hp_diversity | Prompts of Color Feedback Poll

I don't write in the fandom, and a multifandom fest would probably draw more eyes.

I disagree, because a multifandom fest would get much less participation from those who are primarily HP fans. HP fandom is big enough to have hundreds of dedicated comms and dozens of active fests every year. In my experience, only a tiny proportion of HP fic is produced for multifandom fests and that tends to be crossover fic. To see this, just compare the number of HP femslash stories in the annual multifandom femslash exchange with the number created this year in the HP only exchanges femmefest, HP Beholder, and Hoggywartyxmas.

That's just people, then, I guess. The Harry Potter fandom is huge, and should draw more people

That is certainly a good point, that by broadening the scope it would invite more participation. My stumbling block there is that this is really a Harry Potter community. If another community or platform were to host an event promoting diversity in fandom representations, I would be very happy to promote it here. But I am not sure that turning this into a multifandom community is necessarily a positive one for the community as a whole. It just seems to me like that would be equal to saying there's not enough interest in the HP fandom to sustain this community. Which may be the case.

True - the Harry Potter fandom is, quite frankly, huge.

I have been following this community with much interest and I am disappointed that the Prompts of Colour comment fest did not work. But I can see various reasons, one of them the timing of the fest during October when many other fests take place.

My suggestion would be to announce the next fest much earlier, think up a publicity campaign, and have it run during a time when there are less fandom fests (February? August?).

I will share one other concern that may be purely my own: I feel a bit hesitant writing characters of colour. I am myself white, and it feels presumptious to write a character of colour. I know it's a ridiculous feeling as I am a German lesbian, and yet I am writing British gay male characters (not to speak of writing creatures when I am human). Still - I have had an idea for a Black!Remus fic for the longest time but I just feel I am setting myself up for getting things entirely wrong.

What I would love are posts that address issues of writing characters of colour. There recently was a post on tumblr about ways to write skin colour without replicating racist stereotypes. I'd love to see something like this linked here.

And a post on the whole question of writing characters who are (presumably) white in canon as characters of colours. That is going on much more on tumblr and in other fandoms, and I love it. But I have yet to see one Black!H/D story or art anywhere.

My suggestion would be to announce the next fest much earlier, think up a publicity campaign, and have it run during a time when there are less fandom fests (February? August?). I completely agree. October is the midst of the academic term, when students have exams and teachers have grading, and a lot of active writers are busy creating their holiday exchange submissions. HP Beholder isn't running next year, so you could try to slot into the gap that leaves in people's spring fannish activity.

I know, it is a busy time of year both in fandom and real life. This was meant to be part of Diversity Awareness Month, which I don't have control over the timing of. But we could certainly do some kind of independent fest at a different time of year.

I don't really play much on tumblr, and I especially don't follow discussions there as I find the format disjointed and difficult to follow and interact. But it certainly sounds like a topic that would be appropriate for this community as well. If you have a good link to an essay or something like that you can feel free to post it to the comm. :)

I was looking for the link already but couldn't find it, because yes, tumblr format is the pits and not searchable by google (which is a good thing, mind). Will send you the link once I found it.

But I have yet to see one Black!H/D story or art anywhere.

Just butting in to say that I actually recall an artist doing a series of H/D art pieces which featured a non-caucasian Harry. The pieces were quite good. I may have to go on a search to find them.
Anyway, I remember that that art was also well received, so I think there is room for different interpretations of our favorite characters in a fandom as large as ours. But I do get that there discomfort there, too.

Edit: And I found it! Check this out. (http://harrydraco.livejournal.com/8983405.html)

Edited 2014-11-01 20:41 (UTC)

This is awesome. Thank you so much for the link. I think I even recognise the artist from tumblr (creating Good Omens fanart). :) :) :)

I do think there is room in HP for different interpretations of all characters - it's just that I had never seen it done.

I was busy with other three fests - still am with Smutty Claus - during the comment fest, hence why I could only prompt and not fill in anything, even though I had more than one idea.

