#but even without liking it just writing it off as unimportant or non influential is just wrong

[franeridan]

okay look I know I've talked about this at length already but I've seen a ton of people talk about how they don't like whiskey peak and how they think it wasn't necessary for zoro and luffy to fight like that or straight up think it was ooc of them, but then the same people will turn around and go "isn't it fascinating how zoro's the only one who can say no to luffy or nearly order him around or that luffy waits for the opinion of before acting for no apparent reason it must be because they are soulmates" and honestly for real I'm the first to subscribe to the zoro and luffy soulmates thought but the reason why zoro can do all that is whiskey peak. that is the moment zoro took a decision that benefited the whole crew without asking luffy first for the first time, and that is the moment luffy unjustly doubted him without implicitly trusting his judgement, and that is the moment luffy learned that actually sometimes zoro sees what's best for the crew before he does and that trusting him to always act with the crew's best interests in mind is something he should do. zoro had never opposed luffy or acted without his consent in any way before whiskey peak and luffy never doubts him and always turns to him ever since, there is direct correlation between the two zoro and luffy didn't learn to trust each other and respect each other through a magical soulbond connection their relationship is actually pretty damn well developed

#like i know in most manga it's useless to analyze every scene this deeply since the mangaka doesn't actually think about it that much #it's not that deep usually and i get it #but op is Definitely not one of those manga imho you can and you should stop and read into every single thing that happens #everything has deeper implications in it it's one of my favourite things in the manga #you're allowed to not like the thought of zoro and luffy fighting or how they just moved on and laughed it off #(even if i do believe given their characters that's the only way a fight between them could have ended but that's just me) #but even without liking it just writing it off as unimportant or non influential is just wrong #that's part of their history it should be counted as such whether you like it or not #i know i always talk about the same thingssss but there's a lot of new readers starting the anime going in from opla #and wonderfully a lot of them are zo lu shippers which is fantastic but it does put a lens on the way they watch it #like same me too everything is zl for me too but #yeah whatever point it I'm seeing the argument brought up again ex novo all over #and I'm probably the n1 whiskey peak defender so im not unbiased lbr #i love that they fought there who am i kidding #........... I lost my point #anyway *waves hands at post* that's my thoughts on that

[headspace-hotel]

I know it’s an old convo, but I’m wondering if the reason why white SFF authors prefer to write about fantasy races to real ones is 1. The fear of getting punished for getting it “wrong” and 2. The fact that there is a subculture of BIPOC authors who will punish white people for anything they do, including stuff they made up on the spot.

I agree with this partially, but it also radiates the assumption that the problem with homogeneity in fantasy is a result of something people of color are doing wrong and not a problem that’s been baked into the fantasy genre’s history, and I’m going to shut down that idea up front.

The prototypical fantasy setting is European. The vision of “fantasy” as a category that we know is derived from source material that has some pretty racist stuff in it. Tolkien was one of the biggest influences on the fantasy genre and some of his descriptions and characterizations of his “evil” races were...racist. Another huge codifier of a lot of fantasy tropes is D&D, and I don’t know much about the past versions but it has been criticized lots for racism in its worldbuilding.

Younger fantasy readers might look to Harry Potter as a foundation, and it is, again, overwhelmingly white and has a race of slaves that love to be slaves. The later Narnia books have a “Fantasy Middle East” country that is clearly meant as an allegory for the Islamic world and just reads like a bad, disrespectful parody. I’m not “cancelling,” it’s just not right to pretend that these things aren’t there.

You mention writers being criticized for things they “made up on the spot,” but nothing is really made up on the spot. Books are derivative from other books, art is inspired by other art. And fantasy fiction has a history of being ridiculously Eurocentric and incorporating racist assumptions into its worldbuilding. Think about the tropes, the typical patterns of fantasy. Fantasy settings are often really, really white and European, and even when other lands and countries exist, they’re Over There, they’re Other, they’re not the ones we as the readers are supposed to identify with.

But also think about how “fantasy races” are so ubiquitous themselves, and how a person’s “race” is seen to affect their character and personality, and how there’s often a such thing as “inherently evil” races. It’s a staple of the genre that fantasy worlds are made of groups of people divided along objectively real, biological lines—in the same way white supremacy holds humans to be.

Is having “fantasy races” inherently bad? Of course not. But what function are they serving in the worldbuilding and story? Where are you getting the stuff that determines how they work in the story and world and are thought about by the characters?

