#insert oc here

[insertspanishhere]

here for if the oc review thing is still up

im honestly not too sure if this is something this blog deals with since this oc's story takes place historically but I don't know of any other blog that can answer some of these questions 😅

cw for rape/forced pregnancy/racism/intersexism

(i don't have any good drawings of the oc at the moment, sadly, but I'll try my best with descriptions)

for a bit of context, she's an oc whose story i've decided to make take place in during the 18th century, under the colonial Spanish Empire. Her mother was a Quechua woman living in colonial Peru who was raped by a white Spaniard and ended up forcibly pregnant as a result. What happens next is something I have serious doubts about and would appreciate your input in. I plan on having the mother go to Spain somehow and give birth to the oc there. Originally, I was going to have her sneak onto the ship the Spaniard had gone onto to take him back to the peninsula and had her track him down because she had no means of providing for the child (result of colonization + she was shunned for having her "honor ruined" as they said historically to rape victims :/) and out of sheer desperation sought out the man who coerced and raped her. I don't know if this is a realistic thing for her to be able to do/even want to do in the first place though, and as an alternative, I'm thinking maybe the Spaniard forcibly took her with him. It'll change a lot of things about the oc's relationship with her father but if it's something far more plausible, I'd be willing to make the change.

For the questions I have dealing with the oc's appearance and story herself:

When I first designed her, i'd envisioned her with blond hair and amber eyes while being visibly not white passing in regard to her skin tone and facial features. Scientifically I'm pretty sure it's possible, just in the extremely rare case where she inherits all the recessive alleles necessary from both parents to have blond instead of dark brown/brown hair from her mother (the Spaniard has blond hair in this case) and amber eyes. My aim for giving her these features is to juxtapose her Quechua and white features in a really racist Spanish society and explore how that affects her life living in Spain during her early years (she eventually returns to Peru). My qualm is that I know in certain portrayals of people of color with these features, the "white" traits are exalted and uplifted as the only "good" part of that person of color's appearance, which is racist. Do you have any advice as to how to steer clear of falling into that kind of writing? And is there anything I might need to change about her design?

Additionally, I'm making her intersex, specifically having PCOS. BIPOC are already overly masculinized by racists, and i'm having the symptoms of PCOS intersect with that in her story. It'll garner remarks like "do all '''Indians''' look like that?" and "wow, they weren't lying when they said '''Indian''' women were filthy, even with Spanish blood too" and "is that really a girl? she kind of looks like a man" from her Spanish contemporaries. Do you think there are any problems with writing her story like this? The awful racism and intersexism is something I definitely want to portray but I don't want to step into bigoted territory myself as I write these issues.

Your advice is much appreciated!

OC review is up. You’re the first slot.

Next time please do this off anon, as the whole point of this was sharing who made it.

Content warning, rape, forced pregnancy, racism, Intersexism 

I’ll start by saying you’re in the right place. Those who know my main blog know I’m a massive fan of Assassin’s Creed and fact check their games to hell.

Please do not make your OC go to Spain, straight up.  

Reasons why:

Apellido: The Spanish practice of giving the father’s surname, which vaguely descends from the Roman custom of recognizing a child through the name of the father, is linguistically rooted in systems of power and racism. For this woman to find her rapist in Spain would basically be forcing the Spaniard to admit a “fetish” for indigenous people (essentially having sex with anyone who wasn’t a white Spaniard was seen as extremely kinky and niche and wrong. Many Spaniards kept the fathering of Indigenous or Black children as an open secret so they could have fun without the moral lashing they would get from admitting they “liked” non white women.  

Article (IN SPANISH): a linguist explains why we here in Spain have two surnames

Spanish “politics” and how they viewed Indigenous people: the very first western indigenous civilization Spain came across were the Taíno of what is today the Bahamas. According to the compilation available at Wikipedia (and in many of Columbus’s biographies that are worth half a drop of brain juice), Colombus’s FRIST idea, ON October 12, was to take six indigenous people as curiosity presents to the Spanish crown. An indigenous person in Spain was, from day one, a cool new attraction at the court zoo.

