#representation: racial

[icedsodapop]

I really need to stress how groundbreaking Martha Jones literally is. She made her mark as the first official onscreen Black Doctor Who companion, and quite literally paved the way for future Black and other companions of colour to star on the show, like Bill Potts, Yasmin Khan, and Ryan Sinclair. And these characters would also make Doctor Who history in their own ways with Bill being the first onscreen Black lesbian companion, Yasmin being the first onscreen South Asian companion, and Ryan being the first onscreen Black companion with a disability.

Marth Jones' power? Unparalleled.

[alwaysbewoke]

[rhetoricsofraceandidentity]

[comparativetarot]

The Tower. Art by St. Jinx, from the Reclaimed Earth Tarot.

[bluemink5822]

Doctor Who's 15th Doctor (16th? 14th...? I'm counting Jo Martin but not David Tennant twice so 15th.) in brown-tinted pencil on mixed media paper.

Another request from my sibling of a fandom I'm not in but know much about anyways.

Daily portrait #8 and only BIPOC portrait #2, which is rather a shame, honestly. I do love the white/white-passing characters that I've drawn, but to me at least, drawing and painting people of darker skin tones is way more fun, and there's an actual reason for this. The highlights on people's skin will always be the same light shade, regardless of skin tone, simply due to how reflection works, but with people of darker skin tones, the middle values and shadows are allowed to be a little darker and a little richer, and you don't have to dance around putting actual value into the skin. BBC Sherlock, for example, is a great character, but absolutely pasty, and trying to get his skin an accurate shade was absolute hell. More importantly, I just love diversifying my artwork since every field, including art, seems lacking in representation, and it seems Doctor Who also picked up on this sentiment with Ncuti Gatwa, their first BIPOC Doctor here to stay.

Taking free requests for any live-action character you want to see in a monochromatic medium.

Other Doctors:

15

Fugitive

13

[oh-hush-its-perfect]

I once said this on Twitter and got a LOT of backlash for it, but I think it's worth saying. Piper McLean is not hyper-femme. She's not even femme. Piper McLean is a butch sapphic woman. Though there's no problem with portraying her in pink or doing "girly" things every once in a while, if everyone is doing it all of the time, it creates a fandom misinterpretation of the character. It erases her identity as butch. Yes, she improved her internalized misogyny. No, that does not mean that she has become femme or "feminine." Part of feminism and eliminating internalized misogyny is the realization that women have the choice of how they want to present. Piper presents in a more androgynous/masc way. That's how she is, and I don't think all fanart of her should misrepresent her in such a way.

[audioroleplayconfessions]

I usually avoid posting my own opinions, but I've seen a few posts like the one in the screenshot below creep across my feed lately and they're bugging me too much to keep my mouth shut. I censored the identity of this particular example because I don't want to start a Tumblr war or make them feel like I'm singling them out or attacking them.

I don't feel good about celebrating black history month through a character who was both written and performed by a white man. I know this is all just low-stakes fandom headcanon stuff and I'm not trying to control what other people do, but something feels not-quite-right about taking a character played by a white VA and deciding (on his behalf might I add) that he's black and using him as your example of black representation in the audio rp fandom.

There are black VAs out there, they can represent themselves. I really think it's disingenuous to sort through a cast of characters all played by the same white guy and assign POC races to them in order to give a singular white guy's one-man show racial diversity, then celebrate said "diversity".

Sorry, I'm not trying to be a Tumblr drama queen. If you're the person from the screenshot (or have posted something similar), I don't think you meant any harm. Your post probably wasn't meant to be that deep and not the worst thing in the world, but I don't know why you would pick a random character written and performed by a white guy and cheer "Rahhh, let's celebrate black history month with this!". If it really matters to you, you can celebrate a black VA, or a canonically black character, or even just a listener character that you/others HC as black. You can celebrate fan artists and writers who are black.

