#red queen problems

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

For Evangeline and Elane, I feel like by the time her sexuality was confirmed, they were more leaning towards the side of being anti-heroes or just generally more sympathetic characters. However, of the system at large, they are villains and oppressors, and in general there's a lot to be desired of the series. Idk but nothing to me narratively was as problematic as the fact that Farley is a white savior character who is shown to be leading a group of PoC-coded rebels against their oppressors.

i hated all silvers and i see them all as villains so it’s possible you’re right and i’m just being biased. 

What makes you think that they are coded as poc? I didn’t see that. I mean, the only ones I thought were people of color while reading were Mare (I thought that was just me projecting at first tbh) and Iris. 

Also, how about the fact that the poor brown girl that had to steal to live and was saved by the pity of the white mighty prince?  I hated that, too. I didn’t know for sure if Mare was brown, at that point, but I knew that was classist as hell.

Mod A.

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

So I saw that post on Red Queen and from what I've heard from my Latinx friends on Book Twitter, apparently the diversity was word-of-god retconned in, and the MC was written as a tan white person.

yeah, iirc aveyard only said that mare’s latina after the third book was published. Same with Evangeline.

Mod A.

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

About The Red Queen Series:

this is the opposite of a rec - a book to watch out for and not read:

I remember we once got an ask about Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen series, asking whether it was good in terms of representation. It was a long time ago and unfortunately it got buried - I didn’t answer because while I had read the first two books in that moment, I wasn’t really sure if her characters were ethnically ambiguous or just “whites with tans”. Turns out they are people of color - the main character, at least, is defined as a “mixed latina” (whatever that means), and that one of the characters, Evangeline Samos, is “east asian”.

However, Ms. Aveyard explicitly said that she supports the whitewashing of the characters in her series,  saying that she would reblog fanart of Mare, her “mixed latinx” MC, “as a squid” - insulting much? Also, she says that Iris Cygnet is “a mix of french-canadian and first nations” (described as dark skinned), and then reblog edits like this one....with white chick in it. To be honest, reading the book and with her physical description, I assumed she was black, not NA, and I wasn’t the only one - one of her readers fancasted Zoe Kravitz as her, which Aveyard approved on her tumblr when reblogging a post on it - and Kravitz is not native american, and race is not interchangeable. That post also fancasts Avan Jogia as Shade Barrow, Mare’s brother, who should also be “mixed latinx” and not Indian, for the same reason.

The same thing happens with Evangelime Samos, who’s “half asian”, and yet - she constantly reblogs whitewashed edits of her! [those are four different links]

Another point against her is that her LGBT+ representation is... pretty bad, too. Now, please stop me if I’m wrong (I’m neither a bi guy nor a lesbian). The main antagonist, Maven Calore, who kidnaps and holds Mare against her will (amongst other ugly things) in the third book, after having betrayed her trust in the first one, turns out to be bisexual. Another villain, Evangeline Samos, is revealed to be a lesbian, along with another antagonist Elane Haven (this one’s a pretty unimportant character, nothing like Maven - but she’s still one of the silver “racists” of the series). See a pattern? All of her non-straight characters are villains. I mean, except for Thomas, Maven’s first love, mentioned only by name and dead before the series even started. Isn’t there a problem with that?

tl;dr: don’t trust white authors. ever.

Mod A.