#kind of basis of race irl and can just have characters of any color that we can relate to i do just have so many feelings about asian

[cheesey-rice]

And also I think I found it harder to understand/be sympathetic towards ambrosius when I read the comic but like having him and ballisters relationship shown up front is so important in adding just these Stakes of kind of showing what they had, and like the idea that you can survive in this institution with just this one person as your pillar of support but that it's also something that can exist without that system in a different context and having to rediscover that..... Hmmmnmm

[writingwithcolor]

Announcement: No Longer Answering Rubber Stamp Questions

Introduction

Here at Writing With Color, we’ve noticed a shift in the questions we are receiving. In the past, the majority of questions challenged the necessity of diversity in fiction or asked for assistance in making diversity seem more plausible in world-building. We also received many questions on how to describe and characterize people of color in respectful ways that didn’t demonize different races, ethnicities and religions.

By and large, we see that our followers understand why these concepts are important, and for that we congratulate you! This kind of progress takes real, long-term, internal work. Our team hopes that any advice or input you received from us over the years has helped you continue to develop as a writer. We hope you will continue to support us in the future and are especially pleased to hear from our non-white commenters who have let us know when our content has let them feel seen or heard.

However…

We have noticed a recent trend in asks that is discouraging. Many askers seem concerned with receiving our blanket approval of a particular concept or character. These asks often don’t provide us with the direction and context crucial to providing advice from a race or ethnicity-based perspective. Examples include:

“I’m writing a character from [insert background] who has [insert traits]. Is this ok?”

“I’m creating a world where I have made [insert concept] the basis of my world-building. Is this allowed?”

Hi, I’m a [insert identity]. Is it problematic to have [concept/ character] in my story?

“I’m creating a [Race A] character with [these] traits, a [Ethnicity 1] character with [those] traits, a [Race B] character with [some other traits] and a [sex/ gender minority] character with a [different set of traits]. Is this combination offensive?

We call these questions rubber stamp questions. If this describes your question, there’s no need to feel bad. We realize that there was never an explicit explanation of this concept. In addition, our team is mindful of the changing demographics of tumblr that might make it mean we are receiving questions from a younger user-base are not yet familiar with many of the principles we outline on this website. However, on that note…

What is Rubber Stamping?

Rubber stamping refers to the practice of seeking an endorsement without questioning or seeking to alter the status quo. The purpose of Writing With Color is to be a focal point for discussion about diversity in writing rather than simply prescribe a series of corrective measures. Without knowing the asker’s intent (Which we can’t, since we aren’t mind readers), our moderators are not in a position to provide you with carte blanche for your writing concept in the name of all other non-white people. Yes, we have a certain level of skill and expertise on many of these topics, but we are not here to take on the burden of all PoC to approve your writing choices. Nor would it be fair to other PoC if you took our response as a reason to dismiss the perspectives of other PoC (An unfortunately common phenomenon).  

Bluntly, on the moderator end, these asks are also incredibly frustrating because they are vague and thus:

Time consuming

Labor intensive (mentally and emotionally)

The last example from the previous section (AKA “Laundry lists”) is particularly time consuming because multiple moderators must collaborate to produce an answer that boils down to each moderator saying, “I guess it depends??? *shrug*” but in slightly different ways.

Perhaps the biggest problem with rubber stamp asks is they feel (to us) like they are more about the asker’s desire for closure/ approval/ virtue signaling than a willingness to participate in the kind of education and discussion on diversity we are trying to foster on this blog.

To that effect: We will no longer be answering such questions.

(If you sent in such ask before this goes up on November 15th, 2020, a moderator may reach out to you individually to better address your inquiry as submitted.)

However: Don’t worry! We also are here to teach you how to makes these questions better!

Fixing Rubber Stamp questions:

1. Be specific.

Instead of Can I/ May I, try “How can I” or “When can I” or “What can I”?

Thus instead of: “I’m Christian. May I create a Jewish character seeking to become an actress in 1920s Hollywood?” —> “How do I, as a Christian, create a compelling Jewish character while being mindful of the interplay between my own intrinsic bias and historical accounts of prominent Jewish figures in early Hollywood?”Or, instead of: “I want to write a story about a modern day piracy in the East Indian Ocean, but with magic. Is this problematic? —> “Given the continuation of modern day piracy in the East Indian Ocean, what are some tropes I should avoid if I decide to go with a modern fantasy set in this region?”

2. Remember: The goal is improved understanding, not approval. Sometimes, you really just want to know *why* you can’t use a particular concept, and that curiosity is good! Questions that ask “Why?” in good faith are often how you can learn a lot about your own intrinsic biases and the limits of your own knowledge.

Thus, instead of: If I write about [controversial topic], am I a bad person? —> Why is it better for someone like me to not write about [controversial topic]?

