#Special Snowflake

[writingwithcolor]

Black woman with shockingly dark eyes and impossible features - is this exotification?

@pretend-this-username-is-funny asked:

Okay so I'm writing a superhero story and one of my main characters is from Ethiopia. I know it's really frowned upon to give black characters "exotic" features, especially things like light eyes and perfectly straight natural hair. My character is described as having very dark skin but she also has some features that are meant to show her powers. For instance, her eyes are very dark but they're described as being like oil in that they're very shiny and reflect a lot of color, and she has specks of shiny green and blue on her cheeks which are described as freckles. 

She also has really long bright green hair but I want to make it clear that it's really thick and not at all straight. It's not really curly though either, but I don't know any words for hair like that. Are there any adjectives I can use to describe the texture? 

These features are supposed to reflect her powers which are basically colorful blasts of energy but I don't know if they could come off as trying to make the character exotic. I have a bunch of white characters who also have unusual or otherwise impossible features (one is a girl with white hair and unnaturally pale skin and there's also a boy with cat like pupils and fangs). Having unusual physical traits is normal for superpowered people in this world but I don't know if this could be potentially harmful.

"Exotic" features on Black people

I know it's really frowned upon to give black characters "exotic" features, especially things like light eyes and perfectly straight natural hair.

I wouldn't say it's frowned upon to give Black people light eyes and straight, natural hair in itself. It’s when creators choose these features for Black people time and time again over those with darker features and those more commonly associated to their heritage. 

It's also a problem when characters with these "special" traits are exalted, either by the narrative, fate, or other characters, while the other "non-special" Black people aren't given favorable treatment, if they even exist in the story at all. Books tend to represent Black people with light skin or stand-out features first, especially Black women (Black men are more often allowed to be dark and still be seen as attractive, although not always).

When you do have characters with these extra-special traits, it's nice to avoid the pitfalls mentioned above. Also, adding important Black characters without these traits helps to balance out the special snowflake syndrome.

This applies to your character as well. The oil-dark eyes doesn't read as exotifying to me. The shiny green and blue freckles are adding some more "main character syndrome" to the mix, but i'm not too concerned. You have characters of other races with unusual and impossible features. This helps to avoid implications of her only deserving to be there because she's not like the others.

As for her hair Thick, not quite curly, but not straight at all? I think you're looking for the word wavy. Check out our hair guide for more words that may help with texture words, but I think wavy works fine.

~Mod Colette

[shred-my-anxiety]

PLEASE STOP TAGGING EVERYTHING AS AUTISM. NOT EVERY LITTLE ‘WEIRD TRAIT’ OR ‘SPECIAL INTEREST’ MAKES YOU AUTISTIC. STOP ARMCHAIR DIAGNOSING YOURSELF.

[pink-alchemy]

[def-not-kaz-brekker]

Quote from my friend Noah (I love you merchles if you see this):

“I love gay historical figures cuz like it’ll be like

They lived together all their life and they were best friends they even slept in the same room neither of them married a woman for work related reasons and when one died the other commits several war crimes :33

But they were just friends”

[guardian-of-fun-times]

undefined

Dancing in the hail is so much fun!💙❄️

[fiadhaisteach]

So the Orthopedic PA, who sees knees & ankles all day, every day, has never come across knees, or ankles, like mine before.

*feels special* 😂

Waiting for the MD consult next.

[alice-serenity]

“Oh, I don’t go out partying, I don’t drink and smoke, I’m a sheltered homebody, I’m such a Good Girl uwu - BRUH, that doesn’t make you better than everyone, it just means you keep to yourself!

