It’s horrible, I’ve spent so long reading fanfiction that I can’t read actual books anymore because it’s always about a girl who meets a boy or a girl who has to chose between two boys and I’m just like that’s great, but where is the gay. Fanfiction has ruined me
Or, alternative theory: fuck mainstream media! Woo!
For the love of #Clexa: Over a year after Lexa’s death on The 100, her fans are still fighting for positive representation of queer women on television. (Sep 21st, 2017)
The Legacy® continues.
“The CW has declined to comment to BuzzFeed News regarding the character’s death and the widespread fan reaction that followed.”
I don’t want one of the ‘main’ side characters within the show, I want the actual main character in which the entire show revolves around.
I don’t want the entire show to be about them being gay, I want the show to be about something entirely different. And maybe in season 2 they meet this cute other character and they fall in love, and it’s just a little side-on thing which isn’t really important to the story other than they’re happy.
I don’t want them to be gay entirely for the shock factor, or some cheap sex scene. I want cute PG gay couple who are healthy and happy.
I don’t want it suggested that they’re together in some cryptic frendship/relationship way. I want 100% undenialable gayness. I don’t want queer baiting either.
I have had that back from a couple of agents and one publisher. My stuff is either not gay enough (read: not a romance/ erotica) or too gay (read: has queer people).
Actually it is a jar full of chocolate covered raisins on top of a dirty TV tray. But pretend the raisins are interesting and well rounded fictional characters with significant roles in their stories.
We’re sharing these raisins at a party for Western Storytelling, so we get out two bowls.
Then we start filling the bowls. And at first we only fill the one on the left.
This doesn’t last forever though. Eventually we do start putting raisins in the bowl on the right. But for every raisin we put in the bowl on the right, we just keep adding to the bowl on the left.
And the thing about these bowls is, they don’t ever reset. We don’t get to empty them and start over. While we might lose some raisins to lost records or the stories becoming unpopular, but we never get to just restart. So even when we start putting raisins in the bowl on the right, we’re still way behind from the bowl on the left.
And time goes on and the bowl on the left gets raisins much faster than the bowl on the right.
Until these are the bowls.
Now you get to move and distribute more raisins. You can add raisins or take away raisins entirely, or you can move them from one bowl to the other.
This is the bowl on the left. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?
You can’t tell for certain, can you? Adding or removing a raisin over here doesn’t seem to make much of a change to this bowl.
This is the bowl on the right. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?
When there are so few raisins to start, any change made is really easy to spot, and makes a really significant difference.
This is why it is bad, even despicable, to take a character who was originally a character of color and make them white. But why it can be positive to take a character who was originally white and make them a character of color.
The white characters bowl is already so full that any change in number is almost meaningless (and is bound to be undone in mere minutes anyway, with the amount of new story creation going on), while the characters of color bowl changes hugely with each addition or subtraction, and any subtraction is a major loss.
This is also something to take in consideration when creating new characters. When you create a white character you have already, by the context of the larger culture, created a character with at least one feature that is not going to make a difference to the narratives at large. But every time you create a new character of color, you are changing something in our world.
I mean, imagine your party guests arrive
Oh my god they are adorable!
And they see their bowls
But before you hand them out you look right into the little black girls’s eyes and take two of her seven raisins and put them in the little white girl’s bowl.
I think she’d be totally justified in crying or leaving and yelling at you. Because how could you do that to a little girl? You were already giving the white girl so much more, and her so little, why would you do that? How could you justify yourself?
But on the other hand if you took two raisins from the white girl’s bowl and moved them over to the black girl’s bowl and the white girl looked at her bowl still full to the brim and decided your moving those raisins was unfair and she stomped and cried and yelled, well then she is a spoiled and entitled brat.
And if you are adding new raisins, it seems more important to add them to the bowl on the right. I mean, even if we added the both bowls at the same speed from now on (and we don’t) it would still take a long time before the numbers got big enough to make the difference we’ve already established insignificant.
And that’s the difference between whitewashing POC characters and making previously white characters POC. And that’s why every time a character’s race is ambiguous and we make them white, we’ve lost an opportunity.
*goes off to eat her chocolate covered raisins, which are no longer metaphors just snacks*
Because given recent events, THIS CLEARLY FUCKING NEEDS TO BE SAID AGAIN.
Thanks to the AV Club for this insightful review. There are spoilers, so beware!
I have not even read this yet because all of the local comic book shops sold out like IMMEDIATELY but I am so pumped to get it!! The Legend of Korra finale sort of changed my life in terms of helping me realize YES, representation is important, it is different seeing it canonically than seeing it in fic (even though there’s more fic and it’s often better), and we need more stuff like this.
