#he's the fandom's creation now

[beatx-mavie-archangelx]

“dear Mahal, did you mean for dwarves to look like that or was it an accident.”

[stillthesunkenstars]

I loved reading fics so I drew fanart for fics that really moved me so I wanted fic writers to know that their effort was enjoyed..!! If you enjoyed fandom creators especially in small fandoms please at least comment to let them know they are not just shouting to a void, it's really easy to feel alone in small fandoms

[fleouriarts]

feeling bad about my art lately. will probably not post for a while. but i wanted to at least dump some stuff here before i retreat into my hidey hole

[fearandhatred]

.

[nonoqy]

i feel like i didn't really say anything publicly which makes me sound maybe too harsh at times but this is where i'm at. sorry i was too lazy to retype all of this so i'm just sharing screenies of my thoughts !

[avale-reves]

could you share some horror stories (or positive ones from days of kh fandom yore? i'm a new fan and morbidly curious about old times

oh god ive been here from the literal beginning so it'd be pretty hard to pick things. especially because back in the day, things were more localized to certain kh fansites/forums and such, so a lot of 'fandom drama' or wild stuff is more community-specific.

yea idk! idk what kind of stories would be interesting.

[cr33pz-mck3nna]

Concerning Glitchtale Prime and Underverse Prime

The story is still being fleshed out but I am pleased to announce the final boss of Underverse Prime has been decided and the final battle is being created. Soon I will release a list of characters from both UVPrime and it's prequel GPR with their theme songs so keep an eye out! I am currently the only one working on the project but I am also pleased to announce that I am considering making an official discord and "hiring crew" onto the project. I'll be looking for individuals in the age range of 15-18(my current age range) who are skilled in at least one of the following.

Marketing/Promoting

Discord moderation/server creation

Character design/comic panels(for creator authorized fan works as well as official entries)

Creative engineering/story and/or character creation/world building(for creation of the series)

Fanfiction writing(for creator authorized fan works)/script writing(for official entries)

*Voice acting/sound design

*Animation/editing

This project may take anywhere from a month to multiple years to get off the ground and as such the age range for accepted applications may change with it. Please be aware this is a fan project for Undertale by Toby Fox and I do not plan to gain any money from this nor do I want any, if I would gain any it is deserved only by the team behind it or to be given directly to Toby Fox or donated to Doctors without Borders(this may change) so be aware if you wish to join this project it would be out of your own desire to create it and not a desire for money. All team members will be credited on the project.

* When the full story of both series in the overarching Primeverse is complete then fan or official animations have the chance to be created.

When part of the official team creating content for the official stories you will receive the title "Primeverse employee" and when authorized to create official fan work you will receive the title "Primeverse content creator"

Please send your application to clockyworks1111@gmail.com and list the following(*required)

*Your Tumblr username

*Your preferred name

*Your reason for wishing to join the project/the content creators list

*What you wish to work on

Your past experience working in that field

*Your discord username(if you don't have a discord you will be allowed to make one but your application may not be processed until over 1-2 months of you having it)

Any other information you see fit to include in your application

Your legal ID(for those 18) or a photo of a physically written consent form from your parent or guardian including their signature initials next to a paper where you have shown your own hand writing(please request the adult writes in script)

If your application is accepted past the review stage you will receive an email with a discord username that you will also get a friend request from as your confirmation of what account you will be talking to.

Have a wonderful day and good luck! -Creepz

[queennerd23]

It’s been a hot minute so I have a backlog, starting with this! I did the bulk of the work back in May and I finally figured out what I wanted to do with the background yesterday. I’m very VERY proud of it 💖

Speed paint below the cut! (Minor photosensitivity warning)

[enigma-absolute]

Today marks 10 years since I first really stepped into the Eddsworld fandom and went through an event with it.

But it also happened to be first anniversary of its creator's passing. This year marks the 10th.

I figured 13 year old me wouldn't want to feel alone in that moment, so I made this to join her and go through the flow together.

Without Edd and Eddsworld, I don't think I would've had that accessible foundation, can-do mindset and enthusiastic influence, admiration and desire to animate and make stories of my own. I was a year too late when I first entered into the fandom and heard about it, but these past 10 years taught me it's never too late to make an impact and tell your tales - no matter how long they'll take.

Thank you Edd Gould. For everything.

[stars-and-guts]

honestly guys i miss someone important but i think its going to be alright!

