also, because it's not me if i dont be salty, I did see some mutterings of people who wondered why I brought back the race discourse around the same time as the kickstarter last year; I can fully and honestly say I had no idea. Me and my sib sometimes reminiscence on our experience in 4s fandom, especially since it happened at a formative time (19/20 for me, younger for them) and taught us a lot about how to navigate racial justice and discourse. Especially in fandom spaces.
(another readmore! It got long.)
like, I'm fully aware it was half a decade ago, but the lessons I learned then are kind of ingrained in me. I also never stopped being visibly Asian. A lot of the white people I debated with in that forum can move on and never think about race again, and I literally never can. (I am, however, forever grateful some people got back in touch with me, either here or elsewhere, to tell me how my and other's words impacted them.)
I got to take a break during quarantine, but upon re-entering society it is a part of my everyday life again. Like, the other day someone told me I looked like a Kpop star and started describing which of my and an unrelated woman of another race's features were the same, unprompted, and I had to politely stare her down until she stopped.
And I never want to tell people to boycott M1nna or stop supporting her. That's a decision everyone has to make for themselves. I don't believe in cancel culture for small indie artists (which she is), and I don't believe I should trash a person's livelihood because she made something that I don't personally like.
It means that I, as someone who bought her first book, refuse to buy her second and third; it means I haven't touched the site in years; I blocked her on relevant social medias so that I don't see her; and sometimes friends still tell me stuff that happens, like the bunny comic, and I lose my mind because literally I don't think even the most morally high-minded person can read that and not go what the fuck and make a few untagged posts about it.
but! I wanted to address that one thing, because I saw something about it at the time, dismissed it, and then decided 'actually, no, I wanna talk about it'. No, I didn't reignite race/forum discourse as a cheap way to try to undercut her kickstarter sales. If I wanted to undercut her sales, or really put her in hot water, I have so many other avenues than politely using a sideblog and censoring her name and not even tagging the main comic tag in an attempt to keep it separate from the main 4s fandom.
Like, I've never shared this before, or I've only shared it through DMs and hinted publicly, but a staff member of H1v3w0rks personally reached out to me at the time to get the slur off the page way back when. I still know this person, and if I really fucking wanted to, I could organize a bunch of yall to like, idk, sign a letter that goes 'hey can you talk to M1nna about this'.
I could escalate. I'm not going to because I am not evil, I don't personally believe in censorship, I have my own shit to do, and I actually don't think it would work anyway. Any rational employer would be like 'a badly written bunny comic created on M1nna's own time, that isn't contracted to us specifically, is literally not any of our business'. One unfortunate incident 5 years ago is also not grounds for talking to M1nna. It happened five years ago and they already talked to her about it (The specifics of this, or whether it happened, is all conjecture on my part. The contact I had was basically 'you're upset? ok. what's an acceptable substitute. I'll talk to her about it.')
This may seem like a ridiculously longwinded and granular look at how I approach a content creator I do not like or agree with but I want to make it absolutely, one hundred percent, crystal clear, that I both a) don't have an elaborate revenge plan nor will I ever, b) do not condone an elaborate revenge plan towards her. I understand the timing was bad, and I apologize, but I truly do not believe that the posts affected her kickstarter sales, nor would I want them to.
gorblimey id love a readmore function on the phone app, lugging my forsaken laptop out is a time and a half, hello and doin' replies
kaoottinenpeitto
i have 30 tomato seedlings ready to go for spring already!
that is fucking EXCELLENT dude. I am so jealous. my housemate does tomato plants and so far only two or three have survived to give us tomatoes, and of them, a lot go to the birds. pretty delicious when we get some, though.
polar-night-scout
I'm depressed but trying to shake it off, also thinking about finishing some old art. I don't think your posts are negative btw. It's necessary discussion that validates the concerns of many people, at least it made me feel less alone
Aw, I'm sorry to hear that. I believe in you shaking it off. I'm in that weird recovery stage where you're kinda-not-depressed but also kinda-not-neurotypical-yet and i wish this upon you as well.
