#also do a thorough literary analysis of s5 with attention to themes of privilege and power in conjuction with your knowledge of the author

[equalseleventhirds]

i mean, my 2 cents as both a poc and one of the people who like... accidentally started a lot of discussion about this

i don't think that the solution to this is to redesign jon to be universally portrayed by fandom as white; like op said, the real problem lies in canon refusing to give a race to a character played by a white man, but what fans do and what canon does is different. and it's become such an established part of fanon to have brown jon that entirely walking that back now is kinda shitty (and tbh, inasmuch as we do have to deal with 'aracial' characters, i think having designs of a wide variety of races is probably better than any one universal design, just for like.......... not establishing a universal fanon. i hate universal fanon in general, but this one's caused... issues.)

certainly i would not ask you, anon, to undo your designs of jon, especially bcos you're a poc. like, if you are uncritically following the 'vaguely brown but no stated race/ethnicity' thing a lot of fans do, it might be best to like... do some thinking about that. but i think a lot of poc recognize that there are cultural differences, and especially those of us that project onto characters (hi, yes, filipino!martin my beloved) tend to like. do something specific with that. instead of 'ah yes look We Draw Vaguely Brown People, good rep!' like a lot of white fans do.

similarly, if you, anon, are prepared to really fully explore the deep and specific horror of what it would be like for sasha as a poc to be replaced by a white person? obviously warn for it, and think hard about it, but that is a valid take on it. the issue a lot of people were mostly having was that white people would do it ~for the aesthetics~ and not even seem like, aware of the extremely specific horror this is for people of color. definitely be careful about it, but i've seen it done with care a couple of times by actual poc. (i would hesitate to tell white ppl to do this, even with a sensitivity reader, just bcos it is so very much not like... a white person's place to be telling the story of a poc who has her life stolen by a white person? i mean, i'm sure it could be done? but talk abt like, irony & poor taste.)

(also, if you make sasha and not!sasha both poc and the same race, it doesn't really read as a racist joke??? like, we know what the not!them does. we know characters haven't forgotten sasha bcos they're racist. 'someone could interpret this as racist if they really really reached' is kinda... look, i've recently had white ppl say i was racist for saying white ppl who repeatedly tell accidentally-racist stories should maybe steer clear of those stories for a while, ppl will stretch to ANYTHING. do your research and try your best, and most people will engage in good faith.)

but mostly what we've been asking of white fans (of all fans, frankly, but it's white fans who are most egregious) is to a. think critically about how they portray race in fanworks, and b. think critically about portrayals of race in canon, and how changes in race can change the actual messages of the work. and 'think critically' doesn't mean 'criticize this and then never ever do it', it just means! think really hard about it! analyze it and figure out what messages are being sent, both by canon and by fanworks! (this includes messages about race, messages about the overall themes about power and privilege, AND like, unintentional advertising that comes from fandom.)

like, i feel like tone has been less 'never ever portray aracial characters as poc EVER', but more 'think really hard about what you're actually doing, and listen to poc when you fuck up'. there are good, thoughtful, nuanced ways of portraying a bunch of different headcanons. we've mostly just been asking that people take the time to like, do that, instead of using poc as an aesthetic.

(also wrt you can't whitewash fanon: you can't whitewash fanon. if you portray sasha and not!sasha as white, no one can tell you you're whitewashing. well, obviously people can, but it's fucking bullshit?

in fact, cards on the table, i think more fans should engage with what a white jon would mean for the messages in tma and how they interpret his character. not really walk back all their fanart/fanfic/etc of brown jon, but take some time and think about the text itself, fanworks put entirely aside, and what it would mean if we saw jon's actions as coming from someone who looked like jonny sims. how we'd feel about how he treats annabelle and mikaele and oliver and even jude perry. how we'd feel about his power in the apocalypse and even his actions as a boss in early seasons. etc etc etc.

this is entirely separate from fan creations and is mostly abt like, my constant urging for people to separate critical analysis of canon from What Is Good Fun in fandom; tma as it is SHOULD make ppl slightly uncomfortable, especially white ppl forced to confront some Stuff about privilege. but also if you do this, when you come back to making fun headcanons and fanworks, think also about what your race/ethnicity headcanon for jon changes about how you treat him, compared to how you'd treat him if he were white. like, i've seen some stuff where ppl make other characters absolutely tear into jon for being a privileged dick... while also portraying jon as a poc and those other characters as white. like, his race changing DOES change some of the dynamics, u kno?)

I've seen a lot of discussions about the implications of drawing jon as brown and i figured you'd be the person to talk to about this? (you can ignore this if you don't feel like replying!!) so here's the thing - I'm brown and i really like brown jon. i like being able to project onto that. but yeah i think i get what everyone means when they point out things that are wrong with that. but on the flip side, white jon designs are a minority and it would also be weird to suddenly revert to drawing him as white, i somehow feel like that could also have implications. also I've lived through the age of white Cecil and that wasn't very great either.

which got me thinking - while i completely agree with the criticisms about the fanon designs, there isn't a clear solution to any as far as i can see? having both sasha and not-sasha be of the same ethnicity could be interpreted as the racist joke where white people can't tell poc apart. having them both be white would feel like I'm whitewashing the fanon designs which is completely stupid because they're FANON but i hope you understand what i mean? anyway ghfhdgs i hope this doesn't come off as combative, I've just been trying to figure these out for days and wondered if someone else had an answer. have a nice day!

I'm going to give limited opinions here because while it's nice you thought of me, I'm a white teenager and while I have extensive TMA and TMA Fan knowledge I am definitely not who should be giving The TakesTM on stuff like this.

I do actually remember the days where white Jon was the most common, and the shift to ~ambiguously brown Jon~, at least to what I saw, definitely took over art far faster than it did fics. Which to me implies it was on a very aesthetics based level rather than one of exploring what the text would be like with him as a POC, let alone any one specific ethnicity, which is obviously very emblematic of a lot of the problems of people just copying off the guy next to them's art and going "Look it's Jon, we can all recognise that it's him because he's got the same 3 or so traits each time" without thinking about how that actually reflects on their interpretation of the text. But, exactly as you said, it would be weird to suddenly have those artists redesign him as white. So I'm not sure if there's an actual answer there, at least not one that I can give? Something that fans can't even be entirely blamed for, because of course that kind of shit is going to happen if you have a white man write and play a character and then refuse to give that character a canonical race. It's going to become messy and it's just easier to write with a character's race in mind.

I get what you mean with Sasha/Not!Sasha and from what I've heard others say it's best to keep them the same ethnicity, but I don't think you can really white wash a fan design since it's a fan thing and white washing implies a sense of canon? I haven't heard anyone bring up the "white people can't tell POC apart" thing but I would assume that would only be a problem if you Sasha design was the only POC in the archives.

But again, I'm white so nothing I say here should be taken as instructional so if any POC want to add on with their opinions please feel free to do so.