tbh white people in the hp/drarry fandom talking about representation and the obligation to create black and brown characters in works just... rubs me the wrong way, because you all never seem to understand how a lot of your peers DO do this ā to the detriment of people of colour in fandom spaces. like, as long as you throw in a lil spicy desi harry potter in the mix, it doesn't matter how badly he shows up in fanart or fanfiction, because who cares, really?
i've read fics that have turned me off from consuming desi hp altogether, because of the weird emphasis (read: fetish) on names/clothing/food that many real south asians in the diaspora simply do not have ties to, least of all someone in britain whose parents both died when he was a baby and who is, at most, mixed. i've seen art of both canonically and non-canonically non-white hp characters that were, essentially, white characters drawn with european features and coloured in beige or brown. i've seen this in the hermione grangers, the harry potters, the blaise zabinis, the dean thomases and so on. i recently read a fic by a prominent author ā whose works i actually, up until that point, enjoyed!ā that included a fetishistic comment about black men, in reference to dean thomas and it threw me the fuck off for the rest of it.
i don't see these works and feel heartened; i see them as self-congratulatory attempts by white authors and artists to collect woke points, and when their peers cheer them on, it sets a standard for other fanworks, and then representation continues down this path, people of colour in fandom spaces continue to get stereotyped for calling it out, while white people keep getting recognition for their inclusive efforts. it's hard for me to believe white people actually care about diversity and representation in fandom when the results are so poorly researched, overly-sexualized, or simply a mockery of the groups they are meant to represent.
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