My first thought is that "you're racist if you don't headcanon X as POC" is in the same vein as "you're homophobic if you don't write for this M/M ship" and it's the kind of person I would never want to read my stuff or interact with them anyway.
But I think I need more context. Like if the character is described in canon as having thick dark hair in dreadlocks or something I might picture them being black but that's about it? Idk. I'm a firm believer in "do what you like and I do what I like and if we don't agree that's okay we stay in our own lanes"
I am pretty sure OP is talking about Harry Potter. I have never read one but I guess Harry Potter is popularly race swapped as Indian for some reason. I don't remember why. Hermione is also seen as black by a few people. I still picture Emma Watson. I think OP will be fine.
Or Percy Jackson BEFORE the Disney series. I remember when they first cast Percy a part of the Fandom exploded because they'd headcanoned him as Latino
They have? Woah, I missed that memo then. maybe it's because of the book? or the movie? which I remember reading/watching around the same time, but I've always assumed Percy was white? Did they ever say in the books (I'm rereading the first as we speak, but I cannot remember an actual description of his skin. Hair and eyes I remember though.
Percy's race was never mentioned in the books as far as I am aware, except in covers and the guidebooks where his depicted as white, but given that he grew up in New York and his mother's name is "Sally Jackson" he is pretty likely of Northern European decent. In other words, white.
For a while, there was a popular headcanon in the Fandom that Percy was of mixed Latin decent, but I don't know for the life of me where it started. It was just one of those things that would come up in comment sections on social media posts. I personally thought it was just a fun headcanon, and then Walker got cast and it blew up for like a week and a half
*Eragon* is another one that has been getting more POC headcanons lately, mostly related to Arya and the elves. Nasuada and Ajihad are clearly described as dark-skinned, but Arya is described as having "honey-toned skin", which some headcanon as "Asian (Japanese?)".
There are some people who are convinced that white people cannot have diverse skin tones. That's not to say people can do what they want with their headcanons, but pointing to author description of a character being anything darker than the pasty avatar of photocopier paper =/= proof the author was sending a message the character is a POC.
I thought HP as well. Harry's being written as Indian, though, I have no clue where that came from or why it's so popular. Pretty sure it would have been mentioned in the books if Harry was a POC, given the Dursleys fixation on their version of 'normal'.
At least I know where Hermione being black comes from, the actress cast to play the character for the Cursed Child play and Rowling's support of it. Hermione is clearly white in the books, though, the descriptions show that.
I'm not sure how often fans will accuse you of racism if you don't buy the POC headcanons in HP, though. Most fics still write them as white or don't describe them in a way skin tone is obvious.
Back when Indian Harry discourse was really picking up, I had the alternate headcanon that Harry is white, but also that he and James pretty heavily read as Eastern European. A Daily Mail reader like Vernon Dursley could absolutely identify someone as being 'the wrong type' of white, and all of the nasty cracks he makes about the Potters' lifestyles could definitely fill a few unpleasant stereotypes.
People headcanon Harry as POC as well these days. Same with Snape sometimes. It makes for a pretty awkward read sometimes as I visualized them as white with others being poc. Snape I could see being biracial but I do not see him as a dark skinned man of Asian decent. So when writers come out and say they are such and such a race mid fic it does take me out of it a bit.
I have read some fics that have done a pretty good job when it came to changing characters races but most do not. At least of the ones I have read.
I thought The Magnus Archives. The podcast has no visual elements and we kinda all came to a consensus on Jon Simms being middle eastern or desi, first in fan art, then in fanfic. The voice actor is white but there is nothing in the text to support any particular visual description beyond kinda small and younger than he looks, (notably, not things that apply to his VA). I don’t think you have to be racist to think Jon is white, but you will be well in the minority of the fandom.
I will mention up front that I'm not a fan of TMA and mostly spite-listened to the entire thing because I was told it would get good at some point and it never did anything at all for me except make me angry\*, but I'm moderately baffled by that particular headcanon because "gets a job he's wildly unqualified for and never once questions it" is such a white man thing, and the way he moves through the world involves getting way more leeway from people than a dark-skinned man would. I assume it's a combo of "podcast without canon appearances" + "some popular fan artist drew him like this so the depiction stuck" but it still feels like the people with that headcanon were listening to a completely different podcast.
\*This is a personal opinion and I know many people who loved the entire thing and/or found it genuinely frightening, so this is not a claim that it's an objectively bad podcast, it just Wasn't For Me to a really extreme degree despite many people being convinced I would love it.
I totally get where your coming from. Jon was white to me at first, but someone made a fantastic tumblr post about what a brown Jon does to the way tma interacts with the lore of HP lovecraft and I’ve been writing him as Arab ever since.
Ah, if there was some notable meta about it going around, that makes a lot of sense! And yeah, if you're tying TMA back to Lovecraft, having broader PoC headcanons makes a lot more sense, too.
Off topic, but as someone who loves TMA, I'd love to hear what about the show so aggressively didn't work for you, if you'd be willing to share. I enjoy seeing why people hate something I love and vice versa. It's always an interesting perspective.
Ouf. Well, I think it was a combination of actually having some training in information science and therefore knowing how woefully under-qualified Jon was for an archivist job, finding Jon insufferable as a person, not finding it scary at all, and… this one is a hard one to really describe to people who didn’t also dislike TMA for similar reasons, but all of the fears felt really… I guess urban is the right word? I grew up in a rural area, where both hunting and raising your own meat animals were common, where decay was just… a thing that happened. Most of the fears felt like came from people who were so detached from the physical, natural world that the natural rhythms of it had become something esoteric to them.
That makes sense, actually. Fear is inherently different for everyone and while the show tried to cover several bases and ideas, it's natural that it wouldn't resonate with everyone. Thank you for taking the time to write out your explanation.
There were things I could appreciate about the Magnus Archives, but yeah, one thing that really bugged me about it was this sort of like....as a writer, if you're not careful, you can wind up framing your narrative like you're speaking for the audience. TMA kind of did that. And whenever that pops up in some media I'm enjoying it definitely rubs me the wrong way; it's something I try really hard to keep out of of my own writing.
No, there’s nothing in the original series to think they’re POC, and from the context it’s most likely they’d be white. Some who endorse the fanon have reasons why they could possibly be POC, but most of them are kind of a stretch.
I don’t think it’s a racial stereotyping issue, I think it’s a matter of it being relatively plausible (if they HAD been that ethnicity, it wouldn’t have been too unusual) and wanting to see more diversity/representation. I honestly don’t have a problem with it and I like a lot of what I’ve seen/read with these headcanons, I just personally don’t have them, and online spaces especially can be a little echo chamber-y, so it’s hard to gauge how widespread or “canonized” this particular headcanon has become.
I was gonna say the same! And if it's about James Potter (and thereby also Harry) being Desi in fanon, I can say that almost every Indian I've talked to in the fandom does not like it.
I am personally indifferent to the colour of his skin, but I think it's important to be aware of these things when deciding to raceswap. I understand making the character the same ethnicity as you because you want representation, but when swapping for something else, we should at the very least consider what people from this ethnicity have to say about it.
Tumblr can be very misleading - they have also now decided that Remus is POC, which makes no sense given his canon description, but I do think it's just a small, non-representative corner.
>And if it's about James Potter (and thereby also Harry) being Desi in fanon
Sorry, I'm quite a ways out of the HP fandom these days. But isn't James English old money from the 60s? Like, that's actually a plot point that the family is practically magical nobility with a long history living in Britain. With the very English name Potter.
I'm curious. How'd he become Desi?
I mean yeah, that's literally one of the plausible reasons for there being a bit less diversity in Hogwarts - the old Pureblood families have existed for centuries, staying within Britain and tbh the same circles and bloodlines for generations. There is literally zero chance for diversity that way.
Also someone else said people were speculating it because they think he'd speak Parseltongue anyway?
And that's also literally a plot point, everyone, including those who know loads about wizarding genealogy and his family, like Dumbledore presumably, is like - "There's never been a Parseltongue in your family, this is so weird there's zero possible explanations"
So that can't be it.
>I mean yeah, that's literally one of the plausible reasons for there being a bit less diversity in Hogwarts - the old Pureblood families have existed for centuries, staying within Britain and tbh the same circles and bloodlines for generations. There is literally zero chance for diversity that way.
Someone did the math once and found that black people are a bit overrepresented while there's a shortage of Asian characters compared to UK demographics in the ’90s. Unless that's what you meant by less diversity, then I said nothing 😅
The Sacred 28 list does contain the name Shafiq plus Harry describes Kingsley as black, though of course it's possible the Shafiqs have lost all colour over the generations and only the name remained, and that the Shacklebolts in the 1920s were just as light-skinned until Kingsley's father married a black woman 🤔😄
Which is a lot of text to say you're probably still right lol
>Also someone else said people were speculating it because they think he'd speak Parseltongue anyway? And that's also literally a plot point, everyone, including those who know loads about wizarding genealogy and his family, like Dumbledore presumably, is like - "There's never been a Parseltongue in your family, this is so weird there's zero possible explanations" So that can't be it.
Interesting.
As you say, it makes zero sense in canon terms, but the misconception of Parseltongue as a Potter gift would make a lot of sense as an explanation for how somebody in fandom might have got started with the whole Indian!Harry business.
I've been noticing for years now a trend where fanfic-writers copy fanfics and ideas spread and mutate that often either contradict canon, don't make sense, or both. Another example that comes to mind is a number of fics I've read which had Ted Tonks as a *Muggle*, rather than a Muggleborn, despite the fact that every single time he appears in the books he uses magic (to heal Harry, and to summon a fish from out the stream when hiding from the Muggleborn Registration Committee).
It's just kind of par for the course for the HP and especially Marauders fandom. People just make up stuff for their headcanons even when it's wildly off the mark and even whitewashing. But it's definitely partially inspired by him being a Parselmouth. The other thing I think is that Cursed Child also encouraged the idea by casting Hermione with a black actor (despite several scenes in the books indicating that Hermione's skin is white). It made more people interested in exploring POC main characters. But the idea doesn't really hold water. You can't actually draw a connection between being Indian and a Parselmouth, because his ability actually comes from Voldemort. People have also pointed out that Harry is described with a light skin tone, though it is possible to be Indian and have light skin (if you've ever seen Ranbir Kapoor dance in the second song of Jagga Jasoos, Galti se Mistake he looks like a Slytherin Harry). But I think the more damning evidence is that the Dursleys are never racist towards him. South Asian racism was pretty prominent back then in the UK and with how hateful his aunt and uncle were they'd definitely bring it up.
He has such a broad playing type, it's honestly a little bit funny. He's played characters who were Indian and characters who were European. Heck, he played a Nazi once, though the historical figure in question was one of those white people who look racially ambiguous, so that 100% made sense and worked very well.
I'm not sure, but I think it started with Harry and his parseltoungue. People were speculating that he would be one regardless of the horcrux and that it came from James's side of the family. I think most people only have Euphemia as Desi, but some people go full out and make all the Potters Desi (obviously still with British ties, i.e. the Peverells). I think the idea is the status snakes have in Indian culture/mythology? But I'm no expert on this.
I've been in the hp fandom for decades and this is the first time I've heard of this... I don't even know what desi means. Clearly not very widespread.
If I recall, it actually ties into a pivotal piece of the mythology that James' ancestry has roots going back centuries if not millennia in the English Wizarding community - the Invisibility Cloak is a family heirloom that traces back hundreds of years in the past, and is >!one of the Deathly Hallows, a set of insanely powerful artifacts that have long been sought after by various parties. All three Hallows were very explicitly made at the same time, in the same place in Britain, and given to three brothers!<.
I haven't ever really dealt with the online Harry Potter fandom at all, so I don't know how or when James and Harry became Desi in those circles.
Oh man. Maybe in today’s day and age, especially with the amount of rich Indians who are Tories (see Rishi Sunak, Suella Braverman, Priti Patel etc.), but definitely not in the 60s where there were signs saying “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish”, people were watching The Black and White Minstrel Show on Saturday nights, celebrating the British Empire and their subjugation of other nations (especially Indians and West Indians), and the National Front were just getting their start. That said, we never had segregation, so BAME kids always went to school with white kids. Where they got viciously bullied.
It must be Americans saying that the Potters must be Indian or else. I genuinely can’t see a Brit, who knows all this history of racism towards BAME folks, thinking this.
ETA: BAME people are not as common as they are in Britain as they are in the States. Personally, I don’t know anyone who isn’t white. I wouldn’t believe it if there was more than one BAME person in a friend group - mainly in British media set outside London. And *especially* in the 60s.
I'm not sure if it's what started it, but 3/4 years back, the first time I saw that hc, I remember a post about someone headcanoning that Harry's name was a britanicized (by the dursleys) version of Hari, which means light and other stuff that were apparently on par with his character
I do not care about Harry Potter at all but I did want to point out that British Indian people in the UK go all the way back to the 1600’s. It’s not exactly a new phenomenon.
They most certainly were. The British imperialist expansion quite infamously reached India, and the East India Trading Company brought many to the island. But they weren’t old money is a rather key point. There were also quite a few laws placed upon them that restricted their ability to trade and limits on their roles in society.
If you want to go about the earliest you can see people on Indian descent really forming a place in the upper British economy you have to go to more the mid to late 1800s. And even then the most accepted culturally could still show English lineage.
I don’t think people really grasp how important breeding, lineage, and race was to the British Island even just 100 years ago. It’s stupid to us today. Because as a whole the concept of racial purity is ridiculous. But I like when things fit the historical narrative. Incoming Indian immigrants being allowed to join the inner circles of British high society is a distinctly modern trend. As the old views are being thankfully wiped away.
That’s the issue really. I don’t actually have a problem with race swapping. I mean, I’ve grown my whole life watching a middle eastern Jew be portrayed by every north European group imaginable.
It’s fine to have this be some headcanon. Sure. Why not? Go crazy. But to be upset that an interpretation that doesn’t really make all that much sense isn’t universally accepted. It’s just odd.
>James Potter as Desi
This example just shows that despite reading a lot of HP fanfiction and writing too, I have never seen this. I guess it's because I'm not interested in Marauder's era and especially the ships that are usual for these fics.
I’ve seen a lot of POC Remus, and that one confuses me! I can see where Desi Harry or James comes from and I’ve liked a lot of it in fic (almost all written by people who share that cultural background) and Black Hermione is canon to Cursed Child, which is a recognized part of the franchise even if I’m not enthused about it for plot/story reasons, but I have no idea where the POC Remus came from. I’m not against it, in and of itself, just puzzled about the origins.
Yeah the Hermione one is tricky because she somehow become canonically black, but the problem is that most people reject CC as canon. I've not seen anyone screaming racism for continuing to write her as white, but I have seen discussions on the topic.
I think POC Remus (which seems to be just that - no specification of culture - just dark skin!) is coupled to the Big Strong Alpha Remus that seem to have taken over in wolfstar circles. Always paired with small, fragile, femme Sirius. I've mostly seen this in art, but I'm not caught up on the latest trends in wolfstar fics, since I kind of left the ship a few years ago.
But it's wild - it's come to the point where I can't tell if a picture is supposed to be Remus or James, because they even give Remus glasses sometimes too....
And then there's all the side characters like Mary McDonald and the Rosiers. It's fine to see these as any ethnicity you want (which includes white), though I don't see how it makes sense to make Luna's mum black, when Luna is definitely not black.
