#(guess what all of those are foods of immigrant origin AND they're foods that make up the British culinary landscape)

[thedreadvampy]

it's uhhhh as you know I find it hard to let go of stupid comments but somebody commenting on a post that says "immigrants to Britain are part of the British cultural makeup actually, saying that the only authentically British food is White People Food is playing into white supremacist rhetoric, curry and chow mein and jerk chicken are as British as mince and tatties or Sunday roast" to say "um actually curry isn't British it comes from South Asian immigrants" just has me so. ????????¿¿¿¿?¿?¿?

YEAH BUDDY THAT'S WHAT I'M SAYING. IT COMES FROM SOUTH ASIAN IMMIGRANTS LIVING IN BRITAIN. AND THEREFORE IS BRITISH.

[olderthannetfic]

Thank you for your explanation for the skin-color-as-food-description thing! (also I apologize to all olives for assuming them mostly green ;) ) Are there any good resources/tips on writing a diverse cast without falling into the old stereotypes/food-descriptors/more-yikes-words-that-are-yikes? I guess there are probably a lot more pitfalls to this I really want to avoid in the future.

--

I accept your groveling, olive besmircher! ;P

There are guides...

As a white American, I have found it useful to at least peruse them to familiarize myself with things I might not have realized are cliches and red flags. And the reason I have found them useful is that I am a white American, the typical target audience of such guides.

Writingwithcolor, on tumblr, is a classic example of guides produced by fandom.

The thing is, a lot of fans who are from outside of a US context find these guides really... err... misguided. They feel they center the experiences of diaspora in a few countries (like the US, UK, and Canada) over the experiences of people in the home country. They feel they're too One Right Way or too obviously aimed at white people. Many people find them too enmeshed in a US-centric POC framework for dividing identities into categories as opposed to how identity would be seen in even Europe or Australia or New Zealand, never mind various parts of Asia or Africa.

So I'm not saying don't read them. Absolutely. If you want a guide, go read all of the many posts on writingwithcolor. Go find other guides.

But you're not going to find a magic bullet that fixes this.

I would personally focus more on not being an asshat in your own context than on pleasing the nitpicking Americans who might find your fanfic and find it problematique for stupid reasons. What ethnic minorities exist where you are? What do they think about writing cliches? And not just the loudest bloggers: what do people you run into in your actual life think? What do writers from your location think?

There's really no substitute for having a varied friend group and talking to them, but life experience and reading widely are helpful too.

There's no substitute for specificity either. Are you writing Sam Wilson or are you writing BTS? Are you writing something completely original? Is it set in the real world or is it fantasy?

If you want to write African Americans or some specific group not near you, go explore the rich history of literature from this group. Maybe for some groups, there isn't much to find, but black people in the US have produced a fuckton of art about their own experiences, and so have many other groups. Go consume it if you're interested.

Recognize that a very specific niche of highly online people who share the same politics isn't going to give you a robust view of an entire group. Sam Wilson is probably considerably more conservative and traditional than a lot of black bloggers in fandom and considerably less concerned with minutia of word choice given that he's a military guy who has made it through a whole career of other military guys. That doesn't mean he agrees with white US conservatives though or even that he's what we might call conservative overall. Ditto Nile Freeman from The Old Guard. Meanwhile, Peter Grant from Rivers of London is likely going to have far more leftist economic views, less of a connection to Christianity, and certainly a far stronger connection to an immigrant experience.

It's more important to learn enough to write something you know isn't offensive drivel than it is to listen to each and every hater you encounter. Those queer teenagers wailing about "the q slur" have equivalents in any demographic. Beware giving too much weight to this sort of person's views.

But that said, I don't think you need to wallow in research until the end of time. It is far more important to try in good faith than to fear getting something wrong.

Someone might yell at you, and that sucks, but if you're more afraid of that than of making boring art about only one kind of character, you're focused on the wrong thing. If you have basic confidence in your own intentions and general knowledge, you can shrug off the most mean-spirited or petty critiques and are better able to listen to the more relevant ones.

If you just want a list of words that are slurs, that's relatively easy. Writing something that sensitively and properly represents any group is harder, even if you're a group member yourself, and a lot of it comes down to writing skill.

There is no magic bullet.