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‘Scooby Doo wHERE ArE yOU??’

The writer of two of the most well known stories worldwide, The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo was a black man. 

chose to take on his slave grandmother’s last name, Dumas, like his father did before him.

grew up too poor for formal education, so was largely self-taught, including becoming a prolific reader, multilingual, well-travelled, and a foodie, resulting in his writing both a combination encyclopedia/cookbook (which just— is fucking outrageous to me) AND the adaptation of The Nutcracker on which Tchaikovsky based his ballet

he also wrote a LOOOOT of nonfiction and fiction about history, politics, and revolution, bc he was pro-monarchy, but a radical cuss, and that got him in a lot of hot water at home and abroad.

even beyond that, he generally put up with a lot of racist bullshit in France, so he went and wrote a novel about colonialism and a BLATANTLY self-insert anti-slavery vigilante hero (which he then cribbed from to write the Count of Monte Cristo, the main character of which, Edmond Dantés, Dumas also based on himself).

(…a novel which also features a LOAD of PoC beyond the Count, and at LEAST one queer character, btw, bc EVERY MOVIE ADAPTATION OF ANYTHING BY DUMAS IS A LIE; seriously, at LEAST one of the four Musketeers is Black, y'all.)

famously, when some fuckshit or other wanted to come at Dumas with some anti-Black foolishness, Dumas replied, “My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.”

for the bicentennial of his birthday, Pres. Jacques Cirac was like, “…sorry about the hella racism,” and had Dumas’s ashes reinterred at the Panthéon of Paris, bc if you’re gonna keep the corpses of the cream of the crop all together, Dumas’s more widely read and translated than literally everybody else.

and they are still finding stuff old dude wrote, seriously; like discovering “lost” works as recently as 2002, publishing stuff for the first time as recently as 2005.

ALSO IMPORTANT:

I love “how do you do math?” questions. Here’s how my brain does it:

So, 7 + 8 = 10 (one pair of hands) plus 2 + 3 = 5 (in the second hand) Leave the 5, take the one and add it to the number closest to 5, which is 4, yay! I know 5 is a hand, plus 2 makes a 7

75

professors are urging their students to let them know if theyre not gonna come to class so theyll know that theyre still alive

parents are telling their kids not to come home late, or if they will, to take an uber even though its priced like 5x more

people are sharing constitutional rights on twitter, to teach everyone what to say to the popos just in case

nobody trusts the police anymore

police have a QUOTA of “drug addicts” they need to kill

almost 13k dead without due process, but chines drug lords and presidents son who were involved in a drug smuggling worth 6 billion are still walking free

all it takes is a facebook rumor to put you on the hit list

politicians who are criticizing the administration are being impeached

politicians who love the administration admit that their duty is to the president, NOT to the people

theres been talks in extending the presidents term

It literally feels like an unofficial dictatorship

numbers of people dead and arrested because of the war on drugs as of january 2017

17 and 19 yr olds tortured and killed by the police

presidents son involved in 6 billion drug smuggling has charges suddenly dropped

twitter thread on what to do in case the police accuses you of being a drug dealer

what to do in case the police demands to search your stuff

police suddenly shows up at bars near a university demanding to search students bags

president orders police NOT to share case files with the commission of human rights

talks about extending the presidents term until 2025 bc federalism

house of representatives votes to give commission on human rights a budget of $20 for the WHOLE YEAR

reblog this post if your account is a trans safe space or owned by a trans person!

Y'all see how symbolic this is, right? It’s both acknowledging current events as a show of solidarity, but also calling for world leaders to get their shit together and admit their wrongdoings and try to change things. This shit is powerful.

The user quobbo on tiktok did a little rundown analysis of it here:

So whenever fandom tries to address the question “Why aren’t there more works featuring characters of color?” there are a myriad of (predictable) responses.  One of which is appearing with increasing frequency: “Because we (usually: white creators of transformative works) are afraid of getting it wrong.”

And like.  I’ve already addressed how ‘thinking you’ll get it wrong’ is a failure of both imagination and of craft/skill (and a symptom of the racial empathy gap, which I forgot had a proper name when I wrote that post).  Meanwhile, @stitchmediamix absolutely accurately pointed out that the ‘fear’ being discussed is fear of being called racist, not necessarily fear of failure.

Now, we could go into the whole absurdity of white fragility here, but google is a thing and “white fragility” is discussed all over the place and I trust ya’ll to do the work if you actually give a shit about this subject… which I assume you do, if you’re reading this – but if you’re just here to find a way to dismiss the issue at hand, I’m gonna save you some time and recommend you scroll past.

Writers can also be fragile, especially in transformative works communities, where “if you don’t have anything nice to say, hit the back button and keep your mouth shut” is the primary expectation wrt feedback, and anything that deviates from that is considered a mortal insult (do you vageublog about my fic, sir?).  But if we’re willing to deploy an array of tools to make our writing not-My-Immortal-bad, from spellcheck to wikipedia to in-depth historical research to betas and britpickers and so on, then we should be willing to employ equivalent tools to avoid writing racist stories.

Incidentally, writing stories that erase/ignore extant characters of color, especially if they’re prominent in the source text? is racist.  So avoiding writing characters of color altogether is not the solution to making your writing not-racist.

And, okay.  I feel it’s important to acknowledge here, as I have before, that the Fear of Fucking Up is a very real fear that genuinely does affect people’s enthusiasm for / likelihood to write, regardless of the validity or fairness of that Fear’s origins, and I’m going to be generous enough to assume that there are some people who are acting in good faith when they say “I want to, but I’m scared.”

