If You Are Disabled And Impacted By Recent Hurricanes And Need Help, Call Or Text The Disability And

If you are disabled and impacted by recent hurricanes and need help, call or text the Disability and Disaster Hotline at 800-626-4959 or email hotline@disasterstrategies.org.

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Support community reparations for Autistic People of Color through the Autistic People of Color Fund!

Hair for thought: a little mini lesson

I know this blog may seem more geared towards art than writing, and admittedly, I am pushing for visuals because I can be a very visual creator myself, so the two converge for me. So that may be an issue of communication on my end.

However, I do want people to consider that the way you "see" your character in your mind affects how you write them! So if you're here to learn to write better Black characters, the way you picture them has an effect!

For example, let's say you're writing your character. You want them to have a 4C afro. Do you know what 4C means? Do you know what that looks like? How it feels? How it changes under different environments and circumstances? How can you describe those things to give your reader an adequate picture of your character if you don't know what that looks like? How can you get creative with their looks if you don't know your options?

If you have a loving moment between your characters, and you want one to touch the hair of the other. First, do you know the importance of the vulnerability of touching your Black partner's hair? Second, how will you describe that, if you don't know the texture of the hair and what it looks like? You can't often "run your fingers" through it! You have to be able to know and describe the curl pattern and what could happen with it!

Again, I'm using hair examples because that's the next lesson, but this still works in general! Skin color, the way the light plays on the skin- if you understand lighting on brown skin visually, you can describe it! Our lips, the way they feel in a kiss! Pubic hair texture, for the nasty!

One major example I have of this is that once, a few years ago, I did a test in one of my favorite fandoms. I took about 100 stories, and I asked myself: how far can I get into this fic while assuming My Blorbo is Black? (I.e., how often do we assume that whiteness is the default and don't feel the need to properly describe our characters?)

The answer: through most of them 🤣 "Brunette with brown eyes" is the majority of Black people.

We have to be willing to address the unintentional bias in our minds that treats Whiteness, and therefore white features and the habits that come with them, as the default. It doesn't seem like it matters because it's "normal", except for I and other Black fans! It's not our norm! You have to understand how we look, and how we may interact with the world culturally (and again, we're not a monolith! But there are some consistencies!) and how that may "look" (be described) in a story.

I hope this may help clear up some confusion 😅 and again, I'm sorry if I didn't make my goals clear. I'm new at this.

look, guys, this may seem ironic coming from a person with Verbose Disease, but I'm about to tell you the secret to winning social media: shutting the fuck up. you have a controversial discourse opinion? shut the fuck up and no one will know. can't participate in a boycott for various reasons? shut the fuck up and no one will know. you think or do something Problematic that has no bearing on anyone but yourself? shut the fuck up and no one will know. you haven't been keeping up on a pressing social issue? shut the fuck up and no one will know. your mind is a wonderful place where you can have all the bad takes in the world and they're all perfectly insulated from everyone and everything unless you try to excise them on a grand scale. you can take the mental L all by yourself without using a public platform as a confession booth and face zero repercussions and it'll be just fine. open up a damn diary and explain yourself there.

don't fucking laugh at people for getting phished.

you are not immune to phishing. it only takes one mistake.

one single mistake where you're stressed out, the message coincided with events to make it seem more legit, or the phish came from someone you trust but got compromised.

it doesn't matter how smart you are. you are not infallible.

you should not laugh at people for being fallible.