Thread by @Naamenism

To give an example of racism in fandom/fanfiction.

I remember a very popular Stargate SG-1 fanfiction from years ago. It got printed up as a zone with a beautifully drawn cover.

It was Teal'c/Daniel, where Daniel gets implanted with a good Goa'uld.

At one point Teal'c uses acid to burn off the slave mark on his forehead.

HE THEN USES A RED HOT IRON TO BURN DANIEL'S MARK INTO HIS FOREHEAD.

Think about that, this man of color who is now free from slavery voluntarily burns his white boyfriend's mark into his forehead.

He makes himself the property of his boyfriend.

And people PRAISED this fanfiction so much I even bought a copy, that's right paid money out of my struggling college student, part-time at Best Buy, shallow AF pockets for this mess & no one thought to mention that little scene.

Why? Cause everyone who recced it was white.

I used to get in fights on my livejournal all the time about race and fandom.

Like how people would write a SGA-AU set in a hospital where all the characters were doctors except for Teyla who was a nurse & Ronon who was a barista.

(And that isn't to say that Nurses are less than Doctors AT ALL but the author clearly felt that Nurses were less than by the way they wrote the fic which is a more layered discussion dealing with the hospital industrial complex & sexism & racism baked into it.)

Literally one of my friends did her graduate dissertation on racism in fandom and used many examples including art depictions of Blaise Zabini before and after his race was revealed in book 6(?).

He went from a svelte pale angel looking fellow in fan art to all the hallmarks of racist black antebellum imagery, the exaggerated bright red lips, the pickanninny hair.

All of it.

And if there's a person of color that might stand between a white author's OTP?

Like some of you Kylo/Rey shippers were phew😓 the racism towards Finn? Just flew from you fingers with such strength and confidence.

Like you don't have to ship Rey/Finn (I don't, Finn/Poe 4 LYFE!) but the way folks would write Finn?

Even people who said they loved him would often unintentionally go into fetishizing his dark skin and full lips in very intense ways that would make me very uncomfortable and if you tried to call them out?

Fanfiction is not a medium that exists outside of criticism. No media or action really exists outside if criticism. The most important part is how you handle that criticism.

Did y'all know there's a website for fanfiction authors which explicitly bans anything but praise of the works on it?

These authors actually took their work off of other fanfic sites so no one can critically engage with their work.

That is the very definition of white tears.

Banning trolling is one thing but criticism is not trolling.

Pointing out how some (A LOT) of slash fanfiction actually plays into horrible homophobic stereotypes is not trolling, pointing out the racism you have been ingrained with since birth and have subsequently put on the page is not trolling.

Honest criticism is there to make you a better writer. Silence doesn't help anyone least of all you become a better writer and shouldn't you want to improve?

Anyway yeah. Fanfiction is fucked up like all our media is fucked up because of what we bring to it. The fact that the demographics may be mostly folks who identify as women doesn't make them immune from racism or homophobia or ableism or even misogyny.

I've been in fandom for over 15 years now & can cite racism from any era in any of the many fandoms I was involved in.

The reason none of this changed over the years is because we were ignored when we did speak out or attacked and driven into silence or out of fandom altogether.

And often the excuse was:

They just didn't like the character, the fact that they were the sole or near sole POC on the show had nothing to do with it (🙄) and most of the fandom hated that character anyway.

They never wanted to question why that character was so hated.

The hate that people had for Kendra in Buffy, Blaise in Harry Potter (after the reveal - JK loves an after the fact SURPRISE! diversity reveal - but that's a different thread), Simon in The Sentinel, Rue in The Hunger Games, Guinan in ST:TNG, Finn in Star Wars, and on and on...

It's the hate we get for even existing in these worlds and it's really a shame because we get it from the mainstream for existing in the world and then we get it from the "inclusive world of fandom" just more subtly and with more resistance to criticism because...

"What how can we be prejudiced we love to write about to traditionally attractive white cismen having sex with each others in ways that reinforce gender and sexuality stereotypes?"

And sometimes the criticism gets framed as misogynistic because the criticism is leveled at women.

That's not to say that some criticism is mired in layers of prejudice but the criticism is not automatically suspect because of your identity.

If someone were to accuse me of misogyny in my books, the accusation could come from a place of prejudice but it's not automatically racist or homophobic because of my identities.

Anyway yeah

TL:DR: Fandom has problems with race (and other identities) it always has and it is not above criticism because lack of criticism is one reason the problems haven't changed.