#bottom line is Cass doesn’t think of herself as chinese or half-chinese | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

rickktish · 10 months ago

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I’ve got a couple of hot takes and there’s nuance to them but I don’t have a whole lot of brain power so I might leave it as-is and elaborate only if asked:

-The kind of people who engage in fandom and specifically those who write fanfiction tend to belong to the same categories of people/sets of identities which are likely to fall victim to the “white people have no culture” lie and therefore like to spice up their writing by diversifying the cast in ways they view as meaningful or reflective of those characters’ personal arcs/histories, which unfortunately means leaning on a lot of stereotypes and accidentally perpetuating, consciously or unconsciously, those stereotypes. (Is anyone else bothered by the prevalence of latino Jason “drug crime lord” Todd headcanons? I don’t speak up about it often but it frequently feels legitimately uncomfy to me. Also while it’s fun to mess around with various flavors of Asian Tim “the smart Robin” Drake, there are some very uncomfortable discussions which ought to be had about why he gets headcanoned as east Asian specifically— usually Korean from what I’ve seen but also frequently Chinese and Japanese— when the fanon interpretation of his character can basically be boiled down to “good with computers, terrible/abusive/neglectful bio parents with unreasonably high standards/expectations, child genius.” Like maybe critically examine your tropes before applying them wholesale is what i’m saying)

-readheads are an unrecognized minority and have historically been and are still in some places presently subjected to the same kinds of stereotyping, discrimination, and fetishization that recognized racial minorities face. The only difference is that discrimination against poc has frequently been legally mandated throughout western history whereas that against redheads has been largely (though not exclusively) cultural. Think for a minute about how many redheaded characters have been replaced by black actors in live action adaptations in recent years and understand that redheads have been on-screen shorthand for “acceptable token diversity” for longer than probably any of us care to think about and they are losing that status as black characters begin to take that place in widespread visual media. Race swapping the Gordons specifically, while pulled off extremely well by a beautifully talented actor in The Batman 2022, is actively participating in the erasure of redheaded characters, especially ones whose roles are more complex than “femme fatale” or “the spitfire,” (or both), from screen

I'm not necessarily against race-swapping hcs and whatnot, but I do think the Bat-Family fandom has a tendency to ignore the actual POC members of the Bat-Family in favor for their hcs, lmfao.

Like I've seen Asian Tim and Babs hcs and I'm like... you do know Cass and Damian are literally right there, you don't have to do that. 😭

#I do think another part of it is probably largely projection #while Cass and Damian and Duke are canonically non-white they’re harder to project onto #Cass and Damian because their backstories are a little too fantastical to draw consistent rl parallels with #at least for most people #and Duke simply because of a lack of screen time #Cass’s personal arc and history have less to do with being of chinese descent (identity)#and more to do with being a victim of abuse (identity)#and communicatively disabled (identity)#Damian’s history seems like it ought to appeal more to ex-cult members (identity)#and victims of abuse (identity)#than to individuals of middle eastern or asian descent (identity)#though that’s another conversation that ought to happen along with the drug lord latino jason and child genius asian tim #I think at least part of the characterizations we see in fanon are people seeing a common idea #and projecting their own personal experiences onto a character they either already relate to #or who others seem to headcanon as being identity-adjacent to the identity the new author is looking to share/explore #bottom line is Cass doesn’t think of herself as chinese or half-chinese #she thinks of herself as a person who was raised as a weapon #Damian doesn’t think of himself as arab or connected in any way to the area of the world his ancestors came from #he thinks of himself as the inheritor of the league of assassins’ culture and Bruce’s legacy #Duke at least thinks of himself in relatable terms to those looking to write his cultural experiences #but again #lack of screen time is a major limiting factor #Jason and Tim are a lot easier to throw stuff at and have it stick because they’ve actually lived in the real world #they’ve interacted with normal people and attained normal identities #which can be added to/altered to meet an author’s particular wants as needed

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