guys i said they were VAGUELY masc, not butch

anywho, back to the point, we all have eyes and can see that tai is a black woman which, in fandom spaces, essentially dooms her as a character. we can see this in the debate about whether tai is masc or femme. tai is, objectively, quite femme as a character, but this is so heavily argued because black feminity is misunderstood and demonized by white people. on a similar note, van is masc, objectively. though taissa isnt masc, her being perceived as such by white members of the fandom paints taivan as masc4masc, which is also heavily demonized in fandom. i mean, ffs, people call ellie williams butch, but i digress.

back on topic, i think a lot of the reasons taivan doesnt get attention is racism in fandom spaces. yj has ~3 black women characters (not counting adult doubles), akilah, tai, and simone, of which 2 of those characters are side characters (though i am praying they become main characters, esp my bb akilah who has never done anything wrong ever in her life and simone who had an extremely understandable series of reactions to the everything).

its frustrating to see this happen time and time again, black lesbians being pushed aside and forgotten and deemed masc simply because they dont fit white beauty standards or eurocentric definitions of feminity and we can see that happen heavily in yjs. we even see this happen to lottienat/lottielee at times, in which people will automatically make lottie the aggressor in most situations due to her being a taller brown woman. BEFORE ANYONE SAYS THATS JUST A HEADCANON: the problem isnt that she is more dominant than the two, the problem is that this is constantly assumed to be true for characters in the fandom and in other fandom spaces, in which brown women are assumed to be the aggressors in every situation regardless of on-screen personality or otherwise.

LIKE????