#racial coding

Lowkey I end up seeing most the trolls as black or mixed because of the Hair. I just imagine most of them having a specific hair texture as trolls and translate it over for humans. Except Equius. Who I hc as a White Native.

It's all good. Whenever I talk about this stuff it's literally always meant to be me wanting people to see what I'm seeing, not to change minds about their interpretation. My anger usually bubbles, not because I'm being told a different concept of seeing Gamzee but because it always comes with an undertone of undermining or misconstruing what I'm saying or just straight up being ignorant. I may lose my head on people who don't mean to be rude or anything due to these experiences so I can say it's sometimes my fault. Usually I catch myself and just stop responding or apologize.

It's why I choose to not have public conversation about it and just talk and that's it. Thank you for being interested in my thoughts though, I'm really not trying enforce stuff on to people, especially when it comes to Homestuck. I just think we as people should be aware of the racism in all media and talk about it critically, especially anti-blackness.

I really appreciate this ask and how its worded btw because honestly, I've had too many experiences where people are so vague I feel like I'm in danger or make the assumption that the other being hostile and rather not interact further to find out. Thank you for being specific, It's something I need when it comes to these types of talks. 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾

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Here goes some explanations around the black-coding:

• The biggest thing that creates the black coding around Gamzee (and the Makaras in general tbh) is the prevalent theme of vodou. Vodou is an exclusively black religion that comes from Haiti, It's basically Catholicism and sometimes even Christianity mixed with a multitude of religious/spiritual African practices due to the mix of different African tribes in one place and the forced practices of Catholicism. Vodou is what was demonized in a racist panic due to enslaved black Haitians fighting and gaining their independence from the Colonizers whom settled and stole the land, which is what creates the demonized depiction of Vodou we see in media today! What makes Vodou exclusively black is because it's about giving respect to your ancestors. If you're not black, what ancestors are you respecting? Definitely not the African/Black ancestors, that for sure.....

• The reality of the culture that the Makaras practice is also a big one for me. When Gamzee was first introduced in the comic we are told Gamzee's different and weird and a part of a cult. It is confirmed later by Equius that Gamzee is an odd one amongst the purples, in a conversation they have on Trollian. But when Hiveswap comes around it is confirmed that Gamzee isn't necessarily different from other purples in that variant so what exactly makes him different from the other purples? And even than as the game keeps depicting the purple bloods we actively are exposed to how REAL their religion actually is. Even in the original comic Gamzee and Kurloz perform Vodou and it is working, it's working in their favor. If all there is to the purples are "culture vultures" why exactly is the culture that is either made up or stolen referencing them repeatedly even in its most pure form, in the death of Karako?

• Kurloz's whole "evil" Vodou priest writing doesn't help with any fightback towards the clear coding around Vodou. Kurloz's design also represents a lot symbolism and references to the Lwa, Baron Samedi, a figure in Vodou. Baron Samedi also tends to be represented by the colors black & purple and skeletons are a huge theme with this Lwa as well. Baron Samedi is the Lord of the Dead and if you understand who he is as a Lwa a lot of what he represents is very prominent in the Makara's writing.

• I just don't think you can write vodou so culturally into a characters storyline without it being black-coding. That's literally impossible and it feels disingenuous to brush it off like that just because "ICP!!".

• ICP is brought up repeatedly as an explanation to Gamzee's character by other fans, especially to brush off claims of Gamzee's black-coding. Though I completely understand why it is brought up and it makes sense to people who use that as an explanation, it falls short once you look at the text around ICP in the writing of Homestuck. There are two ICP's in homestuck. ICP that we all know as the band and ICP that is specifically prevalent in troll/purple blood culture as Messiahs. (I will call them band!ICP & Messiahs!ICP for less confusion) Messiahs!ICP aren't the same as band!ICP which is confirmed in the original comic as well. If you understand ICP outside the context of Homestuck you would also know that ICP's whole entire theme is just pirated black culture. Them as a real band stealing from black culture and Gamzee being so offended by it? Yeah, I think you understand my point here, i dunno how to end this paragraph because I want to say more but I hate ICP so my brain just blows up when talking about em.

• When we get to Kurloz as a character. Aranea describes Kurloz as being talkative AND mentions spirituality which automatically connects Kurloz to religion in some way before the night terror the facepaint also implies something similar to what Gamzee practices on Alternia? Beforus doesn't HAVE Doc Scratch, if the clown religion's main source is Doc Scratch/Lord English? Why exactly is Kurloz participating in something that shouldn't even exist? It's because the clown religion was always real. The one on Alternia is simply corrupt by The Condensce and Doc Scratch/Lord English which we know are working together running the Alternia through Dictatorship, with The Condensce being the face of it.