[milfbrainrot]

.

this is hypocritical bc i also do nothing but complain about other people in fandom, but i do feel like fandom is... so much more complaining about other people these days than actually engaging or making things. or at least that's kinda where i've landed myself in a bad little cycle due to other people complaining first lol.

i have always had a sense of emotional paralysis with fanon creation that was able to be remedied by me having more time for it in the past to truly take as much care as possible. and now i really don't have that, be it to make sure i'm doing things in-character or not representing something badly. so i just don't make anything. and idk, i feel like it would be less difficult if there were less pressure from knowing all of these attitudes about what the fandom doesn't like more so than what it does like, since when a fandom DOES like something reblogs and comments are dismal.

a lot of times it's hard to think of things to say that aren't negative, which is why i think those posts happen so much. clearly i do this a lot. sometimes fandoms have more popular opinions on things and it feels inevitable to voice contrary opinions to make sure ur not insane, or idk to feel better at media analysis than the other people. and yeah lol sometimes popular fandom opinions are missing the point or you do not get the popular ship etc. it's good to have those discussions i think when done respectfully to try understanding why people think one thing, or pushing that hey something else also makes sense let's look there, etc, moreso collaboratively.

at the risk of romanticizing earlier fandom days, i guess there is something more general in the backlash now though? i imagine that on sites like livejournal, or i remember on deviantart, criticism was... kind of contained. your art might get one shitty comment or there might be deviantart stamps voicing Hot Takes you could then view the popularity of based on the comments/faves and how many people embedded it on their profiles. but there weren't mass reblogged posts with 120k notes about how boring an AU type is, or how stupid people are for shipping rather than worldbuilding, or how things that are genuinely skill issues more than malice are in fact malice so people aren't even allowed to explore and learn in their inherently amateur creations. it is easier to be hateful when a validated approved post is put on your dash affirming it or influencing that toward people and making it into a bigger deal than it needs to be to justify itself and all you need to do is hit a button to further the train.

like i just think there is such a higher expectation for perfect content tm catering to a mass appeal it would've been harder to measure and conform to before. every time i go on twitter the algorithm just gives me post after post of people going "i can't believe people think this character would do this" or "this headcanon pisses me off so much because___" or "ew how could people ship this?" ...all of which was absolutely present in fandoms before! like, i'm sure anonymous posting in particular saw a lot of these things get traction! but not in such a way where an opinion dragging something you do has 248 retweets putting it on ur feed and insinuating that ur mutuals will judge you next time you post a fic update with that thing. (and then ofc, as i do all the time, seeing people complaining = cue complaining about other people complaining.)

obviously we can just block people we don't like or whatever and it's up to us to not let contrary opinions get to us! i just guess this level of complaining has never before been so widespread and easy because you don't even have to say the thing yourself. you just have to hit reblog or retweet to voice something you otherwise would've kept to yourself with less care. and the numbers feel insane because of how much more popular online fandom is today than even 10 years ago, which... i think has brought on such a loss of etiquette in certain ways when fandom is less interactive and personal for like, tiktokers seeing a 30 second fancam and hitting like if op is lucky and scrolling by. algorithms making more personalized experiences make it so much easier to expect everything to cater to us so it's the end of the world when it doesn't. i could go off on a tangent about anti behavior but i won't. etc.

again i am hypocritical because i complain about other people in fandom endlessly (mostly... because of other people complaining about people like me first) and i am doing that here and i probs have reblogged lots of those things myself lol. obviously there are good convos to be had around how fandoms handle certain things! people are free to do that AND other people are free to post whatever kinds of creations they want AND people can block/mute/whatever any of the above! it's just... although fandom has always had its toxicity i do miss when it felt more fun and carefree and appreciative of imperfect contributions instead of... the balance we currently seem to have in a lot of cases.

it felt like we hit such a shift in ~2015 (anti stuff on the rise, representation convos around lexa dying, etc) that injected the expectations for mass media creators into literally anyone making anything at all for free and for fun. and as much as the ability to reblog/retweet/share around so easily can be beneficial for spreading good and building up fanon creators, i wonder if those critical convos wouldn't have gotten so intense and high-risk for anyone who didn't conform to some frankly impossible standards if it weren't for the intimidation of mutuals contributing to the 13k validating notes on a Hot Take. (and, in terms of anti issues, the ensuing callouts FOR making a mistake could get so much more traction than... telling people to Spread The Targeted Harassment Campaign Word by putting the effort into going and talking about it in their own journal.)

