jaskicr

[jaskicr]

Hello! Fandom lurker and POC here. I mostly use this account for liking posts and normally I don’t do this but I have some thoughts I’d like to share.

I’ve seen some conversations about how TWN is using wigs/contacts to make the features of many of their actors of color look more Eurocentric. And they are absolutely right.

Francesca’s actress Mecia Simson is mixed (Jamaican and English) but you couldn’t tell based on the makeup they gave her on the show.

Triss’s hair this season is a red wig which wouldn’t be problematic except they made the wig a much looser texture than her natural hair. (We actually find her hair in S1 to be plenty red enough but MANY fans thought otherwise)

Even with dark skin characters like Dara and Fringilla, they could have been much more creative with their hairstyles. Dara has a basically a copy of Véa’s hair from S1 and Fringilla had sloppy braiding that wasn’t even dipped properly, resulting in jagged braids at the ends. I’ve done better end braids at 2am in my kitchen. For a show with creative design, they did not put in the same amount of effort for their hair as say Calanthe’s hair.

But we can’t ignore how fan reactions and what fans are interested in has played a role in a lot of these changes.

When the first season’s trailers came out forums were bombarded with racist remarks about every actor of color and once Season 1 came out Anna Schaffer had to face an high amount of racism for her portrayal of Triss. Many people here on tumblr would use Game Triss and erase Anna’s portrayal entirely. People would constantly talk about her hair being the wrong color and how this ruined the character.

Fandom largely ignored characters that weren’t white men. We don’t interact with fandom but I consume a lot of content. I found people would pour their hearts into side character white men from the games, create elaborate headcanons and backstories about random witchers, and mostly leave out any women of color entirely. Yennefer if lucky would be Ciri’s mom and relegated to the Geraskier matchmaker. At worst she would be demonized, exaggerating things she did in canon or making up new reasons entirely to hate her. Triss and Fringilla were outright ignored.

Yes. Hollywood has a racism problem. Yes. Hollywood has a whitewashing problem. Yes. They have a eurocentrisme problem. But we the fans are directly contributing to it by letting them know that women of color and characters of color don’t have a place in fandom. That we don’t want them here.

Fandom is no longer relegated to a dark corner of the Internet no one sees. Lauren Hissrich (no matter how much we might not like it) regularly interacts with fandom on twitter and so do many other people who work on The Witcher. They see us. And when we perpetuate erasure of woc and when we send the statement we don’t have a place for poc we are not helping the situation.

And some of the people I’ve seen commenting on how this eurocentrisme is being perpetuated on The Witcher don’t even seem to be invested in these characters. I’ve outright seen many of these people in the past hate these characters and even reblog posts about Triss’ hair or ignore the characters in favor of white men. It’s hypocrisy at its finest.

If you only critique the portrayal of poc in media but do nothing to support diversity in fandom you are part of the problem. And I’m tired of the hypocrisy. I’m tired of feeling like fandom isn’t a safe space for people like me. I’m tired of feeling like every poc has to scream to be heard in fandom.

And I know this won’t change much. I know white mlm will still dominate the Witcher fandom. People will critique any inch of diversity while having 99% of their content based around white men. But maybe this might change one person’s mind. And that would be enough for me.

For the people who support diversity in fandom ILY and I cannot thank you enough. I’m a lurker but I love all your work and sometimes it’s the only thing that makes me feel like this fandom is worth anything.

We have to bring attention to these issues in Hollywood AND support diversity in fandom. If you don’t do both. You are part of the problem.

[jaskicr]

i was ia for months and i barely got any notifs and now suddenly people are digging up my old posts and im getting random notifs every once in a while and im just like oh yes tumblr exists. this account exists hello.

#why u digging up my old posts huh look away #i doubt anyone even remembers me after so long sjfhdjhf

[jaskicr]

wow i really regret how i named my writing docs all those months ago with thing 1 and thing 2 and thing 3 and so on, ive lost track of what number ive gotten up to🧍🧍

#no promises but 👀👀👀 #lets just say s2 hit me straight in the yentriss feels #i havent stopped thinking about them since

[jaskicr]

IM CAKCLING DHJSHDJDBDHD WHAT AM I DOING IM TRYNA WATCH THIS SERIOUSLY BUT I CANT FHDJFHDJFB

PLSS IM DRUNK AND SAD SO I STARTED WATCHINF WITCHER S2 AND I BURST OUF LAUGHING BC OF GERALT’S EYES HELP ME FHDJFBDBDB I CANT TAKE IT SERIOISLY

[jaskicr]

PLSS IM DRUNK AND SAD SO I STARTED WATCHINF WITCHER S2 AND I BURST OUF LAUGHING BC OF GERALT’S EYES HELP ME FHDJFBDBDB I CANT TAKE IT SERIOISLY

[jaskicr]

Wow.

#yennefer

[jaskicr]

Yennefer keep watch on that tower. Reserve your chaos.

[jaskicr]

Anna Shaffer as Triss Merigold in The Witcher, ep. Betrayer Moon (1.03).