• I don't really like using Hussie's word to validate my stance around characters since they generally have a history of backtracking, changing canon info, jokingly saying things are canon etc. etc. She also just doesn't really give yes or no answers either which I can understand. People use his word all the time to validate their stance so I'mma go ahead and do it too. Hussie LITERALLY said that Gamzee getting angry at the ICP video Dave sent him was synonymous to someone getting angry at their culture being appropriated or made fun of. ICP appropriates black culture.... You get my point.....

• Another thing I found out is that people believe afros are a black stereotype which... ngl... bothered me. Gamzee has an afro, so does Kurloz, they actually have similar hairstyles which is confirmed with their general sprites. Their talksprites just have a style gap and were drawn by 2 different artists. I'm aware that anyone of any race can have kinky curls/afro-textured hair but the word afro is literally african/black centered so I just can't take this statement of "Afro is a black stereotype." seriously. I might also be a bit bias cause I'm a black person with a big ass afro lol.

• How Gamzee's written in the epilogues...... 💀💀💀

(Note: If it was like, one or 2 black stereotypes on the Makara's. I wouldn't be so adamant on the black coding but having ALL OF THIS mixed together to makes it impossible for it to not be that. Racial-coding whether it's done good or not, is still racial-coding. At some point intention doesn't matter especially with how much is written around them (as I pointed out) and as well as the racism that is actively IN the comic.)

(Another note: I don't believe all purplebloods as a whole are black-coded. Tbh that concept really bothers me in the same way of making all tealbloods Jewish bc of the stereotypes written into Terezi 's character. To me it's just weird but I dunno. I'm just one person, things are way more complicated than that in real life to me so maybe that's why? Idk lol. I used to be VERY for it but after thinking about it for a long time it just bothers me.)

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Here comes my personal reading of the Makara's/Mostly Gamzee lol, this specific part isn't me pointing out canon writing but using canon (and as well as reality/personal experience s) to support my reading and so that others can understand what I'm saying:

~~CLOWN CHURCH~~

Let me start with my understanding of the clown church.

I DO believe the Alternian version is a cult but just like most religious cults they're usually always based on a real religion. The Alternian version of the clown religion was washed out and weaponized by the Condensce who then also weaponized the purples with the powers (chucklevoodoos) that is known to their caste. She saw how powerful many aspects of this faith was and took advantage of it. This was all heavily influenced by Doc Scratch/Lord English whos character feels synonymous to many aspects related to colonization, of course, with many other things mixed in.

To me it mirrors how the demonization of vodou started but instead of demonizing it to keep people away and demonizing the people that practice it, she weaponized the clown religion throughout her society to create fear towards it, in favor of using it to have control over Alternian society.

The Clown religion was originally something reminiscent to Vodou but warped and erased in a similar fashion done in real life. But instead of it being an erasure, it was a complete rewrite and weaponized.

I believe Kurloz practiced the original version of the religion but was completely led astray by Lord English.

~~GAMZEE BEFORE MURDERSTUCK~~

My understanding of Gamzee is that they're a child that is surrounded by something that they don't particularly connect with. Yes, they're a devout follower but they obviously don't even have a grip of what the cult they're apart of actually is before looking into Lil Cal's eyes. It's very similar to how most children blindly follow a religion they're raised with without understanding anything about it.

Gamzee was a child that was not only neglected but also isolated with little to no connection to the violence that Alternian society already assigned to them. Gamzee obviously knew about it but rejected it in favor of a mentality that made more sense to him but still embraced something that he was raised into.

It just feels incredibly reminiscent of someone raised in a culture that is isolating or even hating them for their differences but still wanting to connect to their culture.

Everything about Gamzee's character literally goes against the cult, specifically before murderstuck, it just feels insane to say Gamzee just CHOSE to be the way he is later in the comic.

I do believe Gamzee's a joke character but I also believe when you're reading a story you can't JUST use symbolism, one off lines, and outside sources from the story to understand a character. I do think there are some people who can but most people don't really know how to read into symbolism in a way that will make sense for the entire existence of a character.

Gamzee is a huge victim of this.

Also want to bring up the fact that Gamzee was so docile before murderstuck that no one could have even THOUGHT he would've done something that heinous. Even Terezi decided to go against her better judgment in the clues she found and decided that Vriska was hurting or killed Gamzee even with all the clues pointing to him because that was way more believable than the obvious. Literally no one thought Gamzee would or COULD do this and it caught EVERYONE off guard.

