#if a poc tells you something is racist maybe you should listen

[decolonize-the-left]

(to preface this, i am white. figured i should make that known off the bat) i wanted to come bounce an idea off of you that i've been rolling around in my head for a bit. i have this pet theory that, for the population ill call here "white progressive queers who know very little about poc and racism", a large underpinning of this group's interaction with poc is a Fear of Fucking Up and more generally, moral purity thought. they (maybe even "we"- im still hopefully learning myself) get so paralyzed by this idea and line of thinking that goes something like this: "1) since i know nothing about poc & racism, then 2) clearly in discussions about these topics, i will fuck up and say something wrong or perhaps even Bigoted, which if i did 3) makes me an Irreparable Ontologically Evil Racist, hence 4) i should just be quiet and never ask questions/speak on these topics" which then results in said White Progressive Queer and those around them never learning. i wanted to know what you think abt this and tell me if im on the mark or not

also thank u for the work u do on this blog, ive found so many helpful resources through you

You're right. In my experience that's exactly how it is.

I want to add tho: yes they're uncomfortable that they might fuck up and be considered racists sure, but a huge part of that stems from the massive inability to place the discomfort where it belongs. Which is with their own guilt.

Instead they blame the conversations for making them uncomfortable.

And let's take some worthy notes here: this is not how white people feel all the time. Because white people are not uncomfortable making these fuck ups in front of other white people.

So it's not that the conversation is uncomfortable. They are made uncomfortable. And they are made uncomfortable because even when discussing anti-racism they step into the role of oppressor (the little fuck ups or accidentally bigoted comments) so naturally and God forbid other (not white) people can See how easy it is.

My advice for white people that are like this (that nobody asked for) is

Your fuckups do not define you but how you react to them does

Listen, respect, learn

That's it. That's the whole list. Say something bad? Apologize, but don't over-explain yourself. Ask how to fix it. Google how you fucked up so you understand why it wasn't okay. Google again to get idea of how your fuck up hurts people. Google some more to make sure you don't do it again. Go to some safe space and ask some clarifying questions. Listen, respect, learn.

Maybe the people you fucked up with don't forgive you and that's okay, they don't have to. But YOU won't ever make anyone feel bad or less than in the same way ever again and that's what matters.

Having one less person making racist comments matters even if it's a struggle for that person to get to that point.

I need y'all to understand that none of you are gonna just wake up being suddenly perfect anti-racist allies. And we will literally never ever have allies like that if y'all refuse to even sit with your own discomfort.

•°•°•

This weird morality issue white people have over looking racist is also just such a non-problem. Like if y'all want a PoC perspective: white people are already being racist ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ ....we Already see y'all as racists. And also I'm gonna experience racism anyway so I'd rather it be because someone was just being ignorant on the path to anti-racism.

Y'all are so worried about how shit Looks that you can't be bothered how really things are? Like you're so afraid of looking racist you'd allow yourselves to continue being actually ignorant and casually racist. And to avoid what? Being uncomfortable for a minute? Being called-out? A mean comment?

We are trying to stop hate crimes and genocide. Like that's what we are dealing with okay. Accountability for your actions is an acquired taste but I think y'all can handle some discomfort considering.

#every time im confronted with the idea that white feelings are why BIPOC are being killed daily i get umhinged tbh #like i might die if i call the cops cuz YOUD feel bad if you talked about racism? AND YOURE JUST KEEP NOT DOING IT?? WHY #asked #answered #sorry #some asks just like #do this to me #white people like this make me wanna shake them back and forth viscerally #whiteness

[scary-flag]

People being all "Ed is just an emo babygirl after a breakup, like, who wouldn't act like that???" and yeah I LOVE emo babygirl Ed, but I do not think cutting off someone's toe and feeding it to them is really a sad babygirl action (although you go girlies, he did deserve that)

Jokes aside, though: We are NOT being told anything in specific, and his actions can be interpreted in various ways. Did he go fucking feral, all kraken and shit? Sure, but he also cried when looking at the lighthouse painting later, which tells us he did not really, like, vow to not give in to his emotions again or something.

On the other hand, we ARE explicitly told in canon that Ed is *not* mentally well, and I do not mean it in a bad way. Maybe we, as a fandom, should stop acting like Ed's PTSD and his trauma responses are something bad that we can't work with? Ed has every right to be sad. Ed has every right to be angry. He has every right to be fucking traumatised. And by making him feel those feelings the fanfic writers or fan artists are not necessarily being racist, homophobic or mental-illness-hating. Ed is just human and he has human feelings. People react in all kinds of ways to heartbreak and trauma.

I know we all love babygirl Ed, but keep in mind that woobifying his reaction to Stede leaving him, we are kind of writing off the whole mental health aspect of the character, which, I think, is super important in the show? Going as far as removing this aspect of Ed (and I have seen people who really believe Ed has absolutely zero issues) is kind of building the stupid "we shouldn't talk about mental illness" ableist taboo agenda.

(to read more about masculinity and rage in the context of POC experience, I recommend to dig into what @uselessheretic posts who is definitely better at writing in English than I am and likely more educated on the subject)

There is nothing wrong in wanting a character to be flawed. Flaws make us human

Another point: He is a PIRATE. Most people are not making him violent and angry because he's gay, nor because he's a POC. Most do it because he is a pirate, and if anything, the legendary pirates were generally known to be unhinged. Pirates stabbed people, keelhauled them, burnt whole villages down, traded slaves and r*ped. I know we all love OFMD and our blorbos, but let's not forget who the inspiration behind those characters were. No one does anything wrong by just by saying a pirate character HAS issues with his mental health, anger management or attitude. Some people just give Ed (or Izzy, or Stede, or any character honestly) more of the real-world pirate characteristics.

Yes, it is a comedy show, but in fan works it can become anything - a drama, a horror, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi slasher, whatever the author wants. So I think that people who do not interpret Ed's reaction to the breakup as basically a cutesy american teenager eating ice cream in bed listening to Evanescence are not necessarily wrong and neither do they have bad intentions.

#ofmd meta #our flag means death #ofmd ed #blackbeard #blackbeard meta #sorry for my bad english but i just cant human today #im ill and tired

[chaos-in-one]

hi! anon from earlier. hope you all are having a good day!

also i'm somewhat new to this so i am trying to be respectful/use right language and i am truly and genuinely sorry if i get that wrong

i (singlet, white) have a system friend who is living in a white body but has POC headmates. lately they have been talking to me about IDing as POC and changing how they dress so that they are perceived as brown - not just POC, but specifically brown. this makes me uncomfortable as the body the system is in is not brown, and does not have the life experience of being brown. i also feel uncomfortable about the idea of someone accessorizing differently (headwear, clothing) in order to be perceived as a different race. i don't know if it makes a difference, but my friends also say that the body itself does not have a living/presenting identity of its own, and so the body is white, but the entire system is POC.

if y'all have the time/energy/ability, i would really like some help in understanding and talking about this. i don't want to ask my friends about it as i'm afraid they will get upset and say that i'm being bigoted or unsupportive. maybe i am, but i do want to understand. any advice would be greatly appreciated! thank you!

Yeah no as a system of color what they're doing is... extremely racist. Alters cannot ID as a separate race from the body, they will never have those lived experiences and therefore will never understand what it is like to live as a person of color. And outright trying to change their appearance to pass themselves off as a different race is race-fishing, which is both appropriative and really fucking racist. They are not people of color, they are the same race as the body because race is based off of genetics and heritage and social perception (last one to an extent, as some light-skinned poc don't always get perceived as their actual race). Alters can have appearances that differ from the body, obviously, but different appearances does not equal different race. Alters that appear darker in skin tone being labeled as poc while in a white body is more often than not built off of racist racial stereotypes of who people of color are.

What the body is is still important in certain contexts. Race is one of them, because race is based off of the body. Same with some other things (for example, age. Yes alters can have different self perceptions of their individual age but, for instance, an adult alter in a minor bodied system should NOT be treated the same as one in a bodily adult system because age is largely based off the brain and it's stage in development as a whole). Saying the body doesn't have an identity by itself does not mean it is devoid of any traits. Certain things are not just identities that can be picked and chosen based on personal preferences, sometimes there are things your body simply is or isn't and even if you don't like it, that's how your body is. An example of that for me other than race (because obviously to me, my race is something I just am, I can't just pick and choose that, but I find it is harder for white people to understand when race is the only example used) is me being disabled. I simply am disabled. My body does not function as well as typical. Even if I didn't explicitly identify as disabled, I still would be perceived and live life as a disabled person does because that's how my body is.

