#and then a lot of depictions of him look like jewish caricatures

[onlyfangz]

i'm writing a script for class that's based around the bible story of jesus's crucifixion (details unimportant), and so i'm doing a ton of research into it, including just straight up reading the bible, and i never realised how fucking anti-semitic the text is. like don't get me wrong i'm not an idiot, i knew that the church was anti-semitic, but considering i was a kid when i was a christian, i rarely got into the actual written text, and not the regurgitated kid-friendly stuff. they really kept hammering home that jews are evil, huh?

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

Okay, so, there's one thing that I'm kind of tired of beating around the bush with white fans about, and it's this: if you pretend to "ignore" race in OFMD, you will miss a lot of what the story is trying to tell you.

Now, I do not truly believe that race is something you can ignore in a story. I just don't think it's possible, and when you try, what you wind up with is something like the conservative worldview of "not seeing color." Trying to ignore race will make you sound racist and ignore important racialized themes.

You can't understand Stede's need for character growth at the beginning of the show if you just focus on how he's "cringe" instead. When Stede makes his crew members of color serve them at dinner when the English board, this is gross, and their faces tell us exactly how they feel about it. Stede unlearning his biases here isn't subtle (guy who called him and Pete "fucking racists" I love you forever), and learning to take all of his crew members seriously as fully actualized people, moving away from the sort of Kindergarten-teacher behavior at the start to truly valuing them as people and taking their input and suggestions, it's an important aspect. Stede asking Abshir for intel at the party isn't just funny, it's also proof he's learned to see value in people in positions like Abshir's.

You can't understand the motivations behind Ed's actions, especially the violent ones, if you ignore the racist overtones. Ed is not a randomly violent person - he gets angry at a captain for calling him a "rich donkey," and if you think it's unreasonable for a brown man to want to get revenge on a white man for calling him that? Then fuck I'm glad you can't see the conversations I have with my other black friends, man. Ed's anger and frustration at the party aren't just because he fucked up with some spoons, lol, you can't get it unless you realize he's the only brown guest in that room. Yeah, he's ignoring Stede's advice, but he's immediately under a pressure Stede never has been. Ed's wanted posters in s2, too, rely on heavily caricaturizing Jewish features to make him look grotesque and monstruous. We're supposed to be horrified by that aspect.

And, yeah, when we ignore the racist tones to Izzy's behavior, I think that's undermining an important aspect of who he is as an antagonistic character. Him buying Ed from the English should feel like a gross violation, because it is. When he sits in front of the crew eating and making Fang and Ivan serve him, I think it's a pretty obvious parallel to how the crew members of color were similarly insulted in the pilot. It's impossible to ignore race in the way he dehumanizes Ed and tries to force him back into a caricature of behavior he hates and is horrified by - when he calls Ed a "wild dog" in s2, if that doesn't cause a visceral reaction of disgust in you, I dunno what to tell you. This doesn't mean that Izzy is irredeemable - just as Stede wasn't - but it does mean that racist biases are things Izzy had to unlearn.

OFMD so often takes so much care with how its characters of color are depicted. We get thoughtful, relatable moments (those French boat people getting humiliated and setting their boat on fire after they'd tried to touch Ed's beard is so satisfying, guys) and excellent, supportive friendships between men of color. The characters of color on OFMD are clean, smart, respected, and it's wonderful. And just because these things aren't always relatable to you specifically doesn't mean they're not important parts of the story.

[kitzatara]

I don’t talk about Billy Kaplan as much on this account, but he is a character that meant a lot to me as a gay teen. And his depiction in Agatha All Along is a pretty big slap in the face to pretty much everything about the character. You can’t adapt a gay character that is important rep as nothing more than a caricature and stereotype, while erasing his Jewish identity. It’s just wrong. Plain and simple.

Imagine other gay characters being portrayed in such a reductionist way. Making it clear that they only thing important about his character as that he presents gay in a way that he doesn’t really present in the comics. Our presentation and expression is important and one of the strengths of the LGBTQIA+ community. We are diverse and creative and present in ways unique to us. Don’t get me wrong, feminine presentation is beautiful, I myself present more fem, him presenting femininely isn’t the problem. The problem is exaggerating the characters traits and making them more and overly flamboyant in the stereotypical way when again he isn’t really like that in the comics. The character more likely to dress that way is actually Teddy but a lot of y’all aren’t there yet, so we’re going to focus on Billy for the moment.

Do not go conflating the issues of fem presentation with the issue of erasing Billy’s identity to be bigger and more than it was. Especially when he was created by a gay jewish writer. Reducing our characters to stereotypes is harmful, especially when it’s clear they don’t care about or respect the characters origins and story. You can’t adapt Billy without including his jewish heritage, especially because he has a Jewish wedding to the love of his life. You can’t adapt half of Billy Kaplan and exaggerate the other half to compensate.

One final caveat, I don’t support or condone the attacking of Joe Locke and his looks. That’s not the issue either and is also very firmly wrong. And there is a slight possibility he isn’t playing Billy, which would be far and away better. Because like Joe or not, he is miscast. It should’ve been a Jewish actor, He and the character deserve better. We as a gay community deserve proper and accurate rep in all its forms and so do Jewish people. We don’t have to accept the bare minimum from a mega billion corporation.

(All this plus the white washing of now a second Romani character. The MCU needs to do better)

[marxonculture]

A Quick Note on 'Jewface', Maestro and Oppenheimer

Given that my presence on this platform is filtered specifically through the lens of Jewishness in film, and that I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the Jewish identity of Leonard Bernstein – the subject of Bradley Cooper’s controversial upcoming film, Maestro – I thought I’d weigh in on the current discourse.

For those who are unaware, one of the biggest films due to premier as part of this year’s autumn film festival season is Bradley Cooper’s Maestro. The film is said to be a non-traditional biopic of 20th century American composer Leonard Bernstein, focusing largely on his complex relationship with his wife, Felicia Montealegre. Controversy has arisen around the Netflix production due to images from the trailer featuring Bradley Cooper as Bernstein wearing an enlarged prosthetic nose. Voices within and outside Jewish communities have loudly criticised Cooper for caricaturing Jewishness, using the term ‘Jewface’ which describes the act of a goyische (non-Jewish) actor using prosthetics to make themselves look more like a cartoonish, imagined Jew.

While it is true that Bernstein did own a decent sized schnoz, the prosthetic utilised by Cooper is significantly bigger, and more defined than the nose was in reality. From a personal standpoint, I do find the use of this prosthetic to be pretty discomforting, but I think it speaks more to Cooper’s insecurity about the size of his own nose, which is a lot bigger than perhaps he would like to admit (and not too dissimilar to Bernstein’s actual nose!), than it does about his perception of Jews. That being said whether it was his intention to cartoonify Jewishness or not, Cooper has ruffled feathers in a way that is crass rather than substantive. Bernstein’s living relatives have come out in support of Cooper and his decision to use the prosthetic, saying that Bernstein would not have minded, but I think their statement rather misses the point. The nose is not about Bernstein himself, but about highly visible representations of a tiny minority that are stereotypical and incredibly reductive.

Funnily enough, however, Cooper’s use of ‘Jewface’ is the element of Maestro that bothers me the least. I have been fairly vocal since the film’s announcement about how I believe the production as a whole to be a pretty catastrophically bad idea. Leonard Bernstein is my number one creative hero – as a composer, public intellectual and educator, I don’t think there has been a single Jewish figure in American history who has had more of a positive impact on culture.

As I mentioned, I have written extensively about Bernstein in an academic context, and in researching him, it became clear to me just how vitally important his Jewish identity was to him throughout his life. It informed his music (even West Side Story, which was initially conceived as a story about Jews and Catholics on the Lower East Side of Manhattan), and his role as an educator (he often described his pedagogy as rabbinic in nature), and he was deeply, foundationally affected upon learning about the realities of the Holocaust which caused what he described as ‘aporia’, a state of being where he was too overwhelmed to write a single word for years. Bernstein’s complicated relationship to sexuality was also hugely significant in his life. There is still debate to this day about whether, given an open, accepting environment, he would have identified as a gay man or as bisexual. He had significant, passionate relationships with both men and women, and was an early major advocate for HIV/AIDS research.

My problem with Maestro is that I don’t have faith in Bradley Cooper as a writer/director, to sensitively depict these two massive aspects of Bernstein’s identity. Focusing on his most significant straight-passing relationship as the centre of a film called Maestro does not inspire confidence that the film won’t totally whitewash Bernstein’s Jewishness, or reduce his sexuality to the pain it caused his wife (in a similar way to other reductive music biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman). Cooper’s own identity is significant in that he is starting from a place of remove from the identity of his subject, which isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, but when there are other filmmakers out there who are far better suited to a project like this, both from an identity perspective and a thematic one, it’s hard to justify why this project exists at all in its current form.