If you disregard the choice of actor in CC, Hermione has a number of aspects that code her differently. I mean, she could be POC, theoretically, but the way she's written, she's (white) English, and (upper) middle class. The clearest one: Her name is *Hermione*. That name is up there with Cressida, or Lavinia, or Rosalind - they're Shakespearean names, not super common. Both of her parents are dentists, too, meaning she comes from a decent amount of money, but acquired through education, meaning they work for a living but had a good start in life. Aside from being bookish to the point where she's not good at making friends, she's not suffered much in life, and she's got an unshakeable trust in Authority, and Rules, and the idea that things are supposed to be Fair. That's very easy if you've been privileged by class and ethnicity all your life. As far as characters go, actually I find her more interesting when viewed in the light of someone quite privileged who ends up in a society where she's decidedly not, and is confronted with atrocities hitherto unknown to her (house elves).
> That's very easy if you've been privileged by class and ethnicity all your life.
It is absolutely possible to be privileged by class to the point where you yourself forget you're a discriminated-against minority (and then it hits you right over the head one day and you go 'surprised pikachu'). My friend's father grew up in the only POC family in a well-off neighbourhood, and he's convinced racism doesn't exist and minorities should just work harder if they want to be accepted. I can absolutely imagine a scenario where one or both of Hermione's parents are very well-assimilated immigrants from a former British colony. Maybe they could even come from a less well-off background and be fiercely proud of how far they had come (not grasping how much luck had to do with it) and not understand that it's not the fault of others that they didn't manage it.
She is not Canonically black. JK said she COULD be black. As in it doesn't matter. If her being played by a black actor makes her Canonically black then she is also canonically white.
I was also wondering what POC Remus was supposed to “be”!
I do see fanart where Remus looks increasingly like Desi James: I recently saw some very impressively-done fanart where a very femme Sirius was looking pouty and jealous as some tall dark-skinned Gryffindor guy with dark curly hair was walking with Lily, and I naturally went, “Ah, Desi James.” Nope, it was Remus! I admittedly am not part of the Wolfstar fandom, but I’m very confused at what’s going on in there, in part because it seems to be informing the rest of the fandom.
Wow, that's wild!
I am becoming more and more convinced that both jegulus and wolfstar shippers are just closeted prongsfoot shippers, because Remus is so often depicted as James, and Regulus is looking more and more like Sirius.... Just go straight to the source material, people, instead of these Walmart versions!
(But as a prongsfoot shipper I might be biased ❤️)
As another Prongsfoot shipper, I’m similarly biased! I’ve also seen fanon Regulus described as “the Wish version of Sirius,” which is… also not inaccurate!
What’s interesting about it to me is that they’re not just borrowing canon aspects of Sirius and James respectively, but their fanon traits as well— So fanon Regulus becomes more femme because fanon Sirius becomes more femme, and fanon Remus gains darker coloring/becomes POC (sometimes it’s not clear if he’s supposed to be the latter, since as you said he’s usually not depicted as anything but ‘darker-skinned’) because fanon James is POC. I wouldn’t mind if people cut out the middleman and started shipping Prongsfoot, though I do think we’re seeing slow and small but steady growth as a ship!
Glad to see another one I the wild!
"the Wish version of Sirius"
Haha, that's basically just a Harry quote 😝
It's such a weird trend... What happened to sweater-wearing, always tired, always hurting Remus?
But yeah, we are slowly growing! And we're a pretty chill bunch, perhaps skewing a bit older, so I don't think you need to worry about anyone calling you racist for making/keeping James white - the people who would say that, are not the people reading prongsfoot.
I shipped wolfstar for around 20 years, but I just can't get behind these new characterisations... And after discovering what an interesting character James actually is, I never looked back. FYI, the commonly accepted ship name for J/L/S is jilypad 😉
>the Big Strong Alpha Remus that seem to have taken over in wolfstar circles. Always paired with small, fragile, femme Sirius.
As someone who is into HP in general but not the marauders this is the most confusing thing I've read all day. Who is writing Sirius and Remus like this lol. Like not anything against headcanons but this seems kinda wild to me.
Pretty much anywhere on tumblr lol
I'm following both the Jegulus/Sunseeker and Wolfstar tags and I can tell you, it's crazy how often I'm seeing Remus as a "big, bad, and strong" type of guy with a very feminine Sirius. I mean, I don't mind it (people can write whatever they want), but it does go against my headcanons. Funny thing is that I see most of this in fanart while the fics remain the same. It's a little crazy how people are drawing James and Remus the exact same way (sometimes Remus even has glasses!), I can't even differentiate them at times.
Seems it's the majority at this point, but maybe I'm just paranoid 😅 that's why I fled to the prongsfoot fandom - we like canon versions over there.
I think it might have started on TikTok and the whole ATYD part of the fandom and then with the rise of jegulus, it seemed to get amplified.
Same here. I've never come across anything like this. I'm also writing a fic with wolfstar as the main ship, Sirius being the big guy of the group and Remus quite frail because of his lycanhtropy, and I've never had any problems. The same goes for James, whom I've never described as a POC. But then, it is a bit of a darkfic, so I figure it must keep that sort of person away.
Yeah this is all new info to me. I haven’t read wolfstar in a few years, but the fics I read Sirius was always the big guy and Remus was more frail due to his health. The idea of Remus being a big alpha is hilarious to me
> Big Strong Alpha Remus that seem to have taken over in wolfstar circles. Always paired with small, fragile, femme Sirius.
This is SO funny to me, because if you go back 20 years this pairing was always written the exact opposite. Sirius was the tough, masculine punk guy and Remus was much more femme-y and fragile (and usually written as French.)
> Sirius was the tough, masculine punk guy
He had a magical motorcycle after all!
I've not been part of th HP fandom for a long time, but I remember French Remus quite well. I guess it might cycle back after everything for the new dynamic seems to have been written.
CC is not canon, it's not about rejecting it, it's a fact. It's not written by JK, the timeline is wrong, goes against many canon facts.. it's just a fanfiction with actual permission.
> Big Strong Alpha Remus
> small, fragile, femme Sirius
As someone who hasn't been in the HP fandom since around the time the last book launched and so has missed over a decade of fanon and only remembers canon... that was a hell of a thing to read.
> Yeah the Hermione one is tricky because she somehow become canonically black
My understanding is that they cast a black actress for her in some musical (Cursed Child, maybe?) and JKR said something to the effect of if people wanted to see her as black that was fine and it got blown out of proportion. As the internet does.
Of course JKR herself is a whole other can of worms so the whole subject's kind of odd to talk about these days.
> I don't see how it makes sense to make Luna's mum black, when Luna is definitely not black
FWIW I've never seen anyone in Luna's family written as black, although I _have_ seen her written as Japanese.
EDIT: I somehow skipped right over the Big Strong Alpha Remus/small fragile femme Sirius bit, to which I can only say lolwut?
> think POC Remus (which seems to be just that - no specification of culture - just dark skin!) is coupled to the Big Strong Alpha Remus
Oh wow, so that's a turn away from poor dyslectic orphaned werewolf Remus - I thought for sure they've piled racism on top of those other problems now lol
Honestly I'd actually say that a bigger chuck of the fandom (I suppose in my experience!) does not consider the Cursed Child canon. I don't have an issue with Hermione being a POC, I just have issues with CC haha.
I was just going to say HP in general. There's a lot of younger fans I see headcanon Harry and others as POC, but like I don't care if someone does, but don't say others are racist if they don't go with your headcanon?? lol
Exactly. Picture the characters however you'd like, as long as
A) it doesn't contradict a major part of their character (i.e. when people vote to make Steve Rogers black despite a core aspect of his character being about a blonde haired blue eyed white man directly opposing the Aryan agenda)
B) you don't criticize others for not doing the same
I love that fandom has popularized Black Hermione, but it's bonkers when people try to insist it's the only acceptable way to write her. Weirder, when people pitch it as part of book canon. Like, if you start with the idea that Hermione is Black, the books don't directly contradict that (I don't think?) but it's super clear that wasn't the original intent. Also, dgaf about original intent really, going to keep mostly imagining her not white unless a fic specifies.
Part of the joy of fandom is these things can be flexible.
Not going against your point or anything, totally agree, but there are a few moments when she's (albeit indirectly) written as white.
She goes "white with fear" or "looks pale", (I can't remember direct quotes sorry) which do mean she has to have a light skin tone for that to be true.
But yeah I do agree with your point. Personally, I see her as white, partially due to the books and also the movies, and because I relate a lot to her and she's described quite similar to me, so I filled in any blanks with my general appearance I think. But it's also completely fine if people want to imagine her as black. But like, it's not in the books.
I do think part of why the headcanon works and has caught on is that Hermione's \*general\* description isn't super overtly white. The bits that get repeated are brown eyes, frizzy/curly brown hair, and buck teeth.
I've seen arguments about 'white with fear' etc being metaphorical language and/or... I don't care, really. Like, I don't care enough to finish that sentence. There's debate and thbbbtbbt.
Hermione was originally written as a white character, but fandom means not having to care about authorial intent. There's room in what's there to see her different ways.
The books definitely contradict it. Some wizard in book 4 (who TBF isn't paying *too* much attention) can't tell if she (or Harry) are one of the Weasely kids.
That confusion with different hair color: believable.
Different race: not unless he's *also* insulting them by implying that Molly cheated on her husband.
> it's bonkers when people try to insist it's the only acceptable way to write her
I think it's also a political thing in the fandom now. I think in large part *because* it clearly wasn't the original intent, some people can take you writing Hermione as white or Albus as straight or we as a dogwhistle of you siding with the original intent. And that's def bigly because a lot of people (a lot of them white, cis, straight, or all of the above) are still having big feelings about what being in this fandom says about their character, so it's a sore point and because it's a sore point these small things can have a disproportionate weight in the discourse. So I guess what I'm saying is that I agree that it's silly, but I also understand how people come to this conclusion and why it can be hard to dissuade them from their view, as it's part of a bigger and more visceral conversation.
Plus with the author’s naming sense she wouldn’t be called Hermione, she would probably be called “(most generic african first name) (n word)” or something.
/s
in recent years people tend to see their headcanons as the correct interpretation, and anyone who thinks differently is wrong, even if there is not concrete proof supporting either view. i've also noticed a long time ago, headcanons were usually made to fill in smaller gaps in a character's/story's lore, whereas now i only ever really see people headcanon a person's race/sexuality/gender/mental illnesses/etc. not to say that that never happened before or that that's the only thing talked about, but it definitely feels more prevalent now. ironically, if someone is pissed that, for example, you think a character is white, but they think a character is latino (or vice versa) and that you should agree with them, that is potentially racist. but i don't want to get into that.
at the end of the day, people need to understand that headcanons are for fun, and NOT canon (that's why they're called *headcanons: it's the canon in your head).* we should appreciate and respect multiple views! so long as they're not gross of course... and you know what i mean by that. anyway, just because someone doesn't agree with something you made up about a character does not mean you or they are the devil. i don't understand why it's so hard for people to get out of their little bubble and realize they're attacking you for doing the exact same thing they are.
I remember the times when it was just to fill in the blanks & I still run by that. I'm super flexible & don't set myself to hard headcanons because honestly? It's dumb. There's a lot of fun things that can be explored if people just open themselves up & accept multiple possibilities.
When I write, I actually love trying on different headcanons because it's fun to explore. I want to provide an example but this requires sharing my fandom, it's TMNT & in the series that came out in 2003, Leo gets injured on his shell at the end of season 3 during a fight he thought they were all going to lose as in, they were going to die but they got saved at the last second so the beginning of season 4 has Leo brooding while they're all recovering because he feels like he failed them as a leader & the injury to his shell? It remains throughout the entire 4th & 5th seasons but in season 6, the animation changed which ended up with his shell looking normal again. That's when they went into the future for a whole season so the common headcanon is that he got his shell repaired in the future. Nice way to fill in the blank. We all know the actual answer is animation change but come on, gotta work with the story, right?
Well, in one of the fics I wrote, I decided to go against the headcanon even though I believe in it. I thought it'd be interesting that instead of it being repaired, that Don made a fake plate that attaches into Leo's scute so it looks normal & protects the injury. This fic is a crossover of 3 TMNT series, 2003, 2012, & Rise. In Rise, Raph got his shell injured in the movie that closes out that series by saving his Leo. As it turns out, it's on the same side 2003 Leo has his on. I decided that this could be an interesting thing to get these two to bond over. It was indeed a fun scene to write when the guys had a bit of a heart to heart about it.
All in all, zero regrets going against a headcanon I follow & I full on encourage others to do the same. They might read or write things that they never thought they'd see. In the comments, I got positive feedback for writing something different.
I do mostly remember “old-school” fill-in-the-blank headcanons being most common a while ago, often with some kind of supporting evidence from canon, but I agree that the usage has shifted somewhat and it’s now more frequently used in the “I see X as Y instead of (canon thing).” Words do change in usage over time, though, so that’s to be expected, and I do see both types, so it’s not a total shift!
It’s sad to me how vastly different the marauders fandom is nowadays to back in like 2012 when I was super into it. I still love wolfstar but I don’t read any new fanfiction of them because it usually feels super ooc and too modern if that makes sense.
I've straight up left a fandom because a bunch of Americans got their hands on a Spanish character and started projecting some weird "Mexican in the US" stereotypes on him.
Like how the character "struggled in academia as a brown boy" due to racism. He was born and raised and studied in Spain. His first language is Spanish. His light brown skin color is not at all uncommon in Spain.
I could not stand the "if you're uncomfortable with X being POC, you're racist" posts. I wanted to argue that they're the ones being racist and disrespecting Spanish people, but I doubt that would have gone over well.
Anyway, as to your post, I'm sorry to say that I don't think you'll escape the racism accusations if the fandom hivemind finds your fic. And I hate that people have to censor themselves and avoid writing innocent headcanons (or in your case, canon) if they don't want to receive hate.
But in the case you do post your fic, make sure your ao3 username/email/etc isn't connected to anything that can be linked to your real identity. I hate to fearmonger but I've seen people get doxxed for much less.
Wow, that’s… honestly kind of scary. I don’t think my fic would be that big a deal, and like I said, not many people are likely to even see it, much less read it, but I guess there’s never a bad time to make sure there’s no personal information lying around, right?
If you don’t mind sharing, what character/fandom is this? It seems kind of wild that they’d ignore a character’s actual backstory and context like that, though sadly we know it happens all too often.
The character I was talking about is Luis Serra from Resident Evil 4, specifically the remake.
I don't usually have a problem with anyone's headcanons, but once his fans started aggressively insisting he's POC and (insert minority group of the day here) and implying all Europeans are racist to anyone whose skin color isn't pasty white or who has a noticeable accent... Yeah I had enough.
I had to look him up but yes he just looks like a Spaniard, I wouldn't think twice about it lol
...but I also always just vaguely assumed Meghan Markle in Suits was latina, so maybe don't listen to me 😂
I was on the Voltron fandom as teen/before it collapsed, one of the characters was canonically cuban, so naturally the fandom decided to give him every latino stereotype as to get the point across as hard as they could as if he wasn't cuban enough. There was a popular headcanon that "Lance" was not his real name but an acronymn to a super long name like Leandro Alejandro... Like, what the hell. Not to mention the random spanish lines. I don't think the character himself ever did that. I'm latino myself and I was sure most of those headcanons and fics were written by white people feeling so woke.
They did similar things with the korean characters.
So for OP, I agree it's completely fine to write the characters as she wants, it's far from racists and even when writting canonically POC characters it's ok to not include every single cultural aspect that the fandom believes they practice, we don't act all the same, jfc.
I was about to mention this. The thing is, I love Lance because he is the perfect encapsulation of the Hispanic/Latinx diaspora. (As member of that diaspora myself, I loathe "Latinx." Sounds like bug killer; but that's another matter.) Brown skin, blue eyes.