Thanks for saying so - I don't like the comic because of the comedically bad writing, but also because I feel like it would crystalize a lot of harmful views for people in cults/christian cults in particular (which.....reading M1nna's last address, it really does sound like she's been sucked into a cult. very classic 'i was garbage and awful until I found [x] thing and now im better and more enlightened' cult language.) I was never part of a cult, thank god, but the isolating experience of being queer in a catholic church with pamphlets about the evils of gay marriage really does radicalize a person.
but yeah. I'm incredibly glad I'm not the only person who saw this and went this is Very Bad News. Thank you for reaching out.
wavewright62
I got a Cintiq and have managed to figure out enough to get an image started. Have erased all doodles, but at least I know how now brown cow.
Oh fuck yeah bro, I am excited to see your images.
zenit-of-the-sun
Well, ive graduated! So, thats that on that. And in a unrelated note, im currently watching sk8 to the infinity and it is fun.
I HAVE SEEN YOUR REPLIES/MESSAGES I WILL ANSWER SOON - but also CONGRATULATIONS on graduating!!! - and also i LOVE sk8, what a good show.
bogkeep
ive had more time to draw which is nice
yeah man I've seen on twitter you've been more active, I'm glad
notapaladin
I have fallen ass-first into a fandom best described as "noir murder mysteries in 1480s fantasy tenochtitlan" and i am living my best life imagining "but what if the main character & his ambitious, hyperconfident apprentice-turned-future-emperor KISSED"
hmmm. please give me details this sounds fucking incredible
Wait, Mi**a did what? Lmao i barely keep up w ssss anymore, but i saw someone post abt a cute "bunny comic" she posted, is it supposed to be a political commentary? Are christians being oppressed? What?
Ok, so, here is the comic and if you want to read it there it is, but the tl;dr is that M1nna wrote a comic about a dystopian world where cute bunnies are given "social credit scores" and being Christian brings your score down and makes you into an Undesirable in this society.
2 things wrong with this: the social credit scores thing are inspired by the unfounded rumour mainland Chinese people have it (unfounded, borderline racist, perpetuated by white media) sorry, I fucked up, social credit is super real, but the fact M1nna is tone-deafly using the CCP as set dressing to make a trite ass point does make me livid, and also, again, Christian Oppression As A Praxis For Like, Being Kind Of Mad Influencers Are A Thing.
Like, I wouldn't be As Peeved with it - there are some? Almost interesting ideas in there? But M1nna signs off with an entire sanctimonious thing about how she recently converted to Christianity and, despite the fact she is literally doing a social commentary about a dystopia and caring about people in a dystopia, one of her conclusions is she'll be fine even if it comes to pass.
Like: I didnt edit this ^. She basically goes I wouldn't like this society? But I won't do anything to stop it and also everyone ELSE may be oppressed (even? Christians? If we take the allegory that far?) but she will be fine. Which betrays a self centeredness that, honestly, the comic oozes.
I DIDNT EDIT THIS EITHER -
Anyhow it's not a good comic and I lost like three hours of my day today incredulously picking it apart because there are about ten thousand layers of bad takes in this piece.
I think, again, also, what it betrays is how little Minna fundamentally understands other people because she doesn't care about them. This may seem harsh to say, but that's honestly the vibe I get through her work. So maybe it's more intellectually honest to say that she is just bad at writing genuine human (bunny?) connection, in a way that makes me feel like the characters involved really do have rich internal lives, rather than being cardboard cutouts mounted on plotlines and steered into place.
Idk! This is all spitballing. I will say that the fact she spits on sensitivity readers/editing sensitive material is genuinely fucking hilarious given she's part of hiveworks, which tends to regard that sort of thing highly, and also that, ahem,
I was personally involved in getting her to edit out a slur in her comic.
I think that was for me actually. I think I broke her brain so bad in 2015 by pointing out she did a racism she's gone full blown tinhat rightwing conspiracist. This is truly the leftist agenda (I say, exhausted)
Hey guys, just in case the unedited versions are what end up circulating rather than the correction, I fucked up and said the social credit thing in China doesn't exist: it super does, I hadn't done research on it since 2015, a kind anon pointed me in the right direction.
Hi! In a previous ask you said (unless I misunderstood it?) that China doesn't have a social credit score system and that this is an unfounded rumour in white media. I'm trying to make sense of the fact that there is a very long Wikipedia article about it with plenty of citations. I'm a white European with no direct access to Chinese sources so I'm a bit at a loss here. If it's not too much trouble, could you please clarify, or point me to some accurate resources? Thank you!
