#one was white. one was jewish. one was black.

[creatingblackcharacters]

Hey! I would like advice on how to deal with race-bending of pre-existing stories, and also your opinion on if this is even salvageable.

There is something I was writing with a friend that started as a personal project, but I liked enough that I was considering making it into some form of comic. It is a twisted fairytale-type story, with all sorts of fairytales smashed together into a character-focused dark fantasy adventure.

Getting into it: I grew up with Wiley and the Hairyman as my favorite story, so I knew I wanted to incorporate Wiley as one of the main characters. In the brainstorming phase of how to fit everything together, he ended up being the son of Baba Yaga, since his "mama was a conjurer" and Baba Yaga is a famous witch. It seemed like the best way to get a character that young involved in everything.

Wiley is a traditionally Black character, and I want to keep him that way. Baba Yaga is a traditionally white character, and also incredibly evil and potentially the archetype for all antisemitic depictions of witches in media.

The way we wrote it, Wiley doesn't have a father, he was Baba Yaga's biological son made by magic.

I have no idea what to do about this situation. It feels wrong to go out of my way to turn the most evil character in my story Black, especially since I am Jewish and feel more able to gracefully navigate the inherent antisemitism of her concept (like dang she's even a cannibal) than Black mysticism stereotypes that I know exist, but am less familiar with.

When this was a personal project, it felt fine to just have them be different races and handwave it away, since I knew how I got there. But their relationship is very turbulent, with her being emotionally abusive, and him being forced into a care-taker role from a young age. This is meant to be a more traditional family-type power imbalance, but I am worried that if they don't look like family, it brings to mind actual historic slavery, which is not what I want.

I don't really know what to do about all this. The answer might be "keep it a personal project." I just wrote a short story exploring their family dynamic and fell completely in love with Wiley as a character all over again, and got excited about the idea of expanding the project.

Thank you for listening! Sorry if this is a lot!

Okay, so I had to go re-listen to that story; i have heard it before! Yeah, no.

I hear where you were going with it, but to have the... mythology of Wiley be in conjuring (implied to be hoodoo or African-American magic) overlap with that of a white Jewish (caricature of evil, even!) magic as though they are similar enough is... Not cool.

Especially since Wiley's entire concept is that between his own wits and that of his mother's and her powers were able to save him from the tricks and danger of the Hairy Man. His father being lost to the Hairy Man might even be allegory for him being snatched up and lynched, given the time period the story was recorded (told orally in the South and written down later).

To place him under Baba Yaga to be abused, to take away his father and his mother (I.e., his living communal connection to that magic) and replace her with someone who doesn't value him, who created him from magic to serve her... Yeah, I think your concern of "this looks like slavery" are founded, at least from this end. I'd keep this one a personal project, unless you develop how Wiley ends up with Baba Yaga and why we should care that he doesn't try to kill her 😅.

[jewish-culture-is]

Jewish culture is this cat.

Okay, technically she's my foster and is going to her forever home in July, so she's a goyische cat in a Jewish household, but you said you wanted cat pictures.

Her name is Miss Moneypenny, Penny for short. She is also called "Miss Priss," "little miss," "hey bug" (affectionate), "child" (you have to imagine that one in the most aggravated tone you can, it gets broken out when she's trying to get on the counters again), and "oh my g-d Penny will you stop he was literally just sitting there what is your problem," because for unknown reasons she's decided one of our permanent cats is her mortal enemy even though he's an extremely sweet boy who wants to be her friend.

Her 3D kitten printer is getting uninstalled today, and supposedly the big snipsnip will calm down cats. Here's hoping.

omg she's so baby

[ID: a mostly black cat wit white face, chest, and paw markings laying and staring at the camera. end ID]

[sleepynegress]

we coulda had it allllll.....

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

I’m sorry but you can’t cry “human rights violation!!!!” when you are actively carrying out a campaign of genocide.

[leroibobo]

oh if you ever are curious about non-maghrebi/egyptian african synagogues i highly recommend this website. they're unfortunately not as recorded in pictures as the other sorts of synagogues i post, but there is comprehensive information on them.

[transbeckett]

saw an absolutely rancid take by a guy on twitter. bro started off by saying "I've only met like one or two jews before" and continues with "but I can never tell if someone's jewish because they just look like white people" and somehow this has nearly 200k likes

[rodeodeparis]

i really hate the way people will accept polling/statistics at face value and not consider all of the potential biases or factors as to why certain results may end up the way they did. like polling can be a good indicator of something but it often isn't fact

[asmileworthahundredlies]

[llycaons]

spinning silver has an extremely rigid and vicious fantasy hierarchy involving the suicide of 'failed' servants similar to tge but unlike tge it also has the main character go 'this is incredibly fucked up oh my GOD' and even though the entire book and the entire pov is spent with maia, it feels like miryem's relationship with power is explored with actual nuance bc it's not presupposed she's Always Good and Right before she even steps into the room. even in this small scene it's better handled! she does screw up, she does misuse her new power, she does internally AND externally interrogate that. and even though her title is just as forced on her as maia's was, and even tho she's surrounded by (from her pov) literal monsters who kidnapped her, trap her, neglect her, and force her to use her wits every single day just to stay alive, she's WAY less of a whiner than maia was. 'wahhh my attendant's don't approve of me I'm such a victim' dude you are the literal MOST powerful person in the entire kingdom if you don't shut the fuck up....

