CoC is short for Character(s) of Color
So, i was going back through my LJ in order to find links appropriate to the People of Colour SF Carnival, a blog event whose time has come. and i decided, no, there's not much i can do to retrieve the past. So let me start with the future.
In the future, i'll get my own server. Why, you ask? Because the world needs characters of color in fanfic, links to fannish knowledge of characters of color, fanart featuring characters of color, and generalized goodness of the multi-racial kind. and that's what Remember Us does.
Now, back in the past, some time ago, Te wrote The Remember Us Manifesto, which is a document of a certain kind of love that only really survives in the original version. While some may discount the ruminations on who "counts" as a CoC, it comes to a certain point where you wonder why you *have to count* CoCs in a fictional universe, when, in RL, POC are the countless majority of people. so, like the time-honoured axiom that women=people and color bars=love, one eventually comes to the realization that CoC=characters of color, ergo characters of color=love.
don't ask about the logic there, just follow me. better yet, read and find out.
I've had a lot of adventures dealing with this archive. From losing the website one time, to learning the most basic of html (you'll notice the damn thing looks like it's made of FrontPage, because it is, though now i use Nvu), to long-awaited updates, i've seen long stretches of RL interrupting me with stress and work interrupted, in turn, by days and weekends where all i do is check my mailbox, update the site, and look for fanart. because i really, really love it. i really love it. more importantly, the people who go to the trouble to express their love (or love/hate! often exciting) of CoC in their fandom deserve to have a place to go to and to direct other people to find it, to remember. i guess that's why archives exist.
Also in the past, we find this entry, where i posted updates from the choc_fic ficathon-- a ficathon! for characters of color!
But in the future, i'll work on some things. I added Central Casting months and months ago, to put out a call for things that would be great to see at the archive. But this is what i was thinking, what i want to change, when i named the page that: people of color in TV especially, but in the media writ large, don't seem to come from where i come from. The latter? Communities of color. For lots of reasons, good and bad, people of color tend to come into contexts including white people from contexts without as many white people. Families are one such community. Neighborhoods, institutions, peer groups, affinity groups, movements, are others. Yet i seldom see that reflected in SF (where i find the media i fangirl the hardest), nor in pop culture-- on TV and the blockbusters, nor in comics. with notable exceptions, CoC seem to come straight from Central Casting in much of popular media. which leads me to wonder, how is that possible? Is the universe in which our beloved characters exist peopled by exactly the same percentages of people of color, everywhere? Is there really only one Black person, one Asian American, one Latin@, one indigenous American, one queer person of color, in any given community? In California? In Canada? In space? In the future? These questions are sometimes asked slightly differently by various series set in cosmopolitan Toronto or the secluded island in the South Pacific, but the answers on display vary *only* slightly. And the emphasis of the answers often ends up the same: magical white men save the day, conventionally-attractive white women dominate their attention, and everybody stays the same. Central Casting is a weird, irrational mythology that i've never understood in years of watching TV, reading comics, and seeing movies, and even in reading fanfic, but Remember Us has been a place where i can find, and help maintain, a different balance. One that looks more like the world i know and love (and love/hate!) but also, more like the world i'd like to see, sometimes. Everybody gets one, right?
I guess what i'm ranting towards is that in the future, i'll work towards a Remember Us Manifesto, version 2.0.
But in the recent past, i have to shout out, i updated thanks to a colleague (lj user="makesmewannadie") who posted about the archive in her LJ. That's all it takes. A small deluge of fic overflowed my mailbox, and i got to live in that kind of world for a little while, again. I don't think anyone should write or contribute fannish stuff featuring characters of color just to give me a weekend high. (Or to help with my fifth dissertation chapter, which is going to be about fanfic featuring characters of color). But i think those developments indicate that out there, somewhere, other people are delighted (?) to see an archive like this one, that gives them a chance to be part of a world they know is coming. Or at least, a world they'll welcome when it arrives.
Go on, remember it.
In the future, i'll get my own server. Why, you ask? Because the world needs characters of color in fanfic, links to fannish knowledge of characters of color, fanart featuring characters of color, and generalized goodness of the multi-racial kind. and that's what Remember Us does.
Now, back in the past, some time ago, Te wrote The Remember Us Manifesto, which is a document of a certain kind of love that only really survives in the original version. While some may discount the ruminations on who "counts" as a CoC, it comes to a certain point where you wonder why you *have to count* CoCs in a fictional universe, when, in RL, POC are the countless majority of people. so, like the time-honoured axiom that women=people and color bars=love, one eventually comes to the realization that CoC=characters of color, ergo characters of color=love.
don't ask about the logic there, just follow me. better yet, read and find out.
I've had a lot of adventures dealing with this archive. From losing the website one time, to learning the most basic of html (you'll notice the damn thing looks like it's made of FrontPage, because it is, though now i use Nvu), to long-awaited updates, i've seen long stretches of RL interrupting me with stress and work interrupted, in turn, by days and weekends where all i do is check my mailbox, update the site, and look for fanart. because i really, really love it. i really love it. more importantly, the people who go to the trouble to express their love (or love/hate! often exciting) of CoC in their fandom deserve to have a place to go to and to direct other people to find it, to remember. i guess that's why archives exist.
Also in the past, we find this entry, where i posted updates from the choc_fic ficathon-- a ficathon! for characters of color!
But in the future, i'll work on some things. I added Central Casting months and months ago, to put out a call for things that would be great to see at the archive. But this is what i was thinking, what i want to change, when i named the page that: people of color in TV especially, but in the media writ large, don't seem to come from where i come from. The latter? Communities of color. For lots of reasons, good and bad, people of color tend to come into contexts including white people from contexts without as many white people. Families are one such community. Neighborhoods, institutions, peer groups, affinity groups, movements, are others. Yet i seldom see that reflected in SF (where i find the media i fangirl the hardest), nor in pop culture-- on TV and the blockbusters, nor in comics. with notable exceptions, CoC seem to come straight from Central Casting in much of popular media. which leads me to wonder, how is that possible? Is the universe in which our beloved characters exist peopled by exactly the same percentages of people of color, everywhere? Is there really only one Black person, one Asian American, one Latin@, one indigenous American, one queer person of color, in any given community? In California? In Canada? In space? In the future? These questions are sometimes asked slightly differently by various series set in cosmopolitan Toronto or the secluded island in the South Pacific, but the answers on display vary *only* slightly. And the emphasis of the answers often ends up the same: magical white men save the day, conventionally-attractive white women dominate their attention, and everybody stays the same. Central Casting is a weird, irrational mythology that i've never understood in years of watching TV, reading comics, and seeing movies, and even in reading fanfic, but Remember Us has been a place where i can find, and help maintain, a different balance. One that looks more like the world i know and love (and love/hate!) but also, more like the world i'd like to see, sometimes. Everybody gets one, right?
I guess what i'm ranting towards is that in the future, i'll work towards a Remember Us Manifesto, version 2.0.
But in the recent past, i have to shout out, i updated thanks to a colleague (lj user="makesmewannadie") who posted about the archive in her LJ. That's all it takes. A small deluge of fic overflowed my mailbox, and i got to live in that kind of world for a little while, again. I don't think anyone should write or contribute fannish stuff featuring characters of color just to give me a weekend high. (Or to help with my fifth dissertation chapter, which is going to be about fanfic featuring characters of color). But i think those developments indicate that out there, somewhere, other people are delighted (?) to see an archive like this one, that gives them a chance to be part of a world they know is coming. Or at least, a world they'll welcome when it arrives.
Go on, remember it.