#and yeah I bet a lot of these are specifically white American culture

[sunnibits]

Ok but honestly I find it so annoying that so many completely innocent forms of affection are somehow limited to romantic relationships for literally no reason. And when I say that like yeah I do mean that I think friends should be able to kiss if they want but also just like. Hand holding??? Cuddling and sleeping in the same bed????? Little kisses on your head or your hand or your cheek?????? (And yes, kissing and making out and literally anything that’s ok with both parties bc platonic/romantic/sexual relationship boundaries are all made up anyways.) And I mean yeah ok it depends on the person and the culture like obviously not everyone would judge you for doing those things with a friend. But I hate how we have to be so touch starved all the time because we’re supposed to wait for a romantic relationship to roll around to engage in this kind of human contact with someone???? However long that could take?????? When we could just be doing it with anyone all the time. And it would be so nice.

Plus some people NEVER want a romantic relationship but they’re still expected to like. Not Do Anything Touchy with anyone ever bc that means you’re dating somehow. And that is so unfair to those people.

[whaleofatjme1920]

Seeing Him Smile and Kiss Someone Else (Hoodie X F!Reader)

[Hoodie/Brian Thomas X F!Reader]

[Warnings: none]

[AN: Howdy! I cross post these on quotev under ‘Elsie I Guess’ and on AO3 under ‘Whaletales1920′ under the title ‘The Places You Shouldn’t Be’. Just thought I’d start uploading them here too.]

Part 2

Proxies aren’t supposed to do a lot of things: speak back to their master, challenge hierarchical roles, have relationships with each other of that caliber, and never, never ever absolutely never have romantic relationships with humans. 

Why? It’s a losing game. Everyone knows that. Should proxies seek any kind of attachment, platonic, romantic, even sexual, their best bet is to stay within their own kind: other proxies. It’s the polite thing to do. It’s the right thing to do. 

When you first came in, you bonded almost immediately to your group of four other individuals. There’s Masky, your group leader. He’s really sweet when he wants to be and seems to care the most about you - it’s probably because you’re new. Toby is akin to the middle child. He’s always buzzing around you a lot like a bumblebee. While he has his jerk moments, he’s got an eye out for you. So too does Kate, once the group’s newbie/runt. She’s the one you replaced. She’s relatively quiet and sticks to herself, but she’s never a stranger to helping you out and immersing you in the culture and world you’ve found yourself entangled in. 

And then there’s Masky’s right hand, a proxy named Hoodie, but you know him as Brian. Out of all your group members, Brian was the hardest to warm up to. He hardly acknowledged you when you were first placed in his group and was amongst the hardest in the hazing process (you’re still technically going through). But, after some time and getting to know each other, the two of you became the closest of friends, even going so far as to rival Masky’s friendship with him. It’s safe to say you got a bit of a crush on him, in simplest terms. 

Three times. Three times you felt you liked him.

The first time was when you were about to head out of your safe house on a grocery run. Proxies don’t have any leads, so cards are absolutely off the table. You walked out of the safe house, yawning slightly, and barely made it down the driveway when Brian had popped back out of the house. 

“Reader,” he called out, slowly moving to lean in the doorway of the empty house the five of you were squatting in. 

“Yeah?” You asked sleepily. 

“Forgetting something?” He holds up his hand - it’s the wallet. 

You feel heat rush to your cheeks as you speed walked back to the front door to retrieve it. “Guess I’m still kinda tired,” you admittedly awkwardly with a small chuckle. 

Brian shrugged slightly and threw you a smirk as he met you halfway, “Think I’ll accompany you this morning,” he said with a wink. 

The two of you began to walk as you mentally mulled over the man walking beside you - his hands in his pockets. You’d never really thought of him like that before, but the way he smiled and that wink… It planted a seed. You weren’t quite sure you were going to acknowledge it or if it was just a fluke, but the thought stayed, and then it remained. 

As the two of you traversed the grocery store for various things your comrades had asked for, you and Brian traded conversation about everything that popped into mind. 

“Oh, like you knew any better in high school,” you wheezed before tossing in a box of brownies. You’d just been discussing how terrible and how gods awful high school relationships can be and how at one low point, you got into one. Brian had said he knew better than to mess around in high school, but you had retorted that ‘we’re all young and dumb once.’ 

Brian raised a brow at the box but allowed it anyway. “I most certainly did and I knew how things were gonna play out before they even happened.” 

“On what basis? It’s not like you have future vision,” You snorted. You watched as he pushed the cart forward as you plucked items you needed from the shelves. 

He shot you a look. “I’m a guy, it’s practically flowing through our veins,,” he said as his eyes raked over the list. “I’d most likely be the reason those things are happening to begin with and knowing that is like it’s own future vision..” He flashed his smile at you. “Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever grew out of the dumb part,” he chuckled. 

Your heart skipped. 

The second time you thought you liked him was when you were in the car with him, heading back to your safe house (in an entirely different part of the country). The two of you were more than exhausted after clearing a house whose occupants the Operator wanted dead for one reason or another and Brian decided to steal a car. So, there you sat in the passenger seat. 

“Something on your mind?” He hummed, arm resting on the console. His hazel colored eyes flicked over to you with interest. 

You shrugged, “just thinking.”

“Dangerous for people like us,” Brian chuckled. “Care to get specific?” 

You sighed slightly and turned your eyes to the passing street lights overhead as the car pulled onto the late night expressway. “Thinking about all the things I’ll miss,” you admit. 

Brian nodded from the corner of your eye. “I think about that stuff too,” he said, a small frown pulling onto his face. “You were finishing up college?” 

“Yeah,” you said. “I mean, I guess I’m getting out of the college loan debt but… Y’know,” you trailed off slightly, your posture changing slightly. “Maybe I would’ve been normal. Get a cool job, live a non murderous life, have a family and a loving partner. I don’t know, like, whatever the American dream says we should have. Anything but this.” 

Brian laughed slightly, “sorry. It’s not - it’s not you,” he explained. “It’s just awfully similar to what I wanted.” 

You turned your attention from the passing lights over to Brian. “White picket fence is your thing?” 

“More or less,” he hummed. “Wanted to live the rest of my life like a normal person.

Certainly died like one, more or less,” he finished. 

You mentally hummed, already knowing what he was referring to. Died and got resurrected. “Don’t think falling from a floor up counts as normal.” 

“Hey, it worked out for…. Something nice,” he quickly chirped. “Fell and met an angel.” 

He briefly turned his head to look at you and flashed a grin. 

“Oh that’s so bad.” 

“You love it.” 

You really do.  

The third time was when the two of you were on the rooftop of some house you’d been spending a lot of time at. It was kind of nice to be able to settle down in one place for more than a month - it’d been going on close to a  year. It was your roof, the one you shared with Brian. Late in the night, when the crickets sang and the stars danced, the two of you snuck up against Masky’s best wishes to talk about the world and life before. 

When summer was giving way to autumn and sending cool breezes throughout the night, you and Brian had been up there once again. 

“You think EJ will be around?” You asked, looking up at the stars you barely knew the names to. “BEN did say he was in the area.” 

“Gonna say yes,” Brian hummed back, momentarily pausing to point out Altair. “He’s always had a soft spot for our group,” he noted. “Why? You looking forward to seeing him?” He chuckled, hand reaching out to ruffle your hair. 

You laugh as quietly as you can and shake your head, “we’ve hardly ever spoken!” You giggled. “I just think he’s cool.”

Brian snorted in response and nodded, “yeah, I think so too. Though, where’d you get the opportunity to talk with BEN?” 

“There’s a little computer cafe in town,” you said, eyes flicking towards the direction of said cafe. “I’ve been spending a lot of time there. Mostly to use the internet,” you admitted, a slight heat coming to your cheeks. Proxies really aren’t supposed to use the internet. “Toby also sometimes tags along.” 

“So that’s where he’s been getting those weird references from,” Brian said with a tone of understanding. “Next time you go, let me know. I’d love to see what you children are up to online,” he teased. 

You laughed again and nodded, “sure thing.” 

The two of you continued to talk before a particularly hard gust of wind came in. On instinct, you shivered - though you weren’t really cold. 

Upon seeing you shiver, Brian took no hesitation in taking off his hoodie, much to your chagrin. 

“Oh, you don’t have to-” you began as you attempted to push it towards him. 

“I insist,” he had said, already popping the thing over you. 

You relented and allowed the giant hoodie to envelop your form like a warm hug. It smelled just like him - something woodsy, smoke, and the faintest of graphite. When you looked back at Brian, he was staring up at the stars, a small smile on his face. His eyes did not leave the inky blueish-black, not even when your hand came within millimeters of holding his. 

All it took was three times. Three times to know you liked him, and once to know you’d lost him. 

As stated before, it is absolutely a losing game to get involved with humans. Humans are frail and prone to panic. They can’t understand the world the way you do, nor are they suited for life the way you are in their current form. In your society, humans are the lowest of the low, akin to cattle - albeit, sentient cattle. Only when they are lifted from their human status are they finally given the time of day. 

He never would have known about her if you never brought up that computer cafe. Truly, it was a mistake on your part. You didn’t mean to, but it had happened anyway. 

“Cute place, right?” You smiled, eyes traveling up and down the rows of tables. 

“The cutest,” Brian agreed with a small chuckle. “Do we go up to a counter and order or..?” He trailed off slightly as he inspected the place and took in all the minor details. 

“Just take a seat, a waiter will be around shortly,” you said, immediately pulling him to your preferred spot by the windows and tucked away into the corner. 

Brian followed your lead and took a seat next to you where he immediately powered on the computer. “It’s kinda weird that they let us have food this close to the electronics, no?” 

“Oh no, it’s super weird,” you nodded as you began flicking open tabs to get to the things you wanted - maybe say hi to BEN. “But, it works. So like, c’est la vie?” You giggled, fingers moving quickly across the keyboard. 

A few moments later, a waitress stopped by. You had already managed to pull up a chat with BEN and were so engrossed in catching up with him that you failed to notice her. You hadn’t even recognized she was there until you heard her giggling at something Brian had said. 

“Never thought I’d be that star struck,” Brian had finished the small anecdote with eyes that practically sparkled. 

Her smile only widened. “You? The star struck kind?” She teased lightly. “Have to see it to believe it.” 

Brian looked up at her, his lips now pulled up into a smile. “You’re looking at it right now.” 

It pulled you so hard out of your conversation with BEN that you’d accidentally sent him a half-baked thought. “Wait what?” 

Your sound of confusion had snapped the two back into reality. “Oh! I’m sorry, sugar,” the waitress apologized with a slight blush rising to her cheeks. “Was there something I could get you?” 

You blinked a few times, your eyes darting between the two before finally managing to stammer out your drink and pastry of choice. You watched as Brian’s eyes followed her out and when she came back in. 

Long after the two of you had finished, the two of you decided to head back. 

“That was fun,” you said. 

“It was,” Brian replied, thoughts drifting elsewhere. 

Ever since that moment, he’d been going to the café with and without you. Sometimes you’d find yourself heading there only to see him entranced in conversation with the waitress, and when that happened, you turned right back around. At first it was to give them space, and then it was to give yourself space. 

You wished you could allow yourself to weather through this one with grace and that it didn’t bother you, that it didn’t get on your nerves, but it did. Slowly but surely, it had chipped away at some odd part of you that you didn’t even know existed prior to. 

Masky was the first to bring it up. 

“Reader,” he began. “Can you wrangle Hood from that café? Operator wants us to do something - I just need him,” he said, barely looking up from his newspaper. 

“I can go if you want,” you suggested before poking your head back out from the refrigerator. 

“Hm?” That got Masky’s attention. “Are you sure?” He raised his eyebrow, giving you an inquisitorial look. 

“It’s no big deal,” you said with a small smile as you plucked your drink out from the fridge. “Besides, I think Hoodie’s busy.” You had to fight the unpleasant feeling that bubbled up in your chest after you said that. 

“Oh,” Masky gave a hum of recognition. “Toby did mention he was getting a little close to someone there,” he said in passing. 

You shot Masky a look. 

He shot one back. 

Internally, you both know that’s not the best thing - but Masky’s not going to stop his best friend. And you know you won’t either. 

Kate mentioned it next, though she seemed to be telling you that you’d get  over it. It came relatively out of the blue. See, the two of you were standing in the living room of a house painted in blood just chatting, waiting for the Operator to give you direction on what he wanted for the man he wanted alive when Kate got weirdly serious. She sat down on the sofa and invited you to sit down next to her. 

“You can’t keep avoiding him like that,” she hummed, her shoe digging into the man’s chest as he wriggled beneath her step. “I know it’s awkward, but he’s your comrade first.” 

You rolled your eyes and lightly pushed at her. “Come on, it’s not that serious,” you said, attempting to play off your feelings that were so gods damn obvious throughout the time you’ve been spending in this area. 

“Are you kidding me?” Kate chuckled. “Look,” her hand is on your shoulder as she digs her heel into the man’s chest, cracking his ribs slightly. “It’s uncomfortable. I get that. It’s why we don’t… Do that kind of thing.” She rubbed her thumb in little circles on your shoulder as she grounded you. “It’s probably for the best, even though you can’t see it right now.” 

You sighed and gave her a look of slight pain. “You’re probably right.” 

“I know I’m right.”

It’s not that Toby is bad at reading a room, but it’s that he’s really bad at reading a room. When the two of you went to the computer café for your outing, he was excited to see the girl Brian was ‘seeing,’ as he somehow managed to miss her from every other precious visit. It was so obvious that they had been - her perfume was practically embedded into his skin now - and his smile was brighter than the sun after seeing her. 

And here you were, not even wanting to know her name. 

It’s Fiona. 

“Toby!” She greeted as she bounded up to your table. “Reader! What a nice surprise!” There was no malice in her tone. She was genuinely happy to see you. “What can I get you two today?” 

“C-Chocolate croissant and some h-h-hot chocolate please,” Toby said. He then turned to you, and as if he read your mind, gave her your order as well. “H-How have t-things been?” He asked. 

