is racism bad in the twisted wonderland fandom? im just curious seeing the treatment of bipoc character designs. seeing minajael side by side with jasmine is truly an experience. the guy is so whitewashed
i personally haven't seen any racism in the twst fandom but also im not personally looking out for it...
but yeah i do agree some of the characters are sorta whitewashed. even in canon. i've got the twst anthology manga which is made by fanartists and there's one story where they made leona's skin color the same as all the more white appearing characters n it kinda bugged me...
leona for reference
im very white i may not be the best person to go to when it comes to fandom racism. if anyone has any input feel free to rb this with it and stuff
As a poc person I can definitely say that yes the fandom is racist and we have racism in the game as well, let me explain it and it's gonna be a long explanation cause this things have been bothering me for a while now.
In the game racism:
So let's start here, humm this one is very subtle so you have to be aware of have a similar experience with this exactly racist act but starting in twisted wonderland world we have different races, Fae, humans, merfolk, beastmens and all, so these races among themselves and towards each other's have really different treatments like among the merfolk canonically Azul as an octopus mer was seen as lesser kind of species between the others merfolk showed in his own flashbacks, being an octopus mer and being chubby made him a bullying target.
now speaking generally the beastmens receives the worst treatment in the game between the other races like for example on Rook school uniform vignette "Leona's weakness", Rook is hunting Leona and he goes to Ruggie to get Leona's weakness and he grips Ruggie's tail and pet it and Ruggie is so uncomfortable and telling him to get off him but Rook keeps touching him without consent and even threats ruggie saying that his fur would do a good carpet or something.
Then on Jack's labwear vignette " will that be all part 2" he is working on the mostro lounge and Floyd starts calling him a good boy and Jade is like can we keep him? And trying to pet him and touch his ears and Jack tell them to leave him alone and do not touch him and azul comes to put a cherry on top saying that he would be a good guard dog.
Them we have the worst case of racism in the game that is Leona's, if you start to pay attention you can clearly see that in the game every freaking time we have a scene with Leona and any other character 70% of them is this other character being passive aggressive towards Leona without a reason to, they even go as far as to get out their way to be rude towards Leona, for example during book 6 we have the boys in confined on a room cause Styx is making a research with one phantom and Riddle, Vil, Azul, Jamil, Leona, Idia and ortho are there playing games to kill time and when it comes to Leona's turn to play they start to gang up against Leona to tease him and comparing him to a cat and all until Leona get away from them and this atitude is only towards Leona specifically before when it was Riddle's turn to play nobody said a thing except for Idia who was yapping about the pros of gaming and Azul who wanted to compete with Riddle and that's it no comments made to sting or passive aggressive lines and back handed compliments same as for when it was Vil's turn to play.
Other's example we have during Leona's school uniform vignette Vil wants him take photos with him to the school newspaper and Leona says he doesn't want to, they could just write something about the housewardens but Vil wants to and start to pestering and at some moment they start bickering and Vil says that Savannaclaw students are boorish and that Leona is repugnant
Then on Malleus ceremonial robes vignette he says Leona's is a wild beast
And for the last example during Malleus dorm uniform vignette part 1 we have the housewardens except for Malleus on a meeting with Crowley and instead Lilia is there and when they starting discussing Malleus lack of responsibility one of the housewardens says unnecessarily something kinda even Leona's lazy ass comes like Leona is some kind of useless prick when in fact we have the canon information that he did became a housewarden in his first year, never lost a meeting and when he needs to fill his duties as Savannaclaw's housewarden he does it like during book 5 when the boys of sports clubs are organizing the event and yuu sees Leona's doing his job and building the stage with Jack and Ruggie and all, the dudes in Savanah respect and obey him like is shown during the beanfeast event before the game itself starts we have the day before in the dorms and when it shows Savannaclaw we have 2 students fighting but when Leona tells them to shut up and go to sleep they do as he says
The Fandom racism:
Now is where things kinda start to get criminal. Let's start with the worst case of racism.
