Diversity in Fiction End of Quarter Reflection. (Week Ten)

Diversity in Fiction Reflection

I want this reflection paper to delve a bit deeper into some of the ideas that I’ve been thinking and writing about over the past quarter.

Early in the quarter I had a lot of ideas, a lot of directions to go in. I got some substantial writing done at the beginning of the quarter, and I had ideas that I was really excited about continuously through the entire quarter, but my schedule didn’t allow for much significant writing and finishing of writing until later in the quarter. The thinking I did in between that substantial writing was interesting in terms of how I developed the ideas in my head without writing them down, as well as tracing the origins of my ideas when I paid attention to what sparked them.

Ideas and Process

When I pay attention to where my ideas come from, or note down what I was doing when I had the idea, most of what has been the starting spark this quarter was phrases that people said, or lines that were in poems from people around me. A lot of them were one-liner type jokes that I like the sound of, or that I could imagine a more intricate version of that joke that would be interesting and surprising. It was the combination of words, usually in a situation that was funny, that seemed special. I don’t really know where the details of the idea comes from, I don’t know what that combination of words did to cause the deeper details in my head that create the rest of the story and the rest of the ideas.

Between the times when I had found the line or phrase that was interesting, written it down, and when I actually sat down and wrote out the rest of the idea or the story that went to it, my mind works in the background on the ideas. At the point when I sit down to write, I tend to write short stories in one sitting. And many times in the past, when I sit down to write and don’t finish that story in that sitting, it’s taken me an incredibly long time to come back to that partial story and ideas, if I do at all.

It’s really hard to keep track of that time and energy my mind puts in without much of my knowledge before writing, which is always interesting when you’re trying to keep track of what time you’re spending on a project.

Most of the pieces I wrote over this quarter were ideas or offshoots of ideas that I had fairly early in the quarter. I wrote down the lines or phrases that seemed interesting. Sometimes I wrote a note about what it would turn into, or a few days later I would write that note. Then I’d end up spending quite a while in between opening up that document and looking at it, but not actually doing work on it. Then the writing would start and finish. A couple of read throughs, maybe a rewrite. One idea turned into three separate pieces of writing, the Rose Series, because all the elements of the original idea weren’t going together the way I was trying to write them in the right way.

Some of the ideas I didn’t get to writing this quarter, when I went to write in the few details under the phrase or line, turned into needing to be a different media than I was expecting entirely, such as a comic. Because I had very little luck drawing anything that I am happy with, those ideas had to be shifted to a lower priority.

Most of the ideas that shifted from a strictly written media to a combination or another media, like comics or monologues or anything else, happened after I started doing writing, thinking, and reflecting on the media I was including in my project. When I was paying attention to what I was thinking when I was reading comic books or watching The Secret Garden or American Idiot.

Media Mixing.

One of the really interesting things I’ve thought about this quarter was the way media have mixed or influencing each other, and how that changes the way the ideas and stories are digested, as well as the way other aspects of my studies, social justice or politics influences various art forms and causes new art forms to be created. American Idiot is a musical created from originally unrelated Green Day songs, and We Will Rock You is a musical created from previously unconnected Queen music. Both have story lines that could be seen as highly political, as the first follows teenagers through their early adult years and the mistakes they make within their society, and the second follows a couple of teenagers through a dystopian future world of uniformity and sameness to discover a hidden past of rock and roll. It’s an interesting type of media to look at, something that was once music turned to the foundation for a live stage performance. During my last quarter, I did some thinking and discussing around how the music from some Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta songs have been used as the base music for political parodies, another really fascinating cross point of media, culture, and politics.

I’ve ended up thinking about those moments of mixing quite a bit. Some of it began during the Power of One Conference early in the quarter, where I attended a discussion about the history of queer comics, which was an angle I had never really thought about, which led to me several awesome and diversely minded comics.

Diversity, Science Fiction, and Storytelling.

