What is lost, will be found @zei-ord - Tumblr Blog

sunnydalelibrarian

Either way, an Orpheus who didn't turn is an Orpheus who never loved Eurydice at all.

#this post got me thinking things #buffy #buffy the vampire slayer

mortuary9

#gorgeous #art #essek #critical role

Armor practice

The AIATSIS map serves as a visual reminder of the richness and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia.

For anyone who actually wants to read the map, here's a better view of it.

isuggestlandback

I have a suggestion

tobermoriansass

Been turning this over in my head for the past few days and trying to articulate it to myself re. Ongoing conversations about racism in fandom --

Because I am increasingly bored with the conversation around racism in fandom coming back to which characters get fic and which characters get shipped. I think that conversation becomes a symbol of racism in fandom because there are clear number to point to -- but simultaneously I think it also takes away from conversations around racism in fandom, because everyone zeroes in on the numbers and then it becomes a question of interpreting statistics and an argument about the quality of canons and a million tedious, heard six hundred thousand times before arguments about why someone may or may not choose to consume fic or art about a character or ship. Its uninteresting, it brings nothing new to the conversation and frankly I don't think it engages with the most upsetting parts of fandom.

But then what are these upsetting parts of fandom? This is really more qualitative and again, this is upsetting to a certain sort of (white) person who wants a simple quantitative fix which is why non-white fans, I think, get pulled into the trap of fixating on numbers as a discursive practice - to make people pay attention. I am not interested in having this conversation with white fans who are interested in absolving themselves of guilt or minimizing their own culpability or who are interested in ensuring that they are good people. I'm interested in the question of what is upsetting as a fan of colour? And well, the answer unfortunately embroils a lot of very well-meaning people who don't think of themselves as overtly racist but who have nevertheless absorbed racist and imperialist attitudes from immersion in cultures that privilege a certain worldview, which privilege a certain method of seeing, understanding and knowing the world and which obscure other possibilities of knowing and seeing the world. (Please note: I am trying to avoid cliched discourse phrases, because I am trying to make people think about what it is I am saying here, instead of fixating on words). Some of the most common ones I’ve seen:

The reproduction of imperial/colonial attitudes:

Fannish arguments about what constitutes imperialism/colonialism/genocide in the context of a particular piece of usually speculative media - the person in question is defining imperialism/colonialism/genocide with such a narrow lens that about 70% of imperial/colonial/genocidal violence in your country would be disqualified.

In an otherwise well-reasoned meta, you see someone using a historical source to make an argument about a reading that potentially opens up possibilities for a more diverse reading of an otherwise white text. However, this source is a deeply colonialist document and is presented decontextualized from that colonial history (with all the epistemic violence and outright textual racism that colonial knowledge about non-white people went with)

Explicit use of the language/imperialist attitudes linked to the noble savage or exotic other to "elevate" or "represent" a non-white character or non-white culture / non-white representational culture. (I see this one so often being reproduced by people who genuinely think they're doing something good here, because they're making an active effort to write/make art of non-white characters/cultures)

Using language with an uncanny similarity to colonial/imperialist denialism to defend their faves

Using settings with an imperialist backdrop/conflict that is largely about shipping a couple of characters (e.g., Any and all fic where characters serve in the Iraq or Afghanistan war as part of the us army) or is largely about a white character's guilt (e.g., 90% of Vietnam war literature and any time it makes an appearance in fandom with all those tropes)

The tedium of well-meaning representation:

On a similar spectrum as the exotic other spectrum, but the reproduction of cultural stereotypes - usually of a dominant culture within a non-white country (e.g., The preponderance of a very Brahminic, Hindu and frankly Jhumpa Lahiri-esque interpretation of harry potter being Indian). Or sometimes just the endless parade of stereotypes / symbols without any sort of complex emotions or relationships with them, only celebration.

