Fang Friday

A goliath werebear from the Icewind Dale, Oyaminartok is a skilled fisher. Though she looks fearsome, she's known to be quite kind and willing to help out adventurers she comes across.

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The absolutely pervasive mentality that unwanted criticism or critique shouldn't be given and should be ignored is why fans of color don't stay in fan spaces.

And I am not going to mince words here:

A lot of you are racist. A lot of your fan works are racist.

That might have been difficult to hear. And if it was, you should probably reflect on why that was.

"Fandom etiquette" has created a space where fans of color either bite our tongues and eventually leave or say something, get dogged on, and then eventually leave.

If I say "I am uncomfortable with fandom's tendency to write trans men as feminine and submissive" I do not mean "I think every person who writes feminine submissive trans men should be chased with pitchforks". I don't even mean "any cis-person who writes feminine or submissive trans men should be chased with pitchforks". I mean "I would like writers to seriously think about why this is so common, why they write that, and if it fairly and genuinely engages with what it means to be a trans man, or if they just think it's hot when submissive people have vaginas and didn't want to write omegaverse of m/f".

Similarly, when people say "fandom is systemically less interested in black characters, less willing to give flat black characters rich fanon than flat white characters, and less interested in black characters in ships", the response is not to explain why you, personally, just happen to like popular white guy in that fanon. Your job is to look at yourself and ask if you tend to "just happen to be more interested" in the popular white guy across fandoms, be honest, and start unpacking that. Sometimes it's easier to love the flat character who's already getting 10,000 fics with headcanons and art and meta.

If somebody says "I wish there were more gluten free options at the potluck. I hate always showing up and not finding anything I can eat*", they are not asking you to throw your cake in the trash and weep. They do not want to hear your long speech about how actually this is your grandmother's recipe, and you've tried it with rice flour actually, but it just didn't work. You think about what you can do, and you listen to how they feel.

For Intersex Jam 2026, I made an informative zine. “Intersex Inclusion: A Crash Course for Creatives” is a quick primer on how to include intersex experiences in your creative works. The text-only version* is available for free, licensed under CC BY 4.0, and I encourage others to repost and use this zine in place of asking random non-activist intersex folks about how to represent our entire community with dignity.

* (it's supposed to be in comic form, but due to rampant computer crashes, I wasn’t able to assemble the artwork into a screen-reader accessible PDF in time for the deadline.)

Overwhelmingly, the most common question I see from allies to random bystanders who just so happen to be publicly intersex is “how do I include intersex people?” I know they mean well, but it gets tiring. I hold no enmity for them in my heart; in spite of that, I’m tired. I want to see folks like me being considered at all—without having to see random, non-activist intersex folks awkwardly struggling to rehash the same three points again and again because well-meaning but ignorant allies keep asking the same question of non-activists while prostrating and flagellating themselves over how they didn’t spawn into existence as a perfect ally. It’s such a demanding task that thinking about it makes me want to roll over and take a nap. Fortunately, I am an old dog incapable of learning new tricks; hence, I am back on my bullshit to provide a bunch of infographics loosely assembled into a zine. I made sure to pack it with resources and citations good for your nutrition, all with love from the universe. Take my hand. Let’s be inclusive of intersex experiences in our creative works, together.

(Has to be someone you actually know/knew in the past. Billionares/celebrities/polititians/etc. don't count.)