“Really good,” Fiona replied. “He’s such a sweetie, got me this necklace.” 

Your eyes immediately left the screen and travelled to her neck. There it was. Beautiful necklace. Silver chain with a hunk of rose quartz at the bottom in the shape of a bullet.You remembered seeing that pendant. It hung on his mirror for such a long time. You once overheard him saying to Kate how it was your possible birthday gift. 

“It’s so pretty,” you smiled, eyes not quite following. 

You were damn certain if you were suffering from hanahaki you would’ve choked on flowers by now and died. The last nail in the coffin? 

Now. Right now. You came back to the safe house just wanting to relax, maybe star gaze for a bit and fall asleep outside - anything and everything sounded better than just being alone in your thoughts after the Operator had some harsh words to say to you on account of your performance slipping ever so slightly from his golden standards. You fix yourself a warm mug of tea and start making yourway to the rooftop. It’s the same path you’ve always taken: head up the stairs to the upper floor, last room on the left side of the hall, go in and open the study windows there and hang out on the roof. 

You make sure to take careful steps as you ascend, not wanting to spill any of your carefully made tea as you seek to unwind. With a deep breath, you start making it through the hallway, thankful no one else is here. Masky is away on business, Kate is doing something with Jeff and Toby left a few hours ago to meet with someone he deems important. Come to think of it, you haven’t had the house free in a while. 

But, as you step closer and closer to the last room on the left, you hear it. Giggling, whispers, conversation that’s so innocent and intimate at the same time. You notice the study door is closed. It’s never closer. You step closer. 

“You’re so sweet,” That’s Fiona’s voice. “You don’t have to get me all these things - I don’t even know where I’m gonna wear all of them.” She giggles. 

“Wear a different one every time I come to see you.” That’s Brian. “Gonna be burning through those things like crazy.” You hear the sound of a kiss. 

“You got a deal,” Fiona chuckled. Another kiss. 

You hear the roof shingles move slightly as they move closer together. Against your better judgment, you push open the study door slightly. Must you be so nosy?

There, sitting on the roof outside the window is Fiona and Brian. She’s wearing his sweater (it’s just polyester) and giggling as he peppers her face in kisses. When she’s decided he’s covered her in enough kisses for an entire year, she presses her lips to his. 

He smiles before kissing her back just as fervently. 

Without a sound, you begin to head back to your room. 

Perhaps tea in your room would be better. 

[supercantaloupe]

okay yeah actually, i’ll bite. i’ve got some of my own thoughts about the unsleeping city and cultural representation and i’m gonna make a post about them now, i guess. i’ll put it under a cut though because this post is gonna be long.

i wanna start by saying i love dimension 20 and i really really enjoy the unsleeping city. i look forward to watching new episodes every week, and getting hooked on d20 as a whole last summer really helped pull me out of a pandemic depression, and i’m grateful to have this cool show to be excited about and interested in and to have met so many cool people to talk about it with.

that being said, however, i think there is a risk run in representing any group of people/their culture when you have the kind of setting that tuc has. by which i mean, tuc is set in a real world with real people and real human cultures in it. unlike fantasy high or a crown of candy where everything is made up (even if rooted in real-world cultures), tuc is explicitly rooted in reality, and all of its diversity -- both the ups and downs that go with it. and especially set in new york of all places, one of the most densely, diversely populated cities on earth. the cast is 7 people; it’s great that those 7 people come from a variety of backgrounds and identities and all bring their own unique perspectives to the table, and it’s great that those people and the entire crew are generally conscious of themselves and desire to tell stories/represent perspectives ethically. but you simply cannot authentically represent every culture or every perspective in the world (or even just in a city) when your cast is 7 people. it’s an impossible task. this is inherent to the setting, and acknowledged by the cast, and by brennan especially, who has been on record saying how one of the exciting aspects of doing a campaign set in nyc is its diversity, the fact that no two new yorkers have the same perspective of new york. i think that’s a good thing -- but it does have its challenges too, clearly.

i’m not going to go into detail on the question of whether or not tuc’s presentation of asian and asian american culture is appropriative/offensive or not. first of all, i don’t feel like it’s 100% fair to judge the show completely yet, since it’s a prerecorded season and currently airing midseason, so i don’t yet know how things wrap up. secondly, i’m not asian or asian american. i can have my own opinions on that content in the show, but i think it’s worth more to hear actual asian and asian american voices on this specific aspect of the show. having an asian american cast member doesn’t automatically absolve the show of any criticisms with regard to asian american cultural representation/appropriation, whether those criticisms are made by dozens of viewers or only a handful of them. regardless, i don’t think it’s my place as someone who is not asian to speak with any authority on that issue, and i know for a fact that there are asian american viewers sharing their own opinions. their thoughts in this instance hold more water than mine, i think.

what i will comment on in more depth, though, is a personal frustration with tuc. i’m jewish; i’ve never really been shy about that fact on my page here. i’m not from new york, but i visit a few times a year (or i did before covid anyway, lol), and i have some family from nyc. nyc, to me, is a jewish city. and for good reason, since it’s home to one of the largest jewish populations of the country, and even the world, and aspects of jewish culture (including culinary, like bagels and pastrami, and linguistic, like the common use of yiddish words and phrases in english colloquial speech) are prevalent and celebrated among jews and goyim alike. when i think of nyc, i think of a jewish city; that’s not everybody’s new york, but that’s my new york, and thats plenty of other people’s new york too. so i do find myself slightly disappointed or frustrated in tuc for its, in my opinion, rather stark lack of jewish representation.

now, i’m not saying that one of the PCs should have been jewish, full stop. i love to headcanon iga as jewish even though canon does not support that interpretation, and i’m fine with that. she’s not my character. it’s possible that simply no one thought of playing a jewish character, i dunno. but also, and i can’t be sure about this, i’m willing to bet that none of the players really wanted to play a jewish character because they didn’t want to play a character of a marginalized culture they dont belong to in the interest of avoiding stereotyping or offensive representation/cultural appropriation. (i don’t know if any of the cast members are jewish, but i’m assuming not.) and the concern there is certainly appreciated; there’s not a ton of mainstream jewish rep out there, and often what we get is either “unlikeable overly conservative hassidic jew” or “jokes about their bar mitzvah/one-off joke about hanukkah and then their jewishness is never mentioned ever again,” which sucks. it would be really cool to see some more good casual jewish rep in a well-rounded, three-dimensional character in the main cast of a show! even if there are a couple of stumbles along the way -- nobody is perfect and no two jews have the same level of knowledge, dedication, and adherence to their culture.

but at the same time, i look at characters like iga and i really do long for a jewish character to be there. siobhan isn’t polish, yet she’s playing a characters whose identity as a polish immigrant to new york is very central to her story and arc. and part of me wonders why we can’t have the same for a jewish character. if not a PC, then why not an NPC? again, i’m jewish, and i am not native, but in my opinion i think the inclusion of jj is wonderful -- i think there are even fewer native main characters in mainstream media than there are jewish ones, and it’s great to see a native character who is both in touch with their culture as well as not being defined solely by their native-ness. to what extent does it count as ‘appropriative’ because brennan is a white dude? i dunno, but i’m like 99% sure they talked to sensitivity consultants to make sure the representation was as ethical as they could get it, and anyway, i can’t personally see and glaring missteps so far. but again, i’m not native, and if there are native viewers with their own opinions on jj, i’d be really interested in hearing them.

but getting back to the relative lack of jewish representation. it just...disappoints me that jewishness in new york is hardly ever even really mentioned? again, i know we’re only just over halfway through season 2, but also, we had a whole first season too. and it’s definitely not all bad. for example: willy! gd, i love willy so much. him being a golem of williamsburg makes me really really happy -- a jewish mythological creature animated from clay/mud (in this case bricks) to protect a jewish community (like that of williamsburg, a center for many of nyc’s jews) from threat. golem have so often been taken out of their original context and turned into evil monsters in fantasy settings, especially including dnd. (even within other seasons of d20! crush in fh being referred to as a “pavement golem” always rubbed me the wrong way, and i had hoped they’d learned better after tuc but in acoc they refer to another monster as a “corn golem” which just disappointed me all over again.) so the fact that tuc gets golems right makes my jewish heart very happy.

and yet...he doesn’t show up that much? sure, in s1, he’s very helpful when he does, but in s2 so far he shows up once and really does not say or do much of anything. he speaks with a lot more yiddish-influenced language than other characters, but if you didn’t know those words were specifically yiddish/jewish, you might not be able to otherwise clock the fact that willy is jewish. and while willy is a jewish mythological creature who is jewish in canon, he isn’t human. there are no other direct references to judaism, jewish characters, or jewish culture in the unsleeping city beyond him.

there are, in fact, two other canon jewish characters in tuc. but...here’s where i feel the most frustration, i think. the two canon jewish humans in tuc are stephen sondheim and robert moses. both of whom are real actual people, so it’s not like we can just pick and choose what their cultural backgrounds are. as much as i love stephen sondheim, i think there are inherent issues with including real world people as characters in a fictional setting, especially if they are from living/recent memory (sondheim is literally still alive), but anyway, sondheim and moses are both actual jewish people. from watching tuc alone you probably would not be able to guess that sondheim is jewish -- nothing from his character except name suggests it, and i wouldn’t even fault you for not thinking ‘sondheim’ is a jewish-sounding surname (and i dislike the idea/attitude/belief that you can tell who is or isn’t jewish by the sound of their name). and yeah, i’m not going to sit here and be like “brennan should have made sondheim more visibly jewish in canon!” because, like, he’s a real human being and it’s fucking weird to portray him in a way that isn’t as close to how he publicly presents himself, which is not in fact very identifiably jewish? i don’t know, this is what i mean by it’s inherently weird and arguably problematic to portray real living people as characters in a fictional setting, but i digress. sondheim’s jewish, even if you wouldn’t know it; not exactly a representation win.

and then there’s bob moses. you might be able to guess that he’s jewish from canon, actually. there’s the name, of course. but more insidious to me are the specifics of his villainy. greedy and powerhungry, a moneyman, a lich whose power is stored in a phylactery...it does kind of all add up to a Yikes from me. (in the stock market fight there’s a one-off line asking if he has green skin; it’s never really directly acknowledged or answered, but it made me really uncomfortable to hear at first and it’s stuck with me since viewing for the first time.) the issue for me here is that the most obviously jewish human character is the season’s bbeg, and his villainy is rooted in very antisemitic tropes and stereotypes.

i know this isn’t all brennan’s fault -- robert moses was a real ass person and he was in fact jewish, a powerhungry and greedy moneyman, a big giant racist asshole, etc. i’m not saying that jewish characters can’t be evil, and i’m not saying brennan should have tried to be like “this is my NPC robert christian he’s just like bob moses but instead he’s a goy so it’s okay” because...that would be fuckin weird bro. and bob moses was a real person who was jewish and really did do some heinous shit with his municipal power. i’m not necessarily saying brennan should have picked/created a different character to be the villain. i’m not even saying that he shouldn’t have made bob moses a lich (although, again, it doesn’t 100% sit right with me). but my point here is that bob moses is one of a grand total of three canon jewish characters in tuc, of which only two humans, of whom he is the one you’d most easily guess would be jewish and is the most influenced by antisemitic stereotypes/tropes. had there been more jewish representation in the show at all, even just some neutral jewish NPCs, this would not be as much of a problem as it is to me. but halfway through season 2, so far, this is literally all we get. and that bums me out.

listen, i really like tuc. i love d20. but the fact that it is set in a real world place with real world people does inherently raise challenges when it comes to ethical cultural representation. especially when the medium of the show is a game whose creatures, lore, and mechanics have been historically rooted in some questionable racial/cultural views. and dnd is making progress to correct some of those misguided views of older sourcebooks by updating them to more equitably reflect real world racial/cultural sensitivities; that’s a good thing! but these seasons, of course, were recorded before that. the game itself has some questionable cultural stuff baked into it, and that is (almost necessarily) going to be brought to the table in a campaign set in a real-world place filled with real-world people of diverse real-world cultures. the cast can have sensitivity consultants and empathy and the best intentions in the world, and they’ll still fuck up from time to time, that’s okay. your mileage may vary on whether or not it’s still worth sticking around with the show (or the fandom) through that. for me, it does not yet outweigh all the things i like about the show, and i’m gonna continue watching it. but it’s still very worth acknowledging that the cast is 7 people who cannot possibly hope to authentically or gracefully represent every culture in nyc. it’s an unfortunate limitation of the medium. yet it’s also still worthwhile to acknowledge and discuss the cultural representation as it is in the show -- both the goods and the bads, the ethically solid and the questionably appropriative -- and even to hold the creators accountable. (decently, though. i’m definitely not advocating anybody cyberbully brennan on twitter or whatever.) the show and its representation is far from perfect, but i also don’t think it ever could be. still, though, it could always be better, and there’s a worthwhile discussion to be had in the wheres, hows, and whys of that.

[literaticat]

Jenn you said Sometimes I feel like the question the asker is actually itching to ask is “Am I allowed to write this?” which brings up the great unanswered question - are they? Is it ok for white writers to have black protagonists? Can a straight person write a gay MC? Men/women Etc. Are there rules involved here especially within genre fiction? Do they have to have a strong reason or is it simply OK to use diverse characters to make their books more diverse and not only white and straight?

Could you hear my groan from space? Yes, I bet.

As I said in that original answer: I AM NOT A BOOK COP. You can write whatever you want. I'm not in a position to tell you what to do, and I wouldn't even if I was.

That being said:

The problem with a lack of diverse representation is NOT simply solved by "white people adding more BIPOC books to their stories." There already ARE a ton of white people writing books about BIPOC main characters. More white people are writing about BIPOC characters than there are BIPOC creators writing about them. So, while there aren't "rules" about what you SHOULD or CAN write - know that agents / editors / readers may side-eye you if you seem to be writing outside your culture or experience without having done any research.