Wikipedia Contents directory: Columbus’s first voyage

 Due to the concept of meztizado (which literally means mixing), the child is still a second-class citizen. It is realistic that the woman would end up being taken to Spain, but I’m going to add the wikipedia pages to biracial (or, the case of Colón’s “adopted” indigenous son) children of first generation colonizers so you can see exactly how much the historical record cared that these men were Indigenous. And yes, I’m saying men, to prove a point: if the men can’t even get an upper hand after being recognized by their fathers, what else would happen to an unrecognized woman?

Martín Cortés the first

Thomas Rolfe

Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau

“Adoption” or “cultural exchange” cases:

Diego Colón the second

Pedro Moctezuma

José Gabriél Túpac Amaru

Étienne Brûlé

And these are just the wikipedia instances I could recall off the top of my head. 

Let’s talk about the honor ruining thing for a moment. I’m a history buff, but I already said this on my main blog when it comes to disabilities. Why do so many people default to finding the most horrific existence for an OC just because life was worse in historical times? 

The concept of rape being dishonor is very modern, and it directly ties back to what I said about white men trying to hide their dehumanizing attraction to non white women. If they have no incentive to come forward to their families, why would they?  

Edit: thank you to @aztecspurthroatgrasshopper for clarifying that modern terminology means the former members of the Inca Empire prefer using Quechua for their ethnicity! I’ll keep that in mind in future posts, but due to the colonization discussion the original words stay here.

Anyways. For Inca women (Inca is the ethnicity, Quechua is the language), motherhood, sexuality, and the protection of these was extremely important. Here are just a few sources on why your OC’s mother would likely not be driven away for something that wasn’t a consensual decision:

Mama Killa and fertility

European Scientific Journal PDF: Maternity Practices in Native Cultures of the Chronicles of Peru

This is a tourist site, but sometimes you can only get the folklore of a place from 

the people that live there. This one explicitly summarizes that rape wasn’t legal. Ticket Mcchu Picchu

So, no, there is no need to think that being raped by a spaniard, especially right after colonization in the 15 maybe even 1600s, would make others abandon your OC’s mother. 

Alright, here’s where I get funny as well as facetious: you know most indigenous peoples thought blondness meant a person was really really sick, right? As much fun as I have with genetics, justifying a blond-haired, light-eyed, FIRST GENERATION Indigenous-Spaniard biracial character through Alleles ™ is taking me…not very nice places, mentally. You don’t need to juxtapose jack-shit. Just her having a slightly hooked nose, slightly darker skin, slightly narrower eyes—hell, you could even give her a narrow Spanish nose and dark eyes with curly brown hair—and the Spanish would still find a way to detect her biracialness FOR her. 

Her circumstances would already make the Spanish question who this “disgustingly hot and mysterious little colony girl” is, because they did it with any spaniard who wasn’t bleach white within their own country. Using her racial appearance to tell that story is an extra layer of Super Uncomfortable. 

Let’s get to the part about PCOS. Which I do have, diagnosed. However…

PCOS is not necessarily intersex. I have friends with intersex conditions that hav told me it’s ok for me to take the intersex label, but they still ask me to keep in mind that PCOS is, to many intersex people, an invitation to the intersex conversation, not a confirmation that a person is intersex. 

“BIPOC are already overly masculinized by racists, and I’m having the symptoms of PCOS intersect with that in her story.” Again, I’m asking myself why people seem to research first how to make a character’s life to be as down in the dumps as possible and work up from there. If she’s already masculinized by racists, PCOS would be a way for her to try to feminize.

And wow…Super DUPER Uncomfortable unlocked with you casually dropping the old slur as a dialogue test. Do I and my indigenous friends sometimes write with that word? Yes. But we do it for a reason. Your reason is just to show off that you did some of the research, then stopped. I’m not going to add it, because I want you to work for it, but I want you to look into Indigenous beauty standards to realize that a lot of what are common traits of PCOS were accounted for in many societies and are things they thought made women hot. Therefore, her Inca blood and her PCOS wouldn’t be that much of a problem within her community…unless you really want to see your character getting slandered for being biracial? 

Which brings me back to Assassin’s Creed, where my Black biracial pirate is allowed by the plot to stab his absent Spanish father. Basically, everyone learn to give your biracial colonized characters a support group or a blender to put their parents in, asap.