Also, I wrote a Dean/Lily Luna story for the Dirtywrong Comment Fest over at hp_het_taboo, but I posted it right before this fest started and I didn't know I could have cross-posted here too (had I known that, I would have done it!).

But to be quite honest, probably there isn't all that interest to explore characters of colour in the Harry Potter fandom...? Not for some particular reason, but maybe just because they're all mostly secondary characters? And also because all I see on my Friends Feed is Harry/Draco popping up EVERYWHERE, and I don't even follow a single h/d community. I mean, I'm not sure that people are interested in writing about something different from their usual interests for a fest (there are people who participate to fests and ask ALWAYS the same pairings over and over and over again). And that makes me a bit sad. I - for example - would love to have a community that would run fests for the next-gen for example, but I don't think anybody would like to participate judging by the amount of next-gen stories that people write for fests. And it's the same for characters of colours, people don't really write much about them. Draco, Harry, Hermione, Snape are every-freaking-where. Maybe the only one is Blaise, who appears a bit more often than the others.

But this is what I think, but maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. :|

Oh sure, cross-posting would have been fine!

Most multi-pairing fests usually end up with a couple of characters of color represented, although it's true they are often by the same creators. People do tend to have their favorite characters and stick to them.

Thank you for all of your recs, by the way. It wouldn't have been the same without your input!

Awww! You're so sweet. It was a pleasure for me to participate! :D xx

So I think there are many reasons why this wasn't as successful as we may have hoped it would be.
The timing was definitely not the best. This is Holiday fest writing season, and speaking as someone who's behind in 5 of the 8 or so fests I'm participating in, and who only found out about this fest at the last second, there was just no time to do it. So better publicity and a longer lead time will absolutely help.

I think Vaysh raises a good point. There has been wank in the past related to less than stellar handling of race issues in HP fandom, so if this community could become a resource for those who are interested in expanding their writing/creative horizons, that would be a very good thing. And, speaking as a person of color who writes in HP, which is, let's face it, a fandom whose primary characters are white, I don't really worry about not getting it right. So I think it's sad that there is such fear from the other side, you know? Maybe we can help bridge that gap.

As for timing, maybe something in February for Black History Month would be apropos? That month is a bit less crowded with other fests. Just a thought.

I had also toyed with the idea of running it during Black History Month, but I thought some people might not be comfortable with the idea of 'co-opting' it for other minorities as well. Well, I wasn't comfortable with it anyway...

I had just wanted some activity on the comm during this month to raise awareness of diversity issues in the fandom, but perhaps a comment fest wasn't the best way of doing that. Maybe the recs would have been enough, or the discussion topics thing which actually someone else suggested on the poll as well.

It's interesting to hear your perspective on writing about non-white characters, as a non-white writer. I think you're right that talking about it might help break down barriers, whether real or imagined.

I find it interesting/strange that the second most-cited reason for not participating is that people didn't know this was going on, and the most popular suggestion is better publicity. This was pimped in every LJ HP community with ties to characters of color and there was a notice posted on every rec on this comm throughout the month. If comm members saw this feedback post then they also must have seen at least one of the notices about the Prompts of Color event.

Unless by 'better publicity' you mean like posting on tumblr, or starting to publicize a month in advance.

Maybe it would be better to seperate the reminders of claiming/writing from the rec posts?

Can only speak for myself but I was busy in October and reading a lot of the diversity recs took enough time. I would love to try to write some characters of colour another time (though I'm kaukasian and have no clue if I could made them feel right). So, separating the fest from diversity month could maybe solve the busy-in-autumn problem as well.

Yes, I think that's right. It was probably not so cool to try running two things on top of each other. Lesson learned!

To be honest, I've been suffering from burnout and/or depression. I dropped out of four fests I had committed to write fic for.

Earlier in the year would probably work better for me, maybe posting sometime around the end of June, beginning of July.

Ugh, sorry to hear that. I hope you've been able to get some breathing space.

Yeah, mid-spring looks like a better time in terms of busy-ness. Thanks for your input!

