I would love for when icebound returns there is new character art, because they said that the charecters art they have now is from before there journey
Hey y'all! I’ve been keeping a couple notes on how some Avantris PCs fall into harmful stereotypes and how to revise them, and at first I thought I’d polish them up to post as a really quick list of sources and bullet points with actionable advice for fanworks. Then I got caught up and accidentally wrote essay-length analyses, so, here we are! These aren't hard and fast rules about how to “fix” the characters—nor is this something directed at the Avantris crew, or any attempt to get you to stop supporting them. They have made it clear through their recent work that they are focused on avoiding harm and cultivating better stories, and with the cultural consults and writers they have worked with since the inception of these characters, I highly doubt that they’re unaware of anything I’m discussing here or would find any of this advice actionable for their style of D&D Actual Play. Of course, they’re free to read, this is posted on a public social media site, but I would appreciate it if it was not presented to them or anybody else as feedback for the party, as that is not its purpose and will distort its meaning. This is a resource meant for people making fanworks, very simply comprising an outline of how the stereotypes discussed emerged, how they hurt people, and how to revise in an attempt to remove that harm, as my previous contribution to this conversation was too vague for my tastes.
I want to make it very clear that I am deeply in love with Avantris’ stories and that is why I’m writing this; I’m not going to be tolerating people being purposefully obtuse on why this conversation matters or people looking for a moralistic, “valid” way to express a dislike for the team when their grievances are completely unrelated to the topic at hand. Keep the topic on racism, you can make your own post, and if you’re gonna use the word woke, use it right. This is a gentle critique, but hopefully in-depth enough that it is abundantly clear that this is not a place for random accusations without respect for the work and the context of the narrative or dismissive comments refusing to engage with what I'm actually saying.
Below is a preface for the topic where I go on for too long about things most of you probably already understand, but may be useful if you’d like an introduction to how this topic will be addressed here, how the narrative of a D&D Actual Play makes this conversation difficult, and how to differentiate harmful and harmless stereotypes. Individual topics/characters are going to be in the reblogs because it's wordy. If you use a screen reader and the “read more” buttons are spotty, would like an easier site to read this on in general, or just want to read this in a cool theme, here’s an Ellipsus doc with more or less the same writing. So far, this is about Kremy, Toa, and Iris in that order. I might add to this as I continue to watch their body of work, but no promises.
In my mind, most of the following are things that are already understood by the vast majority of people, but if you’d like more info on why these notes are being made, what they specifically aim to combat and explore, why it’s a conversation worth having, and such and so forth, here you go. If anything I say gets too complicated or messy, please let me know! My brain filters things in a weird way and I can get too technical too fast, so if there’s anything that’s confusing, I’d love the chance to explain in terms that are more accessible. Otherwise y’all can probably skip this part if i’m being honest it’s way too fuckin’ long for what it is 🙏 General disclaimer that this is going to be focused primarily on stereotypes in American pop culture and media because the crew is American, unless stereotypes relate specifically to other locations like Toa’s section.
I am not an authority on this subject so do not treat me as one, please, for the love of God; almost all of this is linked to other sources because I am not an expert in any of these fields, and these are topics that have already been expressed much more eloquently than I could ever dream to embody. This is a summary of shallow research, and the only cultures I can claim to have any credentials in are the Pennsylvania Dutch and the urban Appalachian Bible Belt. I’m white; my opinion on these are by and large inconsequential, but my hopes for this is that 1. My writing is well-sourced and well-reasoned enough that it makes any sort of sense and directs you toward more important sources and voices, and 2. This will set a precedent for the amount of care white people should be putting into their analyses of racism, because I have already seen misinformation perpetuated in the Avantris fandom by white fans grasping at straws without due diligence. I hope that you’ll be able to find some use in this in clearing up some of the stereotypical origins of the characters and identifying what hurts them, but, please, I know how this goes! I will not be responsible for a bunch of half-assed know-it-alls bullying Brown people off the site!!! This is not a comprehensive guide; please read the sources included and feel free to add on if you have any additional thoughts and information or the time to provide corrections for me/point me in the direction of corrections if I include anything ill-informed, poorly expressed, and/or inaccurate.
The stereotypes in Avantris aren’t particularly new or interesting. They’re not shockingly egregious or deliberately mean spirited, or something so misconstrued from the mythos they draw from that they’re reinventing the wheel and creating a new level of horrific offense. If you’ll allow me to speak frankly, this conversation is pretty boring if you have a basic understanding of these stereotypes because they are an extension of unexamined, simple archetypes first and foremost—none of these points I’m making are going to be original.
Avantris very openly and explicitly bases their characters on archetypes and tropes, something that works very well to establish the stories they tell, the symbols they use, and flesh out their characters through tropes and subversion, but often falls flat when discussing non-Western cultures and folklore, portraying only bastardized, commodified aesthetics that fall thematically flat because of their misunderstanding of the stories they’re based on and only achieve further misinformation and the furthering racist stereotypes. Avantris, in some ways, avoids the worst of this because they have an understanding of theme, storytelling, and character—their PCs have dimensionality, and though some parts of their characters fall into thoughtless stereotypes that hinder them, they are by and large fully established people that escape being full-blown caricatures by their multidimensionality. However, they remain weighed down by a lack of research and pop-culture misunderstanding, and in a genre as specific as a TTRPG podcast, it is very easy for characters to become flanderized and misconstrued that make these parts of them more apparent/more egregious without the ability to revise, particularly in their older works.
To continue this conversation, understand that the vast majority of Avantris’ actual play content is not where one should be looking for “authentic representation” of racialized cultures, point blank. They have a white core cast and they are playing a roleplaying game; it is not their place. The conversation around what representation is and what exactly it entails in media is very complicated and there are many, many perspectives on it, but I feel like something that is extremely easy to understand for everybody is that if you would like to see representation, seek out TTRPG Actual Plays featuring Black and Brown and queer people front and center, like DesiQuest, Transplanar, Tales of Bone and Ice, Three Black Halflings, Everrealm Adventures, Agents of the Circle, Worlds Beyond Number, BaddieBards, Rivals of Waterdeep, Dimension 20 (the only one here behind a paywall!).
If you find pieces of yourself in any of the Avantris characters and their representation of culture, then I am happy for you and I wish you all the power and joy in the world. But Actual Play podcasts are very different from a novel or TV show in the sense that one is expected to embody the character, and the conversation about white people using the skin and aesthetics of orientalized, non-Western culture for a roleplaying game very complicated. The act of presenting racialized/non-white culture through role play as a white person almost always centers the experience of the player and thus centers whiteness, rendering any claims of "representation" for marginalized groups by the players painfully self-absorbed, egotistical, and a boldfaced prioritization of white voices in spaces that they already domineer at the very least level of offense. Avantris has obviously not claimed to provide representation, and I am not suggesting they are attempting to; I provide this in an attempt at defining what representation is not, in an effort to avoid boiling this conversation down to "bad rep" and "good rep". This conversation is more complicated than good or bad, or simply how accurate or squeaky-clean and un-stereotypical one can be, and instead centers instead around a question for white players who play characters of color: “Why do you want to play this character? Why do you want them to be xyz? What does it mean within the narrative?” For a lot of white people, it’s putting on a costume of struggle, of aestheticized, shallow, orientalized concepts of culture for three hours and taking it off again—a slap in the face to the people that live and breathe in bodies that are constantly under attack by oppressive systems and legislation, whose stories and cultures have been churned up by Western media into commodified, misconstrued, easily consumable and flanderized tokens of what they were by the same people that seek to suppress and demonize them.