This approach has the bonus effect of making us feel like you actually care about what we think.

3. Write your question as a draft: Edit your ask at least once or twice to provide as much information as possible while being concise. I’ve told this to college students before, but I can tell when a person wrote their assignment by the quality of the writing. Writing done late at night, when sleep deprived and without at least one edit contains extraneous information while not having a clear point.

Going through your question (Preferably a day after you wrote it) will help you narrow down what you really want to know.

Remember: You all have free will and can write whatever you please. We presume that you seek WWC’s input because you wish to write on issues pertaining to people of color with greater levels of awareness. On a practical note, we recognize that social media, trolling, call-outs, doxxing and other dimensions of cyberbullying make writers online hesitant to do anything unless they think they have the majority of the public on their side. There are times when it is obvious that the asker is asking more because they need approval to feel less anxious when they share their work with others.

However, if the above is your worry, either you aren’t ready to write on this topic or you need to rethink the boundaries you set with the online communities/ individuals you interact with as well as how you manage your internet presence. With respect to personal anxieties when it comes to writing, morality, your conscience and so forth, we recommend turning to your own support systems IRL. As relative strangers on the internet, we are not well-qualified to allay personal concerns.

Remember: Writing with diversity is like training for a marathon. Give yourself permission to expand your comfort zone at the pace your research capabilities and experience allow!

We appreciate that you all trust us to provide helpful, well-thought out feedback for your ideas, and we also thank you for respecting our perspectives even if you may disagree. In the same vein, we request that you put the level of thought into your questions you think appropriate given that another human being is going to spend, at a minimum, several hours coming up with their response. We look forward to hearing from you! 

- The WWC Team

(A link to this article will be added to the pinned FAQ for everyone’s reference)

[jpechacek]

Eldritch Princesses: Pocahontas

Previous design posts here, here, here, here, and here.

So remember Mulan and Jasmine? Both POC, both from cultures alternately exoticized and demonized by the West, both a difficult balancing act between sensitivity and keepin’ it monstrous. Well, they have nothing on Pocahontas.

The problem, as I may have said already, is that what a culture considers “monstrous” very often relies on fear of the foreign and the other. Disability, race, sexual orientation, gender, even food have all been used to signify “here is a fearsome creature.” I think that’s pretty much true for any society on the planet. But it gains an additional complication (or three) when you take a character from a group consistently despised and downtrodden by your own—a character based on a real person whose story has been co-opted as imperial propaganda—a character whose people America has considered monsters for centuries (or, at best, magical relics of a vanished era). Nearly any monster trope is something the United States has assigned or still assigned to Native cultures. And I don’t want to perpetuate that.

I talked about this on Twitter a bit (follow me @ vandroidhelsing, we do have such fun over there) and someone pointed out that nobody would really blame me if I skipped Pocahontas. I’m a white American; it’s very possible I don’t have any business doing this at all. [pointed look at Disney.] But part of the point here is to find notions of monstrosity that don’t rely on racism and sexism and all the other things that have plagued horror since its beginning. And after thinking very carefully, and looking at what Native writers and artists have said about appropriate representation, I decided to move forward.

Very, very cautiously.

There’s a lot we don’t know for sure about Pocahontas, since the English told her story and it was in their interest to tell it a certain way, and Disney took their accounts and just kinda skipped along their merry way, doing whatever they felt like doing, so Pocahontas, the movie, is not terribly accurate. Pocahontas herself was a child at the time, and “Pocahontas” is more or less a nickname meaning “playful one”; her given name was Matoaka, meaning “Bright Stream Between The Hills”. She and John Smith were not a couple; John Smith was actually closer to his voice actor’s IRL behavior than the Apollonian figure of enlightenment in the movie; Virginia doesn’t look like that; etc.

Because I wanted to avoid the Savage and the Magical Native American tropes, I didn’t feel comfortable making Pocahontas an overt terror, but I also didn’t want to tilt too far the other direction and make her cuddly. This is cosmic horror, after all. Some of the other princesses (particularly Belle) have been more into sublime territory rather than monstrous, weird rather than wrong, so that seemed like a good basis. The second nucleus was her name—not Pocahontas, but Matoaka, which is such an evocative image.

The first idea involved obscuring Her behind trees, in a kind of metaphorical representation of how her story has come down to us through the years. I kinda like that, but more as a thought experiment than an actual piece. After all, the point is to design a cool monster. The second idea is a literal stream flowing from the mountains over the forest and swamps, past some settlements, and out to sea. (Pocahontas came from the Powhatan Confederacy, which occupied coastal Virginia.) In this iteration, She is a congeries of flat shapes, like the bark the Powhatan tribes used to cover their homes, or like the pages of history. I do appreciate this as a visual, but it doesn’t look monstrous or even particularly weird. Leaving aside the specific look of the monster, this is the way I went, with the narrative ambiguity and the large, expansive landscape.

