#on the one hand it's a pleasant surprise to see so many poc cast in a uk show from 1959

[mariocki]

Interpol Calling: Slave Ship (1.13, ITC, 1959)

"Oh, face the facts, Paul! Look at all these files; every one of them on slave trading and hardly one actual case. Nothing but third-hand reports and rumours."

"But we know it goes on - the fact that so little is done about it is no credit to the countries concerned."

[oh-boleyn]

POC queens in six fanfiction

[DISCLAIMER; I’m white. I don’t have any particular first-hand knowledge of racism. Commentary and criticism on this post from Fans of Colour is welcome. It is my opinion, but also it has no weight in this discussion. I’m just trying to bring some light around this problem.]

Note: I said something yesterday and decided to make a post about it 

Stats.

I’m using this post about race in casting tendencies. Talking about principals 77% of Aragons are POC, 70% of Boleyns are white, 100% of Seymours are white, 70% of Cleves are POC, 92,3% of Howards are white, 100% of Parrs are POC. Based on that I will consider Aragon, Cleves and Parr

as POC, and Boleyn, Seymour and Howard as white.

Left are characters in fanfics (with and withour ships), right is characters in fanfics without ships.

There’s a drop in fanfics, mostly about POCs when you don’t add ships. The ones which their fanfics drop the least are Seymour and Howard (30,26% and 31,31%), followed by Aragon and Cleves (31,90% and 32,64%). The queens with the biggest drop are Boleyn (34,74%), and Parr (37,15%, also from being the second most written queen, to be the second less written queen).

Out of 830 fanfics, white queens are average tagged in 75,18%, while POC queens are average tagged in 69,36%. When we take the ships away, we get 566 fanfics, in which the white queens are average tagged in 74,68%, while POC queens are average tagged in 67,14%.

Passing on to relationships, I’ve decided not to take stats, since the three white queens are heavily related to each other I don’t think we would see a tendency of shipping them together (or at least I hope so). But I did take stats of friendships.

It only showed the top 10, but further research proved that White&White friendships had 47 tags used, while POC&POC friendships had 18. This is excluding any romantic relationship.

About fanfics with only one queen tagged (excluding any OC, kid character or LIW), Boleyn has 10, Howard 8, Seymour 4, Parr 3, Aragon 2, and Cleves has none.

I also want to add, that I don’t know what is not tagged. This statistics can be wrong if someone has tagged a fic in a different way or decided not to tag. Take them as approximations.

The problem with POCs in fandom.

The thing is: fandom is kinda racist.

No, I’m not calling the Six fandom racist, nor whoever is reading this probably, but fandom culture as a whole is usually kinda racist. It can be seen from CW shows that clearly have issues (I’m looking at you, Supergirl), from KPop stans, from books or other plays, but I'm going to consider the Six fandom specifically here.

I will mostly focus on headcanons and fanfiction, since it’s what this sort of essay is about.

The one that is more obvious is probably the angry black woman stereotype, usually pushed on Aragon and Cleves. Luckily for Aragon stans, Soft!Aragon has become an important part of the works about her in fanfiction, a counterpart for the stereotype, featuring her being more maternal, a chill and down to earth figure, like in the play.

Because that’s another big issue, usually we don’t portray the queens as they are in the play. While in the case of Boleyn, Seymour or Howard that is a good change (making them smarter, or just overall more complex, giving them more depth than their songs can capture) when it comes to Cleves or Aragon it gravitates towards them being angrier, sometimes even the antagonists.

For Aragon, it also relates to religion. She is sometimes even pictured as homophobic, against Parrlyn or other ships. She’s angry and defending her own ideas. There are a lot of fanfics about her treating Boleyn horribly or just hating on her; when play-wise she calls her “babe” and grows with her and the rest of the queens.

For Anna, apart from the idea of being angry, the stereotype of sassy black woman applies commonly. Another point that can be arguable is how she’s portrayed as having problems with her self-image, even when her song is about her not having them. That is more open to interpretation rather than a straight up problem, but it’s also something that has been pointed out in fandom.

Shipping also plays its part.

It came as a pleasant surprise for me when I realized the amount of fics Catherine of Aragon has, but there’s still an issue; in most fanfics with her (or any of the other POC queens), the focus is on a different character. The POC queens are more featured in ships, rather than just by themselves, and a lot of times their stories revolve around their white partner.

No, I’m not going to start screaming about “the whole play is about them knowing they don’t have to be with their white partner!” or about “shipping is wrong!” because that’s a whole other discourse. But what I’m trying to ask is, why is Catherine Parr mostly used in relationships with any of the white queens? (Parrmour, Parrward, and mostly, Parrlyn are the three we know best).

There is another big issue in fan fiction - when the POC queens aren't angry, because they are only used as a plot device for their white partners. Their stories get erased for the sake of serving the other queens, to help them along the way even when the other queens commit mistakes. It ends up with an unidimensional character, again, but this time it’s not angry black woman, it’s supportive girlfriend who is simply there, and has no personality.

It comes from the casting and translates to the fandom.

I’ve seen other accounts talking about this (I personally chose not to tag other people since this is my point of view), but it’s true that the problem comes also from casting choices. Six does a good job having lots of POCs actresses, but they still rarely get cast as Seymour or Howard, who are the more vulnerable characters. Are there bigger issues with other shows? For sure, no doubt, but Six prides itself in being “woke” (I’m lacking of a better word), while still having some problems.

There have been a lot of other problems — the way people treat some actresses (here we can also add colourism, fatphobia and probably other activism points), the way some people headcanon some queens, or jokes made around them. I understand that most of the time this is caused by ignorance, or the intent to just make a joke, but I also agree that it is part of a bigger issue. Everything becomes more than “just an innocent joke” when it gets repeated time and time again.

But! I don’t want to write about them!

I’m not saying you have to write POCs, but rather you have to think how you write them if you do. A good post about this is But!: A Response to Responses. Check how you write them, what things do you add to them, what elements can be controversial (and how many of them you add, Cleves doing a sassy remark, or Aragon getting angry in a justified way is not racism, but it being the only thing they do can sit bad). Try to see if a character makes sense or is only revolving around another. I’m not trying to say anyone is racist, or that if you don’t write or project on certain queens you are. My point is that there is a trend going around, and that’s it’s good to critique your work in light of the wider issues in the fandom. 

Not everything is bad.

When I first started writing this today, I thought I was going to find a problem, like a clear issue in which the numbers are scandalous. To be honest, I found that things are actually better than what I was expecting, and while yes, there’s a lot of problems, people are also actively trying to change it. From writing more complex ships, to Soft!Aragon week or making more fanfics Anna-centered. I am not doing this to say “all the fandom is racist!” but rather point out the issue that has been around for a long time.