“I haven’t seen any racist storylines” // “People are really just complaining” // “People should realize this is just a fictional story”
Fans - esp fans of color and LGBTQIA+ fans - have constantly talked about how minority characters get sidelined in favor of the white LI faves. And no, this is not an issue specific to Open Heart, although that is the specific focus at this very moment, it’s something that’s been happening with a lot of their books, especially in recent years. To say that you didn’t see racism or act like people complaining is a new development is racist and at best, willful ignorance.
Open Heart has a lot of characters of color, yes, but they also sidelined all of them in favor of Ethan and his storyline. If Raf dies like we’re all expecting him to now, where was the good writing in this? I’m legitimately wondering here - even if you don’t want to look at the problematic aspect of it, how about just from a writing standpoint. If a character shows up maybe once every few chapters, is with this random other person who we never heard about before, then tells MC he’s leaving and then dies….where exactly is the emotional payoff there? Deaths need to have meaning and impact and people who loved Raf will be upset but would it be written well? With the little amount of scenes that we’ve had with him, whether he was our LI or not? Why is it that out of LIs who’ve died, it’s Jax, Lily, and Raf (or possibly Kyra, who’s still a black woman)? Why is there not any option for Adrian to die? Or Ethan? Because it “makes sense” in the narrative that PB wrote?
Esme is our intern and yet we’ve barely got to mentor her - when Ethan was our mentor, he was around us constantly, and stans defended it because it made sense, right? Why wouldn’t our attending be with us all the time? We’re learning from him! So why haven’t we been sharing a lot of time with Esme, haven’t been given the ability to bond with her more? Why do Bryce and Jackie (if she gets to show up) have storylines maybe every other chapter when PB remembers that they have one, why do we barely get to see Elijah and Sienna and have to go through tension with Aurora again, while Ethan is in every single chapter with more screentime and more diamond choices than the other LIs combined?
We know all about forced LIs - Beckett was consistently called out as popping up all the time, Nate would have way more scenes in Sunkissed than Samson or Eliana. It happens consistently throughout multiple books and each time I see fans defending it as “relevant” to the story, while also simultaneously losing their shit if their white fave wasn’t featured prominently in one chapter. If you’re one of these people, I really want you to ask yourself - would you say the same thing if this was Beckett not showing up? If Ethan got killed off? If Adrian got killed off instead of Jax or Lily, would you have the same response?
PB was also called out for making their antagonists to MC be women - particularly dark-skinned black women - Xanthe (Acor), Ellen (WT), Aurora, twice (OPH), Victoria (RCD). This is a trend and an awful one. I haven’t even gone into how their covers have changed to be more white & straight over the years (even over the course of multiple books in a series, where you’d expect fans to realize they can keep their LIs, so why can’t we have Lily or a non-white Adrian on the cover of the BB series??), or how characters like Nadia or Lily are hated for being “annoying” and “cringey” while characters like Maxwell with the same personality are praised and loved. Or how even with MOTY making the simple of change of pointing out that Vanessa could be homophobic/racist based on MC, that people didn’t understand why she could be perceived that way.
Fans have always been talking about this, and this has been a problem for a very long time, and to act like this is some new thing is disingenuous.
jacobvanloon
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