CoC in demand

[kattahj]

So, I started thinking about just how many CoCs are underrepresented in fandom, sometimes vastly so (*cough* Gus on Psych * cough*), and it became rather depressing - and then I started wondering about the ones that aren't underrepresented, and why that is.

At which point thelana made a very interesting post about that, among other things. Her example of

Comments

[tiferet]

It's almost impossible to ship Hiro/Ando if you know anything about Japanese men. Ando is so very perfectly drawn as the kind of Japanese man who is basically the anti-gay (not homophobic, just...really really not gay, Kinsey 0.) I have dated enough guys like Ando and you know, the closest that kind of man will ever get to gay is maybe letting some guy suck his dick while he closes his eyes and thinks about strippers, but in order to be drunk enough to do that, he'd probably be too drunk to come.

[kattahj]

Oh, I'm sure Ando would never sleep with a man if the situation was normal, but when your timetraveling friend brings you halfway across the world, and shows you a future where you're dead, and then pops off to the 16th century for a while... well, if that's not the point to start questioning your assumptions about life, I don't know what would be. (Unless you're saying that Japanese men are inherently less gay than Western men? Because that would be... odd.)

Of course, I could be biased by the fact that every time Ando's with a woman I go from my usual love to wanting to strangle him ASAP. So as far as I'm concerned, he needs to be with a man, be alone, or grow the fuck up.

[tiferet]

I've re-examined my assumptions about life many times, converted to a different religion, and yet...my sexual orientation, amazingly, has never changed. I wish it would because I'm 90% heterosexual and think I would be happier with a woman if I could make the sex work--and lord knows I've tried. I don't think Japanese men are inherently less gay than Western men. I do think Ando Masahashi is inherently NOT GAY as an individual.

Also, this?

Of course, I could be biased by the fact that every time Ando's with a woman I go from my usual love to wanting to strangle him ASAP. So as far as I'm concerned, he needs to be with a man, be alone, or grow the fuck up.This does not sound like a reason to ship Ando with someone one actually likes. At all. As someone who's had sexual relationships with both men and women, and many bisexual people, trust me: most people are the same kind of asshole with men that they are with women

[kattahj]

I do think Ando Masahashi is inherently NOT GAY as an individual.

OK. Our mileage clearly varies on this, but at least I think I understand what you're getting at now - the whole "if you know anything about Japanese men" bit confused me in context.

This does not sound like a reason to ship Ando with someone one actually likes. At all. As someone who's had sexual relationships with both men and women, and many bisexual people, trust me: most people are the same kind of asshole with men that they are with women.

Ando's not usually an asshole around men, though. I feel, specifically, that he has misogynist tendencies. That's not rare. And a lot of people are different around men and women. I'm different around men and women.

So yeah, I'm a totally committed Hiro/Ando anti-shipper. I won't read the pairing even if someone I like writes it, because it either breaks my brain or seems OOC to me.Okay. Your choice

[taraljc]

I miss Louise Beckett and Kyle Duerte.

Desperately.

also, the Sisko, and Dr Bashir. But that's cos DS9 was the only Trek I care about after-the-fact.

[kattahj]

Are Lou and Kyle well-represented? I haven't read enough J20 to say, but if that's so I'm obviously thrilled.

DS9 is the only Trek I've never seen - it aired on a cable channel I didn't get, and I've never gotten around to seeing it since.

[thelana]

Bashir and Sisko are interesting cases though. Sisko was a black man and the one in charge of the station. Yet the way I understand he was barely ever written (though in my mind there should at least have been pseudo-slash/het with him and Dax

[tiferet]

I *definitely* think that being middle class makes characters of colour easier for white people (or any person outside of that character's ethnicity) to write. It's *difficult* to write about someone who's from the ghetto, or the barrio, or whatever, if you have no personal background with that, without resorting to stereotypes and a lot of white people are terrified of fucking it up and ending up as the latest star on FW.

[thelana]

I'm not really an expert on many of these fandoms. My theory on race and popularity in fandom is that in a way it's a numbers game

[kattahj]

Yeah, that sounds reasonable - of course, working out the exact pointage of anything would be a headache. :-)

I think in a lot of cases, CoCs are given less gratifying roles to begin with, but there are also cases that baffle me a LOT because surely race couldn't be THAT big a hurdle?

