#anyway that's not a critique of the ''representation'' as much as just the writing I think - there's a few areas where I thought the writin | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

coulson-is-an-avenger · 2 years

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Hello there! I saw you posting about Arcane. I'm considering watching it (even though I've never played LoL lmao). If you have a while to spare, can you, like, sell it to me? Give some best things about it (or some bad things to consider)?

Thanks, have a great day ^^

Ooh I can definitely try!!! I fucking love Arcane, it’s SUCH a cool show with incredibly complex characters and a really awesome art style to boot. It absolutely dragged me in, even though I knew nothing (and still know nothing!) about League of Legends lmao and gave a full story and experience without really needing to know anything about the source material.

The best thing about it in my opinion is how much agency every single character has. Literally everyone on screen has so much narrative force in their actions; an individual person can change the entire course of the story at any moment just because of the choices they make, and it’s so cool to see the story get pushed and pulled in different directions because of that. I especially love this because of how many women (and people of color) are the ones making those impactful choices!!!!!

Every action has echoes and consequences, and although that frequently leads to tragedy, it still feels SUPER narratively satisfying because of how it’s all executed. And that’s another thing, the narrative of arcane is just. fucking incredible. It’s such a complex story about grief and arrogance and relationships and class disparity and it weaves everything together with such grace it’s just OUGHHHHHF absolutely delicious.

And have I MENTIONED how well all the women are written!!!! How they’re all allowed to be super different and vastly complicated people with glaring flaws and incredible strengths and they’re allowed to have prominent noses and unique facial features and also the buff women actually have muscles it’s incredible.

All that in consideration though there is some stuff to watch out for in terms of content warnings!! For example there is significant focus on police brutality and class violence, fantasy drug abuse/forced addiction, economic disparity, messy familial relationships that at times do get violent, and also some intense child death sequences (ESPECIALLY in episode 3), and the first season as of right now Does end on a very tragic note, so all of that is good to keep in mind going in.

I will say for the record though that none of the violence ever feels meaningless or glorified: it always leaves a very profound mark on the characters/situations and carries narrative weight, so while some truly horrible things happen, they do feel like they matter, if that makes sense. There’s a sense of closure/significance in what you witness.

I personally don’t usually love tragedies or media that’s designed to make you sad but GOD it’s so artfully done in this show that I’ve literally rewatched it like four times because as much as bad shit happens it all feels so cathartic at the end (despite it ending on a cliffhanger) and I love it so much hghnhngnnn

Anyways TLDR I fucking love this show and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys fantasy and/or steampunk, wants to see well written characters, or who likes animation even a little bit. I hope this helps!!!

#arcane #mossy speaks #and this isnt even me going into the individual characters like each one is SOOOO fucking cool and complex i care them so goddamn much #other selling points include: mel medarda. just she. lesbians. mad scientist representation. and also ekko #there are also probably some valid critiques out there abt the writing of the enforcers but i haven’t seen a ton of stuff abt that #and as a white person i dont want to put words in anyone’s mouth so im hesitant to critique it myself but! probably worth looking into #anyways hope this helps uwu!

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latinokaeya-moving · 2 years

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wanting to talk abt smth in this one assignment but my linking back to the main point skills r lacking lmao

#x #its just a short log on postcolonial critique of representation (w the implication of it being in the field of anthropology)#which like. fine. i can talk abt traditional orientalism / how anthro aided the colonial project. but i wanna talk abt techno orientalism #sooooo bad and im like finding a lotta of stuff abt it but mostly wrt media and general perceptions of east asia in the west... not so much #specifically in the field of anthropology...#i kinda wanna write abt it anyway n see if iget away w it lmao #idk. i can just say its a way orientalism has evolved or smth. IDKKKK

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ot3 · 7 months

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people are like the BG3 companions are sooo diverse it's HUGE for video games when there's literally only two LGBTQ+ identities represented like just say irl you think everyone is ~a little bit bi~ and be done games have been doing better representation for literally fifteen years

im someone who finds the concept of 'representation' to be a fundamentally flawed way to engage with media critique and i think the fact that it is the primary lens used to engage with characters sexuality in media has caused a lot of people to sort of miss the forest for the trees in these kinds of discussions.

imo saying 'these characters aren't playersexual theyre all just bi and you're a biphobe for saying otherwise' is pretty much the same level of engaging with a text that 'this female character needs to wear a skimpy outfit because her super power is stronger when her skin is exposed' is. you're saying something that is technically true within the fiction you're being presented but really overlooking an absolutely titanic amount of cultural forces that have come together to influence the result you're seeing, and prioritizing the imagined agency of fictional characters over critiquing the intent of the writers

don't get me wrong i'm not saying that people shouldnt enjoy the fact that these characters are functionally, mechanically bisexual in the game. i dont want to take that away from anyone who gets something out of that. but i do think it's kind of strange how infrequently people discuss the fact that Bisexual becomes just the default character sexuality of romanceable play characters so gamers don't get mad that they can't fuck the 3d model they want to. in function, what you get a lot of the time isn't people going out of their way to meaningfully write a bisexual character but rather people abstaining from writing characters with any true sexual/romantic preference in order to please the larger portion of their consumer base.

i don't think it's really fair to claim that these people must automatically assume everyone in real life is a little bit bi because assuming peoples opinions on sexuality apply to real people the way they apply to fictional characters is bad in either direction. but i do think it's a little bit strange that you can see something where characters are made bisexual for the express purpose of being romantically/sexually available to any type of character you could throw at them in order to maximize the appeal of a commercial product and not even stop to consider whether or not that's a dynamic that's worth critiquing a little. considering how much of the way biphobia manifesting in real life is bi people needing to remind everyone that being bi does not, in fact, automatically make you romantically and sexually available to any conceivable type of person on earth.

anyway i don't think Playersexual characters are necessarily a bad or harmful thing but they're certainly something i don't like. and i certainly think that trying to act like any criticism of it is secret biphobia is pretty ridiculous.

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lyssified · 7 months

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HEY GUYS HERE'S PART 2 OF THE HEMINGWAY RANT ! ask and you shall recieve :)

you can read part 1 HERE and also read the trigger warnings there before you start, this one also has a lot of war trauma talk nothing too bad though

people that read the first one and I think wanted to be tagged in part 2: @mister3127 @crayonssmellgood @mack-anthology-of-noise @vampireboywife

okay welcome back to episode 2 of why the fuck am I hooked on the life of an american writer from the 1930s. so I have a couple more interesting facts about him because tbh this man was insane :D

so let's do a little compare and contrast game. hemingway grew up in the great lakes area and enjoyed big game hunting, solo fishing trips, had a father who was a doctor locally famous for performing c-sections whom he worshipped, was injured passing out cigarettes and chocolate to Italian soldiers in WW1, and spent time recovering in Milan

hemingway's most famous short stories are his Nick Adams stories. he created this character that he called Nick Adams and wrote stories about Nick's entire life. here are some things about nick: he grew up in the great lakes area and enjoyed big game hunting, solo fishing trips, had a father who was a doctor locally famous for performing c-sections whom he worshipped, was injured passing out cigarettes and chocolate to Italian soldiers in WW1, and spent time recovering in Milan. are we seeing the similarities???

so Hemingway was out here basically writing self insert war fic. most critiques will tell you that he based Nick Adams on himself, but they fail to tell you to what extent. like the similarities are INSANE. Nick Adams was literally Hemingway as a book character. and he very obviously wrote these stories as a coping mechanism for his war ptsd. the stories are often extremely plotless and sometimes rambling- you can tell it's just an expression of his brain to the point where while reading some of his work, my only thought was literally "go to therapy. talk this out with someone." like it might not help but also it might because some of these stories are insane.

