I endeavor to weave discourse upon those fanciful beings who, alas, meet their untimely demise ere the tale’s conclusion, every fucking time [or the story of how I ne'er loved a fictional character that doth survive and mine need to prattle about it endlessly]
— this fandom has a vast misogynoirist problem and, yes, this also applies to YOU reading this right now; a post filled w unsorted thoughts you should read if you genuinely want black fans to feel safe in fandom spaces with you
i am going to preface this right away w how disappointed i am in some of the people who follow me, who will occasionally like a post calling out misogynoir but only if its comfortable and only if its worded nicely and only if its against someone they dislike and not someone they do like. i am directly talking to my non-black followers because i do not expect black fans to expose themselves to this kind of hatred and thinly (and not so thinly) veiled racism we are faced w on a daily basis. some of you have a big following and a big portion of that following is white and YOU have the opportunity to use your POWER (and, yes, even in fandoms there are different power dynamics because logging onto twitter dot com does not remove the burden of blackness within overtly white spaces, this too is a space where having white privileges will get you places) and talk about these issues that have been becoming more and more prevalent.
our voices are not heard and when they are heard they get twisted by white and non-black fans who prioritize their love for shipping and their male centeredness over racism within fandom and more importantly: racism that is perpetuated by them. a very loud portion of this fandom has painted an image of "angry black women" without ever actually calling them black women because they are socially aware enough to know that it is racist to say so. instead they say it in different ways: they call us rabid, they call us delusional, they call us homophobic straights and love to strip us of our queerness in the same breath, they call us ableists even though this fandom has had several conversations about this, they call us aggressive, they say we are jealous of a mlm ship, they say we are irrational, they call us everything but the one thing we are: black. yet the painted picture is very clear to me and surely every other black person who has ever engaged dominantly white spaces: the big black bully! this is the easiest way to "aggressive black woman" your way through genuine critcism without ever saying it w those words nor acknowledging the thing you are criticized for.
and it becomes even more obvious when you read-over and over again-those attempts at demonizing an overtly black part of fandom (which mel/meljay fandom is and which i will come back to later) while NONE ever mention the things black people ARE saying because whenever you get ratioed for cuck art, whenever you get asked why you erase mel from the story, whenever people ask where mel is in arcane character group arts, whenever you mischaracterize mel for a mlm ship, whenever you strip her of her feelings, whenever you make her an abuser, whenever you dehuminaze her, whenever you deify her, whenever you cry that you cannot criticize her yet dont ever criticize her outside of that ship you so like, whenever any of this happens black fans HAVE and WILL tell you that this is antiblack, its misogynistic, but most of all-since a word for this phenomenon already exists-it is misogynoir. you are participating in misogynoir. your every like is supporting misogynoir. the active erasure of a black woman in fandom is misogynoir. whenever you strip black fans of their credibility to speak out against racism bc we are just "crazy shippers on an agenda", that is misogynoir too. people who arent in this fandom have been clocking this. they see us saying this. they avoid watching the show or engaging w this fandom because the misogynoir is so prevalent here and it is unchallenged by everyone but black people and a few allys who actually mean their shit when they talk about allyship.
the rest of you barely skim our texts or just go "well im not racist so this doesnt apply to me" instead of listening to us trying to explain what the issue is. you guys are so sure that you are a good ally, that you arent racist, that nothing you do is ever misogynoirist, yet you dont even realize that you dismiss or even silence black voices you dont like by villainizing every black fan who wants to talk about this and uplifting every black person who says the things you want to hear. to the point that a black user here can use the hard r and white people are trying to educate black people why that is okay or isnt okay. all while that person even apologized and had to tell you guys to not speak over black people in defense of them. do you not see that you are tokenizing the black voices you deem comfortable while ignoring every voice that asks for a little bit of accountability in your contribution to the horrid antiblackness on arcanetwt?
but, no, no, rest assured this doesnt just apply to the fans but to the character in question too after all there is a reason why meltwt/meljaytwt is so outspoken on this. it isnt about her partner being shipped w someone else, most of us dont even care for the ship, our issue is the constant attempt at erasing her from the relationship she was in and those are two completely different things even if you blatantly choose to look the other way and fabricate lies. mel medarda, despite always being spoken about as beautiful and complex and such a great character, so far even that people say they want her to leave jayce so they can have her for herself, has a very small following. she has less fics on ao3 than the others, barely any x reader ship despite so many people claiming to shipping themselves with her, she gets less solo art and even less w other people or her canonical ship. she is constantly being othered. just recently we had someone exclude her from group art and saying she was the teacher while her same aged peers were drawn as students. to many she simply doesnt exist and if you care about mel, if you actually do like her, if you seek out her content, this becomes abundantly clear real quick: mel does not exist as a main character to arcanetwt.
