Forum:FC:Café Fanfic XXXV



Café Fanfic is a discussion topic centered around fan-fiction. Authors are encouraged to contribute to the café's monthly discussion, which are designed to stimulate ideas and encourage engagement between members of the SWF fan-fiction writing community in a criticism-free zone.

Participants in Café Fanfic are also welcome to submit ideas for the next month's topic of discussion.

Previous topics can be found in the archive list at the bottom of the page.

There are three basic premises for Café Fanfic
 * 1) Please restrict this to stuff from your fan-fiction (written or possibly just conceptualized).
 * 2) You can suggest and make observations, but no condemning other people's work
 * 3) "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer.


 * May's topic: Discuss gender and/or racial equality (or the lack thereof) in your fan-fiction.

Brandon
Glad you went with this topic, Ataru. I think it's a good one considering the topic has come up recently with discussions about the Episode VII cast.

My current project is The Jedi Guardian, and I'm pretty happy with the level of diversity. There are 8 characters who I would consider central to the story, with 4 being male and 4 being female (so half and half). And if you break it down even further, the core group of hero characters is 3 women and 1 man.

Breaking the hero group down racially, it's a white man, an African-American woman, a white woman, and an alien (Nautolan) woman, so that achieves racial diversity amongst the heroic characters. And to answer this question before it's asked: I consider the African-American woman the leader of the group from an in-universe perspective, with her and the white guy being co-leads from a narrative perspective. So it's not a story of the white man still being in charge, calling the shots, etc.

On the villain side, it's 3 men and 1 woman, but the woman is the leader (the Sith Lord). I don't really have a sense of the villain side's racial makeup, though. Not yet, at any rate.

And (SPOILER ALERT for those who don't know the SWRP story) since this is an adaptation/prequel of the current SWRP story, women continue to be in crucial roles moving forward. The eventual Empress, Andraste, is the ultimate villain of the series; while her daughter, Lana, is the last of the Skywalker line and destined to become the true Chosen One.

The Jedi Guardian wasn't designed with any specific attempt at gender or racial diversity in mind, but rather it was a happy accident. I'm glad it turned out that way because diversity is something you should be cognizant of and strive for in your writing, because it's realistic that way. Life is not made up of groups of white dudes at every turn, so having casts of characters that represent multiple walks of life is important and true to reality. - Brandon Rhea (talk)  21:10, May 18, 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Thanks to Brandon Rhea for the topic suggestion. ;) Atarumaster88  ( Talk page ) 15:12, May 19, 2014 (UTC)