anyway, twitter bad and tumblr tags bad. and i really hope i can get to a point where i am less impeded by this sense of pressure keeping me from making things because it is honestly so hard now to take the limited time i have and pump out something that is either risky or out of character or inevitably imperfect and dare to post it. i am trying to do more with original works because of that, but i still love fandom! so it would be nice to engage with other fans through creating and sharing those joys more these days rather than only having the energy to engage with fandoms by seeing what other people are doing and then seeing these popularized takes and getting even further frozen about contributing lol. people are entitled to their opinions ofc and i need to just stay off twitter keep continually building up my ability to go "yeah that opinion is stupid / even if it's understandably contrary to my preferences i can still do what i want even though it feels more dangerous to know the amount of people who could conceivably ostracize me for it" as the sharing scale of Fandom Takes on too-influencing-friendly platforms continues to rise.

[madlori]

On being an older fangirl

I was probably 10 years old when I first conceived of what was, looking back, fanfiction. Me and my best friend would lie in bed together on sleepovers and I'd make up stories about what happened after the end of our favorite book, "The Westing Game." She'd ask me for more stories, and I'd tell her more, inventing them as I went along. "Then what?" she'd say.

I was 14 when I went to my first convention. I had discovered Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was 1987, and my youth pastor was a huge Trekkie. He took me to a one-day crappy Creation con, but it was amazing to me. I met Nichelle Nichols. My dad showed me the Trek movies. He and I watched TNG together.

When I went to college in 1991, my dad used to videotape TNG episodes onto VHS tapes and mail them to me, so I could keep watching (I didn't have TV in my dorm room).

By the time I was a senior, we had Trek watching parties in the dorm lounge, where the TV had cable. Star Trek: Voyager had started up, and I wrote a column about it for the college newspaper. I joined a mailing list about it, with people in it that I still know today.

I got my first computer that could go online in 1995. I was on newsgroups. I discovered Doctor Who. I went to Trek conventions where we still passed around fanzines containing fic and art and smutty K/S fan creations.

Then it was Harry Potter. Then there were websites. Then there was Geocities, where we could all make our own little spots. We organized them into webrings. We talked on newsgroups and mailing lists. There were fanfic archives. Then there was fanfiction.net.

Then...there was LiveJournal. And we could interact in entirely new ways. We could form communities, and debate things, and fight over canon, and get into ship wars. On LiveJournal, I met my best friend of 22 years. I was in her wedding. She's my sister of the heart (which is what she calls me).

Then there was Tumblr. And Twitter. And now there's Discord. But it's all the same.

I am the same.

I am still that little girl who made up fanfiction in her head to entertain her best friend. I am still the one who was amazed to find communities on the internet - which was so new, so raw, so uncommodified - where others like me could meet. I found there people to meet in real life.

I am still that twentysomething going to her first major convention, being told that someone loved my fic, being asked about my writing process.

I am still that thirtysomething watching something I wrote blow up. Seeing friends from other fandoms find me in new ones, finding them there, too. Forgetting which fandom I know someone from, because I've known them for twenty years.

I still know some of the people who created those early websites, those mailing lists, those archives. I still meet people in new fandoms who say "Oh, I read your fic in [fandom] fifteen years ago!" There's no feeling quite like having someone remember something you wrote for that long. Or meeting someone whose fic meant a lot to YOU, or who you talked with on rec.arts.drwho.creative in 1997.

Aging in fandom is a gift. Being middle-aged in fandom is a joy. Having people who still read what I write and ask "Then what?" is a blessing.

It breaks my heart that so many people see it as something to be ashamed of, when it is one of my life's greatest gifts.

[creatingblackcharacters]

No, That’s Not ‘How Color Works’. - Whitewashing

Whitewashing, as defined by Merriam-Webster:

"to alter (something) in a way that favors, features, or caters to white people: such as a) to portray (the past) in a way that increases the prominence, relevance, or impact of white people and minimizes or misrepresents that of nonwhite people and B) to alter (an original story) by casting a white performer in a role based on a nonwhite person or fictional character"

In fandom context, we know it to include:

Making someone’s skin lighter

Making someone’s hair a thinner texture

Changing someone’s nose to be thinner

Shrinking their lips

Changing the character in their entirety to be someone else

The Normalization of Whitewashing

Remember how I mentioned last lesson that despite the nature of poorly drawn Black characters, most audiences are not turned off enough to discourage the action in professional works? Similar idea with whitewashing. Not the same- unlike the Ambiguously Brown Character, which claims to have plausible deniability, overt whitewashing is usually enough to make fans speak up! But that’s the key word here- overt! It has to be “bad enough” to make enough people speak up, but as we’ve seen many a time, “bad enough” seems to have a much higher threshold for nonblack viewership (sometimes the limit doesn’t exist!)

