I've been gone, I'm back, I have thoughts on Tumblr and Wonder Woman and that damn Space Raccoon.

[beccatoria]

Right, I've been gone forever. I spent the first half of April in the USA for my grandpa's funeral (well, memorial service, he was cremated right after he died, but people wanted to take time to organise a big memorial service when scattered family could all attend). It was good to see some people I haven't seen in a really long time. It was

Comments

[beccatoria]

Thanks. I wrote a bit about her here. I'm pretty broken up about it but he had a good life, and a long one.

I also agree with what you're saying about tumblr. And it's hard to talk about because it often is discussing things that need to be discussed and "let's just calm down," so often is the tactic of people who think it's not a problem and want to stop the discussion that it's...well it puts us in a position that feels very awkward. I think it's that lack of nuance. The whole RIGHT/WRONG screaming thing. You can't say, "well yeah, it's wrong, but I think you're ignoring x, y and z in ways that are detrimental to the very thing you're complaining about..." without it seeming like you're then defending it.

Like...a good example is when DC's Earth 2 comic (which is set on a parallel Earth with reimagined versions of a lot of superheroes) had a character who used to be mixed race looking...pretty white and people kicked off about it along with all the attendant, "why do they only care about 18 - 49 year old males!" rage. ALL of which I agree with, but like, no one was talking about the fact that this same comic had race-gender-or-orientation shifted almost every other character that had been in it to things that weren't white, weren't straight, weren't male? Which doesn't mean it is then okay to change an established mixed-race character into a white person because there's such a dearth of representation I don't think there's an equivalent exchange.

But the way it was reported and spread across tumblr, Earth 2 got the reputation of being a symbol of DC's racism and dudebro bullshit when 90% of the time it is the exact type of comic tumblr's always asking for, you know? But now a lot of people will never bother taking a look at it. And that's just... FUCKING COMPLICATIONS MAN. Things are not simple.

Aaaah, anyway. It's cathartic to hear people who feel the same way. <3

[gonzo21]

My feeling of Tumblr is that it's an arena perfectly built for people to stand up and shout 'Me!' to the world. 'This is what I like! Isn't this brilliant!' But not an arena for any sort of debate or conversation.

Sometimes when I see people trying to have conversations and exchange ideas there, I just can't follow it, it's not clear who is responding to what, so I don't read it, I just scroll by to look at the pretties.

[beccatoria]

Sometimes when I see people trying to have conversations and exchange ideas there, I just can't follow it, it's not clear who is responding to what, so I don't read it, I just scroll by to look at the pretties.

Yup, that's basically it exactly...

[gonzo21]

And things disappear from sight so quickly on Tumblr, and once they're out of sight, they're completely out of mind.

It's also quite difficult I find with those people who post about 748 things each day.

[ladymercury_10]

Yeah, like I know that tone policing is a thing, but I also don't think it's productive to just shout nonstop like Tumblr does. And yeah, I get what you're saying about Earth 2, because it's like you can't win for losing, you know? Like even if you try to make something more inclusive Tumblr is still going to find the hole in the bottom, which will always exist because literally nothing is 100% non-problematic.

Which character was it, by the way, out of curiosity? I have really complicated feelings about whitewashing, because it is definitely a thing and it's frustrating, but I'm biracial and I find it really annoying when people act like there is a "correct" amount of brownness a character should have. Like, a lot of people don't know I'm not 100% white until they see my last name or they ask me.

[beccatoria]

Yeah, my husband's in a similar position, or rather...well both his parents are white-passing mixed race which due to a combination of adoption and aggressively hiding this fact meant that he's grown up with no connections to any non-white cultures. For that reason he generally tends to identify as white, because it reflects his lived experience and he doesn't want to, well, appropriate an identity I guess when he's never had to deal with the consequences of it.

But like, if he'd had active ties to his two non-white grandparents' cultures, he would probably identify very differently and he would still look exactly the same.

Anyway, the character was Connor Hawke, which is interesting because he's half white, quarter black, quarter Korean and was generally drawn with blonde hair. His actual skin tone varied massively from artist to artist, from barely being darker than caucasian to being very noticeable. (In Earth 2 his hair colour has changed to red in addition to being pale-skinned, which I think is why people are assuming he's a different character as opposed to a racist job from the colourist where he got white-washed). I think the tendency to make him lighter developed over time, which is why fans of his are upset about it? Like, he was established as having a darker skin tone and then it gradually got lighter? Which I know is a thing there's a really gross tendency to do in media. So partly, the reaction did stem from pre-existing concerns about how he gets drawn, but also it's a really difficult point. On the one hand, mixed race characters who look white can be seen as a way to make them "palatable", but on the other, it's a fucking actual group of people who exist, you know? Who are also deserving of representation.

As to the tone argument and tumblr, yeah. It's really tricky. I think at the end of the day the best way I can explain it is to say that I think rage is societally useful when it motivates us to action, and personally useful when it helps us towards catharsis, but I think sometimes tumblr engages in that second type while mistaking it for the first.

[ladymercury_10]

Yeah. I mean, I'm sure the reason, say, preboot Rose Wilson very rarely looked noticeably Asian has way more to do with lazy pencil/colorwork or people at DC not caring about her racial identity than a desire to specifically represent white-passing mixed-race people. It just gets to be frustrating on both sides, both whitewashing when it happens and the way Tumblr talks about it.

I can explain it is to say that I think rage is societally useful when it motivates us to action, and personally useful when it helps us towards catharsis, but I think sometimes tumblr engages in that second type while mistaking it for the first.
That's a very insightful way of putting it. I think another part of what makes the whole thing really complicated is that there is naturally a lot of ambiguity in how things are meant to come across and how they get read? Like, a lot of the things Tumblr explodes over, I'm like, your reading is valid and I don't deny your right to be angry, but it's also not the only reading and I don't think it makes the source material objectively horrible.