In summary: Ask yourself if you want to portray this stuff or if you just want to revel in the real problems of a race or ethnicity not your own.

OF COURSE, if you are Inca or live in any of the former Inca empire countries PLEASE chime in

[silvermations]

I drew my OCs in the Barbie Trailer mugshot poses.

James and Bryan are just the most confusing partners in crime. An ex delinquent and hardcore weeb.

[jamiragondrawstuff]

Watching Tangled the Series. Uh-huh make me tonight Tonight Make it right Uh-huh make me tonight Tonight Tonight Oh, uh-huh make it magnificent Tonight Right Ah, oh your hair is beautiful Ah, tonight Atomic Tonight make it magnificent Tonight Make me tonight Your hair is beautiful Oh, tonight Atomic Oh Atomic Oh Oh Atomic Oh Atomic Oh

[insertspanishhere]

So, couple of things to note:

This OC does have connections to another OC by the name of Yuseffa Ortiz Serrano and is kinda defined by said connections. However, Yuseffa is also Afro-Latina (specifically being Mexican since that’s where she and her parents were born.)

The world is a high fantasy with fashion based on the 1900s, though most things like continents, geography, and religion are 1 to 1 -- despite some names being changed.

Summarizing the magic system very briefly, spells can be powered by Energy crystals: some countries call them Mana crystals, some use Ki, but the overall point is that these crystals exist. ‘Aether Crystals’ are the name most commonly used because of imperialism, same way Universal Time Zone is ‘coincidentally’ the time of England. (Also fun fact, Mana has Polynesian origins)

Regardless of what term is used for the crystals, they are life energy. While they can be harvested from the air and the environment, they can also come from any dead wildlife.

Isabel De Los Ángeles.

Note: I would change the design if I could to make the purple locs she has go down the front of her shirt. (Heroforge is just very limited and the reason I'm trying to learn blender.

She’s a rich old woman – very old, 70-80. When she was in her prime of 30, her legend became wildly known as someone who could take down beasts thought to be impossible; all you need is a bit of elbow grease and an expertise in herding. Isabel learned to be quite proficient in that, having been inspired by legends of yore – helps that she still had people who were willing to show her the ropes. Though eventually, she figured that there was more to life than just wandering the wilds; she decided to settle down on a place near the coast, tending to animals previously thought untameable and tapped into a surprisingly deep market.

Far deeper than anyone had anticipated, as the creatures she was able to herd ended up producing more mana crystals than otherwise possible. People from all around the world were suddenly willing to make business with her, and well, who was she to disappoint? She went through with these contacts, carefully picking between them to ensure her stockpile of livestock didn’t suddenly go extinct, often consulting with the locals to gauge the population at hand. Eventually, she found herself in a partnership with a company willing to sell these mana crystals across the world; specifically the father of Yuseffa Ortiz Serrano, thus forming a lifelong partnership. (Not romantic! Isabel and Yuseffa’s father are not married.) Still, there was the occasional time where Isabel needed a new creature, and… she was still up for some adventure from time to time.

Yuseffa also used a nickname when her ranching business managed to get off the ground; the Violet Vaquero. This is why Yuseffa has a lot of purple in her design, as Isabel was a large influence on Yuseffa when growing up. In fact, Isabel was Yuseffa’s mentor as Yuseffa’s father and Isabel were business partners. Close enough where Yuseffa often stayed on Isabel’s ranch to help manage the animals and understand the value of labor, or make do when Yuseffa's father was busy. That being said, Isabel was still a bit playful with Yuseffa, often showing her the appeal of less-legal means; she’s meant to be a cool grandmother / grand-aunt who’d let you get away with probably too much, in all honesty. Still fun to be with though!

Isabel also respects Yuseffa too! In fact, the gun by her waist was designed by Yuseffa; it was one of Yuseffa’s early models, but it’s an old-reliable weapon; it can process any Life-Crystal before turning the energy into a superpowered projectile, like a railgun. (In contrast, Yuseffa’s later models tend to be gimmicky, often depending on the element used; whereas the older ones simply used pure energy.) Isabel finds the little kid (to her, anyways) endearing, especially when she invents stuff that simply seems so out of this world. 