For Avantris, the answer to why they include portrayals of a range cultures is theme and a want to draw from folklore and a diverse range of stories, something that can work if supplied by research, by decisive and consistent avoidance of harmful stereotypes and commodification, and by people of that culture present at the table and in the creation process. However, it very quickly goes downhill if that theme is, again, a bastardized version of the meat of what they’re discussing and/or one that’s not prioritized or focused on. If the proper precautions and research aren’t being taken, it can very quickly devolve into misinformation and perpetuate stereotypes that cause real-life harm to people. Sometimes it works out great, like when Arya played Kavir and drew from Iranian culture to create a character (and later a full species and planet for Neon Odyssey!) based on his heritage and experiences in collaboration with the crew, or when they released the gorgeous, well-developed Silkborn and Relicborn species in the Crooked Moon explicitly inspired by Arabic and Latin American folklore. Other times, it leads to a mess of half-baked storylines, bastardized stereotypes, and one-note caricatures that do a disservice to the audience and the stories they are trying to tell.
As they’ve grown as creatives, they have evidently done their research to ensure that their work is not as careless, moving away from embodying cultures they don't have a complete understanding of to highlight friends like Arya and work with cultural consults and a wider scope of creatives in the D&D space to include characters and stories inspired by non-Western cultures respectfully within their actual publications. This way, they pull from a wider and more creative array of stories while respecting the people behind them and giving their players the tools to interact with them in a respectful way as well. In current reimagined versions of their Player Characters, they’ve removed the stereotypical aspects weighing them down completely while re-flavoring them to be more accurate to their source material and/or refocused their themes to align with something they understand more, which is about all they can do within the limits of a story where they must embody their characters.
This is one of the ways to navigate the stereotypes, and I would argue that this is not whitewashing or removing representation that didn't really exist in the first place—they are walking back an overstep they made and mitigating harm, and, when writing with archetypes in mind as they have, without proper diligence, these characters weren’t necessarily non-white in the first place despite being inspired by racialized cultures. Whiteness is by and large default in Avantris, and cultural signifiers are used less as real-life connections to ethnicity, but thematic vessels, to varying degrees of success and respect. The characters themselves were always just white with a hodgepodge of cultural signifiers; in these revisions, they are removing the parts that hurt and misconstrued racialized cultures while maintaining the central themes of the characters, without cosplaying other people’s skins and stories when they have already been cannibalized so much. This doesn’t mean that we have to do the same.
So: the solution to stereotypes in a Roleplaying Game is what Avantris is doing—removing the pieces that misconstrue non-Western cultures or refocusing them in more intentional and well thought-out details without overstepping—and opting to focus on creating intentionally diverse characters within their publications, where they can be 100% certain they’re writing them respectfully in a way that betters their art. In writing, the weight of representation is different, as the role a character plays is different; we as authors, as fanartists, are not literally embodying characters to convey a story as they are while roleplaying, so we have much more room to explore, in addition to more time and wiggle room for research, revision, and consistent, deliberate characterization. This is where more deliberate writing comes in, where there’s a second option—where in this different mode of storytelling, we can more comfortably recognize the problems within the original characters and revise them to be less stereotypical within fan content while respectfully characterizing them as belonging to the cultures they are inspired by. We can pay homage to the cultures inspiring them and code them as belonging to them without climbing into other people's skins and perpetuating the commodification, orientalization, and consumption of culture.
That’s what I’ll be focusing on here: caricaturized parts of the OG Avantris characters and how I want to be mindful about writing them forward, allowing them to retain and represent cultures inspiring them while not perpetuating harm. A lot of this is probably going to sum up to “be mindful of their complexity in canon and lean into it their multi-dimensionality” and do it with intention, because that is the most important step to avoid stereotypes. I feel that it is important to recognize that stereotypes are not the end of a conversation about representation, or, just because something leans into stereotypes does not mean it isn’t necessarily unsalvageable or something to be avoided completely without exception, depending on the origin and the why behind those stereotypes.
Take Ko for example: by all means, she is a stereotypical lesbian—a butchy street-brawler with a sideswept undercut and massive biceps—but I feel like it is very obvious that she is not a harmful image of one because her character is so incredibly developed and well-thought-out. There is care and very clear intent put into her relationship with gender expression, with other women, with her motives, personality, and background. She is balanced out by Mikey's history of representing varied and wonderfully developed queer women wherever he can, and Ko's connection to Japanese culture and the existence of the Kanabo and the Kuzai Syndicate were developed with the help of cultural consult Dr. Emma Yasui, ensuring that they wouldn’t be caricaturized or stereotypical. She does not perpetuate harm. Take Lufti and her horribly confusing lederhosen suspenders and personality as well—though she plays into German stereotypes, the German people are not actively hurt by people portraying a fictionalized version of them as monks with alcohol problems and ahistorical clothing. You would be incredibly hard pressed to find any way that Germans have been hurt by those stereotypes on a systemic level. The stereotype of drunk Germans comes from real-life statistics of alcohol consumption of Germany and celebrations like Oktoberfest—often flanderized and poked fun of in pop culture, but by and large light-hearted and inoffensive, and paired with enough diverse depictions of Germans that it has very little impact on the perception of Germany in real life. She plays into stereotypes but noticeably does not perpetuate harm.
Situations where a whole category of people are only portrayed through characters without depth and with an abundance of stereotypes are clearly a problem, but moments where a fully realized character has behaviors seen as stereotypical for xyz reasons doesn’t mean that they are necessarily stereotypical. The limits to what you are considering something stereotypical and are comfortable with with a stereotypical character will be up to you and your skill level as a writer. If we are in the business of reflecting real life, real people are very multifaceted and everyone has the capabilities to be aggressive and illogical and act in ways that fall into xyz stereotype, and thus our characters will act the same. But in practice we are not writing real people, we are writing characters, and the amount of stereotype that defines a character, the way it is portrayed within a narrative, and how their peers are described (Are they all restrained to the same caricaturized behavior? Are they all given the same grace by the narrative? Are they nonexistent?) is incredibly important when considering where the line between dimensionality and stereotype falls. In Avantris, characters escape being plain caricatures by being fully developed, but with the limitations of the medium of an Actual Play, there are often core elements to their characters and bastardized bits of canon that do perpetuate narratives that hurt people, that are later picked up in the nightmare vortex of fandom culture and flanderized further.
If you take anything from this, understand that stereotypes exist for a reason—not because they are accurate to real life, but because they are the result of a telephone game of information from wildly varying sources and motives, often including deliberate propaganda and disinformation. It is important to determine the why behind them as we navigate this conversation to understand what is “unsalvagable” and what works, because they are rarely of equivalent harm. Butch lesbians are stereotyped because they are visibly queer to heteronormative society and easily caricaturized as man-hating dykes, but there are real people behind the flanderized, propagandized caricatures. The caricature of the cannibalistic, dark magic wielding, voodoo doll sewing “voodoo daddy” is based on a long history of the demonization of African, Caribbean, and Black American spirituality and religion that has been used to bar Black practitioners from work, housing, healthcare, and the ability to maintain integral parts of their culture and communities, encouraging and inciting real life violence on them. Butches exist in real life as fully realized people. The “dark magic” practitioners of The Princess and the Frog and Hazbin Hotel do not—there are only the victims of the violence dealt upon Black spiritualists that these caricatures have encouraged.
This isn’t a conversation about “politically correct” niceties, but about mitigating the harm that these archetypes have caused against marginalized people and how they can be redirected and salvaged for better stories. Many of the stereotypes Avantris has perpetuated are easily dismantled and reskinned, as their characters have enough complexity and love put into them that they are able to escape the status of a caricature and, as they grow as artists, Avantris is also doing their own part to walk back harm—however, harm has been perpetuated nonetheless, and here’s some way we can avoid that as fans while remaining in conversation with Avantris’ work.
