This is why when I write I really detest using race/hair color/etc as a distinguishing factor.
That's probably an entirely different post all of its own, the way that some (american) readers will automatically assume that if a) author has fanfic background and b) character has ethnicity that c) character must be loosely-based on existing fandom's character ... but what really happens is that it ends up sounding/reading like "any time I read a character who's a Chinese man, I immediately suspect it's based on [insert name of current well-known Asian character on Lost or something]". Since I don't actually watch TV, hrm, it's sort of like saying, "oh, look, you have a male character with blond hair and blue eyes, OF COURSE that character is really an analogue for Steve McQueen," as though Steve McQueen is the only freaking blue-eyed-blond ever in the history of media, and that therefore all fictional blue-eyed-blonds are automatically loose renditions of him.
Except that I've never seen the comment made about Anglo characters (though I have seen "he does X just like Y character, so is he based on Y character?") -- but I have seen it, and gotten it as feedback myself, on non-Anglo characters. "Oh! Your lead character is half-Japanese... he's based on X, right? from Y series?" (And I'm going, I have no idea what series you're talking about.) That the identifying elements of ethnicity become the entirety of the character, and then all characters with similar simplistic elements become analogues of that first character, as though one couldn't possibly come up with a half-Japanese, half-Tanuki character all on one's own.
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Date: 6 Feb 2010 04:38 pm (UTC)That's probably an entirely different post all of its own, the way that some (american) readers will automatically assume that if a) author has fanfic background and b) character has ethnicity that c) character must be loosely-based on existing fandom's character ... but what really happens is that it ends up sounding/reading like "any time I read a character who's a Chinese man, I immediately suspect it's based on [insert name of current well-known Asian character on Lost or something]". Since I don't actually watch TV, hrm, it's sort of like saying, "oh, look, you have a male character with blond hair and blue eyes, OF COURSE that character is really an analogue for Steve McQueen," as though Steve McQueen is the only freaking blue-eyed-blond ever in the history of media, and that therefore all fictional blue-eyed-blonds are automatically loose renditions of him.
Except that I've never seen the comment made about Anglo characters (though I have seen "he does X just like Y character, so is he based on Y character?") -- but I have seen it, and gotten it as feedback myself, on non-Anglo characters. "Oh! Your lead character is half-Japanese... he's based on X, right? from Y series?" (And I'm going, I have no idea what series you're talking about.) That the identifying elements of ethnicity become the entirety of the character, and then all characters with similar simplistic elements become analogues of that first character, as though one couldn't possibly come up with a half-Japanese, half-Tanuki character all on one's own.
Le sigh.