Some have pointed to the involvement of Steven Spielberg as a producer on the project as hope for better representation, but given that Cooper and Martin Scorsese – a filmmaker who I have criticised in the past for the didactic, Christian morality of his movies – are also credited producers, I don’t think it’ll make much difference. I’m more comforted by the involvement of Josh Singer (Spotlight, The Post) and his contribution to the screenplay, given his Jewishness and his work on thematically sensitive historical films.

I’m not writing off the film entirely just yet. I had similar worries about Oppenheimer, given the significance of the scientist’s Jewishness in his decision to start work on the bomb in the first place. Nolan and Cillian Murphy, thankfully, proved me wrong in the director’s decision to focus on the differing Jewish identities of Oppenheimer, Lewis Strauss, and I.I. Rabi, and the nuanced ways in which their characters were informed by Jewishness, as well as Murphy’s attention to detail in his performance. It’s certainly possible for non-Jewish filmmakers to consider Jewishness in a valuable way (see Todd Field’s Tar or Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza for a couple of recent examples), but the set-up of this project makes it hard for me to believe that Cooper is one such filmmaker.

To end with a little self-gratifying what-if, I thought I’d lay out what would be my ideal Bernstein biopic: a film centred around the relationship between Bernstein and his fellow queer, Jewish composer and mentor, Aaron Copland, the letters they wrote to one another, and the fallout of their brushes with McCarthyism which had vastly different outcomes. I would keep Cooper as Bernstein (without the prosthetics!) because he can convincingly play the man’s charm, I’d cast Michael Stuhlbarg as Copland, and get Todd Haynes to write and direct. Haynes is Jewish, gay, and has a great deal of experience directing sweeping, romantic, dark, and political films. He knows how to portray music on screen and has several masterful period-pieces under his belt, with Carol in particular as a shining example of complex, historical queer romance in America. Honestly, this would be my dream film project.

[sponeszine]

🌠 ZINE Q & A 🌠

We have received lots of great feedback so far from our Interest Check. Our team is putting together answers and will periodically update with answers from the submitted questions. Our FAQ page on our carrd will also be updated to reflect the answers we share. (UPDATE: Our FAQ is now offered on a public Google Doc for easier accessibility and readability.)

Q: How are you going to treat art submissions that have Spock with green skin? I've noticed your Tumblr reblogged a fanart that goes above a simple tint or a blush.

A: Short answer - Our committee is aware of the antisemitic stereotypes related to Spock art with green skin and will not be permitting it in the zine. Additional: see our FAQ document or the longer answer the cut.

As this topic will relate to antisemitism, our team is putting a CW/TW for the below discussions of antisemitism, and regarding stereotypes/harmful depictions in media.

For some background, there is a pervasive and harmful issue of artists portraying Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy who is well-known to be a Jewish actor, with bright green skin. The green skin is an antisemitic caricature utilized to target Jewish people and plays into a whole host of other problematic portrayals of Jewish individuals. While Spock is a Human-Vulcan hybrid he is regularly presented in canon as having green blood and there are often remarks as such by other characters. There were also several episodes in The Original Series where the makeup Nimoy was wearing gave him a more "sallow" appearance and yellowish/green undertones in his skin (link to article about the process put into Spock's makeup with a CW for sinophobia regarding the name of the makeup color), which some artists today still attempt to carry over when trying to make Spock look more "alien."

Unfortunately, a lot of those depictions are leaning into antisemitic territory. That being said, it is generally regarded that Vulcans generally do not appear with deep yellow/green skin or visibly green undertones in canon; other Vulcan characters in later series have more natural makeup and in the TOS movies, Nimoy's makeup was remarkably minimal. The same is seen in regards to the Reboot movie series, as Quinto's skin tones don't feature any dramatic differences between him and the "Human cast."

Our committee has already discussed and decided as follows in regards to common antisemitic tropes:

Bright green, yellow and/or "neon green" skin colors portrayed for Spock's skin tones will be rejected wholesale by the zine committee. We will consider green blushes or light tints as permissible unless there is an issue raised by the committee. There is also always the option to use a more bronze-tinted blush, which some fans have indicated is likely more realistic for an actual "Vulcan blush."

Written content that contains characters using "goblin" or "hobgoblin" to refer to Spock, unless quoting directly from the TOS episode 'Bread & Circuses' or the 2009 Star Trek movie, will be politely requested to be removed or changed out for a different term, given its derogatory history and connection to antisemitism, and for the comfort of our committee members.

Our zine committee also holds the right to evaluate content that contains other harmful stereotypes and request edits to the submitted material, or reject the submission if that becomes necessary. We would rather promote this as a learning opportunity in each and every case. Nobody is perfect and nobody grows up in a perfectly sealed vacuum of ideas; we are all always learning and unlearning behaviors as we develop throughout our lives.

Other examples of content to be conscientious of would include Christmas celebrations. Yes, we are aware that Star Trek is generally regarded as an anti-theist futuristic portrayal, but somehow that doesn't carry over in regards to fandom, and especially fandom content that centers around Christmas. Mixed faith families is submission content, found or otherwise, are more than accepted to our zine. But we would ask that Spock's (and relatedly, Nimoy's) connection to Jewishness not be replaced with assumed Christian-normativity.

For resources on Jewishness, how it relates to Star Trek, and how to avoid antisemitic tropes our team also offers the following:

@trillgendermetaphor's resources and essays on Tumblr https://trillgendermetaphor.tumblr.com/green-spock

A longer essay about the portrayal of Kirk, and commentary on Jewish characters (and how collective memory has treated Spock and Kirk's relative Jewishness differently) in Star Trek: http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/freshly-rememberd-kirk-drift/

If anyone has other recommendations or other reading materials, please send them our way. We are happy to include them in our resources as well.

The We Go Together Zine committee is made of a diverse group of people, including several Jewish members. As the saying goes, "ask two Jews, get three opinions" so there will likely never be a wholly unanimous agreement as to what "crosses the line" from portraying Spock as, he is in canon, a half-Vulcan, and at what point those portrayals dive into antisemitic tropes.

There is also a longer discussion or critique to be had about the Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and his relationship to Jews and, in part, his antisemitism, but we will keep our focus to fandom presentation. As to your statement about our Tumblr reblogging fanart that "goes above a simple tint or blush" our team was unable to determine what post(s) you were referring to. It may be due to the color mixing on your monitor or screen (or it could be our own monitors), but when reviewing our reblogged content, we were unable to definitively conclude which fanart you were referring to.

If you have any other questions or concerns regarding our response, please reach out to us directly at sponeszine@gmail.com. We thank you for sharing your concern as it is something we understand is important and necessary regarding the comfort and safety of Jewish people and Jewish Star Trek fans. Warmly, We Go Together Zine Committee

[davekat-sucks]

Yoyo what's up. I'm new to your channel server hopper.

Damn why do the incest ships somehow have better pun names that most ships I've seen? Wtf. I degrees. And agree, nu-fandom is overall soft and PC to the point they've shot themselves in the foot a couple times here and there either being so aggressively PC they are actually offensive and rely heavily on stereotypes only to turn around and say stereotypes bad. Or they are too faux pass in their attempts to seem progressive, idolizing white passing abled body lesbians or trans woman while leaving out anyone who doesn't fit that or biting at anyone who points out their homophobia, transphobia, ablesm, racism, and so forth.

Example: pretty sure one of the differences between earth and alternia is factual speaking the woman generally have more power than men? It's a queendom not a kingdom afterall, plus Karkat implied this a few times that men in troll culture are generally seen as weaker and emotional than raw emotional power houses that women are seen as. Or whatever, he calls nerdy violent things girly when they're seen as manly on earth.

Which means the earth equipment of Vriska breaking Tavros's legs is the earth equivalent a transman breaking a cis woman's legs because she's everything said transman wanted to avoid being because of toxic masculinity and social pressure to not be seen as weak period.

And in this light suddenly Vriska doesn't seem so progressive afterall. Hell even without the flip floppy lens, a trans girl breaking a cis dude's legs and the bullying him for being disabled even though she is the reason why he's disabled... Also not cool, it's just which would obviously get more backlash and why. But Vriska gets a pass because she's a girl, regardless if she was trans or not. That and like, have you seen the internet? It's filled with Vriskas. People who bully physically disabled people for being disabled but claim they're forward thinking and progressive. Looking at you TikTok and Twitter!

Also I'm sure black Jewish people do exist, but people are so quick to ignore the fact that ethically at the minimum, regardless of implied religiously, the Striders and the Lalondes are all Jewish. I've only seen blogs that mention it in like deep dives or random ass trivia. Like hey fandom, your gothic rose of the rose Mary duo is infact Jewish. Gothic Queer Jewish rep??? Hello????? They hype up the fact she's POC, or heavily headcanoned by the dubious canon epilogues era of canon writers to be but...like no mention of the fact she's Jewish. Ever.