CW: Discussions of demonization and racist violence. Some sources may include depictions and further discussions of racist violence and murder, slavery, and more.
To get started, there are multiple religions and practices that get confused in this conversation—most prominently Haitian Vodou, West African Vodún, Louisiana/New Orleans Voodoo, and Hoodoo. Hoodoo is a completely different conversation, referring to a complex set of spiritual traditions and beliefs developed by enslaved African-Americans influenced by African and Indigenous American practices that has little to no bearing on this conversation as it pertains to canon. Haitian Vodou is a religion that emerged from a combination of West African religions like Vodún and Roman Catholicism during the Atlantic slave trade. New Orleans Voodoo is an American folkway blend primarily based in Haitian Vodou, and is the one that Kremy is inspired by, from Richie’s own account.
The use of the term Voodoo is largely controversial; it is a misspelling of Vodou and represents the bastardized version of the religion first and foremost (see the article “How the word ‘voodoo’ became a racial slur” by Professor Danielle N. Boaz)—however, many practitioners in New Orleans have reclaimed the term, and it is widely used to differentiate New Orleans Voodoo from Haitian Vodou and other religions, so that is how it will be used here. Information about Voodoo as it appears in New Orleans can be very hard to find; the places that market themselves as valid sources are also very explicitly also marketed towards tourists and shops, making the information they have hard to verify, with surface-level information (i.e. Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo, the Voodoo Spiritual Temple, and Sallie Ann Glassman’s place). The most recent, in-depth, and accessible source I have found comes from High Priest Robi Gilmore, who has a lot of interviews and information out there, particularly about daily routines if you’re interested in learning more. Though this example is definitely more focused on entertainment and the show runners, he very recently made a cameo on a Try Guys video as well where he discusses a lot of specific stereotypes and history in a demonstrative way.
This video by The Guardian is a brief but complete review of the stereotypes around Voodoo originated and how it became bastardized in pop-culture; it summarizes it much better than I can, and includes additional readings in the description that go more in-depth. Some of these are specifically about Haitian Vodou and others are inaccessible without purchasing or having a jstor account, but "The Appropriation of Magic: How White People Demonised Voodoo" by Nadia Lee and "Why Can’t Black Witches Get Some Respect in Popular Culture?" by Angelica Jade Bastién are free to access and are wonderfully written pieces that explore the subject deeper. The stereotype of the malevolent, cannibalizing black magic priest is one explicitly created and used to support the colonization and subjugation of Haitians and Black Americans, perpetuating the idea that Black spirituality is barbaric, evil, and dangerous through images of loosely conceived shadow magic, animated skulls, and human sacrifices. It is portrayed as something distinctly animalistic, violent, and dangerous, accompanied by caricatures of Black spiritualists as hypersexualized, aggressive, and threatening, either supremely manipulative and cruel or too foolish and primitive to understand the fault in their work. It warped the benign, community-focused, and healing tenets of Vodou into something that could be easily poised as a danger to the God-fearing white Christians in the United States: a new trend for the pulpy horror movie of the week, a cheap tourist attraction to shill and gawk at, something controversial and edgy you can use to get back at your parents and drop when convenient. Most importantly, it was a tool to weaponize against Black people, particularly Haitians and Haitian-Americans into modern day, to discourage critical humanitarian aid after natural disasters in Haiti, encourage threats of violence and deportation against Haitain-Americans, and enact massacres of Vodou practitioners in Haiti, directly encouraged by colonial rule and stereotypes.
Kremy is not fully explored because, well, it’s Witchlight—it started as a module campaign in a last-ditch effort to save the channel and halfway through the crew started a project that cost them a massive amount of their personal funds and hit them with burnout so severe Mikey almost checked himself into a mental clinic because of a psychotic episode. Discussing Witchlight characters in this sense is hard because there are a lot of moments where they are warped and flanderized to some degree, because commercial and algorithmic success is the antithesis to nuance, because of the need for the crew to keep food on the table, and because their characters have only recently been given the attention and time needed to grow and develop as they would in their other campaigns. The crew has openly talked about the characters not being developed to their standards and how fandom has added more nuance to them in their place, and how they hope to fix canon characterization with the current timeline of Witchlight. Because of this, much of this critique might become less viable as more emphasis on the nuances of Kremy’s character is developed further and farther away from the Baron and the stereotypes around Voodoo, as Richie has already shown an interest in with more recent episodes containing more nuanced expressions of Kremy’s character and spirituality, and reimagined versions of Kremy removing flanderized aspects of bastardized Voodoo entirely in favor of a more complete and thematically solid character.
Even with these moments of flanderization, Kremy is not portrayed as a one-dimensional caricature; he’s far from a good person, but he has motive, complexity, and a connection to Baron Samedi that has substance to it deeper than a patron (re: his comments about the afterlife with the Baron). Kremy’s deal-making and character is not the fault of his connection to the Baron—he’s not not portrayed as the aggressor here, as some evil analogue for Satan, but as a neutral force in the world that is used by Remy, the true aggressor, to reach his aims, something I believe is further explored in Prime. The Baron is explicitly a neutral deity, a purveyor of power no different from other spirits within Avantris; this subverts the stereotypes of the loa as uniquely dangerous and animalistic, and Kremy, too, is not portrayed as uniquely evil or stupid for his choices.
However, Kremy’s character, many of his powers, and many of the powers of Garou and the Baron are still based on a misunderstanding of culture. The use of a real loa and the explicit referral to things as “voodoo magic”, “voodoo powers” flagrantly perpetuate stereotypes about Voodoo that continue to hurt people today by characterizing them as dangerous, as dark, as evil; even if they’re portrayed as something that’s “cool”, it still feeds into that caricaturized, demonized version of Voodoo that perpetuates harm and misinformation. They’re not portrayed as a realized system of spirituality or religion, but as a caricature of vague ideas of dark spirits, handshakes, and neon lights that do a grave disservice to the religion and its practitioners.
In The Crooked Moon, Avantris bypasses this by separating the aestheticized version of Vodou and Voodoo from the religion by dubbing it “Jinxcraft” and fleshing it out as a real practice, without stepping the line into appropriation and presenting well-developed explicitly Black characters front and center in the chapters relating it—yes, not the art for the Jinxcraft Rogue, but that’s something to take up with the art director—and using them to tell a story about how that magic is abused when it is separated from its role in the community; how it is transformed by bitterness, greed, and ostracization. I wrote a little bit about that before, so I won’t repeat it here, because it’s not completely pertinent. This separation, though not exactly connected to Kremy, is something that can work well to maintain Kremy’s central theme and a positive representation of Voodoo to bypass its reputation while not overstepping boundaries. In alternate versions of Kremy, the Voodoo elements are removed completely while still maintaining his themes easily, but there are ways to integrate his relationship with Voodoo in a respectful way. You can’t have both, though—either separate it from the story, or go all the way with his spirituality.