#triss

[jaskicr]

the white wolf’s bard :))))

#jaskier

[jaskicr]

Second Chances

#geraskier

[jaskicr]

race & culture in fandom

For the past decade, English language fanwriting culture post the days of LiveJournal and Strikethrough has been hugely shaped by a handful of megafandoms that exploded across AO3 and tumblr – I’m talking Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Dr Who, the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, BBC Sherlock – which have all been overwhelmingly white. I don’t mean in terms of the fans themselves, although whiteness also figures prominently in said fandoms: I mean that the source materials themselves feature very few POC, and the ones who are there tended to be done dirty by the creators.

Periodically, this has led POC in fandom to point out, extremely reasonably, that even where non-white characters do get central roles in various media properties, they’re often overlooked by fandom at large, such that the popular focus stays primarily on the white characters. Sometimes this happened (it was argued) because the POC characters were secondary to begin with and as such attracted less fan devotion (although this has never stopped fandoms from picking a random white gremlin from the background cast and elevating them to the status of Fave); at other times, however, there has been a clear trend of sidelining POC leads in favour of white alternatives (as per Finn, Poe and Rose Tico being edged out in Star Wars shipping by Hux, Kylo and Rey). I mention this, not to demonize individuals whose preferred ships happen to involve white characters, but to point out the collective impact these trends can have on POC in fandom spaces: it’s not bad to ship what you ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no utility in analysing what’s popular and why through a racial lens.

All this being so, it feels increasingly salient that fanwriting culture as exists right now developed under the influence and in the shadow of these white-dominated fandoms – specifically, the taboo against criticizing or critiquing fics for any reason. Certainly, there’s a hell of a lot of value to Don’t Like, Don’t Read as a general policy, especially when it comes to the darker, kinkier side of ficwriting, and whether the context is professional or recreational, offering someone direct, unsolicited feedback on their writing style is a dick move. But on the flipside, the anti-criticism culture in fanwriting has consistently worked against fans of colour who speak out about racist tropes, fan ignorance and hurtful portrayals of living cultures. Voicing anything negative about works created for free is seen as violating a core rule of ficwriting culture – but as that culture has been foundationally shaped by white fandoms, white characters and, overwhelmingly, white ideas about what’s allowed and what isn’t, we ought to consider that all critical contexts are not created equal.

Right now, the rise of C-drama (and K-drama, and J-drama) fandoms is seeing a surge of white creators – myself included – writing fics for fandoms in which no white people exist, and where the cultural context which informs the canon is different to western norms. Which isn’t to say that no popular fandoms focused on POC have existed before now – K-pop RPF and anime fandoms, for example, have been big for a while. But with the success of The Untamed, more western fans are investing in stories whose plots, references, characterization and settings are so fundamentally rooted in real Chinese history and living Chinese culture that it’s not really possible to write around it. And yet, inevitably, too many in fandom are trying to do just that, treating respect for Chinese culture or an attempt to understand it as optional extras – because surely, fandom shouldn’t feel like work. If you’re writing something for free, on your own time, for your own pleasure, why should anyone else get to demand that you research the subject matter first?

Because it matters, is the short answer. Because race and culture are not made-up things like lightsabers and werewolves that you can alter, mock or misunderstand without the risk of hurting or marginalizing actual real people – and because, quite frankly, we already know that fandom is capable of drawing lines in the sand where it chooses. When Brony culture first reared its head (hah), the online fandom for My Little Pony – which, like the other fandoms we’re discussing here, is overwhelmingly female – was initially welcoming. It felt like progress, that so many straight men could identify with such a feminine show; a potential sign that maybe, we were finally leaving the era of mainstream hypermasculine fandom bullshit behind, at least in this one arena. And then, in pretty much the blink of an eye, things got overwhelmingly bad. Artists drawing hardcorn porn didn’t tag their works as adult, leading to those images flooding the public search results for a children’s show. Women were edged out of their own spaces. Bronies got aggressive, posting harsh, ugly criticism of artists whose gijinka interpretations of the Mane Six as humans were deemed insufficiently fuckable.

The resulting fandom conflict was deeply unpleasant, but in the end, the verdict was laid down loud and clear: if you cannot comport yourself like a decent fucking person – if your base mode of engagement within a fandom is to coopt it from the original audience and declare it newly cool only because you’re into it now; if you do not, at the very least, attempt to understand and respect the original context so as to engage appropriately (in this case, by acknowledging that the media you’re consuming was foundational to many women who were there before you and is still consumed by minors, and tagging your goddamn porn) – then the rest of fandom will treat you like a social biohazard, and rightly so.

Here’s the thing, fellow white people: when it comes to C-drama fandoms and other non-white, non-western properties? We are the Bronies.

Not, I hasten to add, in terms of toxic fuckery – though if we don’t get our collective shit together, I’m not taking that darkest timeline off the table. What I mean is that, by virtue of the whiteminding which, both consciously and unconsciously, has shaped current fan culture, particularly in terms of ficwriting conventions, we’re collectively acting as though we’re the primary audience for narratives that weren’t actually made with us in mind, being hostile dicks to Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans when they take the time to point out what we’re getting wrong. We’re bristling because we’ve conceived of ficwriting as a place wherein No Criticism Occurs without questioning how this culture, while valuable in some respects, also serves to uphold, excuse and perpetuate microaggresions and other forms of racism, lashing out or falling back on passive aggression when POC, quite understandably, talk about how they’re sick and tired of our bullshit.