the ones that I think best demonstrates this are "a way you'll never be" and "now I lay me," which you can read in THIS PDF, just ctrl+f for the titles. a way you'll never be is about Nick Adams being sent out to the front lines of Italy in American uniform to spread morale. he also has a head injury and also some mental issues and ends up going on a rant about grasshoppers to all the soldiers (because grasshoppers are significant in his childhood of fishing and whatnot) and just generally while you read it you can tell it was written by someone extremely mentally ill to the point where it's like. hard to read. "now I lay me" is a similar idea except this one is mainly about how Hemingway, for much of his life, could not sleep without another person in the room or a light on because he would get horrible nightmares. this one is pretty hard to read as well, and there's some dialogue at the end that makes very little sense out of context of the other Nick Adams stories.

essentially reading Nick Adams stories is like weaving a huge web of plot points and similarities of hemingway's life, and along the way you start learning the significance of things like trout and grasshoppers and the different representations of trauma and it all comes together in a huge pile of what the fuck did I just read please talk to someone about this, I am concerned and this seems really unhealthy. and also the wildest part is he literally did this, published these nick Adams stories, and people ATE THEM UP. they were like yesss hemingway another banger plotless ramble about war traumaaa!!! like people ATE UP his work. and even to this day I don't see anyone talking about how insane it was that he literally did this. someone please tell me i'm right about this I feel like a crazy person.

anyway on a happier note, to end part 2 I would love to tell my favourite Hemingway story.

so if you're familiar with f. Scott Fitzgerald (the guy who wrote great Gatsby), you might be surprised to learn that him and hemingway had a kind of love/hate/friends/kind of homoerotic but Hemingway was homophobic (read the Mother of a queen) relationship. they used to write letters to eachother and edit each other's work !! Hemingway once sent a draft of a story to F. Scott and F. Scott sent back 10 pages of edits. Hemingway sent a letter back that only said "kiss my ass." Hemingway also wrote a really sweet letter to F. Scott at one point that you can read HERE in which he wrote "you are twice as good now as you were at the time you think you were so marvellous," and also "anyway I’m damned fond of you" and then signed it "always your friend." which was cute. Hemingway also like. DESPISED f scott's wife with a passion. do with that what you will.

anyway here's the interesting part !! this is a pretty famous story that Hemingway wrote about later after it happened. so this one time hemingway and f. scott were having dinner in Paris and F. Scott expressed his concern that his dick was too small. so Hemingway said hey, come to the bathroom and we'll compare dick sizes don't worry. and then they did. and hemingway's response was "you're perfectly fine". so uh. here's some articles about that one time F. Scott Fizgerald and Ernest Hemingway compared dick sizes in a Paris bathroom...... 1 2

and YEAH !! thank you for reading part 2 of my insane Hemingway rants!!! hope yall learned something !!!

here's my list of recs of Hemingway stories if you're interested and want to read some of his shit, again all of them can be found HERE

so the 2 most entertaining reads are "the short happy life of francis macomber" and "the undefeated", those have the most plot, if you read short happy life please hmu send me an ask and tell me if you think margot was guilty or innocent

some concerning nick adams stories: "in another country", "a way you'll never be", "now i lay me", "big two-hearted river" parts 1 and 2

i wrote an essay on this one, it has some homophobic undertones: "the mother of a queen"

and finally my personal fave "a clean well-lighted place"

#lyss says things #rants and ramblings #ernest hemingway

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psychewritesbs · 5 months

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hi! i didnt have much success when looking through ur blog to see if uve addressed this alrdy so apologies if u have.

i was curious to know ur thoughts on jjk's portrayals of gender, esp women/femininity. if u have particular insight from a psych or philosophy bg, id be interested in hearing that (warning, i have a v feminist critique lens)

ik u love gege's writing 😅 but his handle on female characters/femininity has given me such a difficult relationship w jjk, and its v difficult to have discourse on it. on one hand, we're introduced to sm interesting realistic women, tbh i actually never stanned a woman in manga before jjk. but imo it cant be denied that gege is a sexist writer. despite how realistic jjk women r theyre all .. halfwritten? i cant think of a single one who isnt underwritten, not fully explored, not utilized substantially in the plot, etc. and there r sm ex's of extremely minor male characters in jjk who r given more thematic relevance than frequently recurring women that just underscores that gender gap imo

this isnt solely a gege problem ik but what bothers me in particular about jjk vs other mangas is how gege addresses strength, even in the light of nb/androgynous characters, and how it feels as if gege's def of strength is inherently masculine? even despite going so far as to give us a philosophical battle shonen w diverse reps of gender and emphasizing individuality that encompasses both femme/masc traits

how a reader interprets whether a jjk woman is strong or not is obv subjective. like, i think shoko is strong but shes not depicted as such bc she doesnt have a combative technique whereas yuki maki nobara or mei r depicted as "strong" bc of their battle abilities. but it also feels as if those women r strong bc they take on "masculine" traits/mindsets whereas there r no clear depictions of "femininity" making women or men stronger. even utahime who falls into v classic shoujo girl tropes is seen as weak despite teaching her students v proficientally in battle strategy (mechamaru v mahito is a good ex of that imo), as compared to how gojo teaches his (ie dumping them into missions for experience). but thats not what gege ever chooses to highlight

femininity also doesnt even seem to make men/nb characters stronger. the ex's i can think of r naoya as a vagina (lmao), geto as a mother to curses, yuta as highly attuned to his emotions, kenjaku as yuji's mother -- those r things that support these (mostly) men's strong sense of individuality but like, those arent really the things that lend those characters their "strength", u know? like geges just sprinkling in androgyny for the spice 🧐

what is feminine vs masculine, how an individual embodies those traits in their gender identity r already complex topics. im obv generalizing a lot here, but i just, idk despite how many other nuanced philosophies gege explores, what is strong/desirable in jjk still falls down to all-out fighting abilities/physical prowess, emotional detachment, isolation, extremism, etc -- all things we harp on toxic masculinity for. and even when he critiques that, theres no cogent counter solution/way to be strong that gege provides, much less one that incorporates "femininity" and women

maybe im just asking for too much from gege after having read so many great representations of women and gender by female (and male) mangakas/writers but.. i shouldnt be 🙄 he can utilize his female characters more imo, esp when he can clearly set them up so well. and im sure theres things ive misread about jjk and its portrayal of femininity, theres plenty of holes in my thoughts ^^ anyways, this is obv not a great topic to bring up in a fandom that is so polarized between dudebros and women w unaddressed internalized misogyny.. so i welcome any and all thoughts and interpretations on ur end! (also omg im rlly sorry this got so long)

I love you feminist anon, if I may call you that lol, I just always name my anons 😂. I am so grateful that you sent this.

I feel like you've very eloquently explained the deeper reason as to why I personally can't relate to the female characters in jjk. If I'm honest, I like them and think they are fun and good enough representations or attempts at depicting the archetypes that rule their personalities.

As you say, however, some of them remain rather superficial and underutilized... and please forgive me anyone who loves them, but some of them feel like they are basically dudes wearing skirts.

No offense to dudes who wear skirts or people who like men who wear skirts or anyone for that matter. It's just that, as a personal preference, I like female characters that wear skirts, pants, leggings, etc and have equal amounts of masculine and feminine energy.