ALSO the comic is supposed to have depictions of queer culture throughout the Avatar universe and I am SO EXCITED!!
I’ve asked non-canon shippers why why choose their ship, and isn’t it frustrating to support a relationship that they never get to see on screen? The general answer has been that they HAVE to ship non-canon, b/c the relationships they want to see (usually LGBTQ relationships) aren’t represented by most shows. OK, fair enough. But I still didn’t really get it. I can honestly say that I’ve never sent hate to anyone for shipping non-canon – that’s not my style – but I didn’t really get it. (2/5)
I had a small light bulb moment recently, though. An anon sent hate to one of my shipmates over her fic, in which she portrayed the main female character as overweight. (The character is not overweight in canon.) Anon called the fic – and the character – gross and asked the writer why she would twist the character that way. I was indignant on behalf of my shipmate that she’d been insulted like that for a work of fiction, in which she should be able to express herself however she wants. (3/5)
Furthermore, as an overweight woman myself, I was infuriated that this anon implied that fat women have no place in romance stories. Don’t I have just as much right to see myself represented in fic, as the thin and conventionally beautiful women do? And that’s when I remembered all the comments from LGBTQ fans who ship non-canon couples and just want to see themselves on screen, and it clicked. (4/5)
I am NOT trying to say that these experiences are equivalent. I know that the LGBTQ community struggles more for representation than a straight, white, overweight woman. But this is the (very roundabout) way that I, someone who’s actually in fandom, came to understanding non-canon shipping a little better. So I’m not really surprised that the showrunners and casts of popular TV shows don’t get it. It’s very unfortunate that they don’t understand, but not surprising. (5/5)
It’s good that you found a way to understand this. I do know that a lot of fandom doesn’t understand it either. Especially when “boy slash” and femslash actually have different and basically unrelated subcultures.
I’d add two things for you. The first is that often times the canon LGBT ships aren’t treated the same way as canon het ships. There is never a will they wont they phase for us. We are always told before the characters even appear on screen who the designated gay couple is and there will only be one of them so sucks for you if you don’t like them. Could you imagine what your shipping experience would be like if you didn’t get a choice to about which elements of a couple you prefer or not. Sucks to be you if you like the tropes around Captain Swan. All you get on screen is Rumbelle. And you have no hope of getting another couple. LGBT ships are often less visibly affectionate. A kiss is racey. All this stuff about implied sex scenes that Once canon shippers are demanding? Pipe dream for us even when we’re dealing with canon representation. Oh… and time. Straight people always seem to think the LGBT couple is on screen a lot longer than they actually are. By something like 50%. So we get no choice, a less full story, and half of it. And that’s if you are shipping a canon LGBT couple.
Where as if you are shipping an non canon couple anything in the world is possible. The other day I reblogged someone who said that fan fiction was the only place two women meet and immediately start flirting. It’s the only place where no one has to have a coming out story or explain their gayness. A non canon LGBT ship is literally the only way we can find the stories that are written equally to the ones you enjoy on screen because we write them ourselves.
Do I love canon LGBT couples? Sure. More of them please. But let’s stop pretending that they’re equal or they should be enough.
And let’s stop treating non canon shippers like they’re naive fools. No one needs you to tell them that their ship isn’t happening. Even if they’re asking when it will be they’re having a fantasy life where they are safe and normal and they get to ask content creators when they’ll be getting something that you get given automatically. Maybe the casts and the writers don’t want to be pestered. But why are we prioritizing a minor annoyance over someone’s right to just have a tiny space to imagine that they might be safe and normal and accepted totally?
So nonnie i’m going to leave you with a charge, you straight shipper, the next time you hear one of your ship mates say “well they’re just letting them down easy” or “telling them the truth” or “letting them know it wont happen” I’d like you to tell them to stop assuming they know better than the non canon lgbt shipper.
This is so great. I have a hard time describing how much canon queer ships–especially ones that I’m into–make such a huge difference to me. (NICE point about “you only get this one.”)
Short story–I’m so used to shipping things I KNOW will never happen that I was at the point where I thought this didn’t even bother me. I have fic, and that does a better job–many better jobs–than a lot of canon anyway. It was just a fact of life that I wasn’t going to get queer ships I cared about. Then I saw the Legend of Korra finale.
I can’t describe how that felt, seeing two characters who I liked, who had been around each other as friends for multiple seasons, who had a great friendship to start, who I SHIPPED, get together canonically. I was crying. It was the most… validating, uplifting feeling. I felt seen, I felt like I wasn’t crazy… it was incredible.
And I have no idea when I’m going to get to feel that way about a show/ship again.
Question of Smoke 