zeegoeshere

I'm going to start off with a somewhat-dickish disclaimer: I probably won't reply to most of the comments to this post. I'm sorry, but I have a full-time job and plenty of stresses in my life, and I know myself well enough to know that it's just not gonna happen. I wish I could participate in the conversation beyond this post, but I've been bitching about this subject to people in private for more than a year now, and I think it's time for me to put up or shut up, even if I don't have the time or energy to do follow-up.

So! Bandom and race. I've seen the idea floating around that bandom is doing better at skanky race issues than other fandoms, and I disagree with this. We do have a cast of characters that is much more multi-racial than just about any other major fandom, and I love that--it's part of the reason that I got into the fandom.

But the thing is, almost no one writes the characters of color who can't pass as white. Whether or not Pete identifies as white (although personally, I think the likelihood that he does is high), we live in a world where, if you do not have clearly brown facial features or skin or wear a pin that says "I'M BI-RACIAL ASK ME HOW," you are going to be seen as white. This goes double if you involve yourself in a scene that is typically very white, like hardcore. Gabe loudly identifies as hispanic and makes efforts to *not* pass as white, but he's the only one, and I still haven't seen his hispanic-ness get much play at all in fic.

But where is the Travis fic, people? We have always had tons of good, *really slashy* canon with Travis. You can make big cases for Travis/Pete, Travis/Bill, Travis/Gabe, Travis/Patrick, and Travis/Matt, just for starters, and his band is *really popular* in the real world--the canon is there. Yet in more than a year of being in bandom, I've still only seen a handful of Travis stories, and the amount of fic in which Disashi has speaking lines is even smaller. Where was the Travis/Ryan when the pictures of Travis kissing his cheek leaked? Where was the GCH/Panic crossover fic when Panic had an awesome cameo in the Clothes Off! video that everyone seemed to love? Where is the Travis/Pete when every other blog post Travis and Pete have made in the past three months has featured pictures of them together or been about how into each other they are? Why has there been more enthusiasm, squee, and fic for The Cab in three months than there's been for GCH in two years?

It's true that Gym Class Heroes does not play the same kind of music that most bandom bands do. However, many people get into bandom bands by seeing pictures of slashy guys and/or reading fic first, and listening to the music second--many people are into Panic, MCR and FOB when they wouldn't otherwise listen to that kind of music. But I've never seen this happen with GCH. And anyway, GCH's hip-hop is *very* rock-influenced; I've probably heard their singles played on more alternative and rock radio stations than I've heard them played on hip-hop stations.

I'm not saying that I think bandom has super bad skanky race issues, I just think we need to stop patting ourselves on the back. Writing tons of fic about characters of color that you can pretty much get away with writing as totally white is not a huge challenge for white writers. I'll start being more impressed if I ever see the amount of Travis fic become proportional to how big his band is and how slashy he is with all the other characters in fandom, or if I ever see Disashi get written as a major character in anything. The number of multiracial characters in bandom and all the opportunities to cross bandom characters over with hip-hop was one of the main draws for me when I got into the fandom, and I'm still waiting for fic output to live up to the potential we have.

edit: gigantic has an awesome post about your Disashi canon needs over here.