white lgbt youtuber defends white lgbt published author publicly attempting to "white-ify" a character of color, calls it "very... Oh dear," refers to author's racism as "panic and fear about not knowing what the right thing to do was," seems to also partially blame said racism on "a lot of angry voices [saying] different answers." white published author then immediately uses white youtuber's defense of their racism in an attempt to shield themself from all criticism. and the initial defense from said white youtuber was in response to a black commenter on youtube who did not feel particularly empathetic towards the white author for their repeated racism and white fragility in response to critique of said racism. deeply typical and deeply disgusting.
per the end note on my “final thoughts” post i felt it was necessary to comment on this, especially after i saw the part where mx. stothers once again used any defense of their obvious unexamined bigotry as a hall pass to simultaneously; defend said unexamined bigotry, deny that they clearly still hold it, and dismiss any criticism regarding it. and no, their mutuals sending them links to "how to write black characters" youtube tutorials after they profited (and continue to profit) off a book containing a grand total of two black characters that were so inconsequential to the plot most people didn't even remember them is not examining their bigotry. i mean at the very fucking least they, being a published author with a multi-book deal from a well-known publishing company, should donate a percentage of their earnings to canadian charities led by people of color. if they've already done this, they should do it again, and periodically, as long as they continue to receive royalties from this godforsaken book.
deciding to post about it with a disclaimer at the top about how "if it's inappropriate for me to use this as a defense against my racism let me know and i'll listen uwu" is a little stunning though. yeah, cause you certainly listened to your critics the last time, right? definitely didn't use a mass blocker on all possibly critical posts or anything.
the other part of their post that struck me was the underlying idea that, given the necessary amount of criticism, most people would buckle under the weight of it all. consequently, the only avenue left to them would be typing out and posting publicly a rambling screed about how they initially dismissed anyone who had an issue with the underlying racism of their writing until they got so much criticism regarding it that now they simply had to make two characters of color "Caucasian 😬". (yes, two, because eres was domitia's mother, so it would also be "white-ify"ing a preexisting character of color who was repeatedly referred to as "mongrel" throughout the entire book.) and yet, no matter the amount of criticism, neither i nor anyone i know would ever do that. that's not "grace," or "intelligence," it's basic anti-racism.
i also wouldn't make lgbt characters cishet, or autistic characters neurotypical. while it's not like they didn't get criticized for depictions of those marginalizations as well, perhaps since mx. stothers is personally both, it felt a little too close to home for them to ~straight-ify~ cameron or something. although they did still make merulo essentially abled again, despite being disabled themself, so maybe i'm off base here. i guess only they can say for sure, which they (allegedly) most likely will as soon as they (allegedly) check their critics' blogs on an alt account again.
i do kind of wonder how often they (allegedly) log onto their (alleged) alt account. is it like, a once a day thing? or maybe it's a sort of ritual, like, first in the morning with coffee, and last in the evening with caffeine-free tea? we'll probably never know.
(credit to @yiddishfisting for the screenshots.)