Sorry, thanks for letting me know - the last time I really researched or was aware of the social credit thing was back in 2015, and I haven't read anything since then. (Also, I talked to some friends' relatives at the time and the general consensus was "it isn't that big of a deal").
Whoops, nope, yeah, I have dug more into it and there's no surprise that the CCP, who are shit, have indeed decided to abuse it.
My frustration at the time wasn't that I endorsed it, but more like how western media at the time decided to be Extremely Racist about the whole thing, back when the reporting was more that it would reflect businesses and personal business etc.
Wait, Mi**a did what? Lmao i barely keep up w ssss anymore, but i saw someone post abt a cute "bunny comic" she posted, is it supposed to be a political commentary? Are christians being oppressed? What?
Ok, so, here is the comic and if you want to read it there it is, but the tl;dr is that M1nna wrote a comic about a dystopian world where cute bunnies are given "social credit scores" and being Christian brings your score down and makes you into an Undesirable in this society.
2 things wrong with this: the social credit scores thing are inspired by the unfounded rumour mainland Chinese people have it (unfounded, borderline racist, perpetuated by white media) sorry, I fucked up, social credit is super real, but the fact M1nna is tone-deafly using the CCP as set dressing to make a trite ass point does make me livid, and also, again, Christian Oppression As A Praxis For Like, Being Kind Of Mad Influencers Are A Thing.
Like, I wouldn't be As Peeved with it - there are some? Almost interesting ideas in there? But M1nna signs off with an entire sanctimonious thing about how she recently converted to Christianity and, despite the fact she is literally doing a social commentary about a dystopia and caring about people in a dystopia, one of her conclusions is she'll be fine even if it comes to pass.
Like: I didnt edit this ^. She basically goes I wouldn't like this society? But I won't do anything to stop it and also everyone ELSE may be oppressed (even? Christians? If we take the allegory that far?) but she will be fine. Which betrays a self centeredness that, honestly, the comic oozes.
I DIDNT EDIT THIS EITHER -
Anyhow it's not a good comic and I lost like three hours of my day today incredulously picking it apart because there are about ten thousand layers of bad takes in this piece.
I think, again, also, what it betrays is how little Minna fundamentally understands other people because she doesn't care about them. This may seem harsh to say, but that's honestly the vibe I get through her work. So maybe it's more intellectually honest to say that she is just bad at writing genuine human (bunny?) connection, in a way that makes me feel like the characters involved really do have rich internal lives, rather than being cardboard cutouts mounted on plotlines and steered into place.
Idk! This is all spitballing. I will say that the fact she spits on sensitivity readers/editing sensitive material is genuinely fucking hilarious given she's part of hiveworks, which tends to regard that sort of thing highly, and also that, ahem,
I was personally involved in getting her to edit out a slur in her comic.
I think that was for me actually. I think I broke her brain so bad in 2015 by pointing out she did a racism she's gone full blown tinhat rightwing conspiracist. This is truly the leftist agenda (I say, exhausted)
I sometimes wonder what to put on here because I don't actually want to link my current artblog and this artblog together as I am, unfortunately, trying to be a smidgen more professional on the internet rather than a feral harpy. If you search far back enough in the archive you can find my proper artblog if you like my work; and if you want my Socials as the kids call them, well, [disappears into puff of smoke]
My sib on twitter reminded me of all the reasons I quit the 4s life and I want to remind you all too why I did, and also hope that the forums fixed at least some of these problems I outlined years ago.
I don’t want to call for a boycott of either fandom or comic, but I also don’t want these issues swept under a rug unless there’s been an absolutely astonishing sea change.
I remember that post, and in all honesty it made a difference for me. (Not sure what provoked your sibling to prod that scar after all this time?) Although I wasn’t so active on the Forum then as I am now, I was aware of the whole storm in Disqus. It made me examine my attitudes, and to my shame I found them in breach. The Forum is not as active now as it was then, and I would say a lot of the toxicity is leached out, at least in terms of shipping. Emilalli is far and away the OTP for many. Reynir/Onni, Sigrun/Mikkel, and Sigrun/Tuuri all have their proponents.
In terms of issues surrounding race & colour, I can’t say it’s much different than it was. There has not been another touchstone event like the one referenced. It has not been a point of conversation, at all, which in itself is suspicious. Issues around gender & sexuality, multiple convos, but not race. I suspect those underlying attitudes may remain; sadly I cannot guarantee they don’t.
