#nonwhite reader

[almostwisegalaxy]

Title of this publication :

"That Precise Moment When I Realize 'Y/N' Wasn't Written for Me 👩🏾‍🦱👩🏾‍🦳🧑‍🦳👩🏾‍🦰👩🏾‍🦲👩‍🦲🧕🏾🧕👩🏼‍🦱🧑‍🦱👩‍🦱 and a Plus-Size Peoples"

"Y/n threw her long blonde hair into a messy bun"

What the helly???‎ ( ⁰▱⁰ )

You know... those fics where Y/N is supposed to be 'universal' but systematically has hair that harmoniously blows in the wind, pale skin that blushes, and tans?

Yeah... Let's talk about it.

"'Y/N has hair like a waterfall in the wind/ He runs his fingers through his silky hair —

" her fine/delicate face"

"they pale skin flushed slightly."

"His blue eyes sparkled."

where, bestie? (⁠ノ⁠｀⁠Д⁠´⁠)⁠ノ⁠彡⁠┻⁠━⁠┻

Yes. That's how I often discover I'm just an extra in a story I chose to read myself? Me, with my hair that needs 2 hours of prep, an oil, a moisturizing spray, and a YouTube tutorial. ?

And then ಠ⁠◡⁠ಠ... I love it when authors think we all have the same hair density. Or that a 'messy bun' is a universal experience. Like, no, I can't just throw my hair back. It stays there, protesting. It needs an action plan, a meeting, a deep conditioning treatment, and some respect. Not just an improvised 'messy bun' at 7 AM before bumping into "Mr~Mrs. Love Interest."

Cause...

Breaking news my dears (.•̵̑⌓•̵̑) :

Not all hair types let themselves be caressed; with mine, I have to negotiate.

............................................* ੈ✩‧₊˚* ੈ✩‧₊

Now.

To you, "x reader" authors,

If you choose to write an x reader, an x Y/N, a neutral or universal reader... then write that. Not a character molded into a single form, not a fixed projection of what we've too often seen: thin, white or too white, pale-skinned, shy/too badass. Too feminine/tomboyish.Too much makeup/"oh my... Do you wear makeup every fucking day? I can't". And the most popular of all...Having "curves in all the right places."

(I have a long back. Now I do what? Huh?)

Because we don't need to have cascading hair to be worthy of a loving gaze.

We don't need to be small, pink, demure, or "delicate" to deserve a heart-squeezing romance.

We don't have to fit into a mold, damn it!

We just need to exist — truly — in your words. With our hair that doesn't necessarily shine in the sun, our skin that doesn't blush but gets hot, our bodies that take up space, our voices that don't always stay quiet. Our laughter that is not at all graceful. A "social laugh."

That's the beauty of an x reader: it's the silent promise that we can be ourselves... and still be chosen.

Without having to fit into a foreign silhouette, without having to silence our textures, our tones, our contours.

And if you can't write that, then say so. Don't offer us an illusion of ourselves.

Because we, too, deserve to have butterflies in our stomachs without having to disappear into skin that isn't our own.

We deserve to be loved without translation.

Love doesn't need filters. Just a gaze fixed upon us, as we are, that says: 'You. You are enough.'

......................................................

And for those who still have doubts or who think that we are dramatizing everything today.

A very simple example. (I think you're at least up to par for that one. Right?...) :

"Her frail/thin/fragile body"→ A toxic equation between femininity, desirability, and smallness.

"She stumbled clumsily" / "She was clumsy, that's what he liked about her" → Too often a way of infantilizing the female character and erasing strength or self-control.

"She had this innocence that no one could ignore."→ Infantilization + idealized virginity = 🛑

"His voice, soft as a whisper"→ And the deep voices? The loud voices? The broken voices? Made invisible.

"She didn't know how beautiful she was." → Overused false modesty. What if you know you're hot? So what?

"Her thin/delicate face"→ Implies that an "acceptable" face is small, thin, almost childlike.

"Her long, silky, cascading blonde hair" → Makes all other hair textures, Length and colors invisible. What if I'm bald, huh?

Inspiration of this text is taken from here

[daisywords]

thinking about this post but also it's more than that. do you ever think about how stories starring men are allowed to be about humanity but stories starring women have to be about Womanhood

[specialagentartemis]

the big thing about worldbuilding is that it’s ALL about tone. The other thing about worldbuilding is that it’s about repeated tropes that keep showing up in aggregate. You can control your story’s tone but unfortunately your story exists in conversation with all the other stories in its genre and you can’t control those, only how your story engages or doesn’t engage with the trends those other stories set.