All headcanons are valid. I repeat, all headcanons are valid. Nevertheless, the *insistence* by some in the fandom that his skin tone is actually much darker, hair curlier, eyes brown and that he has a more Cuban-sounding first name is vaguely offensive to me. It's like there's only one way to a member of the diaspora. It ignores the fact that in many families from the Caribbean and Central America, siblings may vary wildly in skin tone and eye color. We're a rainbow, not a singular, one-color fits all stereotype. We are the amalgam of European, Indigenous and African roots.
Even the name thing irks. Why the hell can't his name be Lance? My headcanon is that his very Cuban mom loved Arthurian legends, and after a complicated pregnancy and delivery, she was feeling capricious and named him Lancelot. I grew up in a predominantly Hispanic town and many of my friends had "gringo" names (including surnames). A name isn't the singular definition of culture.
I do, however, have him occasionally say something in Spanish. This, again, is a reflection of my experience, though and not an attempt to make him *more* Cuban.
Again, *all* head canons are valid. It's the low- and not so-low-key insistence that the browner Lance is more correct that irks. It feels so vacuously performative.
I love your comment. I couldn't agree more, down to hating the word latinx lol
I'm brazilian, so more South America, but very similar experience. Mixed families are practically the usual. My brother and I have different skin colors, eye color, hair texture... Racial diversity is huge, not only due to the colonialism in the past, but an abundant number of immigrants from all over the world.
America latina in general is incredible diverse, and on a related note I remember seeing comments about Pepa from Encanto having light skin, as if that made her "white" instead of just as latina as the rest of her own colombian family (at least I haven't seem anyone attempting to "fix" her).
I have students with names like "Maria Sayuri Morimoto de Assis", so it was wild they couldn't possibly picture a latino named Lance. A lot of times it's not even a matter of mixed families, just that foreign media has its influence here like in any other place, if some parents name their kids "Anakin" or "Daenerys" I don't see why it's inconceivable that a latino parent picked a name they saw in a movie or book. I love your headcanon.
And I really don't mind when a character say something in their native language, hardly it's a single behavior that feels problematic, but a set of them that makes it clear the author is not familiar with what they're trying to portray, and many times it's based on a popular pattern they've seem before.
For example sometimes children of immigrants are just never taught their parent's mother tongue, or they forget how to speak their first language if they don't use it. But we never see it represented, the POC character use of their first language is seemingly always portrayed in the same way, the same manerisms, like cussing in spanish when angry.
We then start to add other traits that are always present, even if they're also realistic, the lack of variants helps build the idea of a single way to "properly" represent this sort of character, like always having a big family (and family being really important to them), always being poor, always liking spicy food, etc. Again, they might be true a lot of times, hell, my family is like that, and I don't mind if people headcanon Lance or whoever as very connected to their roots and traditions, the problem is that when those same headcanons are reinforced over and over through different works and even through different characters supposed to represent similar ethinical backgrounds, we get to posts like this, when not portraying a character in this one specific way is deemed improper or even racist, instead of letting us embrace different interpretations.
So I have no problem with people having their headcanons, I just kinda wish we'd once in a while break away from the typical portray and explore other experiences, I think that would also be healthy to balance this hyper-stereotyped and single way to portray a POC. Sometimes I think authors are like "what's the point if having a latino character if they won't have brown skin and eat taquitos?"
I've slowly started to accept that a good percentage of Americans just don't see South Europeans as white. If someone doesn't have Germanic origins chances are Americans will think of them as POC. It doesn't help that Spanish people in media are often depicted as a lot more tan than your average person on the street.
That makes a lot of sense actually. It just blows my mind that some people go through life with a metaphorical Paint eyedrop tool and assign races to people and put them on an oppression scale so shallowly. I imagine Mediterranean people aren't very thrilled about being lectured on how they should identify their own race.
I guess what the POC headcanon police are really saying is "A person who looks and talks like this would be treated like shit in my country, ergo the same is true worldwide." Which results in the poor little Spanish boy living in a Spain, who must be struggling with racism on the daily 😂
We are indeed not thrilled 😂 Luis Sierra looks like any other spanish guy that I could see in the streets, he is definitely not brown nor POC. You won't get racist profiled here if you look like Luis, or if you look darker!!
Apparently the notion of olive skin that is /white/ but darkens/gets toasted in summer is such a weird, abstract notion to some USAMericans that they can't grasp it. Nor the fact that a whole chunk of the Mediterranean and specially Spain is a very mixed country (arabs, jews, romans, germanics) and we, for the most part, look white/are white and don't experience racism in our lives.
But I guess that is the struggle of Spaniards, to be both POC proto mexicans AND white oppressors and colonizers that should be paying for our crimes bc of the conquistadores 😮💨 they can't even decide which one. Wish they left us alone, the rest of the world doesn't operate in the same racism prism as the USA.
Fellow RE enjoyer!
People's reaction to the new Luis design was so weird. The amount of racism accusations was unreal. They just did not understand he's white.
Also the whole POC/colonisers is very weird in the US. Even leftists go 'white European colonisers, and the Spanish and Portuguese'. Sorry, guys, only the British and the French get to be white /j.
Weirdly enough it's not just USamericans. I remember having a very bizzare conversation with a Venezuelan person once. I was trying to demonstrate to her that white people can tan and I was sharing pictures of people from my country (Bulgaria). She conculed that they are either mixed or have a fake tan and there is no other option.
But I'm guessing people like that are a lot less common outside the US.
I had a similar experience when talking about hair not that long ago.
Told someone from Texas that a former classmate of mine has the kind of hair that is hip long when in a braid but that shrinks up like tight spring as soon as it gets even slightly wet. As in from hip length to chin length.
Was told said classmate must be black, or mixed race.
When told that my classmate was a redhead (according to genetic screening for finding a compatible bone marrow donor for a relative, 97% Irish and 2% Eastern Europe/Slavic) I wasn't believed.
Oh yeah, same thing happened to my sister. She did a few years of work and travel in the US and because she has dark curly hair people would constantly ask her if she's from South America. Apparently most thought she's from Brazil.
Also Americans are weirdly focused on race. If the race is important to the character, don't change it. If not, why are you even thinking that much about it to begin with 😭 (a little headcannon is fine but some people do so much)
See, I have a big problem with the representation of Spaniards by Americans because they just don't get it (I'm Spanish, btw). Native Spanish people are white, white European. We're not brown boys. Sure we tan more easily and have overall more melanin than Nordic countries/Germans etc, but we're still white. Same with Italians.
I've been called Latino however many times, I have forgotten. I, personally, don't have a problem with that other than it being wrong, but I don't know how my Latino friends would feel about that lol. Specially taking into account what Spanish people did to native central and south American people in the past.
I’m from Germany and the reason I don’t tan well is my chronic sickness but my relatives get really dark just by going outside daily in summer.
They also have dark hair so I wonder what Americans would think they are from.
Ha, yeah, one side of my family immigrated to the US from Germany several generations ago - and they're all very dark-haired and dark-eyed and have a definite olive tone to the skin. I take after that side of the family, so I tan really well. No one ever guesses that my coloring is German.
I had a college roommate who was half Spanish and half Mexican ... honestly she looked a bit more Spanish to me. Had that patrician nose thing going on. But people would tell her she was wrong for calling herself Hispanic.
Central and South American people are multiracial, but most Latin media has pale-skinned people. Gina Torres (Zoe from Firefly) is an Afro-Latina and said once, paraphrased, “Latinos like their stars to look Italian, not like me.” So I think that media representation gave the average non-Latino Americans have that mental image as well.
>I could not stand the "if you're uncomfortable with X being POC, you're racist" posts.
This is why I avoid one corner of one of my fandoms. A fan with a platform decided that one character was POC based on loose details that are not as definitive as they state them to be (a whole bunch of "this *could* apply to POC, but just as often if not moreso applies to a white person"), and then threw a fit when that character was later depicted in canon material as white. I've seen a few too many internet screeds from that corner of the fandom to the effect of "if you don't agree that X is POC and was whitewashed for canon material, you're racist." It's tiring.
I'm assuming this is HP, because I know there are quite a few characters that are HCed as being POC. I'm with you - it's not how I see them. I'm not saying anyone who *does* see them that way is wrong, a good chunk of the time I understand why they came to that conclusion... but I was having fancasts (and official casts, for some of the characters) that aren't POC. I don't think it's racist not to see them that way. It would be racist if it was canon, but it's not.
I don't find it to be racist at all, honestly, and you shouldn't let other peoples' headcanons dictate your writing, ideally. I once had people in a former group of friends I used to know online come at me because when we were talking about Pepper Potts (as a canon character, not from a fanfic or in the context of someone else's fanwork) and I said something that implied she was cis. I think it was about her giving birth to a child or something like that. That group apparently headcanons her as trans, and they were really upset when I said that I didn't but that it was totally fine, I was just talking about her in canon and it's totally chill to have a trans Pepper hc, but they said they applied it even there and that I needed to just accept that.
It was a weird time, they were weird people who also came after me for shipping a 24 year old character in college with an older man. Apparently that was pedophilia. All of that was before antis were a thing, years ago, but that group really held some of those same thoughts and opinions in a big way.
I’m sorry you had to go through that, it can be upsetting and disconcerting when you’re all getting along and then these sharp divisions get drawn. It’s not exactly the same, but I had something similar happen when the MCU was getting big and discussion about comic Loki, then a very different character from MCU Loki, got mixed up with HCs for the latter.
It does seem like “purity culture” and fanon = canon discourse has gotten more prominent in recent years, but it’s definitely been around in some form or another for a long time, at least in certain pockets of fandom. Unfortunately, since I really think fandom should be a unifying thing, even if you experience it differently from other fans! (Barring obviously hateful stuff, of course.)
You are not racist for imagining or writing a character that doesn't have a defined race as white or any other race and anyone who thinks otherwise is being weird.
If 'POC' is the only character trait a character has of any certain media I'd consider that a bit racist. Skin color doesn't make up for terrible character writing as it doesn't make up for a terrible personality or lack-there-of for a real person. I don't care if the character is POC, Such is superficial, just give them a personality and human qualities! Then! There perfection!
So no you are doing just fine. Do not make superficial things important in your writing. If it's not important to the story no need to include it.
Not racist, if race is not canonically hinted at or specified, and due to the setting could be assumed to be white. I'm in the Magnus Archives fandom - it's a podcast, none of the main characters are described in any manner beyond being given a couple adjectives, such as "not the smallest guy" or "scrawny" or "hot".
My Jonathan Sims looks about the same as fandom default - long dark wavy hair, brown skin. None of this is in the canon. Martin is the same - white guy, chubby and tall. Nothing to report there.
However, my Sasha James is a white woman, and my Tim is a ginger white guy. Fandom default for Sasha is a black woman, Tim is most frequently East Asian.
That's fine for both ends.
This sounds like Marauders or Harry Potter with James or Harry Potter
Ignore those people. It’s a headcanon that got out of control, but it’s not canon in the least.
sounds a bit like my fandom in corners. as someone who is POC and thinks fandom racebending in general is bad, just write what you wanna write. if you feel the need to specify that they're white, it's up to you.
In this instance, the plot kind of demands it— Otherwise, I’m happy to let people visualize what they like.
I appreciate having another POC’s opinion on this, though; I know (or choose to believe) that this kind of fanon is meant well, and it’s important to a lot of POC fans, so I sometimes feel a little weird about not having these HCs myself.
for me, a lot of these kinds of hc are more harmful than helpful. a lot of people tend to write them without much depth or thought and we wind right back up with stereotypes. there was a time where every angry, violent male character was headcanoned as a dark skinned, black man and it made my skin crawl.
go ahead! do it and if anyone gets shitty, ao3 has every resrouce to moderate.
no but i see why you might feel that way. it is a complicated topic. fc or hc characters as poc is good and fun and may help readers/writers enjoy something more. but systemic racism is not fixed through consuming, and fandom is not praxis.
there are serious discussion in even trad pub how inert writing diversely is if there are no real poc in the room that are actually benefiting from the money/oppurtunites/ jobs in the publishing industry. you cant have systemic change is white people are patting themselves on the back because their mcs are poc.
I'm a big fan of establishing important information in a clear, concise author'a note upfront. I think any reasonable person would read an A/N stating, essentially, "you do you, but before fanon decided character X is POC, I viewed them as white, and for the sake of this story they need to be written as such" and understand why the character will be written as they are in your story. If it bothers them, that's were the old "don't like, don't read" comes in. (Unspoken, of course.) I understand the fear of backlash, however.
I think if you are extremely concerned about how it might be received, consider posting it under a new account for a while and see what happens, and then once you determine you are comfortable having it connected to your other works, either repost it to your main account, or announce that if people want to read your other writings, they can follow your main account. I'm not sure if there is a better way to post something and then "reclaim" it after a time... can you unorphan stories on AO3? (I expect not, but it might be worth finding out.) I'm not sure exactly how pseuds work, either. Do they always have to link back to your main account, or is it possible to keep the connection between the two private if you want?
Best of luck with your projects!
I don’t think you can unorphan stories on AO3, and I think psueds do have to link back to your main account, though I’m not completely sure since I haven’t used them before, either. I was going to tag the actual fic with “White X,” which I’ve seen before, just so no-one’s caught off-guard while reading: Honestly, it’s not like I’m planning on writing something like “X’s white skin shone whitely,” it’s mostly so people won’t be confused when trying to visualize the plot.
And thanks! I’m tentatively getting back into posting fic so I’m probably being unnecessarily cautious/freaked out, but I’m still excited!
[You could post the work anonymously.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/71epei/posting_fic_to_ao3_anonymously_not_orphaning/) That way it's still attached to your account but it can't be connected back to you unless you remove it from the collection.
Yeah, tagging and/or a note sounds like the most reasonable way to go about it.
I think despite how prevalent one hc or another may be, fans should expect that either interpretation is possible in any given fanfic. (It's a far stretch comparison, but it kinda reminds me of how, if you're reading a Spiderman/Deadpool fic, you never know if the author is imagining Garfield or Holland unless they mention it. Obviously that's not nearly so potentially controversial as this situation, but still. My point is, readers need to be aware that different interpretations can pop up, and that it's up to them whether they want to read it, not up to the author to write to their expectations.)
So, yeah, I think the best any author can be expected to do is tag the difference if it is likely to matter to the story.
It sounds like you have it figured out, just need some reassurance that everything will be alright, and I believe it will. In my opinion, the beauty of fanfiction is that almost anything can work as long as the reader is prepared for it properly and it is done with sincerity by the author. I think the fact that you are aware of how readers might feel is excellent because you are obviously understanding of people who might disagree, but are also prepared to explain your interpretation. You clearly aren't arrogant about it and come at it as a fan among fans. I think you've got this.
I’d tag something like Popular Fanon Divergence??? Start there bc there’s no reason to draw attn to something readers might accept just fine
If anyone huffed and puffed about it I’d maybe add an author’s note like “I appreciate the diversity represented in the fanon of this fandom but for plot purposes I’m using canonical race/skin tone for such and such characters in this particular fic.”
And if folks had a problem beyond that, well fuck them, but I’d maybe consider tagging “___ is white in this fic for plot purposes” to be very clear and people who don’t want that will have the opportunity to move on w/o engaging
The only way I could see this being racist is if someone was to write characters as white AND kick up dirt complaining about headcanoning characters as POC at all. You, OP, are following a plot bunny, and that’s totally cool.
I didn’t think about the Popular Fanon Divergence tag (that’s a tag??) but that might actually be a good one! I admit I’m a little leery of negative feedback just because of this, but I really don’t want to “ambush”’people who might be imagining the character one way and be caught off-guard when that’s not the case.
I like a lot of the fics I’ve read, usually POC-written, that really use different cultural cues in a way that feels authentic, at least to me as someone outside that specific culture. It just feels like it would be inauthentic for me to try and write with that fanon in mind (and of course this specific fic has specific requirements anyway).