Should your books be blindingly white and straight? Uh - no, unless you are writing about some weird sect that is purposefully excluding anyone else. For the most part, the world that we live in has all kinds of people in it, and books can and should reflect that.

Should your main characters be of another race or experience than your own? They can be, but again, you'll want to make sure that you are doing right by them, you've done your homework, and if you are writing characters that are far away from your actual experience, that you have gotten expert readers and you aren't making a two-dimensional no-detail-having boring person OR peddling potentially harmful stereotypes, etc. Like - we spend a lot of time with a Main Character! We should know things about them, no?

I'll add - you can't just say, "oh well, it's FICTION, they can be ANYTHING" -- like, yeah, sure, BUT COUNTERPOINT -- a man who spends a lot of time with women in life, actively listens to them, understands that their actions/reactions/motivations might be a little different to his own? He's much more likely to write a convincing woman character than a man with his head up his ass would do. So apply that to any identity.

A Black or Indigenous or LGBTQIA person who has been steeped in majority-white-straight-American culture their whole lives, from school to friends to work to media, is likely to know a ton about majority white-straight-American culture already. A random white-straight American is far LESS likely to know a ton of specifics about that other person's culture. Because one of those backgrounds is literally everywhere here - and the other one isn't.

It's easy to figure out that the further you are from your own experience, the less you know about that experience, and the more work/research/listening you will have to do to get details about it right.

[dragynkeep]

Irish-American musician speaking. I just want to say a couple of things (a) i appreciate that other people are at least willing to criticise Jeff (even though i don’t agree that he was copying “ethnic” styles of music because that’s just bullshit and he was just going for a specific feeling, because that’s how music works) and (b) i really appreciate that this blog takes James' character seriously and not whatever the fecking hell the writers think they've done.

i did want to say that i'm really upset about it as a person with an autistic specturm disorder. i doubt the writers (bless their hearts) realised it, but the semblance they gave James is one of the hallmark signs of ASDs, especially in adults and young people. given the way they've always written him until the end of season seven, i really related to him and his struggles for a variety of reasons. i could get just as angry about the way they've portrayed military service (my dad is a similar ranking to the character and has been through some shit) especially given that a lot of people in my family have or are serving, but i get the sense that everyone sees how problematic that demonstration is. the former is a lot more subtle, and it honestly upsets me more.

and then there's all the bullshit surrounding Penny (they should have just left her dead or given Winter the powers to begin with for fuck's sake). firstly, i'm just going to come out and say that i've hated the way they've used vocal music to bash us over the heads with messages the last few volumes. Cinder's TWO (whyyyyyyy) songs in just that one episode this volume were basically narrating what was on screen which took away from the moments and the second one during her fight with her mentor was just plain bad. i thought those two were the worst we were going to get but apparently i was wrong and we get whatever the hell "Friend" is. (although i will say i bet the only reason they threw in that second song for Cinder was because Casey just had to get publicity for her shitty band). but look. i'm lgbtqia myself and it really (especially considering Penny and Ruby's intereactions) felt like queerbaiting/bury your gays but i'll set that aside. making Penny human (a) took away the only unique/interesting thing left about her character and (b) her death was essentially a glorifying suicide "for the greater good" which really slaps in the face of people who have honestly suffered from depression and suicide.

this isn't the first time that they've shyed away from trying to explore serious subjects, but it is particuarly gross because of the song. an earlier example of them doing this is with regard to "the path to isolation" when Casey felt the need to say Weiss has never cut and that she wouldn't do that. while that was (to say the very least) a bit uncomfortable for her to just drop that, it sounded like she just wanted to avoid talking about the subject because it's too dark. i have a lot of problems with Casey and her actions over the years, but i think it's important to note that SHE WROTE PENNY'S SONG. she is the one responsible for this, and she keeps talking about how great it is and how "humbling" the experience was. bitch no. you can't just take only praise and get mad about critisicism to the point where you basically recieve none anymore.

besides, Casey is pretty hard to understand because she STILL doesn't enucniate much when she sings so if she and her dad are going to keep being basically worshipped hand and foot by people while recieving no criticism even where it is due, then they shouldn't be in this or music. part of being a musician is that you SHOULD be critiqued by your peers and even by just casual listeners but that doesn't happen and they (but especially her) don't improve. by no means do i think Casey and Jeff are the worst of CRWBY, but they are part of the problems with tone in the storytelling and they should be critiscised for it more.

oh god this is a long ask & it’s like a month late, please forgive me.

yeah, my issue with the whole jeff issue was never that he was “copying” ethnic music, though there is a discussion to be had when that music comes from closed off cultures like my own & others & how that should be respected, but that this vague claim by someone who’s lied to push their headcanons before was using it to claim ruby & summer were romani coded when there has been anti gypsyism sentiment in crwby before via arryn’s sexualization of us. i simply don’t trust these white americans to write any gypsy ethnic groups’ stories with any sense of respectability & it was on a baseless headcanon anyways so. that frustration was easy enough to let die down.

i also have a lot of issues with how ironwood was treated, especially as a disabled person & some of the fndm’s insistence to treat this fictional military as a 1 to 1 representation of the flawed militaries in our world is just utterly frustrating. especially when they use that to justify theirs & crwby’s ableism towards one of the few disabled characters we had on screen. i don’t have a place to speak on any autistic representation or harm from ironwood or his semblance because i’m not autistic but i am sorry that you were harmed & upset by this portrayal of a semblance that isn’t even canon, because it features nowhere in the text explicitly. hell, ironwood’s va had to be told what his semblance was from a fan. all this harm & hurt & it’s for something that isn’t even featured in the story. ridiculous.

i’m really trying not to waffle on in this ask because it is so long already but yes yes yes. i agree with you completely, the way that songs are crafted for this world & featured into it most of the time doesn’t fit with what we’re shown on screen. weiss’s songs feature a patriarchy & go over the same arc like five times, as well as those lines alluding to self harm. jeff & casey can cry that they didn’t mean it that way but there are certain themes brought to mind with certain wordings & you have to be mindful of this when you write them; we had this same issue with people believing mercury was sexually abused by marcus because “i’m the one” featured the word defiled, which is most used in a sexual context. when we come to learn that it meant his soul was ruined by his father stealing his semblance, that still didn’t erase the sexual allegory & jeff should have been mindful of those types of themes when he’s writing these songs. often times it feels like the songs & the show are giving us two different stories & both give off different meanings & themes.

not being able to take criticism seems like a common theme in crwby, self admittedly from miles himself who said he “wants” to take criticism but doesn’t like it when “it’s done in a mean way.” that criticism has to be fair & nice, which is a solid sentiment, no one’s going to listen if you’re being an asshole but here’s the rub. nothing is ever nice or fair enough for them. they always find a way to turn even the most innocent of criticisms or questions into a personal attack & it’s pathetic. jeff & casey aren’t exempt from this. like you said, part of being a musician is criticism from your peers & much like you don’t need to be a chef to tell if there’s dogshit on your plate, you don’t need to be a writer or a rock star to tell when a story isn’t making sense or a song isn’t good.

& for fucks sake, i’m with you on them needing to enunciate better. i’m hoh, please jeff & casey, it’s hard enough for me to try & listen to songs that i want to enjoy without having to wonder what word you’re mumbling for this third rhyme in bad luck charm. fuck that song’s rhymes.

[bubbelpop2]

Since the post about my hair, I've been getting anons about my ethnicity so here we go!

I'm Scottish, German, Irish, and Native American!

On my father's side, my grandma Maudie is 3/4 Cherokee and Ogalala Lakota, and my grandfather, I'm told, was half Cherokee, but he didn't get tested like my grandmother did, So we don't know. My grandma had brown hair, tan skin, and brown eyes. My grandfather had brown skin, dirty blonde hair, and blue eyes.

On my mother's side, my grandfather is Scottish with brown hair, and my grandmother is VERY Irish. Ginger, curly hair, freckles, fair skin, all of it.

Standing next to my dad, I look EMBARRASSINGLY white. Like, we hardly even look related. (We are, we tested, and I definitely look like dad.) The Irish washed all color from my skin. I get my blonde hair and blue eyes from my dad, and my freckles and pale skin from my mom.

I never really got to learn a lot about native culture as a kid. Grandma Maudie never told me about anything except dream catchers, and I think partially that's because that's all she knew about. I'd actually really like to learn more about the culture, which is why I always talk to the natives at Missouri Days fair to find out more. I don't know a whole lot about irish, german, or scottish culture either. I just sort of grew up in the Midwest as a baptist (I'm now agnostic) with a slightly southern accent.

TRAITS:

when not weighed down by grease, my hair is naturally curly! It naturally hangs in sort of.. ringlets, when it's long, and an afro when it's short. It's dirty blonde.

I have coffee stains on my eyebrow and my thigh (if you dont know what those are, they're large pigmented patches that are basically freckles that just got super duper huge. Sometimes called Café au lait)

I'm pale most days, but I tan and freckle very easily. Sunburns don't hurt me very much, they heal quickly and I can get pretty dark in the summer.

Disabilities: I have autism, manic depression, and adhd. I have trouble understanding gestures, get overstimulated easily, have auditory processing issues, awful mania, and even worse depression. I also have really bad joints some days, and sometimes need a walking stick or braces because my ankles or hips hurt me. Other days I'm completely fine and actually really like physical activity very much.

I have freckles everywhere. Face, arms, legs, back, chest, everywhere. I can sit outside and watch my skin get new freckles. I get so many fucking freckles in the summer it's ridiculous

I'm fat, but I'm also very strong! I can lift a lot of heavy things.

The carpets match the drapes. My pubes are golden. You didn't need to know that, but now you do.

I have a very specific, very intense color of blue for my eyes.

I have moles! Lots on my arms, and one big one on my hip!

I have natural french tip nails. Pink to white, very stark contrast.

My lips have a cupid's bow and I have very slight buck teeth

My favorite thing: I'm proportionate! I weigh quite a bit, 270lbs, but I've been told that I don't really look very heavy because it's all eventually distributed with fat placement, muscle mass, and bone density.

Anyways, that's my identity. I'm mixed, and feel guilty about it being white because I feel like I don't have a right to call myself native or convert my culture. How original! I bet a lot of people on this site feel the same. About as close as I can comfortably get is being a witch, which I already am, so, uh, yeah! That's all.

[firstpuffin]

Representation in Japanese media: specifically Eyeshield 21 and Gintama:

There is rather a large focus on racism in America and subsequently here in England too, but a lot of it is unbending and not up for discussion. That means that we can’t really write stories about real races in fictional settings, which is a shame as where better to explore such a sensitive topic?

  Japan doesn’t have these strong feelings and I frequently see potentially offensive content from them in their fiction. This is definitely without bad intent, and I figure that if you aren’t looking to be offended then you probably won’t. But they definitely have some interesting representations of Americans and, as is appropriate to this piece, African-Americans.

 Naturally I need to start off with the obligatory “I’m not a racist” which you can accept or not at your own discretion. I’ve made mistakes, said things that are quite possibly offensive, but that was out of an ignorance that I’ve hopefully outgrown.

 So, I’ve been revisiting the anime “Eyeshield 21” which is about American Football with all of the absurd dramatic action that you would expect from anime. I’m not going to bother with a summary except that the music is bad-ass!

  In episodes 23 to 26, our heroes face off against an American team who visit Japan for an exhibition match and these guys are- well most of the named cast are cool. There’s a certain American archetype seen in anime: big, loud, arrogant and rude. Culturally, the two countries are very, very different.

  The coach is an absolute wank-puffin who encompasses these unpleasant traits and is almost definitely racist, as we can see in how he treats the Japanese characters and the one African-American guy in his team. He’s generally contemptuous towards the locals and towards his player. There’s no excusing these actions.

 The player in question is called- well, he’s called Panther and I’m not sure what to make of that. We do have a superhero called Black Panther and another called Black Lightning whose superpower isn’t black lightning, so...

  Anyway, he’s clearly a player who can make or break the team depending on whether or not he plays. And he doesn’t play, because the coach very deliberately only has his white players on the field. They try to explain that away at first by saying that Panther previously lost them a game by trying to show off (for his grandma, which is honestly adorable), and so the coach can’t trust him. Instead, Panther spends his time picking up after the team and carrying their luggage- does this feel at all historical to you guys? Or am I looking too much into it?

  Definitely the latter.

 Anyway, the coach’s attitude towards Panther is very clearly more than just a lack of trust. Even with Panther on his knees, begging to be able to play, and even with the team losing (and I should mention with a pretty hefty bet on the line too), he refuses to let him go out.

  It’s only when Panther happens to say something that triggers a flashback, and the entire freakin’ team gets on their knees as well, does he even begin to consider it. And to be fair, they do a good job of showing his internal struggle, which is especially good mixed with the flashback.

  Maybe I’m being unsympathetic, but being that cruel to someone who shares your own youthful dream just because you lost your position on a team to an African-American bloke is not justified. Some bitterness, yeah, but not all of that abuse. We see him about to repeat the very same line as was said to him when the rest of the team kneels.

  That results in a superb depiction of him forcing himself, very painfully, to not repeat those words but instead to give Panther the chance he’s been begging for.

 I actually find this to be a remarkable bit of writing in a series that otherwise isn’t very serious, exploring something that we wouldn’t be able to do here out of sheer fear and social justice. And I’ve actually seen it in a few different ways in manga and anime.

  Sexuality is one area they explore a lot, as well as gender identity. I think Japan itself is actually kinda regressive in these areas, being a culture who seem to focus on people as being part of a bigger group rather than individuals, but they have greater freedom in their fiction to explore. Of course, whether or not it’s done well depends on the author, and there have been some pretty offensive representations of homosexuals and drag queens and such.

 One example is Gintama where any subject is fair game. One of the first real storylines involves a character who is…n’t transgender. For convenience their name is Kyuubei. Kyuubei was raised as a man for reasons, and grew to see themselves that way. Kyuubei struggles with their sex and their strong feelings for one of the female characters, all while an innate femininity threatens to put the past twenty years to waste.

  Kyuubei is fucking fantastic.