Hope that helps it make sense. I'm sorry about your friend. Personally I would tell them bluntly they're being racist, and if they refuse to listen then cut them off, but they aren't my friend so what you decide to do is ultimately up to you.

#syscourse #racism #poc #system of color #indigenous system #system community racism #plural community racism #starting a tag for this because damn racism is a big issue in system spaces

[97-liners]

i liked this bit from my response to the last anon who tried to tell me off by saying "half the time its stuff that you have literally no say on anyway." "Stick to talking about shit that relates to you and maybe, just maybe, people wouldn't hate on you so much." so i'm going to separate it out here:

the main thing i have to say here though. i don’t have to be black to think that anti-blackness is bad and speak out on it, and i don't have to be fat to speak out about how fatphobia is bad. in fact, it's actively harmful to try to say that only people who are directly affected by a given power structure are allowed to speak on it at all. my saying "equating thinness with health and beauty is not good" is not anything radical, and it's kind of fucked up to think that a thin person should never say that.

this goes beyond whatever this anon is talking about — the problem with the mindless emphasis on “listen to x voices” is that, while it’s important to put oppressed viewpoints and lived experiences in the forefront of discussions, it’s not a free pass out of critical thought. ppl forget “listen to x voices” started out in academic study. it's not about the ppl you choose to defend or the viewpoints you hold publicly. and it’s not about x voices saying “xyz isn’t harmful” taking precedence over established theory to the contrary. i think this is something ANY poc understands acutely and painfully because it’s always the conservative and white supremacist sellouts that get put to the forefront.

it also gives people an out. if you believe that only x people should talk or care about x issues, then that lets you just sit back and say “well, i’m not x so i’m not involved”… and more irritatingly, it gives you the perceived right to say “well I’M a minority so my opinion is right !!!!”. being a person of color doesn’t make me an expert on racism and i don’t pretend to be an expert. there are white anti-imperialist scholars who have a better understanding of racist global power structures than i do and i’m not arrogant enough to just write that off because they’re white.

#97.text #this bothers me sooo much so it felt good to get it out in writing #edit: removed the part about bts bc im scared of army lol

[the-90s-music-colosseum]

Can the anons here stop playing the victim and maybe ask themselves the question of WHY so many black bloggers found their propaganda uncomfortable? Not to mention, the purpose of this blog wanting crazy propaganda was because it makes for good content spread— and it for sure blew up! But not you have to deal with the consequences of funneling only the most unhinged propaganda and putting a gigantic wall of text for one over the other. It really ISN’T because the submitters hate black people at all, but people are pointing out that the undertones are still harboring very uncomfortable wording that is often used even subconsciously to glorify even the most mediocre white person, not even over anyone else, just in general. It would have been uncomfortable no matter what, but the hulking amount of it coupled with the methods and heavy handedness made it feel AND read as though there was something else going on. That’s just the nature of how that whole post was curated. And I don’t find it very fair that people here can accuse all these people of color mentioning this made them uncomfortable of being delusional or ridiculous or ignorant, because wouldn’t POC know better than any white person? I feel like when a black person says that something you said made them uncomfortable, you should fight back that defensive response and self examine and listen to them. Don’t get mad at them and demand them to sugarcoat it, they don’t need to hold your hand. I am IMPLORING this blog and the anons here to please consider that, because honestly, sometimes it does take an outsider looking in to tell you when you’ve gone too far. Even if Damon’s contender was another white man, the propaganda STILL would have read badly. Instead of saying “I could never be racist” and discarding everyone that is uncomfortable, sit with that and examine WHY you felt the need to accentuate his whiteness, his superiority, his Britishness, the blond hair and blue eyes as a picture of Greek gods, etc. None of this on its own makes you racist. But if you dig your heels in and call every black person that is uncomfortable with it ignorant and reaching, you’re certainly not facing the right direction.

Ok first of all, jeez the real wall of text warning is always in the anons

Also I could be wrong here but I don't think any anons or myself have stated that black people aren't allowed to take issue with some of the propaganda? No one is calling all black people who feel uncomfortable with it ignorant or reaching (unless I missed it, then please kindly point out where exactly it was said). In fact I think the one common ground we have in this whole conflict is that everyone has the right to express their opinion here. At least for me, that's what it is. If you find something makes you uncomfortable, then speak out against it, discuss it and let me know how I can make my blog a more friendly place.

#most attractive 90s musician #asks

[femmespoiled]

I understand your frustration, but I'm not convinced it is a bad thing that I make it known I am cis. For society to move past the idea that pronouns in bio means you're trans, we need a lot more cis people putting their pronouns in bio. Especially those who effortlessly get gendered correctly both IRL and online, because they have nothing to gain personally. I actively use they/them for people who don't have pronouns in bio, knowing full well they're cis and take it for granted that I can tell. Because I don't think pronouns is something we should be taking for granted or be able to tell.

It's a little odd to talk about what your girlfriend said to you and not to her, but since this is where it started I will. My point is that I'm using it for you, all of the time, that I'm not just bringing it out as gotcha in a debate with transphobes. Using my cis privilege would be to not mention I'm cis because I don't have to. I would distance myself from people who need to tell people what gender they are, and I would prop up cis people who think it's ridiculous to call themselves cis women when they're "obviously just women." There are cis women and trans women, and we are equal, or at least ought to be, and me not disclosing that I'm cis is a disservice to that cause. I don't think I would be a safe space for trans people if they thought I was trans when I'm not. Just like how I disclose that I'm white, not as some positive quality but as a disclaimer so that if I do something racist I get called out on it and corrected.

I can see how it can come across as a badge of honour to be cis and white, but that's not how I see it, and I don't know how we can achieve both things. If I anonymise my gender and race I become whatever the observer wants me to be to my benefit.

this is public, this is a public post. I want you to listen to me as a nonbinary person and my girlfriend as a trans woman talking about our very own experiences, and maybe put more importance to that than pissing off transphobes or showing yourself off as an ally, which is whats coming off of what you're doing. As somebody in the issue, I don't need to convince you. I'm just saying a lot of the time it seems like cis people prioritize much more pissing off transphobes than actually listening to trans people. You're not doing it for me, I'm actively telling you what I think of cis in the bio, I also mentioned how I don't like putting white in the bio as a nonbinary poc lol because if you're racist or transphobic regardless of gender and ethnicity you should be called out. The system is racist, sexist and transphobic which because we all grew up in it turns out not just white cis people are sexist, racist transphobic.

USING YOUR CIS PRIVILEGE WOULD BE HELPING MAKE TRANS VOICES BE HEARD, instead of speaking over us.

Not disclosing you're cis normalises people not needing to know you're cis or trans, just hopefully treating you respectfully regardless of that knowledge.

Now this is the last ask I'll reply about this. Have a lovely day.

#specially since it seems like youre not listening to me at all #maybe take some time off to reflect on this #it seems like you might be reactive and defensive #that might help #ask

[hauntedpearl]

Hi Doe, I wanted to thank you for making that long post about BAB and I just wanted to say I agree with your notion that "doing a racism=/= being racist.

I think people tend to be stuck in their ways and when pointed out the first reaction will often be defensive. Not saying that that's good, but it's natural.

Admitting you have been wrong takes a certain amount of courage but admitting your behaviour was racist can be even more challenging. People don't like to admit to racist behaviour because they fear they will be painted as a racist alltogether and pointing fingers at random fandom blogs isn't really helping the situation.

People are generally open to listen and learn, but they need a chance to do so before being dogpiled on and threatened.

