#id also love poc recommendations in particular

[ofdreamsanddoodles]

Hey idk if you’re the best person to ask and I’m not trying to start anything, I don’t mean this disrespectfully but why is the new poster artist art problematic?? I’m just not very educated on the subject :)

first of all, i'd recommend looking at this post from thegrinningwheels going over the mistakes people make when drawing peter because this definitely plays into some of them. also, disclaimer that i am white, and if anyone else wants to jump in, feel free. before i start, i'd like to mention this screenshot:

[id: a screenshotted twitter thread containing three tweets. 1. jay onetiredboy (@onetiredb0y) can i ask why you'd want to distance the official art from your previous artworks? is there a particular criticism you'd like to directly address? or... ... 2. Ellison Estephan (@/ellisonestephan) I like to draw goofy stuff as a fan! I thought it would be more professional to make sure people remember that stuff isn't "official art" or something now, just because I'm drawing some posters haha!! 3. *sighs* hyperion city... (@junosteel [rest is cut off]) with all due respect, you can just say that your art perpetuated racism/transmisogyny/ableism without hiding behind "haha its goofy." better to at least be transparent and address it than dancing around the issue an acknowledging it as goofy. own up to your mistakes pls. /end id]

as well as this response to harley kaner saying that people sometimes called others racist to justify bullying them (a post made about an hour or so after the artist was announced)

so they know they messed up but... yeah they're not gonna apologize

(a link to the junoverse designs for anyone who wants to follow along)

for starter’s, the way peter is drawn feels a bit like a caricature, to the point of drawing on transmisogynistic stereotypes. (stereotypes that are like, ten times more visible in their art of vespa, who is actually trans fem which i’ll get to in a second) the intersection of what it means to be a feminine gnc person and being a poc are many and varied, and there is definitely a lot to say about femininity being seen as wrong and shameful. there's a lot of history in how Asian men's femininity has been portrayed and sexualised, both in fandom & in the world at large, and sometimes white authors just aren’t capable of handling those points with care. as much as i would love to celebrate a gnc character design,  i think it's safe to say that this artist's depiction of a hyper-feminine nureyev feels like a mockery rather than honest representation

also, it may not be intentional, but when you have a line-up & you're drawing the lighter characters (or at least nureyev and buddy) much more sultry & sexual than the darker ones.... that tells me something about how you view people of color. especially when the sexual way you draw those lighter characters has nothing to do with their character

a line up like this is supposed to give you an indication of character personality. this is supposed to be how you're going to present them to the world. both buddy and peter use their charisma to their advantage sometimes, but that charisma is based on their personality! though he's absolutely flirted to get what he wants, peter tries to give off the vibes of a suave gentleman. if he’s wearing a tie, it’s not going to be haphazardly put on, because he cares about his appearance. peter can be sexual, but it’s not really the way he presents himself to the world at large, and this version of him goes so far it feels like some kind of parody of ouran host club or something, which makes me feel like it’s mocking him rather than trying to honestly portray his character. 

buddy meanwhile has never flirted with anyone but her wife and gets her way with confidence & force. that exaggerated body type would already be a bad look on its own because of the hypersexual way people view women of color, but with added context, it kind of feels like there's the implication that the only way these characters could be as cool & charismatic as they are is if they get their way with sex, which is just... incredibly racist

some of it is just an issue with the art style in general. a lot of cartoonish styles have exaggerated features, but there's a limit to how much you can exaggerate those features without just drawing actual stereotypes. alessandra's design makes me uncomfortable for the exact opposite reason as buddy's: cartoonishly gigantic muscles aren't really a great sight when black women are constantly seen as hypermasculine. i might be a bit too critical on this one? i feel like it was worse when i first looked at it, but there's still the fact that exaggerating an asian character's eyelids is racist. it's like. racism 101. both peter and quanyi have incredibly slitted eyes in the majority of their art & personally the way quanyi specifically is exaggerated makes her seem more…. manic, somehow? the way her eyes are lidded aren’t only racist, but make it seem like she’s constantly giving everyone bedroom eyes which is just. Oof

