#or at least material that isn't just a racist trope | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bijoumikhawal · 8 months

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I've gotten tired of making a post like this every few months so let's just fire a few of these off, and feel free to add on! Tropes you should at minimum reconsider using when you write or talk about Julian Bashir:

Mentions of "harem" pants, "Arabian nights" aesthetics, etc. These are improper terminology (that feeds into racist ideas) for real things, and when using that terminology those things are often being misrepresented. For my part, if you would actually like to know about the material culture of the Middle East and North Africa, I'm a "hobby" researcher of that very topic and will readily answer asks about it- with the caveat that I mostly know about Egypt, and I'm not the best person to ask about Sudanese specific culture even though I know a little, and I don't know much about Indian or Pakistani fashion (mentioning because these seem to be the most common cultures brought up around Julian).

comparisons to monkeys, apes, the word "simian". This should be obvious but it happens a fair amount, and it's almost comedic given a common trope is to comment on how much Garak hates being compared to a lizard.

This is separate but the way some people use mammalian tips from writing xenofic and trying to understand how an alien would think and categorize things into something that feels very exoticifying. It's not a "full stop, do not do this" but it is something I've noticed

Jokes about how undesirable Julian is. He's the exception that proves the rule about fandom's obsession with white twinks and a rare example of a brown nerd who isn't pinned into the "Couldn't sleep with a woman if they were the last two people on earth" box. I'm not saying we can't make fun of how he flirts just- Stay clear of Raj BBT territory

Conversely: my most hated garashir trope is when the author makes Julian's libido a problem by making him inconsiderate, cruel, and outright manipulative in service of his dick, and the writing often makes it clear they're connecting this to his masculinity. Julian does do some really stupid shit when it comes to his relationships, but this particular way of trying to incorporate this into writing him is just OOC, and you need to not confuse writing Julian's canonical robust and healthy sex life with negative stereotypes about lecherous Black and brown men. There's fics that pull off Julian being a bit of a dick or manipulative well- such as Salt the Earth or the ageswap series (at least where I last left off on it).

making his eyes green or blue. I have the same eye color as Siddig, more or less, and while it's technically hazel (or olive, as some people call it) most people think it's brown and most lighting makes it look brown. If you look at screencaps of Julian, you'll notice it also most of the time, looks brown. This sounds minor if you haven't experienced it, but it has a real and very negative impact on people's self image.

Older one but to be clear: if you're writing Julian as explicitly Muslim, find and replacing "god" with "allah" in English text is not how Muslims (or Arabic speakers in general) use the word? It is really funny to read, but please...

Over focusing on Julian as British. There's a long, LONG conversation that could be had about the dynamics of assimilation and how European racism (ime) very specifically views it as progressive to strip people of their culture and thinks they're causing the problem if they don't go along with it that would need its own post and which I've had with white fans before and feel exhausted thinking about- but to put it simply, there is no such thing as "just British", even for white Englishmen.

Yes the inverse is also wrong but I really haven't read a fic newer than 2014 guilty of that lmao and I think some of the more recent complaints about it are overblown, given I've read only a few fics recently published that delve into Julian as a Brown/African Person and I enjoyed them

I would personally appreciate it if fic writers were a little more balanced about cultural discussions honestly. If you write a lot about Cardassian culture, it'd be nice if Julian’s background was discussed. I won't say that kind of research is easy (again, I do this as a "hobby" that's very important to me, it's actually really annoying and difficult sometimes), but it is possible. I recently talked about how not doing this kind of mentally slots Julian into a "white guy" role.

This is not a matter of me policing your "artistic expression". I have no control over what you do. I would just like for fandom, a hobby I do for fun, to be a place where people stop being racist in a way that directly impacts me.

#cipher talk #ds9 #julian bashir

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sapphire-weapon · 8 months

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Sorry to bring more discourse to your blog, but it's about the whole "problematic" shipling thing, because it's a part of older RE plot, that absolutely does my head in. It doesn't fucking make sense. We can talk ALL day about how Leon is canonically responsible for genocides. It's canon that these things have happened because he never has the backbone to finish the job or manage his feelings like a grown adult. It's an interesting talk, but it's NEVER (or very barely) addressed that way in the actual material. His whole "turn the other cheek, because he needs a vague romance" trope is really just one massive fucking plot hole and I don't know why people aren't completely pissed about it. His messy narrative is one of my least favourite things in the series. It almost turns me off of his games and movies entirely. I enjoyed REmake, 7 and 8 the most because at least the characters add up. Their motivations are clear. It's a fully formed story and we know who does what and why. They just haven't fucking done that with Leon. They can't decide on whether to flesh him out properly or to keep throwing him early naughts b-movie tropes that arguably, just make him less likeable (to me).