One of the ideas that’s been important in thinking about fiction and social justice and diversity is the idea that you must have imagination when you’re fighting for progress and better lives, because you have to be able to imagine a world that’s better, and how to achieve to that world, once your battles are won. Science fiction is an excellent crossroads for that imagination, because it provides a form that allows for varying degrees of direct or indirect social commentary. Many of the issues discussed in the imaginary societies are issues that we have in this reality, they’re just being discussed through the books on a different planet with a green or an orange filter and some different names. Of course that is an oversimplification of science fiction, but it’s an element that’s been important to consider in this project over the quarter. Because through science fiction, activists can imagine the ways the world can change and be different, the ways that battles can be fought, and more. This was really driven home while I was reading Octavia’s Brood, an anthology specifically collected from activists imaginings.

Besides using the imagination, science fiction, and thus fiction in general as a tool for social justice, it’s important that diversity is visible in fiction and media in terms of representation as well. Tying into ideas around stereotypes, media representation of beauty, and understanding others perspectives, showing real diversity in writing is incredibly important. Showing real characters that aren’t driven solely by their diversity, having stories that aren’t diverse simply because they have a token diversity character, benefits everyone, though especially young people from the minoritized or marginalized communities that diversity is typically understood to come from. It’s important to have role models and characters that have experiences similar to your own when there are already burdens stacked against you, and on the other side, it’s really awesome and beneficial to read about situations that aren’t exactly your own, because you learn to see from different perspectives.

It’s less about changing which types of characters or books are the majority, it’s more about giving voice to identities, communities, and experiences that aren’t the typical or traditional.

Creating diverse fiction isn’t just writing books about LGBTQ kids coming out or facing some social issue, because reducing a character down to one issue isn’t truthful, it’s not multidimensional. It’s not just having one kid in the background with a different skin color, or a disability. It’s creating representative work that shows main characters, secondary characters, antagonists, facing those issues, but also just being characters beyond those issues. Stories where the driving principles aren’t diversity focused issues but human issues, with characters that have diverse experiences and lives, is much closer to creating diverse writing.

You can create fiction in the way you wish the world already was. The issues aren’t as important as another part of a character’s story, but everyone is present in the story. After the history of queer comics panel at the Power of One, a friend suggested reading the LumberJanes comics, and loaned me the first volume. It’s about a girl scout group, with baddassery and supernatural elements. All of the characters are diverse, there’s a trans girl, an asexual girl, a couple, etc. But the comic’s not about them being trans or asexual or a couple. It’s about chasing the strange supernatural things that are happening at the girl scout camp where they will be for the summer. It’s about being stuck on a river about to go over a waterfall, and falling into a cave with mysterious creatures. The diversity is not the driving plot point or driving obstacle, it is an element of character depth, and that is an incredibly awesome thing.

This thinking really impacts how you write when you’re writing with an eye to be as inclusive and realistic as possible. This thinking is the theory behind writing diversity into fiction. The practice is always learning more, so the characters and the depth of characters rings as true as it can. In a large part, this truthfulness and clarity would be increased by having a publishing world that made it easier for diverse stories from women, people of color, LGBTQ people, to publish stories. That’s ultimately the way to increase diversity in the writing and storytelling world, to allow, encourage, and celebrate the hugely diverse world of talented voices that exist outside of the traditional publishing world.

In the learning that must be done to create realistic and truthful characters, all the little things of experience must be considered. Things as seeming inconsequential as choosing or creating a new language for a science fiction or fantasy world can be important. In my quarter’s reading, I read an incredibly interesting article about how naming characters, creating languages, and using language can be used sloppily to echo oppressive patterns, or can be thought out to create incredible new languages. It talked about the logistics and elements of language that make languages realistic, that makes them sound right, and that makes them able to step outside oppressive patterns in the world. It warned not to simply modify an existing a little bit, because that does nothing but exemplify othering and the ‘exoticness’ of other languages, but it lets down the readers who speak that language, who are maybe excited to learn about a new language, but wait a minute, it’s just a warped version of the language they already know.

Conclusion and Application.

All of these theories, elements, and thoughts have made up my quarter’s thinking work on diversity, social justice, and fiction writing. Pieces of each of these things were in my mind was I wrote the stories I wrote over this quarter, and I know that taking some extra effort and time to think about these things was incredibly influential in the way I was writing.

It’s given me a lot of things to think about when I’m editing old projects, or working on future projects. It’s not all been applied and changed into actionable thought of course, because that doesn’t really come from a single quarter of thinking.