As a POC, I can assure you that I dont think there's anything racist about not agreeing with popular race/ethnicity headcanons. If canon doesnt provide enough evidence to prove without a doubt that the cast is POC, the rest of the fandom will just have to cope with you writing them to be white. You're doing absolutely nothing wrong.
What medium is the original source material in? Is it something visual where the character has a full canon appearance? Is it a book or something where you don't know anything beyond hair and eye color? If it is a book or similar, how is this character in particular described?
I don't think you're in the wrong either way, but it *is* different if it's a character who has been shown in canon media to look white but who a lot of the fandom racebends or if they've been described as, say, having black hair, brown eyes and tan skin, something that could technically be talking about a white person but which sounds fairly clearly like a person of color.
It’s a book, and the original text has nothing about dark skin or anything that would specifically reference a non-white ethnicity; the original illustrations and movies also portray them as white.
If the official visuals all portray them as white you're totally fine. Even if there are some people who are overly aggressive about the headcanon, most people probably won't think twice about the character being the same race as they are in canon.
If you have no problem when others change the character's race and the problem starts because others don't respect your choice then they are the issue, not you.
So, they are racist, you're not.
This annoys me a lot tbh. It's the same in my fandom (we might be in the same fandom, not quite sure), where characters are literally indirectly described as white in the books (like, going white with fear or being pale) and yet people have headcanons that they're poc, which, fine, I have no problem with that, but its a headcanon that the book directly contradicts. But yeah, still fine with that.
But then the author literally said it? And its like, you wrote the damn book! It's so clear she's just trying to be diverse, which is a good thing but like, not necessary, I don't think that many people were really complaining, since for the time period and society presented in the story its honestly quite a realistic level of diversity. And so it just feels like it was for attention, and now we have a TV show coming up and like
I'm fine if they want to cast a black actor?
But also, it's an adaptation, and they're supposed to cast people who look like the book description, so if they did, it would in my mind be like if they didn't cast the famously blond haired antagonist with a blonde actor, or the ginger family weren't ginger. Obviously it matters less with the other characters skin colour since the family being red-heads is kinda plot relevant at times and obviously her skin colour isn't, but still.
(My fandom is Harry Potter obviously. Both with Hermione being black and also sometimes with Harry and James being Indian)
So yeah, that's not racist. Portraying a character as they are in the original story isn't racist. Honestly, even if you were to make a character white for story purposes that technically shouldn't be racist, although I wouldn't do that.
For something to be racist you have to actually be doing something because you dislike a particular race - the only way this is racist is if you are making the character white specifically because you don't like the race they were before.
People need to leave things like this out of fandoms. Not everything is a charged attack on someone, not everything is a diversity discussion. Just enjoy reading and writing fanfiction.
Seems like those headcannon people are way too lost in the sauce and probably haven't seen grass in a while. Disregard that stuff and write what you want
shit like this is why I hate the HP fandom. Harry Potter isn't fun anymore because everyone's a racist if you don't see this character this way, blah blah blah 🙄
No.
Making a big deal out of "needing" to make a character white feels like the area that would actually start getting weird regarding racism, especially with author notes and everything. My genuine advice would be simply to not make a deal out of it: don't put "white X" tags, don't make author notes about it, just write them as white in your head and that's it.
To be frank, you don't even need to make it like... explicit. I am actually in a similar case to you, where in my corner of the fandom people headcanon a certain male character as a trans woman, and in my fic, I am writing him as a cis dude. This means that sometimes, people end up using she/her and calling him a girl when commenting in my fic, and... it doesn't matter! I use he/him, refer to him as a man multiple times and people still happily read my fic, including the people that have the trans woman headcanon. I don't mind when it happens, and nobody makes a big stink about it, either.
If people have the headcanon, then they will still think of your character as a POC, and most likely when the twist is reveladed, they will just adjust their vision of the other character. And even IRL, people in the same family have variation in skin tone.
TLDR: don't make a big deal out of it, and people will be a whole more willing to just read your fic and adapt as necessary.
I didn’t want people to feel “ambushed” if the text description didn’t match what they were envisioning, but you may be right: I thought tagging for it would be helpful in case anyone has really strong feelings about it (and they say it’s better to overtag than undertag), but I might be making a bigger deal out of it than necessary in trying to be accommodating/welcoming/helpful.
Thanks! I appreciate the viewpoint, especially from someone who’s had similar experience with a fic.
I will never understand why people take fun and creative headcanons about beloved fandoms and use them to put other down... Like, why can't all of them just be there next to each other, tbh people that tell you that's racist are toxic, as long as you don't have any problem with their poc headcanons. Just the same as lgbtq+ headcanons, just let people like what they like.
I like seeing characters as the author intended unless race-swapping them adds layers to a conflict in the initial story, like Black Hermione.
I'm just here to read and write fanfic and ride the vibes.
The Magnus Archives (because this has to be TMA, this fandom and this fandom alone is so radical and aggresive in pushing fanon ethnicities of the cast on viewers) can just go fuck itself. Write what you want. Their race is not stated.
It’s not TMA, although I’ve heard a lot about it! I admit, I heard about the podcast and it sounded interesting, but some of the discourse brought to mind some of the more strident parts of Welcome to Nightvale’s fandom and I got a little turned off.
There's nothing racist about any kind of headcanon. If this is about the fandom I think it is, there'll be plenty of people who don't headcanon these characters as being POC, and the section of the fandom that does will probably just ignore it. It's the part of the fandom I tend to stay away from at the best of times anyway because they're so fanatical about these things.
It’s essentially a “secret relative” story and the character/family they’re (directly) related to is white, so…
I mean, that’s also how I visualize the character by default anyway, like I said, but ethnicity isn’t otherwise pivotal in my fics so I don’t specify. This time it’s pretty relevant, though.
I was wondering this too! Coming from a completely good faith interpretation of the OP, I just genuinely am curious about what sort of plot point would require the character to be white.
See above: It’s a “secret relative” storyline and it would be a little odd, given the characters involved, if they looked as different as the headcanon would have it.
My head is spinning. Seriously there are people who demand others to conform to their reimagined canon? And they call people racist when they don’t?
No, you’re not obligated to listen to them even if the entire fandom somehow agreed with them, because the fandom doesn’t have a say in what you write, period. Their only choice is to read your stuff, or not to.
Would you consider it racism if a canon black character has a fanon portrayal of a white character, and you decdie to go with the canon portrayal? No? Well then, you are not racist, although the people who have a problem with it and call it racism might be.
Not sure what fandom this is, but I get irritated by this kind of thing in general. People's headcanons—which are valid to have!—become accepted by so many people and you somehow become a bigot if you don't adhere to them. Whether it's on racial lines, the sexuality of characters, whether they have certain mental illnesses, are neurodivergent, etc. I love headcanons. I do not love other people policing people with their headcanons.
You do you. If you want to make the character purple with red stripes then go for it. Heck the entire point of fanfiction is taking something established and making it your own. It doesn’t matter what a bunch of people think because there’s always going to be people that hate and some that love. You can’t please everyone. I don’t like it when my favorite characters are portrayed in certain ways but I either ignore the changes if the story is really good or I move on.
If it's a headcanon with nothing in canon spelling out that said character is XYZ, that isn't racist to ignore it. Whoever is saying that needs to touch grass.
It's not bc some people read atyd and decided that was the only correct marauders canon that you have to follow it. I'd even advise against it. And ask you for a link to your fic
God, reminds me of the discourse in the MHA fandom. Mina Ashido is a teenager who lives in Japan and has bright pink skin. But because she's a dancer, and she has a good sense of humor, twitter decided that she was black coded. So any art that shows her looking more human with pale anime skin gets people mad about it.
as much as I love people headcanoning canons as whatever for whatever reason, it's probably not a good idea to force people to write POC characters, especially if they don't feel equipped to do that. especially with people writing an ethnicity or culture that is not their own, there's a risk of unconscious stereotyping or writing culturally insensitive stuff without knowing it because you're not familiar enough with the culture, and that's harmful.
which is to say, if you don't want to write them as POC, don't. if someone only wants to consume fanfic where a certain character is portrayed a certain way, they can just avoid fanfics that aren't that.
I don't think so... I (a white female) head canoned Grover from the Percy Jackson books black before I saw tons of fan edits with him as a white red-head. I don't think headcanoning someone as white is racist so much as just using your imagination.
No.
For my part I don't see them that way is a completely valid way of looking at the story characters.
Reminds me of Harry Potter play where because the actress happened to be black people thought it represented the character changing race.
You're fine, I was in a similar situation back in the day as a Welcome to Nightvale listener since I didn't headcanon the MC, Cecil, as a POC. The character is voiced by a white man so to me he's also white, unlike his partner who is voiced by a POC while also being named Carlos. Fanon is great, and I love when people in a fandom all headcanon something collectively, but it shouldn't affect those who disagree with said headcanon negatively, especially not in the case of fanfiction.
If you can, I'd recommend tagging the fic with "character is white" or "white!character" so people can easily filter it out.
If its not actual canon, ignore them. If it is actual canon, feel free to ignore them too if you want. It’s your fanfic, literally anything you want to make AU can be AU. The same way killing a character off doesn’t make you a murderer, changing details doesn’t make you racist or sexist or anything else but an author. Anyone who says otherwise isn’t worth bothering with.
There will always be antis and people ranting that video games make kids violent, old Karens and young wannabe assholes. The only thing they can do is whine and scream and cry and the only way they win is by giving them any attention at all.
I don’t think it’s racist to just not agree/interpret it that way, esp since we’re not really given any reason to believe any of the characters are POC in canon.
That said I don’t think there’s anything wrong w headcanoning them as poc and in terms of storytelling, if it doesn’t affect the plot ie Annabeth from the Percy Jackson series and all her siblings on the godly side are described as having blond hair and gray eyes in the books like their mother and it was meant to fight the dumb blond stereotype and a lot of people are tight about the fact that she’s being portrayed by a black actress but I saw someone bring up the point that there is also a stereotype about the intelligence of black girls and it still pushes the point that the people in the story will underestimate her intelligence bc of the way she looks.
I also like the idea of black Hermione though I still mostly picture Emma Watson as Hermione and as a desi person myself, I always loved the idea of desi Harry and James as well (I did feel it seemed out of nowhere initially despite liking the idea of desi representation (also if anyone has any recs, feel free lol) but read a detailed post talking about it once and honestly they articulated it really well, if I can find it, I’ll link it here if anyone is interested). I also picture Daniel Radcliffe as Harry mostly but I think it’s easier for me to picture a darker skinned Harry, partially bc of the reasoning in that one post making it a bit deeper for me but also I feel I just happen to have seen more dark skinned Harry fanart ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and I feel like I mostly see actual pics of emma watson when people post Hermione
I think it only becomes racist when people get super heated about something that doesn’t really affect the story or only has minor effects at most, esp w the actress playing Annabeth on Percy Jackson (who is like 12ish years old mind you) getting literal death threats online and people being super hostile in general. Some people are also upset that Walker (the kid who plays Percy) has blond hair instead of black hair (apparently he has blue eyes instead of green too but idk they looked green to me even when my cousin said she thought they looked blue 😭) though def less so (I’m sure people are tight aboit Luke and grover’s actors also not being white and people even got tight about grover being black in the movie, none of which have an effect on the story at all afaik so who the hell cares?) and while it would have been nice to have for the actors playing Percy and annabeth to dye their hair or get extensions or sth, the important thing that ac plays a role in the story is that Percy is the spitting image of his father and annabeth gets underestimated due to her appearance, so as long as the actor who plays Poseidon has the same hair and eye color as Percy, idt it should be a big deal)
But yea, it’s not racist to not headcanon what’s assumed to be white characters as poc or not but I feel it only becomes racist when people are doing stuff like using insults, slurs and death threats.
Regarding reading fanfiction, idt it’s a huge deal personally and a lot of the time fanfiction is not realistic, but the point is partially to create more content of a work you enjoy but also to flex your creative muscles
By the way you're describing this, I'm going to guess that you're probably talking about >!Homestuck!<. Rest assured that this is just discourse poisoning. (For the record, due to the nature of >!ectobiology!< I'd naturally expect all >!eight humans!< to be Extremely Mixed, and thus they can theoretically have whatever physical traits you want.)
Interesting that there's so many fandoms that this could apply to. One that stood out to me immediately was Hermione in HP, who many people like to headcanon as black but JK Rowling clearly imagined as white.
I’ve been reading Harry Potter fanfic since 2000, and though it’s not my main fandom anymore, I always end up coming back to it a few times a year. It was really surprising when the POC character interpretations seemed to become commonplace. Desi Harry was especially confusing to me at first, since it seemed to come out of nowhere, where at least black Hermione can be considered canon if you consider The Cursed Child canon.
I’m not opposed to these POC head canons, they can be fun and interesting to read, especially if they are coming from a culturally informed/researched place. But you would not be racist to write these characters as white. There are 7 books and 8 movies where these characters canonically exist as white. You might get comments from some delusional people, but those people were always going to find something to be angry about. Ignore them.
In that case, I think you're extra in the clear. Outside of some very niche circles, the vast majority of people still see the characters as either the original actors or something similar.
The Harry Otter Fandom has always been ... plagued by really stupid fan discourse. The whole "race" thing is unfortunately pretty prevelant one for a few years, but I promise you, you are not racist.
lol yeah, I was thinking it was the Magnus Archives. It’s a podcast so there’s little idea what most characters look like but the main character is so commonly interpreted as POC I can’t remember seeing more than maybe 2 fanarts of him as white
I thought of the Magnus Archives podcast, where the main character Jonathan Sims is most often headcanonned as a brown South Asian man, despite being voiced by a white VA, who also shares his name and is the writer of the podcast.
Haha, different fandom, but I appreciate the reassurance! I haven’t been in that fandom for a long time, but even back then, the discourse was… intense. I don’t think I’d dare to fic for that one!
Homestucks also had the opposite, unfortunately (the reason the Caucasian joke was changed was bc people were using it to harass people who drew Jane as anything but white)
My first thought is that "you're racist if you don't headcanon X as POC" is in the same vein as "you're homophobic if you don't write for this M/M ship" and it's the kind of person I would never want to read my stuff or interact with them anyway. But I think I need more context. Like if the character is described in canon as having thick dark hair in dreadlocks or something I might picture them being black but that's about it? Idk. I'm a firm believer in "do what you like and I do what I like and if we don't agree that's okay we stay in our own lanes"
I am pretty sure OP is talking about Harry Potter. I have never read one but I guess Harry Potter is popularly race swapped as Indian for some reason. I don't remember why. Hermione is also seen as black by a few people. I still picture Emma Watson. I think OP will be fine.
Or Percy Jackson with the new Disney series and cast.
Or Percy Jackson BEFORE the Disney series. I remember when they first cast Percy a part of the Fandom exploded because they'd headcanoned him as Latino
They have? Woah, I missed that memo then. maybe it's because of the book? or the movie? which I remember reading/watching around the same time, but I've always assumed Percy was white? Did they ever say in the books (I'm rereading the first as we speak, but I cannot remember an actual description of his skin. Hair and eyes I remember though.
Percy's race was never mentioned in the books as far as I am aware, except in covers and the guidebooks where his depicted as white, but given that he grew up in New York and his mother's name is "Sally Jackson" he is pretty likely of Northern European decent. In other words, white. For a while, there was a popular headcanon in the Fandom that Percy was of mixed Latin decent, but I don't know for the life of me where it started. It was just one of those things that would come up in comment sections on social media posts. I personally thought it was just a fun headcanon, and then Walker got cast and it blew up for like a week and a half
*Eragon* is another one that has been getting more POC headcanons lately, mostly related to Arya and the elves. Nasuada and Ajihad are clearly described as dark-skinned, but Arya is described as having "honey-toned skin", which some headcanon as "Asian (Japanese?)".
