#qtpoc magic

A post shared by Q (@qt.pop)

Captain America as a Grace Lee and Jimmy Boggs quote. 

I keep thinking, like everyone, that America is in an extra amount of trouble. We feel like we are seeing the rapid destruction of what little good we had going for us.

And I’ve also been reflecting on how it felt growing up in this country, specifically in a part of the country that wasn’t red, or ‘overtly racist’. I wasn’t experiencing the racism of the ‘50′s so without being able to name what I was experiencing it became a personal problem and not a systematic one. I had great disdain for this country’s institutions but I only had those emotions in short bursts because I couldn’t survive burning that hot all the time. I ended up apathetic and disconnected from almost every part of myself.

What I and other BIPOC know is this has been the standard. We have been living this reality for generations. It is just now coming back around to affecting non-BIPOC folks enough for it to feel like the collective end of the world (verse just the end of the world for a few).

I imagine it’s what astronauts feel like in space, only we didn’t need oxygen tanks. We hovered before deep, black nothingness. A nothingness that was more like everything and forever. We were surrounded by darkness, moving in midair as if carried by invisible currents. The pitch-black space brightened into a royal blue, and little dots that looked like stars surrounded us.

In the conversations around the Mackie Debacle (AKA the Variety Bullshit), and a few other conversations I’ve seen, people have continuously pointed out that the majority of fandom is white and straight. It is important to remember that our little bubbles we create on the internet aren’t necessarily the majority, but the minority/majority dichotomy is old and tired. I don’t want us generalizing fandom as something white and straight and toxic, even if that is the true majority.

Fandom historically and presently is a place for those that are left out of the mainstream and canon. It belongs to QTPOC and BIPOC. Of course, it is overrun with white hets, they appropriate everything, but that doesn’t make it theirs. It doesn’t make them the default.

I saw this important post about people justifying the way fandom is based on the fact that its strength is that it is unmoderated. The poster points out how fucked up that logic is and the importance of taking extra care in the spaces we are creating.

Because it isn’t unmoderated, it’s moderated by us. By the collective, by the fans. And the abuse and racism and toxicity make it clear there are systematic issues with the way fandom and fan spaces have evolved.

QTPOC and BIPOC can’t create spaces that are untouched by racism and homophobia, it gets into everything, it’s internalized, it can’t be rooted out by us alone. That’s the work of those that benefit from it. We can moderate our spaces though. We consistently have flourished and thrived inside despicable conditions for centuries. It’s exhausting and we have every right to our anger and displeasure and to voice that. And we have every right to our joy and passions. 

I know this is super after the fact, but I saw an ask on @witches-ofcolor a while back for some more diverse tarot decks and remembered this article.

ETA: here’s some more! https://dust2onyx.com/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1249459446/the-collective-tarot-round-iii