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hey so i know non white percy is a pretty popular headcanon but i was wondering if it was still considered bad to hc him as a poc with green eyes as i know there has been a heap of people calling rick's depiction of other poc with coloured eyes as disrespectful (re: piper and hazel). i dont wanna hurt anyone by accidentally playing into a racist stereotype y'know? ^ Not my ask. Saw other people discussing it on a different blog. Thoughts?

I think that to answer this question one has to look at the context and intent behind the features of each character.

Hazel and Piper are young Black and indigenous women (and in this case, the fact that they are women shouldn’t be overlooked). There is a history of providing woc with otherworldly/white features in order to “exotify” them and make them more desirable/magical/etc, and this goes doubly for black women. If you consider the actual colors Riordan ascribes to their features, it’s not hard to see how their characters play into this pattern.

Piper’s eye color is literally impossible to have. I’ve seen people try to excuse Riordan by saying that she has hazel eyes (I’m not sure why they even try to excuse it since they obviously understand it’s wrong. Take note of how far people go to preserve the “unique” eye colors of nonwhite characters) but he very explicitly compares them to a “kaleidoscope”, constantly changing colors from brown to green to blue, etc.

This has given people the excuse to draw her with bright pink eyes. Before people became more vocal about how harmful her features are, you’d be hard-pressed to find a dark-eyed drawing of Piper. However, take one peek into her tag and you’d find droves of blue, green, and even pink-eyed Pipers. I’m not here to unfold the entire history of how brown eyes are viewed, but I trust you to use common sense and make your own conclusions about what might influence people to be so subconsciously averse to drawing her with brown eyes, especially when they are one of her canonical eye colors.

To my knowledge, none of the other children of Aphrodite are described this way. One could argue Silena, but we all know that Riordan just didn’t keep her character’s appearance consistent. Ask yourself why he would go out of his way to give an Indigenous woman those eyes. He does it to prove she’s the daughter of Aphrodite, the daughter of beauty. Ask yourself why her brown eyes aren’t enough for him, especially since he has never given any other character this feature.

Hazel, the daughter of a Black woman with no explicitly “exotic” features, is given orange hair and eyes. For Hazel, even the excuse of “she got them from her godly parent” (which is fundamentally flawed) doesn’t work as Hades is literally described as having dark eyes. Add this on to the fact that none of the other children of Hades have any of these features (the di Angelo’s have regular Italian features) and it makes you question why Hazel was specifically chosen to be the one to be described with coloring that is literally inhuman (when was the last time you saw someone with bright orange hair and eyes?). At best, her description is inconsistent with the rest of his writing. At worst, it is dehumanizing and plays into the fetishization of black women.

Now I ask you to look at the situation with a wider lens and realize that the only characters given these inhuman “magical” features are Piper and Hazel. The closest thing I can think of for comparison is Annabeth’s grey eyes, which are both realistic AND given to most (if not all) children of Athena, rather than singling out one child to show how “special” they are.

Now, take all of this and try to see if it applies to Percy. The biggest difference is that green eyes are a completely normal feature for humans to have. They may not be common for white people and POC, but they certainly aren’t unheard of. I can name 10 POC with green eyes that I know off the top of my head right now.

Also, we can’t overlook the role gender plays in this. The history behind the exotification of WOC is infinitely more damning than that of men. While this does often apply to male characters, it’s the unfortunate truth that it’s much more common with female characters.

Most importantly, I think we can’t look past the reason why we are so vehemently against giving Piper and Hazel these features. Intent plays a huge factor in this. As mentioned before, it’s clear both through Riordan’s writing and literary history that the intent behind features such as Hazel’s and Piper’s are to exotify them and show how “magical” they are. By doing so, there is a heavy implication that their natural features are not enough. There is no such intent with Percy. Since his race is never explicitly mentioned, we can conclude that Rick originally viewed Percy as white (who are unfortunately seen as the default). Add that onto the fact that green eyes aren’t unheard of in POC and you see that the implications behind Hazel’s and Piper’s features don’t apply to Percy’s. Also, his eyes don’t come out of nowhere (and they aren’t explained away with a cop-out “it comes from his godly parent”) as Sally herself is described as having sea-blue eyes.

While I see where the concern comes from, I personally think it’s unfounded. Of course, one could argue against me and their view could be just as valid as mine, but when I look at the history behind each character’s features (both Riordan’s personal history and the history of nonwhite characters in general), I find myself concluding that the two situations really aren’t that similar.