Some visual examples

This is a link to my personal thread on a Netflix show I was watching- Worst Ex Ever. Now, while the show itself was quite enlightening, there was something I could not get over. I thought I was going crazy. And that was that no matter how dark the person of color would be in real life, the animated portions would draw this light pinkish-brown. Every. Single. Time. It's like they couldn't fathom scrolling down the color wheel. And this is a Netflix original! Netflix has plenty of money for someone to have caught this in creation. But... it was produced. And put out. And they're making more of it.

I asked all of the Dragon Age fans about the series, and uh… I didn’t know things were this bad, guys! Apparently this is a man of color, but it doesn't seem like the creators want you to know that 🤣. Jokes aside, as I’ve discussed before, the noticeable whitewashing- and that was one of many racist things I was told- was not enough to prevent sales... so why would they stop? I can only hope this new game, with all the updates, is enough to turn the tide. But the series has gone on for a while now, that if they’d chosen to do ye same olde… there clearly would not be a lack of financial support to prevent it.

Colorism as a Tool

Even when actors of color are cast, colorism often plays a role in normalizing whitewashing to audiences, even to Black audiences! People think “oh well at least they’re Black!” as if that is the only important part. It is not.

While Aaron Pierre, the actor cast for John Stewart of Green Lantern fame, is a GORGEOUS, STUNNING man, he is not the dark-skinned man that John Stewart is supposed to be and should not have been cast! To me, this is overt colorism, but clearly for many people this is not “enough” to warrant concern or even prevent the casting itself- including the studio behind the movie! Black fans have plead for years for the character of Storm to be played by a dark-skinned, preferably African, woman, and it has never happened.

It naturally happens in fan spaces as well, which is another indicator that colorism as a tool for whitewashing is quite effective for audiences. If I see one more Zendaya fan cast for Kida from Atlantis, I will scream. It’s been happening for years, and I don’t think any of the people who just want to see her and Tom on screen either understand or care that Kida is a dark-skinned character. Zendaya doesn’t look anything like Kida- it doesn’t matter if she’s Black too! Just because someone is Black does not mean they can play every single Black character! I’ve even seen people fancast Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones fame, to which… I don’t have the words. I can’t fathom what would cause these decisions other than racism.

The Common Excuses

I must be honest. I don’t really feel like re-iterating how certain things are not okay and how to fix them, because I’ve already discussed these things in massive detail. So I’m just going to direct the excuses I regularly hear to my lessons, where you can read up on them.

“Their hair/eyes are like that because they’re biracial so-”

Relevant Lessons: 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 8, 9, 10

There is nothing wrong with having biracial characters with a range of features. I am not saying that! Because yeah, genetics do happen!

But I mentioned this in my last lesson, and I will re-emphasize here, that using biracial identity as a way to whitewash is a sinister form of racism. The intention here- the real intention- is the issue here! The idea that somehow this character can only look the way you want them to look by "diluting" their Blackness… I don’t know how you can explain yourselves out of that one.

You don’t get to use us as an excuse for diversity while still trying to maintain your preference for Eurocentric beauty standards. Black biracial people don’t always look light skinned, thin-haired and ambiguous, and even the ones that do don’t deserve to be treated as your fetish for pretend antiracism. If you just want to draw a white person with a tan, do that. But don’t change a character’s entire look just so you can work in some whiteness. If you want to claim that canon Black character’s mother was white, then I guess they inherited some of her personality because their features should not change.

“It’s my style/It’s the color-”

Relevant Lessons: 3, 4, 10

I hate all excuses for whitewashing, but I’ve grown to despise, hate, abhor and loathe this one the most as I’ve become an artist. I wish there were stronger words to describe just how much I hate the “style” and “color” excuse.

Are style and use of color oft intertwined? Absolutely. I’m not saying they aren’t. But out of everything, there are two things I want artists to understand:

1. Style does not cancel out racism! No style forces you to choose ashy greys and to change peoples’ features. That’s you! If you look at something, and it looks offensive, you change the style. You grow as an artist!