“why are there potatoes in this Generically Vaguely Medieval European Fantasy World?” gets mocked a lot but it’s a question worth asking. If your world has Wizard McDonald’s with a McDragon (dragon hamburger) and Magic Fries no one is gonna be asking where the potatoes come from because you have set the tone of the world: it’s silly and satirical and those aren’t the relevant questions to be asking.

There’s also something very fair to be said for the Vaguely Medieval England Fantasy World, like the Vaguely Star Trek Sci-Fi World, as a known setting: we all know it, we all know its tropes, we all basically know How It Works, so authors don’t HAVE to do any meaningful worldbuilding any more than they’d have to if they set their story in, like, London, or New York City. Anyone in the English speaking world is at least vaguely familiar with how London or NYC work; similarly, the Generic Medieval Setting and the Generic Space Setting are places English language genre readers Basically Know. It’s a pre-made world full of inbuilt connotations to drop your characters/plot/concept into. There’s value in that, imo particularly for short-form works.

But if you take your secondary fantasy world to stand seriously on its own, to support a fantasy epic of your own, it can fall apart at the seams under the conflicting weight of own casual assumptions, and that’s what the “where do the potatoes come from?” question is all about. It’s about assumptions. The potatoes question is basically a synecdoche for, “if your world has the (literal) fruits of nonwhite people’s labor and cultures in it, does it have any nonwhite people?” The Shire has potatoes, tobacco, and iirc sunflowers and strawberries: all plants native to and domesticated in the Americas by Indigenous American people. The question is for you to ask yourself, why are potatoes a quaintly charming English thing for hobbits to eat, while, say, a hobbit eating quinoa or avocado toast would be jarring? Why do the royalty of Westeros eat lemon tarts but not curry? Why is coffee normal in this temperate-climate setting, but papayas and bananas would break immersion? Why are some foods “normal” and others “foreign”? What does this indicate about the assumptions baked into your story-world about what is Normal and what is Foreign? And why are potatoes, in particular, so common in fantasy worlds that are Vaguely European? Why is this a Normal Part Of The World but quinoa or maize corn (other South American Andean staple crops) aren’t? Why don’t we think of potatoes as a South American food?

It’s not about the potatoes, not really. It’s about whether you’ve thought about how Your World works, whether you’re being deliberate with the tone and the type of expectations you set, or if you’re just repeating what Feels Normal without digging into what’s Normal and what’s Foreign and why.

[antimony-medusa]

So I have just learned that @fandomtrumpshate (huge charity auction where offers to make fan works are auctioned off) is allowing people to sign up offering MCYT this year and so far they don't have anyone signing up offering it! So I'm staring at this entry form...

So! If you think you can sign up and say "i can write a 1k or 10k or 5k fic for any prompt" some time before the end of the year, you have a chance to raise some money for charity (list of charities you can pick from here), (fandoms you can sign up with are here— and you an also write in niche fandoms!).

They are particularly looking for people who an write "Ambiguous endings, Aro/ace characters, Canonically trans/nonbinary characters, F/F ships, Gen or platonic works, Genderswap/genderbending, Nonwhite characters’ racial or cultural experiences, Poly ships, Racebending, Rarepairs, Reader insert, Trans/nonbinary interpretations of characters, and Unhappy endings." so you know. If any of those are you. Looking at my friend list knowingly. Why don't we see if someone will give money to charity to make us write a fic? Signups close today, on the 2nd!

[pocketsizedquasar-3]

[ID: 6 panels of a digitally drawn comic showing Daggoo doing twist-outs into Pip’s hair. Pip looks a little nervous through the process, with a warm & encouraging Daggoo, and by the end of it he looks at his reflection with surprised joy. More detailed IDs for each panel in alt.]

i finally finished what i was working on for @creatingblackcharacters’ Black History Month Challenge!

so for those who don’t know, for a few years now i’ve been working on adapting Moby Dick into a webcomic. as you might imagine, a text written by a white man in 1851 is oftentimes Very Racist with how it treats its characters of color, and this very much includes its Black characters, of which there are two of note in the cast, Daggoo and Pip. there are parts of the original text in which Melville tries (and even sometimes doesn’t completely fail) to say poignant things or critiques about racism in the text (and much of the text does very explicitly and intentionally deal w/ racism and racialized dynamics, something literally 99% of adaptations ignore), but for the most part, his nonwhite characters are flat, stereotypical, often violent, racist caricatures.

and i won’t get too much into that here (god knows i’ve rambled at LENGTH abt all of this many times & i will many more), because the point of this challenge is to share art about Black joy, but suffice to say that! I am doing my best to intentionally engage with the race & racism of the original text, whether it’s for characters of my own racial identity that Melville bastardizes (like Fedallah), or those of others (like his Black characters, Daggoo and Pip, and his Indigenous characters, and so on). It’s important to me not only to be in conversation with and to challenge Melville’s racism in my work, but also to allow these characters to be more than the one note racist stereotypes Melville writes them as.

