(no subject)

[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.

Comments

[bexone.livejournal.com]

have there been lots of threads/posts/comments of self-congratulatory backpatting? I move in somewhat limited circles in bandom, on purpose, but that means I miss a lot, so I honestly don't know. I commented on Sheila's post the other day that it's refreshing to be in a fandom where the source material is relatively free of skanky race and gender issues -- coming from spn and before that lotrips, both of which are crawling with problems -- but I would never say that the fandom was all that enlightened, tbh.

[elucidate-this.livejournal.com]

i agree. source text = awesome, fandom = not so much.

[xcarex.livejournal.com]

I actually really love Gym Class's music, and they seem like awesome dudes from what I occasionally see of them. But, for whatever reason, I think they're just one of the bands that don't get written about much-- however, I don't think there is necessarily any more fic about the non-William and yet still very white members of TAI either. Or fics about Ryland unless it's a GSF (which is sadly not frequently written). Or the Hushies at all, unless Greta is being used as a make-shift Mary Sue in a cross over with another band.

Personally, I just don't know enough about any them as people (or as characters) to write about them or even necessarily to read about them, and that's not an issue of race. I don't think it's fair to assume that people aren't writing smut about Disashi because he's black. It might be that they're afraid of just writing him incredibly OOC since nobody knows anything about the dude.

I'm just venturing guesses, though. *shrug*

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

Personally, I just don't know enough about any them as people (or as characters) to write about them or even necessarily to read about them, and that's not an issue of race. I don't think it's fair to assume that people aren't writing smut about Disashi because he's black. It might be that they're afraid of just writing him incredibly OOC since nobody knows anything about the dude.

Stop it. Do not say the race issue is imaginary and simultaneously say you don't even go looking for fic about the bandom people of color so you have no idea if there's an actual problem.

You are ignorant about the issue. Someone is trying to tell you there is a problem. If you don't trust zee or if you don't trust anyone and you want to find out if she is right, go look it up. Go count stories on dotcoms_refresh or del.icio.us and crunch some numbers.

But don't say, "I never noticed a problem, and despite the fact I was not looking in the right direction to notice a problem, if I didn't see a problem, obviously there was not one."

To the extent that bandom is part of mediafandom, it is reasonable to assume that mediafan patterns of behavior apply, and there's been an ongoing discussion in mediafandom for years where white fans have said, straight out in comments or live and to my face, they don't write characters because they are of color.

Race and racism is an issue in mediafandom generally, and there is no reason to expect that bandom is more enlightened than the rest of us.

[ficbyzee.livejournal.com]

sry for replying with the wrong journal

however, I don't think there is necessarily any more fic about the non-William and yet still very white members of TAI either. Or fics about Ryland unless it's a GSF (which is sadly not frequently written). Or the Hushies at all, unless Greta is being used as a make-shift Mary Sue in a cross over with another band.

But the thing is, GCH is a much bigger band than Cobra, TAI and The Hush Sound. They got almost as popular as FOB in the last year; Cupid's Chokehold got massive amounts of radio play. There's plenty of media about them. I think it's pretty messed up that they're as big as they are, but within fandom, they're seen at the same level as Hush Sound (and actually, I would say that Cobra has recently started to get a *lot* more fic and squee than either GCH or the Hushies).

[brownbetty]

I'm kind of guessing that you don't have a long history in fandom, although I could be wrong, but I'm seeing from your comment that you're unfamiliar with the following pattern which I have seen in every single fandom where someone tries to discuss race:

Someone says "Hey, there's not a lot of fic with [Character of colour]. What's with that?"

And then a lot of people reply "It's not that he/she/they are of colour! It's just that they're not personally interesting to me for a variety of reasons! Why does it have to be about race?"

And I don't mean to say that this isn't true for everyone who says it, but after a while it doesn't really matter if it's true: in every fandom, ever, the large majority of fans are uninterested in characters of colour. If it's not about race, it's an alien conspiracy we should probably look into. If it is about race, we should look into it. Either way, it's significant.

I know my username misleads some people, so I want to make clear, I'm white, and I do understand that sometimes you want to write fic about one person, and not about another. But our personal preferences weren't formed in vacuum, they were at least partly influenced by our society. And our society has some icky race issues.

[gypsycaravan.livejournal.com]

Personally, I just don't know enough about any them as people (or as characters) to write about them or even necessarily to read about them, and that's not an issue of race. I don't think it's fair to assume that people aren't writing smut about Disashi because he's black.

I agree with you. I said in my own comment below that I personally don't read fic about them because I don't find them attractive, not because they aren't white. People are getting too easily offended over this.

