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so i think there are a few different reasons why the fantasy racism subplot in #ShadowAndBone 
https://abs.twimg.com/hashflags... draggable="false" alt=""> doesn& #39;t work, but it mostly boils down to: it FEELS like racism written for the white gaze (1/) https://twitter.com/yourtitakate/status/1385792811237142530">https://twitter.com/yourtitak...
there are a few ways of engaging with race in SFF worlds. three very prominent modes in recent stories have been: A) normalisation, or what we sometimes call "color-conscious" casting, B) SPECIFICALLY anti-racist/colonialist themes (2/)
and C) the awkward middle sibling that wants to be both. this is where #ShadowAndBone https://abs.twimg.com/hashflags... draggable="false" alt=""> sits.
these aren& #39;t hard and fast delineationsâofc stories that specifically challenge racism are also going to normalise the presence of non-white people in the narrative (3/)
these aren& #39;t hard and fast delineationsâofc stories that specifically challenge racism are also going to normalise the presence of non-white people in the narrative (3/)
but it& #39;s the middle one that is usually written by... well-meaning white people. it& #39;s when the narrative acknowledges that racism exists, but only at the level of fictional national borders and physical externalities. to my knowledge, the shu han aren& #39;t really... (3/)
that prominent in the books? so we already don& #39;t know much about the region/people save for the fact that they& #39;re... vaguely coded as east asian. beyond her appearance, alina doesn& #39;t REALLY have any cultural markers that contextualize her Otherness (4/)
which is why, in a fantasy world of magic and Darklings and mostly-white fictitious nations inspired by diff Western European countries, the "rice-eater" insult & East Asian coding feel out of place. anachronistic. (5/)
it& #39;s racism reduced to its most visible manifestations: name calling, caricactureâthe ones that are most easily understood by people who don& #39;t necessarily face the mental/emotional consequences of racism in their day-to-day (6/)
without an in-depth understanding of WHERE these microaggressions come from other than just "they look different from white people". it& #39;s also just Whitness VS East Asianness in this show, too, which is... certainly a choice given the current political climate in the US (7/)
(i might have more to add later but it& #39;s brunch time for me!)