So. 10th grade English class. We all come in one morning to find a balloon and a perfectly sharpened pencil on each of our desks. No instructions, no explanation, which is strange, because our teacher is meticulous about that sort of thing. A couple of people try to ask her and she says we’ll get to it. She takes role and then announces that she needs to go to the copy room and she’ll be back in a couple of minutes

Kinda unorthodox, but no one is complaining because this is advanced English and the teacher usually goes kinda hard. So, y’know. Brief respite. We all sit and chat; one of the boys teasingly steals a girl’s balloon, but gives it back to her easily enough; it’s quiet and kind of a nice break. Then the teacher comes back, stops in the doorway, and just stares at us

After a long moment, she says, confused, “You didn’t pop the balloons.”

To which one of the guys about two rows over exclaims, “We’re allowed to pop them?” and immediately turns around and stabs his friend’s balloon with the pencil

There is a vicious revenge balloon-stabbing, and a few more people pop seatmates’ balloons or their own, and the whole time the teacher is just shaking her head. “I can’t believe you didn’t pop your balloons.”

Apparently we were starting Lord of the Flies that day and she wanted to demonstrate the basic concept of kids turning on each other when there are no authority figures present and it was basically my favorite failed social experiment ever

The Classism, Sexism, and Mishandling of Slavery theme of the Remarried Empress ((pt 1. of why I might divorce the remarried empress series)) WARNING: SOME SPOILERS INSIDE

Note: this story/review was written by someone from the western hemisphere, so yes I am well aware that cultural differences is most likely a definite factor in this. However, this is my opinion on how this series kinda rubs me the wrong way. I will admit that I am behind on the series, and some of the info I got was from spoilers so it might be outdated, as I stopped at episode 85 on webtoons, and read some spoilers, if this is the case, I am prepared to address what I’ve said in a new post ( a reblog of this) to make things more fair.

Ok so I’m gonna do a super quick introduction because anyone, who’s anybody knows the basic premise of one of, if not the most popular manhwas next to WMMAP. It’s a manhwa that essentially has dominated on webtoon, ruled on insta and I think is even set to have it’s own movie/kdrama eventually come out.

Yours truly, was a fan of this series, especially when I got caught up in the tales of hype, and complexity of the story/spoilers, and the beauty of the novel. Like I genuinely liked this series, as the premise was easy to follow, it almost seemed like it was written from a sympathetic villainess’s pov and it just made me a fan, until I wasn’t.

The tales of Navier being an awesome strong female lead in the face of walking dung and his mistress Rashta (affectionately known by fans as Trashta- which hold on I will address that in this) was pretty good at first, until I sat down and actually thought about this series. Now I know you’ll say- hey, hey, hey, this is a manhwa (technically not isekai) why are you actually putting deep thought into this? And I’ll say, well, I have this rule when it comes to fiction.

I (the reader) will only take a series as serious, as the series takes itself. So to elaborate, this means I’m not going to sit down and waste time telling you how certain series does things on a broader or more indepth scale if it’s clearly here for a good time. No, this means that if a story wants me to take it seriously, then, um yeah I am going to do so.

Now, coming back to this series, I’m going to get straight to the point, that might upset some people, because I know there’s probably a lot of cultural differences between the writer of this story, and readers who are located on the western hemisphere, like me. 

But- with all due respect.

Something about this story does NOT sit right with my spirit,

 and it’s mainly the classist narration/the dealing with slavery, with pinches of sexism here and there, but let’s start with the classism.

 This story feels like it’s essentially punching DOWN, like it’s telling the lower class to know it’s place, some were born to rule, others merely to serve/follow orders, and punishing the one person, Rashta, who albeit unethically and under bad circumstances, tries to create a better life for herself by somewhat breaking the social norms by climbing up, terribly. I’m not justifying what Rashta has done, nor am I condoning it, but the complete lack of empathy in the narration of a story that is praised for being complex is….well….disturbing. 

In fact, if I have to be honest with you, I feel nothing but apathy vibes from the tone/way this story was written. There’s a distinct lack of empathy when it comes to the suffering of others, particularly women not named NAVIER, that I think needs to be discussed more, especially when people want to push this series as something that promotes a strong fl, because I think it pushes a strong/independent fl at the expense of some other female characters (don’t believe me- just look at how the fandom so readily vilifies a female character who gets in Navier’s way,). 