[twipsai]

while im sharing my ahit hot takes, i also wanna add that i think ppl give Mu a little too much slack

like yeah, she IS a child, she WAS traumatized and had her home essentially colonized for no reason. its implied her family was killed and she spend at least a solid year completely alone, homeless, and scared

but like she also used time pieces to reverse the world 4 billion years back and killed everyone she thought was "bad" based on a short description they gave of their own life (if they were lucky enough to even get to the throne room and not die from the lava inside the castle). ppl act like the entire cast were horrible people for telling her to go away when she literally destroyed the earth???? like no one in ahit is a good person guys theyre all assholes lmao

[kelev9]

I have three breeders I'm very interested in getting a puppy from. I'm gonna try contacting them in the next couple of weeks to ask some questions and get to know more about them as breeders 😌

[asttralhell]

No one is talking about Clock (2023) and its egg symbolism

It would make Morel Orel so proud.

[seleneprince]

Western media and all these radicals, uncultured assholes might have people swallowing their lies, but we know the truth. And we support you, guys.

If you support the actions of a racist, genocidal terrorist group simply because they're opposed to another genocidal government, please do me a favour and stay the fuck away from me.

I don’t usually talk politics but you guys are such assholes but here it is:

I live in Sderot in Israel, my town this morning was taken over by terrorists my friends and neighbors murdered. Hundreds of innocent lives taken. I’ve read their texts as they begged for help that didn’t come.

Terrorism is evil, killings of innocents is evil. The ends don’t justify the means.I don’t justify it when Israel, America or any country fucks up- so stop justifying a terrorist group that wants to kill every Jewish person in the world, all Israelis and kills people for being LGBTQ+. As a Jewish gay woman they make it clear I don’t deserve to live. And have tried to kill me many times with rocket fire, and yesterday with invasion.

To all those who say it’s justified- America has done fucked up things in Afghanistan do all Americans deserve to die? To all British people deserve to die? Iran kills people, so does China- do all their civilians deserve to die?

You all have a double standard for Israel, and I’m calling out your bullshit. If you support a terrorist group that has oppressed the women and children and all civilians in Gaza for years, anybody speaking out against them is murdered. Fellow queers are murdered by Hamas- if you think they represent Palestine then you are an idiot. Free Palestine from Hamas.

I’m not justifying this current right wing government, so stop justifying an actual terrorist origination that believes woman are inferior, Jews deserve to die and LGBTQ+ deserve to die.

*I don’t fucking deserve to die*

I’ll say it again: I don’t fucking deserve to die. My wife doesn’t deserve to die, my family and friends don’t fucking deserve to die.

My neighbors are being brutally murdered as we speak.

Get your fucking ethics in order. You’re talking about me.

[snekdood]

welp id say the only new thing i actually learned on tumblr university in this span of time where ppl are patronizing me acting like I need to relearn feminism- is more about the history of antisemitism, which i desperately needed to learn (and yall do too but refuse to and assume you already do know), otherwise everything else ppl think they're teaching me is shit I already know.

[spioderman]

honestly if you cannot respect jewish artists maybe just stfu about jewish art. if it is all morally dubious to you on site then like go away? the constant questioning and surveillance about whether people can trust or respect jewish artist lest they be one of the ‘bad jews’ is miserably blatant in its bigoted logic. you cant pretend your standing up for something by treating jews as immediately sketchy and dubious. thats just antisemitism.

[musashi]

i want more nuance to be entered into the discussion of the green girl sorority and how differently cynthia plays elphaba in comparison to those who came before her because while a lot of people are rightfully like "why was elphaba not black from the beginning" and celebrating that she is now being played by a black woman, i think we need to be careful in just writing off all the elphabas of the past as Random White Girls when the role was championed (and often followed/succeeded) by a jewish woman

the pop culture archetype of the Wicked Witch has deep roots in antisemitism stretching faaaar far back. there is a level of reclamation happening in casting idina menzel, a jewish woman, to play the Misunderstood and Maligned young girl who is branded as exactly that. and stage!Elphaba is also written and acted with jewish stereotypes in mind--she is loud, aggressive, no-nonsense, blunt. she is quick to advocate for herself and shut down the discrimination she faces. all of this is very intentional! her personality is abrasive from years of abuse, and that makes propagandizing her easy. this is literally the thesis statement of the musical--it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed.

cynthia's performance of elphaba is fucking INSPIRED despite going in a completely different direction. she's much more reserved, analytical, one of her key character traits is how well she can read people (see her calling out Galinda as insecure/putting on airs in their first scene together, clocking that Fiyero is using his party guy persona as a shield for his own depression) elphaba's attempts to blend in and make herself smaller all fail simply because of her existence, if not that then because she feels empathy so strongly she often struggles to hold back from acting, protecting.

personality wise, though, cynthia's elphaba is very quiet and closed-off, not at all the bullet-to-the-face that she is in the stage show, and... she still gets propagandized and maligned. though this seems to contradict the other interpretation, it tells of the other end of the spectrum of propaganda, one that black women watching (and many, MANY other marginalized folks) are sure to identify with--it does not matter how "nice," how reserved, how small a black woman makes herself. a racist society will still scrutinize her every action for a way to parse ill intent from it, brand her as an angry black woman who is dangerous and wicked, and write off any humanity she has in the process.

these two very different interpretations tell of the lie of assimilation. the fact of the matter is, when you are marginalized, there is no way to sand down your edges enough to make the people oppressing you "accept" you. that is why wicked is a tragedy at its core. whether loud and aggressive or quiet and unimposing, there is nothing elphaba could have done to make the people of Oz see her as anything other than a scapegoat to blame all their problems on.

so while i definitely appreciate that people are excited for black girl era elphaba, i would encourage us all to still show appreciation for what came before--that was not white girl era elphaba. that was jewish girl era elphaba. two houses, both alike in dignity, two stories both worth being told.