#dathen

It was characteristic of the man that the direction was a precise, and the writing as firm and clear, as though it had been written in his study.

So, I do pick Holmes putting up a facade with all the concentrated energy of a thousand disguises. And I'm not ruling out the possibility that he had to master himself first. Obviously, that Holmes actually had no depth of feeling while writing his dying message to Watson is out of the question.

(this is re: my previous post about disliking white gurathin portrayals)

@dathen @star-born

this is my primary reading as well. a lot of the fandom is white, and i get the impression that people are more comfortable having him as an antagonistic figure (in murderbot's pov, that is) if he's white. actually - and i find this pretty funny - i feel like the people i see headcanoning gurathin as nonwhite tend to be gurathin fans or even gurathin-was-right truthers! not to say that i place a moral value on this at all, and i genuinely don't have any personal problem with anyone who writes/draws gurathin as white or think they're terrible people, i just think it's a baffling and boring choice.

(baffling because his name immediately reads as south asian to me. i'm not alone in this, right?!)

i also believe that part of it is a sort of "diversity" mentality, as silly as that sounds. most of the presaux crew is either directly described as having brown skin or has a name that would suggest they aren't white (pin-lee comes to mind here), which is obviously very uncommon in a lot of mainstream american media. so, if you flip the usual formula of "white people plus token person of color", you have a predominantly nonwhite presaux team plus their token white man gurathin. which, i'll be honest, does make me chuckle a bit. but, again, with a name like gurathin, it just doesn't make sense.

@violetkirk

i've been in fandoms where people did use this kind of sleuthing to try to figure out details of a character's appearance, so i'm sure you're right, that some parts of the fandom do use this as their reasoning. but, as robin said in the reblogs of the original post, you don't have to be white to visibly blush! i agree that it wouldn't make sense for him to be especially dark complected based on this line - one of my writing pet peeves is when authors describe very dark-skinned characters as blushing visibly, and martha wells seems to avoid those kinds of pitfalls - but people with lighter brown skin can visibly blush, even if they don't turn tomato red. not to mention that people of color can be light complected too! lots of middle eastern and east asian people (and other ethnic groups obv) are on the fairer side, and unfortunately we can blush with the whitest of them.

again, i want to stress that i am not calling anybody racist for headcanoning gurathin as white. at worst, i'm calling you a little boring. i just think that in a fandom around a canon that is so deliberately filled with people of color, in defiance of the norms of both american media and specifically the SFF genre, it is a shame to make an important character like gurathin white just because you're nervous about having an antagonistic character of color. remember:

@amaihinansho @three-magpies-in-a-trenchcoat

character opinion bingo ✨

he is my darling my beloved i love him so much <3 <3 <3 he has no bingo but that's okay because he has so many bingos in my heart 🥺

*john voice* jesus christ arthur, you have a bingo!

like, we’ve seen Martin take on his tormentors, from as low level as going off on Tim for being an unsupportive prick all the way to blowing up at Elias and dragging him for the shit he’s put the Archives through. like, “Martin has a righteous rant once per season” is the joke around him. (and I love him.)

Dath pointed out that... Jon has never successfully done that. Jon has never been allowed to express hurt and anger at his victimhood. it either just.... doesn’t happen or Jon’s rebuffed (fucking elias and his lying “oh well you chose this” horseshit).

166 just brought this to the fore because we already know that Jon blames himself on a personal level for the apocalypse, but while we the audience know that’s so entirely not his fault it barely needs examining.... jon doesn’t. he doesn’t get that. he hasn’t internalized himself as a victim of the apocalypse, only its maker, and jesus fucking christ jon. the horror and sorrow he feels at his own desire for vengence is, looking purely at what Jon has been through and who has hurt him and who continues to hurt people, a little irrational. but since Jon’s never crossed that emotional bridge, to go “I have been made into this and am a victim” he can’t touch that thought without it burning him.

Jon doesn’t know why his feet take him there but they do, each step slow and purposeful. He knows what’s waiting for him, who’s waiting for him. He’s expected.

And Oliver- he’s never seen him before, has only the vaguest memories of his voice, stilted but pleasant. He’s curious to see his ‘hero,’ as Martin put it. But the sight of him standing, silhouetted amongst the dead trees with his back turned, gives him pause. Oliver knows he’s here. He makes no move to run.

