rat boy

(nine inch nails hurt)

note: i started drawing this before s3 so obviously no s3 events are included (and honestly idgaf)

This is a fantastic video--I'm transcribing it with a bunch of links and images for added context that is important:

Humiliating Racebent Characters: It's Becoming a Pattern (Fantastic Frankey, TikTok)

There is an uptick on writers brutalizing and humiliating glamorous characters after they've been racebent to Black, and it's concerning me. Spoilers if you haven't seen House of the Dragon, Interview with the Vampire [Lestat], or The Odyssey. Now I am one of the people who very much enjoys racebending. When it's done well, especially for adaptation of projects that are old and not with the times and homogeneous in the white direction, I'm all for it! For a very long time, Interview with the Vampire in particular was my go-to when I gave examples of a good racebent character. But after watching the [3x7] finale of The Vampire Lestat--and reading a Substack article from one of the Black writers [A. Zell Williams] who was unceremoniously fired from the show; and then finding out that the writer of that finale was a white woman [Hannah Moscovitch]--I had to investigate.

Because within the span of three weeks, I noticed three very glamorous, beautiful characters be humiliated while racebent.

Before, it had no issues; it added context of brutality and humiliation. [But now it has been done] in a way that really made me uncomfortable. And I think really reflects the state of our country and where art is going. Because things have been skewing conservative in a way that I don't like. From that last season of Euphoria, to this film coming out about there being a sex purge where single people can only have sex one day a night, I'm so interested to see how they're enforcing that. It is clear that there is a statement being made and I don't like it, not one bit. Now that it's bleeding into fantasy, it's upsetting me and my homegirl.

Let's start off with The Odyssey, and Helen of Troy. There are spoilers for this, because it's not a part of the poem. There's been huge controversy around the casting of Helen of Troy and having Lupita do it. I don't know if genuinely Nolan believed that Lupita Nyong'o is the most beautiful woman and can launch 1000 ships. I personally think she can, but I don't know what this white man thinks, or if he wanted to drum up controversy like Helen of Troy; having this meta-war start over her online. What I do know is after he cast this Black woman to play Helen of Troy--which was historically played by a white woman, and you know, the general public now sees as a white woman, even if that's not a real character--he decided to add in the mutilation of Helen of Troy and disfigure her face. And so us seeing a Black woman as the most beautiful woman in the world is now a legend. We don't get to see her in that moment. Thank God [Nolan] made Helen's twin sister [Clytemnestra] identical, so there were moments we got to see Lupita without all these scars. But it was something I noted and didn't like--but I let slide.

And the week before I was watching House of the Dragon--which is on a generational run; the show was doing so well. Same thing happened to a character named Rhaena in the book Fire and Blood, which House of the Dragon is based on. The character that we see on the show is actually a combination of two characters. One is a commoner named Nettles, and then Rhaena Targaryen, which is a member of the royal family. In the books, Rhaena Targaryen is a girly-girl who wears pink and gets a pink dragon. And while Nettles is a commoner and a little bit scruffy, being rough, I would also like to note that Nettles is one of the only canonical Black characters in the book. And we had to watch her conflation with this princess; which I was on a fence on whether or not I liked, because yes the story is bloated and there are a lot of characters, so I was fine with the conflation of the two. But I don't know why my girl is out here down bad looking like a crackhead!? There is no reason in the story that she needs to be down like this. The character of Nettles never loses control of her dragon the way that we see the character Rhaena do on the show. She was living in a castle with her father figure Damon Targaryen. We never hear that she rough and unclean. Aside from that, Rhaena Targaryen is a very glamorous character, that we're not seeing in that way. And I feel like even if she was on the run, I would have made sure she at least was kept. So I know they're trying to show that she's desperate, but I'm not feeling it. Because she didn't have to go out like this. Why not just dye her hair black so she wouldn't get caught?! We already saw that the hairdressers in Westeros have that good sh*t, so? So there was no reason for her to look like this crackhead.

Those two strikes weren't bothering me until I watched the finale of The Vampire Lestat.

And it's funny--I've been fighting online for weeks about how the writing felt inconsiderate. Especially with them changing the race of the characters. There were moments in the first two seasons [of Interview with the Vampire] where I felt like: Okay, they're not considering how this looks; or they're not ballsy enough to say outright what's going on. But it was very clear for this season, The Vampire Lestat, which finally has a white lead. Because that's how it felt with the way that they were promoting it and talking about how you didn't need to watch the first two seasons.

There were too many characters that were race-bent for the Interview with the Vampire. One is Louis, one of the main characters; and Claudia, his sister/daughter, the child that he makes his white lover create, to hopefully give their tumultuous relationship new life. During the first two seasons of Interview with the Vampire, where they had so many Black writers, the character of Claudia wasn't that problematic, and the race-bending actually improved the character. Then we got to the biggest part of her character, which is her death [in 2x7]. Now, they did follow the book in terms of her being on trial and her dealings with the theatre company. What they did add was Santiago, one of the main antagonists of the season, desecrating her body and jerking off with her remains; acts that would occur to Black people in America, where Santiago was revealed to be from [⚠️ this is incorrect, he's British ⚠️]. That's after the writers added in them mutilating their bodies, by cutting her Achilles, and making her look crazy. We get another taste of in the third season by the white writers, when she comes back as a ghost and cannot walk around because of it [being hamstrung like a runaway slave].