~~MURDERSTUCK AND GAMZEE'S VILLAIN ARC~~

Equius' and Nepeta's murder and in defense of Gamzee:

I personally do not understand why people COMPLETELY demonize Gamzee for what happened. Like I GET it but I feel like if you read the comic and see what said and scattered throughout this storyline it becomes obvious that Gamzee wasn't FULLY in control during. And even then why would I feel bad at a victim mocking and killing someone who bullied and sexually harassed them on a regular basis? Like everyone just forgot what Equius was doing to Gamzee on the regular?

And even then, everything Gamzee did that people tend to say that were only done to mock Equius were things that Equius constantly asked Gamzee to do during those coerced roleplays. If anything Gamzee was trying to make Equius happy ( ALSO A HUGE THEME WITH HIS CHARACTER. People don't realize how much of a people pleaser Gamzee was.) and as well as doing everything they needed to do simultaneously. Gamzee truly is a clown, a jester, and a minstrel.

And as for Nepeta? Nepeta was sadly in the wrong place at the wrong time and Gamzee killing her was simply a cause and effect of her lunging at him. She did not deserve to see or go through that.

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The reasons why the mental break happened:

Gamzee's meltdown had many factors:

-Was going through withdrawals for a bit before he even saw the ICP video.

-Gamzee IS brain damaged. Prolonged drug abuse during childhood does that and that's just a fact.

-The ICP Video that he saw that enraged them. (Also mind you. Gamzee's eyes weren't red, so this wasn't the beginning of murder mode. Matter of fact, Gamzee literally went hero mode.)

-The affect of the ICP video ruining their faith for them. (The messaging between Gamzee and Dave after Gamzee lost it is honestly heartbreaking.)

-Looking into Lil Cal's eyes (We all know that it's canon that Lil Cal can affect someone's mind just by looking at its eyes. I don't understand why that's considered impossible with Gamzee?)

-Seeing the dead gored body of their crush during their mind break. (Mind you, the biggest reason Gamzee had a crush on Tavros at all was because Tavros was literally one of the only people that was nice to him and WANTED to be around them.)

-Gamzee also most likely has a lot of underlying trauma due to the neglect from their guardian and as well as mistreatment & bullying from their "friends". And all those emotions definitely got triggered and intensified by Lil Cal/Lord English.

To me. Most of the people we call Gamzee's friends were never their actual friends to begin with. Including their best friend and eventual moirail. Karkat Vantas.

Gamzee going Murder Mode wasn't a betrayal but an extreme mental break mixed with withdrawal due to stress, mindbreak, manipulation, and the feeling of betrayal on Gamzee's part. You can't hurt and break somebody's heart over and over again and expect them not to snap?

(Note: I do think Gamzee made some kind of choice or deal without fully understanding what he was signing up for. I personally do not think it was to hurt anybody in particular but was tricked by Lord English. There was only a perception of choice you could say.)

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More thoughts around Gamzee's character and how people analyze him:

I find that most people, when analyzing the characters. Tend use a lot of black & white thinking and are usually never nuanced. Most tend to pick lines and phrases in the comic that makes their dislike or like for a character seem valid but throw away the context of the things they pick or never look at the character as a whole.

When it comes to Gamzee, whether someone is for or against him as a character they always end up lacking nuance because they have zero idea of the things that surround Gamzee's character or are biased to the point they deduce Gamzee to an innocent puppet or a monster when neither are true.

Gamzee's character is simply tragic, just like most of the characters are. The only difference is that he became one of the villains, or you could say, under the boot of the villain. Depending on how you want to see it. I personally see it as a bit of both.

People forget how kind he was before murderstuck. People forget how fucked his mind was when all this happened, and everyone forgets how young he actually is and how easily this kid can and will fall under the influence at the quickest comfort. Why else do you think he started calling Lil Cal his best friend and even speaks of a voice TELLING him to kill everyone BEFORE he even did anything?

It just feels like people are purposely being obtuse about his character just because of a few lines and ignoring everything that surrounds Gamzee's character.

~~Gamrezi~~

Hoo boy....

Many Gamzee fans throughout my time being in the fandom have said that GamRezi should've never even happened and I have to agree. The only reason it was written into the comic was because of a gamkarezi fanfiction written by a friend of Hussie. (I can't remember who it was.)

But even so it's still in the comic and I think it's kind of stupid to scrap it out just because I don't like it. If it's canon it's something that should be analyzed.