  And then there is the Okama bar, okama meaning drag-queen. Staffed by men in search of their femininity, and who are maybe or maybe not gay, who are in no way conventionally attractive for either sex, it’s easy to make them the butt of the joke. And they often are.

  But they are also complex and sympathetic characters: fathers, friends, lovers. They can be blackmailed, they can be brave and stand up to fight when they need to. These okama aren’t just jokes, but are people searching for themselves, or for acceptance.

  That’s pretty fantastic for a series whose name is a dick joke (“kintama” is ”golden ball”; “gin” means silver; “gintama” can also mean silver soul).

 - As I’m putting this out there anyway, I could do with some feedback on whether “African-American” is really necessary, or if “black” is actually acceptable. All I know is from the internet and as we all know, that’s not exactly reliable.

[my-lady-knight]

Favorite Reads of 2019

As seems to be my usual, I’m posting this at what feels like the last second.

Writing this year’s post was hard. I’ve been complaining offline all year that it feels like I read far fewer books I really, truly enjoyed. Even the books I did enjoy, they didn’t stick around long in my head for me to remember details. On the other hand, this list ended up being thirteen items long, so it can’t have been that bad. And having to go back to the books in order to write this list did make me remember how and why I loved them, so there is that.

Presented in chronological order of when I read them:

The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

The first book I read in 2019, and I knew would end up on this list as soon as I finished. It’s also the first book of Guy Gavriel Kay’s where I finally understood what the fuss was about - when he commits to writing three-dimensional characters with compelling interpersonal and socio-political relationships, he commits. The cultural/social details of this secondary-world version of medieval Spain set at the beginning of the end of the Caliphate and the rise of the Reconquista are evocative, and the scope deftly alternates between being vast without tripping over itself and touchingly personal. Most importantly, this book gave me an OT3 I wasn’t even expecting in the form of Amman ibn Khairan, famed soldier, poet, and advisor now outcast from the city-state of Cartada, Rodrigo Belmonte, beloved cavalry captain with a complicated loyalty to the rulers he serves, and Jehane bet Ishak, an esteemed physician whose path intersects with them both. Together they represent the connections and tensions between their respective, secondary-world Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities, cities, and leaders in this secondary-world Spain and form a triangle of everything the country has, is, and can be. A year later I still love this book.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee

This book is difficult to write about, because I remember loving it as I was reading it, but I can’t remember any of the essays very well several months after the fact (see above). What I do remember is that they were difficult, and complicated, and messy, and they did the thing I love when essays do where the fact that the things Alexander Chee was writing about are super-specific to him made them somehow feel all the more relatable. All the essays were nicely crafted stories and emotional journeys, withAlexander Chee tracing all the various aspects of his life through his writing, as an Asian man, a gay man, an aspiring writer, a professional writer, a resident of NYC, and a survivor of sexual assault, using prose that was both artistic and clear as water.

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

Amal El-Mohtar wrote in her NYT review that this book was akin to “Hamlet”, “if [the play] were told from the point of view of Elsinore Castle addressing itself to a Horatio who mostly couldn’t hear it,” to which my response was “huh?” Then I read the book and it a) made so much more sense and b) ended up being an astute, apropos explanation of the kind of book The Raven Tower is. It’s the story of a soldier and companion to the heir of a country investigating the disappearance of its ruler and the ascendency of another in his place. It’s also the story of a calm, patient god in the form of a stone who predates all of history and narrates the changing existence of gods, their power, and their relationship to humans and their civilizations. It’s an understated yet powerful book, full of Ann Leckie’s brilliant and clever writing, world-building, storytelling, and otherworldliness. It’s Ann Leckie. She knows what she’s doing. And it fucking works.

Sal & Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez

This book - is bonkers. It is insane. It is one thousand percent over the top. I kept asking myself “why am I not irritated???” Instead I loved it. Sal is the new kid, a practicing magician with as showman’s flair for the dramatic and boundless energy, and he can open up portals into other universes. Gabi is the sharp-eyed, bossy class president and editor of the school newspaper who just knows something’s up with Sal and his shenanigans. Together, they become friends! And open up more portals into other universes. This book is warm and empathetic and funny and kind-hearted. It’s too-muchness quality somehow worked. The whole thing felt like the literary equivalent of a hug. 

The Parting Glass by Gina Marie Guadagnino

This wasn’t a Deep book, but I could not stop thinking about it, nor could I stop recommending it to people. It’s a zippy historical fiction novel set in 1830s NYC prior to the Potato Famine. Mary (or Maire) and her brother Seanin are Irish immigrants working in the same wealthy family’s house, she as lady’s maid to the marriageable daughter named Charlotte, he as a groomsman. Mary is half in love with her Charlotte; unfortunately so is Seanin, and the two of them are carrying on an affair, the aftermath of which leaves Mary in a bind about where her loyalties lie. I love that this book has a queer take on a love triangle that I’ve never seen before, and I loved Mary’s anger and resentment, her unashamed attitude towards her desire for Charlotte as well as other women, and her selfishness as well as her loyalty. I also loved the upstairs-downstairs nature of the book and the clash of Anglo-American and Irish immigrant ethnic and class mores and the larger social and political setting of the city and time period.

The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson

I don’t even know how to begin describing this book. It’s a story about maps and boundaries and borders. It’s an epic of daring escape and adventure about a mapmaker named Hassan with a magical gift and a concubine named Fatima, two friends fleeing the Inquisition after the surrender of Granada, in search of a mythical island ruled by the King of Birds. It’s a story of faith and trust and bonds forged from disparate people, and transformation, transformation of yourself and the world around you because you will it to be so. It’s a beautiful, beautifully written book.

(As a side note, I’m intrigued by the fact that two of my favorite books on here are set during the Reconquista.)

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

In some ways I liked this even better than The Hate U Give. I loved the complexity that arose out of Bri rapping about the injustices she’s experienced, with people drawing completely different meanings out of her words, people wanting her to use her rapping and her voice for differing reasons, and Bri herself working to figure out the power she has with her rapping and how she wants to use her talents, when it comes to financially supporting her family, standing up for herself, and being herself when so many around her are creating all these false images of her based solely off her words. I loved Bri’s anger, the way she kept speaking before thinking, her loving, sometimes complicated relationships with her family and friends...Angie Thomas’s writing and storytelling is phenomenal.

Kindred by Octavia Butler

I’m not even sure what to say about this book that hasn’t been said but, um, yeah, it’s Octavia Butler, it’s a classic, and really my favorite aspect of the book is how it so effectively bridges the gap between history and present and demonstrates how the two aren’t so far apart, and effectively blends them such that for Dana, the present becomes the past and the past is her present and suddenly she isn’t visiting history at a somewhat removed vantage point, she is part of history, her own history, her ancestors’ history, in all its horror, caught in a catch-22 of needing to repeatedly save the life of her white, slave-owning ancestor who over time grows more and more violent towards her, in order to ensure the chronological security of her own life.

The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf

This was a harrowing read. Set in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia during the 1969 Malay-Chinese race riots, sixteen-year-old Melati has OCD, or what she understands as a djinn living inside her that forces her to obsessively count in order to keep her mom alive, a secret she tries to hide so people don’t think she’s possessed. When the race riots break out across the city, Melati has to make her way through the violence in the streets in order to find her mom, all while battling the djinn as its power increases in the chaos. I repeat, this book was brutal. The descriptions of Melati’s OCD alone make it a tense, taxing read - combine it with the violence and unpredictability of the race riots and all the threats to Melati’s safety and her ever-growing fear for her mom and it’s a lot. Even so (perhaps because) I could not put this book down. The recreation of this part of history (which I had no clue of before and knew nothing about) was both immersive and informative, the story was deftly plotted, and I loved how Melati’s characterization and her relationship/the depiction of her OCD and how it specifically affects her in her particular circumstances. 

Jade War by Fonda Lee

CLEAN BLADE CLEAN BLADE CLEAN BLADE

*ahem*

The second book of the Green Bone Saga was even better than the first. It took the story of the Kaul family and the No Peak clan and the worldbuilding of Jade City and turned everything up to eleven, expanding the story beyond Kekon into the global theater, particularly Espenia, bringing into the picture Kekonse immigration, diaspora, assimilation, and cultural heritage - what it means to be Kekonese, to be a Green Bone and carry jade and follow aisho outside of Kekon. The gang warfare between the No Peak clan and the Mountain clan spills over the domestic sphere into the international. Espenia grows more aggressive in its moves to gain control over jade at Kekon’s expense. It’s family loyalties and betrayals, it’s gang politics and warfare, it’s community, municipal, national, and international politics and culture clashes, and the changing world of being a Green Bone and wearing jade in a post-colonial world. Anyone who’s followed me this year because of Peaky Blinders - READ JADE CITY AND JADE WAR. YOU WILL LIKE THESE BOOKS I PROMISE.

Hexarchate Stories by Yoon Ha Lee

With this short story collection, Yoon Ha Lee has not only successfully published fan fiction of his own work in the Hexarchate universe and is getting paid for it, he’s published good fanfiction. The cute Cheris and Jedao backstory pieces of flash fiction he first published on his website are drabbles. One of the original pieces in this collection is straight-up PWP. (How the hell Solaris agreed to it I have no idea, there is literally no plot.) The very last story (also original) is fix-it fic for Revenant Gun that left me kicking and screaming over the CLIFFHANGER that Yoon Ha Lee ended it on HOW DARE YOU I DEMAND TO KNOW WHAT CHERIS AND JEDAO ARE GOING TO DO NEXT YOU BETTER BE WRITING MORE STORIES SET IN THIS AU TIMELINE. In sum, Yoon Ha Lee is a delight, I love him, and I loved this collection.

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

A novella about the weight of history, especially painful, traumatic history, and the necessity and yearning for it when you don’t have it. To be forced to bear the burden of history alone is to be crushed and subsumed by it. To lose or become detached from it is to lose connection to the people you’re from. Either way, it is difficult to impossible to maintain a people’s history alone. Rivers Solomon is such a poetic writer with her prose, painting beautiful images with just the right collection and arrangement of words, all while packing an astutely aimed punch in 160 pages.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

I had some issues with how convenient some of the magic/magical artifacts felt, and the various threads of the murder plot didn’t tie up as nicely as I wanted, but oh, Alex Stern is a marvel - a survivor in every sense of the word who embraces that part of herself over and over, even as what being a survivor means changes for Alex over the course of the book. A dark/contemporary urban fantasy set at Yale where the university’s elite student societies are also magical societies— Alex is a dropout who got into drugs as a teenager in order to shield herself from the ghosts she can’t stop seeing, recruited to act as overseer of the societies’ magical rituals, and who takes it upon herself to investigate the murder of a young woman not too different than herself. The centrality of power and its abuse in this book is delicious, the read is gripping, and Alex is worth the price of admission. Yes, I will be reading the second book when it comes out.

(Also, this is literally the second book I’ve ever read that makes any mention or inclusion of Ladino (both Alex and Leigh Bardugo are Sephardi.))

Honorable Mentions

Finding Baba Yaga by Jane Yolen

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

How Long ‘til Black Future Month? by N. K. Jemisin

Our Year of Maybe by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee

The Boneless Mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 edited by N. K. Jemisin and John Joseph Adams

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

Amnesty by Lara Elena Donnelly

Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse

Let Me Hear a Rhyme by Tiffany D. Jackson

The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

It’s also been my practice over the past few years when making these posts to crunch the numbers regarding the number of books I’ve read by PoC authors. This year I read a total of 30 books, which is the exact same number as last year, but since I read fewer books this year, they accounted for 47 percent of my reading, compared to last year’s 43 percent. My goal since I started has been to get to 50-50 parity between PoC and white authors, and this year’s the second-closest I got (I reached 48 percent in 2017.) The goal for next year is once again 50-50.

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Crazy Rich Asians

It’s hard to come late to the party for a movie like Crazy Rich Asians. I saw it weeks ago when it first came out and then I made the silly mistake of going on a 2-week-long honeymoon with the love of my life and having a lot of once-in-a-lifetime experiences and seeing more movies and now here we are almost a month later and everyone has seen it and loved it and I don’t know that there’s really that much left to say about this film. And you know what? That’s ok. Let’s just stick to the basics, yeah?

The movie centers on the love story between Rachel Chu, a Chinese-American, (Constance Wu) and Nick Young, a Chinese national (Henry Golding). After a year of dating, Nick wants to take Rachel to Singapore for his best friend’s wedding and to meet his entire family - the super, mega, ultrarich Young family who basically rule all of Singapore’s high society. Some culture shock ensues for Rachel, but the biggest test comes in the form of trying and failing to impress Nick’s mother, Eleanor, played by the indomitable Michelle Yeoh. Ultimately, Rachel and Nick’s relationship is put through the ringer, and it doesn’t seem they’ll be able to withstand the pressures from Nick’s family. Pretty standard romance fare, so what’s all the fuss about? Well...

It’s pretty damn revolutionary to have a movie with this kind of spectacle, this kind of humor and heart and big-budget WOW factor, and not have a single white actor in the cast. I can’t imagine how revolutionary that feels for Asian-Americans and specifically for Chinese-Americans to feel reflected onscreen in a big Hollywood movie that’s made just for them. But I don’t have to imagine, because they can tell you all about that. 

Some thoughts:

The first thing I think of when I think of this movie is COLOR. It’s riotous with gorgeous color and life, especially from the jaw-droppingly beautiful costumes done by Mary E. Vogt. It’s a truly stunning spectacle from start to finish.

Wife saw this before I did, and she said something that sums up the feel of the movie better than I could: It constantly feels like the characters are thisclose to breaking out into a huge elaborate musical number...but then they don’t. That’s how lavish the spectacle is.

I know this has been brought up but...are you really telling me you never googled the guy before you went on a first date? You didn’t even try to Instagram stalk him and his friends? Also if he’s so famous, did you not have any people staring at him when you guys were out before? There is only so much suspension of disbelief I can take regarding this in 2018, Rachel Chu.

