no points for subtlety, tossers

[lanning]

Okay, once upon a time there was a character in Harry Potter fandom named Blaise Zabini. And in the beginning no one knew much about hir, so sometimes s/he appeared in fic as a white girl or a white boy (you see where I'm going with this already, don't you). And then Rowling made it clear that Blaise was a black boy, and all hell broke loose in

Comments

[fruitbat00]

I guess its sad that this does not surprise me. Its just sad that there is always a certain VERY vocal section of nearly every fandom, that just attracts the worst type of fan and attention, thus giving the rest of us a bad name.

[lanning]

This is true, of course. I have to say, though, that this is one of the most blatantly racist examples of it I've seen in fandom. :/

[silkmoth101]

What the... *closes mouth* I've never seen this fuckery before, and I'm not only talking about this &%!§$! Header... I've never seen it happen in fanfiction either. Thank God for obviously reading only the stories by sane authors.

Okay. Let's write them a message. Right? Right.

[silkmoth101]

DONE. *hisses*

[lanning]

Good for you. *hugs* I had heard about the original wank, but I really thought people had gotten over all that. That this archive is basically saying "No black characters are welcome," without any shame at all, is mind-boggling.

[roxymissrose]

I remember that mess--I could not believe it then, and I can't believe it now. People....

[lanning]

I keep expecting fannish people to be more enlightened than mundanes, which is silly, I know. Assholes are everywhere.

[silveraspen]

... I'm disappointed that I'm not surprised. You know?

[lanning]

Yeah, I know. I am surprised at how blatant this one is, though. They might as well have posted a "no coloreds" sign on their page. Ugh.

[pyrotechnik]

To be a devil's advocate, and not because I actually agree with what they have done. Is it possible this site went up before everyone knew who all the characters would be played by? If I recall correctly (please let me know if I am wrong) fandom didn't know who would be playing Blaise until the third movie? Is it possible they just looked at the Italian last name, and chose a pretty boy based on that? Not that they shouldn't have changed it when it became known who played Blaise. And by now, they need to become un-lazy (or un-racist, whichever) and change the header. Because it is offensive.

[lanning]

Well, Blaise's race and gender were established in Half-Blood Prince (the book), which came out in 2005, so even if they didn't know who would be cast, they knew full well that Blaise wasn't white by then. I don't know when that site went up, but the only reason to leave that banner there is to deny that the character is black. Yeah, it's offensive.