vespa i wanted to talk about in more detail, because there is literally not one element of this design that doesn’t scream bigotry. It reminds me so much of every terrible caricature of a trans woman i’ve seen in horror. The wild bloodshot eyes, the bloody nose, the dagger, the unkept hair & hairy armpits, the wardrobe malfunction revealing a bare chest for no other reason than shock value alone—because how else are we supposed to know what kind of woman she is? There’s already been so many films & just, media in general linking trans women to mental illness and violence. We absolutely didn’t need a vespa design that looks like she belongs in silence of the lambs. If this was just vespa holding a knife, that’d be fine! She does, canonically, have a knife that she uses. But everything about this vespa is designed to look as offputting as possible. She doesn’t look dangerous because she’s part of our cool crime family, she looks out of control. Which is exactly how vespa worries the world will see her! Taking a character who says, pretty up front that she wants to be seen as more than her violent urges & mental illness and then drawing her in a way that screams “look out! This person is dangerous and mentally ill!” is honestly unforgivable. Add that to the fact that everything about her appearance implies she’s doing womanhood “wrong” (obviously, not shaving should be considered a neutral thing, but when it’s only a trans woman character you show with hair, it’s worth considering why you feel the need to do something like that) including the fact she’s going around with her shirt slipped like that, which looks obviously oversized to fill a chest she doesn’t have. One of the first things i learned about writing trans characters is that you should never reveal a character is trans by taking a moment to emphasize how different their body looks from a cis person, be it through having someone else walk in on them in the shower or this. It’s voyeuristic and serves no purpose but to make someone’s gender seem like a dramatic twist instead of an identity that deserves respect, and if a trans artist can’t even understand that, then there’s no hope of them accurately representing literally anyone else.

according to a friend, this art had been drawn before vespa was confirmed as trans (but reposted after, so clearly they didn’t see an issue either way) but that just means they saw an angry, schizophrenic woman & decided to not just make her a harmful stereotype of a pyschotic person, but add insult to injury by making her trans as well.

This has gone on too long & i can’t type anymore, but i wanted to say the second citadel designs really aren’t any better. Every character they chose to make a poc implies something negative, such as making marc and tal the only knights of color & then placing them as nothing more than comic relief. Maybe i could believe this was part of an effort to show the white characters as part of the oppressive class if it wasn’t for didn’t seem clear that we’re supposed to see the brothers as a pair of bumbling fools. Not to mention every single other bad thing they did

EDIT: i want to emphasize that just because i’ve only talked about the junoverse designs doesn’t mean the citadel designs aren’t also worth an apology. so far, the only thing ellison has said (aside from them calling the initial line up “goofy”)  is this tweet, but when they say “i wouldn’t draw those characters like that now,” that apology doesn’t acknowledge the fact that multiple people on twitter have criticized quanyi’s design for some of the reasons mentioned above. it also rings a bit more hollow when they say “i wish i could go back and design things different” because this citadel line-up was posted in late august. if you’re incline to go “well, this was in the past, and they apologized” (and i do see some proof they changed their vespa design) i’d like to remind you that some of their most recent drawings were in fact, last month, and there has been no acknowledgement they understand what was wrong with that. whoever was involved in getting a new artist for the penumbra saw these racist & homophobic designs and agreed that someone who drew that material was someone they wanted to align themselves with.

And remember, this is the second time the penumbra podcast has worked with an artist with blatantly bigoted art (the first being tumblr user disasterscenario) and i remember plenty of people explaining exactly what was wrong with that art as well. Whatever chance you think they have to learn and improve—they had it! And in response, this is what they gave us

#ask #the penumbra podcast #tpp #This definitely isn’t all i could say but hopefully it’s enough #Like i barely went into the citadel designs but a white person should definitely not be making a monkey girl brown #note: some of this has been edited for phrasing & etc #also #i didnt explain a part well & it wasnt actually super relevant so i deleted it

[bitchynaruto]

what’s one particular fanbase/creator/media that you have grown ridiculously wary about after being involved with it? like stupidly ridiculous? cus... a bitch can’t lie, this looming threat of a game of thrones prequel is taking me back to 2014 when i woke up daily just to lament and shake with anger over both grrm’s writing and his fans. it’s loser behavior i know but for the next couple of years i avoided everything i could about that franchise & i’ve accepted i cannot escape it anymore 🗿

OOOO THIS IS A FUN QUESTION! honestly, game of thrones is a good pick. for me it’d have to be anything created by disney, but specifically under the star wars name. i cannot tell you how enamored and in love with star wars ive been since i was a kid, and literally the sequel trilogy, while i was super excited for in ep. 7, is the worst thing ever. worse than the prequels imo. anything disney has made for star wars is lukewarm at best, disregarding the mandalorian and rogue one and star wars rebels, or just hot shit at best (sequel trilogy, han solo movie). its sad but the content pre disney, while not the most cohesive bc the starwars lucasfilms era of the expanded universe was huge and not always stellar, felt like it was star wars. idk. its sad

on a more general note, f*ndom in general is just something ive become ridiculously wary with as a whole. ao3 is a garbage site, but the site with the most traction. a lot of f*ndom praises white cishet voices over lgbt poc, and you can tell by the works that are popular mostly being racist, abusive, toxic, or downright illegal. i dont casually scroll through ao3—i only read fics that are recommended to me by people i trust because you never know what youre clicking on, even with the supposed ‘warnings’. if there was another website that had such a good formatting for fic while still having morals and boundaries, i would move to that website. altho tbh, once im finished with fuck konoha series, i probably wont be focusing on producing fanfic anymore and just focus on my original works.

