Google Spreadsheet Hacks

[dark_administrator]

While our Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Fandoms spreadsheet has remained steady at ~1000 fandoms, our Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Prompts spreadsheet has reached ~500 (!!!) prompts. We realize that may be a rather overwhelming amount of data to shift through and so we have organized this very, very basic guide to navigating through Google Spreadsheets in hope it will help you find the information for which you're looking.

Google Spreadsheet Hacks

So someone linked you to a Google spreadsheet document, what now?

( To which type of spreadsheet were you linked? )

( Do you have access to edit it? )

( Sorting and filtering spreadsheet data... )

( Some final words... )

There are a lots of more awesome features so be sure to play around with Google Spreadsheets. Ours are once again:

• Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Fandoms & Characters List: spreadsheet and html version
• Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Prompts: spreadsheet, form and html version
• 2009 Prompts That Work for the Dark Agenda Challenge: spreadsheet and html version

ETA: There was some technical issues in accessing these spreadsheets, but hopefully, they are fixed now!

Critiques and common pitfalls

[dark_administrator]

There are less than 8 days (!!!) before yuletide assignments are due. We hope you're making good progress on your assignment and wish you luck. For those who are already done (!!!!!), congratulations!

In the meantime, there are a few things we want to address. One of the components of our Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Challenge is:

[...] if you end up writing problematic source, engage in fixing it: finding the invisible people of colour and putting them back in, writing the back story for a character without tying it into the white people's narratives, critiquing by making explicit the blind spots and bigotry and flaws in the celebrated white heroes of the narrative.

We encourage you to be aware of how the source for which you're writing in particular portrays race, ethnicity, culture and the intersectionality of these issues with others, especially when the source is not created by people from the identity it portrays.

Last year, we posted about some common pitfalls while writing outside your own culture and how to attempt to avoid them, where we also highlighted a discussion about white and Western consumption of manga and anime, and collected critique posts of some white/Western/other sources.

This year, we'd like to offer similar resources. We're trying to collect a central list of critique posts on the topics of race, ethnicity and culture for white/Western/other sources so if you know of any links, we would love to be linked to them!

( List of Critique Posts for White/Western/Other Sources )

We'd also like to discuss some common pitfalls in writing chromatic characters and non-Western cultures. What problems have you encountered as a writer and/or a reader? And how do you think they can be countered against?

Here are some questions that might help you ground your writing for this challenge:

• ( Who is your audience? )


• ( From what cultural contexts are you working? )

What other questions should we ask themselves? And what other posts or articles have helped you clarify your writing process?

Last Updated: 14 Dec. 2010.

Some reminders for Yuletide

[dark_administrator]

As we've said before, there are less than 8 days before yuletide are due. We've started talking a bit about white/Western/other sources and common pitfalls in writing chromatic characters and non-Western cultures, but now we want to remind you of a few things:

• As you're finishing your story, browse through our Beta Resources Post to find someone to beta your story or offer your own beta services!


• If you're finished with your story and it fits our Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Challenge, remember to also post it to dark_agenda's Chromatic Yuletide 2010 AO3 Collection! In addition, we suggest tagging your story with "Chromatic Source" and/or "Chromatic Character" as well as a range of tags used at AO3 such as "Asian Character," "Black Character," "Latin@ Character," "Native American Character," "Muslim Character," "Hindu Character," etc. (or create them if they aren't available!).


• If you're participating in Yuletide Madness or thinking about it -- and remember, you don't have to be officially signed up for yuletide to participate and there are no length restriction for Yuletide Madness stories, be sure to check our Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Prompts spreadsheet (html version). If you find the ~500 prompts overwhelming, we have a guide for sorting and filtering those information.
  
  Of some interests, prompts belonging to participants whose original writers have defaulted are highlighted in purple. They have all been assigned a pinch hitter already, but maybe you would like to help make sure those participants receive something once the challenge goes live!

On that note, we still have AO3 invites if you need one!