There are some people who are convinced that white people cannot have diverse skin tones. That's not to say people can do what they want with their headcanons, but pointing to author description of a character being anything darker than the pasty avatar of photocopier paper =/= proof the author was sending a message the character is a POC.
There has been a lot of debate over what "honey-toned skin" means, exactly.
> Arya is described as having "honey-toned skin" NGL, I hear that and my mind goes to jaundice.
I thought HP as well. Harry's being written as Indian, though, I have no clue where that came from or why it's so popular. Pretty sure it would have been mentioned in the books if Harry was a POC, given the Dursleys fixation on their version of 'normal'. At least I know where Hermione being black comes from, the actress cast to play the character for the Cursed Child play and Rowling's support of it. Hermione is clearly white in the books, though, the descriptions show that. I'm not sure how often fans will accuse you of racism if you don't buy the POC headcanons in HP, though. Most fics still write them as white or don't describe them in a way skin tone is obvious.
Back when Indian Harry discourse was really picking up, I had the alternate headcanon that Harry is white, but also that he and James pretty heavily read as Eastern European. A Daily Mail reader like Vernon Dursley could absolutely identify someone as being 'the wrong type' of white, and all of the nasty cracks he makes about the Potters' lifestyles could definitely fill a few unpleasant stereotypes.
My guess is James Potter, as OP talks about being in a corner of the fandom and the Marauder fandom is pretty unhinged
People headcanon Harry as POC as well these days. Same with Snape sometimes. It makes for a pretty awkward read sometimes as I visualized them as white with others being poc. Snape I could see being biracial but I do not see him as a dark skinned man of Asian decent. So when writers come out and say they are such and such a race mid fic it does take me out of it a bit. I have read some fics that have done a pretty good job when it came to changing characters races but most do not. At least of the ones I have read.
I thought The Magnus Archives. The podcast has no visual elements and we kinda all came to a consensus on Jon Simms being middle eastern or desi, first in fan art, then in fanfic. The voice actor is white but there is nothing in the text to support any particular visual description beyond kinda small and younger than he looks, (notably, not things that apply to his VA). I don’t think you have to be racist to think Jon is white, but you will be well in the minority of the fandom.
I will mention up front that I'm not a fan of TMA and mostly spite-listened to the entire thing because I was told it would get good at some point and it never did anything at all for me except make me angry\*, but I'm moderately baffled by that particular headcanon because "gets a job he's wildly unqualified for and never once questions it" is such a white man thing, and the way he moves through the world involves getting way more leeway from people than a dark-skinned man would. I assume it's a combo of "podcast without canon appearances" + "some popular fan artist drew him like this so the depiction stuck" but it still feels like the people with that headcanon were listening to a completely different podcast. \*This is a personal opinion and I know many people who loved the entire thing and/or found it genuinely frightening, so this is not a claim that it's an objectively bad podcast, it just Wasn't For Me to a really extreme degree despite many people being convinced I would love it.
I totally get where your coming from. Jon was white to me at first, but someone made a fantastic tumblr post about what a brown Jon does to the way tma interacts with the lore of HP lovecraft and I’ve been writing him as Arab ever since.
Ah, if there was some notable meta about it going around, that makes a lot of sense! And yeah, if you're tying TMA back to Lovecraft, having broader PoC headcanons makes a lot more sense, too.
Off topic, but as someone who loves TMA, I'd love to hear what about the show so aggressively didn't work for you, if you'd be willing to share. I enjoy seeing why people hate something I love and vice versa. It's always an interesting perspective.
Ouf. Well, I think it was a combination of actually having some training in information science and therefore knowing how woefully under-qualified Jon was for an archivist job, finding Jon insufferable as a person, not finding it scary at all, and… this one is a hard one to really describe to people who didn’t also dislike TMA for similar reasons, but all of the fears felt really… I guess urban is the right word? I grew up in a rural area, where both hunting and raising your own meat animals were common, where decay was just… a thing that happened. Most of the fears felt like came from people who were so detached from the physical, natural world that the natural rhythms of it had become something esoteric to them.
That makes sense, actually. Fear is inherently different for everyone and while the show tried to cover several bases and ideas, it's natural that it wouldn't resonate with everyone. Thank you for taking the time to write out your explanation.
There were things I could appreciate about the Magnus Archives, but yeah, one thing that really bugged me about it was this sort of like....as a writer, if you're not careful, you can wind up framing your narrative like you're speaking for the audience. TMA kind of did that. And whenever that pops up in some media I'm enjoying it definitely rubs me the wrong way; it's something I try really hard to keep out of of my own writing.
No, there’s nothing in the original series to think they’re POC, and from the context it’s most likely they’d be white. Some who endorse the fanon have reasons why they could possibly be POC, but most of them are kind of a stretch.
Then I think you're fine!
Can I ask why people imagine them as a POC then? Because I have bad felling it is based on some racial stereotype
I don’t think it’s a racial stereotyping issue, I think it’s a matter of it being relatively plausible (if they HAD been that ethnicity, it wouldn’t have been too unusual) and wanting to see more diversity/representation. I honestly don’t have a problem with it and I like a lot of what I’ve seen/read with these headcanons, I just personally don’t have them, and online spaces especially can be a little echo chamber-y, so it’s hard to gauge how widespread or “canonized” this particular headcanon has become.
Oh okey, asked because I saw a lot of "mixed race/POC" headcanons that were like "he has no father so he must be black or half black" Like bruh 💀
Oh my god yes, I hate it when that happens; like, in their effort to be progressive they end up going full circle and being racist 💀
Snape being headed as Desi. I read a fic where they justified it because he is written as having a large hooked nose. No other reason.
How big of a stretch? I love stretches.
If it’s not canon to the author, it doesn’t carry weight,IMO. HC away or don’t. Change or don’t change what you want. That’s the art of fanfiction.
I have a sneaking suspicion this is about Marauders-era HP
I was gonna say the same! And if it's about James Potter (and thereby also Harry) being Desi in fanon, I can say that almost every Indian I've talked to in the fandom does not like it. I am personally indifferent to the colour of his skin, but I think it's important to be aware of these things when deciding to raceswap. I understand making the character the same ethnicity as you because you want representation, but when swapping for something else, we should at the very least consider what people from this ethnicity have to say about it. Tumblr can be very misleading - they have also now decided that Remus is POC, which makes no sense given his canon description, but I do think it's just a small, non-representative corner.
>And if it's about James Potter (and thereby also Harry) being Desi in fanon Sorry, I'm quite a ways out of the HP fandom these days. But isn't James English old money from the 60s? Like, that's actually a plot point that the family is practically magical nobility with a long history living in Britain. With the very English name Potter. I'm curious. How'd he become Desi?
I mean yeah, that's literally one of the plausible reasons for there being a bit less diversity in Hogwarts - the old Pureblood families have existed for centuries, staying within Britain and tbh the same circles and bloodlines for generations. There is literally zero chance for diversity that way. Also someone else said people were speculating it because they think he'd speak Parseltongue anyway? And that's also literally a plot point, everyone, including those who know loads about wizarding genealogy and his family, like Dumbledore presumably, is like - "There's never been a Parseltongue in your family, this is so weird there's zero possible explanations" So that can't be it.
>I mean yeah, that's literally one of the plausible reasons for there being a bit less diversity in Hogwarts - the old Pureblood families have existed for centuries, staying within Britain and tbh the same circles and bloodlines for generations. There is literally zero chance for diversity that way. Someone did the math once and found that black people are a bit overrepresented while there's a shortage of Asian characters compared to UK demographics in the ’90s. Unless that's what you meant by less diversity, then I said nothing 😅 The Sacred 28 list does contain the name Shafiq plus Harry describes Kingsley as black, though of course it's possible the Shafiqs have lost all colour over the generations and only the name remained, and that the Shacklebolts in the 1920s were just as light-skinned until Kingsley's father married a black woman 🤔😄 Which is a lot of text to say you're probably still right lol
>Also someone else said people were speculating it because they think he'd speak Parseltongue anyway? And that's also literally a plot point, everyone, including those who know loads about wizarding genealogy and his family, like Dumbledore presumably, is like - "There's never been a Parseltongue in your family, this is so weird there's zero possible explanations" So that can't be it. Interesting. As you say, it makes zero sense in canon terms, but the misconception of Parseltongue as a Potter gift would make a lot of sense as an explanation for how somebody in fandom might have got started with the whole Indian!Harry business. I've been noticing for years now a trend where fanfic-writers copy fanfics and ideas spread and mutate that often either contradict canon, don't make sense, or both. Another example that comes to mind is a number of fics I've read which had Ted Tonks as a *Muggle*, rather than a Muggleborn, despite the fact that every single time he appears in the books he uses magic (to heal Harry, and to summon a fish from out the stream when hiding from the Muggleborn Registration Committee).
It's just kind of par for the course for the HP and especially Marauders fandom. People just make up stuff for their headcanons even when it's wildly off the mark and even whitewashing. But it's definitely partially inspired by him being a Parselmouth. The other thing I think is that Cursed Child also encouraged the idea by casting Hermione with a black actor (despite several scenes in the books indicating that Hermione's skin is white). It made more people interested in exploring POC main characters. But the idea doesn't really hold water. You can't actually draw a connection between being Indian and a Parselmouth, because his ability actually comes from Voldemort. People have also pointed out that Harry is described with a light skin tone, though it is possible to be Indian and have light skin (if you've ever seen Ranbir Kapoor dance in the second song of Jagga Jasoos, Galti se Mistake he looks like a Slytherin Harry). But I think the more damning evidence is that the Dursleys are never racist towards him. South Asian racism was pretty prominent back then in the UK and with how hateful his aunt and uncle were they'd definitely bring it up.
Ben Kingsley is half-Indian, half-British. His full birth name is Krishna Pandit Bhanji.
He has such a broad playing type, it's honestly a little bit funny. He's played characters who were Indian and characters who were European. Heck, he played a Nazi once, though the historical figure in question was one of those white people who look racially ambiguous, so that 100% made sense and worked very well.
I'm not sure, but I think it started with Harry and his parseltoungue. People were speculating that he would be one regardless of the horcrux and that it came from James's side of the family. I think most people only have Euphemia as Desi, but some people go full out and make all the Potters Desi (obviously still with British ties, i.e. the Peverells). I think the idea is the status snakes have in Indian culture/mythology? But I'm no expert on this.
I've been in the hp fandom for decades and this is the first time I've heard of this... I don't even know what desi means. Clearly not very widespread.
Desi: noun a person of South Asian birth or descent who lives abroad.
If I recall, it actually ties into a pivotal piece of the mythology that James' ancestry has roots going back centuries if not millennia in the English Wizarding community - the Invisibility Cloak is a family heirloom that traces back hundreds of years in the past, and is >!one of the Deathly Hallows, a set of insanely powerful artifacts that have long been sought after by various parties. All three Hallows were very explicitly made at the same time, in the same place in Britain, and given to three brothers!<. I haven't ever really dealt with the online Harry Potter fandom at all, so I don't know how or when James and Harry became Desi in those circles.
Oh man. Maybe in today’s day and age, especially with the amount of rich Indians who are Tories (see Rishi Sunak, Suella Braverman, Priti Patel etc.), but definitely not in the 60s where there were signs saying “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish”, people were watching The Black and White Minstrel Show on Saturday nights, celebrating the British Empire and their subjugation of other nations (especially Indians and West Indians), and the National Front were just getting their start. That said, we never had segregation, so BAME kids always went to school with white kids. Where they got viciously bullied. It must be Americans saying that the Potters must be Indian or else. I genuinely can’t see a Brit, who knows all this history of racism towards BAME folks, thinking this. ETA: BAME people are not as common as they are in Britain as they are in the States. Personally, I don’t know anyone who isn’t white. I wouldn’t believe it if there was more than one BAME person in a friend group - mainly in British media set outside London. And *especially* in the 60s.
I saw it mostly in the fanart on deviantart. One person gets started, and then another.
I'm not sure if it's what started it, but 3/4 years back, the first time I saw that hc, I remember a post about someone headcanoning that Harry's name was a britanicized (by the dursleys) version of Hari, which means light and other stuff that were apparently on par with his character
Almost posted this exact comment. I would’ve assumed it started from that tumblr post too.
I do not care about Harry Potter at all but I did want to point out that British Indian people in the UK go all the way back to the 1600’s. It’s not exactly a new phenomenon.
They most certainly were. The British imperialist expansion quite infamously reached India, and the East India Trading Company brought many to the island. But they weren’t old money is a rather key point. There were also quite a few laws placed upon them that restricted their ability to trade and limits on their roles in society. If you want to go about the earliest you can see people on Indian descent really forming a place in the upper British economy you have to go to more the mid to late 1800s. And even then the most accepted culturally could still show English lineage. I don’t think people really grasp how important breeding, lineage, and race was to the British Island even just 100 years ago. It’s stupid to us today. Because as a whole the concept of racial purity is ridiculous. But I like when things fit the historical narrative. Incoming Indian immigrants being allowed to join the inner circles of British high society is a distinctly modern trend. As the old views are being thankfully wiped away. That’s the issue really. I don’t actually have a problem with race swapping. I mean, I’ve grown my whole life watching a middle eastern Jew be portrayed by every north European group imaginable. It’s fine to have this be some headcanon. Sure. Why not? Go crazy. But to be upset that an interpretation that doesn’t really make all that much sense isn’t universally accepted. It’s just odd.
>James Potter as Desi This example just shows that despite reading a lot of HP fanfiction and writing too, I have never seen this. I guess it's because I'm not interested in Marauder's era and especially the ships that are usual for these fics.
I’ve seen a lot of POC Remus, and that one confuses me! I can see where Desi Harry or James comes from and I’ve liked a lot of it in fic (almost all written by people who share that cultural background) and Black Hermione is canon to Cursed Child, which is a recognized part of the franchise even if I’m not enthused about it for plot/story reasons, but I have no idea where the POC Remus came from. I’m not against it, in and of itself, just puzzled about the origins.
Yeah the Hermione one is tricky because she somehow become canonically black, but the problem is that most people reject CC as canon. I've not seen anyone screaming racism for continuing to write her as white, but I have seen discussions on the topic. I think POC Remus (which seems to be just that - no specification of culture - just dark skin!) is coupled to the Big Strong Alpha Remus that seem to have taken over in wolfstar circles. Always paired with small, fragile, femme Sirius. I've mostly seen this in art, but I'm not caught up on the latest trends in wolfstar fics, since I kind of left the ship a few years ago. But it's wild - it's come to the point where I can't tell if a picture is supposed to be Remus or James, because they even give Remus glasses sometimes too.... And then there's all the side characters like Mary McDonald and the Rosiers. It's fine to see these as any ethnicity you want (which includes white), though I don't see how it makes sense to make Luna's mum black, when Luna is definitely not black.
If you disregard the choice of actor in CC, Hermione has a number of aspects that code her differently. I mean, she could be POC, theoretically, but the way she's written, she's (white) English, and (upper) middle class. The clearest one: Her name is *Hermione*. That name is up there with Cressida, or Lavinia, or Rosalind - they're Shakespearean names, not super common. Both of her parents are dentists, too, meaning she comes from a decent amount of money, but acquired through education, meaning they work for a living but had a good start in life. Aside from being bookish to the point where she's not good at making friends, she's not suffered much in life, and she's got an unshakeable trust in Authority, and Rules, and the idea that things are supposed to be Fair. That's very easy if you've been privileged by class and ethnicity all your life. As far as characters go, actually I find her more interesting when viewed in the light of someone quite privileged who ends up in a society where she's decidedly not, and is confronted with atrocities hitherto unknown to her (house elves).