You, Jureeya and many others who have left the fandom are missed. You will still find some of your old fan work shared from time to time, for it is delightful (present tense intentional). Your thoughtfulness behind the reasons for your disenchantment is a valuable part of who you are, though. Sea change in the fandom? No, not really. Why would you even consider engaging again, though, if the story no longer is something you wish to share?
Is there enforced camaraderie and lack of antagonism in the fandom? To a certain degree, yes. I look at it much like New Zealand’s approach to Covid-19, with its mantra ‘Be Kind.’
This got kind of long. tl;dr SSSS is an imperfect story loved by a varied and generally imperfect coterie of people. Thankfully, we are all evolving and learning, and thinking about the issues you raised has made me a better person.
I cannot access the forum post but I know on some level what the much needed discourse was about (having joined the fandom and discovered the comic only last year).
The lack of diversity in the comic is quite alarming, simply because obviously all Nordic people are not white – and Minna knows this, living in Finland. There would have been opportunities to include non-white characters. There could have been Sami or Inuit characters, considering both peoples live within Nordic countries, but there isn’t. Even if the reasoning for this could be that the Finnish school system doesn’t teach children about minorities in length (including the Sami, even though Finns have a long and, for the lack of a better word, troublesome history with how we have treated them), it’s still worrying that she has ignored this issue when writing the story. At some point she could have looked at her cast and the world she had built and evaluated the lack of diversity, but that clearly didn’t happen – or if it had, she ignored it.
Lack of awareness and simply not knowing are fickle excuses when obviously this topic has been brought up within the fandom and the forum and there has been no input from her. Granted, being white and Finnish myself, I can understand not knowing to include for example Sami characters because we are taught so little and may not even know to look these themes up, but it’s still not a strong excuse, especially when the issue has been brought up and the comic has been criticized for it.
I’m sorry if this is completely off the topic of op’s post but I wanted to say something considering how active I’ve been in the fandom. I still love the characters, but this is a theme that has been bothering me. From what I’ve heard and from my own experience being Finnish and thereby Nordic we easily believe the stereotype that we’re blonde and white at our most typical, but that is obviously wrong and requires scrutinizing – I suspect it’s that mindset or some aspect of it that has heavily influenced SSSS as well.
I think this is something that the fans of the comic should be aware and critically think about when reading it. I’m sure most of us are able to do so and already are aware of this, but further discussion about it cannot hurt.
Hello! I didn’t realize the forum was locked. I’ll include the forum letter here, under cut, because it was quite long (and - well, I wish I could rewrite it, but I was a really hot-tempered and melodramatic 20 year old, so bear that in mind.)
But I’m really happy you’re doing some soul-searching and criticla reading of ssss. I don’t know if you know about the infamous ‘ching chong’ incident, but suffice to say, um, it was bad.
i was on one of the author’s twitch streams in june and she was talking shit about the black lives matter protests. i pointed out that the protests wouldn’t even be happening if cops hadn’t been murdering black people for decades, and she said something snippy about BLM protesters “killing innocent people” because of COVID.
i closed the tab, unfollowed, unsubscribed. i can’t in good conscience support someone in any way who disapproves of black lives matter. i can’t blame anyone else for doing the same.
i remember in a stream someone asked her outright if there are any people of color in the ssss world. up to that point she’d said that other parts of the world would have their own ways of surviving the rash, so it would follow that there was still racial diversity in the world, though it was unclear if there was racial diversity in the parts of the world actually included in the comic. she said that there weren’t a lot of POC in scandinavia and those who survived would have assimilated. i thought it was ignorance about demographics and cultural values. now i think she just doesn’t want to draw people of color.
if you are going to continue to read ssss, this is something you need to contend with. there have been several issues with race in the comic, and this makes it clear that they aren’t born of innocent ignorance or by accident. it’s time to stop valuing civility and pleasantness over having important conversations about race.
Several people have asked about what was said on stream, so the dear and sweet Kettu from the discord has transcribed the relevant parts, which are the following, under the cut:
Ok I was gonna be classy but L M A O at minna's dry whitebread pearl-clutching boomer-adjacent racist callous isolationist hermit ass FUCKING TAKE HOLY SHIT
*edit thank you Kettu for transcribing and superdark for putting it here!!!
