Participaty thoughts:

[dagas_isa]

On two fanficcy events that I'm unsure about:

1. From dark_agenda, in response to the release of the The Last Airbender Movie:

Re-write one or more white characters in the fandom(s) of your choice as chromatic/non-white/PoC, in a story of at least 500 words, with some acknowledgment of how the racial difference would make a difference to the story being told.

Most of my fandoms are animanga or J-drama in origin (which basically means CoC by default), but between just starting A:TLA and realizing how freaking awesome it is (oh, indeed it's awesome) and also doing a rewatch of Dead Like Me and realizing how few Asians are in the show despite the fact that it takes place in Seattle and the fact that DLM is actually pretty good at the race and gender isues is sort of making me wonder how either a Chinese-American or Japanese-American (and probably bi-racial) George would deal as a reaper, or as a worker at Happy Time. I suppose the question is how I want to address the issue and whether I can address it while being both a) sensitive to the issues and b) having a sense of humor.

2. And then there's hc_bingo. Honestly, while I really like the idea of bingo challenges, and there's a lot of hurt-comfort tropes I like to write (although I'm not sure it's really hurt-comfort I'm writing if I can't tell who the situation is hurting and who is doing the comforting, and if everyone has agency and still gets affected by the event), but at the same time there's a lot of prompts on the list available that I feel hugely uncomfortable writing, or seeing dealt with purely as a hurt/comfort fic.

Any thoughts on this?

Comments

[senmut]

There's definitely some I'm seeing that are .... well, a sensitive hand would definitely be needed to do it with decency.

[dagas_isa]

Pretty much.

[inkstone]

re: hc_bingo

Yeah, hurt/comfort isn't my thing so I wouldn't have signed up anyway but when I clicked the prompt list out of curiosity, I winced a little bit. Okay, maybe more than a little bit. I just felt very uneasy about some of those things being used as prompts for a hurt/comfort fic, you know? I see that the mods are trying to fine tune the prompt lists but even so, I'm just really uncomfortable by the whole thing. I'm not hating on the challenge, just stating my feelings.

[dagas_isa]

Yeah, I'm also wondering if they should have refined the prompts more before opening this challenge up. But then straight H/C isn't my sort of thing as much as subverted H/C is, if that makes sense. So it's probably not the challenge for me.

[nan]

Oh, I definitely see how some (a lot) of the prompts can be problematic, no doubt (especially two that I got on my card - two I'm totally going to attempt to avoid writing). Buuuut on the other hand, I'm going to leave it up to each author to interpret the prompts as they will (and then totally complain about it on my journal, hahaha).

[dagas_isa]

True. I'd rather just not screw up any of the more triggery prompts, even if I'm not triggered by them myself.

[nan]

I understand. I really wanted to get the 'silly' promts; the ones that included vampires and werewolves and zombies, tbqh. XD But while I have serious squares (child abuse, sexual extortion), I will try my best to write them well, write them realistically and respectfully.

I dunno. I just hope everyone adds the appropriate warnings - that way people can avoid their triggers altogether, whether it's written well or not. I will definitely be adding warnings to mine, as usual. *G*

[nan]

And I just realized that it might sound like I'm trying to convince you to join and that's not the case at all! Sorry if it sounds that way. *G*

[dagas_isa]

Oh no, I wasn't interpreting it that way at all!

Mostly, I'm just trying to figure out which ones I can write and write well, which ones I could write in my appropriate given an appropriate AU, and which ones I don't even want to touch. If nothing, there's until December, and I'm really happy with my kink_bingo ideas and I want to do something for ff_megaflare, so it's not like I'm without anything to do if I don't sign up.

[birgitriddle]

I got some prompts that made me go "erk" at, but I have decided to subvert prompts if I come to one that I can't handle tastefully without. For example, I got an "insanity (always there)" one, but I have figured out a way to subvert it.

[dagas_isa]

I'm not even sure what "insanity (always there)" even means or what it could mean without being horribly offensive. I don't envy you that.

And subversion is something I'd have fun doing, but I'm not sure if my normal way of subverting prompts would even work, because I'm not sure that's h/c.

[birgitriddle]

Well, one of the fandoms I write in has a lot of characters who are legally insane, but are seen as dangerous criminals. I tend to write a few of them in a sympathetic way. There are those who I can't write in a sympathetic way, but in real life, they probably wouldn't be considered legally insane. It just happens that the canon is not exactly in tune with real life like usual.

(If you're curious, I write Batman villain fic.)

[dagas_isa]

Ahh, yeah I can see that (though the 'always there' is the part that bothers me).

[birgitriddle]

Well, what I'm going to do is to play on the fact that people other than the "insane person" think that it's always been there, but it never was and it's more about dealing with that error.

[dagas_isa]

Ahh okay. That sounds kind of neat, actually.