sometime ago, i shared with my roommate my ideas around beast politics in eah. i posed that if the plight of those widely recognized as human existed, as i believe it does within that reality, there would be an interesting but tiring dialogue going on about the intersections existing between beasts advocacy and discrimination.
little argument is needed in my belief towards the existence of prejudice in ever after high. but if you want it.
in the canon, apple white is subjected to and perpetrator of the violence:
subjected to:
her people’s admiration of her beauty rather than her merit as a leader (the value of desirability)
her claim to fame as the fairest of them all, which not only centers whiteness but equates it to goodliness (white supremacy)
initial criticisms that are absorbed concern her weight (evidence of fatphobia, which has also been linked to anti-blackness and classism)
perpetrator of:
blatantly disrespecting her non-human staff, not recognizing their own identities outside what relates to her fairytale
no care towards the plight of her antagonist, an essential part of her story despite requiring her cooperation
initial disregard to advocate for beast student pushed for speaking out against discrimination
my education of our real history cements my position that beasts’ rights activists would have the platform of beasts obtaining humanity/citizenship. humanity is something taken away and earned by the marginalized. there was a point in time where we were resided to “beasts.” i can see the discourse and controversy of the plights being related, the hatred of being in space to what you once were. how many leave others behind in hopes of being seen by those in power as worthy.
within my short research of the representation of beast in fairytales, a part of me stared to question the various media existing with these characters the science of it all, has one thought to explore intimately the differences between man and these beasts. what lies beside the physical, intellectual, and cultural differences to truly separate them more than we’ve separated ourselves? what stops this from being another species of human we’ve separated ourselves from, or the manifestation of throwing those “unfit” for society towards the sidelines? (for a moment i was a little scared of the comparisons i wanted to make, but i do remember the conversations had about how much of horrors antagonists picked at disabled people and how ableist that genre can be. i don’t doubt that there isn’t a trend when it comes to creating monsters.)
whereas other political allegories feed into white supremacist dogma, down the slippery slope of fixing the discriminated/discriminating to a predator/prey dynamic, ever after high stands tall. while the discriminated, the beasts, have a history of violence that would justify aggression & violence from the privilege class, it’s reasoned by the destiny system calling for it. despite the fact that beast is simply playing their role, they are not spared the abuse that comes in reaction—similar to the experience of villains such as ginger and raven. moreover, this arrangement is mostly to the benefit of humans in power. it fits the true narrative of the discriminating class fearing the discriminate for their differences and manufacturing their own victimhood. earlier, i related these experiences to white supremacy and capitalism, but with the relationship most beasts have with animals, one could (and i do plan to) fit colonialism in the mix.
@storybookoflegendsarchive’s posts on cedar is what urged me to break this out of its transcript, so let’s get into what ever after high could have done and what i want to do. making cedar vastly different from her peers to push the narrative that she is DIFFERENT™, works amazingly. but what i felt was missing from raven’s “what’s normal” speech is she did not reference anyone with similar experiences to cedar. cedar is questioning her own humanity and is having it denied from her by the destiny system. whom else is in this predicament: beasts! i think it would have been a great stepping stone for cedar to branch out (sigh) and be in community with other non-humans and embrace not her traditional understanding of humanity, but her sentience! (this is only helped by the fact that she is or becomes a little bit aware of the beast movement and supports it in rosabella’s diary.)