But it has begun a study and an awareness about how ideas, language, theory, and representation and of course the bias of personal experience, change the end result for better or worse, depending on how you use the knowledge and awareness of that topics.

There is a lot of knowledge and information that authors have in their minds as they write that never gets on the page. Some of it’s character backstory, some of it’s formatting and style and logistics, and some of it is keeping in mind the audience, the message you hope to impart, and how your work fits into the world at large.

The ability to think a little more deeply on those background topics, that’s what I’ve gained most this quarter.

Love School Again (Rough poetic)

(Note: Blast this simplified blog formatting.)

Make me fall in love with the school again.

The beautiful rush and thrill of learning

 

The pain and burden on all with early mornings and horrible formats and rules

The additional burden of marginalization.

 

Make me fall in love again, make it worth it, show me it’s right,

Or Change.

Because the beautiful rush of learning should not come with such a terrible price.

 

 

Make me fall in love again

With school

With this school

With learning and growing

Show me it’s worth it to be here

Show me it’s worth it to cry and loose sleep

Tell me again how to practice self care and prioritize

When turning around to tell me each assignment and piece of work

That I must complete.

Tell me how important attendance is

Tell me when everything is due

And tell me to take care of myself

That me is important

 

but loose credit if you’re out sick for more than a single day

 

make me fall in love with the thrill of learning

making a connection that was obscured before

make me excited to be in class in the morning

make me excited to hear each new lecture

make it worth the pain it causes to move

make it worth the cost of being present

 

or change it.

 

Tell me why it’s okay to be treated

as a number

as inhuman

maybe it’s not me

maybe it doesn’t touch me

and maybe I have no right to speak on it directly.

 

But I hear the people around me

and I see them even

if I am drowning here

barely keeping a head above water

let alone remembering the love of knowing anew

where is the fellow student weighed down with so much more burden?

 

Thirty feet below or more, murky depths above,

sunlight a filtered, distorted illusive warmth

 

they make themselves heard because they have to

listen to them

don’t deny or dodge

I can promise you

there is reason

and you need to trust

 

make me fall in love with school again

so many reasons not to

so many reasons to break

 

make me fall in love with the rush of knowledge

don’t taint what I can enjoy with the cries of pain

from so many sources and so many reasons

from others much burdened

from myself in so much pain

 

make me fall in love with school again.

Show me how it’s worth it and show me how it’s right to be this way

or show me how you’ll change.

Show me how it’s worth it to be treated this way

or change.

 

Change

 

because it’s needed

learning is lost in this structural chaos

long before these weeks

an idea at the start

make me fall in love with school again

 

learning is lost in this structured

lives

living

chaotic and trapped

fighting for the rush of learning to be pure and tainted no longer.

 

Learning should not need to be worth this suffering

learning should be allowed to be free and new and thrilling, as it first was.

It’s not worth it now

So change.

Change.

Make me remember what it’s like to love learning.

Let us love learning.

 

Note on “Love school again”

This is quite raw and scrabbled. It was an idea, a line. Make me love school again.

Then it was ideas, scrambled down on the page so they wouldn’t be lost. Placed haphazardly.

But then, when I look back and add on, I can’t find a pattern or a way to clean it up, and make it civilized. I don’t know that I should try anymore.

There is pain here, from experiences of other schools, of this one, of listening to the pain and burden that others have carried and carry to be here.

There is a love of learning, because that in and of itself is beautiful and creative and lovely.

There is protest of the structure that school and learning has been forced into. There is an idea that it shouldn’t be this hard or this painful. It hurts that the people trapped and hurting here aren’t just students, but everyone else in the web, stuck.

It a flawed system, but that system is mistaken for people who carry it on, because otherwise there is no where to start dismantling.

This isn’t a be all end idea or a fully articulated opinion, it isn’t edited much or rearranged and shifted to be something more beautiful or elegant. But I think maybe it shouldn’t be. Because while it isn’t complete truth, it is still truth. It is a piece, and every piece must be encouraged to be present, or we won’t ever get any closer to the complete truth.

