since theres a homestuck renaissance; white ppl, yall should remember abt the racist stereotypes in the webcomic and try to do better this time when portraying the characters in what you make
its upsetting that i have to see literal racist caricatures in some artwork of certain characters, and its even worse seeing artwork of the alpha/beta/humanstuck trolls being drawn with sickly green desaturated skin
im tired of seeing one thing mentioned when we talk abt the racism in this fandom, so im going to make a huge post regarding the red flags and white supremacist dogwhistles that are noticed and unnoticed within the comic:
content warning for poc// there’s going to be mentions of racial stereotypes, slavery, and hanging.
a lot of these points were made by people of the affected race in these stereotypes. this is not me trying to make reaches, it is just something me and other people of color have noticed.
white people, y’all don’t get a say in what is and what isn’t racist. this isn’t about you. y’all wouldn’t know. people of color, feel free to discuss your own views on this.
in this post, ive posted links that lead to what these stereotypes these characters fit in. all but one are written by black and asian people.
the makaras and chucklevoodoo
gamzee is a black stereotype. his father is never around, he speaks in aave that is constantly mocked and berated as “unfitting”, he does drugs, he does voodoo, he becomes violent when he’s off drugs, and later on in the story, he basically abuses the cop who is obsessed with hanging things.
him speaking in aave isn’t necessarily racist on it’s own, it’s how it was written to mock black culture. which is a common trait you see within the webcomic.
https://commonwealthtimes.org/2021/02/18/aave-is-not-your-internet-slang-it-is-black-culture/
after the webcomic was completed, he was written to be a pedophile and was involved in some weird racist cucking fetish plot point.
kurloz doesn’t talk at all, but he is portrayed as some magical, mysterious voodoo master, which is a stereotype on its own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro
voodoo, as always, is mischaracterized to be evil and mysterious in the webcomic, when in reality it has nothing to do with those things. it’s a real, closed religion, and as a person who family does voodoo, it’s really annoying seeing people appropriate my culture, or make it out to be evil because of a dumbass webcomic.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/voodoouniverse/2015/09/5-voodoo-stereotypes-that-wont-die-help-me-kill-them/
the condesce is described in the wiki to “speak like an italian mobster” when in reality she uses aave, which is another example of it being mocked. it’s used as irony because she’s a ruler who talks “informally” and is perceived as ghetto.
she is under lord english’s control. which basically means, she’s a black woman being enslaved by a white british guy.
meenah uses more aave than the condesce and is also said to “speak like a mobster.”
a common thing in the fandom is that feferi, despite literally being related to the both of them, is portrayed to be either lighter than them, or just white. this is an issue because feferi is the only one who is portrayed as nice and doesn’t speak “informally”, so it easily comes off across as extremely racist and colorist.
damara is also another racist stereotype. she’s portrayed as a japanese girl who speaks in broken english and japanese google translate. she is also sexualized to hell and back within the dialogue and is basically used as just something sexual.
https://nnedv.org/latest_update/stereotypes-asian-women/
the striders are characters whos personalities all have to do with black culture. they all rap and use aave from time to time. (not to mention dave literally used the n word in his blog which was being written by a white guy)
https://www.epidemicsound.com/blog/hip-hop-the-heart-soul-of-modern-black-history/
while white people can like rap, the striders were written intentionally to be white and their whole personality, that revolves around rapping, are another example of black culture being treated as a joke. they are written to be white despite being aracial.
andrew hussie himself & the fandom
a lot of these stereotypes were written by andrew hussie, and a lot of the plot points used with them give off extremely weird white supremacist ideals.
the issues with these stereotypes is obvious. it’s a white person writing them and treating culture as a joke constantly.
and while white people can easily relate to some of the characters, it’s hard for poc to do because every 5 seconds your culture is being mocked.
it’s hard to be in a fandom where nobody really wants to talk about the racism. it’s extremely difficult to call out the racism when you do see it because nobody takes you seriously. and when they do, they just look at you like you’re crazy. for instance, my girlfriend, who is black, educated some people (who were white) on the fact that the condesce was black, and in return they called her hostile and violent.
so when someone educates you on the racial coding of characters, please listen to them. purposely being ignorant to the racist stereotypes because you want them to be white is EXTREMELY racist and disgusting.
the whole point of this post was basically to say: let’s treat poc right this time, let’s be aware of the racial stereotypes homestuck has, and let’s stop using a racist as a reliable source.
titsay
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
theartofmadeline
romaincrisis