Also the fandom hates pale skinned minority groups period, not everyone who has pale or general light 'white passing' skin is white. Asian people and Latinos who are white passing exist, for example. But they also LOVE to make the "good" characters (or loved by the fandom collective anyways) that they declare POC coded lighter skinned than their direct family who is seen as 'bad' which they make darker skinned in turn. Example is Meeneh is often depicted with Darker skin than Feferi in the fandom like a lot.

And you know it's not a fanon copying 'problematic' canon problem because this shit is happening exclusively in the fandom where it's common place to give trolls toned skin based on their blood color, or to imply they'd be POC or whatever if they were human I guess??? All the while all the trolls across the board in canon have the same tone of grey skin.

Why do the fuck the fandom has to throttle canon for being racist only to turn around and be actually racist themselves??? The fuck?

It is often the hypocrisy. The nu-fandom claims believe they are progressive, but don't see the implications of racism and sexism they would create themselves. To go far as spread misinformation on saying things like "Gamzee and Meenah are black caricatures in the webcomic". I'm just here like....why?!

[benevolentbirdgal]

Hello, recently the new Legend of Zelda game came out and it made me think about the main villain Ganondorf again. I’ve always kind of though he tends to fall into some harmful antisemitic traits such as the red hair, green skin, large nose (his race of people are portrayed with large noses, he is from a desert race of people but I thought it was important to mention), his goal is to take over Hyrule and has the Triforce of Power, and his early depictions re of a large pig-like creature. I am not sure if this was done purposely to make him a harmful stereotype or not, but with how many people are talking about him I thought it would be important to ask.

Hi Anon!

Honestly, this is not an element of discourse that is familiar to me personally. After looking at some images and whatnot (it's been a long time since my NintendoDS has seen the light of day), I can see where people are coming from.

I think it's unfortunate - especially with how aggressively white and western and not remotely Jewish or Jew-coded the protags are - but I don't (personally) think it's intentional nor am I terribly bothered by it. I get why it gives people the ick (esp the pig one), but Ganandorf also hits a lot of general folklore/adventure/fantasy tropes writ large (which TBF, often have antisemitic roots in contexts where Jews have been persecuted). There's legitimately a read that maybe the uber-white-and-western-good-rulers vs the thief who has a big nose has some bad coding TM, but I don't think it's the only read. I also honestly hadn't thought about the visuals that hard, because I've encountered pixel art versions of Zelda stuff on pretty small screens previously and well, those have limited visuals.

If you're asking about this (fanart I believe by an unrelated artist that people had Opinions About on reddit) then yeah that particular drawing was Big Yikes and IMO, intentional or not (artist did release a pretty detailed apology postfact), did emphasize the most problematic/antisemitic/caricature bits of the character.

Re: intention in the original character: given that Zelda originally came out in' 80s (and Ganandorf was introduced in the '90s?) and was produced by a Japanese company (i.e. with designers not from a culture that has historically had interaction with or oppressed Jews pre-WW2), I'm inclined to believe it was more a case of "cool western fantasy elements" without necessarily interrogating their origin or coding or possible harmful impacts. If I had to hazard a guess, I don't think that Japanese designers in the '80s and '90s had any considerations for Jews (so.much.kabbalah.appropriated.in.anime.but.discuss.another.time), much less intentions to create antisemitic caricatures or necessarily even awareness that it could be read as such.

As is increasingly (and delightfully) the case with my asks, this is very much my personal opinion territory, and I'd love to hear what other Jews have to say

[urspopinionsareshit]

Why I tend to hyperfocus on Style when criticizing Kyle's portrayal in fanworks

I'm not blind to the criticism hurled my way regarding this topic.

This is fairly long.

I'm going to preface this by saying that there shouldn't be these fucked up, heteronormative gender roles in same sex pairings in the first place. Unfortunately, people in ALL fandoms are guilty of assigning these roles and leopards aren't going to change their spots overnight.

The reason I call Style tropes and cliches out the most is because Stan, along with Kyle, is usually transformed into a weird, out of character version of himself. And the sole purpose for this transformation is to make Kyle look more effeminate, nerdy, and wimpy next to him.

Stan is easily the most well-rounded kid out of his friends when it comes to interests. Unfortunately, fanworks tend to completely ignore his non-sports interests (and especially his nerdier interests, such as board games) to make him appear more macho or cool and contrast with some bizarro unathletic and nerdy Kyle who only likes to study. Meathead Stan is painful to read about. All of his endearing qualities are stripped away.

Canon Stan and Kyle are equally conventionally masculine. So yeah, it's a big fucking problem that Stan is seen by the fandom as more inherently masculine than Kyle. It's the media's fault for brainwashing society into seeing Jewish boys and men in a certain light. Almost none of you are portraying Kyle as a stereotype on purpose. That being said, canon Kyle is a positive representation of a Jewish boy, who bucks certain trends while also being proud of who he is. So can you blame me for disliking how the fandom unravels all of that progress?

"What's wrong with femininity?"

Not a thing. But Kyle is not effeminate in canon and the media has emasculated Jewish men for centuries. When you write the conventionally masculine Kyle as less "manly" than Stan, you are contributing to these ancient stereotypes, especially when you make Stan more masculine to compensate.

"While the "nice Jewish boy" image has biblical roots, it also stems from negative historical portrayals emphasizing weakness. Seventeenth-century Yiddish term “edelkayt” defines Jewish men as lacking bravery; in 13th-century Italy, rumours about [cis] male Jews menstruating associated them with femininity and frailty.

These historical associations remain troubling. We continue to value male strength over femininity, leading to low self-worth among men who don’t identify with a stereotypically masculine persona."

"Another consequence is to render the Jewish male unmanly, passive, and ultimately subordinate. His masculinity does not roar; it is voiced instead as “the quiet peeps of a mouse.

In Berger’s view, these stereotypes of “social obedience” resemble those of other minority men whose on-screen weaknesses assuage fears of the dominant culture. At the same time, they reprise nineteenth and twentieth-century cultural portrayals of effeminate Jewish men."

"This ideal self-image of the Jewish body eventually merged with 19th-century anti-Semitic caricatures of it. The Jew’s physiognomy and physiology was characterized as unmanly, passive and weak. The Jew’s legs and feet, in particular were characterized as nonathletic, unsuited to nature, sport, warfare, brutality and violence. This Jew was seen as pathologically "hysteric" as a result of the lack of healthy and outdoor activity.

The result is that cinematic stereotypes, dating back almost to the birth of the medium itself, portrayed the Jew as a weak, frail, small, nonathletic, urban (ghetto) businessman."

There are also a lot of gross double standards when it comes to their portrayals.

Exhibit A: Kyle is depicted as short (which wouldn't be an issue under normal circumstances, but Kyle is always emasculated when he's portrayed as short) because Sheila is short, but Stan is depicted as tall, even though nobody in his family is tall (his uncle and his sister are in fact short).

Exhibit B: Fanon Kyle is portrayed as awkward around crushes, even though canon Kyle initiated his kiss with Rebecca and approached most of his other crushes himself. Girls clearly find him attractive in canon, but fanon teenage and adult Kyle is always this inexperienced clod. His sexual and romantic inexperience in future fics is justified by his bad luck with girls in canon. Or even worse, people will make him inexperienced because he's too busy studying to get laid (but don't do the same to the equally intellectual Wendy).

On the other hand, canon Stan has always been awkward around crushes. Yeah, he has Wendy, but she does all of the heavy lifting in their relationship and initiates everything. Outside of Wendy, his romantic experience involves puking every time his substitute teacher spoke to him and ogling a girl's butt crack. But fanon Stan is either a ladies man or super sexually active from a fairly young age. People justify this with "People can change!" If Stan's luck in that department can change, why can't Kyle's? And just because he's with Wendy now doesn't mean that he needs to be in a tedious on and off relationship with her in the future.

Why is inexperienced!Kyle a problem?

"The modern stereotype's meaning poses its own issues with the trope's romantic connotations. There’s nothing wrong with considering Jewish men nice, but the label implies they're nothing more. Titling male Jews timid or studious implies they don't possess the opposite qualities commonly associated with romance, like spontaneity or confidence.

“Nice Jewish boys” may impress parents with their brains, but they'll bore their partners with an absence of excitement and idealism. The implication that Jewish men are undeserving of romantic attention establishes them as inferior to the classic womanizing man."

"But I'm not being antisemitic! I just SEE Kyle a certain way!"

Why do you see Kyle a certain way? What canon basis is there for him to suddenly start sucking at sports (eg. the Wimpy Jew stereotype)? Or to study instead of going to parties (eg. the Nerdy and Uptight Jew stereotype)? Or to turn into some shrinking violet (the Nebbish Jew stereotype)? Why do you always assume that Kyle will be a submissive Omega in those A/B/O fics? What in canon makes you think that Kyle is going to transform into a tiny, meek dork in a sweater vest? Think about it.

Some people might argue that these portrayals are outdated, and while there have been slight (emphasis on "slight") improvements over the past couple of years, all of these tropes are still very much present in Style fics. And I won't rest until these trends finally die.