That being said we can all do better to make this fandom a safe escapist space for POC and be more open to admitting mistakes and change our behaviour if it's called out as racist.

hey anon! and exactly, yes! i think a lot of people are ignorant, but not malicious. I've seen this a lot where the dogpiling sometimes makes the people being called out feel an odd justification in not admitting their mistakes, too. it becomes a case of "why should I even bother with these people if they're going to tell me to kill myself?" and it's like. a spiral. where you probably had a person kind of susceptible to change becoming resistant to it.

again, it's not our responsibility as people of colour to forgive, or be even willing to forgive. or even make accommodations, i think. we don't owe anyone that. but we need to figure out a way to engage with criticisms that is actually beneficial in the long run, where you have more people doing things to keep us safe in fandom rather than us becoming pigeonholed into this echo-chamber where it's just us poc and the three allies who are our yes-men.

it would be great if criticism was received in a healthy way, but things online can get super out of hand. that is the nature of the medium we use to communicate. but yeah. white people need to stop and understand that if they're getting a harsh critique, it's probably because someone else had a worse time because of their actions. and white allies who are eager to prove that they're Good White Allies™ need to tone it down and not dogpile on the criticized person. Instead you probably need to check and see if you've harboured similar beliefs before. maybe even engage w the other person in good faith. try and bring the conversation to a fruitful end instead of letting it disappear under all the mudslinging.

like. the best way that you can be an ally is by taking the responsibility to educate your fellow white people. like. this is something that takes a lot out of poc mentally and spiritually. your allyship is not in your competition to prove that your anger is just as righteous and strong as ours. it's in your willingness to sit with your discomfort and help others like you do the same so that we, as a community, have less reason for that anger in the first place.

Sigh.

Anyway.

i don't have solutions to the problems that tend to repeat themselves online. but i do hope we can figure things out at some point.

#tw racism #tw suicide mention #doe's inbox #anon #i just. all this exhausts me

[nessathewaterflower]

I don’t even like shera that much lmao but I got into a fight with some crackers today. The hate they gave a lesbian kids cartoon couple is insane 

#lmao old people too lol why are you watching a kids show and make a discourse blog around it #bonus point is the critism is racist as fuck #someone said the women of color would abuse her kid and her yt gf would break up with her #vile vile vile #if a poc tells you something is racist maybe you should listen #shera #fandom racism

[fozmeadows]

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.  

#race #racism #c-drama #fandom #fan wank #fandom wank #microaggresions #culture #the untamed #bronies #whiteness #ficwriting #fanwriting #cultural bias #discourse

[crazycatsiren]

Hey, so I'm sure this is kind of dumb, but I keep seeing all this content on Tumblr and TikTok (mostly TikTok) about how white witches aessentially just the worst out there because we are naturally oppressive and things like that. I know that it's probably dumb of me to care so much, but it honestly hurts me feelings a lot. It's obviously good that POC are getting some positive attention and feeling more proud of themselves and accepted for their race (as they should be), but I feel like shaming white witches is the wrong way to spread this kind of message.

Maybe it's just some kind of white guilt or something, but I feel as thought I'm often blamed for things I didn't do when I see that kind of content. It makes me feel shitty about being white, which probably sounds dramatic, but some of the people can be really aggressive about their messages. I feel unwelcome in this community. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm trying to take away from the experience of POCs, I promise that's not my intention. I'm just trying to speak honestly about this issue because it's just the way it's been making me feel...

You obviously don't shame anyone on your account, but I wanted to bring this up to you to hear your thoughts, since you're actually a POC. I figure you would probably be able to comment on this better than I can, since I'm white. I feel like I'm just being entitled or something by being bothered by people shaming white witches. I'm sorry if I am. Honestly, if you think I'm just being kind of dramatic or something, I'd prefer you to just delete this ask. I'd genuinely rather not cause any trouble.

Thank you for your time.

I want you to think for a moment, why you're feeling this way.

Because if you are not one of those "white witches" who cultural appropriate, exclude witches of color, refuse to listen to BIPOC's voices, and get defensive when it gets pointed out to them that they're doing something racist/oppressive, then none of what you perceive to be "shaming" even applies to you to begin with.

And I want you to think hard for a moment, why you believe it is a problem that white witches are being "shamed". Why you should think that anyone, for that matter, getting "shamed" when they're being racist/exclusionary toward people of color is "not the way to spread this kind of message". And why you even think, to begin with, when it comes to us witches of color, pointing out acts of racism and calling people out for them is "shaming". Because you clearly imply it is us who are in the wrong here.

"It's obviously good that POC are getting some positive attention and feeling more proud of themselves and accepted for their race (as they should be)". I want you to think about what you just said here for a minute, what you're implying here. Let's not even mention how you just lumped us all into one race, one monolith. The very fact that you're saying "POC are getting some positive attention" and that we are "feeling more proud of ourselves and accepted for our race (as we should be)". I want you to think about how I, an ethnic minority, should feel about being told that, hey, good thing I'm finally getting some "positive attention" from white people at last, as if this is not something I am entitled to from my fellow human beings to begin with regardless of my race, and feeling "proud" of myself and "accepted" for my "race" (as I should be). The very fact that you felt the need to remind me, that you know perfectly well that POCs have not always been getting "positive attention" and treated with equality and respect from white people, and then have the nerve to tell me it's good that I'm feeling more proud of myself these days, as if this is not something I have done all along, regardless of whether I have been "accepted for my race" by white people, who, as you clearly have expressed here, have never accepted us or treated us accordingly.

And I want you to think about the "some of the people can be really aggressive about their messages" part. Our people are getting gunned down at their jobs, assaulted in their neighborhoods, killed unarmed by law enforcement personnel, and shot in their beds. Clearly we have all the luxury in the world to take our time and be nice and sweet about our "messages", because white people's feelings are what matter, while our people are getting beaten and murdered for living their lives because of what they look like. Is that right?

You feel "unwelcome" in this community? This community full of white gentiles who have again and again pushed us to the margins? Who disrespect our traditions, fetishize our cultures, steal our practices, and never listen to us when we repeatedly tell them so? You, a white person from a predominantly white society in a Eurocentric Western environment, are telling me, a woman of color and an immigrant, that you feel "unwelcome"?

I think you have some self reflection work to do here.

#witches of color

[eremiie]

Hello there how is everything I am a fan of AOT and I wanted to ask you if it okay you can do a headcanon of eren and zeke dating a black s/o

dating a black s/o;

❥ hiii, i hope you enjoy, ty for the request, i’m a poc so this is nice :)

eren jaeger

first of all he fucking loves you, like he’s infatuated with you because you’re so beautiful and just everything you do is like wow.

let’s start with your hair, he loves it so much and he’s always trying to touch it even when you tell him not to lmao

he’ll sit in the bathroom with you while you do your hair and just talk to you while reading the labels of the products you use

he spritz the spray bottle at your hair sometimes just for fun too 

one time you let him try to braid your hair and the braids weren’t terrible but he knotted a lot of your hair ngl😭

he gets so confused when you ask him to buy certain products and constantly comes home with the wrong stuff

“what do you mean this isn’t it? baby, it literally says deep condition creme!” “but it’s not the same, i wanted the coconut oil one!” “well this is the castor oil one, it’s basically the same thing.”

no eren. no, it is not the same thing.

he likes joining you in the shower for wash days sometimes, but he probably leaves halfway through the shower because you’re taking way too long

he hates that sticky feeling of lip gloss but just the way it makes your lips look he finds it so alluring, he’ll peck little kisses on your lips all the time and then wipe his mouth after 

he loves your cooking. he really enjoys it and is always open to try new things, he swears he’s getting the most exotic shit even though it’s literally just baked mac n cheese or something...