Why use characters played by Redacted for this? I promise I'm not trying to start a fight, or accuse people who've made posts like this of being racist or cancel anyone. I don't think they mean badly. But I see this a lot even outside of the context of BHM. It's almost always with characters written/performed by Redacted and it's always made me a little uneasy, especially with the amount of enthusiasm people throw onto the race they decided to HC for this one white man's characters.

If you disagree with me, I'm open to hearing you out. I don't want to try and dictate what people can/can't do in a fandom space or send a mob after anyone, but something feels off to me about using Redacted characters to celebrate BHM.

-Ringmaster

[hussyknee]

Not entirely sure how I'm expected to respond when I point out something is white as fuck and the person I'm criticizing goes "I'm literally PoC!!" Okay? Good for you? Get well soon??

I literally live in South Asia, a place still nursing the world's worst colonial hangover. That's like one billion brown people desperately in need of joining Bootlickers Anonymous. If I had to respect the rancid takes of every yahoo that lives here I'd have to drown myself in the sea.

Living in white countries does something odd to diaspora brains. If you call yourself BIPOC in your own head long enough you end up forgetting you're just a garden variety idiot mainlining white supremacy like everyone else.

[haveacupofjohanny]

How 'Evil' Teaches a Masterclass in 'Show, Don't Tell' Through Racial Inequality

Evil TV show, C for COP episode, racial inequality, show don't tell writing, storytelling techniques, police bias, impactful TV episodes, African American representation, writing lessons from TV, media portrayal of racism

Learn more about the show: https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/evil/ Transcript So I am watching this show evil. And, and I was talking to my husband about this last episode that we saw, and that it does a great job of showing the theme that it wants to focus on during the episode. And I think I took that as a great writing lesson. Because oftentimes, as authors, we are asked to show and not…

[alwaysbewoke]

[murder-incarnate]

tfw the bhaalspawn is the only one in your friend group with a real conscience and they are hanging on by a fucking thread

my friend ez's tav trine (at least they're a tav in her bg3 au) + my durge abaddon + astarion. trine and abaddon typically live in separate universes but ez and i love to talk about how the two would interact, and they both romance astarion so like. this squad gets talked about a lot. abaddon tries so hard to be good despite everything, trine and astarion not so much, and things aren't helped by trine especially having a real tendency to poke the metaphorical bear because it's funny.

colors are messy so here's the lines-only version, which i also like, and is, admittedly, also messy

[pinkcadillaccas]

Like it's no wonder media literacy is dog shit in so many young people we are being written TV that spoonfeeds all of the information to us and leaves no room for subtlety or creative world building and we keep saying that this is good and it's not! And if we all keep watching bad TV and saying that it's good then all TV is going to become badly written contrived crap that thinks it's being deep and annoying libs on Tumblr are going to keep saying that omg this episode was so brave it literally said eat the rich!!

[comparativetarot]

Two of Blues. Art by Stacey Williams-Ng, from the Rhythm & Soul Tarot.

The friendship in the 2 of Cups (Blues) is shown as a pair of Mississippi sharecroppers.

[wolf-tail]

Worst conservative argument against diversety in media is shit like:

"Well I'm not white and I related to White Character XYZ which means that you should never be upset about not seeing anyone darker than a paper bag on TV ever"

[spite-and-waffles]

Do diaspora PoC actually like it when white fans keep race-bending random Batkids? Apparently Jason's Asian now too? In a fic where he had red hair. And I'm sorry but white people making Jay Latino and Tim East Asian is racist stereotypying. The entire point of Tim is his white privilege.

Y'all are a hair away from making one of these people white-passing Black or Native, and I don't think you'd understand the enormity of insult that would be either. Unless you actually belong to the community you're race-bending them for, please for the love of God stop. This isn't representation, it's brownface for brownie points.

[girltalkcollectives]

When Did You First Learn Your Skin Color Was 'Different'? I was 5.