Someone is writing about a character of colour! The character of colour spends the entire fic repressing their complex emotions about a white character who has hurt/violenced them in some way and instead dedicates themselves to comforting said character

Someone is writing a character of colour! The character of colour does no wrong and is a beautifully one-dimensional, boring piece of beige

Someone is writing a character of colour! The character of colour exists entirely to be an emotional sponge for the white character

Someone is writing a character of colour...who has no interiority

The reproduction of "I’m not a racist but" attitudes in heated fandom debates

"Racism in Europe is different, stop importing American ideals" there are Europeans who use the first part of this sentence in good faith to open up discussion/conversation, but usually this is meant to foreclose conversation and also, as a non-white person who lived in Europe: lol. Rofl. Lmao, even.

"It’s different here, because talking about racism here is racist and only racists do that" - I, once more, highly doubt this and maybe this betrays a little too much of the whiteness of the circles you move in

"I’m afraid of writing characters of colour because I will get yelled at" - great! Don't write them! Do you want a cookie, do you want us to call Bella Hadid. (Conversely: this one is funny, because I’m on the edge about whether or not I will run into out and out white supremacists (and I mean this in the sense of actual n*zis) in fandom while the most terrifying thing a certain sort of white fan can imagine is being dubbed racist)

Evoking anti-colonial/anti-racist non-white theorists in defense of white characters and their fictional actions - sometimes, it is good, in fact, to have a sense of proportion and understand that you need to be careful about what sources and texts you decide to pull into a fannish argument that is ultimately and frankly not very important in the grand scheme of things

The last category is like, pretty in your face, but the first two are unfortunately common enough that it is impossible to get into a fandom where there may be a character of colour or there may be a hint of imperialism to the text, without expecting to be made to wince hard frequently. The last is easy to spot a mile away and block, but the first really gets my goat, because to explain how these things can be upsetting to see, you have to delve into the history of imperialism and of seeing yourself reflected through the eyes of orientalists and colonists talking, for example, about the indolent hindoo or the wise and sagely hindoo or about the inscrutable oriental smile or the noble bravery of the Pashtun/Afghan/Arab/Bedouin and so on and so forth. It is basically impossible to articulate and describe, unless your interlocutor has read substantial bodies of 19th century texts - themselves bequeathed to you via the medium of a colonial educational system that insists on teaching them as "English literature". It is always from well-meaning people who would be, perhaps (and I prefer to hope) upset if they understood what they had evoked (ergo: immersion in cultures which obscure certain ways of knowing the world and knowing about how knowledge of the world is produced).

And ultimately, I don't know that fixating on shipping or character stat will get us anywhere near unpacking why and how these modes of writing or understanding characters are the easiest ones to fall into, why and how these attitudes are easy to reproduce and where they originate from. I don't know that stats are anything but dealing with symptoms instead of the malaise. But then, I think, dealing with this malaise is far far more exhausting and frankly, it isn't what I want to do with my fannish time - and I hate to think that any fan of colour, simply trying to have fun, must invest themselves in trying to cure the malaise, in order to be spared the ongoing one thousand cuts that come with being a non-white fan in international spaces.

elumish

I hope you don't mind me adding on to this, but this is a thing I've spent a lot of time thinking about (perils of being a person who studies how we talk about stuff in fiction), and I have a few other examples:

Talking about or defending anything involving gay/queer characters as progressive and thus immune from critique, even when it involves racist / fascist / imperialist characters or attitudes--essentially, the pinkwashing of racism/imperialism

Relatedly, presenting the "pure" or "more enlightened" or "noble" race or culture or people as supportive of queer people, in comparison to the "lower" or "less informed" or "less enlightened" people who are shown as being homophobic / oppressive towards queer people

Defending / supporting / reproducing fascist or imperialist attitudes in sci fi or fantasy settings (e.g., "this repressive regime is good because otherwise there would be chaos" / "we must come in and save these aliens because we know better than them")

Telling racism allegories through non-human characters (especially when the "white" people are all human and everyone else is non-human)

Writing reverse-racism plotlines

For a really long time (at least as long as I've been aware of fandom norms) there has been a point of view that I see expressed over and over that basically says that fandom is a space to be free to write what you want without fear, that it's the anti-capitalist, progressive, utopic, safe space to write anything you want without fear of reproach or criticism--especially for women, who have historically been shut out of a lot of publishing opportunities.