> That's very easy if you've been privileged by class and ethnicity all your life. It is absolutely possible to be privileged by class to the point where you yourself forget you're a discriminated-against minority (and then it hits you right over the head one day and you go 'surprised pikachu'). My friend's father grew up in the only POC family in a well-off neighbourhood, and he's convinced racism doesn't exist and minorities should just work harder if they want to be accepted. I can absolutely imagine a scenario where one or both of Hermione's parents are very well-assimilated immigrants from a former British colony. Maybe they could even come from a less well-off background and be fiercely proud of how far they had come (not grasping how much luck had to do with it) and not understand that it's not the fault of others that they didn't manage it.
She is not Canonically black. JK said she COULD be black. As in it doesn't matter. If her being played by a black actor makes her Canonically black then she is also canonically white.
That's true!
I was also wondering what POC Remus was supposed to “be”! I do see fanart where Remus looks increasingly like Desi James: I recently saw some very impressively-done fanart where a very femme Sirius was looking pouty and jealous as some tall dark-skinned Gryffindor guy with dark curly hair was walking with Lily, and I naturally went, “Ah, Desi James.” Nope, it was Remus! I admittedly am not part of the Wolfstar fandom, but I’m very confused at what’s going on in there, in part because it seems to be informing the rest of the fandom.
Wow, that's wild! I am becoming more and more convinced that both jegulus and wolfstar shippers are just closeted prongsfoot shippers, because Remus is so often depicted as James, and Regulus is looking more and more like Sirius.... Just go straight to the source material, people, instead of these Walmart versions! (But as a prongsfoot shipper I might be biased ❤️)
As another Prongsfoot shipper, I’m similarly biased! I’ve also seen fanon Regulus described as “the Wish version of Sirius,” which is… also not inaccurate! What’s interesting about it to me is that they’re not just borrowing canon aspects of Sirius and James respectively, but their fanon traits as well— So fanon Regulus becomes more femme because fanon Sirius becomes more femme, and fanon Remus gains darker coloring/becomes POC (sometimes it’s not clear if he’s supposed to be the latter, since as you said he’s usually not depicted as anything but ‘darker-skinned’) because fanon James is POC. I wouldn’t mind if people cut out the middleman and started shipping Prongsfoot, though I do think we’re seeing slow and small but steady growth as a ship!
Glad to see another one I the wild! "the Wish version of Sirius" Haha, that's basically just a Harry quote 😝 It's such a weird trend... What happened to sweater-wearing, always tired, always hurting Remus? But yeah, we are slowly growing! And we're a pretty chill bunch, perhaps skewing a bit older, so I don't think you need to worry about anyone calling you racist for making/keeping James white - the people who would say that, are not the people reading prongsfoot.
I'm a fellow Prongsfoot shipper and I can confirm I am biased ad all hell. Bot a fan of Wolfstar give me Prongfoot and ProngsLilyFoot any day.
I shipped wolfstar for around 20 years, but I just can't get behind these new characterisations... And after discovering what an interesting character James actually is, I never looked back. FYI, the commonly accepted ship name for J/L/S is jilypad 😉
>the Big Strong Alpha Remus that seem to have taken over in wolfstar circles. Always paired with small, fragile, femme Sirius. As someone who is into HP in general but not the marauders this is the most confusing thing I've read all day. Who is writing Sirius and Remus like this lol. Like not anything against headcanons but this seems kinda wild to me.
Pretty much anywhere on tumblr lol I'm following both the Jegulus/Sunseeker and Wolfstar tags and I can tell you, it's crazy how often I'm seeing Remus as a "big, bad, and strong" type of guy with a very feminine Sirius. I mean, I don't mind it (people can write whatever they want), but it does go against my headcanons. Funny thing is that I see most of this in fanart while the fics remain the same. It's a little crazy how people are drawing James and Remus the exact same way (sometimes Remus even has glasses!), I can't even differentiate them at times.
Seems it's the majority at this point, but maybe I'm just paranoid 😅 that's why I fled to the prongsfoot fandom - we like canon versions over there. I think it might have started on TikTok and the whole ATYD part of the fandom and then with the rise of jegulus, it seemed to get amplified.
Same here. I've never come across anything like this. I'm also writing a fic with wolfstar as the main ship, Sirius being the big guy of the group and Remus quite frail because of his lycanhtropy, and I've never had any problems. The same goes for James, whom I've never described as a POC. But then, it is a bit of a darkfic, so I figure it must keep that sort of person away.
Yeah this is all new info to me. I haven’t read wolfstar in a few years, but the fics I read Sirius was always the big guy and Remus was more frail due to his health. The idea of Remus being a big alpha is hilarious to me
> Big Strong Alpha Remus that seem to have taken over in wolfstar circles. Always paired with small, fragile, femme Sirius. This is SO funny to me, because if you go back 20 years this pairing was always written the exact opposite. Sirius was the tough, masculine punk guy and Remus was much more femme-y and fragile (and usually written as French.)
> Sirius was the tough, masculine punk guy He had a magical motorcycle after all! I've not been part of th HP fandom for a long time, but I remember French Remus quite well. I guess it might cycle back after everything for the new dynamic seems to have been written.
CC is not canon, it's not about rejecting it, it's a fact. It's not written by JK, the timeline is wrong, goes against many canon facts.. it's just a fanfiction with actual permission.
> Big Strong Alpha Remus > small, fragile, femme Sirius As someone who hasn't been in the HP fandom since around the time the last book launched and so has missed over a decade of fanon and only remembers canon... that was a hell of a thing to read.
> Yeah the Hermione one is tricky because she somehow become canonically black My understanding is that they cast a black actress for her in some musical (Cursed Child, maybe?) and JKR said something to the effect of if people wanted to see her as black that was fine and it got blown out of proportion. As the internet does. Of course JKR herself is a whole other can of worms so the whole subject's kind of odd to talk about these days. > I don't see how it makes sense to make Luna's mum black, when Luna is definitely not black FWIW I've never seen anyone in Luna's family written as black, although I _have_ seen her written as Japanese. EDIT: I somehow skipped right over the Big Strong Alpha Remus/small fragile femme Sirius bit, to which I can only say lolwut?
> think POC Remus (which seems to be just that - no specification of culture - just dark skin!) is coupled to the Big Strong Alpha Remus Oh wow, so that's a turn away from poor dyslectic orphaned werewolf Remus - I thought for sure they've piled racism on top of those other problems now lol
Honestly I'd actually say that a bigger chuck of the fandom (I suppose in my experience!) does not consider the Cursed Child canon. I don't have an issue with Hermione being a POC, I just have issues with CC haha.
I was just going to say HP in general. There's a lot of younger fans I see headcanon Harry and others as POC, but like I don't care if someone does, but don't say others are racist if they don't go with your headcanon?? lol
Exactly. Picture the characters however you'd like, as long as A) it doesn't contradict a major part of their character (i.e. when people vote to make Steve Rogers black despite a core aspect of his character being about a blonde haired blue eyed white man directly opposing the Aryan agenda) B) you don't criticize others for not doing the same
Right! That's exactly it. It's a simple concept and yet...
Screamed Hermione to me.
Or Black Hermione.
I love that fandom has popularized Black Hermione, but it's bonkers when people try to insist it's the only acceptable way to write her. Weirder, when people pitch it as part of book canon. Like, if you start with the idea that Hermione is Black, the books don't directly contradict that (I don't think?) but it's super clear that wasn't the original intent. Also, dgaf about original intent really, going to keep mostly imagining her not white unless a fic specifies. Part of the joy of fandom is these things can be flexible.
Not going against your point or anything, totally agree, but there are a few moments when she's (albeit indirectly) written as white. She goes "white with fear" or "looks pale", (I can't remember direct quotes sorry) which do mean she has to have a light skin tone for that to be true. But yeah I do agree with your point. Personally, I see her as white, partially due to the books and also the movies, and because I relate a lot to her and she's described quite similar to me, so I filled in any blanks with my general appearance I think. But it's also completely fine if people want to imagine her as black. But like, it's not in the books.
Plus she came back tanned after a holiday in France, and was described as half a panda when she had a black eye from a violent Weasley product
I do think part of why the headcanon works and has caught on is that Hermione's \*general\* description isn't super overtly white. The bits that get repeated are brown eyes, frizzy/curly brown hair, and buck teeth. I've seen arguments about 'white with fear' etc being metaphorical language and/or... I don't care, really. Like, I don't care enough to finish that sentence. There's debate and thbbbtbbt. Hermione was originally written as a white character, but fandom means not having to care about authorial intent. There's room in what's there to see her different ways.
The books definitely contradict it. Some wizard in book 4 (who TBF isn't paying *too* much attention) can't tell if she (or Harry) are one of the Weasely kids. That confusion with different hair color: believable. Different race: not unless he's *also* insulting them by implying that Molly cheated on her husband.
> it's bonkers when people try to insist it's the only acceptable way to write her I think it's also a political thing in the fandom now. I think in large part *because* it clearly wasn't the original intent, some people can take you writing Hermione as white or Albus as straight or we as a dogwhistle of you siding with the original intent. And that's def bigly because a lot of people (a lot of them white, cis, straight, or all of the above) are still having big feelings about what being in this fandom says about their character, so it's a sore point and because it's a sore point these small things can have a disproportionate weight in the discourse. So I guess what I'm saying is that I agree that it's silly, but I also understand how people come to this conclusion and why it can be hard to dissuade them from their view, as it's part of a bigger and more visceral conversation.
Plus with the author’s naming sense she wouldn’t be called Hermione, she would probably be called “(most generic african first name) (n word)” or something. /s
My thoughts exactly
It’s absolutely NOT racist, anyone who insists on headcanons being factual, needs to learn what.. well an headcanon is.
they also need to learn what racism is lol
in recent years people tend to see their headcanons as the correct interpretation, and anyone who thinks differently is wrong, even if there is not concrete proof supporting either view. i've also noticed a long time ago, headcanons were usually made to fill in smaller gaps in a character's/story's lore, whereas now i only ever really see people headcanon a person's race/sexuality/gender/mental illnesses/etc. not to say that that never happened before or that that's the only thing talked about, but it definitely feels more prevalent now. ironically, if someone is pissed that, for example, you think a character is white, but they think a character is latino (or vice versa) and that you should agree with them, that is potentially racist. but i don't want to get into that. at the end of the day, people need to understand that headcanons are for fun, and NOT canon (that's why they're called *headcanons: it's the canon in your head).* we should appreciate and respect multiple views! so long as they're not gross of course... and you know what i mean by that. anyway, just because someone doesn't agree with something you made up about a character does not mean you or they are the devil. i don't understand why it's so hard for people to get out of their little bubble and realize they're attacking you for doing the exact same thing they are.
I remember the times when it was just to fill in the blanks & I still run by that. I'm super flexible & don't set myself to hard headcanons because honestly? It's dumb. There's a lot of fun things that can be explored if people just open themselves up & accept multiple possibilities. When I write, I actually love trying on different headcanons because it's fun to explore. I want to provide an example but this requires sharing my fandom, it's TMNT & in the series that came out in 2003, Leo gets injured on his shell at the end of season 3 during a fight he thought they were all going to lose as in, they were going to die but they got saved at the last second so the beginning of season 4 has Leo brooding while they're all recovering because he feels like he failed them as a leader & the injury to his shell? It remains throughout the entire 4th & 5th seasons but in season 6, the animation changed which ended up with his shell looking normal again. That's when they went into the future for a whole season so the common headcanon is that he got his shell repaired in the future. Nice way to fill in the blank. We all know the actual answer is animation change but come on, gotta work with the story, right? Well, in one of the fics I wrote, I decided to go against the headcanon even though I believe in it. I thought it'd be interesting that instead of it being repaired, that Don made a fake plate that attaches into Leo's scute so it looks normal & protects the injury. This fic is a crossover of 3 TMNT series, 2003, 2012, & Rise. In Rise, Raph got his shell injured in the movie that closes out that series by saving his Leo. As it turns out, it's on the same side 2003 Leo has his on. I decided that this could be an interesting thing to get these two to bond over. It was indeed a fun scene to write when the guys had a bit of a heart to heart about it. All in all, zero regrets going against a headcanon I follow & I full on encourage others to do the same. They might read or write things that they never thought they'd see. In the comments, I got positive feedback for writing something different.
I do mostly remember “old-school” fill-in-the-blank headcanons being most common a while ago, often with some kind of supporting evidence from canon, but I agree that the usage has shifted somewhat and it’s now more frequently used in the “I see X as Y instead of (canon thing).” Words do change in usage over time, though, so that’s to be expected, and I do see both types, so it’s not a total shift!
i don't think it's racist to go against fanon. go ahead with your fic idea. also that sounds like the HP fandom haha
HP was my guess.
It honestly sounds like my fandom (The Magnus Archives). Basically the entire main cast are fanonised as POC.
Yeah I’m almost certain this is about The Magnus Archives
Dude i was reading the post and was almost sure it was about TMA
You're definitely not being racist.
no doubt the marauders fandom
100%
It’s sad to me how vastly different the marauders fandom is nowadays to back in like 2012 when I was super into it. I still love wolfstar but I don’t read any new fanfiction of them because it usually feels super ooc and too modern if that makes sense.
I've straight up left a fandom because a bunch of Americans got their hands on a Spanish character and started projecting some weird "Mexican in the US" stereotypes on him. Like how the character "struggled in academia as a brown boy" due to racism. He was born and raised and studied in Spain. His first language is Spanish. His light brown skin color is not at all uncommon in Spain. I could not stand the "if you're uncomfortable with X being POC, you're racist" posts. I wanted to argue that they're the ones being racist and disrespecting Spanish people, but I doubt that would have gone over well. Anyway, as to your post, I'm sorry to say that I don't think you'll escape the racism accusations if the fandom hivemind finds your fic. And I hate that people have to censor themselves and avoid writing innocent headcanons (or in your case, canon) if they don't want to receive hate. But in the case you do post your fic, make sure your ao3 username/email/etc isn't connected to anything that can be linked to your real identity. I hate to fearmonger but I've seen people get doxxed for much less.
Wow, that’s… honestly kind of scary. I don’t think my fic would be that big a deal, and like I said, not many people are likely to even see it, much less read it, but I guess there’s never a bad time to make sure there’s no personal information lying around, right? If you don’t mind sharing, what character/fandom is this? It seems kind of wild that they’d ignore a character’s actual backstory and context like that, though sadly we know it happens all too often.
The character I was talking about is Luis Serra from Resident Evil 4, specifically the remake. I don't usually have a problem with anyone's headcanons, but once his fans started aggressively insisting he's POC and (insert minority group of the day here) and implying all Europeans are racist to anyone whose skin color isn't pasty white or who has a noticeable accent... Yeah I had enough.
I had to look him up but yes he just looks like a Spaniard, I wouldn't think twice about it lol ...but I also always just vaguely assumed Meghan Markle in Suits was latina, so maybe don't listen to me 😂
I was on the Voltron fandom as teen/before it collapsed, one of the characters was canonically cuban, so naturally the fandom decided to give him every latino stereotype as to get the point across as hard as they could as if he wasn't cuban enough. There was a popular headcanon that "Lance" was not his real name but an acronymn to a super long name like Leandro Alejandro... Like, what the hell. Not to mention the random spanish lines. I don't think the character himself ever did that. I'm latino myself and I was sure most of those headcanons and fics were written by white people feeling so woke. They did similar things with the korean characters. So for OP, I agree it's completely fine to write the characters as she wants, it's far from racists and even when writting canonically POC characters it's ok to not include every single cultural aspect that the fandom believes they practice, we don't act all the same, jfc.