TW: racism, childhood trauma

You never forget your first time. Not your first kiss, or your first day of school, but your first experience with racism. Mine happened between juice boxes and monkey bars.

I was five years old, rocking my favorite yellow sundress and butterfly hair clips, excited for my first day of summer camp. Mom had braided my hair the night before, and I felt like the prettiest girl in the world. You know that pure, untainted confidence only little kids have? That was me that morning.

It didn't last past snack time.

The Scene:

Picture this: A sunny playground in mid-July. Kids running around playing tag. The smell of sunscreen and fruit punch in the air. Normal summer camp things. I'd just finished my apple juice and was ready to join a group of girls playing "princesses" in the corner of the playground.

What happened next is seared into my memory with the kind of clarity that only trauma brings:

"You can't play with us." "Why not?" "Because you're black. No black people allowed!"

They started running around the playground, turning it into a chant: "No black people allowed! No black people allowed!"

Just like that, my yellow sundress didn't feel so pretty anymore.

The "Explanation":

The counselors, bless their well-meaning hearts, tried to handle it. They put the other girls in time-out and gave them the standard "we don't exclude people" talk. Then one of them sat down with me, probably seeing my confusion and hurt, and tried to explain:

"It's like if you're wearing a green shirt and they don't like the color green…"

That's right. They compared my skin color – my identity, my heritage, my entire existence – to a shirt you can just change.

My Mother's Rage:

When my mom picked me up and heard about the "green shirt" explanation, I learned what righteous fury looked like. I remember her face changing, her grip on the steering wheel tightening.

"Baby, let me explain something to you," she said, turning to face me fully. "Your skin is not a shirt you can take off. It's not something you can change, and it's not something you should want to change. It's beautiful, it's who you are, and anyone who can't see that is the one with the problem."

Then she marched right back into that camp office.

The Adults Let Us Down:

Looking back now, I'm struck by how many adults failed that day:

The counselors who oversimplified racism to a shirt color

The parents who raised kids who already knew how to be racist at 5

The camp administration who probably thought time-out solved racism

The Things You Remember:

It's wild what sticks with you from moments like these:

The pattern of my yellow sundress (butterflies and flowers)

The taste of apple juice turning sour in my mouth

The sound of their sing-song voices: "No black people allowed!"

The hot shame of standing alone

The way my butterfly clips suddenly felt heavy

The confusion of not understanding what I'd done wrong

The Lessons Learned Too Early:

At five years old, I learned:

My skin color could make me an outsider

Some people would hate me without knowing me

Adults don't always know how to help

Racism isn't always hood-wearing obvious

Sometimes it comes with pigtails and juice boxes

What Nobody Tells You:

The first cut of racism might come from children, but the wound is deepened by the adults who don't know how to handle it. Well-meaning white counselors comparing fundamental identity to clothing choices. Authority figures who think time-out can cure generational prejudice.

To My Five-Year-Old Self:

Sweet girl in the yellow sundress:

It was never about you

Your skin is not a shirt

Your beauty is not debatable

Their racism was not your burden to bear

You deserved better

You were perfect exactly as you were

To Parents and Educators:

Don't compare immutable characteristics to clothing

Don't oversimplify racism to make yourself comfortable

Don't pretend time-out solves systemic issues

Do have real conversations about race

Do validate children's experiences

Do call racism what it is

The Reality:

First memories should be about:

Making friends

Learning to swim

Playing games

Summer fun

Being a kid

Not learning that your skin color makes you "different."

Moving Forward:

That day changed me, as first encounters with racism always do. But my mother's response taught me something more powerful: to stand tall, to know my worth, and to never let anyone make me feel less than because of my skin.

To the little Black girls at summer camp: You are beautiful, you belong, and it's not your job to make others comfortable with your existence.

And to my fellow Black women who remember their "first time" all too well – I see you, I feel you, and I hope you're healing too.

Link to our website: https://girltalkcollectives.com/