My sib on twitter reminded me of all the reasons I quit the 4s life and I want to remind you all too why I did, and also hope that the forums fixed at least some of these problems I outlined years ago.
I don’t want to call for a boycott of either fandom or comic, but I also don’t want these issues swept under a rug unless there’s been an absolutely astonishing sea change.
honestly, seeing Minna totally fail to take any criticism on board regarding the heavily implicit racism in the comic is a big part of why I can’t find it charming anymore. I’m not claiming anyone who still does is a bad person, it just killed my emotional investment and nothing really works to rekindle it. I was kind of holding out for them getting back from the silent world to see if there had been any changes; it would have been so easy to spend all that time that was more or less only with the main characters thinking on what had gone down, and then when they got to Reykjavik (which Minna has personally visited; she knows what people there look like) make it more of an accurate representation of Reykjavik’s population. Given how little we’d seen of the world so far, it wouldn’t have been a continuity error, we would be free to imagine that Reykjavik is simply more racially diverse than the rest of the north at that point, not hard to explain at all given for example a mostly rural Finnish population surviving. Pretty much everyone would have been willing to understand “oh, I was just not very adventurous in my drawing, I drew what l know best, because of my background I didn’t know how much this meant to people”. There was nothing to lose here… except the chance to appeal to a fringe of very right-wing fans.
I don’t want to bring this up like it’s some kind of massive slam dunk, because I don’t want to imply that anyone has an obligation to reply every time someone tweets at them, but… Minna is pretty reliably friendly and responsive on Twitter, and has been to me too, except when I’ve made it clear I’m a foriegner living in Finland. Total blanking in that case. I know I can’t draw a clear conclusion about her from a few text interactions that could have been affected by any other chance thing… still, with the bias shown by her work, with the way she talks about every city she visits (“chaotic and dirty” and “just so loud” is really specifically how a lot of racist Finnish women choose to phrase “there’s icky brown people there”, for example when talking about the neighbourhood I live in), it makes me think, and makes me kind of suspicious of the “just too innocent to get it” vibe many people project onto her. Again, to be clear, that part is not nearly as off-putting for me as the “has absolutely been to Reykjavik, but doesn’t draw what she saw” - it’s just bits that fill out an already terrible impression
My sib on twitter reminded me of all the reasons I quit the 4s life and I want to remind you all too why I did, and also hope that the forums fixed at least some of these problems I outlined years ago.
I don’t want to call for a boycott of either fandom or comic, but I also don’t want these issues swept under a rug unless there’s been an absolutely astonishing sea change.
I remember that post, and in all honesty it made a difference for me. (Not sure what provoked your sibling to prod that scar after all this time?) Although I wasn’t so active on the Forum then as I am now, I was aware of the whole storm in Disqus. It made me examine my attitudes, and to my shame I found them in breach. The Forum is not as active now as it was then, and I would say a lot of the toxicity is leached out, at least in terms of shipping. Emilalli is far and away the OTP for many. Reynir/Onni, Sigrun/Mikkel, and Sigrun/Tuuri all have their proponents.
In terms of issues surrounding race & colour, I can’t say it’s much different than it was. There has not been another touchstone event like the one referenced. It has not been a point of conversation, at all, which in itself is suspicious. Issues around gender & sexuality, multiple convos, but not race. I suspect those underlying attitudes may remain; sadly I cannot guarantee they don’t.
You, Jureeya and many others who have left the fandom are missed. You will still find some of your old fan work shared from time to time, for it is delightful (present tense intentional). Your thoughtfulness behind the reasons for your disenchantment is a valuable part of who you are, though. Sea change in the fandom? No, not really. Why would you even consider engaging again, though, if the story no longer is something you wish to share?
Is there enforced camaraderie and lack of antagonism in the fandom? To a certain degree, yes. I look at it much like New Zealand’s approach to Covid-19, with its mantra ‘Be Kind.’
This got kind of long. tl;dr SSSS is an imperfect story loved by a varied and generally imperfect coterie of people. Thankfully, we are all evolving and learning, and thinking about the issues you raised has made me a better person.
I’m really, really, really touched that this forum post made you reconsider. Like, if anything good came of this, it’s probably this. I do miss a few good people from the forum but I can’t go back, for reasons of both integrity and I have other interests!
