How PC are your stories? How PC is this poll?

[mistressrenet]

Characters of Diversity, Fanfic, Mine meme. Stolen from theemdash.

Methods and Materials

All fics in memories and at my sadly neglected website. I still like that layout. Many of my drabbles are not memoried, or are in meme posts that I haven't bothered with, but I'm just doing tihs for fun, so what the hell

Comments

[daegaer]

Interesting meme! (I'm vaguely afraid of counting how much stuff I've written).

I wonder how to adapt the "played by an actor of one of these classifications" for lit!fic? The last time I did something like this I noted that a lot of the Good Omens characters belonged to no human ethnicity, but were culturally English - but what do they count as? Probably I should just have an "angel/demon" category, and note if any of them are definitely portrayed as PoC.

I think it's fascinating you classify Crawford as at least part Native American - is it a plot point anywhere in your stories? I really, really love you think of him like that, just like I love viridian5 uncomplicatedly making him Japanese-American. (I still have the vaguest of thoughts about a story/ies that pay attention to the fact he looks like he could be Hirofumi and Masafumi's brother . . .)

I'll try starting this meme after tonight's Dr Who and Heroes!

[mistressrenet]

I think you'd have to use their perceived ethnicity; Aziraphale is pretty clearly British but I have no clue as to Crowley. That was my problem with youkai-- they appear to be, well, Chinese or Indian, I suppose, but are clearly treated as another minority within the canon, and...this meme was not made for fantasy or animanga fandoms, methinks.

Crawford the part-NA has not cropped up in any stories I've actually finished, though I've played around with it once in a while. (It mentally makes him both American and jives with his almost-Asian appearance, for me. And I'm all for that story!)

Ooh, Heroes. Where are you at now?

[daegaer]

this meme was not made for fantasy or animanga fandoms, methinks.

I think not! And in all honesty, I'm not sure it was made for non-US respondents either. Why is "Catholic" mixed in with various geographic and ethnic terms? Or why is there an apparent assumption that Europeans are all white? I mean, these people identify/ied as Irish! (Not to mention an awful lot of non-celebrities - at the Japanese speech contest in the school pupil section 25% of the contestants were PoC who all started "My name is X, I am Irish".) I mean, I know the wording of the meme is meant to be (semi?)humorous, but it does show up that certain assumptions are being made about those people taking it!

I'm just putting off counting up my fics, you know that, right?! Oh dear, I think I need to reorganise my memories . . . Crowley is a problem - he quite often looks middle eastern in my mind, but I don't know how he's necessarily perceived by readers (in one story one of the three wise men explicitly thinks he looks like an inhabitant of Judaea). Oh well, on to

[mistressrenet]

The Gypsy thing really made me twitch. We know they're never discriminated against!

I always thought Crowley should be played by Johnny Depp, who's part Native American but is that nice mix of 'exotic' looking without raising eyebrows as non-white, which I suspect would be Crowley's modus operandi in England (though perhaps not at other times and places in history).

Oh, I love that episode! Hiro's so awesome in it and I adore George Takei so much. You'll see him again.

[theemdash]

Yeah, I ripped off the definitions as well. Though I think it's interesting that I classified the turtles as white and you classified them as non-white. And Saiyuki . . . yeah, we're going to have to continue that discussion. I'm so interested!

[mistressrenet]

I've always seen them as at least part Japanese. And so then I did the 1/2 classification, just so I'd have some sanity. And seriously, whoever came up with that blue-eyed thing? Bitch, please.

[theemdash]

LOL. No idea.

If I were separating I'd put Splinter and Leo as non-white and Mike, Don, and maybe Raph as white. Raph's my grey area. (But Mikey is so white he makes me not white, or something.)

[mistressrenet]

Have they never watched an anime? I have a blond Chinese guy with purple eyes here. Purple eyes.

Well, again, it's how they're acculturated vs. upbringing vs. how the world perceives them, and it's hard to tease anything out properly. But I figured they were raised by a Japanese rat, so culturally they should count as at least half Asian.

[viridian5]

Yeah, with all the animanga I've been writing for the last five years I do a lot of Japanese, Chinese, and demon characters, many of them with unusual hair and eye colors, so that would skew my results.

Another problem would be how to classify Tyr Anasazi, who was portrayed by a black actor but whose character was, by race, considered a genetically-engineered offshoot of humanity with bone spurs on his arms and thus somewhat alien. Is Tyr black for the purposes of this meme? Also, can I count the artificial intelligence/android Andromeda as part-white/non-white? Ah, science fiction.

I have about 380 fics if we're counting gen and slash, so I can't break down how long they all are or all the POVs and how many had one POV or multiple POVs and by whom. The "minor character" thing is guaranteed to make me grind my teeth.

I know I've had POVs by original female characters, Dana Scully, Beka Valentine, Andromeda, Li Ann Tsei, Sara Pezzini, Tegan Jovanka, Celena Schezar, Drusilla, and Hope (Twitch City). Until I put this list together, I

[daegaer]

I've just tried counting my fic - I've decided I'm going to go to bed instead :-)

And I feel your minor character pain. It's OK in Good Omens, where a lot of my fic is main character fic (with a significant amount of minor character stuff too) - but in WK . . . well, Schwarz are minor characters for the vast majority of the series, aren't they?

[viridian5]

Schwarz really are minor characters in the original property, though not in fandom. *g*

I tend to be drawn to minor and secondary characters in general. Also, how do you consider characters "minor" for ensemble shows or superhero team comics? Some characters always get the short end of the stick for "airtime" or juicy plots.

[mistressrenet]

I only realized when you guys started talking about it, but I totally counted Schwarz as lead characters, and the Kou-itachi as secondary characters, even though Kou and his crew get way more face time.