#obligatory tim seeley my beloathed

[marsupialmenace]

I am incredibly tired and unwell, but I think I've finally cracked so this is very much a vent post, BUT:

I desperately want to take "Romani Dick Grayson" away from fans until they can learn to be nice. Specifically non-Romani fans.

I've seen so many terrible, invalidating, frankly stereotypical and racist takes from people who are 'claiming to be sensitive' to Romani people.

I don't particularly get upset about peoples headcanons, or the desire for diversity (because I have those desires/HCs too!). It's when I see the 'has to' or people arguing their headcanons about Dick's Romani heritage without the experience or the knowledge to do so beyond their five-minute google search that I get upset.

I saw a nice piece of fanart before that had Dick drawn tanned, and it had a reply on it to the effect of "thank you for drawing Dick brown, he's romani." It makes me sad to see people say things like that, that 'Dick has to be brown', because my pale white ass is also Romani. However, on the flipside, if someone draws him too pale, I see people attack the artists and calling them racist in vagueposts for drawing him 'wrong' (white-appearing) despite it being completely possible for a Romani person to be white.

In another place I saw someone refer to the Graysons as 'definitely travellers, so they couldn't be Romanichal'. Are you saying that Romanichal (English Romani people) are less Romani? I don't really understand the need to exclude other Romani people from the 'list Dick could be descended from' based on...whether on not you (royal) consider them 'travellers'.

Not to mention, the word 'Travellers'. Travellers is used in a derogatory way to the Romanichal in the UK, or at least in my area it is, there is a turn of phrase to avoid calling someone a slur in public, people say "Oh, that ones a travelling girl" or "They're travellers" and it has all of the implications with it.

Romani people are diverse, and we're not limited to a skin colour or religion, we all have different culture and traditions and languages, yet I see people insisting Dick has to fit into a box of a 'specific Romani'.

I don't really care for it in fic, I filter out the 'Dick Grayson is Romani' tag. I don't care for it in comics, because it has always been done poorly. I don't care about peoples HC's, 'cause even if I disagree, they can't affect me.

But to see real people talk about a comic book character using words, stereotypes, and phrases that hurts other real Romani people to attack or build up their own worlds/HCs is just so frustrating.