Now why don't I focus as much on Kyman and K2?

Kyman is NOTP for me. I rarely click on any fic tagged with that pairing. I already know that my blood will boil. And I really don't want to read Holocaust AUs or disgusting fan art like this if I can help it.

As for K2, while there are problematic tropes within that pairing (the two biggest ones are "inexperienced!Kyle" and "Kyle refuses to party and have fun because he'd rather study"), K2 fics have actually improved over the years. There's less focus on gender roles and Kenny isn't twisted into some bizzare hypermasculine version of himself in order to make Kyle the "girl".

I wouldn't even rant on and on about Kyle if the "feminine/masculine" roles were fifty/fifty between him and Stan, but they're not. Even Kymans have their mountain/pine debate.

I certainly don't want people to go too far in the other direction and make Kyle into a meathead either. The best Style fics adhere to his and Stan's canon personalities and throw heteronormative gender roles out the window.

And on that note, here are some excellent Style fics that I recommend. They're both in-character and there are no gender roles:

"Love and Basketball"

"Road Rage"

"Future Telling Device"

"Post-Season Blues"

If you want more eloquent takedowns of these Style cliches, read this. And especially this.

"A Fall in the Springtime"

"Just Between Friends"

I hope that this post gives you some insight. Especially you @urspopinionsareshittttt

[atomheartz]

okay okay, i hate to be that girl, but i’m gonna be that girl.

so, in case you missed it, a few weeks ago, the invisible man from the hotel transylvania serious was finally given, like, a face and body reveal. and while people found the voice to be attractive ( his VA is david spade, who was also the voice of kuzco, fun fact for you ), they were disappointed by the appearance.

they made griffin, the invisible man, kinda fat, with a hooked nose, and gave him ginger hair that kind of puffs out like an afro would, but it looks more curly to me. 

now, if you’re not aware, the hooked nose and the red curly hair are both commonly used jewish caricatures that are often used in antisemitic depictions of jewish people. and these are usually paired together to make a character ‘look jewish’. another kind of physical characteristic matchup is a hooked nose paired with dark hair. and of course, if a character has these physical features, and they’re made out to be greedy, ding ding ding, blatant antisemitism.

for example, if south park characters had noses, kyle broflovski would have been given a hooked nose to match his curly red hair, which is referred to in the show as a ‘jew fro’. ( south park is notorious for jewish jokes. in their game, the stick of truth, ‘jew’ is a playable class, similar to one you would find in a dnd game ).

now, i’m not saying that every person ‘let down’ by the invisible man’s reveal is antisemitic, that would be insane. but what i am saying is that these features being considered ‘ugly’ or ‘evil’ is so ingrained in our society. if you think about it, lots of villainous, or just seedy, characters in animated productions have some or all of these features. 

gargamel from the smurfs, the goblins from harry potter, in some ways, mother gothel from rapunzel ( the hinting at blood libel, another antisemitic trope in media ) , these characters have all been described as ‘jewish coded’ or have pretty distinct features animators use to make sure you know a character is jewish, or at least make you think they’re jewish.

just, keep an eye out for these design choices. keep an eye out for who is given these physical characteristics, and keep an eye out to see if any of these studios have past histories with antisemitism.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

If there was one thing I could tell every white fan who writes meta and fic about OFMD, it's that there's no way to do a "race-blind" reading of a story.

The simple fact of the matter is that our biases about race impact how we interact with every single piece of media we'll ever consume, and that's true for every person on the planet. We're all of us informed by the racism of the societies we grow up in, and we always all need to do the (often uncomfortable) work of examining why we think the way we do about characters of color. This isn't just important for making fandom feel like a safe space for fans of color, these are important life skills to build to help you become a better ally.

An important thing to remember is that you don't have to explicitly mention Ed's race to unintentionally reinforce racist readings of the text. Racist takes very often don't look like "Ed is obviously super violent and angry because he's brown," they more often look like "Ed is inherently violent" while ignoring how white characters like Stede engage in violence with much more enthusiasm. Trying to avoid thinking or talking about Ed's race doesn't mean you're less likely to accidentally reinforce racist takes - it in fact means you're more likely to do that because you're not taking the time to examine your biases!

Ed's race became an important part of the story the moment a Jewish-Māori man was cast in the role. While for a character like Stede the idea of being seen as threatening might even feel empowering (he's a gnc white gay man who has often be made to feel weak and useless), for Ed you will miss part of why the Blackbeard caricature feels so dehumanizing to him if you ignore the racial component. The way Ed is depicted in Blackbeard posters, the way he's exoticized at the party boat, his interactions with other characters - it's impossible to understand Ed's character without considering how the color of his skin impacts how he moves through the world. Moments like Izzy essentially buying Ed from the crown become much more troubling when you take the time to examine the text with Ed's race in mind, and you might even end up with reductive ideas about Ed's gender expression and relationship to masculinity if you fail to consider that things such as longer hair are ways that some Māori men like Ed express their masculinity. You can ignore that Ed's a man of color, sure, but then you're missing a lot.

At the end of the day, it's just important to take the time to sit with yourself and think about how you understand characters of color in the media you enage with. It's good and healthy, I think, to ask ourselves uncomfortable questions. Do you find yourself assigning Ed's violent actions more weight than those of characters like Stede or Izzy? Is it easier to ignore Ed's tears to focus on what he's done wrong? A common example is the moment when Ed orders Fang to skin the racist French captain with a snail fork - do you find yourself thinking that Ed overreacted?

[mismashedsocks]

 so riordan made a half assed lame excuse on his lazy/racist writing on piper yesterday and on top of that he made another one on samirah and i’m muslim so i am going to talk about it

damn i’m so sorry these people have been pushing you past your comfort zone about your wildly popular racist caricatures of minorities that have great impact on your young, impressionable target audience. while its fine that if he takes a break for his mental health he still needs to deal with these problems you can’t just take a break and hope they go away.

why does he think everyone is bullying him. if they talked in all caps, cussed at you, or didn’t stop bothering you, i’m sorry they’re just trying to get you to realize how racist your books are, which you keep refusing to believe. i can believe that a few of them were doing it for attention, but it couldn’t be the majority. and my god, god forbid people want you to write your books the way you preferred, without racist stereotypes. 🙈

you can set your boundaries but you keep ignoring the people, you don’t listen. like you put yourself out there as a writer you are open to criticism

why does he keep doing this to seem like the good guy. you give excuses and don’t do anything and just say that its up to you, you can think whatever you want 🥰🥰. like its such an obvious excuse not to take any action.

i’m sorry but no matter how many muslims you’ve interacted with you haven’t gotten the full experience and last time i checked teachers aren’t the kids best friends soo uhm. anyways the rest of it is just him telling his experience with muslimah students so its just there.

so uhm you just said your students ‘unwillingly’ become an ambassador to everyone she knew’. and then you went to talk to them about islam to make sure you were TEACHING THEM YOUR SOURCE MATERIAL CORRECTLY. i’m sorry imagine. these are kids not some scholars you go to consult. there are so many muslims all over the internet and youtube sharing their experiences for you to access on how to ‘represent their experience’ correctly. you’re the teacher here. picture this:as a muslilm, i teach at a public school and while teaching about Christianity in class, no i would double check or some dumb shit with the students. like educate yourself i’m sorry. anyways apparently he blames his mistakes on himself then goes on to deny he ever made any mistakes i can’t.

so this is a blatant lie. 99% of muslims i’ve met have never read all of sahih bukhari and sahih muslim. usually only scholars do that when they are studying islam for YEARS. and FIVE different interpretations of the quran on top of that. ok so sahih bukhari is 9 books that are over 300 pages each and sahih musilm is 7 volumes with also about 300+ pages each. and then the english versions of the quran are 600 pages. and he claims he read five of them. i’m so sorry but no he didn’t. he writes books so fast and he released mcga around the time toa was being released almost one book per year so he did not have a lot of spare time. the rest ig i can let slide. also and if he did do all of that why does he make so many mistakes in writing samirah. and even IF you accept his excuses reading ALL of this source material is great for teaching your class or whatever but not for writing a modern day muslim. you don’t need to lie to us rick ❤️

most of this is just describing what she’s like but his writing did also add in the model minority, smart kid trope. like no they don’t have to be a terrorist or a A+ student who is the best at everything. there is a middle ground to their personality. 

i actually used to love his rep in sam. that’s how i got into the series. i saw a hijabi girl on his website. i got excited and read all of his books. i loved piper, leo, hazel, percy, annabeth, sadie, carter, nico, everyone. now that i look back i was younger and didn’t see anything wrong with it back then. its great that he tried to portray minorities but he did it so badly and now is just denying the faults that his now older readers are trying to tell him.

hey, uhm didn’t you read all of sahih bukhari and muslim? hmm i didn’t think so. anyways the way he dealt with it honestly wasn’t that bad. but the whole ‘whoops’. like why does he keep portraying himself as the innocent old white man just trying his best.