If I am allowed to digress very quickly, there’s a post floating around with a screenshot of a page from the Crooked Moon of the Jinxcraft Rogue with a big red circle around “voodoo symbols” in the background, but I’m gonna be honest, that’s just blatant misinformation. The symbols used in the Crooked Moon are not vèvè; though they share a similar appearance to the bastardized, aestheticized, and commodified version of vèvè, they are very, very distinctly not vèvè. If anything, they appear closer to nsibidi, the Bamum scripts (though there are no direct copies), alchemical symbols, and full-on creepypasta symbols than anything. If you’ll forgive the shitty canva diagram, here’s a visual example:
I understand the hair-trigger reaction to seeing anything like them—Vèvè, sacred spiritual calling cards drawn in a variety of materials on the ground to call loa and communicate with them, are oft appropriated and commodified for aesthetics, desecrated and demonized for the sake of a “cool” factor or visual shortcuts of evil. But point blank, these aren’t Vèvè and share little to no resemblance. Like, you’ll probably find some crossover between them and Shutterstock aesthetic things marked as “voodoo symbols”, but they have no actual significance and are not being marketed as such. They align with the aesthetics of the trope, but do not cross the line of actual appropriation of sacred vèvè or any other characters significant to Black spirituality like nsibidi.
Again, Avantris separates the idea of Jinxcraft from the sacred parts of Voodoo as to not cross the line into appropriation while maintaining the thematic elements of the bastardized Hollywood version to tell a story with the interesting aspects of the archetype without spreading misinformation or overstepping on sacred ground. They had Omar Ramadan-Santiago, a cultural consult with a PHD in Africana studies, and B. Dave Walters, an outspoken anti-racist Black creator in the D&D space working with them in The Crooked Moon, and though this isn’t a guarantee they’re incapable of causing harm, it is very very unlikely that either of them would condone rep that bad. There is conversation and critique to be had about the aesthetics (Why is xyz used to appear threatening? Why were these specific symbols chosen to evoke this image?), but if you are claiming that they are using vèvè by labeling a bunch of random-ass scribbles as “voodoo symbols”, kindly, you are betraying a massive lack of understanding of Vodou and Voodoo as a whole and should do more research.
If we wanted to maintain the specific connection to Voodoo, it’s going to be a careful balancing act between maintaining the aesthetics and specific realistic but non-offensive cultural signifiers while dropping the “dark magic” parts. If you choose to stick with it, I encourage you to do research into the actual elements of Voodoo and Vodou within daily life within your lane—don’t be overstepping into sacred and closed practices, don’t be drawing vèvè and invoking shit when you don’t know what it means, but understand it on a level deeper than ominous jazz and random phrases thrown around to summon an aesthetic. Voodoo is a closed religion, and though there are resources out there if you want to examine it, it is important not to treat it as a gimmick or toy to play with—again, don’t go half way. Integrate and examine Kremy’s relationship with the Baron as a patron, spirit, and religious figure in a way that is respectful and in line with Black spirituality and religion. Introduce other worshippers of the loa that aren’t making crazy ass deals every five seconds and trying to scheme their way to the top, that have a much more benign relationship that doesn’t involve warlock pacts and instead regular worship and celebration. Re-emphasize Kremy’s guiding theme and conflict—this is a hole he dug for himself, and one that he keeps on digging, with deal after deal with Remy and the figures of the Feywild, not the Baron.
Also consider Baron Samedi and be very, very careful with how you write him, if you do at all. There are ways to write loa in a respectful light, but those are the ones rarely presented in media; do your research, don’t portray him as solely evil or particularly hypersexualized, and pay respect to the mythos inspiring him. There are ways to fictionalize gods and spirits while being respectful, and it’s something done all the time to Western myths and mythologies. The show Fright Krewe, though a kid’s cartoon, is a stellar example of this, centering Black characters and stories in a plot that is explicitly and whole-heartedly inspired by Louisiana Voodoo in a respectful and reverent way. This doesn’t mean that you have to dedicate thousands of words in your fic to his relationship with religion, but pay attention to how this may impact little things like his daily routines, how it may further impact how he sees the world, his views on death and life; there are little nods to this in canon, particularly in more recent episodes, and little nods can go a long way in emphasizing Voodoo as a religion and developing it as a lived-in part of Kremy. Details like how and when he prays, how he refers to his ancestors and family, or specific instances where he is not doing that, how he is separated from these inter-communal signifiers of identity and community and the meat of his relationship with the Baron, both work to identify his religion and spirituality as a serious and respectful depiction of a fully-realized religion.
If we want to move away from the topic of Voodoo entirely—if that amount of research is too much, if that’s not what you want to go for with his character, or just if you want additional ways to separate him from elements that cause harm—lean further into Kremy’s other inspirations, maintaining that theme of gambling with his life and the style he embodies without relying on misconstrued concepts of Voodoo. Richie explicitly cites New Orleans and King Dice from Cuphead as direct inspirations and has made multiple references to Cab Calloway; non-explicit but definitely related inspirations include the Jazz Age and Swing Era as whole, and the archetype of the hedonistic gambler, scheming and sleazing his way into a reproduction of the high life while digging himself deeper and deeper into his pit. We can lean more into the archetype of the 20s-30s Prohibition-era gangsters/high rollers/”sinners” and the time-period relevant themes, the repression of “sinful” behaviors that appeared simultaneous with an increase in the prevalence of organized crime, gambling, and consumerism exemplified by rapidly growing cities like New Orleans. We could elaborate on Garou and his Grinning Sinners more as analogues for mobsters to remove the influence of the stereotype of the “scary voodoo cultists” (if we wanted to maintain the dark magic aspects or even the cultist aspects, we can easily do that by removing the parts inspired by bastardized concepts of Voodoo), and portraying Kremy as what he is at his core, a guy from the bayou who idolized the high life, who got in too deep and has nowhere to fall back on because of his admiration of wealth leads him to disparage and turn his back on his community. The stereotype of the big-high-bigger-lows glitzy 1920s gambler is hyperbolized and ahistorical, yes, but it is largely innocuous if we are to have an understanding of any historical context and does not contribute to current day harm in the same way that misinformation about Black spirituality does.
It’s important to note that the majority of these (explicitly excluding the mob scene and the archetype of the Gambler) are explicitly rooted in Black American culture, particularly in the cultural revolution and establishment of Black culture, art, and wealth in the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age. I don’t believe that Kremy was intentionally supposed to be Black, maybe white Cajun at the most, but I feel like with inspirations as deeply influenced and originating from Black culture, and with a background extremely influenced by class that is inseparable from the conversation about structural racism, making him white in a medium where we have more liberty with his depiction ignores a lot of important context within the metanarrative about Kremy’s place as a “fraud” and grifter, and removes a level of nuance from his character.
To a certain extent, Kremy embodies an aspect of Black dandyism—the push to use high art and extravagant takes on European dandy fashion to assert Black identity, reclaim hypervisibility, and combat stereotypes, and the new wave of Black art that came with the Harlem Renaissance and the Jazz Age. However, he approaches them in a way that makes it clear that to him they are primarily a symbol of luxury and opulence, of produced “high culture” and concepts of self-determination restricted to the upper class he finds appealing. He tries to embody them in a way that is solely self-serving and feeding into biases about who is considered respectable in a way that Black dandyism as a cultural movement was not. He wants to get out of his pit, but doesn’t give a shit about who he has to kick down to climb out of it; he contributes to ongoing corruption and interpersonal inequality while trying to scrape whatever power he can get for himself. He uses the aesthetics and some aspects of Black dandyism to perform class signifiers and assert himself as someone to be respected by the upper class, to gain access to wealth and hedonism with deal after deal and lie after lie, but he is so preoccupied on becoming what he idolizes—the throat-cutting, wheedling, filthy rich bosses looking out for no one but themselves—that he has no way of addressing the disparity itself other than wanting to be someone perpetuating that harm, and no way to protect himself when the people above him turn on him, too.