also to add on for the general stuff, anything netflix produces i am like.. just not that interested anymore. id rather rewatch completed shows i love than start something new in case i get invested in it and it gets cancelled. video games, as a whole, are something im wary about too because of companys releasing unfinished games with the promise of updates or dlc to fill in the world. ive only played like 3 new games counting from 2019-2021 (animal crossing, star wars: fallen order, the outer worlds—which i still havent finished but havent had time to play) while replaying all my old games i still have saved. hollywood movies feel so dry to me rn bc theyre all the same, like i feel like ive watched these movies before, these characters, etc.

this makes me sound super picky but , like, i am! i only have limited amounts of time when not at school, work, or doing household chores/responsibilities and its like.. theres just not a lot of good media rn that im seeing that catches my attention the way it used to like 3-5 years ago. idk if its adhd, the stress of the pandemic, therapy teaching me not to distract myself with engorging on media, or the fact im getting older or what but like.... theres just not a lot of stuff out rn that im willing to put in my time for and its kind of a bummer

#answered #THIS ENDED UP BECOMING A RANT ABT CURRENT MEDIA #MY BAD #Anonymous

[cavesalamander]

Do you have any queer book recs? Preferably not the kind where it's like a coming out book or a Queer Struggle™?

Thanks for the ask!

Honestly I don’t go seeking out a lot of queer books for just that reason - also because being ace and mostly aro, I tend to go for heavy world building and action/adventure, with romance being mostly incidental, if there at all. Also series that last a while and let me know the characters really well.

I also don’t tend to read books that aren’t already at least somewhat popular, so if you want more indie queer book recs, please go check out https://twitter.com/tatehallaway this badass lady on the twitters. I haven’t read any of her books (yet, entirely because I haven’t read anything longer than a couple thousand words in way too long) but I met her at World Con where she hosted a panel on diversity in fiction. She’s a queer writer and is super approachable and friendly. I’m sure she’d be able to point you in the right direction, if not rec some of her own books!

I also would totally recommend checking out Mark Oshiro who recently wrote and got his own book published!! I’m super excited for him, and I’m gonna buy it at some point. His reviews of books are really entertaining too, and he gets pretty autobiographical during them. His fans often recommend queer books and TV shows to him too - so then you get to watch him cry when he realizes that this character that he fell in love with is SURPRISE GAY and he’s so happy he can’t with the emotions. (He’s also a total sweetheart in person holy crap. I got to talk to him at World Con too.)

There’s also TritonYA, which is a publishing house that is working on publishing queer YA genre fiction. I haven’t read any of the 3 books they posted so far because I don’t have the f o c u s these days, and none of them really caught my interest from the summary.

As for books I’VE read... (Apologies that these are like all from cis straight authors afaik, they’re just the ones who I read/ started reading 10+ years ago when I used to read all the time... and back then there just wasn’t the visibility of queer authors, and I didn’t go searching for particular books. I just don’t read very much anymore aaahhh!)

The Circle of Magic series by Tamora Pierce is FANTASTIC. It’s very much romance light - very heavy on the friendship and bonds between the four main characters. But one of the four MCs is lesbian, and there are other queer secondary characters. One of the other girls reads to me as ace/aro too, but that hasn’t been confirmed. (And like 99% of the time my hopes are dashed, but I can see Pierce actually writing an ace character who stays ace.)

Keep in mind that when the series starts they’re like 10, so romance doesn’t come into play until the later books when they’re 16, which is when one of the characters realizes she’s into girls and not boys.

The series is so good too. Pierce’s world building is so good always. She’s like my fuckin idol when it comes to how she does it. The lesbian chara’s character arc about realizing she’s into girls is handled pretty well IMO - the world as a whole isn’t homophobic, so the struggle is mild and mostly self discovery. And the romance is centered around the political struggles happening at the time - is the girl she likes flirting back bc REAL FEELINGS or bc SNEAKY POLITICS!? And SHOULD SHE STAY OR SHOULD SHE GO. Which, given the story as a whole, (and her other writings) this is pretty much in line with how a het romance would be treated.