honestly how he wrote samirah as a hijabi was the dumbest thing i’ve ever read. its is totally fine if she wasn’t hijabi, many muslim girls aren’t, and that is their choice. but he decided to make her like a weird middle ground. it was so lazy and inconsistent. in the first book she says she wears it when she needs to, like in situations like going to the masjid. this was fine, since many muslim girls do that. then in the next books she wears it all the time except when she’s in valhalla for some reason. hijabi girls take of their scarves when they’re at home or with family, but making her claim the entirety of vallhalla as her family. that was just demeaning and stupid to me. it takes away its value. and i fucking hated that last sentence. for hijabis, their hijab is important and not a toy or weapon or a MAGIC ITEM. and then on top of that she would have to take it of to hide. he could’ve made it anything else. her hijab isn’t some token item istg.

i love how he admits that they are a big problem and abusive and usually engage with child marriages. i’m relatively he doesn’t understand what the people even meant by it. the practice is a problem that isn’t supposed to be seen in a nice light. the only possible way it could be slightly ok is that if ADULTS agree they 100% do not want to choose who they want to get married to and let their parents choose, and both sides agree. samirah was a child and he decided to make her wedding life decided since the age of 12. and it was ok because amir was conventionally attractive and she loved him. WHAT IF SHE DIDNT. this literally is a dangerous arranged marriage. and arranged marriages are not ok, and mostly perpetuated by victims of it who will end up passing it down their family lines. my parents got an arranged marriage and I HAVE NEVER SEEN THEM DISPLAY ANY SIGNS OF AFFECTION. arranged marriages are not a trope that your can turn around to be a quirky personality trait for your characters.

i’m sorry that’s not how arranged marriages work. most likely if she said something her grandparents would have shut her done and continued with the marriage, as that is what you usually happens. do not portray the small amount of consented, ‘happy’ arranged marriages as the majority. it is a huge problem that many desi/middle eastern cultures are trying to erase. even on top of that he writes situations where she’s going to be in trouble for acting up and ‘jeopardizing the marriage agreement’ and that her grandparents think she’s ‘lucky that she could get the fadlan family to agree to marry their son to her’. these statements are often used in forced and dangerous marriages, so don’t try and justify your actions. if you wanted to show traditional customs in a positive light, there are so many richer parts of samirah’s culture you could’ve focused on and you chose arranged marriage. 😻 all you’ve done is given parents and authority figures a westernized resource to justify arranged and forced marriages, especially with the minimal explanation on how the marriage isn’t forced in the actual books. and yes, your books do condone child marriage samirah is clearly deemed into this marriage ever since the young age of 12. she lived her life knowing she would marry amir. no one has only one crush throughout their life. imagine how she would’ve grown up. sorry you only consider opinions that align with those in you mind.

i’m going to be honest i did like that one scene it was written nicely and accurately but the explanation he gives just ruins the entire thing. the way he just if this strikes you as islamophobic, or samirah as a hurtful, uhm no explanation i just disagree 😽. the way you wrote her is a hurtful stereotype sorry you can’t see it.

oops, you did. too bad you don’t want to do anything about it.

why do you think people are painting you in a negative light, so many of your characters are written on hurtful and negative stereotypes. people aren’t painting it that way, you need to calm down w your ego and listen. dang i’m sorry your best is giving half-assed excuses and not actually doing anything. i’m even more sorry people are mad that a highly privileged author that has a lot of influence is done talking about his racist depictions of minorities in his books. 

dang must be lucky to take a break from the social media, imagine what all the minorities you wrote about have to go with everyday weather they are on social media or not. people aren’t bullying you this is valid criticism you refuse to listen to.

fuck you

obviously these are my opinions do not judge every muslim based on what i’ve said come to me if you have a problem with it

anyways support jewish, muslim, black, brown, asian, hispanic, indigenous, lgbtq+, disabled, and other minority authors and creators.

[the-kazoo-kid]

The Two Types of Goblincore

I’ll begin by saying that I’m a Jewish archaeologist, and one of my main areas of study is the pogroms of Eastern Europe during the beginning of the 20th century. This affects the way I think of goblincore in two major ways:

Goblins were used as a negative caricature of Jews to tother them and incite negative feelings and violence among non-news

I have been accused of only wanting to be an archaeologist so that I can dig up and hoard shiny things

I spend a lot of my time looking at images like this one. It’s an antisemetic political cartoon from 1898. 

Look at the crown, the long, hooked nose, and most importantly the clawed, webbed hands. His hands envelope the world, symbolizing the perceived universal greed of the Jew.

This stereotype of the greedy Jew didn’t originate in the 19th century either. It goes all the way back to the Middle Ages when Jews in Europe were banned from occupations other than banking. 

So now let’s talk about goblins in popular culture. First and foremost in my mind are J.K Rowling’s goblins who are portrayed as greedy, hoarding and-- you guessed it-- in charge of the money and treasure.

There are even physical similarities between J.K. Rowling’s goblins and the political cartoon above. Note the hooked nose and the hands. 

I was about eight when I read the first Harry Potter book. I remember bringing it to a synagogue event where one of the adults remarked about how uncomfortable the goblins made them. Before I was allowed to watch the movie my mother sat me down and explained what was problematic with those goblins and why.

Next up: LOTR

He has the crown and the hands, although not the nose, and while he bares less direct resemblance to that cartoon, this is still an example of antisemitism. This is a placeholder character for a Jew that is disgusting, hoarding wealth, and a direct antagonist to the main characters. 

Everquest 2:

(I found another image where this character was specifically labeled The Goblin Banker but tumblr wouldn’t allow me to upload it for whatever reason.) This goblin is so other that it’s not even recognizable as a person, and in fact in the game they’re classed as a Mob Race. Yikes. Additionally, Wikipedia describes them as “attempting to - unsuccessfully - forge gold coins, and yet they have no intention spending any of this money, they simply wish to 'have' it.” This goes along with a lot of the greed aspect of goblins and their obsession with hoarding.

So what do we do?

First, I want to say that just because these pieces of media (or any others) have these problematic aspects doesn’t mean that you have to stop consuming and enjoying them. If we never read books or watched movies or played games that were problematic we would back ourselves into a corner where nothing was permitted.

The important thing is to educate yourself to the point where you can recognize the negative caricature/stereotype in something that you come across, and to not create any new media containing the stereotype. 

But what if you really like goblins?

The good news is that this is the first, older kind of goblincore, but it’s not the only one out there. There’s a new wave happening that emphasizes the positive things without including the negative ones. These next examples are technically called trolls in their respective universes, but they really get the vibe that I’m going for.

Boxtrolls:

See? Shiny treasure thing, delight, and no malice. Admittedly the trolls in this movie are some funny looking creatures, but they don’t come across as perpetuating the negative Jewish stereotype to me.

Frozen:

Cute little guys made of stone and moss. They live peacefully, and when they encounter the protagonists they have a nice musical number and then dispense some wise advice. No greed, no bad intentions. Good for them.

(Again, these examples are both technically trolls but I think the idea comes through, especially since they’re so far from the large, lumbering brutes that are trolls in say... Harry Potter or LOTR.)

Now I’m going to hand this conversation over to @goblinblogging who is a Jew working on reclaiming and reworking the idea of what a goblin is and what a goblin does.

-Reid

Now, I know learning that something you’re doing could be problematic is scary! I also know that a ton of people have abandoned goblincore just because they learned of these stereotypes. 

However, you don’t have to abandon something you love! What you need to do is educate yourself and learn about why these things are harmful and learn what you can do to make sure you aren’t doing something harmful yourself! 

Let's start off with how this stereotype came around (Or at least, one way it originated.) In the book Knockers, Knackers, and Ghosts: Immigrant Folklore in the Western Mines, the author goes into detail about how European origins say the goblins of the mines were the ghosts of dead Jews, sentenced (in properly medieval anti-Jewish fashion) to perpetual restlessness for their supposed role in the crucifixion of Jesus. Which is where the “Goblins live in caves and mines” came from! 

So this explains that the ghosts of Jews became goblins because they were being punished for killing jesus. Already a pretty rough start! Now for common goblin appearances that are nothing but antisemitism in disguise. First, and most obvious, large, hooked, warted noses. I don’t really feel like I have to go into much detail about this one. Anyone who took history class in middle and high school should know about Hitler’s propaganda against jews and the depictions of their bulbous noses, often covered in warts. This caricature directly translates over to goblins having their predominant warted noses. Second, Let’s have a look at green skin. Hitler in particular loved to depict jews with green skin, or at the very least, in very green light so it turned their skin green. 

Image source

Notice the green tint, the evil sneer, hooked nose, and pointed ears in this one! All very reminiscent of traits we commonly see in goblins. 

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 This last one is a movie poster “Suss the Jew” produced by Terra Film at the behest of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and considered one of the most antisemitic films of all time. Notice the green skin! 

