Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Nominations!

[dark_administrator]

If you have nominated one or more fandoms that qualify for our challenge, please list them here! If you would like to brainstorm, urge other people to nominate something you might not have had a slot for, or discuss other aspects of nominations, this is the space to do it.

Do remember that the closer we get to 25th December 2010, the harder it will be for people to learn a new source canon - so this is the best time to try to woo a potential writer over into a TV series or epic 6 volume book canon.

How to Nominate
The nomination form

Nominations close Wednesday, 20th October at 8:59 pm US Eastern time.

Addendum:

With the help of dharmavati, eruthros, and thingswithwings, to whom we owe many thanks, we've been compiling nominated fandoms with chromatic creators and characters from your comments, the Yuletide Nominated Fandoms List, and the Yuletide Characters List in the Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Nominations List spreadsheet (html version).

We've been following titling and tagging conventions from yuletide and AO3 and will need help adding and verifying information, so if you have time and energy to spare, we would appreciate your assistance! The spreadsheet is set so anyone (no Google account needed) can edit, and Google Docs is designed so multiple editors can work on a document simultaneously and all their edits will update. We're currently working through the Yuletide Nominated Fandoms list, and you can check our status under Progress. We have also included a Color Key to explain the highlighted cells.

We're also maintaining a list of Chromatic Yuletide Fandom Promotion Posts here.

Comments

[athenejen]

You are SO RIGHT about Badri!

[minkhollow]

I can speak to the question marks on RENT, as that was one of my huge fandoms for a while.

Chromatic characters: Angel Dumott Schunard, Tom Collins, Mimi Marquez, Benny Coffin, Joanne Jefferson
Intersectionality: HIV-positive (Angel, Collins, Mimi, Roger Davis); LGBT (Angel, Collins, Joanne, Maureen Johnson)

[aldanise]

Another person who likes Genji monogatari, yay!

[lastwingedthing]

It really is! You can find out more, cough cough, in the pimping post I just made. :D

CHERUB

[smallfuzzy]

I've nominated the CHERUB series by Robert Muchumore which has a whole lot of CoC and also is generally awesome. (Canon gay characters! In a YA series aimed at boys! Characters BEING racist or homophobic or sexist and getting called on it loudly!) Off the top of my head (and okay, wiki helped) there's Kerry Chang (one of the main characters), Shakeel Dajani, Michael Hendry, Gabrielle O'Brien and Fahim Bin Hassam. And it's awesome and there are kiddy spies and ethics commitees and I would love more fic for it.

[dark_administrator]

Thanks!

[blueyeti]

Oooh, The Giver. I can't remember actually *liking* that book, but I was terribly intrigued by it. Addressing it with a chromatic approach would be awesome.

[blueyeti]

Wow, I really want to watch Lady Daddy.

[anenko]

I can PM you with links, if you'd like.

[blueyeti]

Oh, that would be *brilliant*. Thank you!

[eruthros]

Oh god, yes, so orientalist. But aren't Ali and Mahmoud Hazr (spoilers!) (skip) actually white English lords pretending to be Bedouin? It was pretty much the last straw for me in terms of the series -- just, the main Bedouin characters are white dudes?

[mercredigirl]

Oh, right. Damn. Can we un-canon that? ...THEY'RE BEDOUINS PRETENDING TO BE WHITE LORDS PRETENDING TO BE BEDOUIN? :D

[mercredigirl]

The Adelia Aguilar historical mysteries have several characters of colour, e.g. Hakim and his family from the first book, and Mansur, one of the secondary characters.

[athenejen]

Huh. I wasn't actually angling for all of my nominations to qualify (though I was certainly planning on some), but it turns out they do!

RPF - Chinese history and literature: All PoC, all the time! And given that all four of the characters currently nominated are Tang dynasty poets, the source material is essentially all in their own words! My favorite is Yu Xuanji, a female poet who wrote blunt, autobiographical poems and led a very controversial life.

RPF - Figure Skating: Tons of PoC potential here -- just skimming the list I see: Ben Agosto (Puerto Rican-Jewish), Caroline Zhang (Chinese American), Daisuke Takahashi (Japanese), Denis Ten (Korean Kazahkstani), Emanuel Sandhu (Italian-Sikh Canadian), Felicia Zhang (Chinese American), Florent Amodio (Brazilian by birth), Mao Asada (Japanese), Michelle Kwan (Chinese American), Miki Ando (Japanese), Mirai Nagasu (Japanese American), Patrick Chan (Chinese Canadian), Shizuka Arakawa (Japanese), Takahiko Kozuka (Japanese), Yuna Kim (Korean), and Yuzuru Hanyu (Japanese).