[madamefeu]

I hate you endos

I hate you endos who lie about having a disorder caused by extreme and repeated trauma in childhood so that you can feel special

I hate you endos who invade DID and OSDD spaces to bully real systems

I hate you endos who clog up DID and OSDD spaces to spread misinformation

I hate you endos who bully trauma victims and try to take their safe spaces away from them

I hate you endos who say that the future is plural. THE FUTURE SHOULD NOT BE FUCKING PLURAL BECAUSE THAT WOULD MEAN THAT MORE CHILDREN ARE SUBJECTED TO SUCH HORRIFIC ABUSE THAT IT FRAGMENTS THEIR IDENTITY AND CAUSES ALTERS TO FORM

I hate you endos

You are not a system

You will never be a system

You will never be a special snowflake

FUCK OFF

[uapro]

March 19, 1999

Gary Lesley:  Imagine a crop circle as a snowflake,

What intelligence is behind both?

Not us.

Jerry Bryson:  We’re part of IT.

Gary Lesley:  But does IT make the snowflakes or crop circles? Or do we make 'em together? And, for what reason? Fun? Creativity? Mischief? Or, could it be that these beautiful designs are simply telling us we're not alone, nor have we ever been, nor will we ever be? A part of IT that we can never fully comprehend, but that which we really don't need to....> 

[gallery-art-mod-de-hellsite]

Alright, Modern Art fans, it's time to mock our haters. Presenting:

The Special Snowflake Collection

There are an absolute ton of these, so I'm gonna queue them so they post automatically in-between whatever other random art stuff.

And now with no further ado:

Special Snowflake #1

[leezuhh]

did an insane double take during the new hbomberguy video not only because he called out internet historian for some crazy plagiarism, but also because he had a separate dislike of the same guy for the *exact same thing* that put me off his channel for ages (his dashcon video)

[wishesofeternity]

The thing about HotD is that it while it absolutely minimizes the agency and ambition of both Rhaenyra and Alicent, this is specifically used to glorify Rhaenyra and frame her as righteous while condemning Alicent and framing her lacking. That's the key difference in both their textual portrayals that has directly led to 90% of the fandom hailing Rhaenyra as the second coming of Christ while spewing the most hateful vitriol at Alicent just for existing. But y'all are not prepared for that conversation.

[leal-hound]

here's ani being a mom with her empyrean child who's definitely favored by the barren moon. anthe means well but she has too much power in that little body of hers, and is quick to anger - luckily her mother's embrace tends to smother those flames easily, but the sight of it is likely hard for a certain demigod nearby

[erose-this-name]

humans are not the default race

In every scifi and fantasy setting with """races""", humans are the default.

If you're lucky, we're the short-lived, fast-reproducing pests that are all white Europeans for some mysterious reason, and also have disproportionate rates of being raised as undead because we can't be bothered to make zombie dwarf minis or animate a vampire gnome that has to jump up to bite a tall person's neck.

(We've got BOTH human AND elf skeleton warriors! Oh, hey, I just changed the scale, now it's a hobbit skeleton OR a giant skeleton! Such skeleton diversity! No, Khajiits can't be bone boys, a skeleton with a tail and a cat skull is just TOO SPOOKY)

I feel like a lot of people don't realize that we (Homo sapiens) have the longest running endurance of any land animal. Being able to run a marathon is not normal.

(It's because we evolved the very unusual hunting strategy of Slowly Chasing Gazelles While Throwing Sticks At Them Until The Gazelle Collapses From Exhaustion Then Casually Walking Up And Bashing Their Head In With A Rock™).

Even Neanderthals probably couldn't match our tenacity (they were considerably stronger and tougher though, but by no means dumber judging from the size of their brain cavities{which was bigger than ours actually})

(the evolutionary Neanderthal hunting strategy was probably something like Jumping Out And Stabbing A Wooly Rhinoceros With A Pointed Stick, Then Getting Punted 12 Feet Into a Tree But Getting Right Back Up And Doing It Again Until It Dies Because You Have Superhuman Bone And Muscle Density. And If You Do Break One Of Your Unbreakable Bones Your Homies Will Take Care Of You Until It Heals™

[Neanderthal skeletons are found with healed fractures surprisingly often despite said bones being much stronger and denser than ours, they just kept evolving denser bones until they couldn't even swim without sinking like a rock, but they still got broken all the time])

So given that we, Homo sapiens, actually literally used to be the "species that specializes in sheer endurance, determination, and unbreakable fucking will", I want more fantasy and scifi settings where we are that way! I think the only setting where that's even remotely the case is Undertale. We're not just the "default" intelligent species!