 

(Additionally, the spacing which is always so important to poems or poetic expression are lost on this blog forum. It takes too much time and effort to re create the nuanced spacing and placement I had on my word processor. Minor spacing has been reintroduced, but otherwise each line has been given equal spacing on this medium, which is a little frustrating.)

Imperfect Beauty Rose (Rose Series Part 3)

The tiny theater is shades of black, the gaffer tape that has faded to various degree, noting the time it’s been there. The black sheets and cloth hung around the seating, the stage and the bar.

Tiny white lights line walkways, the bar, and the stage.

Tonight’s open mic night, and the second performer up is a short girl with multicolored spiky hair, steampunk-esque goggles, and a collection of fishnet, velvet, and cropped skirt, cropped top. Rivets and chains. Smokey eyes, but a rainbow pride tattoo on her shoulder.

 

Girls are like flowers and fragile and beauty.

Everyone says.

Mother nature is fragile, needs cared for, gives us everything but is weak.

Everyone says.

Nature and nurture, love and softness.

Is woman.

Everyone says.

I guess we have things in common.

The respect we get is equal.

Both of us treated badly.

Both of us warriors.

Nature will kick your ass, is only biding time.

Giving you second chances.

Nature will have a clean slate and we won’t be seen again.

I’m told my beauty is my all.

But I can’t take control.

My beauty must be given to me, acknowledged and bestowed upon me.

But goddamn,

I know I’m beautiful.

Scars and scrapes and scratches.

My mind isn’t a blemish.

My experience hasn’t drowned me yet,

Won’t drown me out.

I know I’m beautiful.

I don’t need to only care about beauty.

Nature and me, we’re warriors.

We fight, but you won’t notice.

Cause we’re beautiful.

This rose is dried and crumpled.

Missing pieces missing petals.

Bruised, beaten, and forgotten.

Beauty stolen, they say.

So forgotten.

We fight invisible,

beautiful

or forgotten.

We are the Imperfect beauty rose.

The warrior.

We fight.

Similar, not alike.

Together, but not the same.

We are our own, not the only.

We will fight.

So everyone says

They are no longer blind to our

Complexity.

Dumpster Roses Kept (Rose Series Part 2)

Those roses were a little battered. A little bruised and a little beaten. They were dried in the vase, noting the time they had stayed there since found in every wrinkle and sharpened thorn. Each slightly bent leaf or twisted stem. The roses were a little battered. I had had them for years now. Occasionally a petal would fall, or I would almost knock them over with my awkward frame. A curtain would brush them a bit too roughly or something else would endeavor to dent or crunch them.

Only adding to their beauty. They were a legacy and history.

They were the newly made friends that ran down an ally between a suburb and a collection of little shops. They were the made up stories we told each other as we scrambled around the obstacles and were totally childish and full of laughter. We’d make up stories about the people who lived in the houses, or what really happened behind the back doors of the businesses. Pools and patios and flat grass lawns were all well and good, but the dark and mysteriously dusty shop doors could be anything.

Behind one of the shops, its front said it was a florist, there was a huge dumpster. It was at the end of the alley, where it started to turn into a field beside the suburb. There was a fence and some trees, and the house at the end of the lane. That house was the best place to tell stories about. It was covered in flowers and plants and vines and trees. All over absolutely everything. Anything could be hiding in those branches and leaves, the world’s best secrets, so we told ourselves. The trees that overhung the fence and the dumpster in the alley, from the house or the field, were huge and overgrown. Their roots made the pavement uneven and let the hardiest flowers peak through. Their leaves made it shady and cool on the hottest days.

The fan that propped the back door of the shop open on hot days blew out hot, humid air tinged with the scent of flowers and green things. Sometimes chocolate or fruit also, oddly. There was a basketball hoop attached to the back wall of the shop, and sometimes other neighborhood kids would play there, and that could always lead to more stories. My friends, we loved those stories.

One day when we were telling stories, one of the other kids got their basketball stuck in the tree closest to the dumpster. It was a knot of branches and leaves, healthy and huge, and nested gently within it, a dulled orange basketball.

They tried climbing up on the dumpster, but could only shake the branches, not shake it loose. We climbed up too, to see if we were taller enough to get the ball down. I guess we were, it shook loose and fell into the dumpster. Next to a bunch of roses. Once the basketball was returned, my friends and I retrieved the roses. It was a huge bunch, and we decided they were the most beautiful things in the world.

