Mod!Challenge Representing the Underrepresented: A Special Mod-Challenge

Do you know of NPR's Embedded's 'Coal stories' ? It's about coal work/tradition in the Appalachia

There is also a Hellboy story taking place in the rural 60's Appalachis, if you are interested. But I don't know how representiv it is

 

This morning, under the Wikipedia entry for West Virginia, I found a listing of film and television shows "filmed, set, or in" the state.

I have read through Live Free or Die Hard, Logan Lucky, and two Mothman-related films. The plans for my particular subject matter, which I won't discuss here, but have discussed with mavjade, have taken a bit of a hit with the discovery of karstic topography (subterranean drainage takes water from the surface very quickly, also very prevalent for sinkholes), which greatly diminishes the amount of surface water, such as rivers and lakes; so I'm finding myself noting instances of water, eg. Point Pleasant, where this Mothman thing happened, I'm finding myself pointing at the monitor, and going, "Well, there's some water there."

Regarding your earlier 'Silver John' stories by Manly Wade Wellman, suggestion, I will check Amazon for that later.

 

@Sith-I-5 I don't know if this is helpful at all, but I believe the tv show Justified takes place at least partially in Appalachia (Kentucky).

 

Apologies for my neglect over the past few weeks. We have just over a month left for writing, but we have a few more discussion topics people can feel free to weigh in on.

Discussion 3:
Do you write fanfic to help bring attention or educate others on some aspect of you or your life you feel isn't represented or isn't correctly represented in media?

 

It was not my intention when I started out in 2014. I simply wanted to explain what happened to my favourite SW character and just give him the story that he didn't get when the first draft of Return of the Jedi was changed and then, eventually, character roles were shifted. I didn't exactly have to invent new characters, other than side ones and villains. It was easy - the characters were the way they were in the cartoon series and there was nothing else. I was not even planning to write anything else, ever.

And theeen I dipped my big toe into the world of original character and at the point of writing this, two characters seem to be having the characteristics of my own condition. At first it was just one, but when I re-read the little that I have written about the other, she meets the criteria as well. I am partly happy about how I can just weave bits into my own soul into my creations...

...but both characters are female. That means that I did not quite succeed. At the same time, in Star Wars, it's the other way round. Anakin and Kylo are both male.

I...don't know. I don't even know what I'm talking about.

 

I read a writing advice column that suggested taking a personality test for your characters, choose the answers they'd choose, then use the results to shape how they react to stuff later in your story.

I realised that the original characters I enjoy the most have the same personality type as me. I'm using them to explore what I would do in their situation. Or, maybe I'm just not original enough to get myself into another type of person's head when I write...


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Do you write fanfic to help bring attention or educate others on some aspect of you or your life you feel isn't represented or isn't correctly represented in media?

I don't think I've ever set out to do it, but I guess it sometimes happens. When I use medical things in stories, I am for realism because I think it's important. I don't set out to teach, but if someone learns something, that makes me happy!

Though I'm a bit terrible in that one thing I think the media needs to represent more of is women, and I mostly write men. I don't know if it's because the media makes it seem like that's who you should be writing or if my muse just likes writing men more. But it's something I want to work on (she says writing a man for this challenge).

But I've read many fanfics that wether the author set out to educate or not, they have and I think it's great. We learn all the time from things we read, so why not use fandom to help educate people on misconceptions. I've read a series that has a PTSD service dog and I thought I knew a lot about service dogs, but I've learned so much more. I've learned aspects and challenges of using a wheelchair I'd have never thought of from fanfic. You can teach and entertain at the same time and it's something I hope to think about more when I writing.

 

After what you said earlier, about being conditioned, @mavjade , I wanted to add about colour, and diversity.

In much of the profic that I have read, characters get a description if they are non-white; eg. if they are black, that is written down; but if they are caucasian, a lot of the time, nothing, as if that is some kind of default that the unknown reader is supposed to get.

Starting with my Backstrom fics, I deliberately stopped doing any of that. Mainly just describing hair colour.

On the diversity side, while I love what I have seen of Star Trek: Discovery on Youtube - eagerly looking forward to the season one DVD - with my only novel purchase, 19 pages in, I sort of ground to a halt, sensing that something felt wrong.

Plenty of women, human and alien; a lot of humanoids in Starfleet; good mix of nationalities....but, between two Federation starships, a colony planet, and the drilling crew operating on said planet, which represented quite a large cast of names, even if they only appeared once; literally only two white Anglo Saxon male surnames had seemed to have left Earth, and joined this exploration and colony effort.

Compared to the rest of Star Trek, and my own interpretation of a general expansion of humankind away from Earth, this aspect of the demographic - only one white guy on a Federation starship (there was a soiree, so a lot of officers were mingling), and one on the drilling crew - felt like a shark jumping mis-step. Shouldn't there be more?

So, Mis-representation, based on my hospital appointment just now,

Spoiler

prostate examinations get a bad rap. I almost backed out of getting one done, based on the horror stories played for laughs, and people singing "Moon River".

 

Do you write fanfic to help bring attention or educate others on some aspect of you or your life you feel isn't represented or isn't correctly represented in media?

Like Mav, I don't set out to "educate" others. I simply like writing from my own experiences and experiences I can relate to, but if readers learn a new aspect of living with a disability from my fics, then great!

I too have read and learned so much from that service dog fic! It's so great!

