I Wish I Was A Stress Cleaner. Never Once Has My Response To Stress Been “time To Employ Some Good

As the year comes to a close, I just want to highlight all the people that wanted to create this year, but couldn't.

Whether that be due to burn out, lack of inspiration, or simply just not having the time; it's okay. It's hard to center what brings you joy during unprecedented times and these last few years have showed us that plenty.

Just keep chugging along, you're doing fine and we can't wait to see what you've been working on <3

Watched jjk0 in theatres!

fujimaki (and by extension knb fandom) and the relationship with colorism

fujimaki has some extremely questionable views on dark skinned people

its like…the only other character in the series that exhibits sexual “interest” bc he reads gravure mags as a past time, has dark skin (haizaki is notorious for his sexual exploits but its supposed to be frowned upon…hes clearly marked as Bad…so the unfortunate implications are rather telling re: aomine…not to mention how fandom ran with this trivia as some Definitive Character Attribute of aomines l o l)

the only character in the series that exhibits infantile toilet humor (farts, burps) as well as being the Dumb Musclehead character, has dark skin

we wont even mention how momoi, in a fit of rage/frustration, calls aomine ganguro, so essentially using his dark skin as a pejorative and kise made a weird mention of aomines dark skin when he first met him (why? its not connected to his status as a basketball prodigy) or his Biggest Weakness is that he cant clean when his miragen cohorts cant draw, cook, carry a tune, or make a joke? or how nebuya is referred to as a gorilla by sports spectators

and of course, the fandom engages with these characters - particulary aomine - in some insidious ways that match with fujimakis prejudices, but pointing that out incriminates fandom or makes you an oversensitive killjoy

though im not ascertained if the colorism+negative views on dark skin are as prevalent or normalized as it was back in the day, its still rather difficult to navigate in this fandoms content when im constantly bombarded with claims that dark skin means youre a hypersexual/sexually predatory fetish, intellectually deficient, unclean, vulgar, a subject of perpetual derision

its especially disheartening when you yourself are judged constantly by the darkness of your skin, both in the setting of east asian culture (japan has a long, ugly history with colorism and xenophobia) and the setting of US-ian politics (do i even have to spell it out?) and then be told that i should be grateful to fujimaki for even considering dark skin representation?? (these types of people have been brainwashed by tumblrs obstinate and incredibly shortsighted identity politics tied with media repesentation)

honestly being reminded of scott mccall hate stemmed from racism perpetuated by teenwolf fandom when i engage with aomine fandom and its alienating/infuriating

one day the internet rly should talk abt how (white) fandom’s “anything goes” mentality enables a ridiculous amount of racism & racist harassment in fic/fandom spaces/etc, & how cries of “censorship” are often weaponized against fans of color (esp Black fans) who call this out

lack of accountability & moderation in online spaces (regardless of the nature of said space) will always, always lead to marginalized communities getting hurt. most especially people of color. if you hold some lofty ideals of pleasure & ~freedom of expression~ above the tangible safety of people of color then you seriously seriously need to reexamine your priorities. paradox of tolerance and all that. if you tolerate everything then you are not only leaving room for rampant harassment and racism to occur, but you are enabling it. when simple safety measures and moderation are absent, the first people to get hurt will always be communities of color. 

it is actually possible to have a world in which creative freedom is encouraged and also we are able to protect marginalized communities from harassment. white people just don’t have any imagination lmao

Tsumiki/Yorozu

still thinking about "decolonising" missionary work.

the way you decolonise missionary work is by not doing missionary work

the way you decolonise missionaries is like this:

How to stan the white guy with minimal contribution to fandom's racism problem

Look, I get it. You're obsessed with the white guy. Maybe two of them together. And maybe your series has one or more main Black characters or Asian characters or a brown Latino star. You're here because of the irresistible pull of that white guy (or two), who is fascinating beyond belief. His acting is above anything anyone has ever seen. When you write about him, the words just pour out.

This is a fan-centered space so I feel confident in saying — we've all been there. I'm not going to lie and say I've never been invested in white characters. There's nothing innately wrong with liking white characters (that would be silly).

But when it comes to the characters of color in your chosen media, you have a choice. 

You're unmoved by the Black major characters and find them unrelatable? Ok. If you're not able to keep that to yourself, prepare for a discussion about the empathy gap. Because we literally do not need content about your inability to relate to CoC if the intention is for it to stand as some kind of undebatable truth about the inferiority of CoC.

And then there are the deflections. At the first mention of sidelining CoC it comes like clockwork: They're poorly written! The acting is sub par! The character is just not interesting! It's got nothing to do with race!

Except when it happens over and over and over again, it does. It just does.

I can't count how many times a conversation on Reddit or the Jedi Council Forum (or anywhere, really) started out about Finn and became all about Kylo Ren five replies in. Just today I saw the same thing on Tumblr, a post about the poor treatment of Lucas from Stranger Things, and in the comments people were talking about Billy and his trauma. 

If you stan the white guy(s) and don't want to be perceived as part of fandom's racism problem, do not hijack threads about CoC. Not every conversation has to center your guy. Conversations that center Black characters, and I can't stress this enough, do not take anything away from your white fave(s). Nothing at all. It's not a competition.

Stop making excuses about why you don't like the Black character. No one really cares until you start tearing them down with excuses. Don't come up with meta about how the Black hero is a villain, actually, and the white bad guy is a tortured sweet baby who represents all of the forgotten children of the world. It's not clever, it's not good or interesting meta, it's transparent empathy gap racism. 

And, again, that will be discuseed. You can't believe in "maximum inclusion" and draw the line at discussing racism. Responding to racism is not breaking the fandom social contract. It's a long established part of fandom by now.

It really shouldn't bother white guy stans so much to see a Black character in a major role in genre media to the point where they feel the need to aggressively dismiss them and their fans. Not doing that, at least, should be easy. Not doing that means that maybe that fandom critical post about racism isn't about you.

It's not about white guy characters or even their inevitable popularity. It's about fan behavior toward characters and fans of color, whether it's on Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit or AO3.