So, even if I find they are good enough, I've never necessarily loved jjk female characters, because, as you also say, I've read/seen one too many amazing and iconic female characters by other authors...

And it's not like I think you're asking for too much from Gege in wanting better female characters, it's just that, as you also said, I like his writing and I read jjk precisely because of what it's doing for my masculine psyche. Like... quite literally.

So perhaps I'm more forgiving than you are because of it? Because in all reality, there are female character moments in other manga that I have to give the bombastic side eye to, and jjk isn't one of them.

Let's taco'bout it more under the cut.

So, that said, I have to admit that you might not find a lot of "feminist oriented" content in my blog because my feminist lens is reserved for dealing with lame dudebros in my real life, and also, I honestly do not know how to wear the lens on the same level of depth as you do.

Also, since my blog's lens is depth psych, I very much focus on femininity and masculinity as psychological qualities that exist on opposite ends of a continuum regardless of biological gender. You'll see me refer to femininity and masculinity like this throughout my answer.

So because of this, I'm coming at the whole issue from a slightly different angle than you are. The way I see it, I think the way the jjk female characters are written and thematically utilized (basically everything you said), ultimately comes back to how Gege's exploration of femininity is limited by his own sense of self, and very much likely biased by the sociocultural landscape he grew up in.

I don't know how much you know about Japan, but Japan has one foot in the future, and one foot in the past...

And like... ok I'm totally oversimplifying the whole thing. All I'm saying is... Gege is a man who grew up in a man's world, sharing his view of the world through jjk, which is a story about initiation of the male psyche that is published in a magazine for young boys.

Do you see the pattern there?

So If you feel like his female characters are underutilized and underexplored, and that thematically jjk focuses way too much on masculinity and masculine definitions of strength at the expense of the feminine archetypes he does present (like Naoya as a vagina LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL)... well... to me, we're basically looking at the limits of his own relationship to his femininity, which, this relationship is in turn an imperative precursor for psychospiritual development in depth psych. More of this in a bit.

Anyways, that's my anticlimactic reasoning for why I am more forgiving about the issue than you are. To be honest, I've been so consumed exploring my masculine psyche through jjk (because personally my feminine psyche is more developed in certain aspects) that I just never focus on the female characters (that is not to mention what I shared earlier).

ANYWAYS, I fucking love what you wrote about Gege's exploration on power from a masculine perspective because you're 100% spot on. What I'll say to that is that, to me, from a depth psych perspective, that's kind of the whole point.

I invite you to look at it from this other level of perspective (in addition to the whole "Gege's psych is a product of his upbringing"): the whole idea of individuality and focusing on the sense of self as a measure of "The Strongest" is being shown as an incomplete part of the equation...

... that leaves "the strongest" ultimately feeling dissatisfied.

This is a sentiment echoed by several characters because ego strength (masculine definitions of strength) is ultimately an unbalanced measure of strength precisely because it ignores feminine values and measures of strength.

Who knows where Gege is taking jjk at this point, but I will admit I am hoping he is going to explore this in more depth because, central to Jungian thought and depth psych is the idea of the Buddhist middle path and union of opposites.

In Jungian psych this means that, when you have an unbalanced ego attitude like that, something has to give so that the pendulum swings in the opposite direction, which gives the ego the experiences it needs to integrate the "opposite" attitude. This ultimately results in a more holistic and balanced perspective for the ego.

That to say that I'm wondering if Gege is going to make the pendulum swing in the opposite direction with the whole "individuality" idea since self-preservation is a "masculine" trait. Again, psychologically, it's all about balance, and right now, the story is out of balance in favor of the masculine traits you mention.

But... to bring it back to Gege's possible limitations around his perception of femininity and how developing a healthy relationship to his anima (femininity) is a precursor for psychospiritual development... what if, on a meta level, jjk is depicting part of Gege's journey towards integrating and deepening his relationship to his femininity and what you're seeing is the beginning of that journey?

Hint hint Tsumiki! maybe I'll write about it someday

This is the thing... In depth psychology, more specifically what is called "the psychology of fairy tales", fairy tales and myths are stories that depict the thinking patterns of a peoples through metaphor and symbol. The characters in these myths and stories are thus characters playing out dramas in our own psyches. So basically, think of jjk as an objective exploration of Gege's subjectiveness (psyche).

Admittedly, even if the pendulum swings in the other direction (more feminine definitions of strength), you might find that his exploration is rather shallow or that it falls short of your expectations for what you'd like to see from a feminist perspective. And you wouldn't be wrong for it, it's just that Gege is probably not on the same level of understanding that you have about femininity because he's, like you and I, a human on a journey of self understanding and growth reflecting on how his environment has shaped who he is.

The same goes for women with internalized misogyny. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know, and coming to an understanding of it is a process that doesn't take place overnight.

So I think the only part I'll disagree with is that Gege is a sexist writer. But that's perhaps because I'm being a bit too technical in what sexist means? i.e. masc supremacy or hating women and perpetuating stereotypes. I think that rather than being sexist, his unconscious biases are showing, which is why someone like you can pick them out.

I do understand where you're coming from though, and admittedly perhaps I am being too forgiving of him.

Last thing I'll say is that I've said a couple of times that wanting for jjk to have these iconic female characters feels like an exercise in futility. In retrospect, I now understand that it's not that anyone shouldn't want for jjk to have iconic female characters, but that doesn't change the fact that jjk will probably remain the wrong manga to look for them, and that's something to make peace with because it is what it is.

So, here's to hoping we get a chance to see a deeper representation of feminine values in jjk or Gege's next manga. Because, if he's done such beautiful work with the masculine psyche, like you, I'd be curious to see what he makes of a deeper exploration of the feminine psyche.

Between you and I, I'd actually love reading a proper battle bl from Gege. And I mean proper. Like... gays so canon that even the dudebros can't deny it.

ANYWAYS... giiiiiiiirl what an ask 😮‍💨. I don't think I've done it justice tbh. But hopefully I made sense? I really do love what you wrote. It was very eye opening to see this age-old argument spelled out the way you did it. So thank you again for sharing your thoughts!

If you over have any other thoughts on the topic I look forward to hearing from you!

I rambled too so... hopefully I made sense 🤣.

#ask the mental gymnastics anime girl

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olderthannetfic · 10 months

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I've seen a couple of anons ask about RCDart, and since it's now internet history, let me put my hyperfixation to use. Sorry for the long post.

BTW, you guys can still check their blogs using Wayback Machine if you want to get an opinion about the whole thing just by looking at what RCDart themselves used to post, rather than being stuck with the memes. One is rcdart, and their NSFW one was rtitties.

Anyways, they used to be really famous and beloved on Tumblr, especially in the Marvel fandom. Their art was quite good, very late 2010s style, but that's what was considered cool on this hellhole back then.

Then, all throughout 2016, their style worsened significantly, but there was no critique that stuck because Rory (RCDart's name) would just get pissed and use the fact that they were going to Cal Arts to call others stupid for not liking it. All their drawings became very stereotyped, and not in a good way either.

The main critiques they were receiving regarded how they depicted Mexican women and trans men:

Rory depicted Maria from The Book Of Life as a woman with a lot of thick body hair, as well as having a mustache. People complained that it was a representation of bad stereotypes regarding Mexican women, but Rory didn't listen and said that they were adopted from Mexico, so they could do whatever they wanted.

