Writing the Underrepresented: Habits of Mind, Sex Scenes, and Political Action
Edit: The comments have made clear to me that I have done something I didn't want to and written a post that made people feel talked at. So this is a belated disclaimer: This post is about what I think about when I'm writing and what I think about this particular discussion in fandom. This is not a prescription for what you should do. I do believe
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Yeah, I actually am surprised at myself with that. When I look in my ideas folder, more than half of them are f/f, and the more I write m/m in fandom, is the more part of my mind is simultaneously transliterating it for f/f...to the point where I start to fear I'm blurring whatever gender roles there are. A fic I personally like a lot started out with an all-male cast. When I finished, I went back over it and changed out most of the male characters to female, and now I wish it was a chaptered thing, it felt so good. And the next thing I want to work on has a swordswoman with one arm. There must be a meta f/f-m/m switching, somewhere.
ETA: I was also thinking about the whole writing as a political statement thing, and trying to figure if that was the reason I included a POC as a major character in one of my original m/m...and now that I think about it, there's always a POC as part of the main pairing in my original stuff. I don't actively think that I'm trying to SAY something, but I do remember thinking one day when I was contemplating some characters, "Aha! I KNOW he's going to be a black guy with Latin American roots! I can do this here!" And it wasn't really because I felt locked in in fandom (although most times I DO, I've been craving a Blaise-centric fic in the Harry Potter fandom for awhile now).
Thinking Marie is thinking.
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Fascinating! Other people's writing habits are so interesting. :) And I'm always excited when people are writing about women. (Fan fiction and young adult novels are the only genres where I really read stories about male characters.)
I think it's great that you just include POC characters without trying to do so - so many of us (and especially those of us with white privilege - I keep thinking of the conversation that often comes up around racism and privilege that points out that white privilege means white people can get away with not thinking about issues of race where racism means POC always have to consider issues of race) aren't good at that. I am not good at that, and it's one of the habits of mind I need to change. Also, this is reminding me that I think I have your original fic journal friended and I'm not sure if I've read any of it. I will have to go do that!
I hope this is useful/interesting thinking. ♥
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