Some of the petals were dented, and some of the flowers were small, the stems were uneven, and broken in place. They were the most beautiful things in the world because they were dented and bruised, because they had been thrown away and still shone deep rich pigment and glorious grace.

Because we’d skinned our knees and covered ourselves in tiny scars. We’d broken bones and cut our own hair in the mirrors. Our crooked layers and lopsided ponytails were the roses proof, the roses were our proof.

Because we had loved them, because they were still beautiful, because we were still beautiful, they were the most beautiful things in the world. Their value came from themselves, not their history, and their value came from how we immediately loved them.

We’d split up the bunch between us, wondering if they had come from the beautifully overgrown house behind the shop or the shop, wondering about the story behind the flowers, but also creating the new stories that wove together with us since we found them.

Only adding to their beauty.

Rose Calm (Rose Series Part 1)

The room was sweltering hot and sticky. The window was open all the way and still the air felt choking. The sweet smell of the spring flowers coming through the window on the tiniest breeze took turns being sickly sweet and reminding me of the beautiful blindingly bright green world outside was new and refreshing itself.

The light coming through the window made the room feel translucent and shimmering. It was filled with bright greens, and pale tans, with dark shadowed corners. The roses on the bright shiny corner of my desk sat quietly and patiently and seemed to send out a wave of grounding calm to me.

I sat cross legged on the dark purple bed spread, the flat white pages of my homework staring back up at me blankly. It’s been hard to focus since the heat wave started. The heat feels stifling, as if it’s just pressing down on the world.

Of course, it could be the heat. Or it could have been that the heat started at almost the exact same time that I had decided to tell my best friends.

I was definitely waiting. I could feel the sweat on my skin in beads, but they didn’t string themselves down my back like they usually did in the intense heat that surrounded me. These beads of sweat stuck to me in viscous blobs, like glue or half melted hard candy.

My stomach flipped over every few moments, and I sat stock still. I could hear movement outside my window. There was even a fan in the corner set to blow continuously directly at my shoulder all night that whirred steadily. But everything felt still and pensive like me.

Just after my family had moved us here, one of the first times I’d hung out with my new friends, we’d found this bunch of slightly battered roses in the dumpster of this old man’s house. The place was covered in overgrown plants and flowers like an enchanted garden, but these flowers had been thrown away. We’d kept them, because the idea of imperfect beauty had delighted us.

I stare at the dried flowers, my breathing soft and barely noticeable. I’m lost in thought, still. The pressure of heat and memories weighing on me. I considered finding those flowers the bonding experience that had opened the doors for all the friendship that had grown between us all since.

And now, the heat wave stifled everything, and all I felt was saturated with heat and sweat and waiting. To see what would happen next.

Whether they would accept me again, as they had before. As they had the flowers with their imperfect beauty.

I jumped when the phone jangled and buzzed beside me. It suddenly brought all the sounds of the fan and the breeze outside and my breath back into focus in my mind.

When I answered I heard their laughter, all jammed together through the microphone, happy and normal. Inviting me over to hang out, wondering why I wasn’t there yet.

Because those plans had been made before the heat wave. Before my confession, the letting go of my secret. The timing and schedule had made everything go so quiet, I wasn’t sure if I was still supposed to go.

The smile spread across my face, and when I moved to grab my backpack and shove on my sandals, the sweat that had stuck to my back freed itself and rolled down. It felt somehow strangely freeing for it to roll down my back so briskly, leaving behind a trail of slightly cooler skin.

I shove my phone in my pocket as I hop toward the door with my half donned shoes dangling from my feet. Everything was going to be alright this time. Either way I would survive, heat wave or not, but everything would be great this time. I was accepted again, and it was great.

Though, I was never going to come out before a heat wave again.

Week Nine Reflection and Report: Media, Priorities, and Finals Stress.

This week has been intensely stressful, even when it has not made for an abundance of work. The media and social media uproar around the protests and media representation has been tense, even before the school’s closure.