“baby what is this? it is so good.” “eren it is literally fried okra.”

you put him onto so many songs and he can probably belt out the lyrics to some of your favorite artists because he’s heard their songs so many times

occasionally if you’re just dancing in the kitchen and getting down, he’ll join you for a few minutes even though he looks like a complete fool (i doubt he can dance, but he thinks he’s doing an amazing job💔)

sometimes he can ask a lot of questions when he’s bored to know more about your culture, heritage, etc because he thinks it is genuinely interesting

he def seems like the type to put #blm in his bio or something, or post a black screen to show his support 

he brags about you all the time to his friends, he just thinks you’re so cool and not in like a weird way, just genuine admiration for you, and he has a lot of pride that he even had a chance with you, it’s endearing

zeke yeager 

zeke automatically thinks you’re the baddest bitch he’s ever seen, i mean he’s all for you 

i mean this dude was like AWOOGA when he first saw you— pls😭

and it’s not that he brags about you, it’s just more of a “you see her? yeah, she’s mine.” but he doesn’t say it audibly, he just flaunts you in a more physical way

zeke actively tries to help with your hair but it’s more to pester you than anything, like he’ll comb the ends of your hair carelessly and you’ll slap his hands away 

not that he’s not trying or anything but he just doesn’t know what he’s doing LMAO

since i keep talking about the lipgloss thing since i find it funny, zeke out of these 3 doesn’t mind the lip gloss at all, he actually probably goes out of his way to kiss you, and ngl he probably licks the lipgloss you left on his mouth or something jokingly—

zeke lets you talk to him about anything, your culture, foods you want to try to make, issues that you have, and he’ll casually pitch in his own questions and stuff like that, he’s a good listener

if you’re at the store together looking for hair products and stuff he’ll just point to random stuff and tell you you should get it, even if he knows it won’t work for your hair

“what about this, sweetheart? i think this is pretty neat.” “zeke... that is tresemme... i need shea moisture shampoo.” “well i use this, it works just fine.” *cue a staring contest between zeke’s beard and you* “yeah... it’s working i guess.”

but in the end he probably understands why you use certain products and why you can’t use certain products, he just likes messing with you.

he really enjoys your cooking and probably tries to be in the kitchen with you and help you cook, he’s good company and he’s not to bad at cooking himself 

he’ll also give you recipes you should try that he’s seen as well, he just thinks that if you cook it, it automatically tastes better LMAO

he’s like a little sugar daddy, if you want him to buy you a $300 lace front he probably will, or if you want him to buy you some expensive ass shoes he probably will

he probably put on your bonnet or wig just to make you laugh or something, it was actually quite funny—

he treats you like a little princess too, like he’ll probably check the weather and be like “honey, we can’t go out today it’s too humid for your hair.” and he’s really just pretentious about little things like that, he goes out his way to make sure you’re okay, and good, especially when it comes to things that are important to you

he asks you if you can comb his hair and oil his scalp and stuff like that for fun, and lets you braid his hair and beard for practice, he just sits back and enjoys😭😭

levi ackerman

i feel like levi doesn’t show his admiration as much but deep down it’s definitely there, he finds you interesting, and an amazing individual

he has probably stuck around once or twice to watch your hair routine but he’s not always there to watch, the funny thing is though he probably remembers it; you’ve had him help you with the routine before and you were surprised when he wasn’t even really listening to what you were saying cause he kind of already knew what to do

“so then you’re gonna— yeah, yeah... how’d you know?” “i’m not stupid, i’ve seen you do it before.” “yeah— like once!”

we love our educated king <3

he’s surprisingly gentle when he’s doing it too, like his hands are so delicate and light and he’s lowkey afraid to hurt you so you have to tell him to be a little rougher when trying to untangle/comb through your hair

he will not kiss you when you have lip gloss on. i’m sorry but he doesn’t like the feeling, and if you kiss him he’ll wipe it off of his lips immediately, he doesn’t like it at all

he rarely brings home the wrong items if you ask him to run to the beauty supply or something. it’s just not hard to get the right thing, he looks at the photo of the product you sent him and scavengers the isles. he hates going for beauty supply runs though because he doesn’t like getting stared at, he’d rather go with you instead of by himself

he thinks your cooking is good but he’s not that surprised to be honest, maybe the first time you could see in his face that he was enjoying it but he never really exaggerates how good it is like eren would.

he does ask for another plate though, and if you tease him about that he rolls his eyes😭

he doesn’t take racism, any of that lightly, i can definitely see him getting immediately defensive over the slightest things that could even come off racist to you. it’s not that he’ll immediately say something but he does get sus of the person and a little more protective of you 

he probably secretly has so many pictures of you in his phone, and one of them is definitely his lock screen because he finds you so gorgeous 

he probably would put your bonnet on your head for you if you forgot it before going to sleep, or wake you up to put it on

he probably knows some hair care tips because he does his own research for your sake, he wants to know as much as you do so he can be a help; so even if you already knows what he’s telling you, act like its new information, you’ll see his eyes light up a little bit when you tell him you’ll try that next time :’))

he complains about your hair being left everywhere though, i also think he doesn’t like to participate in your wash days because he doesn’t like seeing your hair everywhere

but despite this he still is usually the one to clean it up if you’re taking too long to, thank you levi<33

another thing is, if you have beads in your hair, he really likes it because the sound they make is somewhat relaxing to him + it lets him know when you’re around, it’s almost comforting sob sob

#eren x reader #eren jaeger x reader #eren yeager x reader #attack on titan #eren jaeger #eren aot #eren yeager #levi x reader #levi ackerman x reader #zeke x reader #zeke yeager x reader #zeke jaeger x reader #levi ackerman #levi ackerman aot #zeke jaeger #zeke yeager

[buckysdimples]

hello my loves! i think it's about time i drop in my two cents on the anthony mackie situation. fair warning, this is a long post and i don't make an effort to keep my language clean in it.

also important for me to note: i use "you" a lot in this post. it is a general you, directed at the group of people who have caused this problem. i am not directing this at all of the fandom. just the racists who caused it to get this bad in the first place. here we go!

i know people have pointed this out, but i want to make it very clear. yes, anthony mackie did word things strangely. you know what that means of him? that he's human. those of you who actively partake in fandom racism will take any white man doing the bare fucking minimum and elevate him to a pedestal that's unattainable by any people of colour in the same fandom, and as soon as a person of colour makes one (evidently dissonant with past actions) slip-up, they're the latest in the "which poc can we get out of the narrative today" game.

what makes the situation worse? a person of colour, in this case a black man who has consistently been activating and publicly lending support to many different and important causes as well as speaking up about his stance on the very issues that are so near and dear to people of colour in fandom, when they make a misstep, are absolutely torn to shreds.

meanwhile, you as a fandom whole will continue to apologise for white actors who continuously display problematic behavior, sometimes deliberately, and you either ignore it completely or make up some bullshit excuse to defend it. i'm not going to name names in this post, it detracts from the whole idea that i'm trying to get across, but these people are some of the biggest names in fandom. it is sometimes repulsive how you will use willful ignorance to apologise for them.

additionally, the full context of the interview with variety lends itself to many flaws, which you can read about in this phenomenal post by @thetransguard. the part of the fandom that attempted to eat mackie alive (which is most of the fandom) completely fucking missed this. it almost seems like you who went after him were searching for yet another reason to "fuck [poc name here], stan [white man 30495834] instead!" which honestly, is absolutely the case.

and that makes me fucking livid. you who are ripping him apart right now, your only concern for mackie and his character, sam wilson, has been sebastian stan and bucky barnes. mackie attends any interview, including interviews that are supposed to celebrate his achievements? he's only asked about sebastian stan. white fans discuss and love on "sambucky"? sam is just whatever trope he needs to be to make bucky cry, or smile, or feel better, or feel safe, and that is the extent of his character. that's disgusting. do you understand that?

stupid question. evidently not. mackie brings up valid points that yall stucky fans and now stucky turned sambucky fans continue to miss, he makes these points in admittedly a convolutedly worded fashion, but he makes them regardless. and you know what the other problem with white fans' reaction to it is? this is exactly what fans of colour in your very own beloved fandom have been trying to tell you. we attempted to make these points during the show. you know, when you lot were throwing steve in every damn chance you got and centering the show around bucky and steve and steve and bucky and who's sam? we don't know sam. all we know is a black guy who got steve's shield, and he won't pick it up, and that makes bucky sad, and bucky's doing his best, okay, he's not ignorant, sam's just mean to him, and--

it's fucking draining. from the beginning, this has been about sebastian stan and bucky barnes. you who are ripping anthony mackie to shreds were never here for him in the first place. you never listened to him. you never saw his character for who sam wilson was. and that's coming to a head in how you are receiving his words. and are you truly missing the point of his words? or is there another reason why you took apart that evidently hate-bait headline and used that specific word choice, when it was fucking clear mackie had a point that was an overtone to the words he chose, to turn mackie into a paragon of homophobia and problematic behavior?

yes, i believe there is. because it's the same fucking reason you will drown out the voices of fans of colour when we call you out for the utter bullshit you spout in regards to the media you are incapable of consuming beyond a shipping lens. it is the reason you take it upon yourselves to slam fans of colour for being selfish, or inserting into the narrative something that to your shallow interpretation wasn't intended, or reminding you that sam wilson, anthony mackie's character, is more than a racist trope prop for your favourite white character(s).