she is a side character to many of you. she is a side character like any other black women in fiction because you as fans were conditioned by young age to view black women as that. you are surrounded by the sassy black best friend, the angry black woman, the disposable black girlfriend who will always just be a temporary love interest, side character a and side character b - you grew up in a world where you view black women like that. that is why her fandom is so small. just like any other black female characters are small. no other main character gets this type of treatment other than her. and that her fandom is so small is just another indicator for that. and that it mostly consists of black fans is another indicator too because those very often are the only ones capable to see a black woman as a character in herself and not just a nice compliment in a sentence in between. this, too, is misogynoir btw and saying "well i just prefer this and this character" only works so many times before you gotta put the work in and question your racial bias and i am telling you YOU HAVE TO to OVERCOME that and i am telling you that because i too used to not care about black female characters.
i grew up in a very white society and was one of those kids who were trying to be as white as possible to cater to white ppl and i had to actively unlearn to ignore dark skinned women in any media and woah let me tell you once you do you realize there are so many beautiful characters to obsess over and so many new people to meet and it WILL change your view on a lot of things in fandom and it will make you AWARE and that is a good thing. you should be woke. being woke is a good thing no matter how many people say it isnt. its just nobody can do this for you but you yourself. you will see the mistreatment of fans and you will get angry about this and you will get uncomfortable too bc you might be nonblack you might even be white but that is just what it is and how its going to be and i appeal to you to be loud w us as well, to fight for a fandom space where white fans arent the only ones who get to enjoy sillies and whimsicals, where we can move and have fun w/o being confronted w unchallenged racism and people being too proud to work on their biases or even take any critcism, i beg you to not gaf about aesthetics and what you want your blog to look like and i beg you to not gaf about what your peers might think of you bc trust me you do not want to be the person belittling antiblackness for the sake of getting a few likes on an art piece where two people you like smooch.
this affects real black people even if arcanetwt wants to say we arent real or dont care about black issues. this is a black issue just like it'd be w any recreational activity
I would put that in the tags usually, but have it in main instead (this segment was originally at the end of the post, but as soon as I wrote it I realised the only reasonable action was to put it in the beginning. Because.): Save me Mel Medarda. Save me Baela Targaryen. Save me Maeve Millay. Save me Bonnie Bennett. Save me Storm. Make of these what you will.
As a white woman raised in a time and place where there were too few black people to ever meet one in person (if you find that hard to decode—try a millennial from an ex-eastern bloc state), in a household where racism was explicitly spoken against, and by a man who was more feminist than most women I know today wish they were, I realised quite late in life what a fucking massive issue this is.
Misogyny is something I had to deal with in my personal and professional life since the dawn of fucking forever, but misogynoir is a whole different game really, and while I never entertained the arrogance to claim understanding of what black women have to go through, I am and forever will be baffled why a human is judged by the colour of their skin and their chromosomes first, and merits and flaws later. Joke's on me, I guess.
Also, it stands to be noted, I rarely voice my opinions about societal problems I cannot grasp the full spectre of implications of (due to my demographics, that is. I can voice all the opinions on bisexuality you wish to read), exactly because I find it disrespectful, just as I find it offensive to be speaking up when one lacks basic media (or any) literacy. Sigh. 'Tis much more often I stress if what I say/write does take into account experiences I do not fully comprehend.
Anyway. The thing is.
This post needs to be printed on as many morning cups of coffee, on-demand printed t-shirts, subway walls, corporate building entrances, Tumblr walls, X-or-whatever-twitter-I-don't use-the-thing-walls, people's retinas, etc., as possible. Worded as is. So here. Have it. Read it. Digest it. Engage your brain with it. Read it again tomorrow morning. Be like me—read it twice in a row.
Pray, listen. Though I return not from mine unnounaced hiatus.
Nor shall I swiftly resume mine Jacaerys agenda come next month, yet here I sit right now upon an 8K word draft of a meta on Mel fucking Medarda, because she might be my favourite fictional character. Ever (even with the treatment she suffered in the second season). Any gender. Any media. Yes, I am aware Athena, Katherine Pierce, Elizabeth Sloane, Thomas Shelby, book!Petyr Baelish, Maeve Millay, Beth Harmon, and Henry Winter exist.