So!!! that’s some long winded context, but here’s Daggoo doing Pip’s hair for him and showing him how! I’m extremely fond of Pip getting to be loved and cared for by others of the crew, especially the harpooners (of whom Dag is one). i just think Pip deserves his comically large number of dads who will care for him and make him feel safe and shelter him from the absolute Horror that is 19th century American Whaling (and the Horror that is their white crewmates!). i just think this little Black boy deserves love and joy 😭😭 and i think Daggoo deserves to be a soft, gentle caregiver who can give that to him.

I have lots more thoughts about this and about them and about their hair which i may expand on under a cut or in the tags, but because this is already getting so long!:

to my Black viewers, and my Black readers, you belong in classic literature spaces! you deserve to see yourselves represented thoughtfully and carefully in the ‘canon’ of literature, and to challenge when you aren’t, and be supported in your critiques! your contributions to both literature as a whole (whether “classic” or otherwise) and to literary analysis and critique are invaluable and irreplaceable, both when you discuss the racism in these works and spaces and when you engage in any other kind of analysis or creation. And I want you to be able to enjoy stories of all kinds without people brushing aside your existence or pretending your concerns are invalid or don’t matter because ~it’s a great classic!~ or ~it was a different time.~ your voices and your creations and your art matter.

& on the smallest scale, i hope at least to bring you a little bit of joy. 

I'm tagging some of my art friends! I know the lateness of this in the month means it’ll be hard for anyone to probably do anything of their own for the challenge, but hopefully y’all can still check out & support all the lovely art that’s already been made for this!! @coulson-is-an-avenger @fricklefracklefloof @layalu @brainwormterrarium @seaflying-fliptuna @rootscorrode @holocephal1 and anyone else who wants to!!

& thank you to Ice for making this wonderful challenge, and thank you for all the lovely, incredible work you do on @creatingblackcharacters. truly a blessing to this world 💖💖

anyway, some more notes, because i can’t help rambling:

i referenced a lot of images & videos of people doing twist outs for this but i wanna shout out the video i watched and rewatched and paused and zoomed in on the Most; it’s by kbmaria on YouTube and called “Twist Out on Short TWA 4C Hair | Big Chop Hairstyles”!! def go check her out :]

i loved looking up 1800s hair combs (and afro picks, though it seems they were all just called ‘combs’) & 1800s sleep bonnets for this! the details of the bonnets kind of got lost in simplification (they really do just look like modern ones but with more lace!) but drawing them and the comb was still fun. i also was looking up specifically a lot of Black hair care history and there is some really cool stuff about the original invention and spread of the hot comb (used for straightening hair) and Black people’s role in that (there’s again more i could get into but i won’t right now but do look it up if you’re interested! the library of congress has a good presentation article with sources about Black hair care history. much of it is later the timeline that’s relevant to these characters in particular, but still very interesting!)

i always defaulted to giving Daggoo an Afro when i designed him (mainly because he’s described with one in the book). over recent years, i’ve definitely thought more about this decision and about whether/how to incorporate different hairstyles into representing him. whaling is a…unique situation—long, long stretches of time (we’re talking months) of extreme lethargy with no tasks to do punctuated by unpredictable short bursts (days to weeks at a time) of incredibly high intensity, life threatening, and laborious work. it leaves lots of time to do more complicated, time-intensive hairstyles (which his hair definitely could benefit from in an environment where he’s getting very sweaty, sea-salty, and wet frequently!), but any of that time could be interrupted at any moment; it’s impossible to Plan for when the whale hunts happen and put your hair in a more protective style ahead of time. i don’t really have a specific answer to this yet, but it’s smthn i’m thinking about a lot and researching a lot! visual historical references we have (that i’ve seen at least) of Black sailors of this time tend to have their hair natural and short-cropped (which is how Pip keeps his), but i def want to draw more hairstyles on Dag at different points.

in any case, i do love the idea of him doing Pip’s hair for him (even if the style will be Very temporary due to the nature of their work — he’ll probably get wet very soon 😔) and showing him how to do different ones. starting with something maybe a little easier to do (like this twist out) and maybe showing more complex ones as time goes on.

as far as hair moisturizers go, ive also done a good amount of reading over the years of what kinds of hair moisturizers were available at diff time periods (did you know lots of victorian women used egg washes in their hair to keep it moisturized? i didn’t). i like to think that Dag keeps his own personal stash of natural oil of some kind — he may have access to coconut oil/cedarwood oil/smthn like that. and if he’s ever in a pinch, apparently whale oil is a fine hair moisturizer! and was even used in cosmetics in the 20th century! so hey. got plenty of that around lmao

i think that’s all i have to say for now lmao. thank you again Ice for making this challenge 💖💖

[cephalog0d]

It's a very distinctive fandom

There are 11 auctions for @fandomtrumpshate this year for Leverage! Check out the links below to support important charity work and get yourself some fun fanworks in return, no cons or heists required!

