originally i made a very different post and then i started to understand better what aabria was doing when she was comparing the way fans treat suvi compared with the way real black women are treated. so the TLDR of this post is that if suvi made you understand black women better as a nonblack person, that's so awesome, and also you have so much work to do around how you think about black women
the way fans treat her is steeped in misogynoir because she is made by and is read as a black woman in real world context. but within the context of WBN, she shares very few structural overlapping experiences with black women. suvi is not allowed to be angry, to be loud, to be confused, to have time to figure things out. she is not allowed to feel complex emotion because of the institution she is a part of and her status within that institution. but as gut wrenching as it would be to do so, she can leave it. you can't leave blackness in real life.
when suvi isn't allowed to feel those emotions by fans because she should've done better or she's an abuser or whatever whatever, it reveals something kind of horrifying about how black women would be treated if they had any structural power, if they did not have histories of slavery and being perceived as ghetto for participating in their own culture behind them.
kamala harris (referred to in the original post) does have structural power, yes, but it is something she has in spite of being a black woman, not because of it (systemically). suvi's status as powerful in umora is because she's a citadel wizard, not in spite of it. she doesnt have that history or cultural context behind her in the world of umora, she has her tragic backstory. and maybe she's powerful in spite of her backstory, but real people don't have "backstories".
race and sex seem to intentionally have very little structural involvement in WBN (as in they are present but do not move the story and are not part of the hierarchy). so treating her like a real life black woman doesn't make a ton of sense (from an analytical standpoint).
fans' treatment of suvi is because shes a black woman, and doing misogynoir to black women happens whether or not they're real or fake. but i feel like people understanding black women better because of suvi is just a failing of their ability to make the effort to understand real black women. because the main similarity between them is that they're not allowed to feel their feelings.
i feel like this is a failing if it doesn't extend wildly beyond suvi because understanding her as a character is more about personal context than structural, cultural, or historical context. (obviously) real life black women are way more complicated than suvi and, i dont know, it just feels kind of freightening to me if what the majority of suvi's character does for some people is humanize black women. partially for all of the above reasons listed, but also it feels like it means that black women never get to just be, even in fantasy. they always have to be serving some just and righteous moral aim
not a rosey way to look at it. and yes, part of what fantasy can do is provide alternative perspectives to real world issues. but. maybe this black history month, commit to giving a shit about real black women (trans women especially)
