#poc discourse

[iftheworldimplodesmybad]

I’m just gonna say this. I’m laughing at the genshin fandom rn. I find it futile so many people in this god forsaken fandom thought that they were suddenly going to be ✨beacons of representations✨

Why do you guys expect “ black poc diverse rep” from a Chinese Anime Gatcha Game. From Hoyoverse no less. They are making anime gatcha games for their main audience of Chinese otakus. Not westerners with a moral activist complex. Of course they were not going to care what their western fans think. Because if they listen to the western fans, their main fan base is going to lose interest.

Why do yall expect everyone to be beacons of representation. They should have not bothered with it at all honestly.

And do not come for me with some bs. I said what I had to say.

[pk-butter]

Ngl i hate how much racism against asians (both east and southeast! i will not have asian infighting on my posts thank you very much!) is just ignored. Rampant fetishization in both mainstream media and fandom spaces are ignored. People who call this out are dismissed as prudes, as “puriteens” (whatever that means). We are never mentioned in discussions about racism, and when we are, we are only brought up as examples of “basically white” people of color, as the model minority myth is perpetuated uncritically. Whenever anti-asian racism is discussed, be it in mainstream media or online on social media, it is usually because of some bullshit a white person made up to attack someone (eg Lindsay Ellis) or because somebody has been fucking killed. And even on the rare occasions our struggles are given the spotlight, it is always met with “X group has it worse”. I am so tired of it. FUCK YOU to the white people perpetuating this shit. FUCK YOU to the white people in fandom blatantly fetishizing us and crying “CENSORSHIP” when we speak out against you. FUCK YOU to the governments refusing to teach about the crimes you committed against us. FUCK YOU to the other people of color who dismiss our problems by bitching about how you “hAvE iT wOrSe”. FUCK YOU to the white people weaponizing our voices and speaking over us to further your own goals and ignoring us when we speak about our own issues. Fuck each and every one of you. I hope you are all killed.

[h1biplvm]

Sit down, minority! This person who knows nothing about your community and is fueled with misinformation is gonna explain to you how your body works!

[str4wbrry-bl00d]

I know most of you aren't Jewish, but this might be some insight. So, Jews have our rituals and whatnot, we have the joke about whether the holiday is "they tried to kill us", "we survived" and "let's eat" but even with our happy celebrations we keep a darker undertone. With the smashing of a glass at a wedding, it's a reminder of our tragedies.

What's my point? The culture makes a point to remind us of our struggles, our oppression. We are ALLOWED to feel woe and suffering. However, we aren't to just lay down and die. We're a people of fighters. If we didn't fight, we'd be dead.

So, to my friends out there who are afraid of what's to come, who already face oppression everyday, you are allowed to hurt. Please do. Take some time to feel your emotions deeply and fully. But, then go out there and keep fighting. The nazis want us dead. They want us suffering. They want us to wallow to the point we have no energy to stop them, so they can stomp all over us.

Don't let the Nazis win, do not roll over and show your belly, do not stop fighting.

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

i made a post a while ago talking about spop characters’ noses and i want to elaborate on that.

because while, yes spop is diverse in their characters, one thing i’ve noticed is that apart from skin color and sometimes hair texture, the poc characters do not look poc.

let me explain:

netossa and bow are the two notable black characters in spop. but the only thing that gets the point across that they are poc is their hair and skin color. it’s like the creators of spop doesn’t know that different races and ethnicities have different facial structures and features.

i’m not saying you have to make them look like a caricature or a stereotype, but maybe don’t give your poc character eurocentric features?

let’s take a look at other shows/movies that have poc characters with actual poc features, not just dark skin and vaguely curly/wavy hair.

some of these characters aren’t even human, like amethyst and garnet, but you can see that they were supposed to be poc, not just because of their hair or skin color (i mean come one, they literally have pink and purple skin) but because of their features. same goes for the other characters - their nose shape. their lips, their facial structure, it’s all based off of actual black people.

and these are just black, half-black or black-coded characters. we can take a look at some of the other characters in spop:

now, be honest. when you first watched the show, did you know that these characters were supposed to be asian or asian-coded?

because i didn’t. and i know for a fact that many other people didn’t.

maybe you did realize that mermista was supposed to be indian or south asian, but even then, i’ve seen people assume that she’s black, because it’s not quite clear when all we have to go off of is her skin tone and hair.

and this is why it’s so important to highlight facial features when it comes to poc representation. because you can have a character with dark skin and curly hair, and they could easily be black, latina/latino, south asian or even east asian.

dark skin and curly/wavy/textured hair appears across a lot of different races and ethnicities, so they are the most basic feature you could use when designing a poc character.

but coming back to asian characters, let’s take a look at some good character designs.

see how easy it is to actually give poc characters features that actually communicate their origins, instead of taking a white character and slapping on a different skin tone or hair type? and none of these characters look like caricatures, they just look like real people.

i’m just saying. you can’t blame this on “aRtStYLe” either because a lot of the good examples i’ve shown are not hyper realistic. they’re just realistic enough for people to look at these characters and think “hey, they look just like me”.