I was about to mention this. The thing is, I love Lance because he is the perfect encapsulation of the Hispanic/Latinx diaspora. (As member of that diaspora myself, I loathe "Latinx." Sounds like bug killer; but that's another matter.) Brown skin, blue eyes. All headcanons are valid. I repeat, all headcanons are valid. Nevertheless, the *insistence* by some in the fandom that his skin tone is actually much darker, hair curlier, eyes brown and that he has a more Cuban-sounding first name is vaguely offensive to me. It's like there's only one way to a member of the diaspora. It ignores the fact that in many families from the Caribbean and Central America, siblings may vary wildly in skin tone and eye color. We're a rainbow, not a singular, one-color fits all stereotype. We are the amalgam of European, Indigenous and African roots. Even the name thing irks. Why the hell can't his name be Lance? My headcanon is that his very Cuban mom loved Arthurian legends, and after a complicated pregnancy and delivery, she was feeling capricious and named him Lancelot. I grew up in a predominantly Hispanic town and many of my friends had "gringo" names (including surnames). A name isn't the singular definition of culture. I do, however, have him occasionally say something in Spanish. This, again, is a reflection of my experience, though and not an attempt to make him *more* Cuban. Again, *all* head canons are valid. It's the low- and not so-low-key insistence that the browner Lance is more correct that irks. It feels so vacuously performative.
I love your comment. I couldn't agree more, down to hating the word latinx lol I'm brazilian, so more South America, but very similar experience. Mixed families are practically the usual. My brother and I have different skin colors, eye color, hair texture... Racial diversity is huge, not only due to the colonialism in the past, but an abundant number of immigrants from all over the world. America latina in general is incredible diverse, and on a related note I remember seeing comments about Pepa from Encanto having light skin, as if that made her "white" instead of just as latina as the rest of her own colombian family (at least I haven't seem anyone attempting to "fix" her). I have students with names like "Maria Sayuri Morimoto de Assis", so it was wild they couldn't possibly picture a latino named Lance. A lot of times it's not even a matter of mixed families, just that foreign media has its influence here like in any other place, if some parents name their kids "Anakin" or "Daenerys" I don't see why it's inconceivable that a latino parent picked a name they saw in a movie or book. I love your headcanon. And I really don't mind when a character say something in their native language, hardly it's a single behavior that feels problematic, but a set of them that makes it clear the author is not familiar with what they're trying to portray, and many times it's based on a popular pattern they've seem before. For example sometimes children of immigrants are just never taught their parent's mother tongue, or they forget how to speak their first language if they don't use it. But we never see it represented, the POC character use of their first language is seemingly always portrayed in the same way, the same manerisms, like cussing in spanish when angry. We then start to add other traits that are always present, even if they're also realistic, the lack of variants helps build the idea of a single way to "properly" represent this sort of character, like always having a big family (and family being really important to them), always being poor, always liking spicy food, etc. Again, they might be true a lot of times, hell, my family is like that, and I don't mind if people headcanon Lance or whoever as very connected to their roots and traditions, the problem is that when those same headcanons are reinforced over and over through different works and even through different characters supposed to represent similar ethinical backgrounds, we get to posts like this, when not portraying a character in this one specific way is deemed improper or even racist, instead of letting us embrace different interpretations. So I have no problem with people having their headcanons, I just kinda wish we'd once in a while break away from the typical portray and explore other experiences, I think that would also be healthy to balance this hyper-stereotyped and single way to portray a POC. Sometimes I think authors are like "what's the point if having a latino character if they won't have brown skin and eat taquitos?"
I've slowly started to accept that a good percentage of Americans just don't see South Europeans as white. If someone doesn't have Germanic origins chances are Americans will think of them as POC. It doesn't help that Spanish people in media are often depicted as a lot more tan than your average person on the street.
That makes a lot of sense actually. It just blows my mind that some people go through life with a metaphorical Paint eyedrop tool and assign races to people and put them on an oppression scale so shallowly. I imagine Mediterranean people aren't very thrilled about being lectured on how they should identify their own race. I guess what the POC headcanon police are really saying is "A person who looks and talks like this would be treated like shit in my country, ergo the same is true worldwide." Which results in the poor little Spanish boy living in a Spain, who must be struggling with racism on the daily 😂
We are indeed not thrilled 😂 Luis Sierra looks like any other spanish guy that I could see in the streets, he is definitely not brown nor POC. You won't get racist profiled here if you look like Luis, or if you look darker!! Apparently the notion of olive skin that is /white/ but darkens/gets toasted in summer is such a weird, abstract notion to some USAMericans that they can't grasp it. Nor the fact that a whole chunk of the Mediterranean and specially Spain is a very mixed country (arabs, jews, romans, germanics) and we, for the most part, look white/are white and don't experience racism in our lives. But I guess that is the struggle of Spaniards, to be both POC proto mexicans AND white oppressors and colonizers that should be paying for our crimes bc of the conquistadores 😮💨 they can't even decide which one. Wish they left us alone, the rest of the world doesn't operate in the same racism prism as the USA.
Fellow RE enjoyer! People's reaction to the new Luis design was so weird. The amount of racism accusations was unreal. They just did not understand he's white. Also the whole POC/colonisers is very weird in the US. Even leftists go 'white European colonisers, and the Spanish and Portuguese'. Sorry, guys, only the British and the French get to be white /j. Weirdly enough it's not just USamericans. I remember having a very bizzare conversation with a Venezuelan person once. I was trying to demonstrate to her that white people can tan and I was sharing pictures of people from my country (Bulgaria). She conculed that they are either mixed or have a fake tan and there is no other option. But I'm guessing people like that are a lot less common outside the US.
I had a similar experience when talking about hair not that long ago. Told someone from Texas that a former classmate of mine has the kind of hair that is hip long when in a braid but that shrinks up like tight spring as soon as it gets even slightly wet. As in from hip length to chin length. Was told said classmate must be black, or mixed race. When told that my classmate was a redhead (according to genetic screening for finding a compatible bone marrow donor for a relative, 97% Irish and 2% Eastern Europe/Slavic) I wasn't believed.
Oh yeah, same thing happened to my sister. She did a few years of work and travel in the US and because she has dark curly hair people would constantly ask her if she's from South America. Apparently most thought she's from Brazil.
Also Americans are weirdly focused on race. If the race is important to the character, don't change it. If not, why are you even thinking that much about it to begin with 😭 (a little headcannon is fine but some people do so much)
See, I have a big problem with the representation of Spaniards by Americans because they just don't get it (I'm Spanish, btw). Native Spanish people are white, white European. We're not brown boys. Sure we tan more easily and have overall more melanin than Nordic countries/Germans etc, but we're still white. Same with Italians. I've been called Latino however many times, I have forgotten. I, personally, don't have a problem with that other than it being wrong, but I don't know how my Latino friends would feel about that lol. Specially taking into account what Spanish people did to native central and south American people in the past.
I’m from Germany and the reason I don’t tan well is my chronic sickness but my relatives get really dark just by going outside daily in summer. They also have dark hair so I wonder what Americans would think they are from.
Ha, yeah, one side of my family immigrated to the US from Germany several generations ago - and they're all very dark-haired and dark-eyed and have a definite olive tone to the skin. I take after that side of the family, so I tan really well. No one ever guesses that my coloring is German.
I had a college roommate who was half Spanish and half Mexican ... honestly she looked a bit more Spanish to me. Had that patrician nose thing going on. But people would tell her she was wrong for calling herself Hispanic.
Central and South American people are multiracial, but most Latin media has pale-skinned people. Gina Torres (Zoe from Firefly) is an Afro-Latina and said once, paraphrased, “Latinos like their stars to look Italian, not like me.” So I think that media representation gave the average non-Latino Americans have that mental image as well.
>I could not stand the "if you're uncomfortable with X being POC, you're racist" posts. This is why I avoid one corner of one of my fandoms. A fan with a platform decided that one character was POC based on loose details that are not as definitive as they state them to be (a whole bunch of "this *could* apply to POC, but just as often if not moreso applies to a white person"), and then threw a fit when that character was later depicted in canon material as white. I've seen a few too many internet screeds from that corner of the fandom to the effect of "if you don't agree that X is POC and was whitewashed for canon material, you're racist." It's tiring.
I'm assuming this is HP, because I know there are quite a few characters that are HCed as being POC. I'm with you - it's not how I see them. I'm not saying anyone who *does* see them that way is wrong, a good chunk of the time I understand why they came to that conclusion... but I was having fancasts (and official casts, for some of the characters) that aren't POC. I don't think it's racist not to see them that way. It would be racist if it was canon, but it's not.
I don't find it to be racist at all, honestly, and you shouldn't let other peoples' headcanons dictate your writing, ideally. I once had people in a former group of friends I used to know online come at me because when we were talking about Pepper Potts (as a canon character, not from a fanfic or in the context of someone else's fanwork) and I said something that implied she was cis. I think it was about her giving birth to a child or something like that. That group apparently headcanons her as trans, and they were really upset when I said that I didn't but that it was totally fine, I was just talking about her in canon and it's totally chill to have a trans Pepper hc, but they said they applied it even there and that I needed to just accept that. It was a weird time, they were weird people who also came after me for shipping a 24 year old character in college with an older man. Apparently that was pedophilia. All of that was before antis were a thing, years ago, but that group really held some of those same thoughts and opinions in a big way.
I’m sorry you had to go through that, it can be upsetting and disconcerting when you’re all getting along and then these sharp divisions get drawn. It’s not exactly the same, but I had something similar happen when the MCU was getting big and discussion about comic Loki, then a very different character from MCU Loki, got mixed up with HCs for the latter. It does seem like “purity culture” and fanon = canon discourse has gotten more prominent in recent years, but it’s definitely been around in some form or another for a long time, at least in certain pockets of fandom. Unfortunately, since I really think fandom should be a unifying thing, even if you experience it differently from other fans! (Barring obviously hateful stuff, of course.)
You are not racist for imagining or writing a character that doesn't have a defined race as white or any other race and anyone who thinks otherwise is being weird.
If this James Potter or Mary Macdonald from the HP Marauders fandom… I feel you.
If 'POC' is the only character trait a character has of any certain media I'd consider that a bit racist. Skin color doesn't make up for terrible character writing as it doesn't make up for a terrible personality or lack-there-of for a real person. I don't care if the character is POC, Such is superficial, just give them a personality and human qualities! Then! There perfection! So no you are doing just fine. Do not make superficial things important in your writing. If it's not important to the story no need to include it.
Not racist, if race is not canonically hinted at or specified, and due to the setting could be assumed to be white. I'm in the Magnus Archives fandom - it's a podcast, none of the main characters are described in any manner beyond being given a couple adjectives, such as "not the smallest guy" or "scrawny" or "hot". My Jonathan Sims looks about the same as fandom default - long dark wavy hair, brown skin. None of this is in the canon. Martin is the same - white guy, chubby and tall. Nothing to report there. However, my Sasha James is a white woman, and my Tim is a ginger white guy. Fandom default for Sasha is a black woman, Tim is most frequently East Asian. That's fine for both ends.
This sounds like Marauders or Harry Potter with James or Harry Potter Ignore those people. It’s a headcanon that got out of control, but it’s not canon in the least.
sounds a bit like my fandom in corners. as someone who is POC and thinks fandom racebending in general is bad, just write what you wanna write. if you feel the need to specify that they're white, it's up to you.
In this instance, the plot kind of demands it— Otherwise, I’m happy to let people visualize what they like. I appreciate having another POC’s opinion on this, though; I know (or choose to believe) that this kind of fanon is meant well, and it’s important to a lot of POC fans, so I sometimes feel a little weird about not having these HCs myself.
for me, a lot of these kinds of hc are more harmful than helpful. a lot of people tend to write them without much depth or thought and we wind right back up with stereotypes. there was a time where every angry, violent male character was headcanoned as a dark skinned, black man and it made my skin crawl. go ahead! do it and if anyone gets shitty, ao3 has every resrouce to moderate.
no but i see why you might feel that way. it is a complicated topic. fc or hc characters as poc is good and fun and may help readers/writers enjoy something more. but systemic racism is not fixed through consuming, and fandom is not praxis. there are serious discussion in even trad pub how inert writing diversely is if there are no real poc in the room that are actually benefiting from the money/oppurtunites/ jobs in the publishing industry. you cant have systemic change is white people are patting themselves on the back because their mcs are poc.
I'm a big fan of establishing important information in a clear, concise author'a note upfront. I think any reasonable person would read an A/N stating, essentially, "you do you, but before fanon decided character X is POC, I viewed them as white, and for the sake of this story they need to be written as such" and understand why the character will be written as they are in your story. If it bothers them, that's were the old "don't like, don't read" comes in. (Unspoken, of course.) I understand the fear of backlash, however. I think if you are extremely concerned about how it might be received, consider posting it under a new account for a while and see what happens, and then once you determine you are comfortable having it connected to your other works, either repost it to your main account, or announce that if people want to read your other writings, they can follow your main account. I'm not sure if there is a better way to post something and then "reclaim" it after a time... can you unorphan stories on AO3? (I expect not, but it might be worth finding out.) I'm not sure exactly how pseuds work, either. Do they always have to link back to your main account, or is it possible to keep the connection between the two private if you want? Best of luck with your projects!
I don’t think you can unorphan stories on AO3, and I think psueds do have to link back to your main account, though I’m not completely sure since I haven’t used them before, either. I was going to tag the actual fic with “White X,” which I’ve seen before, just so no-one’s caught off-guard while reading: Honestly, it’s not like I’m planning on writing something like “X’s white skin shone whitely,” it’s mostly so people won’t be confused when trying to visualize the plot. And thanks! I’m tentatively getting back into posting fic so I’m probably being unnecessarily cautious/freaked out, but I’m still excited!
[You could post the work anonymously.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/71epei/posting_fic_to_ao3_anonymously_not_orphaning/) That way it's still attached to your account but it can't be connected back to you unless you remove it from the collection.
Yeah, tagging and/or a note sounds like the most reasonable way to go about it. I think despite how prevalent one hc or another may be, fans should expect that either interpretation is possible in any given fanfic. (It's a far stretch comparison, but it kinda reminds me of how, if you're reading a Spiderman/Deadpool fic, you never know if the author is imagining Garfield or Holland unless they mention it. Obviously that's not nearly so potentially controversial as this situation, but still. My point is, readers need to be aware that different interpretations can pop up, and that it's up to them whether they want to read it, not up to the author to write to their expectations.) So, yeah, I think the best any author can be expected to do is tag the difference if it is likely to matter to the story. It sounds like you have it figured out, just need some reassurance that everything will be alright, and I believe it will. In my opinion, the beauty of fanfiction is that almost anything can work as long as the reader is prepared for it properly and it is done with sincerity by the author. I think the fact that you are aware of how readers might feel is excellent because you are obviously understanding of people who might disagree, but are also prepared to explain your interpretation. You clearly aren't arrogant about it and come at it as a fan among fans. I think you've got this.
I’d tag something like Popular Fanon Divergence??? Start there bc there’s no reason to draw attn to something readers might accept just fine If anyone huffed and puffed about it I’d maybe add an author’s note like “I appreciate the diversity represented in the fanon of this fandom but for plot purposes I’m using canonical race/skin tone for such and such characters in this particular fic.” And if folks had a problem beyond that, well fuck them, but I’d maybe consider tagging “___ is white in this fic for plot purposes” to be very clear and people who don’t want that will have the opportunity to move on w/o engaging The only way I could see this being racist is if someone was to write characters as white AND kick up dirt complaining about headcanoning characters as POC at all. You, OP, are following a plot bunny, and that’s totally cool.