He never really uses the style to assert his own identity, only uses it to mimic Garou; it is a performance first, and though he does have an appreciation for things of the culture considered higher class in modern day (fashion, jazz, foods like gumbo in some cases, etc.) by real world consumption and commodity, his focus on them is rarely truly personal unless it is one of the few times he opens up about something deemed “unfit” for his persona—something that has a strong connection to his childhood in a poor family. By and large, he is fraudulent in even his depiction of himself, picking and choosing respectable parts of himself and his people that fit the aesthetics of the upper class and kicking everything else into the dirt. Despite the flanderization of many of the Witchlight characters, I feel like this is something that remains very central to his character, and though most likely not meant to be informed by his Black-coding in canon, definitely adds a layer to this discussion about intracommunity relationships, how Black culture intercepts with class and is made “acceptable” to the white upper class by access to wealth or softening by European aesthetics, lateral oppression and class dynamics within community, and how Black culture is stolen, manufactured, and sold back to Black people by white corporations, something perpetuated by Black grifters who make money off stereotypes no matter how much they harm other Black people. His character can be made much more interesting when viewed and written as Black. (And if you’ll allow me to digress, again, I think Starlight Kremy represents Black dandyism in a more complete way; though he still has that idolization of wealth that can bite him in the ass sometimes, by and large he is grounded and has community that OUAW Kremy has no access to so like in general he’s more well-adjusted and not making crazy ass deals all of the time LOL)
I’m not expecting the vast majority of y’all to get into the complexities of intra-community politics and relationships with spirituality in your works. Nobody is entering the LOA tag on AO3 and expecting writing on par with They Cloned Tyrone or Sinners. But being aware of the influences and implications within his character—what parts are distinctly inspired by Black culture, what parts are simple mobster archetypes, and what feeds into stereotypes that perpetuate real-life harm—can help elevate whatever story you choose to write when you remain deliberate.
If you are writing him as Black/Black-coded, be intentional and deliberate with how you show his relationships with white characters; Coalecroux has blessedly avoided one of the most egregious that come with queer interracial couples, where the Black (or just darker-skinned) partner is immediately deemed larger, more masculine, and “sexually aggressive" in comparison to the white/lighter one no matter their appearance in canon. But do keep in mind Kremy’s dynamics within the party and Coalecroux, and how you portray his morality—don’t boil him down to being stupid or one-dimensionally evil and cruel towards his companions. Absolutely, he is a deeply flawed person and has hurt his party members time and time again, but there is more dimension to that than just “he’s a SHADOW GUY who craves evil and serves evil death gods and is letting his friends catch the fall of the deal!!!”
Hair and human Kremy is where I see a lot of common mistakes that aren’t completely egregious, again, but fall into a lot of common tropes; I see a lot of people going for a Cab Calloway conk or finger waves without quite understanding that those hairstyles aren’t just “straight hair with a little bit of a curl”, so their art of him ends up a bit odd-looking and incomplete. If you’re struggling to get a solid grasp on his hair, I’d encourage you to look into those hairstyles specifically and research Black hair of the time period. I’d also encourage you to just let him be bald. Nothing wrong with him being bald. 🤷
In summary:
Establish Kremy’s worship of the Baron as a fully-fleshed out religion in line with how Voodoo is practiced or separate it completely from the Baron and the concept of Voodoo. Don’t go halfway; don’t be weird about it.
Be mindful of how you portray the loa and Baron Samedi if you do at all, and emphasize Kremy’s driving theme, that this is a grave he dug for himself and that the Baron himself is a neutral being. Show other worshippers of the Baron and other Loa that are completely normal and average and not like totally and completely fucked like Kremy is. Introduce Black characters in general, even one-off, that are, like. Normal.
Don’t use actual vèvè for Kremy. There are a lot of symbols that evoke the same aesthetics that you can use that aren’t extremely sacred, I promise you—go take a look at 18th century alchemical symbols, the Bohr periodic table of elements, any astrological site.
CW: Discussions of dehumanization, colonialism, racist hypersexualization, objectification, and fetishization.
Stereotypes about Māori are the result of hundreds of years worth of colonial violence and persecution, invented to caricaturize Māori as either primitive, violent, lazy, happy-go-lucky and foolish people, or “noble savages” not built for modern society, with particular connections to nature and some innate connection to vague concepts of honor, bravery, and pride. It can be hard to sort out fiction from reality here because of how historical evidence has been falsified and staged to create false narratives about Māori being “primitive” and how depictions in media have continuously portrayed Māori characters as one-note characters falling into these categories. They are perceived as a remnant of some vague nostalgia for pre-colonization, pre-modernization “good old days”; a fetishized, objectified other unable to fit into “civilized” society and predisposed to violence, stupidity, and lengthy monologues about the importance of one’s “tribe”. These assumptions of stupidity, laziness, and incompetence contribute to discrimination against Māori across all realms of life, the idea of being “natural warriors” uniquely predisposed to aggression, hypermasculinity, and violence encouraging police brutality and increased rates of incarceration, and the fetishization and appropriation of Māori culture and stories applies onto them a simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibility.
Navigating writing Toa with these in mind is a balancing act, like Kremy, but perhaps an easier one. My only real advice here is to fully explore his character and all sides of his personality in canon, because I feel like he is the epitome of a character that escapes being a caricature by being extremely well-developed and explored. Toa is easy-going, positive, and friendly, sometimes to the detriment of himself and the party, but he is competent despite and often because of it. In the same vein, he is heroic and strong, but this is explicitly because he is Toa, not because of some genetic predisposition as this rare member of a “proto-Aryan” race. He is incredibly kind and good-hearted because he chooses to be, again and again. He is large and strong, but, again, he is exceedingly gentle; his struggle between choosing violence and mercy, balancing his grudges and emotions with his moral code, aren’t as simple as a contrast between some “primitive” inner nature and rational thought, but an in-depth look at human morality. His reliance on authority isn’t indicative of being “primitive”, too, but an exploration of loyalty and a want for a leader as his hamartia—it’s a want for someone else to take the reigns and make the hard decisions, to simplify convoluted politics into “good” and “bad” that Richie is oft to explore in his characters (Varus and Grumley coming to mind in particular). Keeping all of these elements of his character in mind and centered on him as a person first and foremost, separate from some preternatural disposition, keeps him from being stereotypes one way or another.
The decision to make a group of Māori-inspired people and make them goliaths—an inherently large, muscular, and “tough” species, distinctly inhuman and literally stone—is not one I would have made, considering these stereotypes about Māori being inherently physically stronger than Europeans and racist narratives about them not being human. However, I feel like a much more charitable depiction can be offered and portrayed if we move away from the classic D&D goliath and leaned more into a more diverse depiction of body type, strength, and temperament, similar to how the Volcar are presented in Neon Odyssey; they’re a species explicitly coded as Polynesian and connected to rocks and the earth in some ways, but in a way that directly contributes and connects to the stories they’re based on, and in the vizdev sneak peaks Mikey has shared and in their portrayal, they have a wide variety of personalities, skillsets, and builds, and are not characterized as one-stroke stereotypes. If you have the chance to portray other goliaths, particularly other goliaths from the Makani Islands, making an effort to shift the portrayal towards something similar to that can deconstruct the stereotypes attached by ignoring the rigid rules of D&D species and pointing out smaller and less physically-inclined goliaths that re-emphasize diversity within the group and deconstruct the notion that all Māori appear one way, re-establishing that sense of humanity.
It’s often commented by other characters that Toa isn’t smart, but this isn’t necessarily the case in canon—he is naïve, doesn’t understand double entendres, and relies on black-and-white morality first and foremost, but intelligence as understood in an abstract sense as understanding, internalizing, and retaining knowledge is not something he lacks. He is by nature curious and open-minded, with an understanding of the world that is influenced by spirituality and communal wisdom but not as one-stroke as “the noble savage's" hodge-podge of ideas. Toa is intelligent, he just doesn’t have the academic prowess that his companions might have or a jaded, nuanced enough view of the world that he is prepared for betrayal or the schemes of archdevils and demons.