 Next is horns and teeth. Hitler in particular would depict jews with devil’s horns hidden under their Kippah (also referred to in Yiddish as a yarmulke, or less frequently as a koppel.) He’d also just depict them outright as demons. 

Image source

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This one is Ukranian. Translated means “Satan has taken off his mask” Notice how “satan” has huge teeth and horns, red skin, with the star of David carved into his forehead. Also notice how his jewish mask has a large nose.

Image source

This one is from Russia (1919), a caricature of Leon Trotsky, who was viewed as a symbol of Jewish Bolshevism. Notice the red skin and pointed ears. Also notice how he’s sitting above the people down below (who are sitting on skeletons and bones) symbolizing the Jew’s greed, which we’ll get into later.

And then there’s this one, where you can see (white) people inside of the Jew’s mouth, you can also see horrendously sharp teeth crushing them. Also pay attention to the large nose and pointed ears. I just remembered that I forgot to cover another very important anti-jewish facial feature, which is that many jews in propaganda have dark beady eyes and drooping eyelids. These are things you can see for yourself in the images above!

Next, we’re moving on to greed. This one in particular hits me close to home. I’ve heard the phrase “Jewing me out of my money” too many times to count. Or alternately, “Don’t be a Jew” when the other person doesn’t think that I’m giving them enough of what they want. (Could be money, could even be sweets. The first time I heard this phrase I was a little kid and I had a bag of skittles. I wanted to share with everyone but I still wanted to have enough for me to eat myself. I was passing out handfuls when my friend’s older brother (he was a teen) didn’t like how much I gave him. He said to me, “Come on, don’t be a Jew, give me some more skittles”. I didn’t understand and when I asked my mom what it meant later she was horrified.) Jews, and their caricatures, have almost always been viewed as greedy and power hungry. As @whalefromwales said above me, Jews in Europe used to be banned from any job besides banking. 

We also have images like this from WWII: 

Image source

Anyone who has taken any class where the Holocaust was talked about should be able to recognize this image, The Eternal Jew. He has money in one hand, which is reached out to demand more - he’s also looking at the money, and a whip in his other hand. In his arm, he holds the whole country of Germany.

Image source

There is also this one. A jew, tinged with red, weighs a man’s life against a large pile of money. Notice also how he’s looking at the money - not the man. 

And this one should also be easy to recognize. It reads “The Jews - A People of Contagion!” A city burns in the background as a jewish man sits atop a pile of bones counting his money. Notice the bulbous, hooked, nose, black eyes with drooping eyelids, and large hands! Hitler depicted jews this way (and as goblins) in order to segregate us. “Us VS Them”. “We are the Good Human Beings and Jews are monsters!” in order to make it easy for him to begin committing the atrocities that he did! It never happened overnight, there were key stepping stones that built up to concentration camps. One of those was “Jews aren’t really people, so it’s okay that we’re doing this to them. We’re doing it to save us, the Good Christian Germans.”  

So what does all of this mean? Well, first and foremost, it means that you have to be careful how you depict your goblins. How? When drawing your goblinsonas or goblin ocs, stay away from drawing them with huge, hooked, and warted noses, don’t make their skin green or red (personally, I prefer grey skin for goblins.) If your goblin has sharp teeth, don’t make them huge and obvious. Because modern goblins are fair folk, it’s difficult to depict them without pointed ears, but try not to exaggerate the proportions.  

Behavior: Stop with the “greedy little goblin” thing. That DIRECTLY comes from jewish stereotypes. Your Goblins are allowed to collect shiny things they find, but don’t make them greedy about it! Have your goblin share what they collect, make it a community effort. Sharing the things you love is way better than being miserly anyhow, and sharing more represents what we as goblins should want in our community! Also, be careful with your goblins being terrors. Yes, there are usually evil beings in every single race (whether mythological or real) but just be really really careful. Hitler loved to depict jews eating the Good Germans(™) or terrorizing communities. So even if your goblin is an evil one, be really really careful and be sure to educate yourself first so you’re not just perpetuating the same tired shit that Hitler did.Collecting coins. 

Now, this has been a huge topic of discourse lately. Coins are shiney! I understand why people would want to collect them. Hell, I have some awesome 50 cent pieces and gold dollars in my collection. You just can't depict  yourself or your goblin character collecting only coins and being very greedy with them. That’s literally doing nothing but echoing the same propaganda that Hitler used against us. Collect them all you want, but if I see “Greedy little goblin hoarding coins all for themselves” I swear I’m gonna hit the fan. To clarify, you can absolutely show off you coin collection in the goblin tags, just be careful how you frame it. “I’m really interested in history, so I collect old coins because I think they’re neat” is waaaaaay different then “Horrible littel crecher is greedy for shiney monies” (That last quote is something I’ve SEEN in the tags, luckily op was just completely unaware of why that was so wrong and they removed the caption after they were educated.) 

 So please, enjoy being into goblincore. Enjoy the culture and the fantasy. Goblincore is about appreciating the things about us that may be depicted as “weird” or “ugly”. Goblincore is a safe haven for neurodivergent people (I’m Autistic!) and also Trans and other LGBTQIA+ people! It’s a culture for appreciating nature, collecting things that may not be seen as normal, and sharing these things with other people. It’s a culture where you shouldn’t be ashamed to be who you are or afraid to get dirty. Goblincore is a support network for the weirder folks where we strive to uplift one another. Goblincore is wonderful and I’ve been so impressed at how welcoming everyone is! Especially on tumblr! Before the discourse happened, I was sure that goblincore was one of the kindest communities on tumblr. However, I understand why the discourse happened, and goyim in the goblincore tag really did need to be educated, but that doesn’t mean you have to leave! So be sure to educate yourself and be aware of how your actions could negatively affect folks. Listen to other Jewish people and be mindful of what they say. Some Jews are very uncomfortable with goblincore, and for very good reason! And I do not claim to speak for all Jews with this post. 

I am trying to reclaim the word goblin for use by any person who wants the label. I no longer want these fantasy creatures associated with such a beautiful and vibrant culture of people. Goblins are very interesting as a fantasy race, but the negative stereotypes do nothing but hurt real life Jewish people. Which is why I’m hoping that folks will read this post and realize what behaviors and depictions of goblins are wrong and harmful. Also, tag your goblincore appropriately! Again, many Jewish people are uncomfortable with goblincore because of antisemitism that has happened in their past. I’ve been compared to a goblin many times! So keep your goblincore in just the goblincore tags. There are many overlaps between goblincore and other micro communities on tumblr (Such as crowcore, cottagecore, naturecore, and vulture culture) but be mindful of what you’re putting in those tags. Most vulture culture people hate us goblins cuz we put pictures of dirt or “I’m just a smol crecher” in their tags, and I don’t blame them! Vulture culture is only for the remains of dead animals, and dead animal remains should be the only things added to those tags. So fellow goblins, I’m going to end this post with a sincere thank you for reading, be mindful of your actions, and most of all, HAVE FUN with goblincore! 

Here is where you should be able to read Knockers, Knackers, and Ghosts for free if you want.

TLDR: This is what we, as Jewish people, mean when we say that goblins are based off of negative stereotypes of jews. This is also why some jews get really upset at goblincore, however, there are many ways to participate in goblincore without using harmful stereotypes! So please, use this post to educate yourself so you can both be good goblins and good Jewish allies.

- @goblinblogging

[105ttt]

So, I'm kinda new to Cookie Run, so I don't know a whole lot about the characters inpirations and all that so I hope you don't mind me asking, but what's up with Milk Cookie's design? I've seen people say it's problematic but no explanation on why it is, and I just feel a little lost and dumb lol

It’s okay! You’re not dumb! I’m happy to explain. I’m going to put this under a readmore because there’s… a lot wrong with him and his design. I’ll put a summary before the readmore in case you don’t want details.

TL;DR: Milk Cookie’s appearance, being likely based on the Crusaders and having motifs similar to the Iron Cross used by the Nazis, is antisemitic. Milk Cookie talks down to people of color and also destroys their property without their consent, even if he does not mean it in a malicious way. All of his actions are played off as cute or a joke, which is racist because it makes a white man seem like he can’t be blamed for things he did which were legitimately wrong and meanwhile makes the people of color he harasses seem like the ones who did something wrong. His contrast with Purple Yam Cookie in his release update and the other Cookies he meets is also outright racist, even if not intentional.

Disclaimer: I’m not Jewish or a person of color, so my opinions on Milk Cookie’s design as it relates to how it’s antisemitic or his character as it relates to him being racist are not important. You should consult Jewish people and/or people of color for their own opinions on Milk Cookie above all else. The things I’m about to list out are what I’ve heard from Jewish Cookie Run fans, people of color who play Cookie Run, or other minority groups sympathetic to Jewish people who have expressed their concerns about Milk Cookie’s design.