Their most infamous character was trans!Steve Rogers, which a lot of trans men complained about, both in call out posts and to Rory personally. The issue was that Rory would draw Steve with very big breasts and a super tiny waist, put him in feminine clothes and lingerie, and would write posts about how they wanted him to have the biggest breast size that exists, called him stuff like bimbo, slut, etc, talk about how he didn't mind saying he had a pussy. Trans guys came forward and told them that their obsession for Steve's genitalia was borderline fetishistic and causing them to experience dysphoria. Rory's responses to this were always non-apologies.

If I remember correctly, there were also people bringing up the fact that they would draw Sam Wilson as a minstrel show character, but I don't think this was brought up until much later.

After this, it's a bit difficult to say what happened. They posted one last time in December 2016, and that was about it. I initially thought that what drove Rory out of Tumblr were the callout posts, but they all seem to have been written way before December. My best guess is that people began meme-ing that drawing of Steve and Tony holding hands, and Rory didn't want to deal with it.

They still used Twitter, it's where they posted the infamous Jim Crow drawing of Star Wars Finn and the equally infamous drawing of Kylo Ren, and there people didn't really stand for that drawing of Finn. Rory posted an apology, but people were aware of how they'd do things (apologize publicly and resume doing what they were sorry for as soon as things quieted down) and didn't take it seriously, so their Twitter was gone in a couple of months too (this was early 2018, so they probably deleted everything at once).

This is pretty much it. If you're still on the fence about the "is it transphobic, is not not" question, I advise you use Wayback Machine to see for yourself and make your own opinion.

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rollercoasterwords · 10 months

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idek if this is actually true but i saw ppl arguing abt the atyd james pov in a tiktok bc its apparently going to include jegulus which deviates from the original plot quite a bit. do you still think it should b called an atyd pov fic?? tbh i just think ppl are making a big deal out of nothing and anyone can write and take inspiration from anything yk?? but i do wanna know ur opinion on this

truly cannot emphasize enough how much i absolutely do not care what other people wanna write in their fics lmao

honestly i think ur right it's just people making a big deal out of nothing. if someone wants 2 imagine what jegulus would look like in an atyd universe then...that's fine. nobody has to read it if they don't want to. i certainly have no place 2 judge bc i included things in my own fic that were extrapolations and/or inventions that mkb likely would not have intended to/imagined including as part of her story. that's what fanfiction is tho! it is specifically someone else's take on a work that is separate + distinct from the og writer's, and nobody has to read it + treat is as gospel if they don't want to. like i honestly don't see the problem with someone writing a hyopthetical "atyd canon-compliant" fic that includes jegulus bc atyd itself is a "harry potter canon-compliant" fic that centers on wolfstar lmao. like do we see the irony there.

anyway i honestly just think that there's a portion of this fandom that is incapable of treating atyd like fanfiction and instead try to put it up on a pedestal in its own venerated category that treats it as if it is somehow simultaneously subject to much harsher + more public critique but also a piece of work that must be taken as gospel within the fandom which honestly just sucks for everyone imo. like people wouldn't care if someone's writing an atyd james pov including jegulus unless they feel entitled, in the first place, to certain representations of atyd fic that match what they view as the pure + untouchable "canon." but nobody is entitled to have a fic perfectly catered to their desires, even if it's an atyd fic! and if someone is deeply bothered and just needs to see their vision realized, then they can write their own fic and ignore the other ones.

#like....there are plenty of hcs + tropes etc that i personally dislike #and sure i'll complain about things on this blog sometimes or more often in gcs/dms #but i'm never gonna take the stance that people can't or shouldn't write whatever they want #bc....hello. it's fanfiction. who gives a shit #also i am not here to be a cop lmao like why would i wanna go around policing what other people call their fics #anyway i just try to avoid atyd-related fandom stuff wholesale these days it's too annoying atp to see people's takes #i understand that its popularity is unprecedented but it is still just. a fanfiction. why would we treat it like it's not #ask

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aho-dapa · 9 months

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hi i just found your account and i just realized we kind of have the same problem with sjm but went 2 different ways about it. i read the books in like a week during a depressing episode so i didn't retain all that much and the parts i didn't like i just replaced (mostly bc i felt like the books were lacking in so many aspects that i don't feel bad basically rewriting it in my head). but the way i went about it is mostly changing the characters i want to like (rhysand, feyre, nesta) and just pretend they didnt do things that didnt make sense to me or they had good reason to do it. i was always bored with tamlin and the high lord of the night court is so up my alley so i just make rhys a little better in my head. i hate that sjm set him up to be morally grey but didnt make the darker parts in the right place if that makes sense? like i dont mind questionable morals in a character if it's to protect their family or people which is kind of what sjm started doing but then made him kind of a bad high lord? and i dont think she even sees it like that tbh bc i know she loves rhysand so i think she left the shitty situations in hewn city and illyria like that to set up plot but didnt stop to think what it would mean for rhys to not do shit about those situations. i know some people have theories that rhys might end up being a villain and is just manipulating feyre and the sisters but i think that's giving sjm too much credit tbh. i think she really leaned into the romance and the rest kind of morphed into the background but honestly i do love romance so i feel like i ended not minding it as much as other people at times. i'd rather have romance than a messy plot which is what sjm gave us (especially in acosf). also none of her characters have that much depth to them (feyre, nesta and rhys are probably the ones that have more but their actions don't always match with how sjm led us to believe they were) so i dont mind just making stuff up in my head like for example mor, she barely has a personality so i made her up one bc i wanted my proper lgbt representation.

anyway im sorry im ranting on your blog like this but it's interesting that so many people can agree that sjm set up a good world but the plot and characters ended up falling flat. and it's funny that the readers end up making the characters more interesting in fanfiction whether it's making rhysand the villain or making up how i think sjm meant him to be

I completely understand!! When I first read ACOTAR, I did the same for Rhys and Feyre because I truly didn't mind them until ACOWAR and sjm's constant inconsistent character writing caught up to me and my suspension of disbelief.

Also I think rewriting characters her characters in our head to make them more entertaining or relatable is something this fandom thrives on. A lot of people like Nesta because they relate to her even if the cabin years are a narrative mess. I personally relate to Tamlin too because of this both because and despite how his character was written.

Yeah, I also don't really mind rooting her or liking morally grey characters or even downright horrible people because sometimes they're just more interesting to me personally. In a sense, Rhys has a bunch of contradictions that don't mesh well because of sjm trying to make him some paragon of moral goodness when his character never even functioned that way even in the beginning.

I also like the villain manipulation Rhys hc but I also don't think that's where sjm is going with it. She fumbled too hard with Tamlin’s arc of abuse to suddenly make the mastermind move with Rhys.

Tbh it's really fun (and tiring) making up new canon adjacent personalities for her characters. I think the maybe unintentional problem with this is that the fandom uses those characterizations in critiquing characters or even hating them.

#sorry for taking so long #got lost on the path of life #anti sjm #sjm critical #pro tamlin

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bloodyrakshasi · 1 year

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I just saw a post that said that fictional characters cannot be abused- they absolutely can. These fictional characters are representations, and the trauma they face can more often than not, in some way or another, be replicated in real life.

On that note, I fully believe in shipping whatever you want to. Why? Because although fictional characters can undergo abuse, they are also not real. If you are shipping abuser x abused irl then yes, we need to have a talk, but in the fictional realm the world's your stage.

I genuinely do not get why people feel the need to police the media that other people consume- that's their own right. I definitely don't agree with certain ships and can't read fanfics of them but how the hell am I supposed to judge someone enjoying that? You know nothing about this person. For all you know, this could be the only light in their life- are you really going to shame someone for having this?

