Seeing Color

[brigdh]

So, as you may or may not be aware, fandom is in the midst of an enormous wank about fanfiction starring characters of color, if there is too little of it, and why that is. (I will spare you my own thoughts on the topic, mainly because I am annoyed with the whole debate.)

But! Much more productive than endless circles of wank is actually producing new fanworks! And so I present to you Seeing Color, a brand-new exchange focused on characters of color. It is operating, basically, on the Yuletide format: sign-up, get matched to someone, turn in a 1000 word fic to receive the same. Except in this case there is art, too! :D

Currently nominations are going on (until May 20th), so get your favorites in there, even if you're not sure you're going to sign up. I of course have totally already nominated Ben January and Underground, but I'm sure the tagset could use more characters in those fandoms. Plus, you know, other fandoms. That's good too.

Useful links!
The main DW comm through which Seeing Color is being run
The exchange FAQ
The tagset
The nomination form

And even if you're not interested in participating, I'd really appreciate it if you could signal boost this information, either on LJ or tumblr or wherever else. It's hard to get out the word about a new exchange, and I really want to see this one get enough participants to take off.

Comments

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I'll be able to participate yet, but I need to remember to nom some stuff.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Well, you've got plenty of time to get nominations in! I was just excited and wanted to do mine right away.

[lynndyre.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure yet, but I put in some of my favourites!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

Is chromatic what fandom is calling PoC? If I were a person of colour I'm not sure I'd like that... That aside, though, it's a good idea for a fest!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

It's not just a fandom term, but yeah, it does mean basically the same thing as POC. I believe some people don't like "person of color" because they feel that puts white people as too central, since it sorts of casts being "of color" as the aberration, and non-marked "people" as white, and "chromatic" supposedly puts the central focus on... well, on people of color (ha, I couldn't think of another way to phrase that sentence).

Why do you dislike it? The unfortunate thing is that there's no one term that everyone uses or likes, so no matter what a mod chooses, some people will have a problem with it. And it gets even more complicated when you're trying to run an international exchange, since the terms and even who "counts" as PoC can vary by what country you're in.

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

I think it sounds, hm, more like something from a fantasy novel than a term to describe real people... I suppose also because for a lot of people chromatic is more automatically associated with music!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, I haven't heard anyone saw it reminds them of music before! Though I have seen complaints that it's too similar to visual art terms.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

The term was coined by people of color/nonwhite people, and it was iirc what the Dark Agenda / Kaleidoscope folks used when those were active. Not everyone liked it. But not everyone likes PoC or nonwhite or any of the other umbrella terms. (I think this is inherent to the search for an umbrella term for a bunch of unrelated races and ethnicities who are only united by being treated differently within white-dominated societies. I think chromatic was meant to better encompass people who are not white but are not minorities within their own cultures, but PoC already gets used sloppily in discourse. Anyway, these umbrella terms are sort of inherently going to be defining against not-PoC, i.e. white people, so there will always be people unhappy with any of them.)

My impression is that chromatic never really caught on widely, though.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Ahh, this looks fun - I was thinking recently that it would be great to revive Kaleidoscope, but it had such a specific focus that I think it had a smaller participant pool. Which is not a bad thing, but this looks good, too!

I'm not allowed to sign up for exchanges until fall, though. >:-(

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I'm not allowed to sign up for exchanges until fall, though. >:-(

I knowwwww! There are so many good-looking exchanges happening this year. I just finished one and really shouldn't sign up for another, but this one will almost certainly overwhelm my resistance. And then there was Night on Fic Mountain too, which I did want to sign up for but had to force myself to skip... And Jukebox, and FemmeRemix, and and and....