teen wolf and fandom's interaction with PoC characters
2013-01-12
over the past few months i’ve probably read hundreds of thousands of words of teen wolf fanfic (on top of the vast quantities of fic from glee, buffy/angel, the sentinel, xmen that I’ve also read).
but it is especially noticeable in the teen wolf fandom where you have a Latino lead, a Pacific Islander queer character, and a Black werewolf.
i was suddenly reminded the other day of this article about how white people just can’t imagine stories for PoC – tw feministing
it struck me in this moment… that the reason why the (mostly) white writers of the fic either focused on white characters, or when writing about the characters, essentially white washed them by removing all and any references to race. is because they simply lack the imagination to write stories about PoC.
a great contrast is blaine from glee, who is white washed by about 99% of fandom and has many fics written with him as a character (with only the tiniest amount actually making any mention of the fact that he is biracial or Filipino).
and that seems to be the only real options for characters of colour in fandom:
either be white washed and written about as if they exist in some mythical race/color blind world
or be entirely neglected/forgotten
(and i know other people in teen wolf have mentioned the fandom’s general neglect for Scott in favour of two white d00ds. but this struck me as a decent explanation for how their racism is operating in this case. because, it is also demonstrable that white people, even beyond fic and fandom shit, have trouble imagining that IaoPoC have any real level of depth and complexity)