I Feel Lost. And Scared. And Happy. Why Am I So Sure That Id Rather Be This Than Everything I Was Supposed

I feel lost. And scared. And happy. Why am I so sure that I’d rather be this than everything I was supposed to be, and that I’d rather do this than everything I was supposed to do?

— Garnet, Steven Universe “The Answer”

💖 Transgender + Nonbinary Positivity 💖

This is a jar full of major characters 

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*

Imagine if someone handed you a box full of all the items you have lost throughout your life

Hey, I just want to reinforce that that you did nothing wrong and that this is about their issues and anger at other not anything you did.

I know that you know this, because you’ve pointed out that you didn’t actually do the things they’re so upset about; you didn’t bring up sexuality at all in the post, you don’t have anything against lesbians at all, you don’t even think garnet should break up for good. And when you pointed this out it had no effect, because its not about what you actually said or they wouldn’t be upset in the first place.

It seems like they’re upset because they feel like they have so little support and representation and bright things in their life that *anything* that threatens the few points of light they have they feel like a threat to themselves and they have to lash out in defense. And that is a tragedy. But you’re not who they’re actually angry at. You’re just a convenient target who accidentally said something related to their issues. You became a symbol of all the intolerance they are used dealing with (or even imagining they deal with) even though that impression was wrong and they lashed out. A critique of something **you also care about** and want to be better became taken as an existential threat that had to be responded to strongly.

Its hard to internalize that and brush this off and getting all this hate feels really shitty. Its one thing to know something intellectually and another to feel it emotionally, across emotional situation and I’ve sucked at dealing with stuff too. But I want you know I don’t think you did anything wrong and support you.

And I’m a big fan of ruphire. I might even say they’re my OTP  =P But I still think that was a really interesting post and made sense from a story perspective why you would say that should happen, even if I really like them being together.

Anyway. I just wanted to offer some support and hope you get through this. like I said, I thought the post was really interesting and well articulated idea and I’d like to see more of your thoughts in the future!

Tumblr: a safe, loving environment

These are just a few of the responses I got from my Garnet post. I never mentioned her sexuality, I never even considered it relevant, but that doesn’t really make a difference now does it.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t sleep well last night. I don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight either. It was entertaining at first but mass hate sinks in, and it isn’t exactly a topical ointment.

My depression had been getting better lately, it’s been just over a year since I felt any suicidal urges. It’s amazing what hate can change.

I’m probably not going to be posting anymore. At least not for a little while. Only time will tell. So yeah, to the fans who stood by me, thank you. It’s been a blast