And besides, shipping something problematic is not the cause of problematic behaviour. It never will be. Perhaps it might be the result of it (i disagree, but for argument's sake), and if so, what effect will that ship have on them? It's only a symptom, attacking it will have no effect.

ALSO, how is this any different to the libraries in america banning books?

There's a difference between disliking something and attacking someone. For example, as someone into the grishaverse, I've noticed that a deeply polarising subject is darklina (I don't care about darklina or malina, so consider me a neutral party). Some people like it, some don't. I know people who have gone as far as to block that tag from their dash, which is totally! okay! Encouraged even. But the trouble comes when you attack another person for liking it.

Now that's for consuming, onto producing.

The ethics of fanfiction are wildly different than that of original fiction. Firstly because, as a fanfic author, you are writing for fun. You are not commercialising your craft, which also means you don't have that much of a responsibility towards what you are spreading- it's only going to reach a small percentage of people anyway. This is why published authors get bashed for toxic relationships but fanfic authors generally get a pass for it- because fanfic is primarily for indulgence. It is primarily written "for fun".

(By the way, I don't mean to trivialise fanfiction, i love fanfiction)

This is why if someone ships a problematic ship I will not care. But if this ship becomes/is canon, then I will criticise the author. It's not that deep.

There's a fine line between it's just fiction and let's critique the values and messages this piece of work espouses because it is harmful and fanfiction or any fanwork will lie safely in the territory of the former. Try criticising fanfiction and you will feel like a fool. Why? Because these authors of fanfiction are not making money off of their work. It's that simple.

#in short:#don't be a morality obsessed victorian landlord #if you don't agree with something *you* don't do it #but don't attack random people who may be living wildly different lives who *do* enjoy that #stay in your lane people #shipping is so niche anyway #proshipper #shipperdiscourse #shipping discourse #proshipping #darklina

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bookofmirth · 2 years

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i know feyre stans hate it when u hate on feyre becoming a mother but i feel like in this situation it’s so justified!

i don’t think i even need to explain the fact that she’s literally like 22 ???? it’s just insane to me that she’s immortal but had a child at 22

99.9% of books with lead female characters end with them being pregnant and having babies so it’s not like that trope needs any more representation in the slightest

i wouldn’t care if it was at the end of the series and everyone had settled down but smack down in the middle of a series with a whole ass war coming and they’ve had a baby? it just looks really silly

and the fact that all the next books are going to have so much space taken up by fawning over the most gorgeous, perfect, smart, genius, most powerful baby in existence (it’s rhysands kid i just know sjm is about to take up pages describing how magnificent baby nyx is)

and honestly the last thing this series needed was a baby and the next books being about baby daycare and characters babysitting nyx

already so much space was taken up in acosf with this baby plot line from hell and i’m crying in the club thinking about how much of elains book is going to be taken up by feysand, nyx and daycare 😀

i know it’s just a baby or whatever but it’s literally renesmee 2.0 but 10x worse

anyway i think that when people hate on the nyx storyline it shouldn’t just automatically be labelled as misogyny or whatever because i think readers have the right to be upset about a baby plot line in a fantasy series

i really was expecting to read about nesta and elain conquering their powers and figuring out what their purpose in life is and finding a court thay they love and nesta’s book was already made 1000x worse with the pregnancy plot (especially the end which was absolutely too focused on feysand like let me read about the valkyries after the blood rite!!!) and if elain’s book is taken up by the worlds most powerful baby i’m going to cry!!!

the world's most powerful baby aslkdjaskldjakls I snorted, she *would* write that story

I definitely think you can be a Feyre stan and dislike that story line, just saying! I love her and it's not just that I hate the pregnancy thing in acosf, but it does feel like... just narratively it wasn't a good choice because like you are annoyed at, it distracted from the main story and was such an obvious "I need something to happen to bring Nesta and Feyre together" and I wish feysand had had time to just EXIST because I love them too and I wanted that for them.

idk if Feyre is happy then that's fine, I personally just dislike the fact that her pregnancy was used as a tool to create conflict and then bring the sisters together, rather than a natural, organic step in Feysand's relationship. There's just a lot going on in that story that's a whole mess, and it's not just about disliking that type of story. I'm sure people have misogynistic arguments about it, but that's what the block button is for. However it's possible to critique that story fairly and have that critique have nothing to do with being misogynist. If the story were done well and were believable, that would be one thing. I could get on board. The fanart of the family that I've seen is super cute! But then I remember how the story actually happened in acosf whomp whomp

#sjm critical #acosf #feysand #ask #anon #okay i'm back to loving feysand #idgaf about what happened in acosf #i just don't see it anymore #i've been craving an acotar and acomaf reread #feeling nostalgic

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themoonsbeloved · 3 years

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same for pomefiore chapter too I havent finished it but like I’m pretty sure Vil’s very extreme disciplinary ways to convey that gender and femininity/masculinity is a social construct by fighting and abusing a 16 year old boy under the guise of “bettering him and his attitude” isn’t exactly the best way to write about and represent or TRY to represent those who aren’t cisgender and such identities/experiences....

#like we can do better #than praise vil for that is what im saying #and also what im saying is its not even vil this is an attempt to write vaguely about gender and identity but #you cannot expect someone who from what I can see is cishet to understand these realities and we should be expecting that #anyway from what i can see pomefiore chapter was shitty and written badly and its honestly because.... the above #we can all just claim our fave characters because in the end we're looking at the mind of a cishet east asian women SO #so in short dont set yourself up for inevitable disappointment we can all be critical in the writing and stop placing yana on a pedestal #also i feel i should explain I am also cishet so i cant speak for anyone this is just somethng that rubbed me the wrong way #and im sure others have a much better critique and the experience so it could be im wrong about the gender representation thing #twst chats

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edwad · 2 years

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Can you explain more about your critique of base and superstructure? I’ve never really read any helpful criticism of it and I’m interested

the usual description of the model really only makes any sense in a capitalist context where there is a meaningful separation between the political and the economic. feudal lords represented both economic and political authority over their serfs, etc, so the case for a political superstructure which is derived from an economic base is hard to square when dealing with societies where political and economic power were ultimately the same thing.

this means there are serious limits for using it to make sense of non-capitalist history (likely not its intended goal anyway!), but also there are the obvious issues where the economic base doesn't just give rise to ideas about legal institutions etc but is in fact predicated on their real existence. this is probably more obvious of a point, but private property, wage contracts, legal subjectivity, formal equality before the law, etc are all necessary elements of the capitalist mode of production which marx identifies in capital; these things are not merely results of "the economic", the network of social relations which they map out are its historical and system-logical foundation. of course plenty of people have made excuses about this, saying the superstructure reflects back on the base etc etc and dragging out that old engels quote about it, but this really doesn't save it for me and still retains the distinction, even when allowed to be "dialectical", which i think is much more complicated regardless.

at the more sophisticated end, there are other problems as well, such as the ironic fact that using this model to account for history or even the shape of society completely sidesteps questions of class struggle, which most people using b/s would probably agree is important (perhaps even the "prime mover" of history!). but it in fact makes absolutely 0 reference, by design, to anything other than a completely one-sided representation of a stable world which isn't even capable of adequately grappling with the real contradictions of society, except for maybe (and probably too generously) at a level which is effectively meaningless and allows for little if any sensitivity to the issue. it is a metaphor which marx alludes to once in a preface for a work whose plan he ultimately abandons and then he never really returns to it.