And, total aside, and I'M SURE this isn't what Mav was referring to when she said she learned about using a wheelchair from fics (and I'm assuming you are referring to my fics?), but the "being at butt/crotch height" totally came up in my life last night. People who haven't read my TWW fics, should still find this funny. BASICALLY, when you are a wheelchair user, you are pretty much at people's butt/crotch height all the time. You get used to it but it can lead to some awkward situations in really crowded areas (aka high school hallways). I have briefly referred to this in my in my fic with my OC (who is a wheelchair user) getting put in awkward situation involving another character and a hospital gown. ANYWAYS. Last night I was at bible study and I was sitting on the couch next to my friend and everyone stood up to sing worship. I of course didn't (but I did scoot to the edge of the couch to be more "involved"), so after a moment, my friend turns around, realizes his butt was basically in my face, jokingly accuses me of staring at his butt, and knelt down next to me. Which, I guess some might find patronizing, but I don't mind either way.

Anyways, my muse kinda left the fic I was working on for this challenge (I write underrepresented characters a lot but I wanted to write something even people who haven't seen TWW would be able to understand and enjoy) but I may have gotten another idea. Hopefully I'll be able to construct it into a fic.

 

I was reading an article about this very topic the other day, I'll have to see if I can find it. But basically, it was something about when race isn't specified, people tend to fill with their own, which in turn means that if a movie or TV show is made from it, usually means white. And in many cases, yes, the author intended for the character to be caucasian and just didn't specify because they probably are and their 'filling in with their own' was just that. (My summary is very simplistic from the more nuanced article.)

Yep, I was! And oh man... but at least your friend realized his butt was in your face!

 

@mavjade
It reminds me of the outcry about the Hunger Games movies, people complaining that Rue (who was described as having "dark brown skin") was being played by an African American girl.
They had completely imagined her as being, I don't know, a dark shade of tan or something, or ignored the description and inserted their own mental picture. They were blindsided by the author going, "uh, yeah, when I said 'dark brown' I meant African American..."

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This is a great idea for a challenge and I'll do my best to put something together by the end of the month.

@Briannakin Would a chapter of a longer fic be okay for this? What I have in mind is basically a character backstory vignette within an epic, and it should be easy to follow without having read the rest of the story.

 

Yeah that sounds fine. Can't wait to read it.

 

Lol, that's what my submission for this challenge is too.

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We have a thread for that and I would be delighted to read more about it.

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/personality-typing-established-and-original-characters.50044929/

 

@Findswoman, it looks like the official read/review list doesn't go up until sometime in August. But here's an unofficial list of the stories that I know about. There could be some missing since my way of finding entries has been to search for the word "mod" on all the recent pages.

Eternal Darkness by CaraJinn
Under Pressure by AzureAngel2
Force a wit y' by GregMcP
"Evermore" by AzureAngel2
Keeping It Real by WarmNyota_SweetAyesha
To Have Survived by Findswoman

 

Yes, there will be an index/reading list once the due date is up.


Which brings me to the next order of business. First, my apologies for being a semi-neglectful mod-host. I won't get into reasons here.

Second, both the due date for submissions and the participation sign up is just over 2 weeks away. Thus far we have 8 stories, but only two users (@Ewok Poet and @Kahara ) signed up thus far for the review phase of this, which is the real challenge (My apologies, @Nehru_Amidala and @Kyber Acyk - your 'sign up' posts weren't clear as to whether or not you were just going to write or if you wanted to partake in the review phase, if you could clarify for me, it would be much appreciated). Please sign up if you want to partake in the challenge.

While the nice thing about this challenge is that it only requires a small number of participants (we could do it with a minimum of 3 reviewers), there comes a point where we have mods have to weigh our own time against the number of participants. We can go through with the second phase of this challenge, or we could convert this to an open-ended challenge prompt, without the reviewing phase or prizes for reviews. We would leave this thread open, continue conversations on this topic (we had a couple other discussion questions), and keep an ongoing index.

Let us know what you think.

 

I am sorry if I confused you Brianna >_< Would I be able to just sign up for the writing portion of the challenge if that is okay?

 

Destiny by TheRynJedi

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You don't sign up for the writing portion, simply post your submission if you have one. Sorry for the confusion.


Here are all the links to the submissions thus far. I will do up a proper index once the deadline passes.

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/mod-challenge-checkpoint-ocs.50049385/
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/mod-challenge-eternal-darkness.50049395/#post-55123075
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...tion-underrepresented-mod-challenge.50049405/
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/keeping-it-real-hera-kanan-for-the-mod-challenge.50049463/
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...llia-underrepresented-mod-challenge.50049517/
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...shot-underrepresented-mod-challenge.50049519/
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/force-a-wit-y’-under-represented-mod-challenge.50049558/
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...eventually-will-be-part-of-a-series.50049635/

 

I hereby confirm that I really want to review stuff. These things are super-important and it would be a huge shame to change the format of the challenge. So...people, sign up to review, too? Pwetty pwease?

I also have two stories in works. 2018 is so...exciting and I forget to...OH, SHINY!

 

I didn't come into this intending to be a reviewer, but if you are short of them at the deadline point, feel free to pull me into the pool.

 

I hate to make promises that I can´t make true.

True, I am still on holidays at present. But I never know when exactly I can be online again.

Since my father is no more there is a lot of work piling up for my mom. I am busy with helping in the flat and the garden since I am back from my 6 day long journey to Polen.

Plus I am abandoning my husband, sort of, at present. But he tells me its okay, but would really like me to return home by the middle of this week.

Hum, I think that I already commented on some of the stories you listed up, @Kahara. Well, I can see what I can do this week. But I am not 100% sure.

 

I'm going to have to pull my finger out, to have something ready for the deadline; my creativity is not sparking enough to make headway on this one.