Kitchen Confidential: This television show based on Anthony Bourdain's book had a sadly truncated run (only 13 episodes -- I think they're all available on Hulu) and was filled with white people. But! My very favorite character was Teddy Wong, played by John Cho. Which I think makes him a Korean-American actor playing a character of Chinese descent (my best guess for someone with the last name Wong), and I wouldn't say the show is perfect on racial politics. But Cho is fantastic and Teddy had some hilarious, snarky, smart lines and is so much more than a stereotype, and one of my requests is likely to center on him. There are also some Latinos in the cast, though they are generally dishwashers. Ramon is the most prominent of these, and I kind of love him, and I've added him to the character list. I think the show falls into stereotypes more when dealing with its Latino characters, but I still think some interesting stuff could be done with them.

Poppy Z Brite - Drawing Blood: If I request fic for this, it will be about Eddy Sung, the best friend of one of the two male protagonists (it's been years since I actually re-read the book, and I was less aware of chromatic issues and politics then; iirc one of them is white and the other is either white or something more complicated; the author is, I believe, non-chromatic), an Asian girl (probably Chinese or Korean, based on her last name) who is complex and strong and vulnerable and smart and flawed and awesome.

Stephen Manes - The Obnoxious Jerks: I believe the creator is a white male, and the protagonist is white, but some of the supporting cast is chromatic (though race doesn't play a significant role in the story): Perry Wu, Roberto Garcia, and if I'm remembering correctly, Wilver Sims. I have a feeling that if I went back and read the source with racial politics in mind I wouldn't be able to call it completely unproblematic, but I do think the book is a lot of fun and smart writing could be done with these chromatic characters.

Athena (comic): A nifty manga-style two-volume comic book by Dean Hsieh, an Asian-American comic book writer (Hsieh suggests Chinese to me, but I couldn't find confirmation in my quick google search). The Greek gods have been retired and Athena ends up playing in a punk rock band and eventually she and her friends and some members of her family save the world. The characters are basically white (or in some cases, possibly indeterminate and generally unspecified), but the creator is chromatic.


Things I almost nominated (and that others did in fact nominate) that qualify:

American Idiot (musical): It is never mentioned at all in the text, but both Whatsername and Extraordinary Girl are played by chromatic actresses, at least for the show's initial Broadway run. Yes, it bothers me that neither of them are given actual names, and because our pov characters are twenty-something white males the women tend to be either demanding or put on a pedestal within the source material. However, the women also make the most consistently sensible decisions throughout the musical, and they're all pretty darn awesome, and stories featuring them, including ones where their chromaticism is written in, could be incredible.

Justified: I'm pretty sure someone has already mentioned that Marshal Rachel Brooks is a CoC. She didn't get as much to do in the first season as I'd like, but she is awesome.

Love Actually: Peter (of the Mark/Peter/Juliet love triangle plot) is a CoC. In the story we get more of Mark and Juliet interacting than we do of Peter (and race is pretty much never mentioned, iirc); I would love to see more of him and his perspective.

RPF - So You Think You Can Dance: Some excellent PoC potential here -- even just from the contestants and all-stars who appeared on this past season, we have Alex Wong, Mark Kanemura, Jose Ruiz, Stephen Boss aka Twitch, Adechike Torbert, and Ade Obayomi, and there are clearly lots from prior seasons, too.

RPF - Mythbusters: Grant Imahara is a fourth-generation Japanese-American and is wonderful and smart and creative and geeky and I kind of want all the fic in the world about him.

Hawaii Five-0: Chin Ho Kelly and Kono Kalakaua are Hawaiian (possibly mixed with Korean and/or Japanese and/or Chinese?) characters played by Korean actors, and are awesome and kickass and I wish they got more screentime.

The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr: Most of the characters are white in this quirky television series (that sadly only lasted one season, but at least it was a fairly long season), but Lord Bowler aka James Lonefeather is one of my favorite characters, and is very much chromatic.

Mysterious Skin: Eric (played by Jeffrey Licon) is, if based on the actor playing him, chromatic, though his background isn't covered in the movie. He's pretty great! WARNING: the movie deals with some extremely difficult subjects; please contact me via pm if you need more explicit warnings.

[aris_tgd]

And I turned my last slot over to nominate The Gymnast (2006). One of the main characters, Serena Goldberg, is a Korean transracial adoptee. And an out lesbian. She's awesome. Picspam here! (The author/director is white.)

