The Skellingcorner

[writingwithcolor]

Braving Diversity: Intro Post

Writing with Color presents…

Braving Diversity: Getting Started. 

It’s ridiculously easy to fall into the trap. You are writing along, going about your merry way, actually finishing things, when BAM!! You notice that you do not have a single person of color in your story and it wasn’t your intention to exclude people of color from your story. You weren’t even aware of the lack of diversity in your story until someone points it out to you or you just come to that realization after the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign. However you came to notice it, the fact of the matter is that your story is seriously lacking in diversity and you would like help to change that.

First off: Don’t panic and don’t start changing characters skin colors all willy-nilly because people aren’t the sum of their skin color. Depending on your story, you might just need to add in a description, but you want to make sure that this isn’t all you’re doing.

Many white people feel like they need permission to write a story about a person of color. Many people think they need permission to write about someone that they don’t identify with. Straight writing gay characters, White writing people of color, people of color writing another culture. You don’t need permission to write about an experience or different point of view. You simply just do it. You write it with caution, concern, and most of all respect and dignity to the characters’ culture.

How do you do that?

[writingwithcolor]

Anonymous asked:

I hear a lot of POC groups saying that white authors should not write stories about POC because they 'don't know what they're doing'. What're your thoughts on this? Also, in the current story I'm working on, I'm considering changing some of my (all-white) main cast to POC. It is a murder mystery, rather than a story about race-issues, but are there any major factors I should keep in mind when I make this change?

White Authors Writing PoC / Stories without racism

Some PoC have that viewpoint because so far, stories by white authors depicting PoC respectfully have been few and far between, and when they point this out, they get a lot of severe backlash and doubling down from white readers. That leads to them avoiding those stories because 

1) it’s not likely PoC will be depicted respectfully and 

2) with the attitude from white readers/authors, they won’t get taken seriously. 

So for them, it’s not worth it. A special pet peeve of mine is when valid critiques are dismissed as ‘whining’; that’s a fast way to get PoC not to ever trust you.

My thoughts, personally, as a WoC, are that you need to be respectful when writing, which means doing your research and having members of the group you’re depicting look over your stuff. If they point out issues in your writing, listen and don’t dismiss them right off the bat.

With respect to PoC characters in your story, much of the same applies—think of the experiences your characters would go through as PoC, because it’ll be markedly different from being white. Make sure that it informs their characters, but also don’t let it be 100% of their personality either.

Good luck!

—mod Jess

“It is a murder mystery, rather than a story about race-issues.”

The appearance of POC should not be dictated by if a story is about “race-issues” or not. Please let go of that othering thinking. People of Color want to have adventures in stories that don’t necessarily focus on “race-issues” and we shouldn’t be viewed as optional if there’s no “race-issues” to discuss.

More reading:

• Braving Diversity Series
• On “Normalizing” the PoC Protagonist

~Mod Colette

[writingwithcolor]

Anonymous asked:

What advice would you give to European based High Fantasy writers for creating diverse characters?

White Writers Writing Characters of Color

Anon II: What is some advice you’d give to white writers who are writing books with a cast featuring entirely POC (or alternatively, POC writers writing outside of their race)? For example my novel is set in a fantasy world & doesn’t have any white characters.

Do your research.

The main reason why Readers of Color are dissatisfied with white authors writing PoC is that it’s immediately clear that said authors have not done their research when it comes to the backgrounds and experiences, resulting in disrespectful characters. 

But also, make sure to have PoC beta read your work! 

There have been works that have been well-researched but at the same time manage to put off readers because it doesn’t feel like the Character of Color is realistic. Good luck in your writing! 

 —mod Jess 

Not sure what’s being sought when you note it’s high fantasy. Are their cultures still intact or a reflection of what would be real-life cultural backgrounds? If so, everything that Jess said is where I would start. If not, then i’m assuming the characters’ dominant culture is whatever culture is that of your fantasy, and so you’d write them as you’d write your other characters while keeping in mind stereotypical depictions that might not mean much to your world but are harmful to readers who are in this world. 

As for the second question; the only advice I’d give is to brace yourself for the reverse racism criers for not having white characters, but otherwise go about your business. How many stories can one say has an all-Poc cast? It’s usually the other way around and no one even bats an eye. 