Maybe I just don’t understand super rich people? But you can’t convince me that this woman is going to carefully cultivate the billion-dollar wedding of the century to wear a once-in-a-lifetime dress and then immediately ruin it by flooding the venue with water on purpose. Or maybe I’m wrong - maybe wedding dresses are like Kleenex to rich people? Can’t wait for the Honest Trailers version of this movie, titled Unchecked Capitalism is Evil. 

I’m still really confused about the fish murder and how that all just sort of got handwaved away as fine. Sis, you literally had ANOTHER LIVING BEING’S BODILY FLUIDS ALL OVER YOUR ROOM and you “don’t want to give [the perpetrators] the satisfaction” of making a big deal about it? And when you tell Nick about it, um....nothing happens? No angry confrontation with his ex about it? Tell Awkwafina about that shit and I bet she’d take care of it. She definitely seems like a true ride or die. 

Speaking of, obviously Awkwafina is the breakout star of the movie and steals every scene she’s in.

The other standout scene is obviously the final showdown between Rachel and Eleanor over a game of mahjong. Two incredible female powerhouses acting the shit out of this emotional standoff was just - ugh, so freaking perfect. The best and most important scene of the movie by far. 

Listen, I love The Hangover and Community as much as the next person, but I’m begging the world to let Ken Jeong live off the royalties and just go home. Watching him still be this cringey 9 years later makes me want to weep and then die.

This movie is big, bombastic, heavy on romance (light on comedy), and a joy to watch. I love that I don’t understand every single little nuance and in-joke that I’m sure I’m missing. It means the movie is rich and full of life, and I get the pleasure of learning and discovering things that I missed as I read more about it. Wouldn’t it be nice if it happened more often that we to go to the movies, are entertained, and also want to learn more about what we’re seeing onscreen?

[diaryofanangryasianguy]

This idea of "pure" ethnicities in SA and the ME ignores that none of our ethnic groups are "purely" one thing.A DNA test will show you this (as a SA, my 23andme results are all over the place). There's also cultural and linguistic overlap (e.g. Farsi and Urdu are related). And, while ethnic pride is a thing (and often trumps nationality), this film is a US film. There's limited opportunities for actors of color so slicing by specific ethnic groups isn't the most productive conversation. (Pt 1)

White actors get to play whatever ethnicity they want to even if they’re not of that background (and they get the benefits of white washing). Why do POC not allow ourselves to do the same thing? There was a lot of controversy around JLo (Puerto Rican) playing Selena (Mexican), but she honored Selena and its a beloved film to this day. I know people worry that if different ethnic groups play another group, white people will be like “they’re all the same”. But they’ll feel that way regardless. Pt2

It’s not really about “pure” identities, people are just trying to figure out where each group comes from and how they might be different or similar. And yeah, everyone has mixed DNA and there’s cultural overlapping for everyone (even those that live in the home countries so no one is 100% pure of anything).

But it being a US film is even more necessary to have very specific ethnic-based conversations because every group is not represented. Some groups are more represented than others so if there’s constant representation for one group and none for the other, that kind of erases the existence of the other group. And the US does a good job at erasing and homogenizing different groups.

And since there are limited opportunities for People of Color, a group should be represented when the opportunity presents itself. If you have one movie that has a South Asian character but they’re being played by a Middle Eastern person for example, some people may not care and that’s fine. But there are others that do care.

White people being able to play as any ethnic or racial group is due to white supremacy and racism though. If you look through the history of American cinema, there are white people doing blackface, brownface, yellowface, and whatever otherface and it’s tied specifically to racism. It’s sending a message that says that white people pretending to be People of Color are better than actual People of Color themselves.

With JLo and Selena, that was during a time when people weren’t all that aware of these issues or didn’t care as much. But I bet if the movie were to be redone today, more people would speak out against that.

I think it’d be more socially acceptable for People of Color to play as each other IF there were more representation of People of Color and not just limited to a few groups like how it actually is. If everyone got to be complex and represented fairly on screen, then most people probably wouldn’t care. This is why some people throughout Asia don’t care if they get whitewashed because they’re so used to seeing themselves being represented already. But that isn’t the case in the US.

Finally, it’s not about what white people think, it’s about what People of Color think. Like I said, not everyone really cares but there are those that do care and there are reasons why they care so much.

Angry Asian Guy

[notesofarichlycolorednight]

hot take

if you’re gonna write a story that takes place in china

maybe actually do the research abt china???

fair warning: if you like really like cinder and/or marissa meyer you may just wanna sit this one out

in these trying times of lost innocence of childhood and being more aware of social justice issues, i find myself being very critical of the entertainment media i consume

esp when it comes to representation, bc representation is important to me. and it’s becoming more and more important to me the older i get, as an asexual chinese-american woman. i’m still on the fence abt no rep v. bad rep, but this isn’t what this post is mainly abt

i’m currently reading cinder, by marissa meyer for my book club

and i just...i have a lot to say abt it. a lot that i really gotta get off my chest before i feel i can continue to read it

i’d preferably like to talk abt it with my friends (and maybe i will when the time comes), but i’d have to wait until june 1 and finish the book. as i said above, i really have to get this off my chest before i can finish it, so here i am, screaming into the void

so to begin, and i usually comment abt this when it comes to A LOT of east asian rep i see in entertainment media: my beef with the combination of east asian culture to mean one (1) asian/east asian culture

in this case, a combo of east asian cultureS (plural) into one (1), which would be china

honorifics

there are honorifics in china--like you definitely want to apply the correct honorific to your authority figures (i.e., parents, teachers, doctors, bosses, etc.)

and that part of china’s culture was taken, and then adapted into japanese culture today, HOWEVER, the way it’s used in japanese culture today is very different than how chinese ppl use them

okay so disclaimer real quick, chinese is my second language, and i have not taken up learning japanese, and am i’m going off information i’ve learned from my friends who took japanese as their second langauge; so the information i provide here may not be precisely accruate (hence, having trouble finding better words to explain this)

a lot of china’s honorifics aren’t as “““specific”””--for major lack of a better word--as japan’s

they have mr., miss, mrs., teacher/master, doctor, etc., and, in general, it’s custom to use them bc they are important--authority and hierarchy is v important to collectivistic cultures

japan has “““specific””” identifiers that are often, if not always, used to identify any of those older, younger, or equal to you

senpai, -chan, -san, -sama, etc., as well as other identifiers as placeholders for the person’s name to communicate who they are in relation to the person speaking (e.g., oniisan, oniichan, oniisama)

how honorifics are used in cinder is almost completely wrong, not just in culture, but also through translation

from meyer’s website:

-dàren: for a high-ranking official today is simply means adult, or grown up. it can be used as a respectful honorific toward superiors, but it mostly just means adult. archaically it did mean “your/his excellency.” but again, today, it’s mainly used to refer to an adult. and i imagine however far into the future this book takes places, they’d use it the same way??? but i mean i guess if they went back to imperialism

-shìfu: for an older male this is actually master (as an honorific, such as teacher is, or to specify a very qualified worker). sometimes it can be used to address strangers, specifically older men (not necessarily specifically, or often, used for an older male)

-jūn: for a younger male idk where she got “younger male” from bc it’s mostly used as a measure word. it can be used as an honorific, but translates to “your” not younger male. had she been going by the “honorifics” she uses below, it should be dì, which comes from dìdi (弟弟), which means younger brother (but not necessarily younger male)

-jiĕ: for an older female my best guess is this is derived from jiĕjie (姐姐), which means older sister (not necessarily older female)

-mèi: for a younger female once again, she probably derived this from mèimei (妹妹), which means younger sister (not necessarily younger female)

these specific pinyin (more specifically the last two/three) that she picked cannot be separated from the other pinyin that help to identify them. jiĕ and mèi don’t exist by themselves in the chinese language (compared to -chan, or -san do in japanese), and therefore do not translate as such in meyer’s book. not to mention, multiple characters can be applied to jiĕ and mèi depending on the context and other pinyin/character next to it that helps form the word, or helps distinguish the context

she perhaps simplified these honorifics a little too much. so much so in fact that they lost their meaning. quite literally

and, as i said before, these honorifics aren’t used like they are in japanese culture/language. you don’t tack on honorifics behind someone’s name (like a suffix) as they do in japan. the whole honorific (not just half of it, not like a suffix) comes after someone’s name, such as Lín lăoshī (林老师), which means Teacher Lin. or replaces their name entirely, such as tā shì wŏ de dìdi (他是我的弟弟), which means “this is my younger brother” (as opposed to, “this is bob, my younger brother” or variations of that same sentiment)

names

now, in this futuristic world, i can understand if there are names from other countries (esp. other east asian countries)

however, if your crown prince’s name of china has a japanese name...i’m probs gonna call you out on it. esp bc china and japan don’t have The Best history. now maybe they’ve worked thru it after all these yrs, but still

he’s the crown prince of china

he’s mostly just refered to as prince kai. which i would be okay with if it was just that bc kai is chinese

however, his full name? kaito. kaito is japanese

rikan? japanese. like wtf, if your the emperor of china, you should probs have a chinese name. i mean, you’d think hope?

iko? also japanese (i admit this is being a lil nit-picky, bc cinder or adri or whoever is free to name their android whatever-the-hell they want to, i’m just saying)

and i mean, i guess i can see names from other countries in the real world too, but you have to remember china has the largest population of ppl in the world, so the chances that there are ppl within a certain district who don’t have chinese names is v slim (esp bc you have to take the hsk to show you can contribute to society in china before they grant you a visa to live/work there).

compare that to cinder’s district, where we have cinder, adri, iko, peony, pearl, sacha, fateema, and dr. earland. oh and then the lab tech named li, who’s most definitely the only one i can assuredly say is chinese (and i would hope looks chinese)

now, again, bc it is the future, maybe more (like A LOT more) ppl have moved to china lbr tho, they’ve moved back to imperialism, why would you choose to live there? but i’d still be bitter abt it regardless, bc like china, in theory, should have chinese ppl? w/ chinese names??? i imagine it’s still a p big country in this future

optics

i really wish cinder looked chinese. this is more of a personal thing, and i get that genes aren’t so cut and dry, and if she’s a lunar, then yeah she probably won’t look completely chinese

but a girl can dream for representation other than just mulan ya know (not saying mulan sucks or anything, but it’s like, kinda the only thing i have so)

esp bc the book takes place in china. and she is said to be at least mixed “““““asian”””””

i also wish the fucking prince looked chinese--his skin is fair according to the wikia

bruh

why are you so afraid to make your main characters brown

on a more serious note, and this is getting really nit-picky (kinda) again, but i really wish meyer had put more thought into dr. earland’s character. okay, now, i haven’t finished the book so the good doctor may, in fact,,, be...a...good....................doctor..............?

but my point still stands in that dr. earland comes of as very sexist (with undertones of racism, wheeeeee) bc he hates fateen (who has dark skin, btw) bc she’s taller than him

and he’s also super creepy (as in, “where i’m from, that’s called pedophilia” kind of creepy) bc of his strange interest in young, teenage (cyborg) girls...

yeah

and okay, again, i haven’t finished the book, so maybe he’s supposed to come off that way

but an old, white dude showing too much interest in finding a young woc? not v good optics, regardless of dr. earland’s character yeah?

the fact the fateen points this out does absolutely nothing (aka lampshading).

if you point it out, but continue to fall into a harmful stereotype, you are still perpetuating the stereotype. full stop

misc

i say “misc” but most of this really falls under criticism of the author herself, misc is just shorter

i think it’s great that she’s taking this age-old fairy-tale and putting it into my place of birth, bc representation means the absolute world to me. also i really like this idea that the first telling of cinderella took place in china like fuck yeah, steal that white disney princess from the europeans

but i really wish you’d do it right

in her faq, she apologizes if she got anything wrong, but that’s like putting a band-aid over a bullet wound

how much research is research? did she just google a bunch of stuff, or did she sit down and actually talk to ppl from china? or chinese-americans who have kept their chinese culture?  participate in chinese culture to gain a better understanding?

going by the fact that she wrote cinder in a month, she probably stuck to google

which...i mean i guess i’m glad she made the effort, but it woulda been nice if she’d, after getting a book deal, consulted chinese ppl and edited what needed to be edited yeah? i know she did a little editing, but she said the whole process took 3 months from the time she found an agent to getting a book deal, so like...i’m willing to bet she didn’t sit down with some chinese folk and talk abt their culture (and so on)

and look, it’s really not that hard. and, sure it may delay when the book gets published, but at least it’d be more accurate. and better representation.

rather than falling into what most ppl do these days (i’m looking at you miraculous ladybug) and combining all the east asian cultures to make one (1) culture, and call it--not even east asian--but asian

as if that one (1) monster culture that’s mostly made of up east asian cultures could speak for the variety and diversity of a total of 48 countries, and their respective cultures, that are within the asian continent

now, this whole “calling it asian culture” isn’t meyer’s fault--it’s a side-effect of our society. like i get that, and i’m not trying to put the blame solely on her shoulders

but she still perpetuates it by choosing not to talk to chinese ppl abt a folk tale the may have originated in china, in order to ya know, make it more accurate to china. considering it takes place...IN CHINA

[nebulawriter]

Black Panther

WAIT BEFORE YOU SCROLL AWAY! If you like this blog, some news: I recently got a moviepass, which means I will be watching a lot more movies, I’m hoping to make it one movie per week, which means one movie REVIEW per week. I’m not sure what I want to do with television right now, though, so we’ll deal with that later. 

ANYWAY as all the early reviews have told you this was a really good character driven, socially aware, well plotted, well crafted movie. 

I mean I think it kinda had to be, right? The first major black superhero movie? Granted I only saw it a little bit ago, but it’s hard to find flaws. but I want to start with that so I can talk about the characters, since they’re the centerpoint of the film. 

I mean I guess it’s not...the most complicated plot? I’m sure that was done intentionally so they could focus on showcasing the world and the characters and everything else, but...I mean its pretty predictable for the most part. 