Sorry for the rant. But holy shit. Anything about his character outside of "I'm angry, let's shoot" has been fucking terrible, in my eyes. They have no idea what to do with him. His choices constantly fucking contradict themselves. He's like a nonstop, unstable "what to doooo?" asshole and I DON'T KNOW WHY ANYONE ELSE ISN'T MAD ABOUT THE CONSTANT PLOT HOLES AND SENSELESS BULLSHIT THIS CHARACTER DOES I HONESTLY DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW HE BECAME MORE POPULAR THAN CHRIS, CLAIRE, WESKER, HUNNIGAN, ETHAN AND JILL OTHER THAN "HE HAS COOL BANGS AND TELLS JOKES SOMETIMES" LIKE WHAT?

I know I'll get roasted and shredded for saying it, but jesus christ man, it's such an enormous pet peeve of mine. I just want the remakes to finish their job of understanding that Leon hasn't been written well and he's gotta be fixed. That Ashley actually has a whole load of potential and Ada has only ever been an empty, racist and sexist stereotype that can't be fixed unless they bother to actually write any sort of story for her other than "sexy Asian is mean sometimes, but her terrorism is okay because the emo boy kissed her this one time and has known her for a combined 15 hours."

Phew. I am mad. I'm sorry for exposing you to this. I've only gotten into RE like less than a year ago and the stupidity and lack of literacy and analysis in this fucking fanbase is crazy to me. If I see one more "sibling coded toxic age gap, Leon is flawless omg ashley little girl so silly" post I'm going to shave my head. Even my phone is glitching because it can't keep up with my seemingly very unpopular rager.

homie i'mma need u to fuckin breathe and understand that this is the same series where the only reason that the main villain ever had to hate the main protagonist was the fact that the main protagonist laughed at his science project -- and then that detail was retconned out of the remake, and now there's no reason for wesker to hate chris at all, actually.

this is the same series that killed off its main villain way too prematurely, realized immediately that they fucked up by doing it, and, instead of just retconning it and bringing him back, they tried to "oops! all weskers!" it, then didn't know what to do with that, then just decided to write it so that he had a son, but then nobody liked him, either, and now they're just going FUCK IT LET'S JUST REMAKE THE WHOLE THING.

this is the same series that is so unabashedly and unrepentantly racist that it sends its white american protagonist into the heart of africa, whereabouts he encounters a village with actual mud huts in it, where the townspeople are dressed in actual tribal clothing, and they chuck actual literal spears at him.

this is the same series where the creators openly admitted to not allowing their main female protagonist to visibly age because they thought it'd hurt their bottom line.

this is the same series where the objectively best title in it has a story that's so fucking bad that the dude who wrote and directed it said that he'd only support a remake of it if the remake fixed his shitty fucking story and actually told a good one.

this is the same series where rachel fucking foley exists and is meant to be taken seriously.

this is the same series where a dude fucking a spider is, questionably and arguably, canon.

leon is not remotely the worst part of resident evil's storytelling, nor is ada the most offensively racist part of it. THE ENTIRE NARRATIVE OF RESIDENT EVIL IS NONSENSE DOG GARBAGE. leon and ada are just par for the course.

if you are not a raccoon and/or opossum who enjoys gorging yourself on garbage, perhaps resident evil is not the series for you.

that's why they called it raccoon city in the first place.

because the playerbase must inevitably be filled with raccoons, because only raccoons would enjoy the sheer amount of garbage that the story throws at them.

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detectivenyx · 5 months

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I think part of the distaste for fandom meta lately comes from an aversion to discourse. When you're a queer teen in the midst of Steven Universe fandom mayhem, it gets scary and makes you want to avoid overanalyzing anything ever again. Not to say we shouldn't be talking about the impact of fiction, cause of course we should. There's just a fear of backlash if you get it wrong.