Guys like Sovieshu and Heinrey are allowed to have explicitly outlined sympathetic aspects to them, whereas the women’s pov is far more subtle, before they inevitably end up doing something terrible (I’m talking about Rashta and Heinrey’s sister in law). All do terrible things, but I feel more inclined to say that the women who become antagonists in this story are more victims than the guys who willingly perpretate the acts, yet aren’t allowed the same leeway/understanding from the narrative. Get the picture?

Let’s start with the topic of cultural differences, now shall we?

PT 1. The Slavery Discussion and Rashta:

Slavery is no stranger to being apart of isekai, in a lot of stories it’s either added as a footnote to help worldbuilding in a fairly negative way, or it acts as some sort of trauma for the mcs to portray them in a more sympathetic light. But in this story, it’s handled so…strangely. Slavery is very much traumatizing, no matter in which media it is presented, or the purpose/form. The after effects/trauma of slavery is massively understated, and I for one think it should be treated with respect when it comes to playing a major role in a story like this.

The fact that Rashta was a slave who was abused and mistreated is seemingly glossed over a LOT- it is most likely the reason why she is, the way she is. She’s so naïve/willing to go along with Sovieshu’s schemes because she spent her entire life up to that point being treated worse than dirt, and now has to deal with living in constant fear of having to return to that life. She probably doesn’t genuinely know any better, as no one was there to teach her right and wrong, or guide her. That cycle of trauma and abuse is so hard to break, and probably even impossible, given the settings/position she’s in. 

 So she’s unable to protect herself from the schemes of those who’ve been born into the game of politics and power and are coming for her blood in order to exploit her, yet the story tries to play it off as…making her kind of selfish, and evil. 

It’s almost like writing Cinderella or maybe just any slave girl (a girl who spent her life as a slave up until she got married) as some sort of pawn, without any sort of empathy/sympathy for the character from the narrative…could you imagine how heartbreaking that would be? This is pure exploitation, yet it never feels like it’s called out in a long-lasting/meaningful way for you to sympathize with Rashta, or offer the character any sort of leeway/complexity (save for the end when she’s about to be executed but even then it’s too little too late) nah it feels almost like the story is telling you that this is what Rashta deserves, she’s just another cog in the wheel for the haves to use. 

I’m not saying that Rashta is completely innocent in all of this, because yes I will admit, that Rashta is a terrible person, who’s done bad things (albeit some under the bad influence of Heinrey’s friend, and others was just because of her, she’s really not a good person, at ALL)- BUT, she’s ruining others because her life was ruined, it’s probably her way of punching UP, of securing herself in a society that clearly does not want the poor to advance/better themselves. Which as bad as it sounds, isn’t completely inexcusable, given how cutthroat the story likes to play it’s politics as. ((Like look at Navier and how she’s always thinking politically, you could probably try to sell her girl scout cookies, and she’d suspect you of espionage or something))

Even in this elevated position, we see that Sovieshu doesn’t even see Rashta as a person of her own, she’s just…a plaything to him, something he’s using because he feels like Navier isn’t giving him the love he deserves. ((I’ll touch on Navier next part)). The Rashta around him depicts herself as stupid, cute and playful, because she knows that’s what he wants her to be, and there’s high possibility that the moment that he finds out that she’s not that (she’s actually a lot smarter than he thinks), he could very easily dispose of her. That brings me to the worst part of their whole relationship which a lot of fans, and Navier herself seems to miss- the unequal power dynamic-

 The worst part is that he disposes of her, at the end, when it really should’ve been his head on a pike, but alas, she dies and the story doesn’t care because at this point it’s almost like it’s done more to explicitly tell you how terrible she is, than to make you somewhat sympathize with her. ((Keep in mind I’m not saying Navier had to accept Rashta with open arms from day 1, but Navier should’ve 1000% been suspecting foul play in more places than she did. I mean someone who was at most a mistress (coming from slavery, where she was uneducated) was pulling all of these political power moves like Rastha was, should’ve raised some flags for Navier, but eh, whatever I guess. Sovieshu doesn’t really seem to get the punishment he deserves.