This rough adds some trees in the foreground and adds the notion of Her as a collection of bright streams twining together. She has some spikier bits as well as some long trailing bits: "Pocahontas”, though it means “playful”, seems to carry overtones of brattiness; the English originally translated it as “little wanton”—i.e., it’s not all fun and games. And the trailing bits, well, since this is Disney Princesses, I wanted to recall the visual of her hair flowing in the wind. (And I just realized one of her iconic moments is jumping off that waterfall, so good job, past-me, for that unintentional association.)

Here I’m focusing on the creature Herself. I didn’t quite like the more fringey carpety look of the appendages earlier, so I went waaayy spikier.

I took a second to go even closer on the appendages and try some things I hadn’t initially considered. At the top you can see I was thinking unnatural, even artificial. The middle is closer to the original conception: sort of organic, botanical or even fungoid. At the bottom it’s more dangerous, like knives, but still attached to the main body by stems. Ultimately, I went with that, but tweaked it with a little bit more dimensionality.

Finished!

During the drawing process itself, I came up with the idea that the main streams are themselves made up of intertwined tendrils, so you can see some little points peeling off a bit like bracts. I also threw some eye-like structures in, because why not.

When it comes down to it, I’m pretty happy, but I think that of all the princesses so far, this one will work better when it’s colored. Since it’s in broad daylight, Her being a “bright stream” doesn’t show up as well as I’d like, and I’m not Gustave Doré; I’m not amazing with linework-only atmospheric perspective (YET). Something to work on for next time, I guess.

And finally, I hope I’ve done this sensitively and respectfully; if I haven’t, I’ll learn and do better next time. As always with the more delicate areas here, please let me know if I’ve messed up.

Next up: Rapunzel!

[manraptor]

WHY I AM DOING THIS?

Tagged by @psychokawaiii (why you drag me into this lol)

Name: Cruz

Height: 5.11

Hogwarts house: Slytherin (I dont know, it haves a cool snake I guess)

Fictional character I’d date: Tomoko Kuroki, Sucy Manbavaran, Mercy (Overwatch), Creepy Susie, SuBeowulf (skullgirls), Philip (Penetralia), David Wong (John Dies at the End)... ok I should stop myself here we’ll be here all day... I want to corrupt, fuck, kill, and date everyone! PHFF

Favorite band: I dont know much about music or what categorized as a band... I guess Queens and Pink Floyd? I just pick random music I think it sounds good to listen while I am high or working on art.

Favorite Artist: Kentaro Miura, Hans Rudolf Giger, Junji Ito, and Wayne Barlowe to name a few that really influenced me. 

When did I make this blog: back in 2013 and I still regret it

How many blogs do I follow: 1,635 (what the fuck is wrong with me)

Do I get asks on a regular basis: Nope because I am not an interesting person to talk to unless you want to feel bad or no response from me long periods of time. Maybe I am an awful person and everyone knows it. *shrugs*

Aesthetic : I dont know really... subtle self-loathing self-deprecation and dislike of humanity?I just show shit whatever I like and is safe for work. hehe

Nickname: Kro and Manraptor

Star Sign: Aires  ♈  <--that looks like a penis

Time Right Now: 16:31 (4:31 pm for you 12 hour fellas)

Last movie I watched: Audition

Last TV show I watched: Jojo’s Bizzare Adventures diamond is unbreakable

What are you wearing right now: Navy blue shirt with basketball shorts... :T

What kind of stuff do you post: I guess is shitposts, cute animals, art tutorials, art stuff in general, anime garbage, random stabs into bullshits of liberals/political left, and random serious topics I feel is important to spread like mental health or your reason why you should hate the human race as a whole... what is wrong with me...

Do you have any other blogs: @lewdraptor it the blog all about the gore IRL, guro, and not safe for work shit you know sex stuff... I do not recommend to go there because is filthy and bloody.

Why did you choose your URL: I started with Kroclel because is some dumb name I made when I was a kid, now its Manraptor because is my internet name gotta keep this shit consistent yo.

Gender: Male I guess dont care why is this important to know?? you can ask my sex but.... aight... 

Pokemon Team: Valor, this app is boring and dumb 

Favorite color: Red and Black

Average hours of sleep: Is really random when I am off from school or a job requires me to go to. Normally I sleep around 8 to 10 hours, but when I have no responsibilities to deal with is either 6 to nothing.

Dream Job: Animator, Filmmaker, some kind of an artist that I wont worried about my next meal, or a cult leader that would be cool.

Cutest baby animals: Gecko Leopards

spread this disease... umm you do not have to respond or anything I do not talk to people much as I should... heh :T (edited: deleted because I was freaking out and did it to shut me up...)