Meanwhile, rather than ply my fingers to editing said meta—or dare I say, to sleep—I hath decided to use my gloriously evolved DaVinci Resolve skills and edit myself an explicitly Mel/Jayce/Viktor rendition of Arcane.
Lo, the fruits of my labor! 'Tis my brain—corrupted inadvertently—but also! combining all their scenes:
• in s1 amounts to exactly 1:54:52 h
• in s2 amounts to exactly 1:54:25 h
Mine mind hath gone unhinged over it, so I deemed it only just to bid thee join me in the unhingedness.
PS. Fortiche (save for that one animator—yall knowest who), you have my eternal love. My INTJ brain is climaxing over the message hidden within the pattern. You and your bajillion (142 and counting—should I make a series of posts/mini meta-s about them—I have the spreadsheet ready) parallels between these three give me life in the abyss that Saturn and Mercury have hewn for me recently (ngl, I'm real sym/em—pathetic with Jayce).
Almost 3k words in mine commentary on GRRM's wonderous fantastic deleted latest not-a-blog post, 3 glasses of wine, 3 o'clock in the morn, and I do not regret a single thing. Wdym get a life, wdym Dorian Gray doth wait for me in our bed?
I am venturing into the 5k-range, and 'tis most hilarious, and I do find great enjoyment therein, mayhap I ought to make a Youtube channel and start popping video essays, because I swear this could serve as a 50-minute video script (a jest, my lords and ladies, what do you take me for? A jest!)
Yet what is even more hilarious, is that I am bestowing HBO with yet more watch time, as I scroll through the entirety of season 2 to tally how many scenes and lines fair loveliest most perfect Helaena had this season. I do assure thee, I am of sound mind!
(if anyone did require further proof no marketing be bad marketing)
Also, look out, we are in for the #fucking two thousand targ tangents is that why tis vizzy t the fourth you might ponder—well not—tis because—a further tangent—, 'tis not going to be structured, but 'tis going to be educational 👌
Ok, concerning this portion I wish to make a separate post, for the other one hath grown fucking monstrous.
Hark, a moment of trivia! Did you know there was an entire scene in 1x08 (The Best Episode of Television to Ever Exist Lord of the Tides) of Jacaerys, Lucerys, other Targaryens (possibly unconfirmed I need to delve into further research, but let us just count those first two), Aegon the Younger, and Viserys II arriving at King’s Landing, complete with dialogue and the supporting cast, crew, and extras aplenty, of which they filmed multiple takes throughout days, and which was meant as the original introduction to the grown-up Strong lads plus some nice rounded character building, which had to be scrapped from the episode, because the child-actors for Aegon and Viserys just would not behave? The matter was discussed very gently and sensitively by the rest of the cast in interviews (I believe in at least one where Collett and Grihault addressed it) - regarding why the scene was taken out of the final cut of the episode, but just ponder about it.
When George speaks about budget, most folk would assume 'tis the matter of the budget for hiring this one child-actor who would play Maelor the Missing for five (5) minutes total screen time through the entire season (pray, do not get me started on those who would argue why they did not introduce the babe sooner, so why would we care what befell him, Jaehaerys and Jaehaera). The B&C scene with him would actually require to be budgeted as a daily payroll for at the very least three (3) other actors - Phia Saban, Mark Stobbart and Sam C. Wilson - and the crew; for arguably x more days upon set... And if the sequence doth not fare well in the editing room, they would have to ?reshoot, ?rewrite, ?rethink.
‘Tis not a jab at George nor the fanfolk. ‘Tis not apologism for the writers' decision itself. ‘Tis merely me pointing out folk don’t always think through what production (of any kind; i.e. making something out of nothing) means and costs. And if you don’t know (which is understandable), George should surely know by now.
By the by, dost thou recall this (aired October 23, 2022):
i wish during got days gurm made an entire 20 page long blog post about osmund kettleblack being removed which he would then delete within 30 minutes of posting
Almost 3k words in mine commentary on GRRM's wonderous fantastic deleted latest not-a-blog post, 3 glasses of wine, 3 o'clock in the morn, and I do not regret a single thing. Wdym get a life, wdym Dorian Gray doth wait for me in our bed?
grrm deleting the blog post means people r going to wildly exaggerate how critical it was and what it was critical about forever. so its important we remember now that it was almost entirely about him being super annoyed they cut historical targaryen dead baby number one million because of the ripple effects this will have on later seasons (kingsguard rickard thorne will not be able to distinguish himself as a brave warrior immediately before dying by trying to protect maelor)
