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girl help I'm having fic ideas incompatible with the amount of free time I currently have

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Speedrunning my own impromptu Nanowrimo apparently

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There’s also a large grey area between an Offensive Stereotype and “thing that can be misconstrued as a stereotype if one uses a particularly reductive lens of interpretation that the text itself is not endorsing”, and while I believe that creators should hold some level of responsibility to look out for potential unfortunate optics on their work, intentional or not, I also do think that placing the entire onus of trying to anticipate every single bad angle someone somewhere might take when reading the text upon the shoulders of the writers – instead of giving in that there should be also a level of responsibility on the part of the audience not to project whatever biases they might carry onto the text – is the kind of thing that will only end up reducing the range of stories that can be told about marginalized people. 

A japanese-american Beth Harmon would be pidgeonholed as another nerdy asian stock character. Baby Driver with a black lead would be accused of perpetuating stereotypes about black youth and crime. Phantom Of The Opera with a female Phantom would be accused of playing into the predatory lesbian stereotype. Romeo & Juliet with a gay couple would be accused of pulling the bury your gays trope – and no, you can’t just rewrite it into having a happy ending, the final tragedy of the tale is the rock onto which the entire central thesis statement of the play stands on. Remove that one element and you change the whole point of the story from a “look at what senseless hatred does to our youth” cautionary tale to a “love conquers all” inspiration piece, and it may not be the story the author wants to tell.

Sometimes, in order for a given story to function (and keep in mind, by function I don’t mean just logistically, but also thematically) it is necessary that your protagonist has specific personality traits that will play out in significant ways in the story. Or that they come from a specific background that will be an important element to the narrative. Or that they go through a particular experience that will consist on crucial plot point. All those narrative tools and building blocks are considered to be completely harmless and neutral when telling stories about straight/white people but, when applied to marginalized characters, it can be difficult to navigate them as, depending on the type of story you might want to tell, you may be steering dangerously close to falling into Unfortunate Implications™. And trying to find alternatives as to avoid falling into potentially iffy subtext is not always easy, as, depending on how central the “problematic” element to your plot, it could alter the very foundation of the story you’re trying to tell beyond recognition. See the point above about Romeo & Juliet.    

Like, I once saw a woman a gringa obviously accuse the movie Knives Out of racism because the one latina character in the otherwise consistently white and wealthy cast is the nurse, when everyone who watched the movie with their eyes and not their ass can see that the entire tension of the plot hinges upon not only the power imbalance between Martha and the Thrombeys, but also on her isolation as the one latina immigrant navigating a world of white rich people. I’ve seen people paint Rosa Diaz as an example of the Hothead Latina stereotype, when Rosa was originally written as a white woman (named Megan) and only turned latina later when Stephanie Beatriz was cast  – and it’s not like they could write out Rosa’s anger issues to avoid bad optics when it is such a defining trait of her character. I’ve seen people say Mulholland Drive is a lesbophobic movie when its story couldn’t even exist in first place if the fatally toxic lesbian relationship that moves the plot was healthy, or if it was straight.                          

That’s not to say we can’t ever question the larger patterns in stories about certain demographics, or not draw lines between artistic liberty and social responsibility, and much less that I know where such lines should be drawn. I made this post precisely to raise a discussion, not to silence people. But one thing I think it’s important to keep in mind in such discussions is that stereotypes, after all, are all about oversimplification. It is more productive, I believe, to evaluate the quality of the representation in any given piece of fiction by looking first into how much its minority characters are a) deep, complex, well-rounded, b) treated with care by the narrative, with plenty of focus and insight into their inner life, and c) a character in their own right that can carry their own storyline and doesn’t just exist to prop up other character’s stories. And only then, yes, look into their particular characterization, but without ever overlooking aspects such as the context and how nuanced such characterization is handled. Much like we’ve moved on from the simplistic mindset that a good female character is necessarily one that punches good otherwise she’s useless, I really do believe that it is time for us to move on from the the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all model of good representation and start looking into the core of representation issues (meaning: how painfully flat it is, not to mention scarce) rather than the window dressing.

I know I am starting to sound like a broken record here, but it feels that being a latina author writing about latine characters is a losing game, when there’s extra pressure on minority authors to avoid ~problematic~ optics in their work on the basis of the “you should know better” argument. And this “lower common denominator” approach to representation, that bars people from exploring otherwise interesting and meaningful concepts in stories because the most narrow minded people in the audience will get their biases confirmed, in many ways, sounds like a new form of respectability politics. Why, if it was gringos that created and imposed those stereotypes onto my ethnicity, why it should be my responsibility as a latina creator to dispel such stereotypes by curbing my artistic expression? Instead of asking of them to take responsibility for the lenses and biases they bring onto the text? Why is it too much to ask from people to wrap their minds about the ridiculously basic concept that no story they consume about a marginalized person should be taken as a blanket representation of their entire community?

It’s ridiculous. Gringos at some point came up with the idea that latinos are all naturally inclined to crime, so now I, a latina who loves heist movies, can’t write a latino character who’s a cool car thief. Gentiles created antisemitic propaganda claiming that the jews are all blood drinking monsters, so now jewish authors who love vampires can’t write jewish vampires. Straights made up the idea that lesbian relationships tend to be unhealthy, so now sapphics who are into Brontë-ish gothic romance don’t get to read this type of story with lesbian protagonists. I want to scream.      

And at the end of the day it all boils down to how people see marginalized characters as Representation™ first and narrative tools created to tell good stories later, if at all. White/straight characters get to be evaluated on how entertaining and tridimensional they are, whereas minority characters get to be evaluated on how well they’d fit into an after school special. Fuck this shit.                            

