I'd rather be a dragon but otherwise I'm good

i just had a professor read the first chapter of something and go on and on about how i must relate a lot to a character, because her disability resembles mine (i had not been injured at the time of writing it), and i get this dreadful feeling like people are going to make assumptions like that again and again.

I kind of hate it!

But it's very difficult to be like, "The author is dead! Do not pay attention to the author! Do not interpret the text into the author's life! But do follow the author on tumblr!"

Like, there is something fundamentally out of whack with the entire affair, which is kind of what my new book HOLLYWOOD, ENDING is about.

For a hot minute, a lot of people had opinions about me who did not actually know me, which was extremely disorienting and much less pleasant than I'd assumed famed would be. So I spent the last eight years writing about that.

Oliver & Olivia by Korin Hunjak

My question is, as a white fan, I don't really know when it's my place to speak up about whitewashing? Usually, I reblog/retweet/share posts written by other Black fans, but the fandom I'm in is from a very niche anime and is incredibly small, barely any popular at all in the West at large. The Black character is drawn so much paler than he is in the anime and it bothers me a lot. I want to avoid coming off as a white saviour, though, especially because I'm white while the artists who whitewash him are largely East Asian. I have always stopped supporting the artists who do whitwash him but I don't know if it's my place to call anyone out

It's always your place to speak up about whitewashing 👍🏾

To be clear- if you are informed enough, that is. If you don't know or aren't confident about what you're talking about, that's one thing. But whitewashing is probably the easiest form of fandom racism to point out. We can literally see when a character isn't as dark as they are in canon, or when their hair texture has been thinned, or their nose changed. We can TELL that the guy you drew is NOT the guy we're supposed to be seeing. I have a lesson about this in my pinned post!

Also, being a white savior is not "I'm speaking up when I see racism". That's not what that word means. Being a white savior is when you talk OVER Black people and people of color, as if you know more and better than them about their own experiences. It's treating us like we're children, like we're less intelligent, that we NEED you and your "wisdom". But both you and an East Asian artist are capable of antiblackness. Neither of you are the group in question. You don't have to be racist or condescending to them, but it is not racism or white saviorism to say "hey, this is whitewashing and that's not cool". Especially if there's no one else in the space saying anything, likely because they're afraid of rocking the boat.

You KNOW classic SF used the limited displays of CRT television and the static of transmitted signals the way theaters use stage makeup and lighting to make inexpensive props look great fine— take advantage of the medium! But it's hard to imagine how it looked if you've only seen Blu-ray HD restorations.

Me: I actually like to use women's deodorant because the stuff for men dries out my skin and smells like harsh chemicals

*BANG*

(3 hours later, at Walmart)

(Mobster holding Dove Advance Care in the deodorant aisle)