Trials of Apollo and the Magnus Chase series by Rick Riordan are pretty good too. I don’t like Riordan’s worldbuilding like I love Pierce’s, and he’s writing as a cis straight man but his books are still a lot of fun. There’s a gay kid who gets a couple of POV chapters in an earlier series, (Percy Jackson) but he’s got a lot more of The Struggle going on in his story. (Kinda understandable considering he was born in the 30s, but still.)

Trials follows, well, Apollo who is unapollogetically bi because that’s canon greek myth. (Incidentally, one of his kids is dating the Struggle boy from before and they are very cute together, if a fairly background relationship). Apollo is also totally full of himself and hilarious, and his trials are of course gonna be about how he has to eat a big fuckin slice of humble pie because that’s how grecian trials work. Only like one or two books are out so far, but it looks like it’s gonna be a lot of fun!

Magnus Chase is about a guy who dies and gets sent to Valhalla and becomes a demigod basically. In the second book, a third MC is introduced who is genderfluid/bigender, and by the end of it, Magnus is kinda crushing on her so, that’s cool! I’m not sure yet how it’s gonna be played, since Magnus so far seems to be striaght, and sometimes his love interest is a boy... but I have a pretty good feeling it’s going to be addressed.

Riordan’s a cis straight white dude but he’s definitely done his research. Some of the bits come off kinda “here’s my research laid out” but he started his first series with the goal of, “I want my son to see heroes who are like him. Heroes with ADHD and dyslexia.” And now he’s like “I have fans who are poc, and fans who are queer, and I want them to see themselves too.” And his stories are fun. Which is the important part, in my opinion!

Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell is actually a webcomic, not a novel, but the MC is most likely aro/ace, and her best friend is bi, who currently is in a relationship with another girl - and there’s at least two other queer couples in the story... and strong hints that one of the characters is a trans girl, and another that used to be a female rabbit but is now a male human, gender unknown as of yet. They didn’t seem particularly bothered by the change though.

It’s also a book about robots and magic and birds and ROBOTS and family legacy and friendship and love and R O B O T S!!! Listen it’s just REALLY GOOD OKAY? Please read it. Please please please!!

The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Johnathan Stroud is one of my all time favorite book series, though it’s the least explicitly queer. There’s no romance in it whatsoever, and the human MC reads to me as aro/ace. (The one time he feels something resembling sexual attraction, he realizes almost instantly that something is Wrong and that he was put under a spell. Lmao...) Human MC is also a ginormous fucking shitlord but I love him a lot, and compared to all the other shitlords in the series, he’s actually pretty moral.

Demon MC is also a shitlord, and somehow works as human MC’s moral compass. Also he’s hilarious. And okay, so... when I was younger, I never really read into anything. But demon MC has this boy from his past who he absolutely loves a lot. You can choose to read it whichever way you want, but it’s a very deep and strong love. QP is likely though unintentional hahaa! Very important... I really need to read the prequel book to see more into how the relationship developed...

A girl is introduced as an MC in the second? and third book. She’s Very Good and also not a love interest. Like it’s way easier to read into a romance between the demon and the boy from his past than it is to read into girl MC and boy MC.

Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner This one I actually got on rec from the librarian I asked for queer books. It’s an older book, like from the 80s and this one I’m pretty sure the author IDs as bi, so hey that’s at least one rec from a queer author. The book is just set in a fantasy world where sexuality is like WHATEVER! and everyone fights with swords and honor and the MC and everyone else are all total fucking pricks but also bisexual.

It’s the most adult and romancy book out of all of them, but the love scenes aren’t explicit or anything. Definitely a recommended read if you wanna see some earlier rep. The copy of the book I got from the library had a recommendation by GRRM on the cover - one that I think predated his rise to fame. You can definitely see why he’d like it. There’s lots of political drama, affairs, murder, swords, etc.

People die, and I don’t necessarily want to spoil you on if the MC or the MC’s love interest dies unless you want me to (You’re welcome to ask!), but it IS a romance, and it’s not centered around The Struggle at all, and I don’t think it counts as Bury Your Gays if EVERYONE is queer!

So that’s what I have off the top of my head. I only counted MAIN characters in this, none of that “someone was gay once in the background see? representation!!!” crap. And like I said, it’s been a while since I’ve really sat down and read anything in earnest. The Swordspoint book was the only one I found while I was actively looking for queer books, the rest is just happy happenstance!

Let me know if you have any questions, and feel free to reblog!

#pride month #if you need any book recs #i love these books a lot #AND NOW I GOTTA GET TO WORK!!! #houdinioverlord