 ~Mod Colette

[writingwithcolor]

albossharuland asked:

Hi! I wanted to ask about fantasy world building based on a mix of cultures, even if those cultures are totally different. For example, a country that has an architecture based on egyptian and arab art, or one that is a mix between indian and russian architecture. I dont know if that would be appropiation or offensive, or how to avoid it or doing it in a respectful way. Also if there is a problem only using the art part and having a different made up traditions/lore (thanks for your time!)

On Combining Cultures Respectfully, Art, and Architecture

“Does it make sense within the world”

Avatar: the Last Airbender mixes Inuit and Japanese culture. Is this any form of sensical in the modern world? Sort of, with how there’s a language link between Siberia and the Canadian Arctic. Does it make sense within the confines of A:tLA? Absolutely yes.

I’m not against the concept of cultural blending. It just has to be sensical within the world itself. They might not be neighbours in the real world, but if you end up with a culture that’s “ocean-heavy Arctic on top of Asia”, then Inuit+ Japan makes tons of sense. But had it been even “continental Arctic”, then the Inuit influence would’ve barely made any sense at all, because they’re really not a continental people.

-Mod Lesya

Like mixed-race characters, blending real-world cultures in fantasy isn’t prima facie a problem, but you’d better make sure it makes sense within the world you’re constructing.  Lots of times authors fall prey to the “Rule of Cool” and just throw in things they think are neat without thinking about how they could have reasonably got there.

In the cases you mentioned, there are some historiocultural overlaps between Indian and Russian cultures (for instance, similar building materials, similar types of timbers in temperate parts of India and southern Russia, very deep cultural roots shared between Slavic and certain Indic cultures, etc.) that would give you a foundation to build on.  Other times shared cultural aspects have a common but non-native root—for instance the Russian onion dome and characteristic Indian Taj Mahal-style dome may have a shared origin in Islamic and Middle Eastern architecture.  Islamic culture is native to neither India nor Russia, but it touched and influenced both areas extensively.

Similar constraints hold for Egyptian and Arab art and architecture.  They used similar building materials but produced different results because the culture and artistic preferences were historically different, but we know that Arab culture strongly influenced Egyptian art and architecture in the Islamic period (think going from pyramids to Graeco-Roman amphitheaters to mosques and minarets, but all made out of limestone, mud brick, and very little wood).  Saladin Ahmed’s fantasy novel(s) feature an Islamic/Middle Eastern-influenced culture built on top of a dead Ancient Egypt-analogue [Nikhil’s note: I’m reading this right now and it’s awesome and you should too].

But regardless of the cultural influence, the material culture stays similar in place—in some Indo-Russian hybrid you might be looking at imported marble and precious stones for those buildings whose patrons could afford it, provided they have access to those materials either through production or trade, but for poorer constructions you’re looking at local building materials—so maybe thatch and half-timber framing and wattle-and-daub in Indo-Russia, or stone and mud brick in a desert environment like Arabegypt.  Art and architecture are functions of culture, and culture as a primitive exercise arises from the local environment, since it’s only once you get to the level of at least an organized economic community that outside trade starts to be a significant factor, which would facilitate creating art and architecture that would be exotic to the local environment.

-Mod Nikhil

[writingwithcolor]

Animals Representing People, Avoiding Poor Associations

@monstergili asked:

I’m writing a story that uses animal characters, however I am concerned that I may be possibly using the animals to unintentionally make racial stereotypes.  The following animals I am considering to use are rabbits, puffins, kiwis, snakes and frogs.  I want to include Russian and Chinese inspired cultures for the Rabbits, but I am concerned about adding an African-inspired culture since it might be associated with the less than tasteful adaptions of Br’er Rabbit in media.  Likewise, I am concerned of the negative association using snakes and frogs if the animal’s culture was inspired partly by India for example.  I’m not sure what to do.

Use positive to neutrally-associated animals to represent groups of People of Color and/or ethnicities as a whole.

You will want to research the association of each animal to its culture, and not just look at it from your own cultural perspective. For example: Snakes are often viewed negatively across cultures and religion. However, if snakes happen to be regarded positively in X Culture, then it’s not necessarily a bad thing to have snake characters for said culture. Just be sure you write them with positive traits as you might see cited in the culture. You should probably avoid marking all these characters as evil or morally ambiguous.

This goes for even more universally-positive animals as well. If all the main rabbits are sketchy characters, for example, and they represent Nigerian peoples, then that’s a problem, even if rabbits aren’t typically thought of in a bad way.