Also, it's very easy for discussion of literature to be clouded by trauma and personal experience. Personally there are subjects I just straight up cannot think about for more than a minute before I'm stressing myself out. It keeps me from having a truly objective viewpoint on the material.

And there's also the case of people who don't actually know how to do literary analysis. It's not always taught in school, and for my high school (Arizona) there was only one available literature class (and it was for college credit). I took it and got through it fine, but my sister tried to take it and she tells me it ruined her reading hobby, and is the reason she now despises literary analysis.

the thing is that fandom meta/media analysis =/= fandom discourse. i very much was a teenager in the midst of steven universe fandom mayhem and flipflopped between adoring and hating the show. i never got super into the discourse surrounding the show.

additionally; the way i experience a lot of media now is very much clouded by trauma and personal experience. in some ways, my channel taking off was one of the best and worst things that happened to me. routinely i still get harassed and judged and sent harassment for simultaneously negative and positive analysis, people @'ing me on youtube to tell me i should remove my content because they're offended by my analysis.

that is all kind of background to say that despite all these elements, i don't really think the reasons provided are implicitly valid excuses. i don't think of myself as a particularly smart individual, but media analysis and being able to look at things objectively is kind of, well, necessary for interaction with most pieces of media outside of passive consumption, and passive consumption isn't a great way to consume anything more complex than the teletubbies.

a friend of mine knew about the incest and borderline-pedophilia in Vampire Knight, for example; but they didn't realise that a 'pure blooded vampire' that's inherently better than the non-pure blooded vampires was a problematic and racist trope that validated 'good breeding' at all. they're not very good at media analysis.

additionally there are multiple sources online (academic and educational sources, mind) that help with media analysis and there's almost guaranteed to be one that appeals to someone at least somewhat.

and to be honest, it is pretty alienating in its own right to be routinely told i'm 'reading too much into things' and i should just accept the blue curtains and make endless yaoi/yuri 100k coffee shop friends/enemies to lovers fanfics because that's your place in fandom as a Wretched Femoid (regardless of my actual gender) by, being honest, all genders in fandom, just depends on if it's 'ew i don't want my literary analysis being done by a WUMMIN and a NONBINRY WUMMIN at that' or 'uhhhh :333 leave the analysis to the boys and join us in Girl Fandom'. we're better than that, i think.

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phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing · 2 years

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i find posts about authour and their morality bad faith as usually the people who say that are defending themselves literally jacking off to cp n rape, trying to say that cause a book about that stuff portrayed in a negative light, and how bad that is, means fic about how good it is actually is fine. if someone writes a racist book and never addresses it, that doesn't mean the authour isn't racist

Oh anon… Bad faith you say. Are you really saying all that about strangers you know nothing about in good faith, though?

Post got really long so it’s going to be under the cut.

To take a well known example, writing a book about a pedophile, written from the unreliable narrator pedophile’s perspective, did not make the author of Lolita a pedophile. In fact he married a woman 3 years younger than him, who was 21 when they met, and who also greatly helped him write and publish Lolita (even stopped him from setting the manuscript on fire a couple times, writing mood), so it be really fucking weird to make that kind of accusation.

In an interview for BBC Television in 1962, he said:

Lolita is a special favorite of mine. It was my most difficult book—the book that treated of a theme which was so distant, so remote, from my own emotional life that it gave me a special pleasure to use my combinational talent to make it real.

This is what writing about dark themes is often most about. It’s exotic in a way, it’s fascinating because taboo topics are fascinating by nature, and it’s a delicious challenge because of the distance from you, because it’s not something you’d ever experience or want to experience irl. What would it be like to feel that way? You have to stretch your imagination to make it believable. It’s fun.

Okay, maybe it’s fun for the author to write, but people who didn’t write it are also reading it and enjoying it. What about people who read those books then? Aren’t they messed up for enjoying noncon or other less than moral material? Worse, isn’t it dangerous to let people read them, in case they start getting ideas?

Let’s see… I can give you a personal example. The first erotic work I ever came across and read and found hot (I was a fairly young teenager, and it was fanfiction.net, where you never knew what to expect) was someone peeping at someone else in the shower. I thought it was really interesting, how someone’s actions might look erotic to someone else, even without them being intentional about it, and it was decently well written.