The claims that he is stupid comes from other characters and is not necessarily reflected in the story—he’s not treated as uniquely stupid by the story and plot, but someone unprepared for the ridiculously complex plans set in place long before their time that will continue long after them, just like the rest of the party. That’s an important distinction to make with his character, I feel, because it’s a careful balance to hit in a story—and in Beneath Dark Wings, there are flanderized jokes that tilt the scale too far and hit too close to real-life cruelty. In serious, narratively important moments, however, claims that he is unintelligent are often portrayed in a way where there’s always another character to contrast that and support him, where it is made clear that it is an insecurity Toa has internalized and an insult from others who do not know him well. Here are some examples that I feel make that clear: this whole segment in Ep. 27 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 until 3:31:00), and this moment in Ep. 38. I’m sure there’s more but that’s what has come to mind. So leaning further into that—the fact that Toa is intelligent, just not academic, while leaning away from the same old “wisdom of the ancients and the primitive” stereotype—helps balance out the jokes that perpetuate stereotypes about “uncivilized” Māori.
There are a couple misconceptions about Toa’s character that, though not necessarily more egregious than tropey errors like Jornir and Lufti’s ahistorical fashion, hurt particularly badly because of how bastardized Polynesian culture is in pop-culture; they carry a lot more weight and harm with them because of the refusal for white people to consider Māori people as equals with culture as worthy of respect, as something other than a trope to buy and sell as miscellaneous “tiki culture” or demonize. A lot of these are very simple to change in writing where we have more time to do proper research:
Though tribe is the word used in canon for Toa’s group and is preferred by the majority of Indigenous American tribes, Māori groups are referred to as iwi, roughly meaning the same thing—directly translated as “people” or “nation”.
The blending and ambiguity Pacific Islander cultures are represented plays into negative stereotypes as well. According to Richie, Toa is explicitly inspired by Māori culture, and the majority of his character is, but there are little anachronisms that confuse and muddy the importance—”Toa” means warrior in te reo Māori, and “kama” and "nui" respectively (and roughly) seem to mean “eager” and “large”. It could be coincidental, but the only actual “Kamanui” surname I’ve found belongs to a Native Hawaiian woman, and it bears many similarities to the surname Kamanu that originates from kamani trees native to Hawai’i.
Toa’s “totem maul” is a bit confusing. The design of the maul shares some resemblance to totem poles, but assumedly is supposed to be tiki. Tiki is the name of the first man in Māori mythology and a word that also refers to the humanoid carvings of this first man and other humanoids that are often associated with Polynesian culture; similar versions appear in other Polynesian cultures as well, but we’ll focus on Māori versions here. Though there are large-scale wooden tiki, small stone Hei-tiki are much more common, particularly in the modern day. Pouwhenua are the closest in design and significance to what Toa wields, and also share a name with a Māori weapon that include carved elements, but are spears. In general, traditional Māori weapons include staffs and spears like pouwhenua, clubs like pātuki, and close-contact weapons like mere; Toa’s staff appears to bear the closest resemblance to a taiaha, though there are no exact matches, and the design itself appears much closer to Hawaiian kiʻi than Pouwhenua. His weapon as it stands is pretty stereotypical and has no real base in the real world, but it has some of the basic concepts of a pouwhenua, so it’s not incredibly egregious, but, I don’t know, have fun exploring different weapon designs with these listed here? (https://teara.govt.nz/en/mau-rakau-maori-use-of-weaponry/page-2)
Regarding clothes, his are similar enough to traditional clothing that the general silhouette is accurate, but specific pieces have some inaccuracies and errors. Of course, there’s some liberty to be taken within a fantasy world, but I thought that the topic of what he may realistically be wearing was interesting so here’s a section about that lol. The closest thing to Toa’s “grass skirt” is a piupiu, a waist-to-knee garment made of flax, hanging from either a tātua belt or fastened with a waistband, both often decorated with tāniko that often reflect differences between iwi. They’re modern re-imaginings of historical rāpaki and pākē karure post-European contact to honor and represent Māori culture, similar to general historical everyday wear. It can be worn around the shoulder, but Toa wears it around his waist.
Images from Tauranga Heritage Collection (1) (2) (3) and Te Ara: Encyclopedia of New Zealand (4)
More examples can be found at the Tauranga Heritage Collection and Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand (1) (2) (3) (4) and in kapa haka performances, by groups like Ngāti Rangiwewehi in the Kapa Haka 2024 regionals, Te Wharekura o Hoani Waititi Marae in the 2017 ASB Polyfest, Te Kapa Haka o Te Whānau a Apanui in FestPAC 2024, Te Waka Huia in the 1996 Aotearoa Traditional Māori Performing Arts Festival, this group in The Maori Today (1960), or the YouTube channel Te Maurea Whiritoi, though only the girls consistently wear piupiu here. There's a lot of performances with men wearing maro and other types of bottoms, but I'm focusing on the ones with piupiu because they're the closest to Toa's canon design.
You’ll most commonly see piupiu today in kapa haka performances with shorts underneath, though it’s hard to find information about further undergarments for rāpaki and pākē karure. In general, people wore at least a maro for modesty and there are some sources that say that penis cords were also worn, but I haven’t been able to find much on that. People usually walked barefoot, but sandals, called pāraerae, were constructed out of flax and other materials when needed and make sense for Toa to wear on a long journey; historical pāraerae would appear more like these than his canon design, though:
Other sources: https://te-reo-maori-dhs.weebly.com/the-story-of-poutini-and-waitaiki1.html
Toa’s cloak is referred to as a “boar pelt” once in canon (Ep. 17) and is later doubled up with a Nemean lion-esque skin. The lion skin is inconsequential to this conversation because it’s an artifact from his wind spirit friend, but boar pelts are a bit anachronistic in a weird way, because wild boars were only introduced to New Zealand in the 1800s by Europeans and quickly became invasive species; Māori cloaks made of animal pelts/skins also aren’t very common in general. There are a lot of variations of Māori cloaks, some designed to indicate status and authority and others made for more practical raincoat purposes, but they were largely woven garments made up of a variety of fibers; they were sometimes paired with materials like feather and dog hair/skin, but this was largely in prestige wear worn only by chiefs and/or nobility, of which Toa is not. There was some evidence of sealskin cloaks before the 1800s, but those went out of fashion as seals became harder to hunt.
On a journey like he is, Toa may realistically wear a kahu tōī, a shoulder garment worn by prestigious warriors longer than a typical rain cape but shorter than a full cloak, with a similar shape and texture to the pelt in his official art and added protection from the elements and disguise at night. He could also wear a pākē (also known as pūreke) (which may also be an umbrella term for Māori rain capes?), a rough rain-cape that’s shorter than a full cloak and retains a similar shape and texture to the pelt in his official art, or a whakatipu that serves generally the same purpose but is better made with a different silhouette and covered with “tags” instead. There are a lot of variations with different fabrics and styles in cloaks, but these were the ones that jumped out to me the most.
Awhina Tamarapa rāua ko Patricia Wallace, Māori clothing and adornment – kākahu Māori – Ngā taonga tuku iho – traditional Māori dress, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/maori-clothing-and-adornment-kakahu-maori/page-1 (accessed 13 May 2026).