Okay I'm another writer of color (black chick =^) ) so no I don't worry about writing characters of color, or at least not much. And I think the points about publicity may be worthwhile. But I second that the issue may go a bit deeper.

I've only participated in Diversity Fest once, writing a story for Dean that admittedly turned out kinda meh. My fault: I rushed it. Fair enough. So perhaps I don't have enough standing to make my case.

But.

I think because of the fact that the characters of color are all secondary or even further down the food chain, it's hard to generate interest. In other words, with the exception of characters that actually manage to make a blip on the radar of the plot (Harry taking one of the Patil twins to the Triwizard Tournament Ball, Dean dating Ginny) it's a very slight presence. That's NOT an unsurmountable problem. The problem is that authors don't take the time to actually BUILD A WORLD for these characters.

Again I could be wrong. I've only participated once. I haven't read through the stories. But I know that I work very hard to build a history, a family tree, and a social context for my charcters. Again my Dean story wasn't up to snuff. But elsewhere I do take the time to do this.

I think THAT'S what's missing. Because ROWLING didn't do the work, anyone who writes for one of her charcters of color will have to take the time to flesh them out and make them 3-dimensional before they can wrap a compelling story around them. That means you have to ask yourself, okay this is a chracter of color, what's their story? Are they from a family of immigrants or have they been here for generations?

BASIC questions have to be asked.

Doesn't anyone ever think the name "Salazar"- which is very close to Saladin (one of the great war leaders of the Crusades) - could indicate that Salazar Slytherin was in fact racially different from the other founders? Which could also explain some of the animus against him. I'm not saying he WAS racially different. But the name itself is suggestive. Why follow it down the rabbit hole and see what you find?

How many people are aware that the Moors conquered Spain in the 700s and weren't expelled until the 1490s? How many people know that Charles Martel was known as the Hammer because he and his army are credited with routing the Moorish invasion of France? How many people know there was an African king, Mansa Musa I believe, who went on his Hajj in the 1300s and spent so much gold he depressed economies? How many know that he was (if I recall correctly) contemporaneous with King Edward III of England?

And has anybody bothered to ask why do they only use Latin - with the exceptions of Alohomora and Avada Kedavra(sp?) which sound like they could be bastardized forms of Spanish or Arabic (to my ears anyway) - for the spells? Latin was the language of the Roman Empire. But what about Arabic? What about Chinese? What about Sanskrit? Or Persian? Or Urdu? Or heck Egyptian? They study Ancient Runes (presumably Scandanavian) but why don't they study any of these non-Western languages? Why isn't there a class on hieroglyphics?

I'm not trying to be a pain in the a**. All I can speak is English. I'm just trying to make the point that it's really hard to make a compelling character and hence a compelling story if you don't dig, RESEARCH the other culture. Learn the history. No, you won't get it all right. NOBODY does. But ask yourself if you looked at the Harry Potter universe through the lens of another person's culture, a culture outside of Europe, how would that change how you saw it?

So I guess I'm saying that building credible backstories for these characters and then harnessing those backstories into compelling plots might generate more interest.

Or I could just be talking out of my a**.

Anyway that's my 2 cents. * puts on a rain coat and waits for the thrown tomatoes *

Thanks, that's really interesting. So do you mean that perhaps a comment fest, which necessarily focuses on quick fixes and short responses, doesn't offer enough space to develop the characters? Or are you speaking in general about a way to possibly generate more interest in these characters, by inviting people to explore their personal histories and the histories of their cultures?

Hi I'm sorry I couldn't get right back to you.

Yes to both questions. I think what might be a good idea is to have a contest maybe for writers to just write a background for the characters of colors. No stories. Just backgrounds. And then maybe other writers can come along and write stories using those backgrounds. Perhaps writers could switch up. But the point is the backgrounds can't be far fetched or rather they can be far fetched (this is Harry Potter after all) but they should include some grounding in reality, the way platform 93/4 is part of the real train station so to speak.

I think if you start with that, you'll have much richer material to work with which should lead to more interest hopefully.

Anyway that's what I got. Hope it helps.

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