Jon and Stephen, and Anderson Cooper is very confused. (So, at this point in the story, Rachel, Keith, and Jon are angry at Stephen, Jon and Stephen and Anderson are angry at Rachel, and Rachel and Jon and Anderson are angry at Keith, and Uncle Pat doesn't even know yet that they all know each other.)
c) would be a really awesome fic if I actually wrote it. But I have a feeling it would be beyond me. Also, it would involve me getting far too deep into Pat Buchanan's head (no amount of antiseptic and latex is enough), and it would involve Rachel getting far too deep into my head (the issues she would have to work through, to resolve the conflict, get fairly close to some of my own issues, which I don't *want* to work through right now). And ... okay, you know how some people won't read or write fic about shows or books from when they were wee? I didn't think I had a problem with that (Ernie/Bert forever! X/Henrietta OTP! Friday/Monday meant2be!). But on doing some really light research, I remembered that when I was such a tiny person that Reagan was president, I used to sit on our horrible burlap orange couch with my dad and watch The McLaughlin Group, back when it was new and shiny. (It was not nearly as cool as Louis Rukeyser, but much cooler than Paul Duke on Washington Week.)
And I just ... I can't write about the sexual stirrings of a guy I used to watch on TV when I was four. I just *can't*. My brain revolts.
Hi! So, all you people who don't see what Bear and Shetterly and Cramer and TNH and company did and are doing so wrong, who think that there is no need to listen to all the voices speaking up for racial awareness in the SF community, because you know better? I'm one of the lurkers who doesn't support you in e-mail. Or in any other way.
(I do have a post written - that I've been tweaking and adding to for a month - on how this discussion has actually helped me as a white writer start to figure out how to write stories that handle race in a least-harmful way. Someday when the discourse reaches a point where that might actually be productive rather than derailing, I may even post it. Or I may just keep writing stories about race, and keep trying to get better at it.
I also kind of wish somebody would start a fest like
lgbtfest for characters of color - low-pressure, open for everybody to write, for submitted prompts that have to be about characters of color and specifically dealing with race, just as a way to encourage people to write those kinds of stories. Only I suspect that it would get far, far less participation than lgbtfest, and that would just be depressing.)***
Speaking of lgbtfest! As of last count, about five of my [insert ridiculously large number here]
lgbtfest prompts have been claimed (two of them twice!) Going by last year's results, that means I will probably get about four stories written for me, and about three that are good.(Okay, it's not any sort of an exchange, so the only way they're technically being written "for" me is in that they are being written by somebody else, instead of me. That is brilliant enough though, yay, I get the stories and I don't have to write them!)
I'm still dithering over whether I'm going to claim any prompts. If I do, the possiblities are a) the Barrayar story about By and Bel and Donna that I signed up for last year but never got written, b) the prompt I posted this year where Rachel Maddow meets Raven Colbert and gets confused, because that's been trying to write itself anyway, and also, hello my kinks, or c) the PRT fic that combines one of my prompts and one of Sarken's, in which Uncle Pat outs himself to Rachel, Rachel tells Keith (secretly), Keith can't resist telling Stephen, Stephen can't resist hinting about it on his show, Pat gets twitchy, Rachel gets angry and kinda outs Jon and Stephen, and Anderson Cooper is very confused. (So, at this point in the story, Rachel, Keith, and Jon are angry at Stephen, Jon and Stephen and Anderson are angry at Rachel, and Rachel and Jon and Anderson are angry at Keith, and Uncle Pat doesn't even know yet that they all know each other.)
c) would be a really awesome fic if I actually wrote it. But I have a feeling it would be beyond me. Also, it would involve me getting far too deep into Pat Buchanan's head (no amount of antiseptic and latex is enough), and it would involve Rachel getting far too deep into my head (the issues she would have to work through, to resolve the conflict, get fairly close to some of my own issues, which I don't *want* to work through right now). And ... okay, you know how some people won't read or write fic about shows or books from when they were wee? I didn't think I had a problem with that (Ernie/Bert forever! X/Henrietta OTP! Friday/Monday meant2be!). But on doing some really light research, I remembered that when I was such a tiny person that Reagan was president, I used to sit on our horrible burlap orange couch with my dad and watch The McLaughlin Group, back when it was new and shiny. (It was not nearly as cool as Louis Rukeyser, but much cooler than Paul Duke on Washington Week.)
And I just ... I can't write about the sexual stirrings of a guy I used to watch on TV when I was four. I just *can't*. My brain revolts.
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:D
I haven't even gone through the prompts lists yet ....
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(Anonymous) 2009-03-07 09:08 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
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You can still totally write for it though! :D
(BTW, do you still have a pile of books for penknife?)
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