you will bemoan the lack of bisexual bucky in canon. you will throw bucky with any white man he looks once at. you will lament how "rude" poc fans are being when they ask you to focus on sam and his story. you take poc fans, black fans especially, talking and clearing up the commentary on racial and class themes that the show attempts to address, and you will tell all of us that "it's not that deep." you will turn around and shit all over bucky and sarah. sam and bucky to you is a prop to make your newly minted m/m ship canon, because stucky never became canon the way you insist it should have. that's the core of the problem, we say, that wanting the m/m ship to be canon has shifted from wanting representation to wanting two men, generally two white men, to kiss on screen so you can go crazy about it. bucky and zemo will never be canon. bucky and john walker will never be canon. you saw sam and bucky and you said, this is stucky 2.0, and you centered it around bucky and steve as an invisible third party. that is what you are advocating for. that is what mackie fucking addressed.

so the reason? the reason is that you know we're right and we have been right all along, but you're too fucking thickheaded to acknowledge that as a respectful human being. so instead, you turn to whatever the hell you can twist mackie's words into, and attempt to get him out of the fandom picture altogether. that's it, isn't it?

how fucking detestable.

just read the goddamn interview, read mackie's other interviews if you need to, and stop ignoring the truth of the messages he is trying to convey. maybe it'll do you some good to watch and read mackie solo interviews as opposed to sebastian and mackie interviews where all you focus on is the relationship between those two actors, completely ignoring what they, especially and generally mackie, are trying to convey. that's another problem, isn't it?

full circle. stop being fucking tone deaf and listen to poc fans and actors for once in your privileged, entitled lives.

thank you for reading all the way through.

#anthony mackie #sam wilson #sebastian stan #bucky barnes #marvel #racism #racism in fandom #tfatws #i'm tired

[comedicreliefonlyworkswhenfunny]

I am against the "Americanization" of fandoms.

What this applies to

Holding non American characters (and sometimes even fans) to an American moral standard. This includes

Refusing to take into account that, first things first, America is NOT the target audience, so certain tropes that would or would not pass in the west are different in Japan.

Like seriously, quite a few of the jokes are just not going to pass or hit, because they require background information that is not universal.

Assuming all American experience is standard. (This could mean watering down just how much pressure is placed on Japanese youth irl by saying that sort of thing is universal (while it is, to a degree, Japanese suicide rates are pretty fucking high because of how fast paced and work heavy some of their loads tend to be), and it's really annoying and rude when someone is trying to speak out about how heavy and harsh the standards are placed on them to succeed just for some American whose mom occasionally yells at them to do their homework dropping by to say "it's like that everywhere")

Demonizing (or wubbifying) a character using American morals, including and up to harassing fans over their interpretations or gatekeeping whether or not a character "should" get development (while you shouldn't do that fucking period, it's rude and annoying- this is specifically for the people who use American standards without acknowledging the cultural gap between them and, you know, the fucking target audience) ((Like seriously, saying "It's different in Japan" is not the end all be all excusing someone's actions, but sometimes the author didn't immediately think that maybe (insert vaguely universal thing) was that bad or that heavy of a topic before they put it into their media. If you don't want to see things like that? Pick a different series and stop harassing the fans))

Getting mad at or making fun of Japan's attempts to satirize their own culture. (A good example is Ace Attorney! To most of us, it's just a funny laugh can you imagine if courts were actually like that- guess what? Japan's are! (Not that America's are actually that much better, they just look good on paper))

Making America/American issues the center of your fan spaces

(Usually without sharing or bringing light to the issues that other countries are going through)

Your

Experiences

Are

Not

Univseral!

Seriously, very few things across America, even, are universal. Texas things the hundreds are nothing while Minnesota's like "oh it's only thirty degrees below zero"- so for fucks sake, stop assuming that all other countries work in ways similar to America.

It's good and important to share Ameican issues with your American followers, but guess what? America isn't the only country out there, and it's certainly not the only one going through bullshit. Don't pull shit like "why's no one reblogging this?" or "why should I care about what's happening in (X country)?"

Don't assume everyone lives in America.

Stop assuming everyone lives in America.

America is not and has never been the target audience for anime, and it's certainly not the only country outside of Japan that enjoys it.

Like I said above, sometimes Japan attempts to satirize its own culture. We can't tell what is and isn't meant as satire, because it's not our culture.

Social media activism can be tiring and maybe you don't have the energy to focus on things that are out of your control, but, if someone tells you about the shit they're going through, don't bring American politics up.

For the neurodivergent crowd out there thinking, "But why?" it's because a lot of social media, especially, is very heavily Americanized- sometimes to the point where people assume that everyone is American. Not to mention, it's disheartening. I'm sorry to say, but you're not actually relating to the conversation, you're often diverting the focus away from the topic at hand. Even if you mean well, America is heavily pedestaled and talked about frequently, and people from other countries are tired of America taking precedent over their own issues.

Don't divert non-American issues into American ones. Seriously. It's not your place. Please just support the original issue or move on.

Racist Bullshit

This especially goes for islanders and South Asian characters, as well as poc characters (because, yes, Japan DOES have black people)

Making "funny" racist headcanons. Not fucking cool.

Changing the canon interpretation of an explicit character of color in order to fit racist stereotypes.

Whitewashing or color draining characters. Different artistic skill sets can be hard, yes, but are you seriously going to look at someone and say "I don't feel like accurately portraying you or people that look like you, because it's difficult for me." If someone tries to correct you on your cultural depiction of a character and/or their life style, don't be an ass. (If possible, it would be nice for those that do the corrections to be polite as well, but it does get really frustrating).

Seriously, no offense guys, but, if you want to persue art, you're going to need to learn to depict different body types, skin colors, and/or ethnic features.

On that note, purposefully, willingly, or consistently inaccurately portraying people or characters of color (especially if someone in the fandom has "called you out" or specifically told you that what you're doing comes across as racist and you continue to do it). If you need help or suck at looking things up, there are references for you! Ask your followers if they have tutorials on poc (issue that you're having), whether it be bodily portrayal, facial proportions, or coloring and shading. Art is so much more fun when you can depict a wider variety, and guess what? Before you drew the same skinny, basic, white character over and over, you couldn't even draw that!

Attempting or claiming to DEPECT CULTURAL ACCURACY within a work or meta, while being completely fucking wrong. ESPECIALLY and specifically if someone calls you out, and you refuse to fix, correct, or change anything.

*little side note that the discussion revolving art is a very multilayered conversation, and it has quite a few technical potholes, which I'll bring up again farther into this post.

Fucking history

Stop demonizing or for absolute fucks sake wubbifying Japanese history because UwU Japan ♡0♡ or bringing up shit like "you know they sided with Nazis, right?" It's good to recognize poor past decisions, but literally it's not your country keep your nose out of it. And? A lot of decisions made by countries were not made by their general peoples. Even those that were, often involved heavy propaganda that made them think what they were doing was right.

Seriously, it's not your country, not your history. Unless you have some sort of higher education (but honestly even then a lot of those contain heavy bias), just don't butt in.

^^^ this also goes to all countries that are NOT Japan (specifically when people from non American countries talk about their history while in fandoms and someone wants to Amerisplain to them why "well, actually-"). When we said, "question your sources," we didn't mean "question the people who know better than you, while blindly accepting the (more than likely biased) education you were given in the past."

What this does NOT include:

Fanfiction

FANfiction

FanFICTION

FANFICTION.

Seriously, fanfiction is literally UNPAID WORK from RANDOM FANS- a lot of which who are or have started as kids. ((No, I'm not trying to excuse racist depictions of people just because they're free, please see above where I talk about learning to grow a skill and how it's possible tone bad and get good, on top of the fact that some inaccuracies are not just willful ignorance))

"Looking it up" doesn't work

"Looking it up" almost never works

Please, for fucks sake, you know that most all online search engines are heavily biased, right? Not to mention, not everything is universal across the entirety of Japan. You want to look up how the school system works in Hokkaido? Well it's different from the ones in Osaka!

Most fanfiction is meant to be an idealized version of the world. Homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, and racism are very prevalent and heavy topics that some fan authors would prefer to avoid. (Keep in mind, this is also used by some people in those minorities often because thinking about how relevant those kinds of things are is to them every day).