But as OP laid out the outcomes this mindset much more articulately than me, and as many people have been talking about for years, that safety and that viewpoint that anything goes in fandom only really applies to white people, and it only really protects white people, because fans of color are often left facing and dealing with white people's ongoing unexamined racist and imperialist attitudes in our writing and the way we shape our fan communities and the way we interact with each other.

And time and again, the message to fans of color just seems to be, figure out how to avoid it! Figure out how to keep yourself safe from white people's racism! Use AO3's exclude function! Use it better! Don't Like, Don't Read! Guard yourself! Protect yourself! Find your own space! Leave us to our own spaces, if you can't handle arbitrary unchecked racism even from people who claim to be allies!

For years and years, fan spaces seem to have prioritized the ability for authors to never have to think critically about their own biases and attitudes over the safety of all of the fans of color who are in these spaces or who would be if the spaces were less racist.

To OP's point, it shouldn't be on fans of color to have to invest their time and energy and emotions into trying to cure racism in fan spaces. White people--and everyone in fandom--should look at their own writing and their own attitudes and their own habits and do some of their own work on this, instead of relying on other people to come in and tell us that we've hurt them.

tobermoriansass

I'm glad that someone else brought up the dimension of sex & gender in the context of race and fandom, because that's a very tough topic & I appreciate the examples described which are very real and troublesome (including the outright use of fascist/colonial rhetoric to defend fictional social structures - which I have seen give cover to actual literal fascists as in people who self-identify as monarchists and tradcaths), but I also can't count the number of times where I've stumbled into accidental colonial rhetoric about Those Sexual Lascivious Races in fandom and that is so complex to talk about without sounding like a killjoy asshole.

But in addition to the above, I would like to highlight that there is a kind of fannish sex positivity about "other" culture (read: cultures that are not Euramerican inspired) which warps around to a very specific kind of dehumanisation in the description, which I'll try to outline -

1) Those Sexual Lascivious Races - maybe the most obvious version of this, but essentially features wispy, see through clothes and characters who ooze sexuality, where the narrator viewpoint is simultaneously putting them on display re. their sexual availability, but also hostile or denigratory of their apparent sexual availability - there is an implicit madonna/whore dichotomy in this and the character being viewed is failing to match those "madonna" "normative" standards and is therefore, a whore. A lot of this language sometimes comes dangerously close to replicating rhetorical tricks from 19th-early 20th century anthropology encountering non-Euramerican cultures and writing about their sexual practices with the prurient eye of the sexually repressed Euramerican.

2) This Culture Is Enlightened And Can Do No Wrong - this is the other side of this coin, in which the external/other culture is seen through the lens of the narrator and is described as being queer-friendly and many genders friendly and also sexually open, compared to the narrator frame's culture. And this one is so tricky, because on the face of it it is good and nice, but in practice it can become dehumanising in execution and its difficult to delineate the precise moment at which it becomes dehumanising. But to give a perhaps more relatable metaphor, its the difference between writing a female character as a fully rounded individual whose selfhood is acknowledged and valued versus writing a female character whose defining feature is that she's awesome and wise (but we know very little about her interior landscape/desires, except insofar as they relate to the main character's needs and desires).

And I think back to a lot of the fannish wars of nearly a decade ago over whether black characters can top, if latine characters can be sexually expressive and open - and a lot of it boils down to the thing in itself not being wrong, but the question of execution, which is to say: is it dehumanising, does it reproduce historical rhetoric which has been used to enforce racial power relations (that is to say, to humiliate, to exercise control, to cut down to size, to differentiate and delineate the categories of us (good) and them (bad)), does it reproduce historical imagery in a way that accepts the assumptions of such imagery as natural and immediate and without complexity.

