Anonymous asked: I think it's weird how your only black characters are subservient to Alec in some way. POC are only worthwhile in your story centered around whiteness and privilege if they're abused or controlled apparently? It feels deliberate
I don't agree with the equivalence of "POC = Black", but for your purposes we can focus on the two major Black characters I've named so far in the narrative of Alec, Viola, and Isabelle Underwood: Clemency Holt and Phoebe Bingham. For those unfamiliar, Clemency is the priest who performs Isabelle's abortion when she's fifteen; Phoebe is Alec's longtime lover, who eventually leaves him when they're both in their fifties or so after decades of an on/off affair. As another Black character, there's Virginia Temple, a friend of Isabelle's after she leaves Alec, but I don't think I've mentioned her at all so I'll leave her out of this conversation.
As far as your point goes, I think there are two important things about both these characters: that they're hand-chosen by Alec for a purpose, and that they retain their own agency within the story. I'll address the former first. Alec is the most powerful major character in the narrative, and that's by design. For realism and for the purposes of the themes I choose to focus on - of isolation, abuse, power dynamics, and privilege as you said, although I don't agree that whiteness is a major theme of my storytelling - Alec, a rich white man from old money who's willing to leverage absolutely anything, no matter how cruel, in order to get ahead....of course he's the big cheese. Of course he gets to pick who he surrounds himself with; historically, men like him did just that. If Phoebe and Clemency were not people Alec believed he could capably manipulate, they would not be part of the story.
As for my second point, the entire purpose of both Phoebe and Clemency as characters is their agency and decision-making within the societal framework they're given. Phoebe is not abused by Alec; she is his willing submissive, and even then, that dynamic only extends as far as their sex life. She's capable of standing up to him and does when it comes to what's important to her, like her career, her independence, and her child, and I would say she's far from his puppet. Clemency isn't abused by Alec either, and chooses to accept Alec's control in order to further his own aims - to escape legal consequences for his past as a serial killer, to have a peaceful and prosperous new life in Odiham. Clemency's failure to shake Alec's control when called for has disastrous consequences for Isabelle, and he recognizes that and does better in the future, surreptitiously implanting the idea in Isabelle's head that she deserves better than the total subservience Alec insists on.
In short, if you feel that the role of the Black characters in the story is deliberate, that's because it is - on Alec's part from a Watsonian perspective, and on a Doylist perspective, on mine. None of the Black characters I've written have abuse by a white character as the focus of any of their stories; those who do take orders from a white character do so to further their own aims, not from any inherent hierarchy or narrative push for them to do so. I think that's more realistic than making them magically even more powerful in the 20th century than they would be in the 21st - which they would have to be in order to compete with Alec, who as I've said, is at the top of the ladder because that's what British society has historically demanded.
As for people of color more broadly, I have a number who exist outside Alec's control, but they primarily exist as the narrative leaves Alec's control (naturally) - i.e., after Isabelle leaves. Her friends Starlet and Virginia are half-Chinese and Black respectively - her friend Saifi being Romani, which is a contested area legally but which still qualifies as a racial minority in my opinion - and none of them suffer from the problems you've presented. I think part of the misunderstanding here is that I have yet to seriously address that part of the timeline, in no small part because I'm still building it.
Thank you for taking the time to ask this question! I hope I've addressed your points to your satisfaction, and if you have further questions, feel free to send them in. Have a good day ^^