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Well it's that time of year again, if you'd like to recieve questions and well wishes throughout nanowrimo please let me know by reblogging this!

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I have decided what to do for nano but it unfortunately entails writing short stories... I have never in my life written a short story and have no idea how to

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Enemies-to-lovers, but instead of featuring a villain redemption arc, the heroic one is getting progressively more corrupt, unhinged and fucked up, and the one who was originally the clear-cut villain out of the two is just like "well mark me down as scared and horny"

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Had yet another one of those vivid dreams, this time about a life-sized doll made of sugar brought to life by a witch's love for her niece, who becomes attached to a little black kitten and runs away via a massive industrial ship to avoid being taken apart

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Wanting to start a project just for fun but feeling like all your good ideas are in limbo on other projects 😔

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Falling asleep, suddenly remember reading a book called Freeze Tag in elementary school... I'll have to look that one up tomorrow and figure out why it stuck around in my head lol

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girl help the character i created for a joke has a detailed tragic backstory and epic lore now

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I don’t know if this is meaningful or stress-relieving for anyone, but it feels like the kind of thing that fandom writing communities don’t talk about much. And I just want to put it out there:

It’s okay if I love your writing and you don’t love mine.

We all have different tastes and different writing styles. Mine might not work for you. That doesn’t mean my writing is bad or your taste is suspect. It means we’re different people with our own preferences and boundaries. You can be welcome here, regardless of how you feel about what I write. And if I gush about your writing, it’s because I want to. Don’t feel awkward about not returning the sentiment. I don’t take that personally. And I never will.

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hello hello! how's nano going for u so far? are u writing a new project or working on one you already have?

Howdy howdy, thank you for asking!  I’m writing a new project for the first time this year, at most the basic idea has been sitting in my head for a while but I haven’t actually worked on it before lol. Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote yesterday~

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Meadow ran down the empty hall of the castle-- a person, not so much a field of grass and flower, though he was the type to think that would be an awfully pleasant change of pace. 

He was late, not that it mattered too much. Son of the king and queen, he would always be on time and it would be everyone else who was either early or late. Unless of course it came to the king and queen themselves, but it was only studies.

Still he ran, distractible and in his own head, half dancing to the tune of a song he'd heard during dinner the other night. Jogging, jogging, a hop and a skip, a step and a slide, humming to the tune until he tripped.

"Oof!"

Meadow hit the ground, the heels of his hands skidding across damp dirt and slick wet leaves as a sudden cold bit him. He shook his head and took a moment to process what happened before picking himself back up and wiping the mud onto his pants with a mildly perturbed look. Focused on his muddied pants, his attention shifted just past that to the ground beneath him.

Mud and dirt, twigs and half rotted leaves. Not well kept marble and carpet.

He spun around to look for his castle surroundings, and found instead himself surrounded by a thick wood of dead trees. Just behind him was a disk of bright light, swirling and suspended in the air. Before he could sort out what was going on it blinked out of existence and he blinked his eyes, left only with the sight of decaying trees and brush.

"Wh– What?" Meadow took a step back, confusion threatening to send him reeling, and he turned it circles calling out "Hello? Hello, is anyone there? Hello! Where am I?!"

A pack of growls approached earshot from a distance, and he heaved a sigh of relief. The Black Dogs, his family's most impressive line of defence. Whatever had happened here, they'd lead him back home. He started walking, then jogging, toward the noise, waving his hand.

"Hello," he called, "I'm over here! What's going on?"

It was terribly cold out and Meadow took a second to rub his bare arms as he went. Winter was near, but the cold must have rolled in awfully fast last night. He'd remember to keep a coat with him if they were going to make whatever this was a regular thing.

Meadow dug his heels into the earth and stumbled back, heart in his throat threatening to beat its way out.

The creatures that approached were not the black dogs, they weren't dogs– they weren't even alive.

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“Character who has met god is an atheist” may be excellent, but consider:

“character has like a post-graduate degree in the study of a completely different religion”

“character is a really important religious leader for a completely different religion and they have a REPUTATION”

“character at least nominally followed the religion of the god they meet up until meeting them, but then they decide to convert to something else just to spite them”

“character tries to rope god into their theological arguments on facebook”

and

“character is pursuing a theology degree and sees this as a research opportunity (I can’t decide if it’s funnier if this is theology in the real-world sense or if in this world theology involves observing God in the field)”

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I don't know if this is meaningful or stress-relieving for anyone, but it feels like the kind of thing that fandom writing communities don't talk about much. And I just want to put it out there:

It's okay if I love your writing and you don't love mine.

We all have different tastes and different writing styles. Mine might not work for you. That doesn't mean my writing is bad or your taste is suspect. It means we're different people with our own preferences and boundaries. You can be welcome here, regardless of how you feel about what I write. And if I gush about your writing, it's because I want to. Don't feel awkward about not returning the sentiment. I don't take that personally. And I never will.

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FINALLY completed nanowrimo. Book I of the series only actually amounted to about 46k in it’s first draft so me n my co-writer just kind of winged it going into book II despite it not being planned. Can’t wait to get to editing, but alas it must wait!

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I need the strongest of vibes to catch up on writing today during thanksgiving there’s going to be so many people

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Won’t be able to finish doing the nanwrimo questions this year, there’s over 100 people and being as sick as I was the first two weeks of November I have a lot of my own work to do lol But I’d still like to keep at least a little active in the writeblr community instead of dropping off the face of the earth on this blog again so in exchange:

Reblog to your writeblr –or main if you don’t have one– if you want occasional questions about your WIPS

I figure my goal might be once a month check ins, but we’ll see how it goes :)