In-canon, she’s a legend that Yuseffa occasionally raves about and you (meaning the player since this is intended to become a game) can hear about through other characters that mention her legend. When you finally meet Isabel, she’s tending to one of her personal animals for fun, having some paperwork on the side. Talking to her shows that she’s very fun and chaotic, offering games of dice and cards. Additionally, she’d give some tasks to find animals around the world, as well as a bestiary for any you haven’t found. Though with some being more obscure, she gives you the means to access them via bait. There’s some other stuff, but I feel I’ve gone on for long enough lol. Hope it’s interesting!

YOOOO legend in my ask box hell yeah.

First of all: BLESS. AFRO-MEXICAN. EVERYONE SHUT UP WE GOT AN AFRO-MEXICAN OC.

Your magic system: I like it, Picasso. I based my Black-Colombian tabaxi bard on Caribbean ancestor consultation so you’re fine there. And I see that England.

A Black Mexican Vaquera Violeta with her own legend oh my God if I could empty my bank account for you I so would. I give you some advice on the hair: I have not seen much Afro-specific Mexican culture, but they do have some stitch braids with fresh flowers you might want to use for formal wear?

This IS in fact extremely interesting. I am mentally throwing in a Colombian llanero in admiration.

[insertspanishhere]

OC review is once again UP!

This time I want them to be

Fandom exclusive

MAY be submitted on behalf of others

MAY include human versions of animals (please stay away from Sonic, otherwise fine.)

BONUS CHALLENGE: make them up on the spot for submission

I’ll leave it to TEN asks but will only answer THREE today.

[insertspanishhere]

Hello! I would like to submit for the OC review, if there's still slots open!

Name: Katrina "Kat" Cruz

Ethnicity: Cuban-American

Pronouns: She/her

Kat is a teenager who's obsessed with theater and dreams of becoming an actress one day. Her story begins with her being frustrated over not getting bigger parts in her school productions and having issues with perfectionism. Her arc is about reconnecting with why she loves acting (hint: it's not because she's the lead all the time) and rediscovering the joy of it -- and, ironically, loosening up like this is actually what will help her get bigger parts down the line. It also helps her to develop closer bonds with her castmates and eventually begin dating one of them, because she grows from being cold and standoffish when we first meet her to being bubbly and upbeat when she graduates.

Some of the named roles I plan to give her in her school plays:

-The Narrator (Cinderella's Castle)

-Regina George (Mean Girls)

-Mrs. Potts (Beauty and the Beast)

-Christine Canigula (Be More Chill) (Especially huge for her since it's her first time as the highest woman on the call sheet)

-Stephanie Lauter (Nerdy Prudes Must Die)

-Veronica Sawyer (Heathers)

I'm also considering a storyline where she lands the part of Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice but has to drop out because the weekend of the play conflicts with an out-of-state college interview (She would be a high school senior by this point)

My biggest question (outside of simply womdering if there's anything I should look out for/keep in mind casting a Cuban-American in the above roles), is about a potential early storyline involving Cinderella's Castle. Her role is gonna be a gender-swap, and I really like the idea of her styling her own costume for the show so that she doesn't have to be the only woman who doesn't wear a dress. I was thinking about having her dress be a traditional one that's a hand-me-down from her grandmother, who she's super close with, as a way of showcasing her connection to her family to the readers. So I was wondering if you had any ideas about traditional Cuban formal wear that the grandmother of a modern eighth-grade girl would have with her.

Welcome to the OC review! As always, I’ll take your question point by point.

What do you mean by Cuban-American? Does she have a US-white parent and a Cuban one? Or did she just grow up an immigrant kid in the USA? I ask this because “Kat” is not the Spanish abbreviation for Katherine. Caterina or Katrina is Kata, or Kate (Cah-teh)

Where in Cuba is she from? Is she Black? How does she express that she’s Cuban? How attached is she to her family? Does she have a specific religion?

I don’t really mind that she’s an actor or wants to be one, I just want to warn that “just in case,” Latina women are known as over-dramatic. There are many times I’ve seen my sisters and myself compared to how the women in the telenovelas act, and it’s often from the non-Latino people aware of said novelas. In other words, non-Latinos base our emotional skills on what they see on TV. Would it be wise of me to assume all USAmerican men are conniving dramatic bros because I watched one episode of The Batchelor? No.