Fanfiction

idkimoutofideas - <5k, all ages, special interests: Aro/ace characters, Gen (no ship) or platonic works, Poly ships

Sansa Catskill - 2k+, all ages, special interests: Aro/ace characters, Canonically trans or nonbinary chars, F/F ships, Poly ships, Rarepairs, Trans or nonbinary interpretations of canon characters

ambernotember - 5-10k, 18+ only, special interests: Aro/ace characters, Rarepairs

nerdsandthelike - <5k, all ages, special interests: Ambiguous endings, Aro/ace characters, F/F ships, Gen (no ship) or platonic works, Poly ships, Trans or nonbinary interpretations of canon characters

Walkingaline - 5-10k, all ages, special interests: Ambiguous endings, Gen (no ship) or platonic works, Rarepairs, Reader insert

kneesntoes - 5-10k, 18+ only, special interests: Canonically trans or nonbinary chars, Gen (no ship) or platonic works, Poly ships, Rarepairs, Trans or nonbinary interpretations of canon characters

roseclaw - 5-10k, 18+ only

CamrynBarnes - 5-10k, all ages

Podfic

bobreyshuffles - 5-10k, all ages, special interests: Aro/ace characters, Gen (no ship) or platonic works, Nonwhite characters' racial or cultural experiences, Poly ships, Rarepairs, Trans or nonbinary interpretations of canon characters

DevilWithABirdDress - 1-5k, all ages, special interests: Aro/ace characters, Gen (no ship) or platonic works, Nonwhite characters' racial or cultural experiences, Poly ships, Rarepairs, Trans or nonbinary interpretations of canon characters

Fanvid

Tafadhali - 5 minute video, all ages, special interests: Aro/ace characters, Canonically trans or nonbinary chars, F/F ships, Nonwhite characters' racial or cultural experiences

[ofbreathandflame-archive]

i haven't read the acotar series but yeah there are...SO many issues with it. I was about to say I'm not surprised that people wanted the racism to be more violent so they could acknowledge but actually, y'know what? No, I am surprised. I'm concerned that people want characters of colour to be dragged through the dirt and be the victims of horrific acts before they can acknowledge the racism of the author. I cannot emphasise how crestfallen, how upset I felt when I searched up what Illyrians were for the first time. Like...oh. They are brown, like me. But they are also a whitewashed version of what white people want them to be: a violent, primitive nation that treat their women awfully, just so that white people can come in and save them, as if they weren't the ones ramping up that kind of misogyny in the first place.

I look across the YA sphere and I see white authors constantly say, through their writing, that poc are violent, that we are backwards, that the women should not exist and do not have lives unless they are attached to white people. I feel that the only time this has kind of been challenged in a mainstream YA fandom has been the grishaverse, and even then, the rep for brown peoples is muddled and vague at best, and the rep for Black people feels like there was no exploration of culture at all.

What I'm trying to say is: it's not great in the YA market, but SJM is by far one of the most racist authors out there. White fans shouldn't be begging for the violence against characters of colour to be ramped up so they can decide when they can step in and say enough is enough.

ugh! this was so beautifully put!

thiis will be a long discussion!

i really want to preface this by saying i would really implore everyone in their free time to read toni morrison's playing in the dark! it's a deep dive into the ways blackness (and in this case minority status) is defined by white superiority; how the very presence of the non-white is always used to reiterated the inherent superiority of their white peers! poc are used as conduits to uphold beliefs of white supremacy - the very existence of the nonwhite existing to boasts the intelligence of their white peers.

sjm's work moves in such racist territory that it so easy so see these mentalities etched into her work. every single poc that is included in the story is relegated to this ideology; their very existence speaks to the power of the main character. the primary function of the interactions deal in shame, humiliation, and cowardice (see: tarquin, nehemia, thesan, helion, tarquin, cressida, nesryn, lucien, the unnamed enslaved @ endovier, baxian, unnamed illyrian population etc).

morrison opens up her novel by asserting that we should be conscious of the way the author's imagination expresses itself:

“Both [reading and writing] require being mindful of the places where imagination sabotages itself, locks its own gates, pollutes its vision. Writing and reading mean being aware of the writer’s notions of risk and safety, the serene achievement of, or sweaty fight for, meaning and response-ability.”

