tragic when a thing gets hate for being 'woke trash' and you look into it and its not even that woke. like cmon man i was promised monacle popping gay commie propaganda. this is just a video game with a woman in it.
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.
Exactly.
Im gonna shill for Marie Kondo again but this is why I find her books (yes, books, the TV show is fun but ultimately misses a lot of the core ideas) so good.
A lot of home org advice fully misses this aspect. Kondo not only acknowledges it, but leans into it. And ultimately this helps motivste me to keep my space tidy - it's really hard to me to keep on the nebulous goal of self-care, but much easier to get up and put things away if I envision my salt and pepper grinders as like, retail workers who are now standing in an empty shop (my dining table) and just wanna go home (the spice rack where they live).
Normie tidying process: that heater should be put away for summer! I mean, I'm not gonna need it
Me: well it's just chilling and also I can't be arsed.
Kondo: that heater has done a good job keeping you warm over winter and now it should get to go have a rest in the cupboard
Me: !! Sabbatical for my heater!! Thank you for your service sir and have a very nice break!
just saw a tiktok or something where the person was saying they did this and they were on a hike and they were like "i managed to get myself to go on this hike because i promised my boots we would go" and its like. OH YEAH. THAT.
Okay, for those who wanted a proper Part 2 to my last comic, I oblige with a short, unapologetically thirst-trappy follow-up where he discovers he has gills.
My boyfriend, again blending together fanfiction tropes: So what if when you finally find your soulmate, that’s when you discover if you’re alpha or omega, right?
Me, hands shaking as I frantically search for pen & paper: KEEP TALKING
Me: Seems hellish
Boyfriend: So does being an ant person
Me: Again, baby, they’re not ants
Boyfriend: YES THEY ARE. They communicate via pheromones— LIKE ANTS.
Me: So back to the soulmate thing….
Boyfriend: You could trick them into following orders and thinking they’re dead by spraying them with a spritz bottle. I think they need a queen.
Me: So back to the soulmate thing…. Seems hellish!
Boyfriend: Not really. If being around the other person is what triggers the changes, if you want to go back to normal… all you need to do is leave.
Me, writing: (You found your soulmate. It’s changing you in scary ways. All you need to do is leave… how difficult would it be to leave? What pressures exist to stay?)
Boyfriend: So these ant-people—
Me: OMEGAVERSE IS NOT ANTS!!!!!!



