So. I was at a very “impressionable” age; yet I have never done that or wanted to do that irl. Sure, it’s hot in fiction, but I don’t particularly want to experience it with my own eyes, it would be really rude of me to try because it’s a breach of consent and that’s a major turn off. That’s what “bring your moral compass from home” means. Reading about it, where nobody gets hurt? Hot. In real life? Hell fucking nah. It’s the same with pretty much everything in erotic fiction, modulo tropes/kinks/etc that repulse you even with the safe distance from fiction; some people have a weak stomach, some people just don’t find certain things interesting, some people find cases where the grossness outweighs the hotness, etc etc, all of those are perfectly fine the important part is that we’re all different with our own levels of tolerance and enjoyment.

The important thing here is keeping things safe, sane, and consensual irl.

Additionally, people have more to them than whatever they’re reading or writing??? I have at least one friend who’s really into writing and reading piss kink, that doesn’t mean they would force me to interact with that side of them. Trust me if that was the case we would not be friends, I have sensory issues and I would have to flee very fast.

With that in mind. Assuming that “jacking off to x” is a proof of evil is pretty fucking weird imo. Sounds very conservative christian, thought crimes and all that. Thinking or reading about something means you’re secretly wanting to do it, which is basically the same as having actually done it, so you’re a criminal. (Fun fact: none of this is true. I can even say I want to kill someone and not get charged with murder.)

You know what my longest fanfiction is called? “There are no thought crimes”. What do you think it means? Why do you think I named it that?????

Now, I’ll give you one, because there’s one thing you said that I do agree with.

Can people write racist books because they’re secretly racist? Of course, but. That’s because it’s a lack of self-awareness that causes the racism in the book, a lack of care. When you’re not thinking deeply about what you’re doing, some of your beliefs may shine through. You can see it very well in Harry Potter, with big things like the goblins or the house elves and little seemingly innocuous details like girls being able to go in the boys’ dorms but not vice versa.

However, this is the result of someone who either doesn’t care or is being careless about what they’re writing. They intend something innocent or good and let slip that their vision of good includes bigoted beliefs. Purposefully writing about dark themes is a very different, and, again, much more fun and challenging experience in the first place.

Honestly anon, I don’t think I could change your mind since you already have an opinion you’re very adamant about. I’m mostly writing this for myself, because this is an excellent opportunity to make my stance clear.

If you think I’m secretly a murderer or a rapist or a pedophile because I’ve been co-writing a mafia AU where murder, rape and pedophilia happen then please just… unfollow or block me? Don’t read my works???

Your experience is yours to modulate anon, keep yourself safe and sane by using your ability to filter and consent. Not liking dark themes is fine. Not liking being challenged by themes in fiction is, while kind of a dubious omen for one’s critical thinking, also perfectly fine.

Assuming the worst of others with no basis other than their reading preferences or use of their constitutionally protected freedom of expression, or worse, accusing them of crimes, is not fine. Don’t do that. Very authoritarian. Rancid vibes.

#phoebe rambles #lemons

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edalynn · 1 year

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huntlow shippers will see you talk about how you dont like huntlow and spam you with hundreds of messages explaining the same few screenshots of them standing next to each other and how you're spoiling everyones fun by "hating something cute for no reason." so you look at the "evidence" and point out why it's faulty and also explain why you personally don't think the ship is cute and how ppl mischaracterize both of them (especially willow and we know why).

and also you decide maybe youre being too harsh on what are probably middle schoolers so you try to look at the ship in good faith and point out the problems with a potential huntlow dynamic and how the ship can be explored to give them both character development. but then the same shippers spam you again accusing you of "ruining the fun" because you can't even portray a relationship that isn't 100% saccharine and conflict free nowadays apparently.

so you eventually explain why you don't see enough canon material to get attached to the ship and how ppl who like the ship really mischaracterize hunter and willow, using some really sexist/racist tropes sometimes. and it's because of the toxic fans that you don't like the ships now and especially their portrayal in fandom.

and then the same shippers spam you with the same 8 screenshots of them standing next to each other and basically proselytize about how "its definitely gonna be canon stop complaining." and they tell you youre entitled to your preferences but also they will not stop repeating their points until you agree with them that yes it will be canon and yes you actually like the ship now haha please go away!

