...*lurks* Uhm, hello! I found your post fascinating, and I just wanted to throw my two cents of.. delusion. When writing, I dwell on the white side of the character spectrum, probably because good canon for the diverse characters is lacking. With some exceptions, of course, but they are still very few and heavily underused.
As a writer, though, I don't think I see much trouble writing someone from a different race as much as writing someone with a vague canon. It might have to do with the fact that I belong to one of the cultural/race facets that gets sucky stereotypical characterizations. I'm a girl of latin and asian blood, born and bred in Mexico, and everyone around here is the result of some mix or other. In my perspective, writing a colored character is no different from writing a white character - I write mostly males, so... it's just an exercise of imagining I'm in someone else's head. I never really thought about why the colored characters were underused, and I still find it surprising that people would think it's easier to write a different imaginary race than another human race. I guess I'm a little out of the loop like that...
There’s a Mr. Terrific plot bunny hopping around that needs doing. Your post has encouraged me to try, and see if I get slapped on the back of my head for messing it up. It doesn’t hurt to try!
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Date: 2006-09-24 06:02 pm (UTC)As a writer, though, I don't think I see much trouble writing someone from a different race as much as writing someone with a vague canon. It might have to do with the fact that I belong to one of the cultural/race facets that gets sucky stereotypical characterizations. I'm a girl of latin and asian blood, born and bred in Mexico, and everyone around here is the result of some mix or other. In my perspective, writing a colored character is no different from writing a white character - I write mostly males, so... it's just an exercise of imagining I'm in someone else's head. I never really thought about why the colored characters were underused, and I still find it surprising that people would think it's easier to write a different imaginary race than another human race. I guess I'm a little out of the loop like that...
There’s a Mr. Terrific plot bunny hopping around that needs doing. Your post has encouraged me to try, and see if I get slapped on the back of my head for messing it up. It doesn’t hurt to try!