[thelana]

I agree on all counts.

And yes, figuring out the exact numbers would be impossible because they are highly subjective and likely to be different for each person. I just bring them up to express in how I think race issues do exist in fandom. I think they might exist in the form of a certain malus when it comes to character popularity. The big question is how big is that malus.

And then there are issues that aren't race, but might be/are correlated with race (like: cocs being more likely to be written as physical or lower class; pocs being a minority hence it's less likely that cocs will get pivotal roles; or white people have certain issues writing cocs and since the writers who write the shows are white the cocs of have these flaws which are then again repeated and built on in the fandom etc) and that also have a negative influence.

[tiferet]

Do you think some of this is due to the fact that most fic is either slash or het, not gen, and there's a reluctance to write interracial pairings? Do you think CoC--especially black CoC--get written more when they can be paired together instead of with white people? Just wondering.

Relationships between black people and white people seem to be much more common in shows from the UK (Mickey/Rose, Ianto/Lisa, Martha/Doctor) than they are in shows from the US, where it used to be a huge taboo.

And I've always suspected racism to be behind the extreme hatred for the Dean/Cassie ship in SPN fandom. Always. She's the most hated female character in SPN and frankly she was only in one episode and while she did blow Dean off, so have other people. Bela (who is a huge bitch) gets less hate than Cassie.

[alixtii]

I think class is a huge factor in which characters of color get written. When I examined my own writing and what characters I had written and which characters I would have an interest in writing, class was the huge divider.

Now, if lower-class white characters routinely get written (by an individual or by fandom as a group), we're back to some complex race/class intersectionality. And I suspect that may be the case. The only one that jumps easily to mind is Faith from Buffy, but I suspect that may have more to do with the fact that, figuratively speaking, I haven't "had my coffee" yet. A lot to think about here, though, so thank you!

[kattahj]

Well, Rose Tyler is working class, the Winchesters too. Of course, they're main characters, which most of the working class CoCs don't seem to be. So I think it's a factor, but that there's more to it than that.

Huh, I now suddenly get an urge to check my own writing when it comes to class.

[0nlymemories]

And for what it's worth, Eliza Dushku is of Romanian descent and there are a lot of places in the States where she wouldn't get read immediately as "white".

[undomielregina]

I'd have to disagree there. I'm of Romanian decent and I know my full-Romanian relatives (I even knew my great-grandmother, who was born there.) We would all be read as white immediately no matter where we were and, looking at Dushku, so would she.

[bluesenough]

(here via metafandom

[kattahj]

I've not done a study myself, but my sneaking suspicion is the problem is as much in the creation of canon texts as it is in the ways fandom respond to those texts, if not more so.

Oh, absolutely. That was why I wanted to look at positive examples rather than negative ones - because I've seen so many posts of "why doesn't anyone write X?" filling up with comments about how X is poorly written, or not angsty enough, or not shippable enough, or whatever. So I wanted to see what made people like and/or write a CoC.

I acknowledge, we as fans are VERY good at grasping at straws, but if a character has nothing interesting about them in the first place except for the fact that they happen to be a CoC/queer/female, what really recommends them?

I think this is one reason CoC characters (and queer/female characters too) need to be lauded individually as well as a group. I mean, it's good and necessary to point out a lack of representation, but it shouldn't be the only reason to write a char. So it should also be pointed out that the specific

[bluesenough]

(ha ha sorry, belated very long reply here

[kattahj]

Reading it did make me wonder to a certain extent, especially because I think white (generally male, straight) writers are between a rock and a hard place

Oh, absolutely. But a very smart man (Dag Hammarsköld) once said that whatever you do, someone will condemn you for it. So the way I see it, it's better to do one's very best than to let it slide with the excuse that "even if I did do something, someone would complain."

"PoC don't write enough TV Shows."

Ayup. And I think one of the ways white people can help is by sometimes stepping down so that the PoC can get what should have been theirs a long time ago. But I also think that since white people do have the power over, among other things, TV shows, it's better not to say "Oh, I can't write a CoC, I'll leave that to the PoC." Besides, maybe the PoC writer who does come through really wants to make a show about Marie Antoinette, y'know?