Character Coordination

[aunt_zelda]

 Hi all!

This is a post I've been meaning to make for a few years now. Every year we have great challenges and collections, such as Misses Clause (promoting fics that pass the Bechdel Test) and collections for characters of color. However, the posts for those come during sign-ups, when people only have the tagset to work from. If nobody nominated any women or characters of color for your favorite small fandom, you're out of luck.

Look over your own nominations in these next three days. Look at the spreadsheet and the nomiations post on DW and LJ. Are these the characters you want to make requests for, write for, or both? Did you have a free slot and are you nominating them after looking at the requests tab on the spreadsheet? Are you already coordinating with a friend, or friends, to cover a big cast list?

Consider coordinating with fellow fans using the nomiantions posts and spreadsheet in these final days. Who is your cast list comprised of for your fandom? Are there women, are there characters of color, are there characters with disabilites? If someone who likes this fandom wants to participate in Misses Clause, will they be able to? If someone who likes this fandom wants to participate in a chromatic challenge, will they be able to? (Obviously not all fandoms can do this, some fandoms only comprise of a few characters at all, sometimes no one can find someone else to help with nominations. I mean this in general terms.)

I know every year only about 1/3rd of people nominating end up using the nominations coordination posts and spreadsheets. This year, why don't some of us help each other out to make the tagset more inclusive?

Edit: tl;dr: If you want to nominate more characters from a fandom, it's best to coordinate with fellow fans on the nominations pages I've linked above. If you don't want to, you don't have to.

Comments

[rosefox]

This is super awesome, thank you! You've inspired me to swap one of my picks out for a character of color, and just doing that is already giving me some great fic ideas.

[maeve_of_winter]

Who is your cast list comprised of for your fandom? Are there women, are there characters of color, are there characters with disabilites? If someone who likes this fandom wants to participate in Misses Clause, will they be able to? If someone who likes this fandom wants to participate in a chromatic challenge, will they be able to?

I certainly agree with the goal of this post, and I admire the encouragement for participation in the Chromatic and Misses Clause challenges. It is very generous of people to help out others who need a spare nomination slot. And certainly, coordinating character nominations for a particular fandom helps eliminate redundancy and allows in a greater number of characters.

However, I don't think it's entirely necessary that Yuletide participants reconsider the characters they've already nominated. Presumably, those are the characters they like and want to read and write fic about, and I don't see why their preferences require self-examination. I especially don't see why it falls to other nominators to ensure that individuals in their shared fandoms can participate in either Chromatic or Misses Clause challenge. My firm opinion is that if you want to see particular characters in your fandom, you need to nominate those characters instead of relying on someone else to do it for you. It shouldn't come down to some participants giving up their own nomination slots to accommodate others who have the same opportunity to nominate characters.

Again, I admire the sentiment of this post. There are a number of characters of color, female characters, and LGBTQ characters I'd love to see more fic for, and I can commiserate with the notion that fandom can tend to overlook some of them. And I'd certainly be happy to see this post's type of enthusiasm for the diversity challenges when they occur later this year. But I don't fully agree that a small fandom fic exchange needs to be the time to question your chosen characters when fic for those fandoms at all is fairly rare.

[paradisi]

I think the sentiment here is good, like maeve_of_winter said above, but wouldn't it be better to encourage people to request those characters rather than nom needlessly?

Or even better, at this point in the timeline, maybe promote canons with diverse characters at the forefront that people might consider offering/requesting?

[muccamukk]

I just wanted to say I've been thinking about this since my Internet died earlier (which was probably for the best), and the more I did, the more I agreed that this is a good idea.

I don't think you're saying anything about making people nominate things they don't want, just suggesting a use for the extra spaces, and checking to make sure we're not nominating the same person six times. Both of which are good things.

Def made me think about what I'm going to use that last nomination for, though I still haven't decided, lol.

[mlravenwrites]

Dark Matter (TV) characters of color, women, and women of color to nominate:
Solara Shockley
Misaki Han-Shireikan
Teku Fonsei
Four | Ryo Tetsuda
Sarah
Sajen

[saiditallbefore]

I know you mean well, but honestly? This feels a bit condescending. I want to write about women-- that’s why I always nominate them. I assume the people who don’t nominate them don’t want to write about them-- and that’s OK. This is fandom. We’re all here to have fun; this isn’t activism.

(Realizing too late that a character you really wanted didn’t get nominated is a whole other ballgame, and it sucks, though! Definitely a good reason to coordinate.)

You said in another comment "I have said absolutely nothing in this post about "forcing" yourself to do anything you don't want to do."

I don’t think anyone thinks you’re forcing them, but-- as someone who almost always focuses on women in media, especially queer women-- it comes off as... odd. I love writing about women-- that’s why most of my noms are women! If people are really that interested in writing about POC, LGBTQ people, women, or disabled characters, then it seems that they will probably already be nominating those characters.

And YMMV here (I’m a lesbian, but other issues here don’t apply to me), but it comes across as focusing more on the tickyboxes the characters check off than the actual characters. Personally, I’m not interested in stories that center around being a woman, or being queer, or being disabled, or being POC. I want stories where my two faves who happen to be women are together. Or solve mysteries, or go on adventures, or whatever.

Also, tagset bloat is a real problem, especially in Yuletide when we have such a limited number of request/offer slots! If there’s a bunch of characters in the tagset that no one really wants but were nominated “for the complete set”, it messes with people’s ability to offer/request any, and that’s really frustrating.

Like I said, I know what you’re going for here, but please understand why it’s rubbing many people the wrong way.

Are y'all serious?

[(Anonymous)]

Foreal though? None of the language in Aunt_Zelda's original post implied anything about "making" or "forcing" anyone to do anything. Reading that into those words says lots about you, though. Reacting so defensively to the mere suggestion that *some* people who mean to nominate/are open to nominating more marginalized characters can use the coordinating posts to do so is utterly ridiculous. If *the very idea of such a thing!* calls for this tight a grip on your pearls, then you should go ahead and check that privilege. A little discomfort won't kill you.