BRHood: Sorry, I had to get past the “waaah, waaah, my wants” in order to answer this.
No one said you couldn’t write PoC characters. Just that 1) there’s very little chance of you NOT fucking it up, so be prepared for PoC readers to, well, read the fuck outta you, and 2) your best bet is to literally co-write it with a PoC. Yeah, there are enough stories full of y’all, but if the only stories you can write are scenarios that are going to FORCE PoC characters to deal with blatant racism, don’t even bother.
Let’s use that girl’s pirate story for example. There is a huge difference between “pirate story taking place right before the American Revolution featuring Black pirates,” and “pirate story taking place in some alternate world, maybe One Piece inspired? featuring Black pirates.” One would force the Black pirates to face racism while the latter would allow for Black pirates to exist solely to have adventures and get into shenanigans.
That, and co-writing (which idk why you all are so against that) with a PoC in order to accurately portray them is probably the only way you can do it without fucking it up. And even then, you have to still be conscious of real world stereotypes and caricatures and whatnot. Either way, you’d have to be so careful about it that I can’t imagine it being much fun (unless you think of it as a challenge and get off on that).
But seriously, collaborating seems like the best choice.