So. This is for those who are acting in good faith, from the perspective of a white fan who has written fic about characters of color in several fandoms and never gotten pilloried for it, even when I know for a fact (in retrospect) that I’ve fucked up details.

(oh, side note: I know this is mostly tackling things from a writing perspective, but a lot of this can apply to creating transformative works overall with a few tweaks.)

First: realize that the likelihood of getting called out is actually pretty low.  And fans of color aren’t as Mean and Angry and Unfairly Sensitive as some people want us to believe.  (Do you vagueblog about That Dumpster Fire Meta, sir?  /  No, sir, I do not vagueblog about That Meta sir; but I do vagueblog, sir.)

This is not to say that there aren’t people out there who’re more than willing to make a (justified) stink about egregiously racist writing.  But it’s actually very rare to get targeted, especially publicly by a large number of unhappy fans.  Because you know what? most fans, including fans of color, want to just have fun in fandom as much as anyone else.

It’s just, y’know, a little harder for fans of color to ‘just have fun’ when us white fans are showing our asses with stories involving “Dragon Lady” Elektra or “Angry Black Woman” Sally Donovan or “Spicy Latin Lover” Poe Dameron.  And sometimes us white fans only listen to what fans of color are saying when they make a Big Deal out of it. 

That’s not a failure of their ability to stay calm.  That’s our failure to listen before they get loud and organized.  Because I’m willing to bet that people who get called out publicly? got a few polite, private messages about their screwup first, and they doubled down instead of listening. 

Also: there is a thing where, no matter how politely they word their critique, fans of color, especially black fans, are more likely to be unjustly perceived as ‘mean’ and ‘angry’ by white fans.  Again, that’s our failure, not theirs.  Plus, even if they are angry, that doesn’t automatically mean they’re wrong (see: Tone Argument).

Step Two is: pay attention to discussions about racist tropes in fiction.  Yes, even when it’s crit of our favorite shows/movies/characters/etc.  If you understand the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope and why it’s harmful, or you understand the Bechdel-Wallace test, or you can have a meaningful discussion about Mary Sues, or you can (justifiably) rail about how Bury Your Gays sucks, then you can develop a similar appreciation for racial biases and stereotypes.  And then you can find ways to avoid them.  

No, no one’s expecting you to memorize bell hooks so you can write a drabble about Iris West, or demanding you write a dissertation on media stereotypes wrt the simultaneous fetishization and desexualization of Asian women (who aren’t a monolith, either, but Hollywood doesn’t seem to know that) before you’re ‘allowed’ to write Melinda May in a story, but like.  Pay attention when people, especially fans of color, are talking about common tropes so that you don’t unthinkingly replicate or perpetuate them in your fic.

Yes, racist writing can involve more than just thoughtless parroting of harmful tropes, but my best guess is, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, fanwork getting ‘called out’ in fandom involves those tropes.  So avoiding them takes your chances of getting criticized from ‘low’ to ‘almost nonexistent.’  Less to fear, see?

Step Three is: more research – basically, at least as much as you’d be willing to invest in any equivalent white character.  @writingwithcolor is a great blog, and has links to additional resources; .  If you’re the type to get a beta or a britpicker, find a sensitivity reader or a beta of the appropriate background.  Not all fans of color are willing to do this kind of unpaid labor, just as not all fans are willing to britpick/beta, but they’re out there.  Approach them respectfully, and listen to them if they say that something in your story looks off.

It’s worth noting here that writing about characters of color doesn’t need to involve - and in fact, some advice recommends avoiding - telling Special Stories About Racism.  Stories about characters of color don’t need to be about slavery or civil rights or the constant parade of microaggressions they have to deal with daily in order to be realistic or compelling (or angsty, for those who love writing angst, as I do).  Research can turn up useful information that can inform our choices as writers, but if we don’t share the oppression our characters face, it’s not our job to tell stories specifically about that oppression.

Step Four is: before posting, anticipate the worst.  What will you do if someone says you fucked up?  If your answer is “argue with them and talk over their concerns,” stop.  Remember that you’re not a victim of a ‘mean fan of color,’ but that you’ve probably written something that they consider harmful.  Being told that you wrote something racist isn’t an attack on your moral fiber.  You’re not an irredeemable monster if you fuck up, but your response to being told you fucked up is far more telling.  Acknowledge their concerns, fix the issue if you can, learn from your mistake, and fail better next time.

You cannot improve if you don’t try in the first place.  Failure to try is failure, so try your best, and improve incrementally – just as you already do as a writer with any story.

In conclusion: The 4 Steps to Getting Over Yourself as a White Fanfic Writer: (1) recognize that the likelihood of getting called out is pretty low; (2) educate yourself about the most common racist writing issues, so that likelihood will be even lower; (3) do your due diligence when writing; (4) in case of the worst: apologize, fix the issue, learn from the experience, fail better in the future.

For comparison:

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling- 257,045 words

A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin- 298,000 words

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy- 561,304 words

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo- 530,982 words

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell- 418,053 words

The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien, all together- 706,574 words

Made me cry, made me blush, made me laugh

Actual patriotism says it is not only your right but your civic duty to stand up when your country has fucked up and say it has fucked up and demand it does better.

Free speech is the most important thing in the world, and we are all about free speech.

“SJWs” and anyone pushing “SJW” rhetoric will be banned.

We are against safe spaces.

Anyone who disagrees with us is not allowed in our space, which is for us to discuss our views without being bashed by the opposition.