heinrich makes the case that he is attempting to briefly combat the way of approaching history/society typical at the time rather than offering a fully fleshed out alternative which we should all submit to, but i think it's also important to note how much marx's own understanding of history and society necessarily changed after 1859 when it was written. even a few years later, by the time he's working on capital, the picture becomes much more complicated. this is even truer for the distance between the status of the critique of the political economy and his much earlier historical thinking from the 40s which people tend to backwardly project b/s onto.

anyway there are a lot of things i could say, some more speculative (e.g. i think the function of many of marxs prefaces have a lot to do with putting an appeal to scientific objectivity out front so that he has an easier time getting past the censors he'd been struggling against since his youth etc), but i hadn't even planned on writing this much. maybe i'll return to this eventually and give a fuller treatment but not today lol

#communism

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writingwithcolor · 3 years

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I'm writing an AU of a movie that takes place in the 1880s USA, where a travelling white character and a Jewish character are waylaid by Native Americans, who they befriend. Probably because it was written by and about PoC (Jews) the scene actually avoids the stuff on your Native American Masterpost, but I'd still like to do better than a movie made in the 1980's, and I feel weird cutting them from the plot entirely. I have a Jewish woman reading it for that, but are there any things you (1/1)

2/2 1880s western movie ask--are there things you'd LIKE to see in a movie where a white man and a Jewish man run into Native Americans in the 1880s? I do plan to base them on a real tribe (Ute, probably) and have proper housing/clothes and so forth, but right now I'm just trying to avoid or subvert awful cowboy movie tropes. Any ideas?

White and Jewish Men, Native American interactions in 1880s

I am vaguely concerned with how you only cite one of our posts about Native Americans, that was not written by a Native person, and do not cite any of the posts relating to this time period, or any posts relating to representation in media.

Sidenote: if you want us to give accurate reflections of the media you’re discussing, please tell us the NAME. I cannot go look up this movie based off this description to give you an idea of what my issues are with this scene, and must instead trust that the representation is good based off your judgement. I cannot make my own judgement. This is a problem. Especially since your whole question boils down to “this scene is good but not great and I want it to be great. How can I do that?”

Your baseline for “good” could very well be my baseline for “terrible hack job”. I can’t give you the proper education required for you to be able to accurately evaluate the media you’re watching for racist stereotypes if you don’t tell me what you’re even working with.

When you’re writing fanfic where the media is directly relevant to the question, please tell us the name of the media. We will not judge your tastes. We need this information in order to properly help you.

Moving on.

I bring up my concern for you citing that one—exceptionally old—post because it is lacking in many of the tropes that don’t exist in the media critique field but exist in the real world. This is an issue I have run into countless times on WWC (hence further concern you did not cite any other posts) and have spoken about at length.

People look at the media critique world exclusively, assume it is a complete evaluation of how Native Americans are seen in society, and as a result end up ignoring some really toxic stereotypes and then come to the inbox with “these characters aren’t abc trope, so they’re fine, but I want to rubber stamp them anyway. Anything wrong here?”. The answer is pretty much always yes.

Issue one: “Waylaid” by Native Americans

This wording is extremely loaded for one reason: Native American people are seen as tricksters, liars, and predators. This is the #1 trope that shows up in the real world that does not show up in media critique. It’s also the trope I have talked about the most when it comes to media representation, so you not knowing the trope is a sign you haven’t read the entirety of the Native tag—which is in the FAQ as something we would really prefer you did before coming at us to answer questions. It avoids us having to re-explain ourselves.

Now, hostility is honestly to be expected for the time period the movie is set in. This is in the beginnings (or ramping up) of residential schools in America* and Canada, we have generations upon generations of stolen or killed children, reserves being allocated perhaps hundreds of miles from sacred sites, and various wars with Plains and Southwest peoples are in full force (Wounded Knee would have happened in 1890, in December, and the Dakoa’s mass execution would have been in 1862. Those are just the big-name wars. There absolutely were others).

*America covers up its residential schools abuse extremely thoroughly, so if you try to research them in the American context you will come up empty. Please research Canada’s schools and apply the same abuse to America, as Canada has had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about residential schools and therefore is more (but not completely) transparent about the abuse that happened. Please note that America’s history with residential schools is longer than Canada’s history. There is an extremely large trigger warning for mass child death when you do this research.

But just because the hostility is expected does not mean that this hostility would be treated well in the movie. Especially when you consider the sheer amount of tension between any Native actors and white actors, for how Sacheen Littlefeather had just been nearly beaten up by white actors at the 1973 Academy Awards for mentioning Wounded Knee, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act had only been passed two years prior in 1978.

These Native actors would not have had the ability to truly consent to how they were shown, and this power dynamic has to be in your mind when you watch this scene over. I don’t care that the writers were from a discriminated-against background. This does not always result in being respectful, and I’ve also spoken about this power imbalance at length (primarily in the cowboy tag).

Documentaries and history specials made in the 2010s (with some degree of academic muster) will still fall into wording that harkens Indigenous people to wolves and settlers as frightened prey animals getting picked off by the mean animalistic Natives. This is not neutral, or good. This is perpetuating the myth that the settlers were helpless, just doing their own thing completely unobtrusively, and then the evil territorial Native Americans didn’t want to share.

To paraphrase Batman: if I had a week I couldn’t explain all the reasons that’s wrong.

How were these characters waylaid by the Native population? Because that answer—which I cannot get because you did not name the media—will determine how good the framing is. But based on the time period this movie was made alone, I do not trust it was done respectfully.

Issue 2: “Befriending”

I mentioned this was in an intense period of residential schools and land wars all in that area. The Ute themselves had just been massacred by Mormons in the Grass Valley Massacre in 1865, with ten men and an unknown number of women and children killed thanks to a case of assumed association with a war chief (Antonga Black Hawk) currently at war with Utah. The Paiute had been massacred in 1866. Over 100 Timpanogo men had been killed, with an unknown number of women and children enslaved by Brigham Young in Salt Lake City in 1850, with many of the enslaved people dying in captivity (those numbers were not tracked, but I would assume at least two hundred were enslaved— that’s simply assuming one woman/wife and one child for every man, and the numbers could have very well been higher if any war-widows and their children were in the group, not to mention families with multiple children). This is after an unknown group of Indigenous people had been killed by Governor Brigham Young the year prior, to “permanently stop cattle theft” from settlers.

The number of Native Americans killed in Utah in the 1800s—just the number of dead counted (since women and children weren’t counted)—in massacres not tied to war (because there was at least one war) is over 130. The actual number of random murders is much higher; between the uncounted deaths and how the Governor had issued orders to “deal with” the problem of cattle theft permanently. I doubt you would have been tried or convicted if you murdered Indigenous peoples on “your” land. This is why it’s called state sanctioned genocide.

This is not counting the Black Hawk War in Utah (1865-1872), which the Ute were absolutely a part of (the wiki articles I read were contradictory if Antonga Black Hawk was Ute or Timpanogo, but the Ute were part of it). The first official massacre tied to the war—the Bear River Massacre, ordered by the US Military—places the death count of just that singular massacre at over five hundred Shoshone, including elders, women, and children. It would not be unreasonable to assume that the number of Indigenous people killed in Utah from 1850, onward, is over a thousand, perhaps two or three.

Pardon me for not reading beyond that point to list more massacres and simply ballparking a number; the source will be linked for you to get an accurate number of dead.

