#also for any discussion regarding racism (ugh) or anything else

[inspirited-goddess]

You guys have no idea how books and media brainwashed me as a child

And by this i mean you know how there’s books where the author doesn’t describe the character(s)’ complexions bc (most likely) they’re using white/Caucasian as the default skin tone (and not describing anything is supposed to allow us to automatically realize that)? And then how there’s TV shows where damn near every MC/side character is white/Caucasian (save for a few token minorities)? Well I watched and read a lot of that shit as a child and preteen, and obvi i was blind to the lack of representation and ate it up (but to be fair i loved the plot lol). And it brainwashed me. It made me think only having white/caucasian characters was the norm and all that was necessary...so when i first started writing books in the 2nd grade up until fairly recently around 2-3 years ago, guess what? ....All my characters were white.

And as a POC myself, a Black female at that, you know how crazy that is?? Looking back now, it’s insane. I was really excited about potentially publishing a novel with a cast of all white characters. Looking back now I think of how hypocritical I would have looked publishing that, as a WOC.

Same thing with sexuality. Everything I read and watched as a child (bc of media and society seeing straight as the “default” sexuality and my family’s own homophobia) was full of straights. So, I consumed that...and all my characters were straight. All 60+, across my entire series. ...All of them. Like,,, that’s crazy. And that’s why, tbh, I’m glad I came across this site.

Everyone on here is so open and (mostly) comfortable with their sexuality (as far as I’ve seen). It is through tumblr (and other social media as well) that I realized/discovered for myself that the world is more than just cis, white, and straight. (I also further educated myself on these topics outside social media). I became so much more open-minded (bc originally, my very traditionally religious family had conditioned me to be homophobic and, well, “traditional”) and that’s when I started making changes to my characters.

I now have so much more POC, gays, and even mentally ill/disabled realistic characters in my series now. Like,,, the growth jumped out. It’s crazy. The past couple of years of my writing journey have been a learning experience, but I’m grateful I’ve become so open-minded and it reflects not only in my writing, but my life as well

Also this isn’t to say i included all types of characters “just because”; there’s literally so many different types of people in the world. Everyone is different. Representation is damn near mandatory, esp since I write fantasy

Also please don’t read this and think i hate white people and/or straights (bc i feel like some of yall will overlook EVERYTHING i just wrote and start assuming shit). I’m not one of those POC who hate white people just for existing (i really dont wanna talk about racism on this post so please shut up guys lol) and i def dont hate straights,,, i just don’t fall into either category and thus, my writing shall reflect some form of that :)

[captain-fofa-stuff]

Further Thoughts on Oboro

Some time after making my original post on Oboro, I went and actually unlocked as many of her support conversations on my Revelations file as I could. After doing so, nothing about my opinion changed in regards to her character--in fact, I actually got more stuff to address than before.

I already discussed how her motive on hating Nohrians doesn’t make sense if you think about it, how her support with Beruka is hollow, and how she simply isn’t allowed to develop or show flaws. After reading the rest of the supports, my points of her supports being rather limited to death glares, clothes, and Takumi still stand, and of the supports with other Nohrians, only one of them actively tries to address the racism issue, and that’s with Silas. One support that tries to address the problem--and poorly, I might add--out of 8 Nohrian options (including both Corrins) does not make me happy. In the C rank, the highlights for me were her saying that she hates all Nohrians equally, and Silas only mentions that it’d be natural for that given that their nations have bad relations with each other, never mind him actually calling her out on hating innocent people who had done nothing wrong. The B rank support has him address her motive for the hate and try to convince her that Nohr does have good people in it, and she only gets convinced of that in the A support after he saved Hoshidan peasants from bandits off-screen, and him saying that he’d have done the same thing if the races were reversed. This is a part of their conversation:

Oboro: Hmm... You know, you told me before that there are good people in Nohr. And you know what? You were right. You're living proof of it. [Emphasis mine.]

Silas: I'm glad I could help change your mind.

Oboro: I'll try harder not to make snap judgments about people like that. It's better to get to know people for who they are, not where they're from.