The only reason we're good at everything is because we can make complex tools and can learn and aren't bound by instinct. Which, by definition, all fantasy races would also be able to do. Otherwise, they'd just be considered animals. Like trolls or Redditers.

The "default" species should just be really good at making tools and quickly adapting, but kinda suck in every other category. So I guess gnomes or goblins are the default d&d race.

And Humans are certainly not the Tolkien "that one race that lives short lives and reproduces faster than everyone else and is good at farming" because:

A) we actually do already live relatively long lives for mammals of our size and also GIVING BIRTH CAN KILL US, AND IF OUR PARENTS DON'T RAISE US JUST RIGHT THAT CAN ALSO KILL US, WE ARE SPECIFICALLY VERY BAD AT REPRODUCING

B) we are in no way adapted to farming, and most of our modern health and societal issues stem from the fact that we aren't meant to farm or be civilized, but do it anyways.

We only farm because it helped us survive the ecological collapse at the end of the ice age, now we're in too deep to go back.

When the ice age ended (quite abruptly) the ecosystem couldn't provide for hunters and gathers anymore, a bunch of things were getting heat stroke, sea levels rose, hibernation and bloom cycles and reptile gender ratios were out of wack, predators died out because herbivores died out because plants weren't doing well. Decomposers like vultures and worms had a field day (Until they didn't [RIP condor population]). It would take a while for a new ecological equilibrium to emerge and for evolution to fix things.

But farming doesn't need any healthy ecosystems except for the soil and pollinators, mostly, so that still works. And farming makes more food meaning you can have more people. So now there's more people.

But that also means you can't ever go back to foraging without all those extra people dying of starvation. So, anarcho-primitivism would technically be the most deadly ideology if implemented, and therefore is not based, unfortunately. Here's hoping for an apocalypse to do that for us! (I would not survive it)

Fun Fact: those isolated tribal societies like the Sentinelese that still do hunting and gathering only spend 15-20 hours a week doing that and another 20 doing camp chores, and the rest of their time forming meaningful relationships and not being depressed.

Notice how most of what they do as "work" (hunting, fighting, hiking, berry/mushroom/etc picking, cooking, camping, arts and crafts, oral history/story telling) are things that we need to do during our limited free time as "hobbies" just so that our "work" doesn't drive us insane. Thus leaving less time for relationships, etc.

If we were actually good at farming or industry or civilization, then things like math and repetitive manual labor wouldn't be work. They'd be the most fun activities.

Sure, these foragers die young, but so did medieval peasant farmers who were even less healthy since they had much less diverse diets (a lot of carbs) and got plague more often thanks to cities and their close proximity to livestock. Our modern sedentary lifestyle is bad too.

Hobbits are suited to farming (also Entwives I guess). Hobbits are quite good at it, at the cost of not being as good at much else (besides going unnoticed and throwing for some reason), they inherently enjoy farming life quite a bit and most* aren't haunted by the sense they should be anything else, like we are. *(The Took family got that Call To Adventure 'tism)

We only think that we're not special or can't be anything other than what we currently are because we no longer have anything else to compare ourselves to. The Neanderthals and Denisovans died out tens of thousands of years ago and the fucking aliens are somewhere, presumably

We are special, only we survived.

But at the cost of becoming the species equivalent of an abandoned child raised by wolves. We fantasize about these things because we all know that we shouldn't be alone. But our perceptions of ourselves are twisted by our trauma and lack of socialization.

Personally, the realization that having lost our family was probably our fault makes that hurt so much worse.

[genevawrenn]

If you haven't gone to watch Maepletea's new animatic, Phil commissioned a three part animatic about his characters, and the first part of it dropped today;