A lot of shit that happens in writing is purely because it's an ideal setting. I've seen a few arguments recently about how fan authors portray Japanese schools wrong- listen, I can't tell you how many random school systems I have pulled from my ass purely because (I need them to interact at these points, in these ways). Sometimes the only compliment I can think of is 'I like your shirt' or sometimes I need character A to realize that character B likes the same thing as they do, so I might ignore the fact that most all Japanese schools require uniforms, so that I can put my character in a shirt that will get someone else's attention.

Sometimes it's difficult to find information on different types of systems, and sometimes when you DO know those things, they directly rule out a plot point that needs to happen (like back on the topic of schools (from what I've seen/heard/read- which guess what? Despite being from multiple sources, might still be inaccurate!) Japanese schools don't have mandatory elective classes (outside of like gym and most of them usually learn English or another language- I've seen stuff about art classes? But the information across the board varies.), but, if I need my character to walk in and see someone completely in their element, I'm probably not going to try and gun for accuracy or make up a million and two reasons as to why this (non elective) person would possibly need something from (elective teacher) after school of all things.)

Some experiences ARE universal- or at least overlap American and Japanese norms! Like friends going to fast food places after school doesn't /sound Japanese/ or whatever, but it's not like a horrible inaccuracy to say that your characters ate at McDonald's because they were hungry. Especially when you consider that the Japanese idolization of American "culture" is also a thing.

Also I saw someone complaining about how, in December, a lot of (usually westerners) write Christmas fics! Well, not only are quite a few of those often gift fics, with it being the season if giving and all, but Japanese people do celebrate Christmas! Not as "the birth of Christ," but rather as a popularized holiday about gift giving (also pst: America isn't the only place that celebrates Christmas)

But, on that note, sometimes things like Holidays are "willfully ignorant" of what actually happens (I've made this point several times, but (also this does by no means excuse actual racism)), because, again: plot convenience! Hey what IF they celebrated Halloween by Trick or Treating? What if Easter was a thing and they got to watch their kids or younger siblings crawl around on the ground looking for tiny plastic eggs?

Fanfiction authors can put in hours of work for one or two thousand words- let alone ten thousand words, fifty thousand words, a hundred thousand words. And all of these are free. There is absolutely no (legal) way to make money off of their fanworks, but they spent hours, days, weeks, months- sometimes even years- writing. It is so unnecessary to EXPECT or REQUIRE them to spend even more hours looking up shit that, no offense, almost no one is going to notice. No one is going go care that all of my combini prices are accurate or that I wrote a fic with a Japanese map of a train station that I had to backwards search three times to find an English version that I could read.

Not everyone has the attention span or ability to spend hours of research before writing a single word. Neurodivergent people are literally a thing yall. Instead of producing the perfectly pretty accurate version of Japan that people want to happen, what ACTUALLY happens is that the writer reads and reads and reads and either never finds the information they need or they lose the motivation to write.

^^^ (This does NOT apply to indigenous or native peoples, like Pacific Islanders or tribes that exist in real life. Please make sure that you portray tribal minorities accurately. If you can't find the information you need (assuming that the content of the series is not specifically about a tribe), please just make one up (and for fucks sake, recognize that a lot of what you've been taught about tribal practices, such as shit like human sacrifices or godly worship, is actually just propaganda.)

Not to mention, it often puts a wall in front of readers who would then need to pull up their OWN information (that may or may not be biased) just in order to interact with the fic ((okay, this one has a little bit of arguability when it comes to things like measurements and currency, because Americans don't know what a meter is and no one else knows what a foot is- either way, one of yall is going to have to look up measurements if they want to get a better understanding of the fic)). However, a lot of Americans who do write using 'feet, Fahrenheit, dollars,' also write for their American followers or friends (which really could go both ways).

On a less easily arguable side, most fic readers aren't going to open up a new tab just to search everything that the author has written (re the whole deep topics, not everyone wants to read about those sorts of things, either). Not only are you making it more difficult on the writer, but you're also making it more difficult for the reader who's now wondering why you decided to add in Grandma's Katsudon recipe, and whether or not the details you have added are accurate.

Some series, themselves, ignore Japanese norms! Piercings, hair dye, and incorrectly wearing ones uniform are frowns upon in Japanese schools- sometimes up to inflicting punishment on those students because of it. However, some anime characters still have naturally or dyed blond hair some of them still have piercings or wear their uniforms wrong. Some series aren't set specifically in Japan, but rather in a vague based-off-real-life Japan that's just slightly different (like Haikyuu and all of its different prefectures). Sometimes they're based on real places, but real places that have gone through major changes (like the Hero Academia series with its quirks and shit).

Fandom is not a full time job. Please stop treating it like it is one. Most people in fandoms have to engage in other things like school or work that most definitely take precident over frantically Googling the cultural implications of dying your hair pink in Japan.

Art is also meant to be a creative freedom and is almost always a hobby, so there are a few cracks that tend to spark debate. Like I said, it is still a hobby, something that's meant to be fun (on this note!)

If trying new things and expanding your portfolio is genuinely making you upset, it's okay to take a break from it. You're not going to get it right on the first try and please, please to everyone out there critiquing artists' works, please take this into account before you post things.

I'm sorry to say, but, while it gets frustrating to see the same things done wrong over and over again, some people are genuinely trying. If it matters enough for you to point out, please offer solutions or resources that would possibly help the artist do better (honestly this could be said about a lot of online activism). I get that they should "want" to do better (and maybe they don't and your annoyance towards them is completely justified- again, as I said, if this becomes a repeated offense and they don't listen to or care about the people trying to help them, yeah you can be a bitch if it helps you feel better- just please don't assume that everyone is willfully ignorant of how hurtful/upsetting/annoying a certain way of portraying things is), but also WANTING to do better and ACTUALLY doing better are two different things.

Maybe they didn't realize what they were doing was inaccurate. Maybe they didn't have the right tutorials. Maybe they tried to look it up, but that failed them. Either way, to some- especially neurodivergent artists- just being told that their work is bad or racist or awful isn't going to make them want to search for better resources in order to be more accurate, it's just going to make them give up.

Also! In fic and in writing, no one is going to get it right on the first try. Especially at the stage where we creators ARE merely in fan spaces is a great time to "fuck around and find out", before we bring our willfully or accidentally racist shit into monetized media. Absolutely hold your fan creators to higher standards, but literally fan work has so little actual impact on popular media (and this goes for just about every debate about fan spaces), and constructive criticism as well as routine practice can mean worlds for representation in future media. NOT allowing for mistakes in micro spaces like fandoms is how you get genuinely harmful or just... bad... portrayals of minorities in popularized media that DOES have an impact on the greater public. OR you get a bunch of creators who are too afraid to walk out of their own little bubbles, because what if they get it wrong and everyone turns against them. It's better to just "stick with what they know" (hobbies are something that you are meant to get better at, even if that is a slow road- for all of my writers and artists out there, it does take time, but you will get it. To everyone else, please do speak up about things that are wrong, but don't make it all about what's wrong and please don't be rude. It's frustrating on both ends, so, if you can, please try not to escalate the situation more.)

Anyways, I'm tired of everyone holding fictional characters to American Puritanical standards, but I'm also tired of seeing every "stop Americanizing fandom" somehow loop into fanfiction and how all authors who don't make their fics as accurate as possible are actually just racist and perpetuating or enabling America's take over of the world or some shit.

Fan interpretation of published media is different than fan creation of mon monetized media. Americans dominating or monopolizing spaces meant for all fans (especially in a fandom that was never meant for them to begin with) is annoying and can be harmful sometimes. Americans writing out their own personal experience using random fictional characters (more often than not) isn't.