Jamil viper, some people in this fandom put Jamil in an "arabs are terrorists and sexual predators stereotype". Before we had actual Minajael design and him on game, just when we got the news that we would get a twisted version of Jasmine some part of the fandom on X and TikTok were making comments about "how Jamil wouldn't control himself towards twisted jasmine" talking about that scene of Jafar and Jasmine in Aladdin with the red gown implying that Jamil is a sexual predator and would harass twisted Jasmine then before that we had on the fandom people drawing their white oc's again on that scene of Jafar and Jasmine once again, there's no discussion about how sick this is.
The sexualization of the animal characteristics of Savannaclaw and Malleus the way people ignore the beastmens and Malleus animal's characteristics until is time to make a sexual/erotic headcanon or fic about Malleus having two dih's or the Savannaclaw boys and the yn in a predator/prey situation
We have other's situations as well like the way both Leona and Jamil get painted like volatile, violent, cunning men that would do anything for power even going as far as hurting other people, when those two are nothing like that,-and it shows during book 7 how Leona's own mind made his dream a nightmare out of guilty of the possibility of hurting his brother and nephew, as for Jamil in Japanese the original language of the game it says he is a slave not servant like the english ver says and can you blame a slave for wish freedom? He was wrong for making those things to take Kalim out of school, but that doesn't invalidate his feelings, he is a 17yr old boy who only knew slavery he had to make himself small cause Kalim is the asim heir and while kalim is not the responsible for the slavery in the scalding sands he still is someone who gets benefits from that sistem and haven't spooke against that at all and since Jamil is his personal slave is of course he would project his hatred towards someone in power and that someone was Kalim- ,it'salways used as an argument for their racism stereotypes is the fact both Leona and Jamil hurted people during their pre and during overblot when in fact every single one overbloter hurted physically someone pre and during the overblot not only them but when it comes to the white overbloters this fact gets simply erased from their minds, example Azul literally for two years straight trapped and enslaved the first years with his contracts and made they work on mostro lounge without payment and from the time he opened to time to close the restaurant and when they complained he send Jade and Floyd to beat them but somehow his pre overblot terrible acts are forgiven like pre overblot Vil who tried to KILL neige purely moved by envy and his self depreciation feelings and nothing else and never had to deal with the consequences of his actions cause he got Rook and Kalim making excuses for him 2 minutes before trying to poison neige, what isn't the case for Jamil and Leona who years after the book got released are still holding accountable for their actions and had to deal with the consequences right after their overblot, this is not an excuse to neither Leona's or Jamil's actions just facts that they are still disliked and mistreated by part of the fandom for what they did meanwhile the other's are not.
Now the Shippers:
Let me get this clear I'm not saying you can't shipp those characters I sincerely don't give a fuck, this is showing the problematic dinamic some part of the fandom create around those shipps that are indeed stereotypically racist
Since this is long enough I'm trying to keep it to 1 or two examples
Leovil
Let's start with the same plot/dinamic people give them of Leona being this black brute, salvage, aggressive and super emotionally volatile boy who doesn't know how to act in society and it's openly rude and lash out on everyone and Vil the white savior who domesticates him and teaches him about love and etiquette, and they have this really aggressive sex encounters after a fight and Leona is always the asshole emotionally unavailable who always make Vil cry and blablabla.
Bitch no
First of all Leona Kingscholar is a motherfucking PRINCE, he knows better of etiquette than Vil will ever know, he likes to play chess and translate books for ancient languages for his own fun, he is not lazy he is a clear representation of depression he doesn't do things cause it will cause him too much energy, he is struggling with depression and Leona never has acted in physically aggressive away toward others or lash out he only did that during his overblot, he is not blind to other people's suffering or struggles like they paint him to be, he is observant during book 6 he knew what kind of person Jamil was and what he needed to hear to improve himself, he gift to epel a bunch of merch from his favorite spell drive team, let Ruggie take money from his wallet cause he needs it and doesn't say a thing, amuses baby cheka while pretending to dislike him and Leona is respectful toward women is canon he send pictures of himself to his sister in law cause she asked him to, accompanied Sally on the Halloween event and was a gentleman to her the whole time he is not a brainless brute women hater.