2. “Everyone who is brown will look ashy so I just-” if you recognize that your Black characters look strange in comparison to your nonblack characters, then it’s time to try something else! I don’t understand this sudden need for “realism” when it comes to color and lighting, but not when it comes to hair, for example. No one cares about realism when giving every and all Black characters wavy tresses they probably wouldn’t have, but suddenly milquetoast watercolor attempts at brown and off-putting lighting is “how it works”. That’s not fair.

The color picker is an available tool! I use it often!

Dead giveaway of purposeful whitewashing: if someone gets the outfit color palette right via color picking, but the skin color is multiple shades lighter. That means they were looking at that character and chose not to proceed.

Dead giveaway of purposeful whitewashing: if the white characters in the show are completely correct in their palettes. Again, that means they cared enough to look at everyone else… and not the Black characters.

If you use the color picker and the color picked is… disrespectful, you do not have to use that! You can simply choose a better color that is still similar to the brown that ought to be depicted!

“It’s the lighting-”

Relevant Lessons: 4, 5

If your white characters do not shine like snow in the sunlight because of your lighting, then your lighting does not make your Black characters suddenly light tan.

If your Black characters look bad in your lighting of choice- for example, putting a very dark-skinned character in electric white lighting can be ghastly- try changing the intensity or the color of the lighting. DON’T change your character’s skin color!

I'm going to show you some pictures of South Sudanese model Nyakim Gatwech. Pay attention to the choices of light, color, and makeup.

Look how BEAUTIFUL she is! Look at the choices of intensity and color of light, and how they make her look different in each image.

Now look at this image in comparison:

In this image, whoever did her makeup and took this picture did not take into consideration her skin tone. She's also under this really intense lighting. This is an example of "increasing the lighting does NOT make an image "better"". She didn't need to have lighter skin or "more lighting" to look good. She needed BETTER lighting, lighting that worked with HER.

To see this as an example in drawn art, @dsm7 makes an excellent argument for proper lighting and color, why it is an issue to use it as an excuse, and how to solve that problem.

‼️DISCLAIMER FOR NEXT EXAMPLE‼️

Okay. I am about to show y’all a fan-created example from my personal experience. It is a TEACHING EXPERIENCE ONLY. I am not including the artist’s name in this image. It happened a couple years ago, and it’s over- they’ve chosen to be who they are despite me kindly confronting them about it. The only reason I’m including it at all is because I feel like it would be remiss to have such a clear-cut, multi-level example, and not teach with it. That said, no, I am not telling anyone to act out towards them. Again, that is not what I’m telling you to do. The last thing I need is a literal lynch mob of angry nonblack viewership for trying to teach you all, and y’all sitting there watching it happen to me. Every example of whitewashing is not going to be so obvious, but I hope you learn how to spot the examples in the art you see and share.

I'm obviously a Hades fan, particularly of Patroclus- despite my disdain for the lack of effort in his canon character design. So I've seen a lot of things. That said:

“Well it’s just MY design of them-”

Relevant Lessons: ALL

The sepia coloring did not do this. The lighting did not do this. The design is the exact same as the Hades version, even down to the shape of the hair curling in the back. The only thing that is different… is the man himself.

Y'all. Y'all! You CANNOT take a pre-existing Black character and say “oh well this is my design of them” …and the design is of a whole white person. Because if the rest of the fit is the same, and the only thing that changed is the Blackness… Racism. If you’re going to “make up your own design”, then do that!

“Blackwashing”

Speaking of: I’m sure someone edgy out there thinks they’re so smart as they retort to the screen: “but if that’s not okay, then why is Blackwashing okay?” To which I say- shut up. 😐

The “definition” by fandom: making a nonblack character Black, usually an anime character, but characters in general.

Funny enough, the actual definition in the dictionary (or closest to) is “to defame”, in contrast with whitewash (as in whitewashing history). Maybe racist fans ARE using it correctly when they say you’re blackwashing their characters, when they mean you’re making them “less likable because they’re Black now”. 🤔

Anyway: Blackwashing is not real for the same reason reverse racism is not real.

Me painting these characters brown is not going to take away from the fact that there are far more of you in media than there is of me. Me saying that I ‘headcanon a character as Black with 4C hair’ is not going to make the studio go “oh! Well they must be Black with 4C hair now!” Me saying “oh I think I’d like this character better if they were Black” as a beta tester (less overtly, obviously, because I’m not racist!) will never make a studio change that character. Black viewers have minimal value in comparison to the power of the white viewer’s dollar. I could draw white characters Black every single day of every single game media… and they would still produce majority white characters. There has not been centuries- if not millennia, when we consider Jesus Christ himself, even- of purposeful “Blackwashing” with the intent of removing the original ethnicity- and thus importance- of white people. No one has ever been allowed to forget when someone is white. No one has ever been allowed to forget or not acknowledge white people.