I’ve spent some time this week going over articles and news from the CooperPoint Journal and other sources, to catch up on what’s been happening and what’s being responded to. I’ve not been particularly informed about what’s been happening aside from coincidental happenstance, and I’m glad I took that time to catch up. However, much of it was done before the closure on Thursday, and that created an additional load of media, most of which I haven’t been able to get through.

It’s all stirred up a lot of feelings and dulled anger and frustration. It’s been hard to really feel what’s happening as real or that it has direct impact. I’m not sure if that’s partly because of a defensive mechanism, or only a manifestation of privilege. Either way, it’s been a worrying and stressful time, and the additional priority of trying to get done all of the final school work that I had agreed to at the beginning of this quarter has seemed almost surreal at times. Priorities are strange and warped in these times it seems, as schoolwork is supposed to be a priority, but so is safety and the social justice work that many students cannot disconnect themselves from.

It’s not much that I can really figure out how to describe or anything that I should be trying to explain to any audience but myself.

Besides trying to think and be knowledgeable what’s happening around me and the campus, I have been working on trying to get all of the pieces of writing I’ve been working on finished, posted, and sent to the appropriate places.

The academic statement needs to be addressed, and as the deadline gets closer I feel less and less able to write one that will truly serve me in any future endeavor, which is quite a frustrating feeling.

I am definitely needing to go back to working on all of these things, and all of these little stressors, so I will keep this week’s report to a minimum.

Final Wk 8 Paper: Comprehensive Sex Education’s Connections to Social Justice Work

Sex Education and Social Justice

 

This paper ended up being more of an experiential discussion exercise than a formal research paper, but it served its purpose as a great learning experience and a piece to reflect on to learn how to further use language and work with social justice issues.

Week Eight Reflection and Report: Event, Paper, and Wrapping up

This week has been primarily dedicated to two things: facilitating my event, and finishing writing my final paper.

My event, “Let’s Talk About Sex” at the TQC was pretty easy to facilitate and it went pretty well. Over the whole time, there was probably between ten and fifteen people who participated, either specifically for the event, who were already at the TQC, or who walked through or dropped by for part of the time. With the excitement of the week, I hadn’t been able to borrow a large screen to show my introductory video, but my makeshift purpose as a tablet holder worked well enough. The discussion wove through a bunch of different topics including the safety of sex toys, the failures of sex education, things we’d changed our minds about in terms of sexuality and a bunch of other topics started by or off of topics brought up by conversation prompts that I provided from the organization Sex Geekdom.

One participant told me they really appreciated the use of multiple types of media, and that they were really excited that the event was happening and that wished there were more events of this type around.

As for the writing of my paper, I realized early in the week that I wasn’t going to be able to thoroughly read through the resources and research that I had collected over the last few weeks in time to write a cohesive paper, so I decided to change up the style I was aiming for and instead of a formal academic research paper, I went for a more experiential based discussion of topics that I have been thinking about in depth over the last quarter and even before. I wanted it to be an introduction of topics that could have further formal research done, and a reason why it might be important that that research be done. I attempted to briefly question the way that research is done and why it must be formatted and styled in such formal ways for it to be considered valuable, though this was likely somewhat awkward and not likely living up to its intentions. Even so, I found it a really good experience for my learning and future writing to try and pay much more attention to why I was writing what I was writing and what parts of my education and the history of social struggles and interactions might be affecting my perspective or my writing. It’s not a piece that was exactly meant to be a be all end all examination, or one that would be shared without much further work and understanding, it’s an aim to stretch my writing capability and my thinking, and giving me more new things to work on.

In addition to my event and my paper, there were a few little things happening as well. I spent an afternoon hanging out at a friend’s student film, and being an extra for a couple of the shots. It was really cool to be able to help out a friend, and her film’s are always really beautiful and awesome. They’re set around Greek mythology, poetry, and love, and I think that being present for a stage of a storytelling medium, especially around a person who’s work creates more diversity and more perspectives, is really awesome.

The quarter is wrapping up and now the focus is on getting things done, which makes it harder to reflect back or create a cohesive narrative for each of these episodic reflections, as I am working to create a cohesive quarter long reflection as well.

I have really enjoyed the freedom to follow the interests I have gained over this last quarter, and the ability to choose where I am spending my time. I think it has given me a lot of good knowledge, insights, and things that I can continue to learn about.