Yuletide 2009 Fandoms with White / Western / Other Source Creators

[dhobikikutti]

Note: In my personal hierarchy of diversity, it is more important to support chromatic creators, and sources made by the people they represent. In addition, many White and Western sources come with deeply problematic racial and cultural depictions of their characters, and yet they end up being more popular and disseminated than more authentic representations.
That said, many of us love sources that are problematic for a variety of reasons, and as fans, one of the wonderful things we can do is produce fic that critiques, challenges and complicates the flaws in the source.
So if you do decide to write for these (and seriously, do it in addition to rather than instead of writing for the first list), please make sure you hunt for critique of the source, and write something that does not add to the problems of misrepresentation.

List of Chromatic Characters in White/Western/Other Created Yuletide 2009 Fandoms

PLEASE USE THIS FORM TO ADD INFORMATION TO THIS LIST (Made by the wonderful thuviaptarth)
Links to posts that comment on the source's racial and cultural representations are especially needed. We'll be editing this post continually to keep up with new information as we get it, so corrections, explanations, and counter-opinions to any commentary about the source is most welcome.

Comments

[thuviaptarth]

I'm not Scott Pilgrim should be here? Most of the cast is white, but the creator's biracial.

[dhobikikutti]

Hmmm. I moved it over, but I feel like maybe we need a different section or list for such things?

[likeadeuce]

Adding some comics with CoC -- "Agents of Atlas" - Jimmy Woo
"Iron Man" - James Rhodes
"Captain America" - Sam Wilson
"The Order" - James Wa, Milo Fields

And film, "The English Patient" - Kip

I'm sure I'll come up with others, but those are off the top of my head.

[likeadeuce]

Oh, and also, Derek Khanata for "Agents of Atlas."

[dhobikikutti]

Added all, thanks!

[liviapenn]

Scott Pilgrim (comic)
(Supporting characters of colour include Knives Chau, Matthew Patel, Tamara Chen. Chinese-Canadian Knives Chau may be seen by some as a problematic stereotype. The comic as a whole plays with stereotypes and genre tropes, so it's difficult at times to tell reflection from criticism.)Preview

Slight correction: Bryan Lee O'Malley is half-white, half-Korean, and mostly seems to define himself as "half-Asian" in interviews, etc. So he might need to be moved to the other list.

[dhobikikutti]

Ok, I changed it over.

[gloss]

I was going to mention Jimmy Woo, et al, in Agents of Atlas, but I thought I should write a post about the problematic status of the canon. That would be helpful, yes? It's an utterly fabulous comic, and Jimmy Woo is the MAN, but at the same time...it's coming from a very "post-racial" (heavy on the sneer quotes, obviously)/hipster racism place, or at least it often seems so.

[dhobikikutti]

Very helpful. Drop a link to it when you're done, thanks!

[kindkit]

This is a really minor correction, but Liz Williams's Inspector Chen books are not set in Hong Kong. They're set in Singapore 3, a "franchise city" located somewhere on the south coast of China.

[dhobikikutti]

Fixed, thanks!

Coming here from the ~yuletide community

[recessional]

Slings and Arrows has Nahum, who is Nigerian, and I know for sure on the listed characters (because I requested him, because he's fantastic). As well, in S2 there's an Asian volunteer/student named Emily Lu, and in S3 there's a black actress named Barbara, no last name given that I can remember.

Re: Coming here from the ~yuletide community

[dhobikikutti]

Added, thanks!

[firerose]

I'm not sure if this is the right place, but Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series (young adult fantasy) is largely populated with characters whose skin is described as various shades of brown and black, while the 'Other' characters are white. There has been a fair amount of discussion of racial issues in the series over past years in the context of television and anime adaptations, which failed to use appropriately coloured characters.

[dhobikikutti]

We really need to start a third list with characters that are presented as non-white/chromatic, even though they are not part of actual existing racial and cultural identities.

[lesserstorm.livejournal.com]

If so then you might add Tanya Huff's The Fires's Stone. Chandra and Darvish (2 of the 3 protagonists) and the countries where the action is set are all distinctly "non-European" and I'd say South-Asian influenced, but definitely secondary world created cultures rather than an actual country or region in disguise. The most prominant feature of the world building is the magic system / religion and I can't spot any real world belief system behind it, although there may be something I'm not aware of.

(Not using your form right now as I'm not sure how far the fandom qualifies. I'm afraid I'm also unable to point to any meta as I've neve seen any for the book.)

A Question

[lesserstorm.livejournal.com]

To what extent is it appropriate to add fandoms that have just a single chromatic character to this project, especially if the rest of canon is mainly white?

One of my yuletide requests is Susan Cooper's Seaward which is, among other things, an interracial romance and Westerly is awesome so might qualify. On the otherhand it's a story where teenagers from our world fall into another world and the created world is largely Celtic in its mythology. I also can't recall anything that would place West's specific ethnicity, nationality, culture or region of origin although he's clearly neither white nor European/North American. Hence issues. But on the third hand, I would dearly love to see West's backstory and identity fleshed out in a way that made sense in real-world history. (He does have some detailed backstory including a disappeared father and a possible coup going on when his story begins.)

I don't want to clutter up the community with inappropriate fandoms; on the otherhand a quick internet search makes me feel I need to stand up and shout "West isn't white. Please don't write him as if he is."

Re: A Question

[dark_administrator]

We're trying to post a third list with chromatic characters in secondary worlds, and it sounds like this fandom would fit that category?

Re: A Question

[lesserstorm.livejournal.com]

That list would be cool, but I think this character should probably be on the real-world list -- it's a portal fantasy type thing; he falls through a door into another world from what looks like a coup or at least a lot of civil unrest. So although most of the action is secondary world, the characters are definitely from our world and it's the real world stuff that's most interesting in character terms. But you can see my problem with working out where to put it.

(In fairness, I can't tell from the book whether the white heroine is North American, European or something else, so it's not only West whose given back story is minimal).