But thank you for letting me know. It means a lot to me! You’ve always been extremely kind and lively, and I’m glad to see this hasn’t changed.
My sib on twitter reminded me of all the reasons I quit the 4s life and I want to remind you all too why I did, and also hope that the forums fixed at least some of these problems I outlined years ago.
I don’t want to call for a boycott of either fandom or comic, but I also don’t want these issues swept under a rug unless there’s been an absolutely astonishing sea change.
I remember that post, and in all honesty it made a difference for me. (Not sure what provoked your sibling to prod that scar after all this time?) Although I wasn’t so active on the Forum then as I am now, I was aware of the whole storm in Disqus. It made me examine my attitudes, and to my shame I found them in breach. The Forum is not as active now as it was then, and I would say a lot of the toxicity is leached out, at least in terms of shipping. Emilalli is far and away the OTP for many. Reynir/Onni, Sigrun/Mikkel, and Sigrun/Tuuri all have their proponents.
In terms of issues surrounding race & colour, I can’t say it’s much different than it was. There has not been another touchstone event like the one referenced. It has not been a point of conversation, at all, which in itself is suspicious. Issues around gender & sexuality, multiple convos, but not race. I suspect those underlying attitudes may remain; sadly I cannot guarantee they don’t.
You, Jureeya and many others who have left the fandom are missed. You will still find some of your old fan work shared from time to time, for it is delightful (present tense intentional). Your thoughtfulness behind the reasons for your disenchantment is a valuable part of who you are, though. Sea change in the fandom? No, not really. Why would you even consider engaging again, though, if the story no longer is something you wish to share?
Is there enforced camaraderie and lack of antagonism in the fandom? To a certain degree, yes. I look at it much like New Zealand’s approach to Covid-19, with its mantra ‘Be Kind.’
This got kind of long. tl;dr SSSS is an imperfect story loved by a varied and generally imperfect coterie of people. Thankfully, we are all evolving and learning, and thinking about the issues you raised has made me a better person.
I cannot access the forum post but I know on some level what the much needed discourse was about (having joined the fandom and discovered the comic only last year).
The lack of diversity in the comic is quite alarming, simply because obviously all Nordic people are not white – and Minna knows this, living in Finland. There would have been opportunities to include non-white characters. There could have been Sami or Inuit characters, considering both peoples live within Nordic countries, but there isn’t. Even if the reasoning for this could be that the Finnish school system doesn’t teach children about minorities in length (including the Sami, even though Finns have a long and, for the lack of a better word, troublesome history with how we have treated them), it’s still worrying that she has ignored this issue when writing the story. At some point she could have looked at her cast and the world she had built and evaluated the lack of diversity, but that clearly didn’t happen – or if it had, she ignored it.
Lack of awareness and simply not knowing are fickle excuses when obviously this topic has been brought up within the fandom and the forum and there has been no input from her. Granted, being white and Finnish myself, I can understand not knowing to include for example Sami characters because we are taught so little and may not even know to look these themes up, but it’s still not a strong excuse, especially when the issue has been brought up and the comic has been criticized for it.
I’m sorry if this is completely off the topic of op’s post but I wanted to say something considering how active I’ve been in the fandom. I still love the characters, but this is a theme that has been bothering me. From what I’ve heard and from my own experience being Finnish and thereby Nordic we easily believe the stereotype that we’re blonde and white at our most typical, but that is obviously wrong and requires scrutinizing – I suspect it’s that mindset or some aspect of it that has heavily influenced SSSS as well.
I think this is something that the fans of the comic should be aware and critically think about when reading it. I’m sure most of us are able to do so and already are aware of this, but further discussion about it cannot hurt.
Hello! I didn’t realize the forum was locked. I’ll include the forum letter here, under cut, because it was quite long (and - well, I wish I could rewrite it, but I was a really hot-tempered and melodramatic 20 year old, so bear that in mind.)
But I’m really happy you’re doing some soul-searching and criticla reading of ssss. I don’t know if you know about the infamous ‘ching chong’ incident, but suffice to say, um, it was bad.
Ok this is longer than I thought it'd be but hey guys. I’m out of this forum.
