#but yeah I'm here for research purposes & to remember and learn from the mistakes of the others in the past.

[paperstarwriters]

(you don't have to publish the ask but make sure it's anonymous) please please please don't worry about the anon I think it might be the same person who made a harrass discord group...of course it's good to acknowledge wrongdoings of creators but it doesn't make anyone obligated to stay away from fandom. If you don't support the racist mess that happened it's totally fine if you stay in arcana fandom. Don't worry.

of course, of course. I'm not feeling pressured to leave the fandom right now don't worry about that. I know seeing it can cause a bit of anxiety, and for a little while it did make me feel anxious, I recalled why I wanted to write a lot of the fanfics I make in the first place, I didn't like how they wrote Muriel's ending, and I didn't like how they represented him a lot, so I wanted to make something that fit the image I had of him instead.

Anyways, I was much more curious about the note they made about the problems with Julian being a bird or the various bird motifs and that being antisemitic. I was wondering how or why that was the case, as when I tried searching it up I wasn't really able to find any definite explanations, so I was wondering if they could point me to a resource or something on the topic. I've heard that a merge between an owl and a human can often be antisemitic especially when that owl is presented as an almost demon-like entity with feathers forming horns like that of a great horned owl, and their beak being presented as a large hooked nose. That much, I do understand, but I'm unclear if it applies to the wider range of birds as well, or not.

In my initial search I found a story called Jewbird written by Bernard Malamud, an American-jewish author, and while it serves as the allegory of antisemitism not only coming from outside but inside as well, the nature of the intelligent bird being representative of an older more traditional Jewish individual (according to another source who were likely more able to draw the parallel than I was), presents him as a human-merged with bird individual and the whole point of the text seems to present it as the pure opposite of being antisemitic.

Of course, I can see the possibility of it, that he was presented as a bird in order to subvert the initial expectations and stereotypes, in the same way that Maus by Art Spiegelman does, but I would still like to be better able to understand the bird-antisemitism connection. Does it apply to specific birds? What kind of bird-like representation causes issue? Would the image of birds flying freely over the sky be considered problematic imagery? Why and how? is it the caged bird that is problematic? Why and how? Is there any possible way that this birdlike imagery can spread into other spaces and cause issue? Should Julian never be given feathered wings, regardless if you're creating a bird image or not? is his bird familiar problematic as well??? this is like telling someone unfamiliar with racism against African-american individuals that cotton is not good to them without telling them about the whole history about slavery and cotton picking, leading them to believe that they just take issue with the material of shirts or something.

I know I probably sound kinda nit-pickey, but I am genuinely curious and would love to avoid making any antisemitic mistakes when including Julian and Portia in my works. I wish to avoid this all the time, of course, but most especially now, as discussion on Palestine has spurred a lot of antisemitism due to the cultural genocide from Israel. And while it's clear that what Israel is doing, it's also clear that not all Jewish individuals support that, even though some news groups or people talking about it frame it as if it is.

Of course I'm open and eager for discussion on the other LIs as well and the intricacies of their problematic representation and how that must be handled corrected or re-framed, especially since in the early more.... hostile days of this fandom, I tended to stick to Muriel's route since I hadn't played the other routes in a while/all the way through so I'm a little unaware of all the other characters' misrepresentations (so if you're mentioning Muriel I probably have heard about and considered that one before—this man does not leave my brain lmao)

I can see the possible issues on Nadia being constantly represented as domineering failing to recognize softness in her (which I belive, though correct me if I'm wroing, is about dark skinned women being seen as violent and tough instead of soft or kind), and Asra being represented through Orientalism (mystic, but lesser other with messy foreign traditionalistic magic that must be corrected through the western logic and science—this partly originated in ancient greece so not entirely western as in America)

But yeah, I'm just really curious about it, cause my initial search only brought up news articles about people apologizing for being antisemitic, or the history of antisemitism. Rather than some of the various possible forms of antisemitism or it's possible relation to birds.