Now let's get to Louis. All of a sudden, Louis is not just a villain--which, we always knew he had problems and he wasn't the best of characters--but he was being punished every two seconds, and also being framed as a villain in a way that I didn't think was true to his character and true to how the characters around him should be feeling. And you know what? I got over a white writer [Ryan Kattner & Kevin Hanna] writing his daughter/sister calling him a "nappy-headed slave"--which sounds crazy, I know! But I gave them the benefit of the doubt, because I didn't do my due diligence, and I thought maybe that's how these Black people saw each other; insulting each other because I've done worse. I remember in college I called a girl Frederick Douglass because she got me upset, and that's not right. It was very racist. I apologized after. But you get what I'm saying? I was okay with the insult, thinking that was coming from a place of knowledge.

But it was after I saw this episode [3x7, the finale] where two of the main characters were beheaded--one white, one Black--and they were treated totally different; because the white character Lestat (who had the biggest grievances [with Armand] of all the characters involved of the dual beheading) got the decency of us never actually seeing his severed head [conveniently hidden in a bowling bag] besides when the act happens. Everything is shown from his point of view, so instead he gets a Bojack Horseman dream/death state, until his head is returned to his body. However, our Black character [Louis]--who once again is glamorous, handsome and enamoring--we are forced to watch this man's head on a spike while his body reaches for him.

And this is after the character Louis talks to Daniel one of the writers [⚠️ Louis told this to Lestat in 1x3 ⚠️] and explains how Black men's heads were put on a spike as a way to humiliate them, and to remind Black people that they are less than people.

And what's worse about us having to watch this Black man be humiliated when his white counterpart didn't get the same onscreen is the fact that the man who orchestrated this beheading was a Brown man; and he and his Brown doctor ended up livestreaming it! I want to say it again: They had two Brown characters have someone livestreaming on the dark-web. If you guys are too young to understand why that is problematic: Back in the day, when al-Qaeda was the Big Bad of the US, videos of [captives] being beheaded was livestreamed all throughout the US, and used as a way to fearmonger us towards, you know, al-Qaeda and Muslim people overall. I'm not here to talk about politics I'm just talking about the correlations.

All in all what I'm saying here is that this is all intentional, and I'm not messing with it. I do like racebending, but not at the cost of these characters losing their dignity. We're taking these characters and we're being put in worse positions.

And that's only when white writers do it, because when you think of someone like Ryan Coogler who racebent Namor--(I know his name was [pronounced as] Nay-mor but when he was racebent to be indigenous Mexican his name became [pronounced more color-consciously as] Nuh-mor)--and guess what? He got to be a king with infinite strength and power who never was down bad! Hair was slicked, skin was always moisturized, and he was always shown respect--even when he lost.

And you guys can say I'm on a high horse, but at this point somebody needs to advocate for this, because it's very clear that something's being done and it's f*cked up. Let me know in my comments below.

i HATE self-censorship for a lot of reasons, but being in crisis work makes it even more frustrating. who are you censoring for? like i am being so fr, WHO are you censoring for? have you even thought it through? people who have been raped know that they have been raped. if someone attempts suicide or is grieving someone who did, saying "sewer slide" isn't going to protect them from any of the feelings. a murder victim's family isn't going to feel better bc you said "unalived" instead of murdered. if anything, it's just extremely invalidating and othering. it's saying "what happened to you is so bad that i won't even say the word," which is NOT trauma-informed care. you are not protecting survivors/victims when you self-censor. the ONLY things you protect when you self-censor are the puritanical ideologies that are being encouraged by rich fascists who want your money and obedience

"The hat is customizable," he said, struggling with the velcro patch on the front. "If I need it, I have an ICE one too. I pick based off the business i walk into."

"Customizable is an important hat descriptor," I said. "what can I get you?"

"You wouldn't believe how offended people get these days," he said. "And I'm supposed to do something about it if you're offended? You chose to be offended!"

"We all have hundreds of thousands of decisions everyday," I said. I thickened my accent. "That's what my stepdad always said. But I can make one easier - we have a delicious Ethiopian roast available."

"Like if I told you you have a bull ring," he said, "because bulls have rings in their noses. Is that offensive?"

I laughed. "I've heard that before."

"It's a joke, but people get offended. Maybe you're offended."

I looked at him. I smiled. "You aren't trying to offend me though, right?"

Of course he was. I was being friendly and the friendlier I was, the faster he switched topics. He was saying anything inflammatory he could think of to see if I'd take the bait. After about 20 minutes of my redirecting and deescalating, he settled into a more normal interaction. He took up too much of my time showing me a product I'd feigned mild interest in to get him to stop talking about getting accused of inappropriate behavior at work. When we finally disengaged, he spent 10 minutes trying to catch my eye again. When he failed, he left.

There's this new breed of customer who insists on trying to incite political conversation through their clothing and, when that doesnt work, their snide little comments. If I owned my own business, maybe I would have given the guy the fight he wanted. But I work for a corporation and I love paying my bills so I deescalated.