And you're right, there are lots of bandom people who hardly get written about, and they are white. I don't want to offend anyone by saying this, and I mean nothing bad against ficbyzee for making this post, because I find it interesting to ponder, but. But, I just feel like people always want to drag the race thing into something and make it an issue. I'm not saying it isn't an issue in an overwheming number of aspects in daily life. But many times, and I think this is one of them, if the issue of race is very small and not even intentionally mean, people latch onto it and make it a bigger deal than it needs to be. Less GCH fic doesn't mean people have a problem with some of the members being black. It could just be that they're not appealing to read or write about for a number of other possible reasons.

[elucidate-this.livejournal.com]

yes yes yes yes yes. worlds of yes. WORLDS of yes.

I think bandom's race issues are twofold 1) most people consider the majority of folks white even when they are not white 2) we are either villainizing or just plain ignoring folks of color.

Gabe gets cast as villain a ridiculous amount and GCH gets ignored despite Travis and William's dynamic being one of the slashiest dynamics out there and it's ridiculous.

People in bandom tend to pretend we are issue free and it's really really dangerous. We do have race issues (and plenty of other issues), and by not talking about them, like, ever we are pretty much ensuring we always will.

[sharpest_rose.livejournal.com]

The Gabe=villain thing isn't something I'd necessarily connect with race issues, personally. I think much of it has to do with 'basement' as a song, and to a lesser extent some of the songs off the new album. Gabe is far more confessional about things he's done to hurt other people than most of the other bandom lyricists and singers, both imaginary wrongs and the actual shit that comes with relationships. This makes him, by his own actions, 'canonically' morally greyer than the dudes who limit their confessions of wrongdoing to 'I confess I messed up' and 'I just made her more interesting'.

[lemonsherry.livejournal.com]

lol, i think Gabe being cast as the villain is just a case of a bandom cliche gone overboard. Like the sex-kitten!Billiam or pedo!Pete, somethings are just never going to go away.

[lemonsherry.livejournal.com]

I think the main discussion was about how race and diversity is dealt with in bandom in relation to other fandoms. There's no doubt that in the whole scheme of things there's some glaring shortcomings, but the whole commending bandom on its diversity wasn't in terms of diversity in the fic and other forms of online output, but more in what constitutes bandom, i.e. the bands, boys and girls themselves. Because there was some comment about it only being made up of a bunch of 'white boys' or whatever.

In terms of the points you make in this post however, I wholeheartedly agree. And I love the fact that the whole recent bandom diversity talk has prompted open discussion about issues of race such as this one. Its always been something i've noticed and silently acknowledged, but never actually openly commented on (maybe I felt like there wouldn't be others wanting to talking about the topic, or my voice would get lost in the noise) and those with the big flists and big voices in bandom aren't usually people with the subject foremost in their minds to bring up.

Treckett (Travis/Beckett) was what introduced me to bandom (and to GCH. Seeing their onstage and offstage interaction and how open they were simply boggled my mind. Canon for the pairing, imo, was so much stronger and out there than alot of the more popular pairings. I wrote strictly Travis/Beckett for a long time before I touched Panic! or FOB fic, yet finding well-written Treckett from writers other than you and a few others was, and still is so rare.

Similarly with Travis/Pete. We read an interview about the Panic boys having sleepovers with Pete, and to this day there'll be pages and pages of fic based on that alone. Travis and Pete shacking up and painting, playing with hemmy, being mutually insane and adorable for days? We'll see only writers like gigantic (who i love from afar SO MUCH) put something out, and there'll be next to nothing after that. Pete will make a blogpost on the heels of announcing his engagement, about how 'its sort of messed up' but he misses when he and Travis were up late at night being doofuses together. In terms of fic or even general aw-age--there's nothing.

And its sad, but its something i've gotten used to. Bandom, in many ways, reflects the catching up that society still has to do in terms of minorities in every sphere of life, so I just add it to my list of things that might (as Obama said, *yesiamlamedontshootme*) never reach perfection in our lifetime, but will be perfected.

[drunktuesdays.livejournal.com]

Travis and Pete shacking up and painting, playing with hemmy, being mutually insane and adorable for days? We'll see only writers like gigantic (who i love from afar SO MUCH) put something out, and there'll be next to nothing after that.

That was actually impertinence!

[lemonsherry.livejournal.com]

* gigantic recently wrote Travis/Matt shacking up fic, impertinence wrote the Travis/Pete I referred to. I have the dumb.

[calathea.livejournal.com]

I'm always terrified of commenting in race debates because I am not American, and even though I have lived in North America, I am not immersed in the same race issue in the same way that American authors would be. (Of course, we have our own race issues here in the UK, but they are differently composed and expressed, and don't translate to America any better than American race issues translate to us.) I therefore live in fear I'll say something that trips every single American's OMG EVIL HATE button, probably completely unintentionally.