How it could be "solved"

Personally, I love Black edits and I welcome them here. I find them creative and fun. But if you really, REALLY didn’t want us to make those edits, then naturally, we need more Black characters in all of our media!

I wouldn’t have to make edits if I saw more of me to begin with in the things I like to watch- but when we have those characters, racists act an ass about them. We’re not allowed to even be present! I’ve seen too many gamer bros mocking the existence of Yasuke in Assassin’s Creed, and he was a real ass man. But if we made a game about African peoples in African societies, how many of the gamer bros would actually play those games? Do you think there’d be as much support, when we hear so much about Black characters that are treated so abhorrently? How many games do we have where people would love their faves just as much if they were Black? I even learned that Solas was apparently supposed to be a man of color. IMAGINE how many people would not have liked that man, with the same exact plot and characterization.

Something I’ve noticed recently: apparently "Blackwashing" is not a thing when White fans “allow” it. Take this recent trend with Miku. International Miku was beloved! But if you draw any other character as Black on any other day, there will be people that are horrid about it. Ask any artist, Black artists and Black cosplayers especially, who’s ever done it what their comments are like. I’ve read entire missives akin to white supremacist drivel on how it’s somehow morally wrong to make characters Black. Meanwhile no amount of “hey maybe you shouldn’t do this” prevented the movie Gods of Egypt from being created, with a cast full of British White people.

Solutions to Avoiding Whitewashing!

1) Using References!!

Do I think you should know what Black people look like? Yes. We’re humans. It’s 2024. Everyone knows what we look like when it’s time to hate and discriminate against us, so you know what we look like when it’s time to love and depict us. If you’re on Tumblr, you have access to the Internet. ESPECIALLY if you’re in the U.S., as Black people are the source of damn near every piece of online pop culture. If you can find my dialect to make my jokes, you can find pictures of me.

Would I rather you use a reference every single time so that you can only strengthen your depiction of my people? ABSOLUTELY.

Anyone on the Internet telling you not to use a reference or that you shouldn’t need a reference? Unfollow them. You don’t need that negativity in your life. Why would you deprive yourself of a tool to create? The greatest portrait painters in history had to look at their subjects! You are not getting paid nearly as much to do this as Hans Holbein, and he had to stare at Henry VIII correct else lose his head- you can pull up multiple references. I’d far rather be judged for using hella references than be judged for being a racist!

Part of the issue is people draw what they’re used to, what they’re comfortable with (thus last lesson). But if what you’re used to is not what someone will look like… That’s not okay. Their features are not the issue, your skills are the issue. Learn! Practice! There is no rush. No one is rushing you to be perfect at drawing Black characters, and no one is rushing you to post them. You can just practice! If you’re not a professional, you can take as long as you need to draw! If you need to draw that piece of hair over and over until you feel like you have down the shape, you do that! If you need to use a tool that would draw the hair for you, you get that tool!

If you want to post, you can say you are practicing! If you make clear you are practicing, then be willing to accept that people may have feedback. I’d far rather deal with someone saying they’re unconfident and practicing, than someone posting a whitewashed caricature and closing their ears because “well at least I’m trying!”

2) Empathize! Care about actual Black people when you create a Black character!

Imagine, if you will, in the Twilight Zone: you went to an artist, and you asked for a white character (I typed in “regular looking white dude” on google). There’s hardly ever any white characters, you’re so super excited about this one! You paid good money, because you’ve seen just how amazing this artist creates! They’re so good at drawing characters of color! But no matter how many times you ask, they send you back an image of… Assad Zaman.

That man might be fine as hell! Gorgeous! Beautifully done! Chef’s kiss. Stunning! But… He’s not white. That’s not what you asked or paid for. You can’t even fathom how they mixed this up, they don’t even look alike! And when you confront them, they gaslight you, they call YOU the issue for not understanding how you can’t tell that this is a white man! They would never get this wrong! They have white friends, you’re the racist! But you’re not stupid, and you have functioning eyes- you can SEE what this drawing looks like! And… It’s not you.