His appearance:

Milk Cookie’s physical appearance is a major problem for many people because it brings up antisemitic imagery. He is likely based on a paladin from Dungeons and Dragons, since Purple Yam Cookie and Mala Sauce Cookie are also based on Dungeons and Dragons classes. Paladins draw their imagery from the Crusaders, which is an antisemitic group from European history that claimed their religion was a valid reason to murder and oppress Jewish and Muslim people. Milk Cookie not only looks like a Crusader, but religion is a major theme in his design. The crosses, white clothing, and the fact that he is associated with Milk Angel all imply this. His story also says he is on a “divine mission” to bring peace to all Cookies, but a religious mission like that sounds dangerously close to the mission of the Crusaders. The crosses on his shield and mace are, as I already stated, also very visually close to Iron Crosses.

While all of this was likely not intentional on Devsisters’ part, it still brings these kinds of associations to mind. This is why many Jewish people in particular are uncomfortable with Milk Cookie’s design and do not like to see him or talk about him. It does not help that he is always smiling and has rosy cheeks, as it makes him seem “cutesy” and “trustworthy” compared to a character like Purple Yam Cookie, who always scowls and has slashes on his face and chest.

His character and actions:

Milk Cookie’s character is racist in that it makes him, a white man, seem automatically more likable and good as a person than any person of color he meets by virtue of how the story portrays his actions and the people around him. From his debut, he has always been portrayed as a “kind”, “gentle” person who does nothing wrong. Even when he verbally and physically threatens Purple Yam Cookie despite Purple Yam Cookie not threatening him at all, he faces no repercussions for it. Later, he stalks Purple Yam Cookie even after Purple Yam Cookie tells him to leave him alone. Rather than being punished for this creepy behavior, he gets defended by Purple Yam Cookie from a giant Jellyworm and later stays at Purple Yam Cookie’s camp (once again, against Purple Yam Cookie’s will). Later, Purple Yam Cookie nearly falls into a volcano, and Milk Cookie saves him by grabbing onto his clothes. As he does so, however, he says demeaning things to Purple Yam Cookie. Rather than Purple Yam Cookie rightfully being allowed to be mad at Milk Cookie, the story portrays them as bonding afterward. It’s very awkward for a black man to suddenly forgive a white man for his creepy, condescending behavior just because he saved his life.

The Dino-Sour Cookie update included a scene where Milk Cookie told Purple Yam Cookie to mind his manners when speaking to Dino-Sour Cookie, which is very condescending. Purple Yam Cookie is an adult, so he should be allowed to do whatever he likes. A white man speaking over a black man and telling him to “watch his manners” is very textbook racist.

In the Mala Sauce Cookie update, Milk Cookie is once again portrayed as more “kind” than Purple Yam Cookie when he scolds Purple Yam Cookie for not offering to help Mala Sauce Cookie with her tribe’s issues. This is once again a case of Milk Cookie talking down to Purple Yam Cookie, as Purple Yam Cookie is implied to have just met Mala Sauce Cookie and therefore is not close enough with her to the point where he should want to undertake the big task of helping her. In addition, Purple Yam Cookie has his own goal which he wants to stick to, and as an adult, he has the right to want to pursue it before anything else. Milk Cookie’s condemnation of Purple Yam Cookie’s choice to focus on his own goal is just plain rude. Later, after the Dragon’s Valley Squad meets Pitaya Dragon Cookie and receives their advice on how to solve Mala Sauce Cookie’s problem, Milk Cookie once again calls Purple Yam Cookie selfish for wanting to continue his quest rather than stay with Mala Sauce Cookie. All-in-all, it’s a big mess.

In the Mango Cookie update, Milk Cookie suggests that he and Dino-Sour Cookie dig into Pineapple Mountain to try to find Ananas Dragon Cookie. Mango Cookie begs him not to do so, as it ruins the island’s landscape and enrages Ananas Dragon Cookie, but he starts digging without listening to Mango Cookie. When Mango Cookie asks what he’s doing, he ignores Mango Cookie’s obvious concern and says he’ll use his shield to defend them all from the Dragon when it arrives. Thus, Mango Cookie’s concern is played off as a joke. The defilement of the island, which is inhabited by Pacific Islanders, by a white man is extremely reminiscent of imperialism in real life, and it would likely make Pacific Islanders uncomfortable that it is played off as a funny story. Ananas Dragon Cookie’s rightful rage about the whole thing is played off as ridiculous too, which doesn’t make it any better.

Milk Cookie compared to those around him:

Every important Cookie Milk Cookie has come into contact with in the Dragon’s Valley story was not white, and almost all of them exhibits traits of racist stereotypes about non-white people that make Milk Cookie look more “perfect” and “likable”. The biggest victim of this is Purple Yam Cookie, but we’ll get to him in a moment.

Dino-Sour Cookie falls into the stereotype of being animalistic. He has sharp teeth and lives alongside dinosaurs, and he even seems to communicate with Jellysaur somehow. Attributing these kinds of characters to a man of color is a classic kind of racist stereotype which tries to make him seem more alike with animals than humans. Simply put, it is dehumanizing. People call Dino-Sour Cookie “feral” because of how he’s portrayed, and that’s… not good when you’re talking about a man of color.

Mala Sauce Cookie, who would likely be Chinese if she were human because mala sauce is a Chinese sauce, falls into a similar stereotype to Purple Yam Cookie. That is, her personality centers around combat. There is also the fact that she’s from a tribe, and her Costume contains motifs like animal skins and dangling golden jewelry which are typically racist when applied to people of color. Devsisters may have been intending for Mala Sauce Cookie to be Mongolian, based on her Costume and her living in a tribe, but that just makes her even more of a stereotype as she’s portrayed with Mongolian stereotypes (like the helmet in her Costume and living in a warrior tribe). Whether Mala Sauce Cookie is Chinese or Mongolian, she is still very obviously a woman of color, and so applying these stereotypes to her is… not good. (And we’re not even getting into how Cookie Run loves to make dark-skinned female Cookies more masculine than the ones with lighter skin, which is a racist stereotype that dehumanizes women of color and invalidates their right to be feminine if they so choose.)

Mango Cookie and Ananas Dragon Cookie both are portrayed as ridiculous for objecting to Milk Cookie’s destruction of the pineapple island, which makes them seem ignorant of “the greater good at hand” and selfish when they are simply trying to defend their home and their dignity.

Purple Yam Cookie has been with Milk Cookie since the beginning, and he is by far the biggest victim of the racism inherent in Milk Cookie’s character. He has always been juxtaposed to Milk Cookie. Even on the title screen for their release update, we see Purple Yam Cookie depicted as “rowdy” and violent, looking at the player with a smirk and wielding his mace, while Milk Cookie in that same screen is partially turned away from the viewer. He is smiling politely, and his mace is nowhere to be seen; we only see his shield. This contrast alone signifies how their different characters clash, and how Milk Cookie is supposed to seem more “likable” and “pure” than Purple Yam Cookie.

Purple Yam Cookie’s character is literally a racist caricature of black men. He is angry, violent, and loud - all the time. Even when he seemingly has no reason to be angry or violent, he shouts, complains about how angry he is, and acts in such a way that the player is supposed to see him as “selfish”. His trauma about the Oven is played off as a joke, claiming that it’s the reason why he’s always angry. The game treats his PTSD as a joke for the sake of making him a racist stereotype. His loading lines in-game are all either about fighting or being angry. He yells in most of his dialogue, emphasizing words that don’t even make sense, just for the sake of making him seem grumpy and rude. He even says things that don’t make sense at all just to keep the angry personality trait! If you equip his Champion of Valor Costume, he claims that “shiny colors” and “fancy clothes” make him angry, and his Costume description contains him yelling at people for complimenting him. He is also depicted with sharp teeth in some cutscenes, which is reminiscent of racist remarks made about black people by white people throughout history, calling them “animalistic” by nature. All of this taken together, combined with the fact that his Skill is all about destruction and that his whole character motive is to fight Dark Choco Cookie to reclaim his title as Champion, makes him into a character you are “supposed” to dislike and view as mean.

Contrast that with Milk Cookie. His dialogue in most cutscenes is polite. He gives encouragement to the player in his loading lines for his Costume. Most of his loading lines are also uplifting and encouraging. He has never been shown to be unnecessarily mad except for once, when he threatened Purple Yam Cookie after hearing he was planning to fight Dark Choco Cookie - and he was not punished for this or made to seem violent by the narrative! Milk Cookie’s backstory is about wanting to thank Dark Choco Cookie, not wanting to fight them. And the fact that he has sprites where he smiles and seems happy, whereas Purple Yam Cookie only ever smiles in canon when he’s being violent, just makes Milk Cookie seem more “pure” and “gentle” to the player. Devsisters likely did not make Milk Cookie and Purple Yam Cookie this way intentionally. It was likely the product of internalized racism, but even so, that doesn’t make it okay or make the racist elements insignificant.