An analogy: one of the most helpful and important tags on AO3 is the one for homophobia, not just because it allows readers to brace for or opt out of reading content they might find distressing, but because it lets the reader know that the writer knows what homophobia is, and is employing it deliberately. When this concept is tagged, I – like many others – often feel more able to read about it than I do when it crops up in untagged works of commercial fiction, film or TV, because I don’t have to worry that the author thinks what they’re depicting is okay. I can say definitively, “yes, the author knows this is messed up, but has elected to tell a messed up story, a fact that will be obvious to anyone who reads this,” instead of worrying that someone will see a fucked up story blind and think “oh, I guess that’s fine.” The contextual framing matters, is the point – which is why it’s so jarring and unpleasant on those rare occasions when I do stumble on a fic whose author has legitimately mistaken homophobic microaggressions for cute banter. This is why, in a ficwriting culture that otherwise aggressively dislikes criticism, the request to tag for a certain thing – while still sometimes fraught – is generally permitted: it helps everyone to have a good time and to curate their fan experience appropriately.

But when white and/or western fans fail to educate ourselves about race, culture and the history of other countries and proceed to deploy that ignorance in our writing, we’re not tagging for racism as a thing we’ve explored deliberately; we’re just being ignorant at best and hateful at worst, which means fans of colour don’t know to avoid or brace for the content of those works until they get hit in the face with microaggresions and/or outright racism. Instead, the burden is placed on them to navigate a minefield not of their creation: which fans can be trusted to write respectfully? Who, if they make an error, will listen and apologise if the error is explained? Who, if lived experience, personal translations or cultural insights are shared, can be counted on to acknowledge those contributions rather than taking sole credit? Too often, fans of colour are being made to feel like guests in their own house, while white fans act like a tone-policing HOA.

Point being: fandom and ficwriting cultures as they currently exist badly need to confront the implicit acceptance of racism and cultural bias that underlies a lot of community rules about engagement and criticism, and that needs to start with white and western fans. We don’t want to be the new Bronies, guys. We need to do better.  

#some white ppl like to cry CENSORSHIP against fans of colour when we point out anything #fandom racism

[jaskicr]

Happy Birthday to the ever-amazing @herostag! In traditional Wolfie fashion…. I have a gift for you!

1.2k of Geraskier nonsense - featuring a baby forktail and one disaster bard

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Winter apart from Jaskier had been quiet, too quiet. Geralt was always surprised by how lonely his life seemed once his bard had flitted back off to Oxenfurt for the colder months, the promise of a warm bed and fine company luring him away from Geralt’s side. So, Geralt was riding faster than he probably needed to in order to cross the Continent in as little time as possible. He would make sure Roach was compensated when he reached Oxenfurt. He knew the university stables would take good care of her, they always did.

Every bard he met along the way seemed to mock him, singing Jaskier’s songs as they danced and flirted around the taverns or inns that he stayed at when he could. It got worse the closer he got to his destination. He heard songs that he’d never heard before, but there was just something in the cadence and in the rhymes that reminded him of chamomile and cornflowers, and he just knew the songs were Jaskier’s.

By the time he trotted through the gates of Oxenfurt, he was exhausted, hungry, and yearning for something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He rode straight to the university, the winding streets a familiar path now. He could find Jaskier’s dorms blindfolded at this point, even without his witcher senses.

It was like coming home after all.

His medallion hummed as he made his way through the corridors towards Jaskier’s room. Geralt gripped the wolf in his fingers, instantly focusing his senses and scanning the area for any sign of danger. If he was lucky then it would just be left over magic residue from a portal. He knew that Yen liked to visit Jaskier over the winter, they would drink far too much wine and gossip like farmer’s wives. Geralt could never quite suppress a smile at the thought. It had taken Yen and Jaskier a long time to reconcile, but knowing that the two most important people in his life got along was heartwarming. He had never thought it would be possible.

Keep reading

#geraskier

[jaskicr]

WITCHER LADIES APPRECIATION WEEK - DAY ONE: FAVOURITE MINOR CHARACTER

As in life, it is impossible to always be fully prepared for battle. Keep your sword close and keep moving. (Know when it’s time to stop moving.)

#calanthe

[jaskicr]

WITCHER LADIES APPRECIATION WEEK day 3: favorite wardrobe or outfits | ciri of cintra

#ciri

[jaskicr]

Halcyon Days

Yennefer and Ciri for @thewitcherzine! I re-read their parts in Blood of Elves for it.

#yennefer #ciri

[jaskicr]

Yen in ink

#yennefer

[jaskicr]

You. You saved me. I won’t ever forget that.

WITCHER LADIES APPRECIATION WEEK Day Two ▸ Favorite Dynamic/Relationship

#yennefer #tissaia