It’s dehumanizing. It’s being told that there’s a “better way” to look like you, and that’s by… Not looking like you. You, as you exist, are what’s incorrect. Your identity is incorrect, not their drawing. It’s better to have thinner hair instead of an afro or locs, it’s better to have lighter skin, it’s better to have a straighter, thinner nose over a round one, and smaller lips.

And what makes it worse is knowing that people who don’t look like you? Probably won’t care. They won’t be willing to see- not unable, but unwilling- that playing with this caricature is harmful, that they’re propagating harm by not acknowledging it. They’re letting you know that your humanity means less to them than the clout received with a whitewashed or half-assed Black character, and that people will applaud them for that ‘attempt at inclusion’. And people will applaud! They will be entertained by the mere performance! And that hurts.

I’m going to say this, and it’s awkward and I try not to say it directly on here, but… Having Black friends and/or being around actual, real life Black people would help. I can tell from some of the questions I receive that Black characters and their traits- especially things like our hair and our cultures- are being treated as… alien concepts. But even if, for whatever reason, you legitimately don’t know any Black people, you do not need to know us individually to care about our humanity as a whole! Even if you do not know we’re there, we are, and we could possibly see your work!

By acknowledging Blackness and making room to understand what it means- and that includes how we can look- you are doing the bare minimum of acknowledging our personhood. If you cannot do even that, you don’t need to be drawing us.

Conclusion

Here’s the thing: if you want to draw a white man with tanned skin, do that. Just do it! You do NOT have to erase me to have more of you! There is not a single fandom where the majority of the white fans ever said “gee, not another white guy!” It simply doesn’t happen. God knows we wish it did sometimes. You will always have an audience for white characters. There’s no danger to any of you of “being erased”.

(Without putting on my political hat, I will say that a lot of white people who consider themselves to be far from white supremacist will express beliefs in line with great replacement theory if you push them hard enough. It is unfortunately not as uncommon an idea as you might think. I would do some self-evaluation.)

People are going to notice that you only ever draw white people, but… To be frank, that has never stopped anybody from being successful. Again, Jen Zee, at Supergiant with the terrible dark-skinned characters… Still has a job. at Supergiant. A professional studio. Dragon Age. Multiple games of consistent whitewashing and racist writing. Still going. If racism prevented creation and popularity, I wouldn’t have to have this blog. Alas, that is the society we currently live in.

But if you ACTUALLY want to depict Black characters, if you ACTUALLY want to do right and be respectful- not because you want the clout, but because it’s the right damn thing to do- then you need to commit! This means drawing them as they are meant to be! Accept that you’ll likely lose some fan base, who was there (whether they were aware of it or not) for the white and lighter skinned characters. Accept that this means that trying to appeal to those people by whitewashing characters is 1) wrong, 2) racist, which is 3) something you chose to do when you could simply have just… Drawn more white people.

I’ll say it again: antiracism is hard. It’s hard doing the right thing in a society that rewards racism so easily. It’s really hard knowing that people will stop supporting you or caring as much about your work when you start including Black characters as actively as you do white ones, especially if you start talking about the importance of it. But in my honest opinion, I’d far rather be someone that cared about others, with genuine fans, than someone that was racist for the fleeting internet clout of strangers. And that may be less ‘hopeful’ than I normally am in these lessons, but… People make choices. And people who have been informed- as you are now- are aware of the choices they are making. It’s the thought that counts, but the action that delivers- let’s choose better actions.

[getvalentined]

An open letter to @staff

I already submitted this to Support under "Feedback," but I'm sharing it here too as I don't expect it to get a response, and I feel like putting in out in public may be more effective than sending it off into the void.

The recent post on the Staff blog about changing tumblr to an algorithmic feed features a large amount of misinformation that I feel staff needs to address, openly and honestly, with information on where this data was sourced at the very least.

Claim 1: Algorithms help small creators.

This is false, as algorithms are designed to push content that gets engagement in order to get it more engagement, thereby assuring that the popular remain popular and the small remain small except in instances of extreme luck.

This can already be seen on the tumblr radar, which is a combination of staff picks (usually the same half-dozen fandoms or niche special interests like Lego photography) which already have a ton of engagement, or posts that are getting enough engagement to hit the radar organically. Tumblr has an algorithm that runs like every other socmed algorithm on the planet, and it will decimate the reach of small creators just like every other platform before it.

Claim 2: Only a small portion of users utilize the chronological feed.