Tied into that there was a lot of pretty on the nose exposition? but that was needed to explain the world and properly set things up and. Yeah, it was fine. 

Oh and there was one character death that was kinda unnecessary. 

Other than that? Yeah it was pretty solid. 

Killmonger: As you may have heard, this is one of the best villains marvel has put forward. I mean, it’s not the highest bar, basically he’s hanging out with Vulture, Hela, and Loki in the “best marvel villains” tent. I will disagree with some critics that he’s the BEST part of the movie or something like that (especially with like...*gestures to all the other characters*) but yeah he has a ‘point’ and some excellent political commentary and he’s got a cool look to him. Marvel has successfully saved another ex-human torch, because he does some wonderful acting that really stands out playing against the other characters. Personally I’m not quite behind the trend to make sure villains “have a point” but “take it too far” because I feel like that treads dangerously into just having the marginalized being villains for the heroes, and then we get into the “bad” marginalized people and....okay thats a complaint for the trope in general, THIS movie doesn’t do too much to contribute to that. I mean it’s a thing but he’s still a good character and a bad...person...and I get that. Actually a part of me wants to write something up about what really ‘Made’ him a villain, because I think it was more America than Wakanda, but that might not be for me to do. 

Klaue: Andy Serkis steps out of his motion capture suit to give a....well it was still a pretty animated performance. I think if he were the ‘main’ villain he would have gotten annoying, but as a side villain he played off Killmonger well. Did not expect him to die, mostly cause I thought Marvel was gonna keep him on, but kudos, movie. Though I wasn’t happy Killmonger’s girlfriend died, that felt unnecessary.

W’Kabi & Okoye: This will probably be more about Okoye because Heck Yeah but I love the duality in morals presented with these two, especially as they’re presented as lovers. Both are close to T’Challa, but both end up betraying him for Killmonger at the halfway point (ish. Not really a betrayal. just. On Killmonger’s side) and it’s so clear that Okoye does this for her love of Wakanda, and when Killmonger did things according to the rules of Wakanda, Okoye followed him, even if she didn’t like it. Very Lawful. W’Kabi, though, wanted what Killmonger could offer, and when the chips fell, went to war over it. These two also were the leaders of the armies that fought in the finale, so it was very interesting to see these two as opposites. Also, though OKOYE!!! DAMN I LOVE HER SO MUCH!! LIKE DAMN!

M’Baku: Don’t have much to say on him, other than I guess the one thing that wasn’t predictable was the good guys coming to these guys for help, but it made narrative sense, and it was nice to see that he was just....legitimately doing what he thought was right, the traditionalist to Shuri’s progressiveness. I wonder what he thinks about the end of the movie.

Zuri: Yeah I called his death the second he was on screen. 

Ramonda: I actually called her death too, but was gladly surprised. Woo!

Everett Ross: I did not expect to like Martin Freeman in this. It’s weird hearing him with an American Accent. He might be the weakest character in the movie, but that doesn’t quite feel like a flaw, he was....a plot point. And it was nice seeing the white guy being a plot point. 

Nakia: I admit, it took me a bit to stop just thinking of her as Lupita Nyong’o, but I loved her, I loved that she was always right, I thought her romance with T’Challa was adorable, and she was badass. Absolutely the moral center of the film and I dug it. 

Shuri: !!!!!!!! The comic relief of the film, clearly more in touch with the outside world than most, but she had respect for Wakanda and traditions and such. Her dynamic with her brother was amazing (actually, T’Challa’s dynamic with all the women were amazing, but we’ll get to that) She was smart and witty and brought some great levity to the film. Plus....awesome. IDK. 

T’Challa: A solid man, a good king, I like him. I mean that was basically it was just following him as he faced some pretty damn tough decisions. And then everything went to hell in a handbasket and. Whoops. But yeah, he was awesome, and a great person to have at the center of all the wild personalities listed above. Woo!

Wakanda: What an amazing world. I know so little of African culture I can’t really speak to a lot of it but I appreciate all the touches of it, and....okay I really appreciated that the tribes were color coded that. that helped a lot. But yeah holy shit that was amazing to see. 

(Sidenote, Theory for Infinity Wars: I’m betting that inside that Comet of Vibranium that’s made Wakanda so rich is in fact the Soul Stone. That’s my guess anyway. I dunno, if I were an alien trying to keep one of the Infinity Stones away from Thanos, wrapping it in a giant ball of Really Tough Metal and launching it into space (where it might have accidentally hit a measly planet like Earth) seems like a good idea.) (But the Wakandans in their new trading initiative dug too greedily and too deep and will probably find it and accidentally reveal its location to Thanos. Whoops. Can’t wait to see all the tribes united, fighting together, WITH the Avengers) 

The Social Commentary: Im willing to put money on the idea that the mid-credit scene was written after 45′s election, because you could almost tell they were ust... desperately trying not to say the word “wall.” 

As it was, yeah, this movie was directed towards a specifically African American audience, and I say African American instead of Black here because a lot of it is focused on America’s race problems (not to say other countries around the world DONT have that, but it was very America focused, which, for a movie made by Americans, makes sense. 

Anyway, as I am NOT African American, or a racial minority of any sort, I cannot speak to this with any nuance and can just say “Good.” Like, thumbs up, with my understanding of it, I’m all in favor of black communities a) helping each other out and b) getting stronger in general. If anything, I think a lot of the white characters in the movie could have been held more accountable, and considering Ross was right there they could have done something with that. but hey, they kept their focus, I’m good.

The plot: Like I said, kinda predictable (did you really expect me to believe T’Challa was dead?) but I....don’t care. It was tight, like, no holes that I can think of though I’m sure the internet will think of some.

Oh, and Bucky’s still in Wakanda. We kinda knew that but ‘kay. 

I really want to see Luke Cage working with the New York Wakandan Outreach Initiative, and/or going to Wakanda. I just think that’d be neat.

Wait, actually, thats it. T’Challa vs. Killmonger reminded me of Luke Cage vs.....shit what was his name, his half brother. Like, finding out his Dad was Wrong and now dealing with a villain his Dad created.

Am I missing anything? I think that covers all the stuff. 

[sanerontheinside]

Hi! You mentioned in one of your posts that you're taking a class that makes you think about the relationships between American school and American government, and that sounds a lot like a class that I would be interested in. What class is it? I'd like to see if I can find something similar. I'm trying to train myself to think critically about debate and politics and culture and... all the things that help people understand complex issues. Do you have any other suggestions of places I could go?

Hmmmmm…. This is… going to be a bit difficult. 

Ok, for one thing, it’s a grad course at my local university, and the program I’m in is Masters of Arts in Teaching. It’s not really one out of a standard class set. 

For another: while the class has spent some time focused on how government, democracy, and policy affect schools, the actual goal of the class is to examine how media representation presents schools, and how that affects people’s attitude towards schooling and teaching. 

However, I can probably recommend some reading. 

Here’s an online course I am kind of curious about. It sounds more relevant to what you’re looking for than my class, I’d say. You will be able to audit the course (the certificate for a verified course usually costs some money, but the audit is free). 

Check out other courses on edX, too: it’s a good site for online learning, basically a pool of free online courses made public by various universities. (Harvard also offers a course on American Government, which I’m enrolled in for shits and giggles, but haven’t done more than take a cursory look at thus far.)

Here’s a link to a google drive folder that contains some articles from my class, if you’re curious. I would say some of them are pretty good reading, but I’ve listed a basic summary of each one I uploaded below the cut. I haven’t gotten to all of them yet, though, so I can’t actually be 100% accurate about what’s in each. 

Now, of course, since it’s academic writing, quite a bit of it is pretty dry and dense, which especially applies to the first three listed here: 

The Hochschild files (read): discuss how, in theory, education and democracy/social structure should interact and better each other. 

(A required text for my class, one which unfortunately you have to pay for: Is Everyone Really Equal? by Sensoy and DiAngelo) 

(if you’re curious, that link is for Teacher College Press, they have an ebook for a grand total of $27.96. They’re also the only ones I’ve seen offering an ebook. You will need another app, though, to actually read the file: ADE) 

Anyon is a study of 5 elementary schools which shows how education is stratified by social class. 

Brookings “Big Government” explains (loosely) how the government funds programs. 

Democracy and Freedom (FH-FITW) index (read): these are pretty clear, though—it’s the study that compares democracy and freedom between countries. You might’ve seen a post running around tumblr that says, for a country with such a loudly touted democracy, the US sure scored a bit low—this is that source. 

American Citizenship “Counting on Character” is an article on a charter schools

Larabee (read): is about the differences between public and private education. This one plays into our actual course goal a bit, because the entire business of school reform is criticised right there on the very first page, as it’s a very media/propaganda-directed process. 

Measuring Democracy (read): is godsawful dry. This was mainly assigned to give us an idea of how many types of democracy there are actually. As such, our assigned reading was pg.253-end, so, don’t fall asleep. 

A couple of nytimes articles are listed: First Amendment Support and Preparing Students for a Complex World (read), highlighting some interesting generational differences between current teachers/adults/millennials and Gen Z kids. Surface stuff, tho, like our preferences for social media, concern for privacy, and interpretation of the First Amendment—less about why these differences exist. 

Parker Against Idiocy (read): before you go getting any ideas about what idiocy is, in the context of this paper—

Idiocy shares with idiom and idiosyncratic the root idios, which means private, separate, self-centered — selfish. “Idiotic” was in the Greek context a term of reproach. When a person’s behavior became idiotic — concerned myopically with private things and unmindful of common things — then the person was believed to be like a rudderless ship, without consequence save for the danger it posed to others. This meaning of idiocy achieves its force when contrasted with politēs (citizen) or public. Here we have a powerful opposition: the private individual versus the public citizen.…An idiot is one whose self-centeredness undermines his or her citizen identity, causing it to wither or never to take root in the first place.

Putting Democracy Back into Public Education (read): bit of an economic perspective, and a focus on why democracy should be a focus in schools. 

Westheimer and Kahne: more on what makes a good citizen 

Young Citizens and Civic Learning: another research paper, on how to teach civics in the digital age. 

To be honest, I don’t know precisely how much these readings line up with your interests? They’re mainly theoretical, and mostly geared towards pedagogy. Some make for pretty good reads, tho. 

I’ll probably add some more as we go through the class, and as I do my own research, but I’m leaning more towards curriculum structure/design at the moment. Plus, there’s the finicky part where my content area is mathematics… and that’s not… precisely… very policy related. 

… CORRECTION: Math content is heavily politicised and people keep trying to regulate math education and curriculum structure and keep trying to reinvent the wheel, here. But in the more general sense, while it’s an example of policy impacting schools and teaching, it’s less about government control of a school as a whole. 

Basically what I was trying to say there was it’s less relevant to my class, but it would serve as a good, and very in-depth case study, if you were looking for a very specific example. 

The things to keep in mind: what you’re looking at is a highly intersectional topic. So many things have an impact on the way we teach: media reporting on teaching and current events, economic goals and its current state, policy, etc. 

Fun fact: you know how we rank countries by the number of students who pass standardised exams out of high school, yeah? Well. A side-by-side comparison of the exams and the topics tested actually shows that the questions European countries consider ‘qualifying’ are easier: they test lower-level topics than the US exams. 

What does that tell you? 

It’s a stupid, non-standardised study, your groups are non-comparable, your variables have no damn relationship to each other. 

But someone reports that the US is lagging behind in Math and STEM becomes a huge deal and Music and Art programs are poorly funded and businesses like Pearson benefit because they have a monopoly on tests, and we push kids into STEM fields because that’s feeding the current job market to bloating while telling them they can’t get a job with a liberal arts degree. 

Furthermore, education is an immensely powerful tool. It has been used (still is!) to destroy upward mobility for the working class, for people of colour, for people in poor rural areas. You can harm so many people by simply not mentioning something (erasure), and hey, it’s not like teachers get much time anyway because they’re supposed to be preparing their students for qualifying exams that permit the kids to advance to the next year. 

And let’s not forget that at some point it was a popular notion that these exam results would be used to control teachers’ pay. The exams weren’t even designed to be used for that. 

So, everything you’ve ever learned about setting up scientific studies and doing statistical analysis? Yyyyeaaah… well the current White House sure ain’t heard of it, you can bet your last dime, but whoever was doing studies on education before them also sure as shit was not the CDC. 

Just.. every now and then, stop, breathe, throw out everything you know, and then keep going. 

[tefltraininginstitute]

Racism and Ethics and in Online Marketing (Ekitzel Wood)

Image by Pixabay

I speak with Ekitzel Wood about online marketing and discrimination in teacher recruitment. Ekitzel tells us how our Facebook information change the job advertisements that we see. We also talk about racism in teacher recruitment and why many schools present a ‘white’ image of their teachers to their customers.

Ethics Discrimination in Online Marketing (With Ekitzel Wood) - Transcription

Ross Thorburn:  Hi, everyone. Welcome to the podcast. As you know, usually on the podcast, we speak to people with similar backgrounds to myself, but today, we've got someone from a very different background. That person is Ekitzel Wood.

She specializes in online branding and marketing. She's worked and consulted for many education companies in China about how to improve their brand and find more teachers.

In our conversation, Ekitzel and I talk about marketing messages that work for different groups. On the second half of the podcast, we discuss some of the dangers of online marketing and how this can make discrimination based on race easier.

If you've ever searched for anything in Google, or you've liked a page on Facebook, this affects what job opportunities you see in the future. Even if you don't, this affects who your colleagues are and will be. Enjoy the podcast!

Online Marketing in Education

Ross:  Hi, Ekitzel Wood. Thanks so much for coming on.

Ekitzel Wood:  Thanks for having me. [laughs]

Ross:  Do you mind telling us just very quickly a bit about what you do? You're in education marketing, but you market staff to teachers, right?

Ekitzel:  Right. I got my start in social media working for a lot of different companies. I start to quickly specialize in Chinese companies that wanted to have a greater influence and to manage their brands better in North America. Eventually, that parlayed into a very fast‑growing education sector in regards to how to manage their digital brand, what they want to portray themselves as online.

