#black-coding

[blackfilmmakers]

They Are Black:

All Members of The Thorns Team

Notable members include: Jett Fillmore, Will Harris, Modo Olachenko, Olivia Burke, Archie Everhardt, Lenny Williamson

Y’know, there was a brief time where I was willing to be a bit more lenient with how folks portrayed some characters in Goat 2026. Not all of them stood out as particularly Black to me. I just figured y'all at least knew which characters were undeniably Black, as in, it wasn't left up to interpretation. But apparently, no matter how obvious the writing and portrayal of the character is linked to their Blackness, y'all still had the audacity to depict them as white, of all things, when reimagined as human beings.

So now I have to say, nah: they are all Black. Every team member here. Meaning when you draw them as humans, they better be Black. This is already a Black sports genre story anyways.

“But what can I do about Olivia’s hair?” Either make them into afro-puffs, use the concept art where she is drawn with Black hairstyles in mind, or base it on Y2K straightened Black hairstyles. Either figure it out or don’t do it, I'm just at that point.

Edit: Thanks to this addition in the notes: We now know that Modo's style is based on a former Black basketball star. Please read

Literally, I can’t imagine watching a movie like this and forming the conclusion that someone like Will Harris is a generic white boy. Truly, what were y'all smoking? So for this series, I do want to point out some possible reasons, some of ya’ll don’t want to see these characters as Black. We know it’s due to antiblackness, but we gotta dig deeper into some of these reasons.

Why can’t Will be Black?:

He’s goofy in a corny way

He’s considerate

He’s small thus “non-threatening”

Typical underdog story you associate with scrawny small loser white boys

“None of those reasons only apply to non-Black characters,” and yet time and time again, y'all demonstrate you believe that to be exactly the case. Your actions speak louder than words here, remember that.

See, Will shares a similar demeanor and appearance to the character Miles Morales: a young inner-city Black boy with a humorous personality, fro-ed out hair, love of sneakers, you get the gist. Hell, there’s talk that Caleb McLaughlin may end up voicing Miles in the next Spider-verse movie(don’t quote me).

The thing with Miles, however, is that he isn’t an anthropomorphic animal or anything like that. He’s visually a normal human Black boy. Unfortunately for non-Black fans, many didn’t know how to engage with that fact. Miles’s character was funny and charming and sweet and all, but they just couldn’t imagine a Black boy having those traits, while also being unapologetically Black. I’ve seen attempts to whitewash his character on the account that his mother was Latina, but then stump themselves learning she’s Afro-Latina. People tried depicting him as a troubled Black youth who steals art supplies he can’t afford, which no…he doesn’t do that. His dad is a cop(awful), his mom is a doctor, and he goes to a private school; they aren’t struggling financially. So when all of those attempts to sanitize his Blackness were met with criticism, non-Black fans then turned all their focus onto Gwen Stacy. That's sadly the common tactic for these guys when they enter a fandom focused on Black stories, they focus on the token white.

Now, because Will is depicted as a goat person, some of y'all decided that was a perfect opportunity to say he can be white, cuz “no one said he couldn’t be,” thinking y'all are clever. We already went over how stupid that logic was, so I won’t say much here again. If you are out here believing that a character looking like this, in a Black sports movie genre is white: skill issue. 

What I will talk about are the characters yall WILL agree are indefinitely Black…but only due to bigoted biases of preconceived notions towards Blackness. 

See, for me, Jett Fillmore is a Black woman because her VA, Gabrielle Union, makes her sound like a typical, old-school auntie who knows how to smack-talk and got game. She was also characterized as someone who had trouble expressing emotional vulnerability and was always hardest on herself. I often see this happen to Black women irl, as we tend to keep to ourselves and close ourselves off, figuring no one actually cares to help us (which does happen more often than not). We live under a system that puts us under constant pressure and hypersurveillance, waiting, and cheering for our downfall. We are expected to help everyone, but at the same time, never to express our thoughts, as that makes us appear aggressive, threatening, and hysterical. That was just an interesting storyline they gave her, and I would have liked to explore that more (how was she not the main character???), but for what we got, the signs were there.

Also, she’s literally a black panther wearing her own Jordan brand; it’s honestly not that hard to conclude that this is a Black character. So for a time, I was impressed to see the fandom depict her as a darkskinned Black woman, cuz fandoms never go that far unless - oh….oh boy

Yeah, so imagine my disappointment to learn the fanbase seems to only agree she’s a darkskinned Black woman, because they see her as an aggressive and angry individual who is “masculine” because she doesn’t have a “feminine body.” 

Idk about y'all, but it’s funny how every other day on this website, we talk about how women should be allowed to express their emotions, allowed to express anger over personal injustice, and allowed to have varying body types without being demeaned or questioned about their gender expression. But when it comes to Blackness and Black women, we all of a sudden can’t find ourselves to extend that same grace and consideration. Why does Jett need to be considered a masculine figure for being a Black athlete? Why does Will’s race AND his gender need to be questioned by non-Black people for not meeting the assumed image of Black boys?

Misogynoir in women’s sports is so disheartening to witness. Our bodies are already masculinized (or called animalistic) enough as it is. You then have to add on top of the fact that we aren’t allowed to scream, get angry, get energetic, be happy, or show any visible disappointment with a turnout, lest you be deemed the villain.