You can find a poll by user @darkwood-sleddog here that at the time of writing this, sits at over 40 THOUSAND responses showing that over 96 percent of them use the chronological feed*. Claiming otherwise isn't just a misstatement, it's a lie. You are lying to your core userbase and expecting them to accept it as fact. It's not just unethical, it's insulting to people who have been supporting your platform for over a decade.

Claim 3: Tumblr is not easy to use.

This is also 100% false and you ABSOLUTELY know it. Tumblr is EXTREMELY easy to use, the issue is that the documentation, the explanations of features, and often even the stability of the service is subpar. All of this would be very easy for staff to fix, if they would invest in the creation of walkthroughs and clear explanations of how various site features work, as well as finally fixing the search function. Your inability to explain how your service works should not result in completely ignoring the needs and wants of your core long-term userbase. The fact that you're more willing to invest in the very systems that have made every other form of social media so horrifically toxic than in trying to make it easier for people to use the service AS IT WORKS NOW and fixing the parts that don't work as well speaks volumes toward what tumblr staff actually cares about.

You will not get a paycheck if your platform becomes defunct, and the thing that makes it special right now is that it is the ONLY large-scale socmed platform on THE ENTIRE INTERNET with a true chronological feed and no aggressive algorithmic content serving. The recent post from staff indicates that you are going to kill that, and are insisting that it's what we want. It is not. I'd hazard to guess that most of the dev team knows it isn't what we want, but I assume the money people don't care. The user base isn't relevant, just how much money they can bring in.

The CEO stated he wanted this to remain as sort of the last bastion of the Old Internet, and yet here we are, watching you declare you intend to burn it to the ground.

You can do so much better than this.

Response to the Update

Under the cut for readability, because everything said above still applies.

I already said this in a reblog on the post itself, but I'm adding it to this one for easy access: people read it that way because that's what you said.

Staff considers the main feed as it exists to be "outdated," to the point that you literally used that word to describe it, and the main goals expressed in this announcement is to figure out what makes "high-quality content" and serve that to users moving forward.

People read it that way because that is what you said.

*The final results of the poll, after 24 hours:

136,635 votes breaks down thusly:

An algorithm based feed where I get "the best of tumblr." @ 1.3% (roughly 1,776 votes)

Chronological feed that only features blogs I follow. @ 95.2% (roughly 130,077 votes)

This doesn't affect me personally. @ 3.5% (roughly 4,782 votes)

[femslashspuffy]

I'm not so much mad Izzy dies I'm just mad that the tone feels so wrong. It shouldn't be happy before happy after, if it's supposed to be a big thing make it a big thing and this one for sure shouldn't be small

[orionsangel86]

There is something about proudly proclaiming a show "tumblrista catnip" that makes me emotional.

Something about how for years tumblrinas were ridiculed by show creators.

Something about Supernatural having a meta episode set at a convention with all the weirdo fans that made the main characters uncomfortable. Something something about Becky and the message that fangirls are gross and obsessive.

Something about Sherlock and the way fans were portrayed as crazy obsessive nutjobs for trying to figure out how he faked his death.

Something about creators mocking fandoms, dismissing them as freaks. Something about queer people not being welcome to engage in their creations because "why do you have to make everything gay?"

Something about the malicious culture of queerbaiting throughout the 2000s/2010s, followed by Bury Your Gays tropes across the media landscape because hell, you should be grateful we even gave you queer characters to begin with - and everyone dies in our show! You ain't special!

Something about Destiel questions being banned from conventions...

And then...

Something instead about Good Omens, and letting the story adapt naturally, embracing the fanbase and leaning into the fanservice.

Something about Our Flag Means Death, and the genuine outpouring of love and affection between cast, crew, and fandom that culminated in an explosion of fanworks that were never once mocked or deemed gross or wrong.

Something about Sandman, and staunchly digging in their heels on the queerness of it all, refusing to give in to the homophobes and instead avidly mocking THEM on social media rather than us.

Something about the writers hearing about fandoms favourite ships and excitedly stating that YES! We DID lean into that because it happened naturally and made sense.

Something about a firefighter coming out as bisexual after 7 seasons...

So yeah, something about a new high quality show made FOR US. By creators that love US. Respect US, and WANT our love.

Something about US FINALLY being a target audience for the best shows being made on TV now.

Tumblrista catnip. Creators saying "we made this for you. You are important. Your voices have been heard."

It just... all got a bit overwhelming for a moment there.