There is probably a lot more I could talk about when it comes to why Milk Cookie as a character is problematic, but these should be enough details to get the gist of it. As I said before, you should consult Jewish people and people of color when it comes to this topic before anything else, but I hope this explanation clears things up.

[spockalicious]

Hello, I saw your post about the whole drawing spock with green skin debate, and I just wanted to ask a question as I’m worried about posting it on my main. Spock canonically has a yellow-ish sort of skintone, and adding green blush to this may make it appear very similar to the horrid caricatures made of jewish people, how should artists deal with this? I’m terribly sorry if this comes off as disrespectful or ignorant, and if so please let me know so i can adjust my perspective!

hello, it’s completely fine! it must be said that I do not have all of the answers and i’m still learning a lot. a few people have different perspectives on spock’s blush and his blood colour being green, and say that can also be viewed as antisemitic. if it has the potential to be seen as offensive, it’s best to avoid it.

i will state that in some of my works where i have been not as aware of this issue, not being very mindful or careful, i have unfortunately coloured spock’s blush and other features green before. while I did not make his entire skin green, i have made his blush slightly olive green or such as when i depicted him and kirk as a muppet, his design was to have a green diamond nose and blush marks. this was wrong and i completely apologise for this, and will accept any criticism that comes my way for drawing these things.

this may also be applicable to any work you as an artist have made when you weren’t aware that what you were making could be seen as offensive or in turn be connected/related to an offensive connotation. it’s best to apologise and learn/adapt any following or future works so that you don’t keep doing the same thing.

i think the best way to deal with this is to actually make the blush a lot more like a darker yellow than a green, since technically, in the books it states that vulcans’ blush is more of a yellowish tone. it works for other white skin tones that may be more pink even when they blush pink, so it in turn should work for vulcans if their skin has a yellow tone also.

on the rare chance i make art now, i’ll usually compare the skin tones of another character who has whiter/paler skin tones to spock’s, and if while drawing the colour seems to be very much on the green side, i will try and adjust it so that it looks more like a very, very pale white-olive and even it out with warmer tones. obviously don’t make him as bright as a glass of sunny D, but don’t make him completely green or blush very bright green.

i’d like to welcome any jewish trekkies, especially those who have more experience in art to add to this discussion and give anon more clarity as well as educate anyone who might be concerned about the same thing. i would like to provide more information, since saying stuff like “just get a Jewish person to explain it to you” is bad, bc you shouldn’t have to put yourself through explaining why things are antisemitic when people are too lazy to go educate themselves. however, I’d rather not overstep my place or try and say something that i don’t really have a say over or may have also been in the wrong for.

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Questioning a Jewish person’s “Jewishness” is antisemitic. Also, there is something funny to then criticize them as creating a doll “anti-Semitic caricature straight out of a nazi poster” when, to be quite frank, was it not the Nazi’s that questioned people about their ethnicity? What right do you have to criticize a Jewish person depicting a Jewish character as a doll? With the spew of confessions that have been going on as of late about both religion, and Doozh, I doubt the confession was well-intended – it reeks of someone fishing through Doozh’s content to get something to fire at her. If you want to dig through her stuff so much, you’d probably know that her being Jewish isn’t really in question – “if” that confession had any well-intention behind it, which I doubt. Personally, it is probably healthier to go for a walk, watch a nice movie, or play with your dolls. Let people depict themselves as they choose. If their community finds it distasteful, people identifying as part of that community will let it be known. This goes for any minority group, but it’s often better to help raise the voices of those that are oppressed, endangered, etc. rather than drown them out with your opinion, no matter how “well intentioned” it may be. Whether or not the artist - any artist - cares about that response is another matter, but the Jewish community doesn’t need people to try to “stand up” for “them” over a doll created by another Jewish person. The Jewish community is incredibly diverse, but like… man… Neal Hoffman also created the “Mensch on a Bench” doll as a Hanukkah equivalent to the Elf on a Shelf; he has a beard, tallit, menorah and all and, for the record, over 100,000 Jewish families use him. I realize this is a BJD confession blog but, perhaps, that helps bring slightly more context into the whole “Jewish doll” thing…? Just because something might look like a stereotype to someone outside of a community doesn’t mean people inside that community feel that way, and vice versa. The people in x group’s opinion matters the most if you want to go down some kind of moral high ground. People can care about many things in life but please, if you want to help the Jewish community, there is a lot more pressing things that matter - I’m scared to be in front of a synagogue at the “wrong time.” I’m scared how my, currently theoretical, future children will fare, too… With events like Charlottesville in my country being more and more common, it’s hard to feel confident. I don’t live in a place with a lot of Orthodox Jews but I am familiar with it enough to understand that Doozh’s doll was kind of a modern spin of Orthodox dress. I also showed it to my partner, who thought it was funny - he got a laugh out of it, and he’s also Jewish. There is many, many things I quietly disagree with Doozh about, but I was honestly impressed by her doll (especially the beard), and I thought it was really cute.  ‾\_(ツ)_/‾ I’ve rambled far too much but it was late so oh well, I suppose. What I said is largely applicable to a lot of things and I don’t really use tumblr so this’ll probably fall into the void but please, think of the people of x group first and how they feel and uplift their thoughts, rather than how you think they should feel, unless you’re apart of that community.

~Anonymous

[a-poc-alypse]

If pointed ears are anti-Semitic to put on a demon character then by that logic wouldn't horns also be anti-Semitic? Sorry if I'm not understanding this correctly but I'm not sure I understand the difference. Isn't the trend of giving anti-Semitic charicatures pointed ears to make them look like demons kind of illustrating it was originally a demonic trait, not one rooted in anti-Semitic traits?? (In contrast to the big nose which exaggerates features Jewish people actually have...?)

Like, I guess I don't get how it's anti-Semitic to put features that originated in depictions of demons on demon characters that aren't Jewish and aren't in any way supposed to be a representation of anything associated with Jewish people. Giving a demon pointed ears to make him look more like a demon feels different than, like, giving a character a hooked nose just to make them vaguely more "villainous," which is unfortunately pretty abundant in anti-Semitic characitures and definitely seems rooted in the way Jewish people have historically been dehumanized? (Sorry again if I'm not understanding! Just wanted to get your thoughts)

Horns actually do have an antisemtic tradition, it’s all related to christians seeing jewish people as devil worshipers/heathens etc. So they associate them with demons etc and there’s this pervalent stereotype that jewish people are actually secretly hiding horns in their hair and tails in their britches. But those stereotypes aren’t related to demonizing traits that jewish people had, but more about literally demonizing jewish pepople by associating them with traits that were already deemed as being evil. The horns,tails and ears being associated with evil came before jewish people were made into caricatures with these traits.

 I’d suggest going through our ‘#pointy ears’ tag, i tagged every post on the subject  but I feel like this post might be the most important because the user Spritesinthesky actually was nice enough to type out an abridged history of the pointed ears in antisemitic art. 

https://a-poc-alypse.tumblr.com/post/187096703431/im-hewish-and-i-checked-out-scribblemakes-art-and 

And I’ve sorted out my thoughts on the subject fully now, and like with other issues this is based not just on my own thoughts but talking to friends, friends bringing it up with jewish people they know and also my own logic. 

So the first person to bring it was someone tied in the ears to the nose, and how the blog reblogged racist art that had those features to it, and so the two were connected to racist depictions of crowley and specifically I think those two features were linked together and then we got a second ask from a different person. This second person actually gave some identifies in so far as they implied they weren’t jewish and pointed out art we reblogged where crowley did have slightly pointed ears and they brought up how they didn’t even know about the pointed ears thing until they saw a post about it. And I thought that this blog had reblogged a post on the subject, I hunted that post down and it didn’t actually mention ears.

And so fastforward after Sprite spelled it out me and after getting conformation from both jewish people on this blog and also on my person, I’ve come to the conclulsion that it’s for a case by case basis. You’re right, its not inherently bad, again I’m basing my opinion on many other sources at this point, and David Tennant is not a jewish man and Crowley is not a jewish character. So it’s not inherently bad to draw him with pointed ears, it’s an issue when its combined with marking him as jewish in a caricature type of way. Which I hopefully haven’t reblogged any art where that’s the case, i try to avoid art where hes drawn like a cartoon mosquito with a nose etc. 

Y’all got to see me puzzling it all out on this blog but yeah I’m coming down to, yeah were still going to reblog art where crowley has elf ears, because from thinking about a lot of the artists intentions they don’t seem heinous and most just seem to like to think of crowley as pointy as hell demon, all right angles and sharpness physicality wise. And knowing that in the caricatures the pointy ears caricature stems from wanting to connect jewish people to demons/the devil, and with demons they were often drawn with ears instead of or along with the horns. Like Spirites pointed out.

Yeah I’d suggest going through 

a-poc-alypse.tumblr.com/tagged/pointy-ears/chrono 

to see my evolving thoughts on the subject and my speculations about how the trend came about in fandom anyway.