Well, truthfully, I’ve been out for months now. I checked back occasionally to see if there were any fun challenges or swaps happening, or if any good discussion was, but I ceased commenting for a while. For my health. You may know me as the really sketchy fanartist from way back. Anyhow.
I’ve decided to make a clean break with this place, and with the comic as a whole. I spent a lot of time loving this comic and having fun making things for it, and having fun engaging in fandom antics. I wish I could say I still wanted to do that. If I was even capable of doing that; the thought of making more fanworks for something that has disregarded me, for the benefit of a fandom that makes me uncomfortable to be in save the close friends I’ve made, makes me incredibly uncomfortable.
I’m a queer woman of color. I’m half-Chinese, half-White, and bisexual. I do not feel comfortable in this community. I don’t feel comfortable in a community where shipping is such a hot-button issue, and especially gay shipping. How many Emilalli comments on disqus are met with passive-aggressive bromance comments? And yet straight shipping comments never merit this level of dismissal. But many people have said more eloquent things about shipping and this fandom. This isn’t my main issue, but my god does it compound with why I feel ill at ease even posting here.
I do not feel comfortable in a community where a racist slur was – accidentally – placed in the comic and there was an ensuing backlash against people who asked for it to be changed. I am not comfortable with people from America, from other places with clear Chinese populations, saying that it was funny and shouldn’t have been changed. I’m not comfortable with people saying that surely some Chinese people found it funny, and it was a matter of opinion.
Even now, with Monday’s page, there is a veritable wave of people saying she shouldn’t have even changed it. There are people expressing their distress that they cannot reply to these people and incite another debate because Minna might take away the comments again. Who wins in this scenario? It’s the people who think that ‘Ching Chong’ isn’t a bad thing to say. Maybe they’ll call someone that. Maybe they’ll say Ching Chong Chinaman. It’s harmless, isn’t it? some links.
I’m not comfortable with Minna being made out to be the victim in this unfortunate misunderstanding. Is she? Maybe a victim, since she’s been the target of vicious PMs. But to make her the sole and only person who had her feelings legitimately hurt is a disservice to the fans who scrolled through people in the comments who belittled their hurt and belittled their ethnicity/nationality.
Maybe if this was a one-time event I could have let it go. But it isn’t – it was the tipping point. This community cares more about a fictional work than the lived experiences of real life people.
I have seen rank condescension on this forum about people of color. I have seen insinuations that black people could not have survived the apocalypse because they’d stand out against the snow. I have seen people call a Asian girl’s accent ‘adorable’ and ‘soft spoken’ and other stereotypes, when the only indication she was Asian was the fact she stated she was. I have seen a black teenager’s stories of what it is like growing up black dismissed. I have had my own words glossed over. It’s fine to listen to these people when they’re talking about headcanons, but the second a person of color opens their mouth about their real life? Too political. Inciting drama. We need to keep calm and quiet.
Here’s the other thing. I don’t feel comfortable in a community where being nice and friendly is forced. Here, there are time limits on how angry or upset you are allowed to be in a discussion. Mods shut down your comments, censor them. There’s of course good reason to shut down a discussion when it gets too heated, but god. This isn’t a flame war about ships. This is real life. You can’t mute people’s anger and hurt over things like racism, like being excluded because they want a nsfw board – and I cannot believe it took nearly 10 pages of rampant discussion and puritan-esque demonizing of sex to finally come to an accord – you can’t do it.
When the ethnic diversity and racism thread was closed, it wasn't because of the racist sentiments in the thread. It was finally because people were too loud.
Racism isn’t cut and dry and nice. It didn’t die with the 60’s, 70’s, it isn’t dead now. You cannot tell fans to play nice with people who think this way. No one should have to compromise their integrity, to cater to racist people, to racist thought, just so that this community gets to keep its crown of ‘nice and civil’. I shouldn’t have to politely ask that people treat fellow people of color with respect.
So you want me to stand still and stay silent? Hell no. Goodbye forum. I’m out.
My sib on twitter reminded me of all the reasons I quit the 4s life and I want to remind you all too why I did, and also hope that the forums fixed at least some of these problems I outlined years ago.
I don't want to call for a boycott of either fandom or comic, but I also don't want these issues swept under a rug unless there's been an absolutely astonishing sea change.
germansingergirl
baratheonpilled
romaincrisis
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izzy806
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dailybridgerton