Let’s not forget that Rashta can’t exactly say no to Sovieshu’s advances (dude’s the emperor who could have her beheaded for breathing out of her mouth wrong) and like I said before, is literally being manipulated by Heinrey’s friend. It’s sad because I know this story will probably gloss over it (I kinda know the spoilers where he ends up taking away her kids in the end after she’s executed, which is kinda good because at least her children aren’t orphans, but once again it’s just exploitation. Exploitation of a naive women by powerful men- seeing the theme here? Sovieshu uses her against Naiver, and Heinrey’s friend uses her against them both…almost feels like her main purpose is just to be a tool for others (most noticeably MEN) while having no agency of her own…))

You can say that maybe I’m overreacting about this, but like I said before the story likes to take it’s politics/characterization seriously, and I have no doubt that if Navier was a slave- we’d be exploring every traumatic aspect/long term effect of slavery. Everything Navier would be doing would be constantly sympathized with, because the story would recognize that she was a slave, and the cycle of abuse/trauma she’s faced it’s hard to break. Yet the story continually lacks that empathy for most of the female characters, in fact, the story seemingly gets a kick out of pitting women AGAINST each other. Because at the very least the fans do (I need to talk about Heinrey’s sister-in-law, remind me to talk about her for the next part).

 You can argue well it’s just the times, so strong women really shouldn’t be working together, but then I’d say- um, no. If this story wants me to suspend enough belief that magic exists, Navier feels no remorse about breaking social standards (and being able to get away with it too) while being the main ruling force of the empire behind the scenes, with some fairly outspoken female characters- then I could totally buy the strong women working together, even in unconvential means. In fact, it’s kinda frustrating that Rashta spends the whole story getting manipulated by powerful men for their own means and she never wakes up/develops from it. Hmmm, that’s kinda…suspicious to me…

Honestly-

The fact that magic exists in this world, but Slavery is still around is just….wow, sure it’s a form to punish you for not paying off debts- but I fail to see how that works, when Rashta’s debt ridden father was able to get away from it by selling off someone else, it’s a blatant loophole that even the poorest of the poor can escape, with little consequence. What’s the point of having that system if it apparently doesn’t even work right? I think it’s almost too severe, and stupid given how many loopholes the story glosses over.

Maybe Navier isn’t that kind of an empress, why exactly has she never pushed for the elimination of slavery/increase of human rights? We know that she’s the one who’s wearing the real political pants in her empire, and the administration seems to be fine with this, as we never hear them complain. Also we’ve seen her gladly sponsor someone from the magic school, which was, a fairly expensive school, and I think the girl was from a fairly good background, unless I’m mistaken, maybe she was poor, but she had to be exceptionally good to get it. ((I’m choking on the classism here)). So it’s not like she’s going out of her way to benefit the massive underprivileged class of her empire, I kinda wonder if she knows they exist (save for the time they kind of rightfully grill her for running off to go marry the prince of the enemy empire, which sure she had her reasons for it, but I doubt the peasants would know/care about the full story, not when they have slavery and God knows what else dark ages problems to deal with).

Navier’s face when she hears the lower class cry for food. They should’ve thought about that before they became peasants!

You could also argue that this slavery isn’t exactly similar to the form of slavery in the west (which I would answer that there were other forms of slavery before the one that notoriously evolved in the western hemisphere, that were still socially degrading)- but once again, like I’m saying, if you’re going to base something off of a thing that has had traumatic/degrading long term effects socially, you should treat it with respect or don’t write it at all. I feel like there was either a blatant lack of research, or care when it was written into Rashta, which honestly would’ve been ‘fine’, if the story didn’t really try to antagonize a traumatized character while it later on tried to paint the narcissistic sexist Soviedung as complex, or sympathetic. Heck, I’m pretty sure the story is going to try to make Heinrey somewhat complex/sympathetic for trying to sabotage the empire while Navier was trying to run it! Yet Rashta doesn’t get a pass until it’s too late….

It’s like the story hates the underprivileged, which, is actually kinda funny to me.

If a westerner had tried to write something like this, it would be rightfully called out. So I’m not making any full exceptions here. You can argue that yeah cultural difference here is one thing, and I’ll say, alright, fine, fair. But then I’ll say, doesn’t it seem sexist to you that at the end the female character is seemingly more villainified/suffers more than the male character (who keep in mind is the main perpetrator) yet the story never seems self aware to call this out? So at best it’s probably just innocent ignorance, and at worst it’s just kinda sexist.