[hadesoftheabyss]

"We need more gay ships that include people of color!"

The Spiderverse Fandom: does that

"Actually no, don't do that. In fact stop touching people of color and forcing themselves into gay ships!"

[sad-endings-suck]

some of you are once again getting too comfortable disproportionally headcanon-ing disabled and neurodivergent characters as ace and demi-sexual without examining why you always seem to do so.

[inejqhafa]

the scene where anthony tells kate that he wants to go to India so that their child knows their history and that he does too is so important especially for brown girls who are so often told to focus on integrating into their new households and forget their family once they get married. it really shows how much he values all parts of kate’s identity and who she is beyond just being viscountess, a wife, a future mother, etc. and then kate’s reaction of being fully and completely overwhelmed because she could never have imagined that he would be the one to bring it up, let alone being there for the birth makes me so emotional 😭

[ariadne-mouse]

In all this C3 discourse about what the main themes are I have seen viewpoints all over the board. I have also noticed some posts/tags/replies are particularly fired up saying that those who disagree with them are ignoring or putting down the perspectives of people of color. I have also watched some of these same users dunk on posts that are written by people of color, some of whom are sharing their family's irl experience under imperialism/colonialism, or why they either don't think that theme fits in C3 in the ways proposed by fandom or that it would have poor implications if it did, or even just saying that it's way more complicated than how the theme is being presented in these arguments - and then lump them into the complaint of "people ignoring perspectives of POC". Like, yes, it is absolutely a fandom issue that perspectives of people of color get ignored, shut down, or undervalued. But these perspectives are not a monolith and to pretend that they are - or that they must clearly be aligned with a specific view - is reductive and presumptuous, and indeed contributes to that very fandom issue. So in the fervor to decry those ignoring perspectives of POC, perhaps pause to consider - regardless of your own identity but especially if you are white - whether you might be doing that yourself in the exact same breath.

[eliyahu613]

*sighs* well, here i am making this post, thank you antisemitic "leftists" for forcing me to spell it out for you.

"traditionally, the idea that all women/people generally should dress modestly has been a way of oppressing women and excusing men's misogyny" and "more recently, shaming women/people for dressing modestly and in some cases forcing them not to has been a way of targeting specific cultures, especially jewish and muslim communities" are statements that can and should coexist.

you're justified, and i'd encourage you to, critique how the new wave of "tradwives" believing that all women should be modest due to some biological difference are being openly misogynistic. that's all well and good, because these are white women from mostly xtian backgrounds who want to force their beliefs on everyone. you can and should also criticize when oppressed minorities weaponize misogyny, as long as you are sure you are correct that that's what's happening. but what i've been seeing on social media recently is nothing like just "criticism."

dressing modestly is a choice. just like you (general) should be free from people forcing you to dress a certain way, it's not in your right to force others, especially tznius-keeping jews and other minorities, to not dress in that way. simply, the way other people choose to dress isn't any of your business. just bc i post about being into modest fashion doesn't invite you, random atheist from reddit, into my inbox to scream about how i'm such a misogynist for... choosing to dress modestly as a trans man.

this post didn't make much sense but tl;dr: quit being annoying about people choosing to dress in accordance with the religious law that they follow, it's their personal choice.

[theweeklydiscourse]

It’s just interesting to observe the differences in how people treat Zukka vs how they treat Zutara. Because I searched Zutara on TikTok to look for some edits and the comments were filled to the brim with people saying “But Katara belonged with Aang 🥺” or “How can you ship Zuko with her after Mai said such a romantic line?” Or perhaps the most insufferable of all “Maturing is realizing that Zuko would’ve thrown himself in from of lightning for ANYONE” as if that’s some revolutionary reading of the text. It’s so irritating how this kind of behaviour is…accepted by the fandom.

But you don’t get that with Zukka, instead you see people gushing over how sweet they are together, hailing it as a wholesome and unproblematic ship, praising artworks of it with positivity and appreciation. It’s difficult to find much negativity under Zukka posts, you won’t see people saying “But Sokka belongs with Suki 🥺” or boldly going on a tangent about how another ship is SO much better. I saw one person praise Zukka as the most unproblematic ATLA ship because of how little conflict there was about it, that you wouldn’t see the same hostility among that fandom as you might with Zutara.