morrison also posits that author's intenionality and/or bias are unfortunately apart of the creative process of imagination, reiterating:

“The imagination that produces work which bears and invites rereadings, which motions to future readings as well as contemporary ones, implies a shareable world and an endlessly flexible language. Readers and writers both struggle to interpret and perform within a common language shareable imaginative worlds. And although upon that struggle the positioning of the reader has justifiable claims, the author’s presence—her or his intentions, blindness, and sight—is part of the imaginative activity.”

this initial opening builds an understanding of the creative process, in a wholesome way. what i mean is - morrison is establishes that the creative process is informed by our own perceptions and understanding. the way our the narrative voice reconciles normalcy vs. unknown says something about the author. or what the author has put to page. the reason i am even discussing this is to make a similar point: sjm's writing oftentimes subconsciously asserts the dominance of the 'main, white character,' in conjunction with a ethnic, poor, nonwhite individuals of the story. when we meet celaena, we are immediately aware of aelin's 'superiority' over the slaves in endovier. the function of her slavery is to relate her power, while the story views the enslaved as dump, hopeless, individuals whose only goal is to die for their liberation in an endless cycle. aelin even complains that she 'finally' can talk to compotent people with assumption that the enslaved at endovier were somehow too dumb to adequtely communcate with her.

a court of thorns and roses invents an entire culture whose only cultural practices seemed be filled with violence, misogyny, and brutality. then the story argues that only three (3) out of thousands of brown men actually have common sense. that they're so dumb and brutish that they'd absolutely choose to have barely any resources out of spite of their benevolent high lord. cassian, rhys, and az are the strongest in history. and to relate their power, we get these dumb brutes who just seem okay for fighting for a country that would not even be allowed to enter....that's actually some crazy racist writing lmaooo. or the fact that nuala and cerridwen are trained spies, who up to this point, make so much money they'd probably be able to retire...and they just choose to be also the handmaidens...for five-hundred year old fae. like...immediately after acotar, there back working. rhys and feyre can still be reeling from that experience but nuala and cerridwen can just serve because that's just what they like to do.

the next notable quote states:

“These speculations have led me to wonder whether the major and championed characteristics of our national literature—individualism, masculinity, social engagement versus historical isolation; acute and ambiguous moral problematics; the thematics of innocence coupled with an obsession with figurations of death and hell—are not in fact responses to a dark, abiding, signing Africanist presence”

“The fabrication of an Africanist persona is reflexive; an extraordinary meditation on the self; a powerful exploration of the fears and desires that reside in the writerly conscious. It is an astonishing revelation of longing, of terror, of perplexity, of shame, of magnanimity. It requires hard work not to see this.”

in this way, the nonwhite becomes the site of a descent into darkness, hypersexality and power for white people. think of the way in which feyre's darkness is often times heavily associated with the nonwhite (see: court of nightmares). this sexy, liberated, dark woman using south asian culture to establish superiority while eschewing the people who are the originators of said culture.

but - really want to move this away from a discussion on individual characters and really focus the subject on sjm's role as the write. ultimately, feyre, aelin, nehemia, rhys...aren't real. they are reflections of the author's own internal dialogue. i actually really resonated with this observation/ assumption morrison's makes and that is:

“I assumed that since the author was not black, the appearance of Africanist characters or narrative or idiom in a work could never be about anything other than the “normal,” unracialized, illusory white world that provided the fictional backdrop.”

ultimately, i believe the racism comes from the fact that, although these are fictional worlds born from sjm's imagination, a lot of the racism comes from the fact that sjm is writing what she believes to be normal. and so - that's why the problem ultimately persists. violence against woc and poc are justified already. it doesn't matter that rhys slaughters hordes of illyrians because the assumption is that they're probably horrible, brutish people who ultimately deserve to die; nevermind, they could have had complex reasons, just like rhys. it's okay that the illyrian women are oppressed because...that's just the way things have always been. the only queen who helped rhys and feyre is humilated, murdered, and has her head shaven. we get one sentence about her and the story moves on. nehemia planned her own brutal murder, awoke dorian's power, and as a reward....her entire country is burned to the ground and the liberation of ellywe is delegated toward one sentence about maybe going to visit. , sorcha gets her head cut off (and its treated as a joke by the fandom) and dorian blames her for essentially being 'too fragile' or something like that. poc are already being brutalized in these stories, we're just positioned not to care.

and im not saying that ya isn't extremely racist - but i think sjm is by far one of the worst racist authors i have come across. not even ms. bardugo or aveyard or her other peers have this many racial problems by comparison and boy are there still problems even in those stories. like damn even george rr martin has like...semi-better writing (but he's actually another author that really exemplifies what morrison was talking about and id love to one day talk about that. but it woul take me quite awhile. i do like like asoiaf obvi, but it just has a lot of problems that i cant ignore). lmaooo even armentrout made some attempt to rectify her representation issue and thats saying a lot.