Protecting the women who you’ve been low key politically sabotaging so you can take over her empire be like:

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that slavery shouldn’t/can’t be used in fiction, but the way how the series fails to empathize with an obviously traumatized person from slavery but painting her the way it does, is just….wrong…

ESPECIALLY because the story literally tries to become a contortionist in order to make Sovieshu more sympathetic the last second. Why does Sovieshu get to have something of a redemption arc/sympathy when Rashta doesn’t??? It’s giving me classist, and low key sexist. 

Rabbits Rabbits Rabbits

Reblog this on the first of the month for good luck all month long!

Not Another ACOTAR Fandom Demographics Survey!

It's happening again! The last survey was so fun and so interesting, I decided to put together another one. This one is going to focus more on the characters and ships that people prefer.

Google Docs

ACOTAR Fandom Survey Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

Another survey of ACOTAR fandom! This one is looking at the characters and ships that people like and dislike the most. All answers are anon

I'd love for this to reach ALL sections of fandom, so I would really appreciate it being spread around! This is the one situation where reposting is accepted and encouraged. Share the link on your own blog, or on another site (reddit/twitter/facebook/IG etc).

The survey will close on Wednesday, July 26. Results will be posted a few weeks after that.

Some questions and answers people may have under the cut

What is this survey for? Why are you doing it if you don't seem to like ACOTAR that much?

It's for me to have a dataset to play with! I used to be a scientist and I just like doing data collection and analysis. Also I think this fandom is interesting! People were very suspicious last time bc I'm kind of a hater and haven't read all the books. Which is fair, I GUESS. But I promise there are no nefarious intentions. I just want to play with some data.

Is the survey to prove some kind of point? Or support an opinion you have?

Nope! I am well aware that I have very niche ACOTAR opinions and am not looking to "prove" that I'm right. I don't care about being "right" I'm just here to have fun. If anybody thinks I'm doing something shady with the data to sway the results, I'm more than willing to share my raw data with anyone that asks.

I still don't trust you.

That's fine! Nobody has to take the survey. Just know that not taking it can skew the results towards opinions you disagree with. So not taking it doesn't punish me so much as make one side seem more numerous than the other.

Have you learned anything from the last survey?

I would like to think so! I have a better idea of the ships that people actually like (not having Neris, Azris, or Emorie on the first one was just EMBARRASSING). I also have a better idea of the plots of the books and the dynamics of the different characters. But I'm sure there's much more for me to learn!

Reblog if you need this energy

source

“Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.”

— On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong

that’s enough emotions for a whole year. ciao

girl typing a very specific question into google search bar, scrunching her face as she takes time to make sure she hasn't made any spelling errors, hitting enter, shaking her head as google only presents her with unhelpful websites that don't answer her query at all, moving her cursor back to the search bar and clicking on it so she can carefully write 'reddit' at the end, hitting enter again, sighing with relief as she finds a link to a reddit post asking the exact question she needed answered posted in a subreddit for a very niche topic, finally moving her cursor to click on the link, wondering why she didn't go straight to the subreddit earlier, only to be met with a deleted comment with a reply from the OP stating 'that was very helpful, thanks', sighing with frustration as she moves her cursor back to the search bar so she can copy the link and paste it into the wayback machine,

Relationship Compromise in Batman/Catwoman

(or: I’m not sure Tom King knows just how bonkers what he wrote is and I don’t know what to do with that)

Batman/Catwoman concluded this past June, and I did not enjoy it, and it haunts me.

Just… when I read a story and what the author apparently thinks is happening does not align with the events on the page, I can’t help but feel some fascination. The final page, in B/C #12, is definitely the most dissonant:

What a romantic scene, the pin on a tale of love triumphant! If you ignore many of the events around it!!

I try not to be too much of a dick even about things I don’t like. Regardless of my opinion, Tom King wrote twelve dang issues interweaving three different time periods, so he put some measure of thought into it. So at the conclusion of my first read, when my reaction was “lol what,” I still thought maybe the spliced time periods were hiding something from me. That narrative tactic is typically used so that an event that happens in one period of time can directly comment on an event that occurs much earlier/later, and there was some of that in B/C, but its main effect was muddling the story. Plus I read it over the course of 17 months! Maybe I missed something, something that made it allllll come together.

So during my second read, like a sane person, I cut up all the panels and sorted them into the three different tracks. And then I read the story again chronologically, and this time my reaction was… *resoundlingly* “lol what.”

And I will explain why at length under the cut (with many many spoilers, as well as remarks on dismemberment and suicide).

Seguir leyendo