#im avoiding naming the character in specific to avoid attracting discourse

[autismswagsummit]

I submitted some fictionalised version of historical figures. Is this ok? Since they’re not accurate depictions of the people who share their name.

This is another vague area that in practice, I have to treat with some level of individual consideration for each nomination, however I checked which nomination is (most likely) yours and I will say firmly that your character will not be making it into the bracket. To avoid ambiguity and cut straight to the point, the real life version of this character was a slave owner, and I do not feel that (even in a parody/rewritten form) slave owners should have a place in this competition. I hope you will understand where I'm coming from with this

[millenniumfae]

hi fae! i was wonderng if u could give me some advice as an ace poc on this other ace poc character im writing. its for an urban fantasy series w/ 4 main characters, 3 of whom are non white. the character im concerned abt is korean/american and demisexual. ive read a lot of discourse about asian characters being desexualized in media and as a white woman i want to avoid reinforcing those stereotypes, but also keep ace rep. other characters def perceive him as attractive and hes also not my (1/2)

ace character (the other is a white sex indifferent girl). truthfully the story is more about interpersonal relationships and found family with dashes of action than about any of the characters identities. im ace myself and this character is someone i feel i can really get ppl to identify with. do you have any tips about staying in my lane/what to avoid?

Well, let’s be very specific; it’s some Asian men that suffer desexualization in the given term. Largely, when we discuss the Asian experience, we are talking about objectification - the removal of a voice and autonomy in their sexuality. 

Desexualizing Asian men often occurs when they’re in comparison to ‘real men’ and ‘real male sexuality’. It’s a quick way to ‘emasculate’ the partners of Asian women, and tell these women that they deserve better than men who can’t fulfill their little womanly desires.

But in my experience, Asian men are much more likely to be objectified alongside Asian non-men, than they are to be desexualized. Because we’re not just talking about your given straight cisgender frat boys in State, we’re taking about any and all sexual individuals who have their own misconceptions of Asian people, and how Asian people relate to their sexual desires.

In my own experience of being aspec and Asian, the primary reaction (upon someone knowing that I am both) is an immediate reduction of my worth as a person. I was invited to this party to stand there and be sexy, not because I’m an actual guest. Insert-fellow-college-student-here will never ask for my peer opinion again, because why bother talking to me at all? Date #1 asks me if I know what ‘asexuality actually means’ and orders me to imagine an erect penis, date #2 turns into a therapist with an obvious intent to ‘cure my trauma’ so they can continue the night as planned, date #3 gets dangerously angry and is seconds from having a meltdown because they ‘don’t appreciate being lied to’.

So as you can probably guess, I’m very much not impressed with the sudden interest in telling Asian people that we could NOT be asexual, and having that movement couched as progressiveness. 

It’s more than ‘enforcing stereotypes’. It’s about the lack of real-life Asian voices regardless the material. AKA, a lack of paychecks paid towards us, a lack of media attention, a lack of autonomy over our creative endeavors. 

Writing characters of color is a discussion in itself. We (and by ‘we’, I mean both white and not) will most likely encounter characters of color that engage the audience like the audience is white. Or, at the very least, not of their own race and culture.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and it can be carefully justified. A good example includes Raul from Fallout New Vegas - one of the companions the player can recruit. Raul is voiced by a famous American latin-american-speaking actor, Raul’s spanish words are not translated in the subtitles, Raul makes several allusions to his life in Mexico as a Mexican man.

Raul is no token Mexican stereotype, he is a character with strong Mexican backgrounds and stands on his two feet as a character of color. He talks to the player in a way that implies that the player is shoehorned into being not Mexican themselves, but it’s only a slight suspicion and you can also say his outsider’s opinion on the player’s background can instead be attributed to his age - he’s nearly 200 years old, and talks about the world pre-nuclear apocalypse. 

Is Raul ‘obviously’ written by a non-Mexican writer? You’d have to talk to someone who’d be more familiar with that, but there’s enough on Raul’s benefit for me to claim that he’s a passible example of a fictional man of color.

So what’s a character obviously written by white people, for white people? Continuing the Latin route, Mass Effect: Andromeda’s Reyes Vidal is… hhhhhh. His face is a white model spraypainted tan, instead of having different hairlines or a differently shaped nose and mouth and forehead and etc. He’s voiced by a white british actor who does an atrocious job at faking some sort of spicy latin accent. He exists primarily as some sort of captivating, mysterious Sexual Being - every interaction with Reyes involves dates, or otherwise hints at sexual histories. Any moment that doesn’t, it’s about his failure as an honest man.

He’s obviously meant to be a sexual interest. That itself wouldn’t be a problem, but add in the fake ‘latin’ accent and spraypainted white model and lack of any indicator of him as someone from an actual culture and society? Very not good. 

Reyes is what happens when you take your default white character, and decide to spruce him up for spiciness points. Raul, on the other hand, is someone who was built from the ground up as having that very specific of color experience.

The mistakes that gave way to Mass Effect’s Reyes is what I see most primarily, and it’s what I encourage all to avoid. 

So lets consider your goal of writing a Korean man, and compare the worst case scenario versus what you’d want to aim for. So you, under pen name Cassandra Blair, introduce Yoosung Baekhyun (named after your favorite dating sim character and kpop member combined into one), and he’s a lily-delicate elven boytoy when he enters the room. By chapter five, it’s clear that our exotic ricefairy has neither interest nor knowledge of sexuality, leaving him completely out of any sexual discussion - and therefore by extension, he has little voice in any written development in bodily autonomy.

Everything about Yoosung Baekhyun is to be pliant under the hands of an outside force. If he doesn’t have neither an interest nor a voice in sexual discussions, that leaves a big empty hole where anyone could fill it with whatever, should they wish. His lack of voice and autonomy makes him into an object for the purposes of your other characters. 

Instead, let’s say that Yoosung has a voice. A large one. He’s got that Jughead sarcasm when it comes to dealing with sexuality, and gets to both start and end these discussions. Suddenly, this Korean man gets to control the flow of the story, and he’s not just a prop to be used. 

That’d probably be more accurate, anyways. Aspec people love to talk about their asexuality. I know I do.

There’s very little I can tell you without actually reading the story. Criticism of literature should (and sometimes do) have a huge emphasis on justice-driven portrayals of the marginalized. Thing is, criticism is a paid profession that is useless in small doses. From one artist to another, I say unto you - write your story, but get more voices of color to give you their honest opinion. And then change, and change often. Your efforts will never be perfect, but you can do much to avoid the worst.