YOUR LIFE IS YOUR OWN ★

in short, what i want to discuss is the role race plays in my ocs' stories. (i am specifically talking about my OC Story TM with the cast of angel, teddy, sotri, etc. etc.) the majority of the cast is non-white (6/9, 7 if you count bug who is a robot but is japanese-coded) but i myself am white.

(^ for reference! i don't have a better pic of all of them together unfortunately. if you want to see other depictions of them they're all tagged under "#name (oc)")

this specific story im telling is NOT about race, but i have still made an effort to be conscious of it and for it to come up when it's relevant. my story is set in a fantasy world, but it's intentionally meant to be basically identical to the real world in terms of things like misogyny, gender roles, homophobia and transphobia, etc. however when it comes to things like countries or other real world locations, i have left it purposefully vague as to whether they exist or not, as i want the story to feel like it sort of takes place in a strange little vacuum that both is and isn't connected to the real world as we know it (a la dsmp)

because of that, my original intention was that while my characters all have canon ethnicities, they would never be directly referred to within the story itself. for instance, teddy and tizzy are intended to be half mexican, but since mexico itself doesn't really exist in this world, it wouldn't really make since for them to be labelled as such within the story. but also if i ever have any characters speak another language, that brings up the same issue of like, how can the japanese language exist if japan doesn't exist...

alongside all of that, there's also the topic of how race plays into the characters themselves. my original intention was that it wouldn't be outright ignored and would factor into their characters, since it's a part of who they are, but it wouldn't come up much.

for example, i had the idea of an interaction between evelyn and teddy where evelyn makes a weird comment about his hair looking better straightened - it wouldn't really be directly addressed as Racism Because Teddy Is Black, but since visually he is obviously black and that comment obviously has racist connotations, that would sort of be the implication. but also this would just be one thing among many other bad things evelyn says or does to him that don't have anything to do with his race. another example is that angel (main antagonist and pretty much worst person in the story) is very intentionally a skinny white woman, but i've never really intended for that to be pointed out in the story itself.

race is not a major factor in this story specifically, since as a white person i don't think that's my story to tell lol. the story's main focus is on femininity, gender, and amatonormativity, but obviously race plays a factor into those things as well. (plus i think it'd be a little odd to have those things exist as they do in real life but not racism) that's why my approach up to this point has been to not ignore it and keep it in mind, but generally keep it as something that's moreso just implied rather than something that is given explicit focus.

so i would greatly appreciate if i could hear your thoughts on this! do you think that i should have the characters' races be directly mentioned within the story itself (if it's relevant) and/or be given more importance/prominence in the narrative? or maybe i should entirely remove it from the story and make it a full-on fantasy world? (while still obviously keeping it in mind so that i'm not doing anything tone-deaf)

please don't hold back as i would like entirely honest opinions!! also if you have any other feedback about my handling of race in relation to my ocs i would like to hear it, as i want to make sure there aren't any issues! feel free to leave your thoughts in the notes or tags, or you can always send me an ask directly!

(also to my white followers, rbbing this post is fine but i do not need any opinions from you! please keep it to yourself!)