[ SECRET POST #2637 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2637 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.


__________________________________________________



11.


__________________________________________________



12.










Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 070 secrets from Secret Submission Post #377.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[darkmanifest]

Though it's funny how nobody ever calls out a poc for writing a white person

The media, the news, the internet, history, the majority of any information around me have trained me to know the middle-class white straight US American perspective better than I do my own. When I first started writing as a kid, every character fit that description because I sincerely believed that's what stories were supposed to look like.

So the idea of being called out for writing that seems super odd to me. I mean, I guess I could get it wrong, I could get anything wrong, but really, writing my own actual experiences gives me more anxiety than yet another story about an awkward white US American kid in a suburban high school.

[tabaqui]

If you think that tv and movies is 'every white experience' - or even the news, or history, well...that's not accurate. I mean yes, broadly, it is, but then you could say that about most people.

But everyone has weird secrets, family pasts, odd things, different perspectives. (And isn't 'awkward kid in suburban hs' as a 'white only' trope kind of belittling?)

[darkmanifest]

I didn't say "TV and movies", I said "the news" and "the media", which includes nonfiction. I also didn't say "every white experience", but "white straight middle-class US American" - I went to school with poor, white, LGBT kids and representation of their stories wasn't commonplace, either. I also didn't say "awkward white kid in suburban HS" was a white-only experience, just an experience that's represented far more often than most others, and therefore can be the easiest of all to write. It was never representative of my reality, or probably even the reality of most white people in this country, but it's the reality we are fed.

[tabaqui]

No, you didn't, sorry, i misspoke. But you did say "...have trained me to know the middle-class white straight US American perspective better than I do my own..."

To which i replied - but that *is not* every wsUSa persepctive, just the one pushed out there, and in writing, one hopes to *not* follow the lock-step of popular media (which includes tv and movies), but imagine a little bigger (or at least, less white-bread&may), darling.

[darkmanifest]

Then perhaps I should rephrase that to "the popular middle-class white straight US American perspective". And also add that I'm aware, as an adult, how not to lockstep with what I'm fed - but when I was an impressionable grade-schooler writing my first stories, I didn't realize my perspective was just as valid as the one above, even though it wasn't the perspective I actually lived. So, my point remains that the idea of someone calling me out for writing that very specific - but extremely overrepresented - perspective strikes me as odd.

[tabaqui]

I guess it doesn't me, since i, as a white person, would be called out for writing that if my characters were black. If i wrote the black stereotype of the pimp, i would certainly be criticized, despite *that* kind of thing being pretty much a staple of *my* childhood tv viewing (i grew up in the seventies).

I mean - i was pretty aware as a kid writing stories that the stuff on tv wasn't *real*.

[darkmanifest]

Did you also think the news wasn't real? That history, social studies, and current events classes in school weren't real? Because that's also where many of my impressions about Le Normal American Experience came from, not from stereotypes in fiction, but from very limited representation in real stories.

I mean, in any case, if ever I've written a white straight middle-class American white character and some white straight middle-class Americans take umbrage with my portrayal, I'd take it seriously. I just find it highly unlikely to happen because of the reasons stated above. But anything's possible.

[tabaqui]

In my experience, the news doesn't show anything remotely *normal* - that's why it's *news*. And we rarely read about mundane, everyday people in our history books.

[darkmanifest]

We had quite different experiences of those things, then. Tons of events on the news that weren't murders and scandals - "everyday living" kind of topics only really relevant to certain groups of people. And as for history, most historical figures were mundane folk who inadvertently ended up famous - that was hammered home a lot, that ~anybody~ can start out a peanut farmer and end up president. Only that "anybody" didn't look like me and my friends.

[tabaqui]

We watched the news during dinner at my house, and what stands out the most clearly for me are things like the Vietnam war, and the hostage crisis (and that 'peanut farmer' being castigated for how it went). Maybe there were 'everyday living' things on early-morning shows or something, but we didn't watch that and hell, we only got three channels, anyway.

Sure, they were mundane except for how they *weren't* - i can't think of a single historical figure that makes me go 'wow, just like me!'.

Eh. Our perspectives are different, but it's all good. I'm off to bed, me - feel free to reply, but i won't see it until morning.

[darkmanifest]

I'm an eighties baby, so by the nineties when I was growing up, most news was very fluffy compared to earlier generations. Mostly I remember local events, bitching about gas prices, and who the president was banging, that sort of thing.

I really liked Harriet Tubman - she wasn't exactly like me, of course, but she was a black female hero, unlike the scads of white male heroes I was used to. And she didn't die horribly in the end, which was a huge plus.

Thanks for the discussion, and I hope you sleep well. ^^

[(Anonymous)]

This. A lot of what the media tells you in a non-explicit way is that white is the default norm. It's neutral, so everyone can identify with it... and to a certain extent, that was very true for me. I grew up surrounded by mostly white people and when I started writing, most of my characters were white, too. I felt nervous writing about someone like me because it felt (and still feels too autobiographical, as though people are going to be scrutinizing that character more closely than the others, checking to see if it's an author insert.

To be honest, that makes me feel so twitchy I haven't shared much of my writing that contains POC characters with anyone. It's not just white people who worry about messing them up, after all. And If I mess up a POC character who looks like me, I feel like it's going to look really, really bad and people will question how I can screw that up.

[darkmanifest]

It's not just white people who worry about messing them up, after all. And If I mess up a POC character who looks like me, I feel like it's going to look really, really bad and people will question how I can screw that up.

Seriously, I worry about this all time, to the point where the voices of characters like me, or like people I actually grew up with, feel more unnatural compared to the voices of those I have no personal experiences of. Like I'm faking it or something, even though I lived it (to a certain extent, last I checked I didn't have magical powers). It's very weird.