#just google it #better represent real life #if you tell a fic reader to ngl you're being pretty ableist and don't really have a good idea of how search engines work #also when people DO try to make culturally accurate fics often times at least one or two people will pop in and say 'actually that's wrong' #not to mention sometimes they might not even be right to begin with... #and okay once or twice it is what it is #but seriously if this keeps happening over and over most people are just going to stop writing or caring #fanfiction #fanfiction is literally free #fanfiction is free labor #adding layers upon layers of research and knowledge needed- on top of how difficult it can be to portray human emotion #it's not going to it's just going to make once starry eyed writers loss their ability to enjoy their work #and guess what #some ACTUALLY racist (or homophobic or transphobic or misogynistic) writer is going to swoop in not giving two fucks #and they're going to go on and get their work published because they don't care about accuracy

[97-liners]

God ur so self righteous it hurts 😭 all u ever do is sit here and throw around ur hot takes and opinions and then expect ur little gremlins to agree with you, but as soon as its another person who has a hot take or an opinion that opposes you, and a few people defend them whether it be a friend or an anon, they are evil, and this is just fatphobia aside like this is EVERY "moral" take you have its just all hot garbage and you being a hypocrit 💀 half the time its stuff that you have literally no say on anyway.

Are you a vampire? Have you always been afraid of mirrors?

"Moral backbone" my ass you just say whatever you will think would appeal to various minorities so you can look like the good guy who happens to be blunt. Its not even being blunt you arent cool for being a cunt towards everyone and it will never be cool. Stick to talking about shit that relates to you and maybe, just maybe, people wouldn't hate on you so much. It's no wonder half of caratblr can't stand ur ass

I dont think this take is as bad as that one time, or well multiple times you have shat on peoples writing styles or the content they write about just because it doesnt fit your vanilla cis straight woman narrative, now thats awful

Or maybe the times you've vagueposted about some of your closest moots just for them to still be here, defending your ass when all you do is talk shit about them constantly

you think i’m just saying what i think will appeal to various minorities. it’s really telling that you think people have the political beliefs they do just to look good. like do you really believe people have the beliefs they do performatively? do you find it hard to believe that people hold beliefs not out of a desire to look good, but because that’s what they believe???

also because this is weird: since when have i vagueposted about mutuals. when have mutuals defended me???? like what are you actually talking about … i don’t care if half of caratblr can’t stand my ass, if they’re that willing to support anything just because a fic writer did it, i don’t really care what they think. like i say it here all the time, i don’t care what y’all think of me. just unfollow me if you don’t want me on your dash.

the main thing i have to say here though. “half of the time it’s shit you have no say in anyway” like i don’t have to be black to think that anti-blackness is bad. this goes beyond whatever this anon is talking about — the problem with “listen to x voices” is that, while it’s important to put oppressed viewpoints in the forefront of discussions, it’s not a free pass out of critical thought. ppl forget “listen to x voices” started out in academic study. it wasn’t about the ppl you choose to defend or the viewpoints you hold publicly. and it’s not about minority voices saying “x isn’t harmful” taking precedence over established theory to the contrary. i think this is something ANY poc understands acutely and painfully because it’s always the conservative and white supremacist sellouts that get put to the forefront. (this includes diasporic poc more so than non-minority people native to their nation. like how irritating that bts has a voice on violence against asian americans when their experience as native koreans has NOTHING to do with the diasporic asian experience!?)

it also gives people an out. if you believe that only x people should talk or care about x issues, then that lets you just sit back and say “well, i’m not x so i’m not involved”… and more irritatingly, it gives you the perceived right to say “well I’M a minority so my opinion is right !!!!”. being a person of color doesn’t make me an expert on racism and i don’t pretend to be an expert. there are white anti-imperialist scholars who have a better understanding of racist power structures than i do and i’m not arrogant enough to just write that off because they’re white.

#jenna is that you lmao #jenna broke mutuals like a year ago when i said it was gross for a NATO korean war solider #to go back to korea on some sort of meaningful memory lane trip #because i sincerely hold anti-imperialist view points that i believe in not just for clout #they claimed to be defending me to mutuals??? idk my first time hearing about it

[newtonsheffield]

Hey! I love your work! Could you do a piece on Anthony defending Kate from racism and/or sexism? I just think these are important conversation in today’s world and feel that Anthony would stand for none of it.

(I’m white but have friends that are POC who have received racist remarks and it breaks my heart every time they tell me so I think it would be nice for people to read and acknowledge the work that needs to be done and the pain it can cause the people they are saying these horrible things too)

These are super super important conversations in today’s society! As we know I’m also a white cis woman and while I do get the occasional casually sexist remark thrown my way, especially working in a male dominated profession (The amount of times I’ve said Ahaha! No, I am the doctor is ludicrous), it pales in comparison to the remarks I have heard sent the way of my POC friends. Even my Brother in law who was born in Australia (Both my sister and I were not) but is of Chinese-Malaysian heritage still gets asked where he’s from in that disgustingly suspicious tone that makes your stomach churn.

You guys know that I feel it’s never my place, or intention, to speak for POC, and I am always more than open to any dialogue on how I can improve myself. I feel that as a white person who can get away with much more in this society than any of my POC friends it’s my role to listen and facilitate a conversation where possible. If a POC comes to you and says “Hey, that’s really insensitive and it would be really nice if you could stop.” We should just be stopping. Stop arguing that that brand’s been called that forever. Just stop.

Also I’m not going to say the exact term Anthony heard used to describe his girlfriend because even the thought of writing something like that sets my teeth on edge and I couldn’t bring myself to type it out! Okay! Let’s go.

Anthony had heard it, clear as day as he and Kate had shouldered gently past the throng of people at the football stadium. If they were pushed to say it, neither of them were terribly enthusiastic about football, but this was a big match for Simon and the entire family was heading out to show their support. Kate had stiffened next to him immediately, her entire body tensed, ready to run away. Anthony himself had stumbled a little at the sound of the words, looking around for the source. A man was standing some feet from them, his eyes trained Kate, a sneer on his face as he laughed with his friend. Anthony felt rage burn white hot in his chest, felt his hand that wasn’t gripping Kate’s clench into a hard fist.

“Kate stay here.” Anthony rumbled out. Kate looked stricken next to him, paling slightly as she tried to tug him back by the arm.

“Anthony don’t. It’s fine.” She said, her voice tiny, and even through his rage he felt his heart clench at the sound, and he couldn’t help but wonder just how many times something had been said like this as she was just going about her life. Innocently, no provocation other than existing. Anthony felt sick to his stomach.

“No Kate, it’s not fine. It’s disgusting.” He said, his eyes burning into hers, which widened in surprise at the fierceness of his tone. He used her surprise to extract his hand from hers and pushed through the crowd towards the disgusting man, he could hear Kate calling his name, hear her footsteps behind him.

“What did you say about my girlfriend?” Anthony called out, as he approached, both men stilled slightly turning towards him in surprise, their faces set in a look of derision.

“Not worth your time, Mate. You should probably move along before it gets ugly.” The man who’d made the comment said, standing closer to Anthony, crossing his arms menacingly. He was several inches taller then Anthony, and a lot broader but Anthony stood his ground, anger rooting him to the spot.

“You seemed to find to very funny just now.” Anthony said, struggling to keep his tone even. The man laughed again.

“Anthony, please can we just go?” Kate’s worried voice said from behind him, Anthony turned to her. Her lip was trapped between her teeth, her brow furrowed, arms crossed shrinking in on herself.

“Kate, this man was just about to apologise for what he said.” He said, politely smiling at the man, even as his fist itched to hit him. The man laughed loudly, his mate joining in for just a second though he was looking less and less sure that he wanted to continue the interaction.

“Look, pretty boy, you can slum it with whoever you want but I’m not going to apologise to a f-” he was cut off by Anthony’s fist colliding with his nose. The man recoiled, blood spurting from his nose.

“Anthony! Fuck!” Kate yelled dragging him backwards, as the security closed in on them.

“That was the most ridiculous thing I think I’ve ever seen you do Anthony!” Kate berated him later as they marched from the stadium, his hand wrapped tightly in an ice pack, still throbbing mercilessly. “You’re lucky you just broke your hand, he could have killed you!”

“Well, I wasn’t going to stand there and do nothing Kate!” He said, tugging her around to face him, his gaze locked with hers. “What he said about you was absolutely disgusting, and I just... couldn’t...” he trailed off when the lump in his throat got too big to swallow down. Kate sighed.

“That’s very sweet Anthony. And I appreciate you standing up for me, and while it was very very hot that my boyfriend just broke a racist’s nose, can we maybe not get arrested at Simon’s match next time?” She said, standing on her toes and leaving a light kiss on his lips. Anthony smiled broadly.