Ross:  Maybe that's a good place to start. Like if you're a teacher and you've seen some online social media for school, how would you go about researching that school and finding out, is it legit?

Ekitzel:  Coming from the other end is I pose that a lot to schools when they approach me. What type of person do you want to attract? Specifically, one issue for a lot of Chinese English‑training centers is they want to attract more female talent.

This is just a general issue in education globally is that within the domestic markets of any country, education is typically about 65/35 female‑skewed, but once you expatriate that, it flips.

How do you attract or how do you appeal to female educators, or what type of messaging will most resonate with them, especially in terms of...There's a lot of messaging where you focus on having an adventure or trying something new, having access to different areas of the world, meeting new people.

For women, it doesn't work as well unless they're between the ages of 22 and 26. That's the sweet spot for women. For men, that can work up until the age of 39 typically, actually. They're very different, the way they behave.

Ross:  What marketing then works for women, say then, over the age of 26 in education or some marketing things that resonate with that group?

Ekitzel:  There's two different types of tracks that you can take based on the research that I've done with a few different places.

One is a new‑beginning style track where it's like, "Are you feeling all right?" or "Have you been teaching the same lesson plans for 10 years now? Is it getting tiresome? Do you want to take those skills and then adapt them for new culture, learn about a new place?"

It's about self‑enrichment and about taking your experience and moving it on to something that will challenge you in a new way but won't be too challenging, if that makes sense. So making sure that you apply the side career advancement opportunities that they might have.

If your English training center focus on the fact that you might give them the opportunity to write books or develop curriculum or learn about administration, mentoring, especially, is something that really resonates with a lot of...I know North American long‑term professional teachers that are over the age...They're in their like 20s.

It's a difficult time even to our trained teachers in North America because the attrition rate is quite high. Most teachers in the United States, they leave a teaching profession within five years of starting. The late 20s is a very good time to attract those teachers, to give them an opportunity...

Ross:  This is because that a lot of them are thinking they've had it with education at that point. They're already thinking about doing something different, anyway. In some ways, that problem in the domestic market creates an opportunity, that does it?

Ekitzel:  Exactly. Not to sound traditional about it, but it is something that, in terms of market research, has proven true, that at that age, if that person is already married, it's very unlikely that they're going to relocate. If that person isn't married, they want to be or they're thinking about it.

It's about 50/50, actually. That's a group that wants...I've tried marketing too with a couple other places, and it's proven not very profitable.

Ross:  What are some groups that are maybe the easiest ones to attract, the ones with the highest return on investment for ads?

Ekitzel:  Highest return on investment are definitely 23 to 26, male, college educated, one and a half years of spotty experience. They haven't had a solid job after graduating from college. That was a lot easier to do in 2010 to 2012 when the economy wasn't so good in North America. Now, it's not as big of an issue. It's getting harder to recruit that type of talent.

 Discrimination in online Education

Ross:  A lot of what we talked about so far that has been marketing to specific groups. I want to ask you, if I was a language school owner and I believed that my customers really liked white, blonde teachers aged 28 to 34, is it now impossible for me to engineer something like that where I can deliberately try to attract those people?

Ekitzel:  Unfortunately, yes.

Ross:  Wow!

Ekitzel:  With Facebook, the way it works when you make an ad is you select an audience. That audience is divided by psychographics, which are preferences like pages you follow, interests you see list on Facebook.

This is information you volunteer yourself. You volunteer that information also by liking certain types of content and sharing certain items. That's who you're going to target, so cannot be done by race. It's difficult, but there are ways obviously to do that. Not many white people follow BET, for instance.

Ross:  I've done, before, research into hiring practices. It turns out in my research, at least in China, if you have a white photo at the top of your resume, you're 50 percent more likely to get a job than if you have black photo at the top.

That's almost somehow even scarier, that now, it's possible to almost cut out the people that you don't want based on age, ethnicity, interest, and everything. They don't even see the advert in the first place. Of course, like you say, you would hope that language schools eventually would discover that that's not what makes a successful school.

But equally, if the only people that you're going to hire are white, blonde, Aryan people, maybe you never actually find out, because you never have those people from other age groups and ethnicities. You never find out that those people could be equally successful.

Ekitzel:  Yes, I know. Not just the companies I've worked for but the entire industry is guilty of this, where they over‑recruit online teachers and especially highly‑qualified teachers from urban areas who are not white. They will keep them active just to the point that they won't leave, but they do deprioritize them in terms of their marketplace.

They have backend ways of tagging them that aren't obvious to the outside observer or to them even as a teacher in their platform. If you say, "I want a teacher who has a specialty in math because I need to improve my English master, engineering vocabulary," they'll search these two terms. Then the first page or two of options will only be these idealized profile.

Ross:  I never understand why that happens. I always thought that the great thing about online teaching was that...

Ekitzel:  Is the equalizer?

Ross:  Yeah, right? It gives students the opportunity to...You can choose whoever you want. If you are racist, or sexist, or whatever, fine.

Ekitzel:  That's your choice.

Ross:  You can go and choose the Aryan teacher if you want, but if you want to choose the person with the highest star rating based on feedback or the best qualifications, you can search for it however you like.

Ekitzel:  The market, especially, in China is highly competitive. The acquisition cost for students is very high. They're doing anything and everything they can to...The thing is, even for them, they do lots of market research where they have quality and experience are the two main drivers for student acquisition. That's what they really care about.

However, unfortunately, behavioral data says something else. I don't know if that's a catch‑22, because a lot of these platforms prioritize towards this idealized image. Are they only selecting those because that's what they're being shown first, like in the first search page, or is that because that's really what they, themselves, prefer?

Ross:  It could be a self‑fulfilling prophecy where you choose what you show.

Ekitzel:  Right. Because the market is so fierce, no one that I worked with or consulted with has been willing to take that risk.

Ross:  If you are a teacher and you maybe already worked on one of these platforms or you're just an employee of one of them, what's a way that you can find out and investigate to what extent your company is promoting an idealized ethnic...?

Ekitzel:  Discriminatory...?

Ross:  Yes, discriminative and profile for teachers.

Ekitzel:  If you work inside of an online teaching platform and you have access to the students' site, how students use the portal or parents use the portal, do some testing. I think you'll find pretty quickly that even when you search very generalized terms, you'll see very little diversity in the first 20 results.

Every company I worked for, that's one of the first concerns I bring up. You can be very successful recruiting teachers. That's your main goal, is quantity of teachers and quality of teachers.

However, I refuse to help you with that unless you start marketing domestically, that you provide teachers that are of non‑white backgrounds, that your billboards, that your online advertising doesn't just have a white face on it, and that has a variety of faces.

Once people start searching for your company and your information, they're not just going to see what's available in United States. They're going to see what's also being promoted in China. They're going to see pictures of subway adverts.

If they see only white people in those subway adverts, they're going to say, "Well, you're only selling white people to Chinese people, so what's you're saying you're a diverse welcoming country?" That's hypocritical.

Ross:  I wonder what the reason is, what's the underlying thing that causes this racism. On discrimination, I've read before about how people of color were discriminated against in customer‑facing jobs, but in management‑facing jobs basically suffered almost no discrimination.

The background to that seem to be that companies were worried that their customers were racist. They prefer to have a white person or beautiful person or whatever, but it was like the recruiters, themselves, didn't actually have a preference.

What I wonder is here, is it people in these companies actually feel that way, or they just worry that this is how our customers feel? Do they think like, "I really believe white teachers are better," or is it like, "I really think that our customers are kind of racist. I'm going to discriminate on their behalf"?

Ekitzel:  I think it's a little bit of both. I'm a big follower of Brené Brown. [laughs] She's a social worker, just had talks and things like that. She tells the story about her own experience where she was waiting on the line at a bank. There's a teller. He was black.

There's an older white lady in front of her. She was getting really upset. Something was wrong, and she's like, "I want to speak to your manager." Brené was behind of this awful lady. He's like, "OK," so he brings the manager who also happens to be a black woman. She's like "No, I need another manager."

Ross:  Wow.

Ekitzel:  She was so angry. She got upset. She's just like, "That lady was crazy." The teller was beyond professional. He's just like, "She's just worried about her money, and she's afraid. When people are afraid, they don't make the best choices."

I think, especially in terms of business development, in a hypercompetitive market of English education in China, they know that it doesn't really matter, but they're afraid because they might lose one or two families. That, to them, could be a big difference in their profit margin.

Everyone's trying to sell to the lowest common denominator. They think that if this will change five percent of the people's minds if they see a black person there because it spooks them or it scares them, then they'll make this safer "choice."

Ross:  It's better to do something that's going to appease the racist five percent, because for the other 95 percent, they don't care.

Ekitzel:  They don't care. Unless they are the ones not being represented, they'll just become more complacent what the imagery they're seeing.

 Ross:  Thanks so much for coming along.

Ekitzel:  Oh, thank you.

Ross:  Do you have a blog, or a Twitter handle, or something that you'd recommend people to go to?

Ekitzel:  I don't have a lot of professional social media for myself.

Ross:  That's ironic.

Ekitzel:  You're welcome to follow me on Twitter. It's @ekitzel. That's my Twitter handle.

Ross:  Awesome. Thanks again.

Ekitzel:  Thank you.

Ross:  Cool.

[rrrawrf-writes]

idk what this is

okay i haven’t read any SJM books and i don’t want to or need to, my fantasy cravings tend to lean towards logistics-heavy military fantasy anyway. i also kind of don’t really want to get into the discourse surrounding the disabled dude who was healed, but i’ve seen some sentiment in that discourse (because i do follow it because snark blogs and also because i love drama) that i really, really want to talk about.

“you can’t expect a fantasy YA author to write only from their personal experience, or else all their stories would be about boring people.”

while yeah, this is true, this is absolutely true and i always encourage people to write from completely different perspectives........stop using this to excuse an author writing about minorities and being completely insensitive about it.

to clarify with an example: jones is white and able-bodied and writes a book about a disabled slave in early fantasy american history. jones does no research. poc and disabled people are offended.

they absolutely deserve to be.

first thing, as advice for authors who do not belong to a specific minority: do not write books about that minority’s issues. i can do all the research in the world, but i cannot ever truly know what life is like as anything other than a white girl.

DO write books with minority characters. DO write books with minority characters as the protagonists. DO even include some instances of microaggressions or discrimination, as long as you do so with respect! but DO NOT think that you, as an outsider, know enough to write a book specifically about minority issues.

white authors already hold the bulk of the power and voice in the book industry - in any industry, really, that involves story-telling (in america; i have no working knowledge of any other country). when we write stories about mexican immigrants, first of all, we probably don’t know what the real experience is. second of all - we take the spotlight away from those people who do have those experiences.

the most well-known stories about a minority should be written by a member of that minority. i want stories set in polynesian cultures, but i’m hesitant to read a lot of them because so many of what i can find are written by flippin white people. i want to write, and am writing, stories set in fantasy cultures inspired by polynesian cultures! but before i publish these, you sure as heck can bet that i’m going to be asking actual polynesian people if i’m doing it right - or, well, if i’m not doing it so wrongly that people will want to throw me off a cliff. i don’t want to be a voice for polynesian cultures. i want to be waving a giant sign saying LOOK AT THESE AWESOME PEOPLE, LISTEN TO THEIR STORIES (and maybe read mine but don’t take it as gospel, read theirs more).

“you can’t please everyone -”

no. no you can’t. but that’s no frickin excuse to just be as offensive as possible, or to write whatever pops into your head and present it to the public without at least considering whether it could hurt marginalized people.

chaol in whatever series SJM wrote (spoilers) was disabled, and then magically cured. please, for the love of all that is holy, stop writing these plots.

(i am looking at you, too, brandon sanderson. i love you but come on. you were doing so well.)

when we, as a society, see stories of disabled people being cured, magically or with technology or with sheer force of will, or otherwise, it hurts not only disabled people, but society as a whole. here’s an amazing post by someone who this plot ending does hurt and offend, and it’s totally worth a read.

i kind of lost track of what i was getting at, but here’s the point.

you can be a good (or at least, a not-bad) person, and still hurt people by what you write. not taking the advantage of sensitivity readers, or research, or criticism, is just one more slap in the face of minorities. popular authors, whether they intend to be a ~public figure or not~, have the opportunity to influence a ton of readers. YA authors, especially, have an enormous responsibility to influence their audience for the better. SJM writing a magical cure story is sending the wrong message, whether she meant to or not. authors need to own their stories, and i don’t care if she’s a good person or a bad person or what. i genuinely don’t. i don’t care about her as a person, i care about her as an author who has a huge reader base and the chance to influence them, and she has not exercised this privilege to the extent that she could have.

she could have done better than write a magic cure plot. she should have done better. all she would have needed to do, literally, is ask disabled people to beta read and fix what they say needs to be fixed. when authors with influence ignore opportunities to make things better for subsets of people....i start to feel like they don’t deserve that opportunity.

[pixelatedlenses]

“You Can’t Have Black Faeries”: Black Magic, Representation, And Fantastical Reads and Writing , or How I Started Writing Black Characters on Tumblr and Never Looked Back

So I’m going to preface this with the fact that this is a veritable essay that kind of winds: it’s not really organized and would never be published on a formal news site. It’s just my story, all of what I remember, and clocks in around 6ish pages. It was important for me to write this during Black History Month because over the last year, I’ve undergone a lot of changes, and my writing has changed with it. I hope that you’ll read this and ask questions, and continue to support me as I change even more. I love my blackness, I love my writing, and I love sharing it with you all. I suppose here’s the roots of how I got to be Spencer Avery, my pen name that I use for my core writing, outside of beng Tomi for art and light novels. 

It’s my story, and is more stream of consciousness than anything else. Basically: enjoy, is what I’m trying to say. Also, this is, of course, one of the supplimental pieces I mentioned in my post about writing about BHM in Japan. I hope you come to understand another part of me, and see why my black is beautiful. .

I can honestly say that at 24, I love writing black characters.