The relationship between Gamzee and Terezi was abusive there's NO denying that.

The main thing around their relationship is that it's a relationship that NEITHER of them TRULY want to be in. Terezi talks about how much she hates that she's still with him and Gamzee talks about it in a passive way with guilt because he cares about Karkat. One thing I also notice about Gamzee's conversation with Rose about their spade relationship is that he's talking more about how Terezi feels about him rather about how he feels about her.

It feels like the relationship is a form of self harm on BOTH ends.

Here comes my theories.

The abuse that went on in the relationship felt like a mixture of neither actually WANTING to be in the relationship plus it just never being healthy to begin with. I feel like a lot of the abuse Gamzee put upon Terezi was him literally not even understanding what's too far in a kissmesitude PLUS the lack of control of his own mind due to LE, and psychosis.

Terezi being the Seer of Mind, I can see her clocking that Gamzee isn't completely there and staying mainly because she feels like she's responsible in trying to "fix him." It's probably why it took so long for her to even TRY to kill him. Terezi isn't scared to kill, she isn't a damsel, nor is she a perfect victim. But still a victim.

The idea of trying to bring someone you care about back from a state and feeling you're getting close but facing failure over and over again. I can see her giving up and choosing to believe Gamzee's gone. There's one Gamzee now and he's here and he's a bitch. I can really see her thinking that and stewing in those feelings for a good bit. Finalized decision to go "Clown Hunting" was finally her resolution. Of not only freeing herself but Gamzee as well.

Imagine her finally making that decision to kill Gamzee and stabbing him repeatedly and to just be jump scared with a face that she's familiar with. Before the game. A voice that was soft like before.

She didn't want to kill HIM. She was close again and faced with her perceived "failure". BRUTALLY.

A teen trying to take on a responsibility she should've never took on, and most likely pursuing it due to guilt of killing her best friend, Vriska. Desperately trying to keep the people she deem innocent or hold dear protected. She's just as tragic as Gamzee y'all. I love her a ton!

(I actually made a post about how I see Gamzee's corruption which will make my theory around GamRezi make more sense. Here!)

~~GamRezi regarding Aranea~~

(This part is PURELY theoretical.)

Also wanna bring up. I do NOT think Aranea mind controlled Gamzee to abuse Terezi but I do like to play around with the idea and I think about how she may have planted seeds of insecurity for Gamzee to say to Terezi about her blindness. It just feels very suspicious especially with her wanting to heal Terezi's sight beforehand and Terezi rejecting the offer. Aranea's whole thing was that SHE wanted to fix everything and be the hero that defeated Lord English which is why she did the things she did in the first place. I can imagine Aranea trying to heal Terezi's blindness for 2 reasons:

-Wanting to be a hero and FIX people, even the ones who don't want to be fixed (I've met people like that before, get them AWAY from me lol)

-Eliminating the threat that Terezi poses because her blindness actually made her seer powers stronger, which has a possibility of her ruining Aranea's plans.

~~THE AUTHORS NOTES (PERTAINING TO GAMZEE & PERSONAL THOUGHTS AND EXPERIENCES)~~

Everything that is demonized and said about Gamzee in the Authors notes in the physical books either gets debunked within the writing of the original comic or just racism, ableism, or an obvious bias towards victims of drug abuse. It gets incredibly obvious that there's a bias and lazy writing taking place here.

So I won't lie, it hurts to see people just agree with the thoughts of someone demonizing the way me and my family speaks. It hurts to see someone demonize the way I think and understand the world and everyone just agrees with it. It hurts to see the suffering of huge group of people as a joke and everyone just agrees. All these things that get demonized were things I had gone through at some point in my life and It just.... disgusts me that people are just ok with it.

There's definitely a bit of a bias on my part but I guess that's literally what happens when everything you are is demonized by the people around you your whole life and then finally when everything about you is presented in one character, the individual who created the character and someone we all know has pretty bad biases demonizes all those things.

But it doesn't matter cause everyone is all for it.

I really do want to be understanding to everyone's point of view but I just find it all disgusting sometimes.

~~My kudos to Hussie~~

I do understand that I come off as antagonistic towards Hussie and I feel that generally puts most people off cause they assume that I dont have respect for the work that is put into Homestuck as a medium so I thought it'd be a good thing to add this.

As much as I don't really like Hussie as an individual I can't really say that I have zero respect for them as a creator, nor can I blame her for the lazy writing, plot holes, rushing later in the original comic. It makes sense especially with how much they were stressing about it and how the fandom gave them shit for the hiatus' and breaks.