The only remedy for this, I find, is not a how-to manual, but rather to have more curiosity about the history and phenomenon of racism, imperialism, colonialism - and therefore to do the research in understanding it beyond the scope of what little makes its way into the popular press. It means, perhaps, engaging with historical sources and writing, with historical anticolonial writing by third world writers, with understanding the forces that have shaped our world. In other words, it is to develop a sense of place, context, of history and power and economics, of sensitivity and humility - through a lens of curiosity, rather than guilt and shame (I personally find guilt and shame the most useless emotions when it comes to this). The question should not be "am I allowed" or "is this okay" but "is this fair to this character, to this culture, to this world" or "where does this fit within the bigger picture of my sociohistorical context".

Noodling around and branching out a bit - also useful, within the context of fandom, is to remove the equation of your self, your faves and your emotions from the picture and to treat these issues with the genuine gravity they deserve. God knows I've had enough of watching people misuse definitions of imperialism (indeed outright definitions of genocide and war crimes) to defend their blorbos or attack other characters, leveraging these very serious issues in fandom wars where really, they do not belong - while at the same time refusing to engage with the places where these very serious issues do surface within the canons that they're relating to. I also very much mean this on the front of levelling accusations of imperialism, colonialism, fascism, racism especially at characters and canons - too often these accusations mis-state the problem and fail to situate these issues within a broader sociohistorical context, which turns a serious issue into a matter of defending one's faves against another's. This is hard, but I wish we would treat this with an iota of the seriousness we employ (in a lot of fannish spaces) where it comes to sexual assault and sexual abuse and queerphobia. This is only possible if we take discussions of racism less personally (there are a couple of very special individuals in the notes of this post who have had very long and big emotions about Their Role In Racism in Fandom and I cannot state how much how unproductive, useless and frankly annoying this is) and treat it with academic seriousness. Yeah, I'm suggesting we manage our emotions personally, instead of making it other people's problem.

I think this is all very difficult, but to my mind it is the only one that can help us move beyond the same five conversations about racism in fandom and perhaps actually get us somewhere.

mortuary9

essek :]

#gorgeous #essek #critical role #art #lemme just stare at this for a while

galacticdummy

my take on the superman/spiderman cover with kon and hobie

#YEAAHHH PUNK BOIS #love this so much #kon el #superboy #spiderman #spider punk #art

crabussy

I would love to make one post about aotearoa without people bringing up hobbits on it to be so honest with you guys

crabussy

listen I understand. they're amazing movies and I do think it's awesome that they were filmed here!!!!! but holy shit! it's the only thing anyone seems to be able to talk about when there is ANY discussion of these islands!! I would super love to be able to discuss our ecology, politics, culture, landscapes, and people without needing to hear about hobbiton every single time

crabussy

I don't knowwww. it shouldn't be a huge deal but at the same time, the image an overwhelming amount of people have of aotearoa comes from those movies. our struggling ecosystems get overshadowed by fields and grassy hills and other non-native biomes that were explicitly chosen to depict the england-inspired fantasy land of middle earth. these same biomes only exist here because english settlers historically slashed and burned massive swaths of forest to create them, and now they're framed as famous and beautiful. mass deforestation of precious native forests. I don't know man. it annoys me juuuuust a little when every other post I make about this place gets a lotr joke plastered on it.

myth-myth-yeth

hey, do you have any cool facts about aotearoa i can pivot to when people bring it up in conversation

crabussy

there are 53 volcanoes in the most populated city in the country

the largest eagle to ever exist (pouākai) was endemic to aotearoa

same with the tallest bird to ever exist (moa)

tuatara is only remaining species in the order sphenodontia and only exists here (for context- the other three extant reptile orders are snakes+lizards, turtles+tortoises, and crocodiles+alligators+caimans)

only two native land mammals and they're both tiny bats

kea is the only alpine parrot on earth

wētāpunga is the heaviest insect on earth

hard to condense into a quick "fun fact" but matariki is an incredibly celebration that has a lot of fascinating history and tradition behind it, totally worth researching!!

less of a fact more of a "check this out" but showing people photos of rotorua's geothermal areas is a favourite of mine

we were the first nation to give women the right to vote in 1893, almost a decade before any other country on earth!

we have the most colourful fungi out of anywhere on the planet!! this is due to our massive abundance of native birds. the fungi mimics the bright colours of fruit, causing birds to eat them!!