That said, a while back I was chatting to someone in IM about writing girl!Travis, as a teenager, meeting Matt as in canon, because I adore the Travis/Matt canon. So we were talking about this story and sketching out the plot, but the problem that occurred to me is that on top of my permanent problem of writing in an American universe, I would now be trying to write in a specifically black American universe. It seemed to me if I wanted to write an interesting story about a young Travis meeting a young Matt, whether I gender swap them or not, I've got some fundamental issue of knowing how to write the role, if any, that their skin colour would have played in getting to know one another as teenagers. It seems that any assumption either way (it would have no impact, or it would be a really important thing that would occasion comment from friends and family) is extremely dangerous for me to make in terms of tripping those OMG EVIL HATE buttons, and it's not like I have canon for it, or I have someone I can ask to fact check and beta for me specifically on those issues. Unlike getting someone to American-language pick, where one's country of origin is very clear on LJ, it would be exceptionally awkward to poll my LJ friends for the purposes of my utility and say hi, what ethnicity are you? (And again, bear in mind I live a very very long way from most people on my list, and being foreign I don't necessarily read social cues with the same knowledge. So someone who specifically referred to something that you might think of as very obviously giving away their ethnicity, I would probably be oblivious to. So unless someone SAYS they are of a particular ethnicity, or posts photos, or in a few cases, I have met them, then I have no idea.)

So this comment can be summed up as follows: I would like to write PoC stories, and if I were going to, I would want to write a good story, just because that's kind of my aim in life anyway. I am not sure if it would be worse for me to write as if the character's race is immaterial, or to pretend I know anything about how it would impact the plot/story/relationship and potentially inadvertently say something utterly disastrous. If I were to write my girl!Travis in something other than chat log, something that would be held up to public scrutiny, I would want to handle the race issue interestingly, sensitively, and appropriately. I just lack confidence in my ability to do so, and because of the super-charged atmosphere in American universe fandoms when it comes to race, thus far I have shied away from the risk of writing the story and getting it completely and utterly wrong.

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

http://zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com/366922.html

Also, do the thing people always do when they need research assistance in fandom and they can't google up the information they need. Ask your flist. Not, "Are you a black American?" but, "I'm trying to write a story about girl!Travis. Any advice for me about writing a young, black female in upstate New York in the 90's?" And if you get greeted by resounding silence then the people on your flist, anyway, will not be catching any subtle race problems in your writing, so that's someplace to start.

I just lack confidence in my ability to do so, and because of the super-charged atmosphere in American universe fandoms when it comes to race, thus far I have shied away from the risk of writing the story and getting it completely and utterly wrong. Not helpful. The answer to problematic race relations is not to act as if people of color don't exist. It's really, really not.

[dreadfulrauw.livejournal.com]

dude -- have i ever told you about the backstory that exists with dishashi and travis and the red ball express (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Ball_Express) and the supply lines through france before the allies captured a port in europe and how i am so fucking stymied by the fact that bandom has TWO characters who self-identify as black (who the fuck is tyga? my knoweldge of band-canon, as you know, ends in october 06) that if i ever wrote it, i'd have to, like, steal kanye and lupe and half of the rappers i enjoy just to fill one trucking convoy.

aka i make everything about me and MY au needs, but you already know that i agree with almost everything you say here and think you should say it more!

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

Bwahahaha! A bandom question I can answer! Tyga is Travis' cousin. He's a rapper. He's been signed to Decaydance/Batsquad. He'll be releasing an album this summer, he made a video and has released some singles. My google-fu was unable to tell me if that still meant he was on FBR or not.

http://www.myspace.com/tyga

He's pretty cute, but not quite as cute as Travis.

[sunqist.livejournal.com]

My only real contribution to this conversation is that every time I've seen Ray written where his ethnicity is addressed, he's always, always written as Mexican (either overtly or by implication). It makes me crazy. I don't know if people don't realize that there's a difference between Mexican and Puerto Rican, or if they just don't care, but if other authors are scared away from issues of ethnicity because they're afraid of screwing it up, I think I can appreciate that more than pointing a big neon sign at themselves that says "I have no idea what I'm talking about." Would I love well-constructed fic that addresses ethnicity appropriately? Of course. Do I think it's ever going to get written by people who are not of color themselves? Not a chance in hell. The people who could do it are scared of getting things wrong, and the people who can't do it try it anyway and screw it up. If that makes any sense.

[gypsycaravan.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm just a random person here, but this post caught my attention and interest.

Obviously no one's gonna argue with you that there are considerably less GCH fics than fics with other bands in them. But personally, I see this as being because perhaps bandom in general doesn't find the GCH boys very attractive. I know I personally don't, so I'd rather not read fic about them. I know it shounds shallow and lame, but really, if most bandom boys weren't so pretty, the number of people who would care to read/write fic about them would be considerably less than it is now. So I don't see the lack of GCH fic as soley to do with the race issue. There is definitely some merit to what you have said in your post, about writers and readers feeling more comfortable dealing with characters who pass as white, but I think this has less of an impact on the lack of GCH fic than other reasons, like the boys' physical looks.