[eruthros]

I WISH WE COULD. It was such an awful moment -- like, Russell spent the whole book learning that Arabic people are people too, and then she starts to recognize Ali and Mahmoud's intelligence and to appreciate desert living and whatever, and then they're surprise!white? Way to negate everything in that arc! The Russell-judges-PoC-and-learns-valuable-lesson approach was already problematic, it didn't need any more help.

I have clearly had this stored up in me for ages now.

[carmarthen]

I nominated Alaya Dawn Johnson's The Spirit Binders books--fantasy, author of color, all characters of color.

I forget what else I nominated, but that's the fandom I most wanted in the list, so.

Re: CHERUB

[blueyeti]

Oh, wow, I've seen CHERUB around, but after my disastrous affair with Alex Rider when I just wanted the books to be *smarter* and more complex, I hadn't really thought to pick them up. I am so very tempted by a YA series where characters get called on racist/homophobic/sexist/dickery comments, and also for the canon incidental gays (I say incidental, because it sounds like it's not the point; I want to be able to brandish it at the YA/queer lit professor at my uni, because she gets really focused on specifically queer lit). Also, ethics committees. Alex Rider would have been so much better with ethics committees.

Thanks for the canon rec.

[freneticfloetry]

Pretty sure biracial sharpshooter Alyssa Locke is on the nom list already, considering she's half of the series' most popular pairing. But I missed the chance to add Korean-American ex-LAPD Troubleshooters operative Lindsey Fontaine, Mexican team medic Jay Lopez, Black/Vietnamese SEAL Vihn Murphy, and LT "Jazz" Jaquette, the well-respected black officer who serves Team Sixteen's XO and has never, ever gotten his own story. Drat. At least we have Martell! And Ric, who I love almost as much.

[freneticfloetry]

I nominated Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer's collab novel "Agnes and the Hitman," which features a black "cleanup" specialist who goes by the alias Carpenter. He's the hero's most trusted ally and - amidst making bodies disappear - serves as a profound moral center and prospective love interest for the heroine's best friend.

Re: CHERUB

[smallfuzzy]

See, I read Alex Rider WANTING them to be another CHERUB and nearly threw the book across the room. It just wasn't right.

CHERUB is awesome. The main character is an ass probably over 50% of the time, but he gets called out for it again and again and again. And there are consequences! Frequently really bad ones! And I can HEAR my kid brother talking through the books half the times and damn, but I wish I'd known when he was younger to beat him over the head with them.

Re: CHERUB

[blueyeti]

I read Scorpia, the fifth Alex Rider second. Which is *by far* the most interesting and complex of them (if you didn't get that far: Alex switches sides, a 40-yr-old women flirts with him and seduces him to evol, and Alex has an identity crisis). So I was so damn excited for a YA series which took a twisty premise and acknowledged it was twisty, but, um, I think my brain works different to Horowitz.

I shall heavily rec CHERUB to my little sister. Not that she's like your kid brother, but she could do with some intelligent spy novels since her Alex Rider obsession passed into Twilight. I think I even ripped the first audiobook for her a year or so back. I shall make sure it gets onto my iPod.

[mjules]

See, you weren't around when I was editing the character list! But we might be able to add them during wrangling.

[blueyeti]

Not to be all pimpy of my own stuff, especially since I wrote it years ago, but I started to explore Milie's origin a few times.

More relevantly, one of my requests is going to be Chrestomanci (Millie) and my no go will be Christopher/Millie romance, so I hope to add to the pool.

[labellementeuse]

Diane Duane's Young Wizards series. White author. Chromatic colours are Kit Rodriguez (one of the three POV characters), his sister Carmela Rodriguez (very minor until the fifth book when she takes a level in awesome; each successive book has seen her ramp up the badass until in the eighth book she shoots the source of all evil in the head.) (It doesn't stick. But it's still pretty amazeballs considering she's not a wizard), plus their family who are pretty minor (mama Marina, pop Juan, and older sister Helena). The Rodriguez family is Hispanic-American (off the top of my head, I think Marina might be mixed-race.)

Darryl McAllister, who is African-American, is a less significant recurring character (he plays a major role in the sixth book and then cameos a bunch in successive books; he gets a relatively large amount of screentime in the ninth book.)

There are a bunch of minor characters and mentioned characters who I'm dying to see written about but I didn't get around to nomming so they're not on the list :-/ NEXT YEAR for me to request a story about Jarrah Corowa!

Intersectionality: Kind of an anti-rec: I really recommend people interested in disability activism skip the sixth book, which has a pretty unfortunate severely-autistic-wizard,-heal-thyself! storyline. No queer characters in canon but there is Word of Gay for a couple of minor characters (Tom & Carl, for those playing the home game. Not exactly a shock.)