“Very hot hey?” He said wiggling his eyebrows. Kate scoffed and turned to keep walking and Anthony heard a muttered Insufferable leak out into the night

#bridgerton and sons au #kathony #anthony x kate #kate sheffield #anthony bridgerton #kate sharma #disgusting casual racism #Kate does not need a man to fight her battles #but it’s kinda nice when you don’t have to fight them all #Anthony Bridgerton punches a racist #molly's asks and aswers

[pluviophile-bookworm]

AWAE 3x3 rewatch: thoughts and reactions

So I made a ginormous pause in between these again. I just wasn’t feeling up to the task, I guess. But it’s the anniversary of the premiere of AWAE, so what better day to do the penultimate one of these... Let’s just dive in because it’s been literal years since I first saw this episode and I remember literally nothing from it.

Oh my, Bash is just the best. And those baby chicks... well, I know what is most likely to happen to chickens on a farm when they grow older but... can we just maybe not think of that yet? Plus, seeing Mary keeps reminding me that soon I won’t be seeing her anymore. It’s safe to say I have mixed feelings about this cold open. Let’s move on.

Gosh, now they’re leaving Matthew alone with Delly, who is two types of people he’s uncomfortable around - a baby and a girl. But it’s fine, it will be just ‘a couple of hours’...

It is such a shame to think that Mary might have been saved... if she were white. People can be so awful. A human being is a human being. At least there are people like Dr. Ward and our protagonists who know that and act accordingly.

Oh... there’s that cute scene of Matthew showing Delly around Green Gables that I’ve seen in so many gifs... I can’t comment much on it so I’ll just sit back and enjoy. But before I go - Matthew is the best, most gentle man I’ve ever seen. He might be awkward around women and children, but he knows how to treat them right better than most people who are not awkward around them.

Oh gosh, the nappy! That kind of made me laugh out of place but, well, I just wanted to say - thank gods for Jerry and his many siblings. My boy knows how to change nappies.

Oh, they’ve got the printing press! Now that’s exciting! I feel like excitement is a good word to describe this episode, at least so far. We’ll see how I feel by the end of it. All I know is this is making me smile and I’ve really been needing that.

My, my, Ruby... I keep forgetting when it was that she got over Gilbert. Apparently it was not before mid-season, since she’s still in it way too deep. 

Oh wait... is this when things began happening between her and Moody? I mean, the way he gives her his handkerchief, you’d think ever since he stopped trying to make Diana and her ‘very blue’ dress notice him, he’s been sitting back and watching Ruby from afar, hoping he can, somehow, compare to Gilbert. The best part is, in just a bit, he won’t need to. Boy, do I need a fourth season even if just to see these two develop... and for Diana and Jerry to make up, and just in general to see the kids being all grown up... now I feel like crying because we’ll very probably never get it... ok, moving on.

Anne: Sometimes life finds gifts in the darkest of places./ Marilla: Indeed. Wait, was this Marilla’s way of telling Anne she loves her? This is just the best. 

The contrast between scenes dealing with Mary and the rest of the episode is just so stark, it’s jarring. It’s like, you never know the darkness someone might be sinking into  while everybody else is bathing in the light. You know, everybody involved in making this episode, and the show in its entirety, made it so poetic, and yet it’s not. It’s absolutely devastating. And now Gilbert can’t even tell Mary that she’s got no more than two weeks left. This is the worst. 

You know, Anne is right. Caring deeply will always be the right thing. I mean, it’s natural for Gilbert to doubt himself at this time, especially since the tragedy is happening to his own found family. You know, there’s something my mum taught me to do when I’m watching something and I can’t bear the subject matter of it - focus on the acting. And right now I’m just blown away by the superb performance by these incredible young people. But I really can’t bear to focus on the plot right now. And the acting being that good doesn’t particularly help me to detach myself from the story.

You know, tragic as what’s happening to Mary certainly is, it’s somehow lucky she has Anne in her life now that she’s about to leave her own daughter to grow up motherless. Because if only Anne’s parents had an orphan tell them what an orphaned child needs most, Anne’s own experience might have been very different. Mary is a very smart woman for realising that and talking to Anne about it. Because life is not about lamenting what we didn’t have. It’s about making sure we do what is in our power to make it easier for others if we can.

Ah, yes. Racism and ‘White Man’s Burden’ mentality are still very much a thing present here. I guess this here is the first mention of that horrible prison of a school that Ka’kwet would be sent to. This is. The. Worst.

I just can’t bear to listen to this guy. ‘Heathens’ - you mean people with a rich culture and belief system beyond your privileged straight white male comprehension? ‘Teach them all things civilised’ - you mean erase their own, I repeat, rich culture, and replace it with your white man’s ideas of civilisation? What deity fell from the heavens and made you God? And the way Rachel totally agrees with this guy, it just makes me sick. As if that guy would hesitate to discriminate against you on the basis of you being a woman! I just can’t with this. Let’s move on.

‘Be sure you marry for love. Only for love.’ Don’t worry, Mary, he will. Not before a huge, long period of confusion, mind you. But he’ll come to his senses eventually. People do stupid things when they’re young. That’s how they know they’ve lived it to the fullest.

Rachel just baffles me, you know. And Marilla, too, isn’t quite faultless here. How can you be so accepting of one kind of POC, yet so cruel to another? Then I remember their initial reactions to meeting Bash. They were not the most accepting at first. Yet they can see how they’ve now grown to accept and care deeply about Bash and Mary and Delphine. Why can’t they give Ka’kwet’s people a chance like this?

‘You may well have saved some Indians today’... Saved them? From what? Being free to practice their own culture? You know, white people can be so very ignorant... and I say that as a very white person. I’m just ashamed of everything my ethnicity has done to literally every other ethnicity.

‘I don’t wanna die’... You know, sometimes I do, and right now that makes me feel so ashamed. I should really think of Mary and also every real person who had an untimely death whenever I’m having those thoughts again. We should all learn to appreciate life so much more.

So this is the one with Mary’s Easter... this is beautiful. I might have to rescind my ‘excitement’ statement from earlier, but there is still a theme of beauty, love and family throughout this. Well, technically throughout the entire series, but especially here. I love this. 

Delphine with a flower crown is the cutest thing ever...

Minnie May: She looks like a chocolate candy. I just... took notice of how the background music abruptly stopped. You know, coming from an older person, this would sound... not at all ok. But this 7-year-old didn’t mean any harm, and they realise it after a brief moment of panic in their eyes. Still... black people don’t call us, idk, butter or something. We should not compare their skin colour to chocolate.

Their singing is absolutely beautiful. But let’s be real - in a real-life situation, most of the people would be way off-key and those harmonies would be impossible to arrange. Still, for this beauty, I am willing to suspend my disbelief for miles. Also, that prayer at the end... well, I’m not Christian, but I am religious, and I know the power of a prayer as poetic as this one. However hard it must have been for Mary to know she wouldn’t live, it must have been a great consolation to know she would go in such a way, surrounded by so much beauty and love, and light. Well, that ending was bittersweet! But I absolutely loved this episode. Except for the racist parts that made me absolutely livid. It’s so frustrating to know there is still so much hate in the world based just on minor superficial differences between people. Yet it would have been even more frustrating if we didn’t have people in the world like our protagonists (and especially the protagonist, Anne). It is such an absolute shame that this show, and others like it, got cancelled over some trivial issues and wasn’t given the proper chance to develop its positive messages even further. But still, even with just the 27 episodes it was given, it was able to cover so much ground. I don’t know what to say. AWAE is just supreme.

Let’s sum up: the final weeks of Mary’s life; racial prejudice might have just cost this lovely woman, a wife and a mother, her life; Matthew showing Delly around Green Gables is the sweetest thing; the first press-printed issue of The Avonlea Gazette, with a significant typo; and thus, a ship was born; subtle ways of saying those three little words; ‘Caring deeply will always be the right thing.’; the legacy of a mother; ‘White Man’s Burden’ mentality is alive and dangerous; double standards regarding the acceptance of POC; Mary’s Easter; going surrounded by a loving community.

#anne with an e #awae #anne with an e season 3 #awae season3 #anne shirley cuthbert #gilbert blythe #diana barry #jerry baynard #ruby gillis #moody spurgeon #jane andrews #josie pye #tillie boulter #marilla cuthbert #matthew cuthbert #bash lacroix #mary lacroix #delphine lacroix #rachel lynde #jnk watches awae