#read as

i’m still angry that Kevin wasn’t Japanese when the narrative constantly pushed that Kevin and Riko were like (adopted/foster) brothers, a la Cain and Abel edition. since all the fucking main villains were a Japanese family, what the fuck forced nora to make Kevin related to them, but white? like, that specification takes much more elaborate work to get around rather than just let Kevin be Japanese too, and the result we get is that all the Japanese characters that appears in that series were villains that tortured a white person. do you get that? because i don’t. she put in extra work, she deliberately made Kevin appear white. why not at least have one good Japanese character, or are they only good for using as villains?

Nicky is the only other explicitly canon character of color we get, but wowza, nora pushes him onto the Predatory Latino Trope and makes him spout gross comments that’s counted as sexual harassment, something that he never apologizes for, or gets resolved in any way. there’s definitely character development there, even though we never get showed a scene where Nicky were sorry and apologized towards Neil (again, a white).

this series just....goes all the way with the trope [Trauma is a White Thing(TM)] with all the foxes (all young adults that have survived various kinds of abuse and trauma) being coded as white, besides One (1) person (Nicky) being canonically a character of color.

like, it’s really interesting to see how the white aftg fandom treats the canon characters of color. Riko is a fucking despicable character, but i wonder how the fandom would’ve treated him if he was white? i’m going to tell you; more people in this fandom would have focused more on his trauma and tried to redeem him (see examples from: Star Wars, Agents of SHIELD, every other major fandom tbh). 

even though many of the foxes do and say problematic shit, Nicky gets more heat than many others, and though it’s not unsolicited, it’s just really peculiar that some of you keep receipts specifically on him, and not other characters that have done some problematic shit, like both of his cousins, Aaron and Andrew.

my point is: try remembering the characters you say you hate from this series. the probability of them being a character of color is pretty high. and that’s largely on nora, for making the series at it is, with all the Japanese characters being irredeemable villains, not even likable or someone you could feel sympathy towards. it’s also on her for not giving Nicky a good scene to show he learned what he did was wrong, was sorry and changed from it. his character in the following books do suggest a development, but if it’s not explicit, it’s not something we can count on.

my point is: Nicky is a canon brown gay man that many of us fans of color like and feel protective of, i guess. and since he’s the only good character of color (read: not a fucking villain), when you all make “hate posts” about him, like maybe make a point of understanding that nora, the one who sat down and wrote the book, made a Latino embody a very widespread racial stereotype, and though his actions were very wrong, also make a point that nora didn’t make the narrative criticize or give him a chance to redeem himself, the only good main character of color she made.