But there’s a reason for that which has less to do with Zutara shippers themselves, and more to do with the harassment and hostility they face on all sides of the fandom. Fans will go out of their way to antagonize Zutara shippers, they’ll feel brazen enough to leave backhanded or outright hostile comments under Zutara posts and art, they’ll interject their shipping opinions in spaces where nobody asked and condescend Zutara shippers by framing them as shallow or delusional for shipping it.

I think Zukka is admittedly cute, and they definitely have their haters, but the difference between it and Zutara is astounding. It’s incredibly frustrating to watch this phenomenon play out, especially when these shippers carry themselves with a kind of false moral superiority that can only be found in shipping discourse.

[dead-inside-demiboy]

Everytime I see people get upset about any form of media, especially indie/youtube stuff because the creators werent "inclusive" enough or "did it wrong" I just remember my irl friend, a cishet white guy who is fully an ally and friends with many poc, queer, and trans people telling me how he ran a dnd campaign with a group of characters that were each a color, and how his players were disappointed cause he made the only female one pink and the only non binary one the robot, and how the two of us had a good laugh about it.

Like give these people a break sometimes, we are all human, and especially if you aren't a part of a minority, sometimes you just want to tell a story and aren't thinking of how many brownie points you can slip in. Also, we are all dumbasses! Irl we let the people in our life be stupid sometimes, lets extend the same kindness online please.

Yes, inclusivity is great and we should be asking larger companies to tell more stories with different perspectives, but also lets not harass people and indie storytellers for these same things please? We are all stupid humans and a lot of people don't have the big eye of the internet to give them the "correct" beliefs.

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

(the original post was made a while ago and it used nate's deadname so i blurred it out)

yeah. this about sums up nate's thought process while creating the show. instead of focusing on important plot points and giving the audience proper arc resolutions and answers to their questions, nate focused more on endearing his blorbos to the viewers.

and i get it. i love my OCs too. i love making up random funny facts about them and picturing them in different scenarios.

but this is not what you do when you're professionally writing a show that's airing on netflix. this is not some fanfiction or a fun story that you share with your friends, you are profiting from this show. therefore, it is your responsibility to make the story make sense and tie up loose ends in a satisfactory manner.

you can't make it flawless, of course. but you can do your best to make it coherent and well-written, and choose to focus on important plot points instead of making up stupid quirky traits for your characters.

[casscainmainly]

op complaining about not curating your fandom experience to ignore racism while not curating their own fandom experience and ignoring people who enjoy canon 😭 although yeah not gonna ignore prevalent racism in fandom is a good thing I think

Yeah this!! Also I'm not sure if OP knows that fanon is nearly inescapable? So many canon fans won't even look through character tags anymore because it's flooded with fanon. OP also tagged Cass, Duke, and Steph, were they expecting Cass/Duke/Steph fans to prefer fanon to canon??

This is the last I'll say about this discourse for a while, but honestly it shouldn't even be fanon vs. canon. It should be fanon + canon fans vs. racism/sexism/ableism. There's nothing inherently harmful about fanon fans, some are great and engage with POC and women, but a lot don't. There's a difference between having comics-inaccurate headcanons, and actively perpetuating racist/ableist stereotypes and excluding women.

Frankly, 'just look away' is not an appropriate response to people calling out fandom prejudice. Fandom should be an inclusive space, but inclusivity means examining and interrogating our biases. Whether or not you like canon, whether you've only read WFA or have read 1000+ comics, this holds true for all of us. I know the conversation is old at this point, but honestly I'd prefer people complaining and being annoying one thousand times over people ignoring the problem.

[maydayintheforest]

I don’t know about yall but my “political extremism” is gonna really shine through come Monday 😋

[system-of-a-feather]

To white people out there, if there is a POC open and willing to call out racist and problematic behavior, the best thing to do to be an anti-racist ally is to support the POC trying to speak and limit the amount of which you add your two cents.

While the intent is good and appreciated and actually helpful when there isn't a POC around to speak for themselves, white people talking about the complex issues that POC bring up in mixed spaces will always make space for misunderstanding, removing nuance, and distorting the message POC are trying to say.

Always remember, as much as you care and try to learn about the issues POC have, you will not know the topic more in depth, more personally, and more intensely than someone with lived experience.

This also applies to POC that disagree with what most POC say.

If a POC disagrees with what you've heard other POC saying, it is not your place to tell them that they are wrong - you don't have the life experience to understand the topic enough to argue at other POC. Leave POC discourse with POC to other people who have the lived experience.

Know your place and stay in your lane, else you run a huge risk of being a white knight and speaking over POC and derailing the Point of any complaints that POC are trying to get heard.