Within Latinos, Caribbean women are seen as more fiery and are often ignored because we Caribbean girls are louder or speak faster, so our desire to communicate as much information as possible gets us in trouble sometimes. Keep this in mind if you plan to write any sort of conflict outside her culture.

Note: We do not call clothing from our elders hand-me-down. We call them inherited. It’s an honor to get our outfits from our family.

Traditional Cuban formalwear is really similar to Spanish 17-800s outfits, so I would start with something like traditional dances!

[insertspanishhere]

Umm I hope this is ok! For your character submissions, this is my OC Jack Cordero and his shadow, Verus (both trans men). His family originates out of Oaxaca, with some Mexican Polish mixed in there, but Jack himself was born and raised in what would geographically be New York in our Earth. However, he lives in an alternate post-post-apocalyptic setting where a cataclysmic event happened in 2000 that dramatically altered the geopolitical and geological makeup of Earth, and since then people don't always stay dead. Sometimes, they come back as soulless undead: vampires, zombies, revenants, ghouls, etc.

Jack is a Living Revenant, having managed to come back with a pulse (which does make him a bit Weird and Different compared to the undead cast). But he still lacks a soul: it became entangled in his shadow, animating it into a ghostly version of himself.

(Jack and Verus ultimately have the same aesthetic preferences, but have vastly different energy levels. Verus is too tired to do all that, he just puts on whatever's warm)

All those who come back Wrong in this setting, as Jack has, suffer some involuntary urges that can be pretty destructive and gnarly (not least because they all feed on the living), but it's noteworthy in the story that anyone who knew Jack before he died and came back knew him as a profoundly good-natured, caring person, and his current persona is wildly out of character for him (this is a problem shared by many other characters of various ethnicities in his setting, nobody dies and comes back without being Different and Worse than they were before)

Jack's true nature is further emphasized by his shadow "Verus" (they felt it was too confusing to both be Jack when other people get involved), whose personality is that of pre-death Jack: an extraordinarily empathetic, kind-hearted goofball who just wants to make music and friends, and music with friends.

Jack is working hard to overcome what he's become, to fight the urges so many undead succumb to and be able to be a decent person again, and Verus does his best to keep him on the right track and remind him who he really is.

Despite their struggles, Jack and the other "undead" characters in the cast bust ass to do good in the world and to reclaim their sense of self and dignity in spite of the curse that's taken them over. He's restless and motivated, and wants nothing more than to be able to be a People Person again and to make friends again without grinding his teeth.

He's become a masked vigilante called Progeny and puts in the work to protect his community and bring the fight to corporations.

(His issues were not INTENDED to be a thinly veiled metaphor for living with OCD, Bipolar and BPD but since being diagnosed with those things myself, a lot of the things I have put into Jack as my oldest and dearest edgelord OC make a lot more sense... But we are in recovery together and we have come a long way together.)

Bonus:

Jack with his "therapy dog" Chayo. She wants his hot dog.

DAMN! This is SOLID! A lot of the pitfalls I would’ve brought up, you covered.

He looks like an old friend of mine, and I see you’re going for cyberpunk with a little indigenous on the side there! His name is killing me (Lamb to the slaughter omg)

I also love how before death he was sweet and loving. I don’t like it when all Mexican indigenous men are written in telenovelas or American movies to be abrasive. Let a man have a sense of pride AND a personality!

I will clarify two big things: the cannibalism and the Polishness. They’re actually intertwined. Eastern European folklore has lore of spiritual cannibalism warnings, but so does Central American indigenous spirituality. I warn you that the Spaniards made lots of misconceptions that made it into history books about Indigenous masculinity and war.

I understand he’s an edgelord with an explanation, but I also want you to consider how it looks for a visibly indigenous guy to be walking around with a desire for flesh. I wrote a visibly indigenous Colombian vampire character for a DND thing I once had going on, but I already knew that for indigenous folklore in Colombia it’s seen as you giving in to what once was your personality, and I had to work to pull my character AWAY from his Spaniard vampire ancestors to find out why he wanted more power.

