Girlie, I lowkey thought I was going crazy with the way a lot of fic authors write Jazz.
(Also complaining!!! I LOVE TO COMPLAIN AAAAAâ)
As an occasional fic writer, I know I'm probably guilty of some of the things you've mentioned, I'm not black (am filipino) but I did spend my formative teenage years living in a predominantly "black" areaâblack in this context being an umbrella term to refer to those with darker pigmentation, not of African descent (because Australia, with Aboriginal history being my only personal point of reference when it comes to first-hand, technically second-hand, experience with "black" culture). And its very interesting to see how those same perceptions and prejudices towards black people are carried onto Jazz (and to a lesser extent Prowl).
There's also the whole other debacle of the "model minority", and how white society views and lowkey pins asians (specifically east, or east-passing asians) and blacks against one another to vie for white attention and acceptance. Positioning one or the other as "desirable" in certain facets where the other is not. Its not particularly relevant to this discussion, but a thing that comes to mind is how "blackness" is seen as hypermasculine, and "asianess" as hyperfeminine. That asian women are more "feminine" than white women, and thus more desirable. But black women are more "masculine" than white women, and are thus not (note how whiteness is considered as the baseline for "attractiveness"). Bullshit like that. This outlook also works with asian, white, and black men. But even then, the "feminine" asian man does not face the same level of scrutiny when compared to the "masculine" black woman, despite both serving as direct parallels to one another in this specific diagram, due to different societal expectations associated with one's gender.
But in relation to Jazzprowl and Jazz's characterisation, I feel like a lot of ficsâexplicit ones in particularâtend to hyper-masculinise Jazz playing into anti-black tropes of aggression and possessiveness, tying into the desirability and fetishisation of the "masculine" black man. Particularly in the objectification of his "feminine" other half. There's a lot to be picked apart with how the both of them are portrayed in explicit mediaâbut then again it's p*rn. And I doubt these authors are trying to make a serious commentary on race and identity, nor do I think (or hope) that any of the above is reflective of the author's actual, real-world beliefs.
(Also note that Jazz's aggression is more largely attributed to the warping of BDSM tropes rather than solely on race, but again it ties into what you said with how a lot of authors aren't mindful to the coding and messaging of their fan-works.)
Also, super sorry if you're not comfortable with NSFW topics!!! But I feel like explicit fan-works are typically the most egregious offenders of the racist under- and overtones you've mentioned, because they're typically able to get away with a lot more taboo topics, as they're not expected to dissect them in any meaningful or nuanced way. For instance, slave-master relationships (which in general are... uh... uhhhhhhhhhh.)
HOWEVER, on a relatively more wholesome note. I'm really happy you brought up how, with black-coding in mind, the dynamic with Prowl being a police officer gets super strange. I find this especially when authors try to be politically aware and try to educate the audience on the race-dynamics present in society.
Which is... fine, and if done well can add a lot meaning and nuance to the narrative these authors are trying to tell, but something these authors have to take in consideration is whether the message they're trying to tell makes SENSE, given the setting they're writing in. Like does the racism, and thus the oppression these characters face, feel like a natural extension of the world-building? Or just something extra that author wrote in to give the story some surface-level depth?
Because while Transformers is an allegory for the underlying philosophical themes and troubles that plague the human condition. The characters in Transformers are ultimately not human. Like robo-racism is and SHOULD be fundamentally different than real-world human racism, because they focus, scrutinise, and debase different aspects of an individual. For instance, through pattern-recognition and basic empathy, we should be able relate the different Transformers conflicts (cold vs forged, frame-type discrimination) to racial conflicts in the real world. As the concepts, such as the notions of being born "wrong" and being treated "different" are directly comparable, WHILE others are not.
Like, while Jazz is black-codedâunless its humanformersâhe is ultimately not a black man. And his struggles while in parallel to real-world struggles, should not be a direct one-to-one. Like if authors want to give him stereotypical black struggles, the world needs to justify it, because at the end of the day. They're robots.
Like what is Jazz being discriminated against? His frame-type? His cold-construct status? And if so, why is that so often when compared to other characters of a similar frame-type and status, the narrative or specifically the authors will try to position him as more oppressed? Like with *cough* *cough* Prowl? And it's easy to place Prowl in a position of more privilege because he was a high-level Enforcer pre-war.
But, canonically, so was Jazz???
So, ultimately, I feel like the deciding factor on who gets bent over is racial-coding (this also applies to Prowl btw iykyk).