[chuchulovelymunimuni]

Actually though, so sick of seeing people draw skinny frank, lightskin leo and piper, and 3a curl textured hazel lol

I know the beauty of being in a fandom for a book series is that everyone gets to interpret the characters in their own ways but maybe can we question why certain white readers have a horrific aversion to drawing characters of color without scrubbing them of their unique and nonwhite traits??

[relaxxattack]

HI HELLO MAX (do you still go by max? this is suri) i left it in the tags but i wanted to drop you an ask abt it too because something i don’t see talked about as much as the representation of queerness and gender in SU is its depictions of race, as told by me, a queer poc :D

so… SU might have had some of the most positive depictions of nonwhite characters i have ever seen in the cartoons and kids/teens media i grew up with. the pizza family come to mind, but i don’t want to speak on them without a black fan’s perspective.

what i CAN and absolutely WILL speak on, though, is connie maheshwaran, and her parents, priyanka and doug. Connie might be one of, if not the best, depiction of an indian (in the sense of From India, not indigenous american) character in any of the media i grew up with. SU takes so much care to treat her like a full person and give her realistic growth and challenges even when she’s not the focus of the story, and i’ll always be grateful for it.

i don’t know that people are as aware of indian racial stereotypes in media, but if you go back through well loved shows with an eye for what to look for, you’ll start seeing them everywhere. the typical hallmarks i look out for are as follows:

indian characters are overwhelmingly men. this on its own isn’t necessarily a racist trope, but it becomes one when…

… indian men and boys are constantly portrayed as physically weak, socially inept, unfunny, uncool, awkward, or the butt of the joke. in adult characters, this usually extends to a lack of a romantic or sex life, combined with desperation and a pathetic “neediness”. this may be also combined with stereotypical markers of effeminate behavior or gayness, i.e. being overly consumed with hygiene or grooming, petty/catty behavior, etc. broadly, it’s emasculation.

if indian women are portrayed at all, they’re often portrayed as unattractive, prudish, academically minded to the exclusion of everything else, similarly socially inept, though with women it’s usually portrayed as bluntness. weirdly often they’re shown as physically stronger and very often masculinized, as is the case for most women of color.

there are a lot of titles i adore but have trouble revisiting because of these stereotypes— this is baljeet in phineas and ferb. this is ravi in jessie. this is chirag gupta in diary of a wimpy kid. i rarely saw representation to begin with as a kid, and a lot of the time, this was all that was available to me.

enter SU, and enter connie. i really love how bubble buddies (s1e2) sets her up as if she is going to be some kind of demure affection for steven to pine for from afar, only to immediately cut in and show that she’s actually deeply lonely, and that trying to be this perfect girl is taking a toll on her.

after all of these stereotypes, connie is a marvel. nightmare hospital is still one of my favorite episodes just for the sheer catharsis that comes from her finding the strength to challenge her mother’s perception of her, reveal more of the true self she’s been cultivating, and ultimately emerge with a better relationship because of it. there’s a lot of episodes and even just individual scenes in episodes with different focuses where the time is taken to just… show connie in all her different facets. we see her as a reader and a fan, we see her as an athlete, a passionate musician, an artist, a teen girl with her own complicated emotions to contend with, an incredible persuasive speaker, and a really good friend. as the series marches on she blossoms into this really skilled, confident and levelheaded young woman with a serious knack for diplomacy— and can i just say, it’s such a breath of fresh air to see an indian character who ISN’T academically pursuing science or engineering. connie is the exact opposite of the stereotypical indian character; episodes like the crystal temps and the finale of SUF really shine a light on what a fantastic public speaker she is and how much she’s grown from shy and anxious to outspoken and unafraid of her own anger. even episodes not focused on her take the time to show that her growth is constantly happening, even when we can’t see it.

ultimately, i can sum this all up as the writers simply treating connie like an important character worthy of depth and respect, and seems insane that she was one of the only ones i knew of for so long. i first saw her in middle school and connected with her instantly. i can’t think of a character before or after that i’ve been able to see both so much of myself in AND so much to aspire to. connie was my rock through some of the most difficult years i faced. i’ll forever be infinitely, unbelievably grateful to rebecca sugar for her.

hi suri! :)

this is a wonderful, beautiful ask that i’m tempted to just let sit on its own.