Our characters are different, but there is notoriously a lot of overlap what you want and what a lot of people think. Not to mention that Oaxaca is HIGHLY cultura self-aware, so even after the unmaking of the world, what of the old remains in the new?

[insertspanishhere]

Here they are :)

[image description in alt text]

(oh and a properly finished drawing; one of them younger, too, and an enven more baby version; oh oh and this one too but tw for blood) (as you may have noticed i draw it a lot)

Espa (short for "Espada") (they/it/she) (ela/elu in Portuguese) was created to be the main character of my current writing wip, because I really like this 'living weapon' type of character. It's set in Northeast Brazil and she was raised by this sort of evil mafia-ish organization along with a lot of other child soldiers she thinks of as her siblings.

They're usually pretty stoic and good at concealing their emotions to act ruthless and cold (which may sometimes come across as scary despite their harmless appearence), but deep down they can be very kind and protective. She is a little... ammoral, in the way she views the world, due to the whole 'dehumanized from childhood and trained to be a weapon of murder' thing (i love a good tragic backstory, too), and she's also pretty touch-averse. They also have a slight self-sacrificial streak and dislike cats. (<- mostly due to the one (1) cat pictured above, she's a superior's pet and said superior always leaves espa and the others taking care of her, much to their dismay. the cat doesn't like any of them. the feeling is mutual.) It's also illiterate and a pretty good fighter. It has nightmares almost every night and enters an instant fight-flight mode whenever someone approaches it from behind but like to pretend it's no big deal (obviously not #trust #she's fine guys).

It's one of my favorite ocs and created out of, mainly, self-indulgence. She's aroace and isogender but she doesn't have a very solid framework for understanding those, plus she isn't really fond of reflecting about her emotions and sense of self, but it's how I would define it. They are :) very special 2 me

(They also have this large cape that is 99.9% rule of cool because it barely makes sense from a practical standpoint, but it's fiction and I can say that it's made out of a light and breathable material and stuff so she's not boiling in the +35º C northeast brazilian heat. It's also a comfort thing for them- they feel very bad about most physical touch, as mentioned above, but the weight of things like its cape or a blanket are usually very good at grounding them.)

Tragic: person who loves Marvel Comics shown Living Weapon Trope

Anyways! I love the living weapon!

She’s from a place in Brazil that yeah I have let people from, and they’re really near to my home region so we kinda look similar in the same room!

I understand its name as the Spanish word for sword is also Espada, and I understand its origins, but I’m gonna have to sit you down at a McDonald’s booth for a chat.

Here’s the post by @creatingblackcharacters on violence in Black spaces and Black media. Lesson 12: “The Bulging Eyes and Twisted Mouth” which is appropriately triggered warned and does an excellent summary differentiating how Black people write violence and dehumanization versus how white writers include it.

The part that really worries me here is the mafia and the intentional dehumanization. She’s Black. As much as I could easily say “OMG another living weapon,” I also wonder why she’s Black. From a predominantly Black part of Brazil. And ended up as a child soldier in a mafia. You see how, for a light Brazilian, or for a white person, this would be unique and tragic, but for me who has lived hearing about my Black USAmerican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Colombian, and Brazilian friends getting pressed into gangs or rebel armies, this isn’t unique?

The living weapon is also very common in cyberpunk, where the whole point is being seen as a machine.

It is Black. It looks Black, and comes from a Black part of Brazil, and is really close to what seems like romanticized mafia culture.

OH NO I just noticed the “they’re illiterate” part…you know that a lot of slaves were kept illiterate in South America so they couldn’t read their legally required terms of servitude? YEP.

In South America slaves were sold WITH THEIR OWN FREEDOM PAPERS lying in wait until they could “prove” they were decent enough to be freed. They could “negotiate” with a “patrón” (boss), often an educated Black or biracial slave, for their freedom, but if they couldn’t read their contract they didn’t know if it was getting changed on them.

I also understand why they’re standoffish. She has reason to be. But I also ask…why’s the Black one cold?

I know she’s a very dear OC to you, but they have a LOT of tropes that land extremely differently through the lens of a Black Brazilian.

I highly recommend you study the effects of South American drug wars on the Black and rural communities of their respective countries, and find a way for Espada to have a person to rely on when the going gets tough.