I don't even think Hussie really wanted to finish the comic in the first place but she did. (More of an assumption on my part. But with how the fandom was going and how them as an author reacted. It's kind of hard to think she finished the comic with love.)

I'm incredibly appreciative of the creation of Homestuck, it was one of the only things in my childhood keeping me from killing myself. And even though Gamzee was a joke character and he hates Gamzee.... I really appreciate the creation of Gamzee. It was the first time seeing a character represent so many aspects of myself and I truly love them.

It hurts to see a creator hate something they created so much but it's ok. and it makes sense as an observer of the fandom and Hussie for years now.

~~In Conclusion~~

I read all your asks about fantasy races but I there wasn't one that talked about a fantasy world with no humans. My question is: is still othering to have poc in that context? Should I include more humans to balance it out?

Fantasy races with features from real human races

From what I gather, you are saying you are writing a fantasy series with no humans, but a variety of fantasy species, some of which have human-like features, including skin tones. I think this is a simple problem. 

When coding cultures and traditions:

Do not:

Code whole ethnicities/ races for whole species.

This would reinforce the racist pseudoscience notions that differences between groups with different outward appearances connote different intrinsic, biological and behavioral attributes.

Do:

Show ethnicities within species.

Show societal attributes that can all be linked to the circumstances of the environment, even if the outcomes are different for different groups living in the same region. 

Avoid dehumanizing coding Lastly, I advise against creating a [human-like features] = [more human personality] / [animal-like features] = [Less human] dichotomy as this too falls in line with “dehumanizing based on physical appearance” reasoning you are looking to avoid in the event your culture-coding ends up revealing any intrinsic biases.

Marika

"Why are you bringing race into everything?"

"She can't be Black, she's literally not human."

"It's fictional, why do you care so much?"

It's not made of monolingual English-speaking and bilingual (Japanese and English-speaking) audiences. Nor was it made for the general US audience as well as the general Japanese audience.

The Japanese language is not meant to be understood by anyone, either having English speakers translate it or leaving the audience to infer what is being communicated. The spoken English translation often overlays the spoken Japanese. Not even basic Japanese is used for the benefit of English-speaking audiences, only English words from Japanese speakers. Then written Japanese is set dressing. If it's not translated, it goes by so fast that if you understand it, you don't have the time to read it. Then the dogs all have standard English dog names with tags that are written in English. And you know, the whole thing where the dogs, our main characters, speak English.

The movie is designed in such a way that translating to Japanese is impossible without being uniquely awkward.

While there must be much to enjoy if you understand both, the movie does not just favor English, it others Japanese.

When it comes to the movie's use of language, every related issue branches from this and every potential praise has to contend with it.

Content Warning: Depiction of Racism, mention of cannibalism

I briefly touched on this in my Zelda video, but I wanna talk about the way the Deku in Majora's Mask are portrayed.

Zelda utilizes racial coding to depict nearly every group/race in the series. Racial coding if you're not aware is you apply traits associated with our real-world understanding of race, gender, disability and so on to non-human characters. It's neither inherently good nor bad to do and can enrich a story if used consciously and carefully.

It can also be done unintentionally without a storyteller realizing the implications often because they're repeating elements from stories they enjoy without catching these details.

I can not believe we live in a society that genuinely believes racial coding = 'stereotypes but woke'...

Y'all, racial stereotypes are overexaggerated and meant to generalize a group as a whole....

Yes, racial stereotypes are technically coding, but that doesn't mean racial coding itself is based on stereotypes. [Think square = rectangle but rectangle =/= square.]

If it was all the same, you can not create any characters with a race because anything can be a stereotype by their POV.

Gave your white oc straight hair? "Racist. Not all white people have straight hair."

Gave your black oc dark skin? "Racist. Not all black people have darker skin."

Your character comes from a place with a language other than English, and they dare speak in that language? "Racist. Not every person knows their home language."

All of these rebuttals in isolation are correct, but context is extremely important. Yes, if someone claims an entire group of people have to look like XYZ to be a certain race, that's stereotyping. Making characters who happen to have very common traits among certain races, specifically the one they're meant to represent, is not.

You can literally spin anything into being racist if you view characters with this amount of malicious intent.

Getting so butthurt over someone simply calling a character X-coded (especially when it's confirmed and extremely obvious) is so incredibly dumb.

Getting mad at people critical of an X-coded character because there's no traits for people to actually connect the dots (without reading an outside source) is also extremely dumb.