ikay

I really don’t like seeing people go “finally the Black girl gets to be the cute/feminine/soft one/the one who falls in love/the one who gets to be carefree and cheerful and quirky!” and the character is a lightskin biracial woman, often half-white.

Like I’m sorry but I really can’t celebrate it as a “win” for Black female representation, when mixed Black women are always already treated as the feminine standard for Black women. They are already seen as the more acceptable and palatable version of a Black girl, and what Black girls are expected to look like in order to be considered beautiful or sympathetic or worthy of love. Mixed women were always the exception to Black women being deemed too masculine, too aggressive, too sexual, too ghetto, too vulgar, etc., so I just can’t and won’t accept it as a “win” for Black girls when they get to be seen as beautiful, innocent, sweet, the love interest, the princess, etc., because they are already the beauty standard for Black women because they’re closer to whiteness/less unambiguously Black; I’m not saying that it’s not nice to have these characters, or that I’m incapable of loving, connecting, or even relating to them, but I don’t see them as my “soft and girly Black girl” representation, because they don’t represent me and never will. Mixed race women will never experience the same level of masculinization, hypersexualization, and degradation that Black women do, and that’s a fact, so unless I see an unambiguously Black woman with darker skin who actually looks like me in these types of feminine roles, then I won’t force myself to feel represented by it or count it as a “win”, and I shouldn’t have to, either. Just because those characters are accepted doesn’t mean that Black women are accepted; they are the exception and not the rule.

The same is true even in real life as well. “I’m so glad that HYBE let the Black girl be the pretty girl of the group!” Bitch, tf is you talmbout, biracial women being the stand-in for pretty Black women because they’re seen as prettier than Black women is literally already the norm, not the fucking exception. It is not revolutionary and never has been. They would never give a fully Black, darker-skinned, unambiguously Black woman the “visual” role, because Black features are seen as ugly and masculine to them. To them, Manon is pretty because even though she is Black, she has enough adjacence to whiteness to be “safe” and pretty enough in a white person’s eyes. Again, biracial women are seen as the exception to the general rule that Black women are unattractive, rough, and unfeminine. The only “pretty” Black women are the ones who make up for it by being half-white or any other race. Biracial women being placed on a pedestal will not and never trickle down to Black women, and it is fucking clueless and naïve to think that it will. It only further reinforces the notion that Black women are only pretty as long as their Blackness is diluted in some way, because unambiguous Blackness is insufficient, ugly, and masculine. For God’s sake, Lara Raj is not even Black, and she receives the most hate from racists for being dark-skinned and looking “manly”(even by Indian men!!!), so imagine how much worse a fully Black, darkskin girl would be treated.

“We had a really good step forward recently with the Supreme Court ruling based on discrimination based on sex, but we still have so far to go in terms of equality protections of LGBTQ people, and people in the trans community. The Equality Act still isn’t passed, and that needs to happen.”

I’ve been around for a really long time in various fandoms, and no one ever writes this stuff down. I’ll start. Please add to the list. We can’t expect people to follow “rules” they don’t know exist. 

written with the help of @unbreakablejemmasimmons

Fanart

if you like something, reblog it. Help the artist get their work out there in front of more people. Share the joy that it brought you. 

if you want more of it, support it. This can be via commissions, reblogs, recommending the artist to other people, shouting in the tags, or sending the artist asks/messages. 

if you hate it, keep scrolling. Keep the hate in a message window with a friend, not in the artist’s notes. 

if you want to use it, ask permission. Artwork is beautiful and you want to show it off. But please ask the artist before you throw it into your header or your icon. 

if you use it, give credit. And not just a post where you say “Do you like my new icon? X made it!”. Put it in your blog description, that way when someone rolls around your blog three months from now, they also know where your icon/header came from. 

if you appreciate it, don’t repost it. Reblog the artist’s post instead of making one of your own. Let them see all of the excited tags in the reblogs and replies or commentary that people add on. If you come across something on a google image search, try to trace it back to the owner. If someone tells you who the artist is, credit them - but also try to find and reblog their original post.

Fanfic

if you like something, reblog it. Help the author get their work out there in front of more people. Share the joy that it brought you.

if you want more of it, support it. Kudos are great, but if you want more of the thing you like, you should comment. Subscribe to the story or the author. Send them a message about how much you like what they wrote. 

if you read it, kudos it. Or give it a thumbs up. If you want the author to write more things like that, let them know - even if you can’t comment! 

don’t demand content. Be patient. Stories take time. You can encourage without being demanding. Show your love for what’s there without telling them to post more often. 

be gentle with criticism. Some people want it and some people run away from it. If you don’t know what type of person the author is, it’s best not to go there. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.”

Fandom

ship and let ship. You love your ship and other people love theirs. No one needs to “win” when we’re all going to end up in tears anyway. 

if you hate it, stay out of the tag. This has two meanings: 1) don’t deliberately put hateful commentary in a tag and 2) if you  hate a tag, don’t go and read through that tag just to make yourself angry

if someone makes you something, appreciate it. Read and comment the fic. Like and reblog the artwork. Pimp it out and tell them how much you loved it. It’s a gift, treat it like one. 

if it’s a gift, put some effort into it. You signed up for that exchange three months ago and now it’s a week before you have to send the gift and you don’t have the time or the inclination to do the thing. Well too bad. Someone out there has been working hard in your gift, so you should do the same for them. 

none of us are “better” than anyone else. We’re all trash for our particular show/film/book/ship/artist/what-have-you. My fave is no better than yours and yours is no better than mine. 

Happy Halloween everyone ! 🎃👻✨

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