because if you dislike a thing they personally like then obviously YOU are the stupid idiot who doesn't understand WHY the thing is good and THEY definitely don't need to reflect on if the reasons they like the thing is short-sighted or even harmful. or if its just a difference of preference for what at the end of the day is a ship between two teenagers that are not real. and if you're not getting it then it's their duty to make you see reason. obviously.

oh and then you look at their blog to see wtf kind of person is spamming you and theyre always. like. twenty five years old

I just went through such a specific, extremely vivid scenario, I feel like I need to lay on the floor for a while and rethink my life lmao. Because you are 10000% fucking right. Every argument, every conversation, every ask pans out exactly like this, almost word for word give or take a few points. It' so telling how they all have the same responses and same patterns. Like, there's nothing I can even add to this ask, that's just exactly how it fucking goes and its embarrassing. I want to say at least be original at this point, but they clearly don't care enough to given they don't give half of a thought to our reasons why we dislike it. H/L shippers all share one braincell that they pass around based on who's sending the angry anons which day, but the braincell is the size of a pea anyway so it doesn't even matter. Critial thinking skills: -2000. This ask is just too perfect, I can't even touch it anymore to give my opinion because you already said everything lmao

#asks #taako talks #toh #the owl house #huntl0w negative

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onewomancitadel · 11 months

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I would also take antis (and anybody who wants to have a serious conversation about the relationship media and literature have with society) a lot more seriously if they didn't do shit like call Reylo variously incest, paedophilia (Rey is 19 and Kylo is 27), analogy to domestic abuse, etc. Like if you're suddenly defining these things as things that they're actually not, you've lost the ability to talk about actual measureable 'harm' or what are precipitators of 'bad behaviour'.

Like, a girl found 'fanfic' her brother had written about her (this was on Reddit, so it's possible it wasn't real, but the comments were definitely real) and a bunch of people who were upvoted said it was just his 'fantasy' and tried to write it off. It's an extreme example, and even more extreme because it's an online community giving advice, but clearly there is a point where the proshipping position lets up and this is what I'm trying to demonstrate - a family member writing erotic fanfic about his sister is too far and is a serious warning sign. But equally any sort of nuance is lost in the anti debate, and the anti debate wants to move right to censoring AO3 without even knowing the stuff that gets posted on sites with predominantly male userbases. This isn't whataboutism, I think it just demonstrates what their motivations are.

I think about this a lot because I do care about the depiction of ideas in media and literature and how those convey our social concerns... I was musing last night on Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and how a majority of online discourse surrounding those novels is that the romances are regressive and toxic. Yet to me what is urgently concerning in interacting with those texts is the inseparable racism, from Rochester's imprisoned wife to the racist pseudoscientific physiognomy to Heathcliff's 'dark-skinned gypsy' (it's a slur against Romani people) nature. I don't think that is any reason to discard the texts at all, I just think it's interesting that an urgent issue of moral division focuses on the romance (because that's where the modern 'toxic romance' discourse is interested) rather than the materially concerning things is very, very telling.

Separately with Heathcliff I think it's very interesting that the 'sad white boy' trope of the Byronic hero is really not... a sad white boy trope. Heathcliff is best known as one of the archetypal Byronic heroes and you can't read his relationship to Cathy without being cognisant of the manner of his adoption and the way his physical appearance is married to, and realises, the othering of the Byronic hero in the story (and Cathy's by virtue) and the impossibility of their union and the torture of it. Isn't it telling that a deeply tortured literary figure explores actual... social and physical alienation?

For the record, I'm not a literature major, I've never read any professional criticisms of the Brontës so these are just my impressions. But, it was impossible for me to read the description of Jane's facial features and how those reflected her spirit without thinking of how that contrasted to Rochester's imprisoned wife, Bertha Mason, whose mother was Creole and similarly to Heathcliff is implied to be mixed race (and that her madness is potentially a consequence of this...) That is expressed racism in the text. I'm trying not to 'whataboutism' here, but I think the least of Jane Eyre's problems are really related to Jane getting married.

But that's my problem, like, it's not quite as cool to talk about that because that's not the point being moralised in anti discourse. If your social movement is based upon what is most cool or what is most inciting, when it is no longer cool or inciting it won't matter.

#stirring the pot

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