Descriptions in fan fic
I love fan fic. I love that there are people out there who imagine stories for characters that I like and are willing to share those stories. One thing that annoys me, though, is that some writers have the habit of using “the black man” or “the black woman” just about every time the character of color has a line or performs some action. Is that really necessary? I mean, it is not likely that a person is reading a story without having some basic knowledge of the characters. A highly unlikely occurrence, but for the sake of argument, let’s say that a person wanders into a story with no prior knowledge of the characters, are they likely to forget something so basic as a physical/racial description within the span of time they are reading the story? More than likely, the answer is no, and as the racial description is usually unimportant to the storyline, why do these writers feel compelled to remind the reader that a character is one of color at every turn?