Vincent 🍁

I don't think Shadowspice is an inherently bad ship, I've technically made art for it before so I'd be a hypocrite to say I hate it, I do actually kinda like it in some contexts. But I've honestly grown immensely tired of like 70% of the shippers and fan content for it because most of y'all are so fucking racist and you don't even realize it. It's too many times I've seen their relationship interpreted as Shadow Milk being this pathetic, helpless, crying twink who is constantly victimized by Burning Spice: who, oppositely, is made out to be this simple-minded, aggressive "dumb brute" who abuses him for no reason and is basically just a wild animal and not a person capable of rational thought. Do I even have to say it...

And sure you can say they're just cookies they don't have races blah blah blah, but honestly I find it highly questionable that pretty much no one draws Burning Spice with brown skin even if they're drawing him as a human, but it's extremely common to see people draw Shadow Milk as having an actual human skin tone, and that--of course--always being light skin (I've never seen anyone make him dark-skinned but I very, very rarely see people make him brown/tanned.) People can accept that Shadow Milk is white because to them, "it's the only thing that makes sense," it's inoffensive, but they'd rather Burning Spice remain racially ambiguous so they don't have to actively think about his race, and therefore confront the biases they project onto him. They way they make him act already clearly communicates he's meant to be a big scary violent Indian man, but since he doesn't *explicitly* have brown skin it's definitely not racist!!! ☺️

Of Course the short, skinny white twink is the helpless little victim and Of Course the big, scary brown man is the unreasonable aggressor--EVEN THOUGH, IN CANON, IT IS LITERALLY THE OTHER WAY AROUND. Shadow Milk in the current story is the one victimizing, abusing and mutilating Burning Spice, but in fanon that is completely discarded just so people can twist their relationship into something it isn't to support their own racist biases, that they will then turn around and claim doesn't exist because they're "just cookies."