It’s just…once you go to the effort of seeing it you can’t stop. Think about popular recent YA fantasy—Leigh Bardugo’s world is Eurocentrism incarnate; she has a variety of analogs for European countries, an analog for Asia In General, and an analog for...everything else. In fantasy you start with Europe and everything gets more simplified and unimportant the farther away you go, it seems. Throne of Glass supposedly has non-white civilizations in its world, but it has, like, one person of color in the first two books and she dies in the second one.

I don’t hate all the books I listed. I love some of them. But they’re flawed.

And imagine me, a white fantasy writer, trying to come up with my own fantasy. Off the top of my head, or whatever, except nothing really is. If the vast majority of things I’ve read and find influential were written by white authors and are full of these baked-in racist assumptions and tropes, it’s going to be easier to copy them (without even meaning to!) than not.

All that to say, criticizing racism in fantasy is super legitimate. It’s almost part of what makes Fantasy, Fantasy. White authors defined so much of what we recognize as “fantasy” and all lived in a racist world that affected how they thought. It would certainly not be better if the authors of color weren’t there. And it took a long time for me to see this. People of color who are fans of fantasy are seeing this stuff and being affected by it.

Are white authors afraid of criticism? Absolutely. And it...isn’t totally unfounded to fear concrete consequences for making mistakes; a couple years ago there was at least one book pulled before it were even published because a couple YA authors with substantial followings on Twitter took issue with the way race was handled. I have distaste for the treatment of other writers by some of those writers and the way they’ve used their influence on social media to rally followers against people. That’s true.

The crucial thing about the specific incident I’m remembering, though, was that the writer whose book got pulled was herself a woman of color writing about a topic that affected her personally. And, unpopular opinion, but this is kind of the sense in which I believe “cancel culture” is, to some extent, a real and harmful thing—not the phenomenon of “cancelling” so much as the idea that “cancelling” will fairly administer justice. The fact is, people who are privileged to a significant enough extent can brush off being “canceled,” no matter how horrible they are, whereas people without that combination of privileges may well face real and hurtful consequences.

Obviously this doesn’t translate to a straightforward “white author=not harmed by cancelling” rule, but like…the big name writers who are writing the most harmful and bigoted shit don’t seem to have the slightest fear of consequences, nor even the slightest dent in their careers, no matter how much people talk about how gross their writing choices are!!! It’s easier to see results when you’re targeting some random lady trying to debut in an industry that already discriminates against her. Or maybe it just happens randomly when then stars align and outrage gets focused on said random lady by chance. I guess the intentions were good? I don’t know.

It remains that the vast majority of racism in fantasy fiction barely gets any attention. Even fucking Lovecraft hasn’t stopped being influential because he was racist. I think that most white writers probably don’t fear concrete impacts to their careers so much as just the mortifying ordeal of being criticized itself. White people are notoriously bad at handling being called out and writers are notoriously bad at handling criticism in general.

But, in both senses, those things are just…things you have to work on, even though they are both things you’re kind of predisposed to take personally. Because it is impossible to avoid criticism entirely, and very often writing things that open you up to more criticism will be better for you as a writer. That’s not just true of writing about race, that’s true of any writing at all, ever.You can be like “I don’t want to include racial diversity in this book because I’ll make mistakes and be criticized for them” in the same way you can be like “I don’t want to write poetry because I’m afraid I won’t be good at it.” A lot of writers do things like that. Our resistance to facing criticism holds us back.

There have already been a lot of posts that address The Fear of Getting it Wrong when writing racially diverse characters. I won’t bother to say what has already been said all over again, but it’s a general principle of writing that fear of criticism isn’t a good reason to not write. “The people criticizing me are just wrong” is a common defensive reaction, but it doesn’t help you grow.

“How to not be defensive and make it all about you when something prejudiced you said or did is pointed out” has been written about a lot; so has “how to take criticism as a writer without having a complete breakdown.” What can I say? It’s important to learn those skills.

But also, it’s not really as if white writers are being dissuaded from writing the diverse characters they already would write if people weren’t so harsh in criticizing them. Because fantasy is already a super white genre, and it still would be if there weren’t active efforts to change that, active efforts by authors of color to break into the genre. (Read authors of color, check their books out at libraries, et cetera et cetera. There are some mega detailed book recommendation posts out there.)

It also deserves mentioning that if you include people of color in your fantasy novel, a shit ton of the criticism will be coming from people who are just pissed that you’re trying to be “politically correct” or whatever. Maybe less so in YA, but adult fantasy writers get this shit a lot. People are going to criticize you and it’s going to hurt. That’s just fundamental to the job.

#random #racism in fantasy #writing #writeblr #writing diverse characters #fantasy writing

[a-place-we-all-call-home]

A Place We All Call Home (Prolouge)

Word Count: 1932

Warning(s) <For the chapter: Abandonment, lies, death mention, time skip, lots of dialouge, if there's anything else, let me know!

