#but from what posts I've seen on how it's being done in c3 I think it'll just frustrate me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

beetlemancy · 3 years

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hi beetle, this is coming from a friend so i really hope you take it to be in good faith. recently i've been kind of frustrated by the way that you've been discussing the whole potential racism in c3 issue. i know you do actually care about people of color and our concerns, and i know you also care about critical role--the cast, the story the people. what's been kind of concerning/disappointing to me lately is that you have a lot of focus on the (mostly white) people who are (1/?)

making "criticisms" of c3 already with ridiculous complaints like "it's racist to set it in marquet to begin with", etc. i know how you feel about purity culture/cancel culture etc and i'm absolutely not saying it's wrong to call those people out, however it's been pretty disheartening to me to just see stuff like "of course it's different if poc have concerns" in your tags, while there's dozens of posts about how annoying the cancel culture people are. and i mean i 100% agree, (2/?)

they ARE super annoying, not to mention incredibly harmful. but one of the biggest causes of harm right now is that they are speaking over people of color with real concerns. this has ALWAYS been the case with cr, and it makes it very easy for white fans to not look at what poc are actually saying. i don't know if or what research you've done in your free time on some of the concerns and racism already present in cr or what actual poc are worried about, but i do know that (3/?)

just from looking at your blog, i get a sense of "ehh there's probably racism here, maybe? but all i want to talk about is the people calling out fake racism, cause they're wrong." i know that's not consciously who you are as a person, bc you've always been very kind and willing to listen to me. all i'm asking is, please consider maybe signal boosting some of the poc talking about their concerns, if you're going to discuss the people with invalid concerns. if you wanna talk more i can dm (4/4).

A few things before I respond - to anyone reading this, this is valid criticism coming from someone I know. They are on anon but we talked outside of this because of technical 'tumblr is broken' stuff, however this is the first time I'm actually responding directly to this. Please do not clown on this post, if you reply! I'm good, my friend is good, and this is important criticism coming from a good place. <3

So. I did a little digging through my own blog because my memory is bullshit and I found this response to an ask which I believe is the crux of the issue:

Now, I'm going to say this as an autistic person trying to parse through behavior and not as a way to excuse myself, but here is what I believe is happening: Generally, people come to me with the disk horse about the people who are being obnoxious about it. Generally, people don't come to me with reasonable, in lane, valid criticism. I'm very used to only responding to the "purity culture" version of fandom drama. Rarely do people send me asks about the real stuff because there's nothing to be angry about it.

I also haven't personally seen many takes by fans of color who are vocally worried about the setting based on being uncomfortable with it in the past - many of the people I follow are actually excited about it and honestly I took my cues from them. I actually try to avoid the tags these days because so much of it is spam or active trolling. I, and I think along with other people in my autie circles, find it truly difficult to figure out whether someone is -actually- worried or just being pre-mad for disk horse reasons as well. This is room for improvement and I'll be doing more research to find blogs that are talking about real concerns - that's on me for not being more active in following different perspectives.

I 100% understand where you are coming from in regards to how it comes across, now that I've taken a step back to assess. I understand why you are disappointed in my responses about it, especially to that ask in particular. That was someone directly explaining that they were worried and for good reasons and I definitely side-stepped answering with any real deep thought.

I do still struggle with knowing what is the right thing to do in situations like that. I was being honest when I said I didn't believe this was "my lane." I thought it would be disingenuous for me to really talk about my feelings in depth about it - but had not considered the fact that by only responding about the obnoxious people that I was adding to the noise drowning out fans of color.

Now I write all this out because I think I'm not alone in this and hopefully others will read this and be like 'oh, yeah, i fall into this trap too' and maybe we all can do a little better. We pride ourselves on having nuance in the face of bullshit, right? But nuance isn't a constant - its a learning process, and I'm definitely still learning - with the help from my friends who love me enough to point things like this out.

I'd also like to follow more people who are talking about this for real (aka, not the usual crowd of pre-madders) and I might need a little help finding people (social deficits make things more difficult but are not an excuse to not try!). I'll be hitting up some other people I know privately to find blogs, but if anyone has someone or if you are someone and would like a signal boost, hit me up!

In conclusion. I'm really glad I have friends who are patient with me even though you don't have to be and I'm glad you told me about this issue. My hope is that I never disappoint you again, but if/when I do, I hope anyone - one of my friends or not - feels like they can come and talk to me about it. <3

#critical role #cr discourse #important #i'm putting the discourse tag just because i know some people only follow it and not the maintag lol #this is Actual Discourse and not disk horse #also i'm going to pin this for awhile

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