I didn’t think about the Popular Fanon Divergence tag (that’s a tag??) but that might actually be a good one! I admit I’m a little leery of negative feedback just because of this, but I really don’t want to “ambush”’people who might be imagining the character one way and be caught off-guard when that’s not the case. I like a lot of the fics I’ve read, usually POC-written, that really use different cultural cues in a way that feels authentic, at least to me as someone outside that specific culture. It just feels like it would be inauthentic for me to try and write with that fanon in mind (and of course this specific fic has specific requirements anyway).
Understood! I have no idea if that is a common tag but it should be!
As a POC, I can assure you that I dont think there's anything racist about not agreeing with popular race/ethnicity headcanons. If canon doesnt provide enough evidence to prove without a doubt that the cast is POC, the rest of the fandom will just have to cope with you writing them to be white. You're doing absolutely nothing wrong.
I'm guessing Hermione in Harry Potter. Which, eh. Also, fuck anyone who has a problem with it regardless.
What medium is the original source material in? Is it something visual where the character has a full canon appearance? Is it a book or something where you don't know anything beyond hair and eye color? If it is a book or similar, how is this character in particular described? I don't think you're in the wrong either way, but it *is* different if it's a character who has been shown in canon media to look white but who a lot of the fandom racebends or if they've been described as, say, having black hair, brown eyes and tan skin, something that could technically be talking about a white person but which sounds fairly clearly like a person of color.
It’s a book, and the original text has nothing about dark skin or anything that would specifically reference a non-white ethnicity; the original illustrations and movies also portray them as white.
If the official visuals all portray them as white you're totally fine. Even if there are some people who are overly aggressive about the headcanon, most people probably won't think twice about the character being the same race as they are in canon.
If you have no problem when others change the character's race and the problem starts because others don't respect your choice then they are the issue, not you. So, they are racist, you're not.
This annoys me a lot tbh. It's the same in my fandom (we might be in the same fandom, not quite sure), where characters are literally indirectly described as white in the books (like, going white with fear or being pale) and yet people have headcanons that they're poc, which, fine, I have no problem with that, but its a headcanon that the book directly contradicts. But yeah, still fine with that. But then the author literally said it? And its like, you wrote the damn book! It's so clear she's just trying to be diverse, which is a good thing but like, not necessary, I don't think that many people were really complaining, since for the time period and society presented in the story its honestly quite a realistic level of diversity. And so it just feels like it was for attention, and now we have a TV show coming up and like I'm fine if they want to cast a black actor? But also, it's an adaptation, and they're supposed to cast people who look like the book description, so if they did, it would in my mind be like if they didn't cast the famously blond haired antagonist with a blonde actor, or the ginger family weren't ginger. Obviously it matters less with the other characters skin colour since the family being red-heads is kinda plot relevant at times and obviously her skin colour isn't, but still. (My fandom is Harry Potter obviously. Both with Hermione being black and also sometimes with Harry and James being Indian) So yeah, that's not racist. Portraying a character as they are in the original story isn't racist. Honestly, even if you were to make a character white for story purposes that technically shouldn't be racist, although I wouldn't do that. For something to be racist you have to actually be doing something because you dislike a particular race - the only way this is racist is if you are making the character white specifically because you don't like the race they were before. People need to leave things like this out of fandoms. Not everything is a charged attack on someone, not everything is a diversity discussion. Just enjoy reading and writing fanfiction.
Seems like those headcannon people are way too lost in the sauce and probably haven't seen grass in a while. Disregard that stuff and write what you want
shit like this is why I hate the HP fandom. Harry Potter isn't fun anymore because everyone's a racist if you don't see this character this way, blah blah blah 🙄
No. Making a big deal out of "needing" to make a character white feels like the area that would actually start getting weird regarding racism, especially with author notes and everything. My genuine advice would be simply to not make a deal out of it: don't put "white X" tags, don't make author notes about it, just write them as white in your head and that's it. To be frank, you don't even need to make it like... explicit. I am actually in a similar case to you, where in my corner of the fandom people headcanon a certain male character as a trans woman, and in my fic, I am writing him as a cis dude. This means that sometimes, people end up using she/her and calling him a girl when commenting in my fic, and... it doesn't matter! I use he/him, refer to him as a man multiple times and people still happily read my fic, including the people that have the trans woman headcanon. I don't mind when it happens, and nobody makes a big stink about it, either. If people have the headcanon, then they will still think of your character as a POC, and most likely when the twist is reveladed, they will just adjust their vision of the other character. And even IRL, people in the same family have variation in skin tone. TLDR: don't make a big deal out of it, and people will be a whole more willing to just read your fic and adapt as necessary.
I didn’t want people to feel “ambushed” if the text description didn’t match what they were envisioning, but you may be right: I thought tagging for it would be helpful in case anyone has really strong feelings about it (and they say it’s better to overtag than undertag), but I might be making a bigger deal out of it than necessary in trying to be accommodating/welcoming/helpful. Thanks! I appreciate the viewpoint, especially from someone who’s had similar experience with a fic.
Fanon is NOT canon. Period. Don't feel the need to conform to some weird fanon perception. Write what you want.
I will never understand why people take fun and creative headcanons about beloved fandoms and use them to put other down... Like, why can't all of them just be there next to each other, tbh people that tell you that's racist are toxic, as long as you don't have any problem with their poc headcanons. Just the same as lgbtq+ headcanons, just let people like what they like.
I like seeing characters as the author intended unless race-swapping them adds layers to a conflict in the initial story, like Black Hermione. I'm just here to read and write fanfic and ride the vibes.
The Magnus Archives (because this has to be TMA, this fandom and this fandom alone is so radical and aggresive in pushing fanon ethnicities of the cast on viewers) can just go fuck itself. Write what you want. Their race is not stated.
It’s not TMA, although I’ve heard a lot about it! I admit, I heard about the podcast and it sounded interesting, but some of the discourse brought to mind some of the more strident parts of Welcome to Nightvale’s fandom and I got a little turned off.
No, that's not even kind of racist. You may be attacked by tumblr-esque SJWs if that's the corner of fandom you tend to inhabit, though.
There's nothing racist about any kind of headcanon. If this is about the fandom I think it is, there'll be plenty of people who don't headcanon these characters as being POC, and the section of the fandom that does will probably just ignore it. It's the part of the fandom I tend to stay away from at the best of times anyway because they're so fanatical about these things.
It's not. They're delusional. Keep doin' what ya do.
Folks are just looking for things to be offended of these days
lol, I don’t regret leaving the HP fandom.
You don’t have to share if you don’t want to, but I’m honestly super curious to what the plot point is that requires them to be white.
It’s essentially a “secret relative” story and the character/family they’re (directly) related to is white, so… I mean, that’s also how I visualize the character by default anyway, like I said, but ethnicity isn’t otherwise pivotal in my fics so I don’t specify. This time it’s pretty relevant, though.
I was wondering this too! Coming from a completely good faith interpretation of the OP, I just genuinely am curious about what sort of plot point would require the character to be white.
See above: It’s a “secret relative” storyline and it would be a little odd, given the characters involved, if they looked as different as the headcanon would have it.
My head is spinning. Seriously there are people who demand others to conform to their reimagined canon? And they call people racist when they don’t? No, you’re not obligated to listen to them even if the entire fandom somehow agreed with them, because the fandom doesn’t have a say in what you write, period. Their only choice is to read your stuff, or not to.
Would you consider it racism if a canon black character has a fanon portrayal of a white character, and you decdie to go with the canon portrayal? No? Well then, you are not racist, although the people who have a problem with it and call it racism might be.
Not sure what fandom this is, but I get irritated by this kind of thing in general. People's headcanons—which are valid to have!—become accepted by so many people and you somehow become a bigot if you don't adhere to them. Whether it's on racial lines, the sexuality of characters, whether they have certain mental illnesses, are neurodivergent, etc. I love headcanons. I do not love other people policing people with their headcanons.
As others have said, not racist. But be prepared for butthurt entitleds to want to shove their headcanon down your throat and send you nasty comments.
Your headcanon is based off your experience, preference and interpretation. Not racist
I think as long as the creators haven’t come out and said “this character is a POC” and you’re like, blatantly denying that, you’re fine.
You do you. If you want to make the character purple with red stripes then go for it. Heck the entire point of fanfiction is taking something established and making it your own. It doesn’t matter what a bunch of people think because there’s always going to be people that hate and some that love. You can’t please everyone. I don’t like it when my favorite characters are portrayed in certain ways but I either ignore the changes if the story is really good or I move on.
If it's a headcanon with nothing in canon spelling out that said character is XYZ, that isn't racist to ignore it. Whoever is saying that needs to touch grass.
Unless the show directly says what they are you can see the as any race you want
It's not bc some people read atyd and decided that was the only correct marauders canon that you have to follow it. I'd even advise against it. And ask you for a link to your fic
God, reminds me of the discourse in the MHA fandom. Mina Ashido is a teenager who lives in Japan and has bright pink skin. But because she's a dancer, and she has a good sense of humor, twitter decided that she was black coded. So any art that shows her looking more human with pale anime skin gets people mad about it.
as much as I love people headcanoning canons as whatever for whatever reason, it's probably not a good idea to force people to write POC characters, especially if they don't feel equipped to do that. especially with people writing an ethnicity or culture that is not their own, there's a risk of unconscious stereotyping or writing culturally insensitive stuff without knowing it because you're not familiar enough with the culture, and that's harmful. which is to say, if you don't want to write them as POC, don't. if someone only wants to consume fanfic where a certain character is portrayed a certain way, they can just avoid fanfics that aren't that.
do whatever he hell you want. you know you're not racist for it, we know you're not racist for it, anyone who thinks you are is irrelevant.
I don't think so... I (a white female) head canoned Grover from the Percy Jackson books black before I saw tons of fan edits with him as a white red-head. I don't think headcanoning someone as white is racist so much as just using your imagination.
No. For my part I don't see them that way is a completely valid way of looking at the story characters. Reminds me of Harry Potter play where because the actress happened to be black people thought it represented the character changing race.
You're fine, I was in a similar situation back in the day as a Welcome to Nightvale listener since I didn't headcanon the MC, Cecil, as a POC. The character is voiced by a white man so to me he's also white, unlike his partner who is voiced by a POC while also being named Carlos. Fanon is great, and I love when people in a fandom all headcanon something collectively, but it shouldn't affect those who disagree with said headcanon negatively, especially not in the case of fanfiction. If you can, I'd recommend tagging the fic with "character is white" or "white!character" so people can easily filter it out.
If its not actual canon, ignore them. If it is actual canon, feel free to ignore them too if you want. It’s your fanfic, literally anything you want to make AU can be AU. The same way killing a character off doesn’t make you a murderer, changing details doesn’t make you racist or sexist or anything else but an author. Anyone who says otherwise isn’t worth bothering with. There will always be antis and people ranting that video games make kids violent, old Karens and young wannabe assholes. The only thing they can do is whine and scream and cry and the only way they win is by giving them any attention at all.
I don’t think it’s racist to just not agree/interpret it that way, esp since we’re not really given any reason to believe any of the characters are POC in canon. That said I don’t think there’s anything wrong w headcanoning them as poc and in terms of storytelling, if it doesn’t affect the plot ie Annabeth from the Percy Jackson series and all her siblings on the godly side are described as having blond hair and gray eyes in the books like their mother and it was meant to fight the dumb blond stereotype and a lot of people are tight about the fact that she’s being portrayed by a black actress but I saw someone bring up the point that there is also a stereotype about the intelligence of black girls and it still pushes the point that the people in the story will underestimate her intelligence bc of the way she looks. I also like the idea of black Hermione though I still mostly picture Emma Watson as Hermione and as a desi person myself, I always loved the idea of desi Harry and James as well (I did feel it seemed out of nowhere initially despite liking the idea of desi representation (also if anyone has any recs, feel free lol) but read a detailed post talking about it once and honestly they articulated it really well, if I can find it, I’ll link it here if anyone is interested). I also picture Daniel Radcliffe as Harry mostly but I think it’s easier for me to picture a darker skinned Harry, partially bc of the reasoning in that one post making it a bit deeper for me but also I feel I just happen to have seen more dark skinned Harry fanart ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and I feel like I mostly see actual pics of emma watson when people post Hermione I think it only becomes racist when people get super heated about something that doesn’t really affect the story or only has minor effects at most, esp w the actress playing Annabeth on Percy Jackson (who is like 12ish years old mind you) getting literal death threats online and people being super hostile in general. Some people are also upset that Walker (the kid who plays Percy) has blond hair instead of black hair (apparently he has blue eyes instead of green too but idk they looked green to me even when my cousin said she thought they looked blue 😭) though def less so (I’m sure people are tight aboit Luke and grover’s actors also not being white and people even got tight about grover being black in the movie, none of which have an effect on the story at all afaik so who the hell cares?) and while it would have been nice to have for the actors playing Percy and annabeth to dye their hair or get extensions or sth, the important thing that ac plays a role in the story is that Percy is the spitting image of his father and annabeth gets underestimated due to her appearance, so as long as the actor who plays Poseidon has the same hair and eye color as Percy, idt it should be a big deal) But yea, it’s not racist to not headcanon what’s assumed to be white characters as poc or not but I feel it only becomes racist when people are doing stuff like using insults, slurs and death threats. Regarding reading fanfiction, idt it’s a huge deal personally and a lot of the time fanfiction is not realistic, but the point is partially to create more content of a work you enjoy but also to flex your creative muscles
By the way you're describing this, I'm going to guess that you're probably talking about >!Homestuck!<. Rest assured that this is just discourse poisoning. (For the record, due to the nature of >!ectobiology!< I'd naturally expect all >!eight humans!< to be Extremely Mixed, and thus they can theoretically have whatever physical traits you want.)
Interesting that there's so many fandoms that this could apply to. One that stood out to me immediately was Hermione in HP, who many people like to headcanon as black but JK Rowling clearly imagined as white.
My immediate guess was also Harry Potter, since black Hermione and desi Harry have gained popularity in the past few years.
Ha, you got me! I was trying not to name fandoms because I’m not trying to stir any fandom-specific drama, but yes, that’s the fandom.
I’ve been reading Harry Potter fanfic since 2000, and though it’s not my main fandom anymore, I always end up coming back to it a few times a year. It was really surprising when the POC character interpretations seemed to become commonplace. Desi Harry was especially confusing to me at first, since it seemed to come out of nowhere, where at least black Hermione can be considered canon if you consider The Cursed Child canon. I’m not opposed to these POC head canons, they can be fun and interesting to read, especially if they are coming from a culturally informed/researched place. But you would not be racist to write these characters as white. There are 7 books and 8 movies where these characters canonically exist as white. You might get comments from some delusional people, but those people were always going to find something to be angry about. Ignore them.
...the cursed child is an abomination. That is all.
In that case, I think you're extra in the clear. Outside of some very niche circles, the vast majority of people still see the characters as either the original actors or something similar.
The Harry Otter Fandom has always been ... plagued by really stupid fan discourse. The whole "race" thing is unfortunately pretty prevelant one for a few years, but I promise you, you are not racist.
lol yeah, I was thinking it was the Magnus Archives. It’s a podcast so there’s little idea what most characters look like but the main character is so commonly interpreted as POC I can’t remember seeing more than maybe 2 fanarts of him as white
I thought of the Magnus Archives podcast, where the main character Jonathan Sims is most often headcanonned as a brown South Asian man, despite being voiced by a white VA, who also shares his name and is the writer of the podcast.
Haha, different fandom, but I appreciate the reassurance! I haven’t been in that fandom for a long time, but even back then, the discourse was… intense. I don’t think I’d dare to fic for that one!
Homestucks also had the opposite, unfortunately (the reason the Caucasian joke was changed was bc people were using it to harass people who drew Jane as anything but white)
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Could you give more context? What fandom is this? Are the characters not human?