In regards to this https://nelsonagency.com/2019/02/why-im-so-picky-about-fantasy-by-quressa-robinson/ I feel like there is this hard push in fantasy lately for there to be diversity. The above just kind of drove the nail in a bit deeper. My MC in my WIP is a "half-breed," though I am careful not to refer to her as such. None of the races in my WIP are necessarily bad, certainly not those with darker skin tones. I like to think it's well rounded and it would be difficult for people to draw parallels to real-life issues, but I feel like everything is so slippery these days. Like a minefield for upsetting people. I will continue writing my book as I had originally envisioned it. I'm careful. I try to be inclusive, but I feel like you're kind of destined to fail unless you have a MC who is an asexual person blind person with no gender in a world with no race. I understand that people want representation, and I am happy to have a diverse cast of characters, but I feel this intense pressure and impending scrutiny. I am doubting absolutely everything, and it sucks. Even in a fantasy world with mythical characters, people are equating things with modern life and ripping new ones for the perceived connection. I feel like I can't add diversity because the diversity itself is dangerous territory. Which I think is the opposite effect you would want to have if you desire for there to be diversity. It makes me anxious.
To hell with what other people want: write your story about your characters. If someone else doesn't like it, they can bloody well write their own.
That's what I keep telling myself, but the doubts keep on creeping back in. I need a board with nails in it or something that I can whack them with.
Always remember that the Agent that eventually took on J.K. Rowling said she'd never be able to make any money off her children's book about a kid named Harry.
I'm not really seeing the issue with the specific article behind the link. The author is urging diversity, and it sounds like you too want diversity. It doesn't sound like she's objecting to mixed-race characters, she's just objecting to handling them sloppily. And so on. I'm failing to see the issue.
It's part of the larger picture. People on GR will give 1-star reviews for books they have never read because one of their favourite bloggers said it was racist/sexist/etc. There is a massive mob mentality. Things that seem relatively innocuous to my eye are ripped to shreds. Apologies, I do not have any specific examples of that. These instances have been catching my eye and sort of piled upon each other to become the beast to which I refer. My issue is not that she is objecting to things being handled sloppily, it's that sloppily is not well defined which perpetuates this personal paranoia that I find quite stymieing.
Ah, OK. I'm not saying that I don't ever have concerns about doing my best and discovering that I did something stupid out of ignorance and ran into unpleasant consequences. My main point was that I don't get that vibe from the specific page behind the link.
The author of that article seems to be a racist. Example: "A medieval/European/Western setting from a BIPOC author will likely have a POV different from what we’ve already seen so much of in SFF." Translation: skin color determines how you write. The woman admits to caring at least as much about your skin color than about the words you put on the page. She's not an agent I intend to ever query. Full disclosure: I've more Iroquois in me than most, and my wife's parents had very different skin colors. Doesn't define us: we're who our parents and our culture raised us to be. Heredity is not destiny.
I think perhaps the timing was just appropriate for me to feel like it was just another dog on the pile. Another facet to influence my underlying fear that my WIP is going to be a heap of dung/not well received. ETA: I just re-read the article, and yeah I think I overreacted a bit.
I don't read it as racism necessarily, but I see where you are coming from. She starts off saying she is sick of reading about medieval/European/Western settings and then goes on to say essentially that it is fine if you aren't white. I don't really see that as racism so much as encouraging more BIPOC writers, but she could have worded it better.
Well, I'm not reading her as saying that those settings aren't "fine" even if you are white. Just that she's looking for something different. And as an agent(?), she has every right to do that. She's not suggesting that all the other books be destroyed.
She wrote: "In this area I’m particularly looking for #ownvoices." Look the term up. It means "almost any author except a straight white male."
She's looking for particular types of books. She can do that. When an agent says, "I represent science fiction, not historical adventure," people accept that.
She does have every right to do that, and she isn't suggesting that all the other books be destroyed. You are correct. I don't read her as saying that they are fine though. She very specifically complains about them and then at the bottom says it is okay if you are BIPOC. That does not bother me. I do not think she was trying to tear anyone down but actually trying to encourage a particular POV. At any rate, I am not trying to say she is a bad person or she isn't allowed her own opinions. The point of my posting this was not about her specifically so much as my personal opinion that diversity in fantasy has become a very polarizing topic and that it makes me feel anxious thinking that I cannot approach diversity without being shat on.
She's looking for books written by people who don't have white skin. White supremacists are looking for ones written by people who do. I don't see much of a moral difference. "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. I have that dream too. #ownvoices isn't helping us get there.
When the vast majority of something is X, and someone's looking for just a little more Y, I don't see that as the same as looking for even more X. Also, if someone saw that there were a ton of books about, say, firefighting, written by non-firefighters, would you see it as really really terribly wrong if they wanted some that were written by firefighters? I like the existence of books about women's experiences. And I'd like lots of them to be written by women, because I think that there's some chance that women may know more about women's experiences than men do.
Sure, yep. I'm semi-comfortable with the way I'm handling these issues in my WIP, but that doesn't mean I'm totally comfortable.
I don't make the mistake, when reading fiction, and especially science fiction and fantasy, of thinking the characters in that fiction are like typical people. And I don't want them to be typical, because typical is boring. So there's no real utility for me in the concept that the character is better because the author shares the same reproductive organs, skin pigmentation, or whatever. Maybe that helps an author write boring typical characters, but that's of no interest to me. So I don't care who or what the author is. I read the words on the page. If they tell a good story with characters I care about, nothing else matters. Not whether its paper or bits, not whether its in Palatino or Times Roman, not who printed it, not who published it, and nothing about who wrote it expect their name, because if I like this book, I'll look at others they wrote. Myself, I don't write typical women: I write interesting ones, that my wife likes.
If you get value from being bored, I envy you. My life would be so much simpler if I could do that. I wouldn't need so many expensive vacations in foreign countries, for one thing. Next stop: Greece.
Your post above is so internally contradictory that it’s pretty clear that this is not a discussion for you.
I think the last thing people want to read is a book crammed with 'token' diversity. By token diversity, I mean sticking umpteen racist and gender representatives into your story, simply because 'everybody' wants them to be there—especially if you, yourself, have very little direct experience with any of these issues. I agree it's difficult today, when everything gets nitpicked to death for evidence of bias, but I think that simply not including a racial or gender representative in every book doesn't mean it's a negatively biased book. It's just a book that is focused on something else. That being said, I do believe it's important for you, the author, to recognise if you hold any racist or sexual orientation prejudices—and that you work to get rid of any you find. There is a big difference between not including these issues in your stories, and including them in a disparaging, stereotypical or dismissive manner.
It's things like this that have been freaking me out: https://www.vulture.com/2019/01/ya-twitter-forces-rising-star-author-to-self-cancel.html and https://www.vulture.com/2017/08/the-toxic-drama-of-ya-twitter.html
I don't see any internal inconsistency. But please, feel free to wow me with your brilliance and point them out. Unless you can't. Or unless you'd rather waste everyone's time on why you only want to hurl the insulting accusation, and don't want to back it up with any facts or reason. That's a thing people do these days, unfortunately.