Similarly, we have the character Mane Attraction that fandom will also not argue is Black. You would think it’s because of his inner-city AAVE, his use of diss tracks, or his cornrowed mane he takes great care of (even if they might be extensions, which gestures). But no, looking at how y'all treat Jett, I can only assume it’s because Mane is a big, strong, and aggressive individual bullying the “meek, frail, and feminine” main character. I’m being sarcastic with those traits I used to describe Will btw, because that's how he’s all of a sudden framed when it comes to shipping. No, he's just smaller than the average Roarball player, that was kinda the point. Which you should ask yourselves why being small = petite and feminine...and white. Had Will been built like the other large animal players, I’m very certain yall would label him aggressively masculine for speaking AAVE. 

Basically, a lot of y'all in the fandom are phony for encouraging this behavior, honestly. All this talk of how we want media to stop portraying everything as an assumed binary, only to show y’all want the status quo to remain. So until further notice, everyone on The Thorns is Black. “Everyone?”

Hey, if you can somehow find a way to make Will a white boy, I’m sure y'all can find how to make the other guys Black.

[blackfilmmakers]

Due to some alarmingly ignorant events we’ve witnessed the other day, I now feel compelled to make a series of posts discussing non-human characters that are intended to be Black

Assuming a non-human character HAS to be white is due to whiteness being framed as the default. This tends to lead many to believe that they can depict any character as a white person uncritically. The truth of the matter is that even if the character isn’t human, you can still potentially be whitewashing them. Hollywood (storytellers in general) have had a long history of only ever including poc by depicting them as something inhuman, so it’s not like it’s impossible to pick up these intentions

Often when someone is pointed out to have whitewashed these characters, they become extremely defensive and double down into the mindset of how these characters don’t have a canon real race assigned to them, therefore they have the “right” to depict them however they please

Which, sorry, the writers had some faith in y'all to use critical thinking to naturally come to (what should be) obvious conclusions. Seriously, I’ve seen y'all depict Kung Fu Panda characters as white people, despite the fact that the story’s location takes place in Ancient China and is unapologetically Chinese (depicted by white people but nevertheless). And don’t even try to bring up how “they can be white if they traveled from a distant country,” because y'all shut that down immediately when Black people bring up that we also traveled. We are not doing this “rules for thee, not for me" type reasoning

Essentially, who you decide gets to be depicted as Black or not can potentially be rooted in racial or other bigoted biases. Again, rather than confront those biases, many get defensive without examining what has led them to hold onto these beliefs. And as we’ve also seen, those of us who do call out this behavior are framed as the aggressor for the crime of disturbing someone’s fun by making them feel bad. Believe it or not, antiblackness is not fun; at least for normal people.

So yeah, I feel motivated to do this more than ever. It’s 2026, y'all need to get over the fact that white isn’t the default.

[weirdratblogs]

The issue with the word ‘coding’, in reference to a character being ‘black-coded’ or ‘autistic-coded’ or ‘queer-coded’, is that it’s one of those concepts that people don’t actually look into and so develop a definition for it based off of vibes.

Coding is the use of the semiotics of concepts to influence an audience’s perceptions in situations where actually presenting said concept is impossible, such as due to societal expectations, legal reasons, or in-universe logic.

The Hay’s Codes made it impossible to legally represent the queer community in a healthy and happy way, so queer-coded characters were used in place of actual queer characters. This is also why so many confirmed bachelor characters and pansy characters were used in television from the 50′s to the 90′s. You could make a character as gay as you wanted, so long as it was never actually confirmed and used as a joke.

Characters like piccolo, garnet, sapphire, and ruby are inhuman aliens, and thus can’t actually be black, so they are coded as black. Characters like Twilight, Peridot, and Donatello are all likewise inhuman, and so can’t be autistic, so they are autistic-coded.

You’ll likewise note that plenty of autistic-coded characters were not initially confirmed as autistics. This is because they were merely meant to be seen as quirky or socially awkward, and that it was only the fandom surrounding these series commenting on how much they relate to [insert character] that saw them being recognized as such. While characters that were initially meant to be autistic and confirmed to be so from the start tend to be a mishmash of stereotypes, thus making their place as representation questionable at best.

This is why the use of terms like ‘minor-coded’ are not only incorrect, but also offensive and insulting. People can be short. People can be naive and childish. People can be interested in things that aren’t ‘adult’. 

Saying that sexualizing a character or entangling them in romance because they’re ‘minor-coded’ is insulting to people who are actually like these characters in real life. Hijacking the concept of coding for the sake of being offended by pointless bullshit takes away its power as a tool. Looking at real life people and saying that they aren’t allowed to date, or that someone pursuing them romantically is tantamount to pedophilia is controlling and completely ignorant.

Not to mention the harm it brings to little people, by earmarking anyone who might be interested in them as a creep just because they’re a little person. Not dissimilar to the amount of people who see an asian person with a white person and immediately jump to fetishization... 

Edit to Add: It should go without saying that you likewise can’t minor-code by dint of minors being fucking everywhere and in damn-near every genre. Like, clearly porn is an exception, and fucking hell is it fucked up that there are minor-coded roles in porn, but generally, a series can and will just... add a child if they want a child-coded character... Except for fucking Chappy, but I feel that Chappy’s more the exception that validates the rule.