I stick representations of myself –my culture, fat black folxs, nerdy black folxs, magical black folxs– into whatever I can, whether it’s a mundane romance tale set in a perfectly normal world or a princess stuck in a tower. It became important to me about… eh, three years ago that I start to normalize those kinds of worlds, that Black folxs were just as magic as a Tolkien elf or a Harry Potter wizard. We belonged in those worlds alongside European styled magics too.

But it wasn’t always like that.

I started writing fanfiction at age 13. I was confused about a lot of things: I felt wrong in my black skin, about liking girls over boys and flowers, felt at odds with the black girls that teased me and bullied me into buying them snacks. (And also called my mother fat to my face, which yeah, we both are, but you don’t get to call her that, you know? Geez.) Most of all, I think feeling a sense of nothingness prevailed: I was a black girl playing at being good enough to be white, playing at stepping outside my ethnic roots to somehow feel capital-N Normal.

Video games, thus, became a home for me: I found myself in Naruto, felt at home in the vast worlds of Kingdom Hearts, was brave and empowered in Pokemon was somebodies hero in the countless rpgs stacked next to my bed. I don’t think its an exaggeration to say that I spent more time connected to a set of double a’s or a charger than I did reflecting on myself. I think now, a lot of Blerds –black nerds – often do: we’re pushed out with anti-blackness from our own black folx, and left to imagine ourselves as meaningful in somebody else’s world. It’s quite sad, and perhaps why now, I write so much fantasy and fiction featuring a black character overcoming: it’s a message that still needs to be heard and echoed.

Nevertheless, I was a lonely kid. It was the height of MySpace, I was a digital roleplayer under the all too ridiculous name Naruko Fai Uzamachi –I literally just let out the most pitiful Regret Groan – and I was still on the hunt for that last, little taste of acceptance.

Hence writing.

I put up my first fic on Fanfiction.net sometime in 2007, most likely May. It was a hot mess, but I’m saying that millions of words later in 2017. At the time, it was a release: I was deep into the 801 –that’s Yaoi for the uninitiated, taking from the alternative pronunciations for 8, 0, and 1 in Japanese – community, having found a weird, hypersexualized acceptance amongst likeminded women who felt pushed to Western society’s fringes. I was everywhere I could on MySpace, Aarinfantasy, and any board I could find to somehow make my 14-year-old heart ache less. Fanfiction was there as another balm: I have memories of sneaking onto the computer at midnight, trying to turn the brightness down just so to not wake my mother, and clacking out my feelings about depression, hurt, growing up, and wanting desperately to belong to something.

(As I’m currently at work, I won’t like it: it’s explicit, and I don’t’ look at things like that on my on hours. I can tell you it’s called “Land and Sky” and was a SasuNaru fic, a hot pairing even in 2017.  You can look it up on my Fanfiction.net account, and for fun, do a live reading with your friends. I’ve tried to rewrite it multiple times, and may try this year as it’s the anniversary and my writing is hopefully better. I think perhaps that’s my penance for teenage me’s horribly written yaoi: rewrite a SasuNaru fic every ten years for the rest of my life. Of course, it’s funny now: at the time, I was Ride or Die about that fic.)

This led to me often seeking solace in Asian characters: they were the closes analog to me. Brown and black faces didn’t match me in terms of how I felt; they reminded me of the same mocking laughter, harsh hands, and hurtful words that were hurled at me daily. I didn’t want to like them, but perhaps a part of me also realized I needed something. Asian person –specifically Japanese character – offered that something. They were ethnic enough in my young eyes, and were close enough. Sometimes, characters were a tanned brown, many shades away from my dark skin, but felt cousin to my desire for acceptance.

(Now, of course, I realize that wasn’t the answer and that Japanese-Americans are often ridiculed for their own desire to enjoy their culture, while Westerners  –predominantly Americans of European descent – often police fan culture within Anime and Manga or general Japanese pop, and that has often led to exclusion. That’s not to say there aren’t black folxs out there policing Japanese-American consumption of their own culture too: there certainly are, and they’re just as wrong.)

Writing, thus, developed into a series of long worded fanfiction pieces that I posted all across the web, primarily on FF.net, which was my stomping ground for a very long time. I can still google my many pen names –Syrus Gardenia Fuze, which apparently I asked to be called, dozens of Japanese names with African-esque sounds, and eventually, Nagone, which I took kanji –immaturely and without any knowledge of the language, as I was studying Spanish and not even Chinese yet to understand characters and radicals– to mix together to form “a strong sounding name” which I still use today, but hope to change this year actually– and find my pieces. I get hits daily from kids going through the same growth I did: kids who message me asking questions about the fictional worlds I built, kids who express the same sadness, heartache, and loneliness of being classed as different. PoC kids who tell me that they’re looking for themselves and found it in my writing.

Growing up certainly hasn’t changed in a decade, you know?

However, by the time that college rolled around, fed-up, still black, now queer me was tired, and fanfiction wasn’t always doing the same things it had. I was sick of school, wanted desperately out and to move to Missouri for college, but was stuck in a mundane year. After a blow up at my bullies which resulted in me getting kicked out the band hall and nearly breaking a bass clarinet from dropping it on the ground, I stopped writing: I just flat out gave it up. It felt like it was putting away childish things, tucking away the past, and would let me move on.

Of course, at this point, you’re realizing that I didn’t stop as I’m talking about writing. Let’s continue.

I came back to it in college after my father died because I need Home again. I was still focused on Japan and Japanese media because Japan was cool: I hadn’t had the realization that Japan was a country, and hadn’t really delved into my studies that would lead me to a degree in History and Asian Studies focused on Japan and on showing a 360 view of the nation rather than “it’s got pop culture!” I was still hiding from being black: high school had brow beat me with “Why do we need Black History Month?” gorilla masks when Obama got into office –with friends remarking that I should be proud on of my people made if at 17 and 18– and general Southern Fried Racism that I was more than willing to reject being black. My pool of genuine black friends had grown from two to six: I added a few men into the mix -almost all are college friends I still love- and was steadily working towards some awareness that I was black and not secretly a white girl beneath.

Home was in writing more fics: still primarily yaoi, though I had dabbled in yuri and girl’s love with the arrival of my first partner. I was a bit more brazen and brave about what I wrote, and started showing PoC women together instead of solely Japanese men. It was a radical change, and made me feel a little bit better between regretting being queer and loving college. But there was still a stark absence of anyone black: in fact, I honestly can’t remember ever writing a black character for most of my early writing life.

So, I bet you’re wondering when that black part will come in?

Well, it starts probably in 2013ish when I made my writing Tumblr.

I’d heard about Tumblr through my fourth partner, an asexual with a penchant for wanting a mixed child because they were “cute” and wanting a boy despite being agender and stating that no one should choose gender.

(I should add that they often remarked they wanted to spin the sperm of their donor to increase the rate of a boy, and would be sad to not have their child come out how they wanted. It made me feel very gross, and I was not at all sad to break up with them. It was for the best, and I hope that they realize now that it’s kind of gross to want a mixed child for their aesthetic and not because you wouldn’t mind having a child with multiple cultures. They were a nice person, but it’s alright to accept that nice people -even me- have microaggresions that we must constnatly work at.)

I started with a cosplay tumblr: it was dedicated to my costuming which I did often enough, and was made with the mindset of being a black cosplayer. This was a huge change, and it came solely because of an event the year before: namely, the murder-death killing of Trayvon Martin, a boy who was sent to rest by a man who is, simply put, a racist and hated him for his skin.

That changed my world: it was like I’d been literally seeing black and white, and suddenly, there was an entire spectrum of Brown that I fit into. I was a black person, ahd the potential to get killed for my skin, for not being submissive, for being a perceived threat, and that was scary. It was the kind of thing that, for months, kept me awake. I saw, for the first time, the ugly face of kind racism: I had white friends remark that President Obama wouldn’t know how it felt to lose a child like that because he was only half-black, and he was the President, one of the good ones. I saw that perhaps, I was perceived like that: that my intellect, my quiet nature, my bookish ways, and my gentleness were only Right because they were White, that a percentage of people around me where trading Me for being Good, and a Good Black.

(Insert another groan.)

So my writing changed with that: it became more active, more constant, and eventually in 2014, solidified into this blog with all the meager beginnings I could offer. I remember my first posts were from a roleplay senior year: they focused on the characters of our werewolf campaign. I think after that came some reposts from FictionPress  –I really want to start utilizing that again this year, alongside Wattpad and other sns for writing–  and then… well, then I started writing for myself. It started with fae –I’ve always like fae since I first read Holly Black’s Modern Fae series, specifically Valiant, sophomore year of high school– and so I started to transplant black features onto them. My fae ranged from sweet to scary, were villains, heroes, lovers, and friends. They were varied like I felt I was: black had stopped having a singular identity or word bubble of terms that were solely “ethnic” and was a mass of very difficult faces, all living very different lives. I mirrored that onto the supernatural, and it worked: I started to gain ground and felt that I was doing something right. It felt good, and that momentum carried into grad school, picking me up when I was down, giving me a place to escape, but also critically write about big feelings.

Simply put, writing was good.

(I also got into Legend of Korra heavy and started writing fic again. I’ve been on a two year fic break, but plan to pick it up soon, after I finish my current project which I still can’t talk about.)

You’d think that after nearly a decade of writing, I’d have written for myself, but I always think I was writing for others: it’s a habit I still struggle with because I’m a people pleaser and want to make folxs happy, but writing for myself was the most freeing thing I could ever reward myself with.

Now, I’d love to tell you I remember my first black girl, but the one I remember most –and the one that’s fairly well-known and recent– is Cobalt “Colby” Johnson, a college-aged, plump, chubby black girl from my novella Gelid. She’s from 2015, her story written in a month in a cast of all non-white characters. Colby is probably one of the dearest characters to my heart, and when I get a chance, I will rewrite her purposely quickly written story into something bigger, seal up her plot holes and give her more body.

Colby, as a character, was not originally meant to be an analog of me: I never set out thinking, “Yeah, this is me, but if I ended up in a crazy, month long adventure”. At the time, I was writing her as a challenge: finish one thing, and it would mean I could finish anything I set my mind to. Surprisingly, when I did finish, it gave me the strength to do just that: finish things, even if it took time.

Colby was the culmination of all the things I felt that big black girls needed: adventure, an acceptance of self. She was my swan song to the me that hated being fat, to the me that hated being fat and black, to the me that thought other black girls also wanted adventure. It was important to me that I give that adventure and have the black girl win: I gave her winnings in the form of a solid relationship with her mother that was genuinely healthy, a good friend, and the power of being a diety essentially. Certainly, thinking now about the story, there’s massive plot holes to how that all happened, but that wasn’t the point: it was getting that story out of me and out for people to engage with.

Regardless, Colby became me because writing is a part of me: every character takes from their owner, right? Colby was no different. But she was magical because she did something special to me, and made me crave writing again.

(Please search the Gelid tag on the blog. I really love this story because it changed me, and once I wrote it, I finally stopped looking back to my mistakes and started to change my writing to be more self-serving. And hey, if there’s enough interest, Gelid will receive a published rewrite and maybe even an ebook form like I had formerly planned.)

After that, a cork was popped, and I’ve been writing a lot more black girls since. Black folxs I should say as most range from AFAB persons to trans and genderqueer, genderfluid and fully other: dragons who take female form but are just them, otherworldly entities, fae who don’t need human gender roles. Honestly, I feel the momentum is still here even though I had to step back from writing to transition my life to Japan. I’m still writing black girls, though now, my life is influenced by half-Japanese and African-American folxs, writing for an often underserved part of Japanese society.

The fantastical is a powerful thing, you know, and when a pen is your sword, you can do a lot of great things. I wish that younger me had the ability to see that would be our reality one day: yet I’m glad I didn’t because realizing that was sweet, if not hard fought for, and makes writing even more valuable to me.

This year, of course, will bring more black girls, along with Japanese writing, largely because of my new environment. I have plans for many stories with all black fae communities, returns to old characters like Colby (Gelid) and Flavia and Sorrell (Polychromatic (18+), a piece from the wonderful SSBB, which was a dream come true!), a magical girl series called end game that contains black duotagonists, and lots of other stuff. I won’t reveal my entire hand: I want to keep some things close to my chest, but I can say that 2017 –and perhaps the rest of my life– will be the Year of Black Magic, of celebrating my skin through writing, of realizing worlds where real society is tossed out and equality, fairness, and mutuality reign.

I’m going to end this telling you that I’m still a work in progress: a decade of actualized self-hate is not cured by writing some pretty badass black folx overnight, or even in a few years. Loving my blackness, writing my blackness, and living both of those things are a daily effort, and sometimes, it gets beaten down and I feel worthless because ultimately I am a human. I’m not invincible. Yet I still find the ability, day by day, to rise up and be proud of me.

I’m but one of many black writers, but I’ll say that I’m proud: a decade of writing, a decade of The Struggle, and I’ve arrived. I love my life, and especially love my writing. I hope to share it for as long as I can on here, and everywhere for the rest of my life.

Say it loud: Spencer Avery’s Black and Proud!

tl;dr: I won’t ever have an all white story again, and honestly, probably never a story without 96% POC characters. It may be the case that I’m that one writer with the Token White Person in the future: I often wonder if that’ll be true. I don’t mean that in a negative way either: I love writing characters, but I also think it’s important that little black girls and black folxs can see themselves succeed not through strife, but through living in other worlds and engaging with life without having to always Overcome. Strife is not a Black Descriptor: it’s not all we are meant to do. Once I write black, I sure ain’t going back: ugh, that’s the wrong tense, but you get the point. I love writing representation for people who look like me, who are dark brown, darkly toasted, and proud. I don’t know if I ever could stop: the thought makes me rather sad. I hope that 14-year-old me who sought representation in tidbits, in girls like Tally Youngblood who I desperately hoped had an inkling of actual melanin, would be proud: that me would love to know that there are fae and witches, princesses in towers and deities that look like me: black, curled hair, big-brained, and adventurous in whatever they do.