Here’s a really in-depth review of Māori clothing if you’d like to look further into it: https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/items/4a6e5f0f-9a4f-4126-999e-3b846a9985d6
Toa showing so much skin isn’t necessarily sexualizing him, and the way that I have seen people insinuating that him “not wearing a shirt” is sexualizing him feeds into a long history of the hypersexualization of Māori people rather than deconstructing it. Modern standards of modesty did not have much of a place in Māori culture pre-Europeans; toplessness was the norm for the majority of people unless accented by a specific cloak. European misunderstanding and sexualizing of this, combined with orientalist ideas of Indigenous people, is how fetishistic, objectifying stereotypes about Māori came to be. There are moments in Beneath Dark Wings where Toa is sexualized in a normal way, and, separately, where there are comments made about his traditional clothes that are inappropriately sexualized, but appearing in these clothes is not in itself sexual in the core narrative, nor are they in real life, and the distinction between that is crucial. There are some jokes that come off poorly, but the solution to jokes in poor taste is not to cover him up, but instead either fully explore the difference and cultural clash between the Makani Islands and the other character’s Western views of modesty—to interpret and elaborate on this facet of the text for use of in-narrative critiques on these concepts, regardless of the original intentions—or to cut the jokes themselves, not the real cultural clothes.
Māori tattoos are known as tā moko and are very sacred, personal, and important representations of one's spirituality and lifepath. Men typically wore tā moko on their faces, backs, stomachs, and calves. Toa has moko on his face (moko kanohi) and later gains moko across his stomach, but he also has tattoos across his ankles, wrists, bicep and hip; moko in these locations has become more common in the modern day, particularly as tā moko has drawn influence from other Polynesian tattooing styles like Samoan and Tongan tatua. His tattoos are a bit kitschy, as most reproductions of tā moko are, and are a bit closer to tatua than moko in some places, but they don’t appear to be egregiously incorrect or overly duplicative compared to contemporary designs like those found at Paitangi Art and Ink and Arts Elemental. There’s not anything new to say here; tā moko are sacred and unique to the individual, so it’s inappropriate to use someone else's moko for a design of a fictional character unless being given explicit and specific permission. As far as they appear, Toa’s canon tattoos don’t copy anybody else's, so there’s no worries about intruding on anything by using his canon design.
My last point regarding his design is more a critique of the artist's style of drawing faces in itself, but despite having a humanoid face, Toa has little to no traditionally Māori physical features. Ethnicity isn’t one-to-one to phenotype or race, of course, and there are plenty of Māori that share his features and are “white-passing” or are racially white, but there are also many Māori with broad noses, full lips, and darker skin, whose features are often erased or caricaturized in order to appeal to a white audience. I think it would be very nice to include more specifically pre-colonial Māori features in Toa's design to maybe balance that out a bit.
Fandom-wise, there is some tendency to emphasize Toa’s size and “animalistic” behaviors in comparison to other characters that come across in poor taste when considering the rampant dehumanization of Māori and the fetishization of Polynesian men, oft caricaturizing them as larger, “savager”, “bestially well-endowed”, and more masculine than their white partners. Be mindful of the dynamic he has with others in that way; an emphasis on their size difference can be benign in some cases, but when accompanied with Toa being characterized as aggressive, hypersexual, or overly domineering, placed in contrast to a submissive lily-white partner (very often Felix), it very quickly veers into a caricature based in stereotypes of Brown men being sexually aggressive that contributes to a massively harmful narrative. So, generally, making comparisons between Toa and animals in order to make him seem more “bestial”, “domineering”, or stereotypically animalistic and inhuman is ones that contribute to a lot of this dehumanization and should be avoided.
Other than that—
Depict him as he is in canon outside of cheap jokes; gentle, kind, and morally rigid to a fault. Not stupid, not happy-go-lucky, not needlessly violent—just Toa.
Include other goliaths that extend further outside of the “rippling muscles and incredibly strong” stereotype.
Consider looking into more historically accurate clothing for his design if it interests you at all.
CW: Discussions of orientalism and hypersexualization. Some sources might contain further in-depth depictions and discussion of racist and misogynistic violence.
The commodification, fetishization, and romanticization of Ancient Egypt is one that is a product of Orientalization, defining Egypt as something just “exotic” enough to be palatable and consumable as an Other, but white enough that it can be respected by Western culture. In pop culture, it and its mythology have been reduced to sand dunes, the vague idea of gold jewelry and hieroglyphics, and tanned white women in skimpy clothes—something to be pilfered by white archeologists for “respectable” museums, far away from the actual Black and Brown people in Egypt. It is built off of centuries of the pilfering and desecration of holy sites, of false historical narratives and the modern-day image of the “Oriental” Arabic woman. The article "The Depiction Of Ancient Egyptians In Film And TV" by Josh Wilson goes more in-depth if you'd like to take a look there.
This will be a bit of a change of pace from the other ones because Iris is by and large written well. Her devotion to Anubis is fictionalized to some degree and there’s a pop-culture sheen to a lot of her character, but there is a clear respect given to the Egyptian pantheon and to how it operates as a religion rather than just a jumble of myths and concepts. Iris is not a construction of simply gold and cyan paint; her devotion to Anubis is explicitly characterized as religious devotion first and foremost—not aesthetics and flimsy concepts of the gods, but a viable religion that offers its folklore the same respect as any other, albeit through a fantasy lens. Nekhbet is not portrayed as a simple exotic land of tanned white women and sandstorms, but a place as developed as the rest of the world of Avantris, with complex societal structure and its own history and world—mixed historical accuracy, but certainly no Sumeru or other “savage desert world.” There’s some awareness of the bastardization of Ancient Egyptian mythology and culture within the text as well—this moment in Har’Akir stands out to me as a particular example, with Mikey making a direct commentary on how it’s been commodified even within the world of Avantris.
There are certainly some confusing parts of her character (“Iris” is the name of a Greek god; the clichéd “of the sands” surname; her character art’s… robes?) but she has an extremely solid core to her character and a well-thought-out place in the culture. Of course, her characterization itself can be off-kilter as Nikkie navigated roleplaying an unfamiliar archetype, but by and large the core of her character is well-expressed and easily understood. Something that I feel may not be apparent to people that haven’t watched Beneath Dark Wings but is very important is that she is not hypersexualized as many characters like this are—she can be sexual, as Nikkie’s horribly creative collection of innuendos can’t be contained, but she is not an orientalized, objectified cut-out of the idea of an Egyptian woman. Any sexual jokes about her are explicitly started by her and hinge on her being very confident about everything while simultaneously extremely sheltered, leading to an extremely strange concept of sexuality that’s absurd and fun to explore. She’s not the object of fetishized desire, but a fully realized woman who has the power to summon an extremely well-endowed statue at will and takes it.
Similar to Toa’s, Iris’ clothes aren’t extremely egregious compared to the other general inaccuracies in Avantris design, but they sting particularly badly because of the misappropriation and bastardization of Ancient Egyptian fashion and the hypersexualization of Egyptian women. In canon, Iris’ clothes are just a bit vaguely confusing; within BDW, she’s described as wearing “linen robes”, lots of gold jewelry, and on rare occasions, a headdress of Anubis. Her official art shows her wearing her headdress and this jewelry (including a period-typical usekh collar), which are generally historically accurate, but her robes are a bit strange—her clothes are similar to shentis, knee-length kilt-like garments fastened with a belt or cord around the waist, vaguely similar to what she wears were commonplace and worn by most people in Ancient Egypt, but they were not typically accompanied by a top piece like hers regardless of gender, similarly to the previously discussed piupiu.