A/N: I'm really glad I got this out today, I've been working really hard on this, and I wanted to make it as good as possible! I couldn't have done it without some amazing support for my art for this from my lovely significant other ❤️ Please enjoy!

Asila is a land full of many strange creatures. Divine women, wild beasts, and rivers full of clouded judgements and extreme violence. There are things that aren’t even explored there yet. This wide country is lead only by a singular Divine Woman. The people call her a Goddess, even though she’s nowhere near that powerful, or that influential. Or at least so she thought. It was something no one in this land expected, when the time came for a new one. It was a turnaround for everyone.

People never wanted to get rid of Ivy Rose, she was popular. She was fair, she was reasonable. But, she didn’t quite fit her expectations , left by her mother, Wintrella. She had the power, the strength, but she split everything up in ways that were unpopular. Then, came the most recent Goddess, Aristole. She changed everything, and it’s an adventure and a half as to how she got there.

Aristole was separated from her family at birth, by choice of Ivy. She didn’t want to raise three children at once, she only wanted one. She kept the one she expected to be Goddess, but she was wrong. By age 5, her children had the powers they were expected to have, and Aristole, being the heir, didn’t develop powers. She was powerless, like most non-Divine. Ay around age 8, she met her sister, unbeknownst to her. She met Sunset, the supposed “black sheep” heir. Because she had developed her powers, instead of receiving them through ceremony, she was thought to be wrong, not Ivy’s, and she was called names by the public. They disliked her, only because of what they heard, not what they could see. They refused to change their minds.

Aristole, at the time, went by Faeore. And that’s how Sunset knew her for 10 years. At about age 12, Sunset introduced Aristole to Ivy.

“My child, what is this?” Ivy had asked in the beginning.

“This is my new friend! Her name is Faeore!” Sunset replied.

“Faeore… Where have I heard that before?”

“You know her?!”

` Aristole broke in, “Excuse me? Y-you know of me?”

“Yes my dear, please, come with me for a moment. Sunset, please stay here. This is not important to you.” Ivy lead her off into a different room, “Hello, Aristole.” She said, as soon as they were alone.

“Um, I think you have me confused for someone else. I’m not her… I’m Faeor-”

“No, my child. My daughter…” She looked down, sadly, “You’ve grown fine already, and you’re still so young. I wish I didn’t… I wish I picked right…”

“What do you mean..? Daughter?” She was confused, lost. She didn’t know what to do.

“I wish I was honest from the beginning.” She sighed, “Your name, in actuality, is Aristole. Aristole Rose Asila. You’re my daughter. Even if you don’t quite believe me, I can’t prove it to you yet. You’re too young. You’ll be 18 in about 6 years. By then, I can show you the truth, but there’s going to be so much trouble when that happens.” She grabs Aristole's hand. “My dear, I’m sorry for keeping this secret from you, but I hadn’t been able to get to see you without drawing a big deal. Please, don’t tell Sunset, she’d be devastated. I just couldn’t stand to see her like that. I want you to go visit someone. Her name is Melia. She can help you understand what you’ll need to know in order to be a proper Goddess when the time comes.” She grabs some paper, and writes down an address. “Here, visit her tomorrow. I’ll let her know you’re coming. Stay safe, my child. I love you, even if you don’t believe me.” She reaches down for a hug, but, Aristole, stands back in shock.

“Y-you.. You lied to everyone. You lied to me. You lied to Sunset. Who haven’t you lied to?”

“Aristole, please. I can explain. I just need you to understan-”

“No! I need YOU to understand. You’ve lied to everyone so much. You’ve told everyone that Sunset’s the one, not me. You’ve thrown me away like I’m just, unimportant! No one would believe me anyways if I told them the truth. I’ll go see Melia, once. She’s going to tell me the truth, and I’ll make a decision from there. You, need to apologize to the people as soon as possible.”

“You’re not in charge yet. You can’t boss me around. You need to learn your place. I’m ordering you to go to Melia’s. I’m ordering you to keep this a secret. You’re going to be the next Goddess. You’re the rightful heir, and you will keep it. Now, leave, before I get you exiled to live with Melia, and stay alone.”

“Fine.” Aristole started to storm out of the room. Sunset was patiently waiting outside. The area was soundproof, showing that Ivy had probably had many screaming fits beforehand.

“What was that about?” She asked.

“Your mother, trying to order me to go somewhere I don’t want to go.” She crossed her arms, and sighed. “Anyways, I should get going. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. Maybe next time we can actually do something and have fun. I’ll see you soon?”

“Of course.” She went in for a hug, and off she went.