Eni

Writer Expressing Universes SJSU Anthro Major Black Literature and All Things of Color

[manikas-whims]

Zutara Nation how are we doing 🥵

[bishanora]

and now to let the zutara authors cook

[honeysucklesoda]

warm zutara

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

YOU. WILL. WRITE. oh you want to write so bad. all the motivation is here. the plot is so good. words come to you so naturally. YOU ARE GOING TO WRITE. RIGHT NOW.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

getting mad at ao3 for being against censorship and allowing all kinds of dark and fucked up fics to be on their platform is like getting mad at a library for not banning books

[sncrlynwtms]

fandom etiquette as a whole died when people who didn’t grow up on fandoms became stans during lockdown, yes, but why am i seeing people openly mocking fics on twitter. why am i seeing screenshots of fics with captions like “bro what is this 😭.” why am i seeing people mock fic writers for not knowing how sports or theater or college or any other organization operates in the real world.

“college is absolutely nothing like this” “why are we writing four people on the team scoring a hat trick in one game” “so tech work is nothing like this, hope that helps!”

if you don’t like a fic, and if you can’t suspend your belief enough to enjoy a fic that exaggerates or ignores real-world orgs, you don’t have to read it. you don’t have to screenshot it and put it on blast for twitter. you don’t have to post a link to it in the replies. the back button is literally there on your phone. it’s not giving baby’s first fandom anymore, it’s giving entitled asshole and it isn’t as cute as you think it is.

[enimilanesa]

Also let's address shipping wars in fandoms. Let's not normalize bashing multi-shippers or regular shippers just because they like a ship you hate (unless its literally an adult and a minor). Especially if the ship they're shipping has genuine research behind it. Nothing wrong with crack ships either. For example I've seen people in the ATLA fandom who ship Kataang literally seeking out Zutara shippers to bash them. There's nothing wrong with Zutara or with Zutara shippers. They deserve a safe space too.

[enimilanesa]

Representation In Fiction

I recently had to make a proposal for my term paper and was confronted with a lot of really good ideas. For reference, my term paper is about representation in fiction and how it's entirely entwined with anthropology as a concept. So, essentially, lack of representation in fiction, especially literature and film, is much more harmful to POC than I think we all realize. It creates a cultural disconnect especially amongst the YA genre consumers. Fiction, as we all know, is a form of self expression, and in terms of anthropology, it's a cultural exchange. When representation is lacking in media, it damages self view, perpetuating the idea that novels are only famous because of their proximity to whiteness, which ends up reflecting with the statistics, unfortunately. As an anthropology major, I just want to remind white authors and filmmakers, especially in the Western Industry, that we have too many resources to learn about POC for you to shy away from adding representation into your content.

To clarify, in case it isn't glaringly obvious, not all representation is good representation. There is no excuse for ignorance in a world where everything is at your fingertips. Claiming you cannot do justice to POC characters is a cop-out. POC characters should never be something you fear if you genuinely care about the quality of your work and do research before hand.

The fear of feeding into your social view within POC communities as a "colonizer" or "culture vulture" ironically makes you seem like one anyway. There is a historical dynamic we need to acknowledge between white people and POC which created the world we live in. That dynamic created resentment, which is further perpetuated by actions done by white people in entertainment positions of power. For example, Emerald Fennell's adaptation of Wuthering Heights blatantly disregarding what Emily Brontë wrote in terms of Heathcliff being a POC, which is quite literally in her writing. So don't be afraid. Don't ignore POC as a whole. Be mindful. Do better to bridge that gap from distrust.