So how did they befriend the Native population? Let alone see them as fully human considering the racism of the time period? Natives were absolutely not seen as fully human so long as they were tied to their culture, and assimilation equalling some sliver of respect was already a stick being waved around as a threat. This lack of humanity continues to the present day.

I’m not saying friendship is impossible. I am saying the sheer levels of mistrust that would exist between random wandering groups of white/pale men and Indigenous communities wouldn’t exactly make that friendship easy. Having the scene end be a genuine friendship feels ignorant and hollow and flattening of ongoing genocide, because settlers lied about their intentions and then lined you up for slauther (that’s how the Timpanogo were killed and enslaved).

Utah had already done most of its mass killing by this point. The era of trusting them was over. There was an active open hunting season, and the acceptable targets were the Indigenous populations of Utah.

(sources for the numbers:

List of Indian Massacres in North America Black Hawk War (1865-1872))

Issue 3: “Proper housing/clothes and so forth”

Do you mean Western style settlements and jeans? If yes, congratulations you have written a reservation which means the land-ripped-away wounds are going to be fresh, painful, and sore.

You do not codify what you mean by “proper”, and proper is another one of those deeply loaded colonial words that can mean “like a white man” or “appropriate for their tribe.” For the time period, it would be the former. Without specifying which direction you’re going for, I have no idea what you’re imagining. And without the name of the media, I don’t know what the basis of this is.

The reservation history of this time period seems to maybe have some wiggle room; there were two reservations allocated for the Ute at this time, one made in 1861 and another made in 1882 (they were combined into the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in 1886). This is all at the surface level of a google and wikipedia search, so I have no idea how many lived in the bush and how many lived on the reserve.

There were certainly land defenders trying to tell Utah the land did not belong to them, so holdouts that avoided getting rounded up were certainly possible. But these holdouts would be far, far more hostile to anyone non-Native.

The Ute seemed to be some degree of lucky in that the reserve is on some of their ancestral territory, but any loss of land that large is going to leave huge scars.

It should be noted that reserves would mean the traditional clothing and housing would likely be forbidden, because assimilation logic was in full force and absolutely vicious at this time.

It’s a large reserve, so the possibility exists they could have accidentally ended up within the borders of it. I’m not sure how hostile the state government was for rounding up all the Ute, so I don’t know if there would have been pockets of them hiding out. In present day, half of the Ute tribe lives on the reserve, but this wasn’t necessarily true historically—it could have been a much higher percentage in either direction.

It’s up to you if you want to make them be reservation-bound or not. Regardless, the above mentioned genocide would have been pretty fresh, the land theft in negotiations or already having happened, and generally, the Ute would be well on their way to every assimilation attempt made from either residential schools, missionaries, and/or the forced settlement and pre-fab homes.

To Answer Your Question

I don’t want another flattened, sanitized portrayal of genocide.

Look at the number of dead above, the amount of land lost above, the amount of executive orders above. And try to tell me that these people would be anything less than completely and totally devastated. Beyond traumatized. Beyond broken hearted. Absolutely grief stricken with almost no soul left.

Their religion would have been illegal. Their children would have been stolen. Their land was taken away. A saying about post-apocalyptic fiction is how settler-based it is, because Indigenous people have already lived through their own apocalypse.

It would have all just happened at the time period this story is set in. All of the grief you feel now at the environment changing so drastically that you aren’t sure how you’ll survive? Take that, magnify it by an exponential amount because it happened, and you have the mindset of these Native characters.

This is not a topic to tread lightly. This is not a topic to read one masterpost and treat it as a golden rule when there is too much history buried in unmarked, overfull graves of school grounds and cities and battlefields. I doubt the movie you’re using is good representation if it doesn’t even hint at the amount of trauma these Native characters would have been through in thirty years.

A single generation, and the life that they had spent millennia living was gone. Despite massive losses of life trying to fight to preserve their culture and land.

Learn some history. That’s all I can tell you. Learn it, process it, and look outside of checklists. Look outside of media.

And let us have our grief.

~ Mod Lesya

On Question Framing

Please allow me the opportunity to comment on “are there things you'd LIKE to see in a movie where a white man and a Jewish man run into Native Americans in the 1880s?” That strikes me as the same type of question as asking what color food I’d like for lunch. I don’t see how the cultural backgrounds of characters I have literally no other information about is supposed to make me want anything in particular about them. I don’t know anything about their personalities or if they have anything in common.

Compare the following questions:

“Are there things you’d like to see in a movie where two American women, one from a Nordic background and one Jewish, are interacting?” I struggle to see how our backgrounds are going to yield any further inspiration. It certainly doesn’t tell you that we’re both queer and cling to each other’s support in a scary world; it doesn’t tell you that we uplift each other through mental illness; it doesn’t go into our 30 years of endless bizarre inside jokes related to everything from mustelids to bad subtitles.

Because: “white”, “Jewish”, and “Native American” aren’t personality words. You can ask me what kind of interaction I’d like to see from a high-strung overachieving woman and a happy-go-lucky Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and I’ll tell you I’d want fluffy f/f romance. Someone else might want conflict ultimately resolving in friendship. A third person might want them slowly getting on each other’s nerves more and more until one becomes a supervillain and the other must thwart her. But the same question about a cultural demographic? That told me nothing about the people involved.

Also, the first time I meet a new person from a very different culture, it might take weeks before discussion of our specific cultural differences comes up. As a consequence, my first deep conversations with a Costa Rican American gentile friend were not about Costa Rica or my Jewishness but about things we had in common: classical music and coping with breakups--which are obviously conversations I could have had if we were both Jewish, both Costa Rican gentiles, or both something else. So in other words, I’m having trouble seeing how knowing so little about these characters is supposed to give me something to want to see on the page.

Thank you for understanding.

(And yes, I agree with Lesya, what’s with this trend of people trying to explain their fandom in a roundabout way instead of mentioning it by name? It makes it harder to give meaningful help….)

--Shira

#platypan #genocide #native american #North America #america #history #american history #media #representation #asks

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cafffine · 3 years

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Hey guys, I’ve decided to stop publishing Saltcoats for a number of reasons. I'm aware that many of you are going to initially be let down or confused, but hopefully once you’ve read through this post you’ll understand why this had to stop. I’ll try to hit all my points, but of course if you have any questions pls feel free to dm me or reply to this post.

DISCLAIMER: Ending this fic was a decision I came to by myself! No one asked me to do this, though many did help, and if you have something to add please do not bring other tumblr or ao3 users into the conversation unless they’ve explicitly said they’re ok with that. It’s a draining and heavy topic (not to me, but for those affected) and I don’t want to cause anymore unneeded distress.

Also, I’m the only author, all the problems with this story were created by me, and were biases I should have recognized and acted on much sooner. I’m very thankful to all the people that have reached out to me about the negative impacts on this fic, but it really does come down to: I wrote and published a story that was fundamentally ignorant of its setting and racist. So now I have to do my part to apologize and educate myself/take accountability.

First off, this was a flawed concept to begin with because I was trying to do a low fantasy setting with aliens in period clothes and a work of historical fiction at the same time, and those are not things you can go halfway on.

Historical fiction that centers around people of color has a long history of simply going race-blind and faking diversity by giving poc the roles of white people in Eurocentric stories and erasing their identities. (This article about Bridgerton explains the problem better than I could.) And it was something I tried to avoid by still having the Fetts written as immigrants from Aotearoa (NZ), but completely missed the execution on because I didn’t commit to full historical accuracy in all characters and aspects of the story. Meaning, I might as well have gone race-blind because you can’t pick and choose what to include, it’s just as racist.