i’m really glad you shared this because i hadn’t thought very much through this lens before. watching the show i mostly took note of how great for a “female love interest” character connie is. while she does struggle with shyness and making friends, this isn’t portrayed as submissive; and in fact in the very episode she’s introduced she has a loud, emotional outburst about her completely valid fears. i always appreciated that while connie is having to fight to break the mold by being an awesome, swordfighting adventurer — this isn’t portrayed as a consequence of “being a girl” but instead as something unfair and unusual from her overprotective parents. it’s nice to have a story that obviously does have undertones of misogyny without it being weirdly two dimensional— connie is not “a girl who wants to be one of the boys”, she is a normal girl, whose struggles mostly revolves around dealing with her strained relationship with overprotective parents with overly high expectations… something both relatable to kids in a general sense but also, i’m realizing, likely specifically relatable to children of first generation immigrants.

connie isn’t quiet or submissive, and while she does deal with being overlooked and subdued it is something specific and real and grounded. connie herself is an incredibly grounded but dynamic character— the only one with a different outfit every time she appears!— someone so full of life and changing. the essence of being human, and the perfect foil to steven, who is magically static, in that way. you can really see just how much care they took with everything in this show, from the art to the story. it genuinely warms my heart.

i really really love connie. thank you for this ask.

[puddicure]

Sorry I’m feeling very punchy today about “representation” and how there is increasingly no such thing as stories about non white ppl written with empathy and compassion, just “own voices.” Bc then when whatever nonwhite ppl make for ourselves isn’t received well (even if we are pulling punches or writing for the White reader, even a white gay reader) it can be attributed to Us Being Inherently Unmarketable and ‘Our Voices’ being undesirable to the ‘average reader’

[nonbinarygamzee]

🔥

ive touched upon this one before but they ways that people apply/revoke the nuances of racialized readings in homestuck is like entirely dependent on whether they Like the character in question and can thus use that racialization to absolve/demonize characters depending on their preferences. you see the tired argument about gamzee being a white appropriator with no regard for the fact her religion,culture, and ideology is all mockingly and disparagingly drawing from actual cultural practices and theres no payoff to the supposed idea that the story has anything at all to say about her proximity to whiteness while repeatedly drawing from tropes and modes of storytelling that paint a picture of antiblack charicature. meanwhile you have characters like the strilondes who are more or less confirmed to be white people with varying degrees of clai over black culture and yet because they have a generally more positive view from the fans it is reinterpretted as good faith readings of nonwhiteness. for the record i also tend to depict them as nonwhite because they like gamzee do still experience levels of racialization in the text itself despite this, and i also just think we have seen enough of them as white to last a few lifetimes over, but its a very palpable difference in how the reality of authorial fumbling was handled by readers.

[olderthannetfic]

The To Gaze Upon a Wicked God situation is more complicated than a straightforward "yes/no" on whether it's a colonizer romance or not imo.

I think the author wants to send an anti colonial message with the book, but it very much wants to have the cake and eat it too. It's written a lot like other "dark romantasy" and the marketing surrounding it went hard on the enemies to lovers thing (the Zutara comparisons especially was still being pushed even in late April). Iirc, the real love interest only appears for less than five scenes?

With that in mind, I don't think it's unreasonable to read the protagonist's rejection of the prince at the end as a set-up to a tortured "I love him but I can't trust him anymore because he's evil and lied to me" while Baihu simped for her in the background and the prince gets redeemed with a heroic act at the end of the second book or something. That was my impression until it was revealed that the childhood friend was the real love interest.

(Maybe I just read too many angsty "you killed my whole clan but I still love you even though I'm not supposed to" cnovels in my youth hahaha)

Imo, it was in really bad taste to do a fake out marketing, but idk if she has control over that. It feels like nobody around her understood how touchy the subject and her inspirations were, because none of these irl decisions wouldn't have happened if they did. I don't think the original anon had the right to comment like they understood everything without reading the book, but I completely get the feeling of "wtf girl you did not just write/say that." Also the writing was... not good.

I hope the "baihu cut" remedies a lot of its issues. Plenty of white authors write shit takes on history. Asian authors shouldn't be burned at the stake when they do the same

--

(Followup to last anon about to gaze upon wicked gods) One thing I forgot is that the author's notes directly mentioned the Japanese occupation and unit 731. I think it's reasonable for readers to make the connection between that and the Roman invasion + human experimentation mentioned in the book. I can't blame them from being grossed out or even outraged when everything irl points to Antony being the intended love interest even though he's the leader of in universe unit 731

I can well believe that it's mostly a skill issue.

People should be free to criticize a book for what's actually in there, but yeah, there's definitely this vibe like nonwhite authors or minority authors or whomever aren't allowed to just... not be very good.