And I'm not trying to say the boys are unnatractive because they aren't white. I myself don't identify as white, and I'm very proud of my race and find guys of different ethnicities other than white to be very appealing. However, the GCH boys just couldn't even be any less attractive to me. And maybe I'm making a huge assumption here, I dunno, but I feel like many people feel the way I do about them and would rather not read/write fic about them for this reason, not because they are "brown."

[morganya.livejournal.com]

Hello, also random person who got linked through dotcoms_refresh. I totally get not finding someone attractive, because we all have our opinions on what makes someone hot or not, and it's a valid choice to be fannish over someone you find attractive.

The thing is, I've seen people use "I just don't find so-and-so attractive," in a way that I'd consider problematic, i.e., someone saying, "I just don't find black/Asian/Hispanic/Latino people attractive." When it's phrased like that, it's seeming to assume that a) all members of a specific race or ethnicity look the same, and b) those features are automatically judged lesser compared to features that are usually white. So, while, yes, we all have our subjective opinions on what makes someone hot or not, it doesn't automatically mean that there aren't other societal factors that play into that.

There's also the question of what leads people to write: while someone may write fiction about a person they consider attractive, somebody else may write because of dynamic, or personality. There's a great variety of reasons why people are drawn to fiction, and finding someone hot is only one of them.

[iamsupernova.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to say, I applaud you for your non-wanky discussion of this topic. I've seen a bunch of posts and comment strings on this topic and I'm "discussed" out. I'm really tired of the over-reacting, too.
<3

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

Er, did you read the discussion we had with xcarex? Cause you are mashing on that same button.

Zee is not saying that everyone has to abandon writing about MCR and FOB and PatD and start writing Travis/Gabe Saporta epics or about the sweet, sweet love of Ray Toro and Matt Cortez, or else we'll put you on our big list of racial fail.

She's saying that, considering the number of guys who are of color in bandom, considering their actions in the real world, the amount of fic is not the same as it is for other guys in bandom who are like them in all ways except they code as white.

The pattern of racial difference is not unique to bandom, and no one's going to pry Patrick Stump from your hot little fingers. But that thing where people try to say, "Disashi is too mysterious to know," or "I'm afraid if I write Alex Suarez wrong the fen of color will fall on me and tear my fannish reputation to shreds."? That shit is not true and has got to stop.

[iridescentglow.livejournal.com]

I agree with parts of this argument, and parts of it, I think are unfair generalizations. Yes, bandom isn't great on race. It's pretty much akin to any other fandom. The CoCs get written a lot less often than the white (or "white" -- I very much take your points about assuming whiteness) characters.

However, GCH is the point at which I go *eh*. Sure, it's a shame that's there's not more fandom for them. Maybe it's a race thing -- maybe not. There are many, many "bandom" bands that have small amounts of fic: when was the last time you saw Hush Sound fic? Furthermore, there are white members of GCH. And they don't get written about, either. If there were tons of Matt fic out there, I could more easily buy it as a racial issue that Disashi doesn't get written about it. As it is, there is actually a substantial amount of fic about Travis out there. Most of it's not great quality, but it exists. Whereas, the fic that even mentions Matt's name, I could count on my fingers.

Oh, and to address another point, commercial success =/= fandom. Just look at CSI: it's one of the biggest shows on TV, but the fandom is tiny. Those things don't necessarily correlate.

[bridgetmc.livejournal.com]

Interesting essay.

It does make me think about my current love affair (sports rpf). There is no denying that there are plenty athletes of color between the three sports I watch/read (NBA, MLB, NFL) and no one shies away from writing about them. In fact, a lot of the more popular pairings are about athletes of color. Knowing that makes me verily happy.

[kaizoku.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this. I definitely thought that bandom was basically all white boys when I was first getting into it. (Though some of that was probably my assumptions of whiteness.) Eventually I realized that there *were* people of color and women and they just didn't get as much fannish screen time. And that's true of most fandoms, but at least with a TV show you can easily look up who is on the show. Bandom knowledge-gathering is more of a process and a lot of the canon is canon-as-presented-by-fans. It put *me* off, so I would imagine a lot of other people take one look and say do not want. (It also doesn't help that FOB's videos have such sketchy race stuff going on. I cut them a little slack now that I know the "hoods" are mostly played by friends of theirs and famous people, but still. At the time, I went looking for commentary on that, thinking there *must* have meta about it... I found one essay on a blog and it wasn't written by a bandom person AFAICT.)

[miindy70.livejournal.com]

That's good to know.