If this were any other setting, Silas would’ve taken Oboro pretty much saying that he’s “one of the good ones” as an insult, because people in real life have taken offense to that.

The other supports with Nohrians weren’t much better. Her support with Jakob has her surprisingly not want to do war crimes on Nohrians largely because they were defenseless people like her parents were at their deaths, which she doesn’t like of Jakob. I was expecting this kind of conversation to be done with someone like Saizo, given the nature of his job as a ninja, but instead theirs is her going “you’re going to wear this tacky outfit without a choice in the matter! It’ll be funny!” for the C and B ranks. (As a personal nitpick for that, what do we call people who try to force things onto to others like that without any consent? Oh yeah, we call them harassers. Try playing a round of “reverse the genders” with that: if Saizo had been the one trying to force Oboro to wear tacky clothes with no choice in the matter, the audience would be calling foul rather than finding it funny.) I was expecting her and Jakob’s support to be more like her refusing aid from Jakob during battle claiming that she “doesn’t want to be touched by a filthy Nohrian”, and when Jakob heals her anyway on Corrin’s orders, she bites at him with “I don’t remember asking for your help,” and the situation eventually escalating with Corrin and Takumi having to order her to accept healing from Jakob or other Nohrian healers. But that would show Oboro having an ugly side or being flawed, and the writers can’t have that. (As for her not wanting to kill defenseless Nohrians in wartime, I suspect this was put in to keep her from getting any flaws or doing ugly things. Most other cases of vengeful people would be eager to kill those defenseless people and would have to be convinced otherwise by others, usually being too blinded by rage at first to see reason, but the writers really dislike the idea of Hoshidans looking bad, so Oboro doesn’t get that.)

Another support I find myself scratching my head would be with Niles. I found it to be rather out-of-character on Niles’s part that he would be watching his language around her, try not to make innuendos, and try to be friends with her just because the two of them had orders to try and get along as Nohrian and Hoshidan. Oboro hasn’t done anything to really earn Niles’s trust or respect like Leo sparing his life and giving it meaning again or Owain/Odin also working under Leo, so why should Niles be giving her that much wiggle room and not getting insulted when not even Elise--his own lord’s younger sister--is spared from it? If anything, I was expecting that once her background was revealed to him, he’d be like “you at least had loving parents and understanding relatives to take you in! I didn’t!” before continuing how his backstory was much worse than hers or maybe even ask her “what if the perpetrators were Hoshidan?” both as an honest question and to mess with her head like he would for anyone else.

Her support with Benny is pretty much like Hayato’s, as Benny being scared of Oboro’s demon face being played for laughs like it always seems to be, and not him pointing out how wrong it is for her to be accusing him of horrible things that would deserve hatred. It’s pretty much retreaded ground, so it’s kind of boring.

I also raised my eyebrow at Orochi’s support with her. Namely how, in making her demon face at some black armour because the colouring of it reminded her of Nohrians made a little kid cry by accident, she says this: “Ugh, I hate it. It terrifies people. It's like a bad habit I just can't kick.” All I ended up thinking is “you must not be trying very hard to stop it considering I don’t see you putting in any active effort to stop it.” In other words, it’s largely a case of “show, don’t tell.” Show me any efforts to stop making that demon face regardless of how it came up (any Nohrians being present or otherwise) and then I’ll believe you.

Heck, I think it might’ve actually been a good thing for even one of her fellow Hoshidans to get shocked at her attitude towards Nohrians, maybe even a statement of “I may not like Nohrians much either, but even I think that was extreme/uncalled for.” At least show a little depth to the other Hoshidans in the army.

And that’s pretty much everything else I have to say about Oboro. She still doesn’t get any real development in her prejudice against Nohrians, and when she does, it feels like it was slapped on with no actual realization of what she did was wrong, like the “what have I done?” kind. One conversation was placed with an inappropriate character, and other opportunities for better topics were missed. Hopefully I got everything I missed on my first go around because I’ll be very annoyed if I have to make a third post rather than keeping it at two.