Prompts of Color Feedback Poll

[swissmarg]

Despite having been the most popular idea for a Diversity Awareness Month activity, the Prompts of Color comment fest didn't exactly find a resounding echo amongst the community members. Only a couple of people submitted prompts, and only one person completed a fanwork (this spectacular portrait of Padma by imera, go check it out!). So I'm just curious in finding out what went wrong and if there might be anything we could learn for future events.


[Poll #1987555]


Feel free to leave any comments you might have below. Thank you!

Comments

[librasmile.livejournal.com]

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 *

[swissmarg]

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?

[librasmile.livejournal.com]

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.