If we’re aiming for vaguely Old Kingdom–era accuracy, an upper-class woman like Iris may be wearing kalasaris, sheath dresses that have the same general shape but cover the stomach and are held up by straps on the shoulders, appearing with and without sleeves. They often started underneath the breasts and were sometimes accompanied with sheer tunics over them. In the Middle Kingdom, cotton gowns emerged, often sleeved and designed to be a single sheet wrapped around the body with plunging necklines, necklace clasps, and styled with a belt around the middle with which one could blouse the top. Other linen dresses appeared that ran from the waist to ankles with straps covering the breasts and supporting the dress from the shoulders.
Photos taken from the Cairo Museum and Metropolian Museum of Art: Old Kingdom: Seated Statues of Rahotep and Nofret (1), Estate Figure (2); Statuette of woman (3).
The styles of the New Kingdom are the ones most commonly represented in pop-culture, the most elaborate, and the easiest to get away with without getting banned on most social media sites—upper-class women wore dresses that were depicted as looser, starting at just under the breasts or at the waist and extending to the knees or ankles, often ornamented with jewels and beads. It was in fashion to make these of sheer or otherwise light linen, drape them with sheer linen, and pair them with elaborate wigs, headdresses, and jewelry, and wear belts or sashes at the waist. These were often paired with a capelet, often also made sheer because of the status-symbol that sheer linen was. The New Kingdom was also the time period that extremely ornamental and bejeweled clothes became common, so that’s where I like to personally aim with how I depict/describe/picture Iris; I assume that Iris would also like the freedom of movement (though the tightness of previous sheath dresses are often theorized to be exaggerated in older artwork).
Photos taken from the Metropolian Museum of Art: Women with Bouquets and Sistra (1) - information here, image sourced here; Queen Nefertari being led by Isis (2); Female Musicians (3); Menna and Family Hunting in the Marshes (4); Menna's Daughter Offering to her Parents (5).
Sources for the written portion are from "Fashion & Dress in Ancient Egypt" by Joshua J. Mark in the World History Encyclopedia and "Ancient Egyptian Fashion: So Understated We Had To Dig To Find It" by Chris Wells for the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
Most Egyptian nobility wore wigs, but Nekhbet is by and large populated by non-humanoids without human hair (and Sekhet specifically tabaxi), so I’m not exactly sure they would develop wigs in that same way? I think the idea of full-body cat wigs would be very funny but definitely wouldn’t appear similarly. Casual headcoverings she may wear when not wearing her headdress could appear close to a khat/afnet headdresses or a simple kerchief—there aren’t too many sources on these that I can find, but this article seems to have a pretty good overview. Daisy Viktoria also has an in-depth review of head-coverings here with modern-day reconstructions. There's also an example here in this statue of Hatshepsut:
Sandals were typically constructed of papyrus, leather, and sometimes even gold—Iris’s sandals are definitely hard to judge for accuracy because she has cat feet, but the general spirit is there!
I’ve seen some very lovely reimaginings here and here that work very well with these details in mind!!! (Please let me know if you’d like the links to your art removed, I’d be more than happy to oblige.)
I’ve seen a lot of people headcanon Iris as Black and make her deliberately more Black-coded, which I personally adore. The most obvious part of this is that a large part of the fetishization and commodification of Egyptian culture is that Egyptians are extremely whitewashed in pop culture, despite being representative of a wide array of phenotypes that include explicitly and predominantly Black groups that are specific targets of erasure and disbelief.
The second part is that Iris is a wonderfully written character, who is compassionate and competent while being allowed to make mistakes and have flaws that make her “bitchy” and stubborn, and is loved and cared for because of it. Black women are rarely allowed to be loved and “messy” at the same time in pop culture; if they take the charge as Iris does, they’re deemed aggressive, proud cunts that need to be “put in their place”; if they’re caring and cared for as Iris is, they’re stripped of all complexity and autonomy in order to appeal to a white audience. There are so many shows and characters dedicated to humiliating Black women that are confident in themselves, that are too loud and demanding and confident in their abilities, but Iris is never the butt of any jokes like that. She is the healer of the party, but she is cared for in turn by them as well; she is competent, but she is not expected to be strong on her own by the narrative, she is allowed to break down and cry when shit gets rough and express her emotions without being demonized for it. Within the story, she is allowed to be just as incorrect and silly as the rest of the party without being deemed stupid or aggressive or evil.
However, outside perspectives of her are not as charitable; even without her being explicitly Black, and her being played by a white woman, regular old misogyny means that she is often mischaracterized as aggressive, cruel, and annoying. Writing her as a Black woman (or any other gender, I see y’all transmasc Iris truthers!!!) means that there’s another level of misogynoir that we have to navigate when considering how our depictions of her come across and makes approaching her character and perspective from a place of compassion and care all the more important, to ensure that we are offering her—and the Black women in the Avantris fandom—the same respect that we offer everyone else.
Because Beneath Dark Wings is a very small fandom, I haven’t seen anybody try to claim that she is uniquely evil or apply these same tired tropes to her, something I was extremely pleasantly surprised by. However, as Avantris grows bigger and more people begin BDW, and with how Black women are characterized in fandom spaces, I worry that there are a lot of tropes within her character that can be flanderized into something harmful and painful for Black fans if she is explicitly written as Black. Here’s some things that I’d try to do to steer clear of that line of flanderization:
Avoid making her vanity and attention to her appearance the butt of the joke through violence. Especially if you are writing her in a more humanoid variant, or with details specifically rooted in Black invention, styles, and culture—i.e. Afro-textured hair and hairstyles like braids, locs, wigs, acrylic nails—it is worthwhile to be careful about how you portray her caring for herself and how you portray her getting hurt in comparison to them. There’s a long-running, pervasive stereotype of Black women being vain, stuck-up, and self-obsessed about “ghetto” styles that contributes to a lot of shame and harm to Black girls who are simply confident in their presentation. This isn’t saying that she can’t be vain, and she can’t be hurt in a way that ruins her hair or something like that; it is just important to be mindful of the purpose behind the scene and how it comes across when humiliating Black women by violating parts of their identity is a very real life phenomenon, and Black women are routinely faced with a massive amount of violence. A fic where Iris’ regularly well-put-together appearance is ruined and she’s distressed by it because it is an extension of a want for control and the way that she demands respect could be thought-provoking and written successfully. A fic where her appearance is ruined to “punish” her for something narratively or to mock her comes off as particularly cruel. Regardless, violence targeting her in ways that hurt her in this way will be read very differently and particularly personally by a Black reader. Mrs. Ice at Creating Black Characters has a very good lesson about that here.
Iris is caring; she is a healer, a leader, a protector, a good friend at her heart. But she is not the party’s Mammy—she is not the party’s mother, she is not only here to further her friend's character development and play keeper. Iris is competent, strong, and capable, but she is not the Strong Black Woman; she’s not impervious to attack, she isn’t built for taking pain after pain from other people’s shoulders, and she needs her friends’ care as much as they need her. Iris is confrontational, confident, and often times condescending and rude, but she’s not the Angry Black Woman who only shows up to cause conflict or yell at someone for the sake of a joke or her friend’s safety, she is a woman in a position of power that has learned that she needs to assert herself before anybody else tries in order to get ahead, she is a woman with an extremely tight moral code that she is more than ready to argue about if needed. Again, exploring all sides of her character is essential to avoiding one-note stereotypes about Black women that perpetuate harm. The capitalized categories here are categories of stereotypes about Black that Mrs. Ice, again, goes into more detail about these stereotypes here.
In summary:
Don’t boil down Iris to a caricature of a Black woman; write her fully and completely. Be mindful of why you might have read her as Black initially—it is out of interest in the narrative, or because she’s an abrasive character? Just because an initial spark of an idea was rooted in stereotype doesn’t mean it has to remain that way with attention to the narrative and the portrayal of her character.
Be mindful of how some character design details relate to orientalism.
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