And Jon takes his place beside him, hazarding a glance at the man; his angular features, the sad glint to those dark eyes offset by the grim smirk on his face. Yes, best that Martin’s not here to see him. Jon wouldn’t hear the end of it.

And Martin surely wouldn’t have appreciated Oliver’s next move. He takes Jon’s hand within his own in one smooth motion and raises it to his lips for a gentle kiss, as if declaring fealty, or maybe devotion. His eyes close and his lips linger. It make’s Jon’s throat run dry.

“Archivist.” Oliver’s voice is as he remembers and his eyes flit up to meet Jon’s, mischievous and teasing. Jon should scowl in irritation. He doesn’t.

“Call me Jon.”

“Jon, then.” Oliver hasn’t let go of his hand though he drops it to his side, keeping it in a light hold. Jon should pull away. He doesn’t. “Have you come to kill me?”

“No. I don’t think so.” 

“I suppose you’ll be wanting the tour then.” He feels the pulls on his hand and allows himself to be tugged along, following the branching, black roots as they flicker at their feet. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

what’s your opinion on white actors playing PoC? I know Penumbra and other podcasts do it, but have seen it spoken against. Most of the main cast was established in s1 as unpaid voice actors/family/housemates so I’ve seen a lot of mixed opinions on confirming them as PoC with white voice actors

Yeah, this is an issue I have mixed feelings about personally, and I know there’s probably a really large variety of opinion among fans of colour. Personally, I’d really prefer it if actors of colour were hired to play characters of colour--casting white actors contributes to taking away opportunities for actors of colour, who already have difficulties being cast anyway. Ideally, that’s what I’d want--actors of colour cast in these roles.

However, I feel like lately (we ran into this with critical role too...) I’m seeing situations like this, where a majority white group of people with pre-existing relationships start a thing, and the result is either...a completely white cast or white people playing characters of colour. (And again, I equate the lack of confirmation of any race to just making all the characters white. Podcasters especially love to do this “they don’t have a race” thing and it’s uh bullshit. You can’t create a “raceless” character because there are no “raceless” people. I almost feel like I’d like it better if creators in situations like this just said okay, fuck it, all our characters are white, because at least you’re owning it instead of trying to appear diverse with little to no effort?)

In this scenario, I’m still frustrated by the lack of opportunity for non-white actors. I want to critique situations like this by saying “Get a less white friend group oh my god!!!,” but I feel like that...doesn’t exactly help. So yeah, there are times when I look at situations like this and I go, okay, if they have to have an overwhelmingly white cast and they can’t cast people of colour, fine, go ahead, play a character of colour if you’re white. The role wasn’t going to go to a person of colour in the first place. I’m tired of shows with only white characters. (And if you’re going to do this for gods sake research, actually talk to people of the race you’re going to be playing, hire a sensitivity reader, whatever--try to write and play these characters well. Major problems with this can arise because in a show written by white people with characters of colour played by white people it’s really easy to run into steryotypes or harmful tropes if people aren’t thinking. Or in the other direction, charccters who are stated to be characters of colour but who are written/played by white people sometimes still read as white, probably either again, due to a lack of research or thought, or due to a worry of “screwing it up”--for example, I’ve seen critique to this end regarding Hamid from rqg, and this applies to Beau and Nott from cr as well imo).

The real issue in cases like this to me is just a lack of thought towards racial diversity in the first place. If you’re creating a show like this (especially something that was intended as a show rather than something that was thrown together somewhat accidentally like cr) and you know you’re going to reach out to your friends to fill roles because you’re low budget, why not reach out to your friends of colour? Why is it that white people are always thought of and prioritized and incorporated into things like this while people of colour are not? (And if your friend group is overwhelmingly or exclusively white....why is it that way lol). 

I don’t know the exact circumstances of tma’s creation, and I understand that this is a complex issue. I don’t have a perfect solution and I don’t know if there is one that will satisfy everyone and effectively diminish the negative impact of having a majority white cast. The only way to fix something like this entirely is to avoid it in the first place--to think about race and to think about people of colour in the creation of your work. And to think about us in specifics--not to write us as tokens or as ambiguously brown facades but to consider specific cultural backgrounds and how that impacts the characters that are being created and how they should be portrayed. And to intentionally incorporate us in the process of creating, as writers and actors and every other job involved.

Right! I noticed the Frodo-and-Sam vibes that Jon and Martin have this season, and the similarities between Barad-Dur and the Panopticon!