I don't mean they should be free from all criticism, but there's a particular type of extra torches-and-pitchforks criticism that amounts to "Thou shalt be a godlike writer from birth or else!"

[black-is-beautiful18]

Just wanted to say that it is alright to be fans of books like LegendBorn, Children of Blood and Bone, and Raybearer but if you are not Black you are not the targeted audience. They deserve your support but the author is not writing with a nonblack audience in mind. The same goes for other nonwhite authors no matter where they come from. Usually these authors are writing for themselves and ppl who look like them. Seeing ourselves is much more important than whether or not white readers like it.

[burr-ell]

the latest chapter of emperor and the goddess was fucking W I L D - edel got not just a wife, but a whole ass DAUGHTER and then she still... cheats on byleth with ingrid. also yippee yahoo the narration refers to ingrid as a woman STILL. the entire fic really just reminds me that popularity /=/ good writing

Here's the thing. If the issue with this fic was just that the prose is mediocre or the characterizations are bad—and they are—nobody would talk about it the way that they do. There's a similar fic that's been brought up as a sort of counterpoint to EatG that I have not made too much public comment on, and it's not because I don't have opinions on it; it's because I'm not terribly interested in it and the opinions I do have are mixed-to-negative, but it's almost entirely due to writing style and characterization. (There ARE a couple of iffy cultural elements in there worth critiquing; I chalk them up to inexperience and naivete, but it's not invalid to point them out if you're going to.)

There are a couple of things that set EatG apart. It's not just that it's an incredibly popular fic whose author is perfectly happy to let people claim it's either the true canon or better, and it doesn't help that he's basically been Christopher Columbus-ing fanfiction by acting like he's writing some brilliant meta piece that's totally not the same as those icky girly fanfics. It's that the fic is choked with absolutely rancid implications and themes about biracial people, nonwhite people in general, women, gay men, mentally ill people, trans people, religion, imperialism, and genocide. When people whose heads aren't shoved up Edelgard's ass comment on this, every criticism is dismissed by either pretending the person said something they very clearly didn't say or pulling "I'm not misogynistic, I have a lesbian beta reader!".

Like, there are mediocre-to-bad fanfics in every fandom, right? There's certainly plenty of them in the 3H fandom, for any ship (I've turbosmashed the back button on plenty of Claude/leth fics). Edel/eth is one of the most popular ships in the fandom; you go through those archives, you're gonna find some clunkers. That in itself is not the problem. The problem is the hype around it, fed into by the author, and the truly obscene bullshit that gets repeatedly handwaved (as we know, a story about queer women is at its most above reproach when written by a cis man) and whatabout'ed (a biracial character hating herself for her "nonhuman" side and being told she's right is totally fine because sometimes people who dislike Edelgard aren't very nice).

Any time a fanfic author acts like this, run.

[mightyflamethrower]

Running a Business in Our Democrat Future

No need to wonder what America will look like if Democrats achieve their demographic and political objectives; 68% nonwhite, 80% Democrat Oakland is already there:

An Oakland gas station manager [was] expressing anger and frustration Friday after dozens of people ransacked his business overnight – and to make matters worse, he says police never showed up after he called for help. … Station manager Sam Mardaie believes some 80 to 100 people took part – apparently unhappy that they weren’t allowed inside the station and only offering window service which was normal for that time of night.

The looting started around 4:30 a.m. and went on for 40 minutes.

Mardaie estimates that the damage and theft totals are more than $100,000.

A small price to pay for social justice.

Mardaie and his family took over the business less than a year ago.

The marginalized police did finally show up:

It was only after a video of the mass looting was shared with the department that it was raised to a Priority 1 and an officer was sent to the store nine hours after the robbery began…

Liberal readers will be pleased to note that none of the looters appeared to be worried about the police inflicting systemic racism.

Welcome to your New Democrat inspired Post Modern American Utopia where you steal your groceries.

You'll get robbed once a week, eat bugs, and be happy

[disformer]

🔥 transformers fanfics!!

ahahahhahhshsgshdhdhhdhs STRAIGHT OUT THE GATE…

When talking about competent fanfiction written and read by adults: more than a little stagnant, with readers that are extremely resistant to new perspectives brought in by nonwhite/transfeminine writers. Often, bizarrely, relies on extremely racist stereotypes to convey a sci-fi cultures ‘strangeness’ or ‘sexually exotic practices’ which is yucky to read. Prone to breathy, hands-down-pants imaginations of war and horror that (despite all its posturing as gritty, emotionally impactful and genre-defying) often feels derivative and very sheltered.

Despite all of this, is usually very fun! Has had an unmistakeable impact on the direction Transformers canon has gone, and deserves credit for that.