This creates situations like the Fetts being immigrants facing real life oppression while the Organas, also people of color, are unaffected by the social climate and living as members of the British upper class. That’s not accurate to any version of history and ends up wiping clean any point I was trying to make about race and oppression. That also extends beyond the Fetts, I was not addressing how the american characters come from a country that still allows for the ownership of slaves, the British oppression of Scottish people and their culture, or even an in-depth look at real Queer communities of that era. (and more)

Given the real life historical climate in the 1850s, a multi-racial story like this one is not successful, and is racist in its ignorance of the struggles of poc, immigrants, and the intersectionality that had with class and crime.

In addition, the Fetts being written as criminals, even if it is framed as a morally correct choice*, is still playing into negative racial stereotypes that shouldn’t have been ignored.

* I should add, I don’t mean to make it sound like i’m creating excuses for myself when I give explanations for some of these choices such as “but it was framed as morally correct”, that doesn’t lessen the damage being done, it’s still racist, I guess I'm just trying to show why so many of these things went overlooked for as long as they did, and how easy it is for white/privileged people to find mental loopholes around racism when you’re not being sufficiently critical of yourself.

On another note, the Fetts being indigenous immigrants to Britain in the 1800s is not something I should have tried to tackle in fanfiction - a medium that often lacks nuance and can easily end up romanticizing or glossing over most heavy topics. This goes for period typical homophobia, addiction, and class struggles as well.

That being said! I’m not implying that any of those things should be completely ignored in fanfiction. Addiction, for example, is something very close to me that I do still want to explore in fanfic for the purposes of education and normalization, I’m not telling anyone what not to write, just checking myself. Because in a story like this where literally everything is so heavily dramatized and also applied to characters of color by me, a white person? It’s only going to end up being out of place, lacking in historical accuracy, and wholly disrespectful.

Another major problem I wanted to address is the relationship between a rich white person and a poverty stricken poc. That's a bad stereotype to begin with, but then I tried and failed to frame Obi-Wan as ignorant and biased to a point where his social status plays into the theme of class critique. But, if he’s still being written as Cody’s love interest, all his negative characteristics are ultimately going to be ignored and excused by the narrative (by me).

I’m not trying to end this conversation, I’ll always be willing to talk about this to anyone who’d want to say/hear more, but I don’t want run the point into the ground with over-explanation.

So, in conclusion, this fic had to stop and be broken down into the problem that it was. All white authors who write for the clones need to be hyper-vigilant about the fact that we are creating narratives for poc, and that our inherent racism is always in threat of being baked into in the stories we publish and spread to an audience. I was in the wrong when I wrote this story, and it should never have gone on for this long. I apologize for both my actions, and to anyone I may have hurt along the way.

This is getting posted on ao3 in the fic, and then, for now anyway, the fic is going to be deleted after a week. I’ll leave this post up and answer everyone unless it's someone trying to change my mind. Also, if I ignore an ask please send it again, tumblr might just have deleted it. I don’t want to try and bury this or run from my mistakes, I just don’t think that leaving the fic up where it can still find an audience will do anyone any good. Thank you for reading

If you're interested here's some resources I've been using to educate myself further:

What caused the New Zealand Wars? - An excerpt of the book by Vincent O'Malley of the same title. It gives a good summary of the violent colonization and oppression of Māori people and their culture by the British empire.

NZ Wars: Stories of Waitara (video) - Very educational documentary about the NZ wars and British colonialism. There are some historical recreations that get violent so pls watch with caution.

Historical American Fiction without the Racism - Tumblr post by @/writingwithcolor that talks specifically about Black people in the 1920's, but makes a good point about race and historical fiction in general. I'd recommend any post from this blog, especially their navigation page just a lot of great resources

Who Gave You the Right to Tell That Story? - An article about writing outside of your race that includes a diverse series of testimonials

History of Scottish Independence - Details the colonization of Scotland by the British empire, sort of long, can cntrl + f to "The Acts of Union" for a more direct explanation.

The best books on Racism and How to Write History - A list of well written and diverse works of historical fiction and why they are good examples of representation

I have a lot more that I can share if you're interested (x x x x) but this post is getting a bit too long.

#I proofread this a lot but I'm sure there's problems with this post too #If anyone has something they want me to change or of theres anything I said that was offensive I'd appreciaite any help fixing it #but also I'll be rereading this all night and it will likely change before I put it on ao3 #saltcoats #racism

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olderthannetfic · 2 years

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Hi! Anon here who asked you to clarify what the post meant: thank you so much! I really appreciate it. English isn't my first/native language so when I was reading the post I was just like "okay.. i know what all these words mean on their own :S but what is the point of the post". So once I read your explanation, it clicked.

And if I think about it, ultimately, I think I was getting confused because even though I was getting it somewhat (when reading the original op), I was already thinking with your 2 points in mind you listed that are missing and I was mostly just "what is this person on about? why can't we just exist and enjoy our porn in peace knowing it's porn and fantasy and stuff." Things along those lines.

"Plenty of actual fic content is regressive twaddle. That’s not the thing that’s special about fic at all! Many of the early acafans who waxed lyrical about how slash fandom was feminism or whatever literally just meant that women writing badwrong horny art and not apologizing was a big deal."

Yes, I agree. To me, fandom, fic and such things were always a place where I could go and be myself. Like I never felt bad about my fandom and fic stuff (or my kink stuff in general) personally but I knew that internet wise and IRL wise my experience of existence as a human being (I'm a cis female) was just different. On the internet, in fandoms especially, people just treated me like a person and I was listened to. And we could talk, exchange ideas/tropes and overall connect. In real life however, I would either be met with "you're being weird" or "hurdur it's always the quiet ones ;) ;) ;)" depending on the context, and with the first I can be like "ah whatever" but with the second one I gag every time. Let me just exist and vibe goddammit!

"But I will grant that I’ve seen plenty of idiots claiming fic is more woke than other types of iddy writing or calling fandom progressive or feminist or subversive without making it clear why they think it qualifies, and this post is a reasonable critique of those claims."

And I agree with this too. I've seen plenty of folks saying how sometimes fic is better than published novels for example, and while sure... someone could write a fic that reads better than some published novels... I recognize the fact that there's gonna be shitty (or whatever) writing both in fic and novels and it's nothing special. Shitty writing is shitty writing and good writing is good writing, whether it's in fic or novels.

Anyway, when it comes to the last part.. I'm aware of breeding kink haha, but like I already said. I think it went over my head because again, like you- I'm of the opinion that it's not transphobic because I assumed/knew that that specific type of fic was written by horny trans people who want that sort of content. I remember reading the quote and thinking "...but who else would be writing this? where are you going with this?"

I think my overall confusion is because I feel like I'm reading a comparison between two different things as if they're the same thing? Like in my mind, meta analysis and introspection all that is one thing and then porn you get off to is a different thing. BUT I guess I GET IT NOW (at least I hope I do, I'm so sorry if I sound like a moron), if they think those fics were written by people who aren't horny trans folks aka cis people who would be then stereotyping.

I'm so sorry this ended up being so long. But I wanted to thank you again so much!! I really appreciate it. You're amazing. <3

Thanks, anon!

I don't know that poster, so they could mean plenty of things, but my guess about the meta vs. fic comparison is that they're thinking: "Man, people keep talking about fic like it can fix representation problems, only when I actually go to look for fic, all I find is porn I hate."

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