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

[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.