On that note, please go way more specific than “African-inspired.” Animals will vary in meaning within cultures in Africa, plus it’s homogenizing and offensive to crush all of Africa together for an “African-Inspired” culture. Please research the many varieties of African cultures. Maybe start with a broader region such as East Africa and narrow down to a choice of countries/peoples to represent, always keeping in mind their own cultural perspectives on these animals.

Jess adds regarding China: So far the only association I have with China and rabbits is the rabbit in the moon legend, which is hardly negative. 

~Mod Colette

Sometimes snakes are regarded positively or ambiguously in various Indian cultures (there are secondary Hindu snake deities, for instance), but actually with that you can still run into some problems.  

Let’s say you have “Indian-inspired” snakes (not sure what this means but I’ll just go with it for the moment)—if your reader sees that and makes that connection, it could bring to mind the Orientalist tropes of India vis-à-vis snake charmers, for example, and you’re still back in stereotype country. Or the reader makes the negative association with snakes based on their own background, and somehow starts to view Indian cultures negatively based on a bad impression of snakes?

As for frogs, I’m not aware of any association between India and frogs, other than that there’s a whole lot of frog species in India.

–Mod Nikhil

[sweetlittlevampire]

Okay, wow, so I just noticed someone reblogged that Yuri!!! on Ice couple fan art I drew a while ago, and I went to read the tags (because I´m a curious little shit and the tags on my art make me happy), and saw this.

Over 1.600 notifications?!

I…um - wow. That has never happened to me before. Never. Thank you so so much! You have no idea how much this means to me. I´m always trying to tell myself that notifications don´t mean that much, but at the end of the day…
I´ve been told so often to stop drawing because it was deemed worthless and useless, and it made me feel like I was worthless. To see that something I drew brings a smile to so many people warms my heart.

Thank you again so so much!

Originally posted by yandereatheart

[sweetlittlevampire]

The feeling when one of your favourite witchy Youtubers replies to you on facebook and says what you´re doing is fantastic. 
In caps lock.

I literally squeed. :D

Thank you, Molly Roberts!

[usedupshiver]

Why does the MCU hate emotions?

I just got home from Thor Ragnarok and once again asking myself this.

Think it was @knightinironarmor who first opened my eyes to this, later I had it pointed out from many more sources and once you see it, it’s everywhere in the newer MCU movies. I can’t even put my finger on exactly when it started but wow. It bugs the shit out of me now.

Every single time a movie has a moment. An even slightly emotionally deep and serious moment - someone cracks a joke. Nothing is sacred. Just hit those feelings with the joke stick. Hard. Before someone thinks we’re gross girls or something. Real Men™ don’t have icky feelings and emotions just laugh it off there we go.

I shudder to imagine if this had been a thing earlier in the MCU run. If movies I love for the emotion and pain they really get across in those moments had been treated like this. Like Iron Man, and CA:TWS for example. If those movie moments would have been full of ruthlessly misplaced jokes?

God that would have been so ugly.

And for the record, I liked Raknarok. I liked the general humourous tone of it. Much better than I expected to, even.

It’s just this thing. 

Please, MCU. Give us a moment. Without laughter. We need it.

[nishakadam]

astromaly asked:

Hi! You're art is absolutely stunning and I just wanted to ask how do you make you're art seem so alive? Like with anatomy and posing and such. When I draw myself it often seems stiff and motionless so I was wondering if you had any tips?

binley answered:

Here you go buddy!!! I mean this is by no means a how-to, more just random tips that may be helpful to apply to your style! Also please bear in mind I massively over exaggerate butts and thighs and this may not be something you are into lmao

[weneeddiversebooks]

[weneeddiversebooks]

The WNDB™ Mentorship Program is excited to be moving into its third year! 

For the 2018 year, we are offering mentorships to ten upcoming voices—eight aspiring authors (or author/illustrators) and two illustrators—who are diverse or working on diverse books. This is an opportunity to be matched with an experienced children’s book creator and receive individual support and feedback on a work-in-progress. We are open for applications during October 1-31, 2017. 

Find out more on our website.

[Image description: Image says “Looking for a Mentor?” in white letters over a pink background. Below that text is a grid with photos of 12 mentors. At the bottom of the image is the WNDB logo and pink text on white background which reads “Applications open: Oct. 1-31, 2017 Web: www.diversebooks.org email: mentor@diversebooks.org”]

[weneeddiversebooks]

There is less than one week left to apply to our mentorship program and our short story contest. Get to work on your submissions!

[writerswritecompany]

writerswrite.co.za

12 Common Writing Mistakes Everyone Makes