I'm going to double down, if some westerns decided to make a story, wherein the atrocities that was historically commited against us (like what Japan did to half of Asia) and it was trivialised or simply a footnote in a story. The backlash would have been so severe, and we'd be calling them insensitive, uneducated, etc. No one would be defending it as 'just a story'. Oh, the hypocrisy.
Thank you for saying something about this!!! I was getting really tired of people saying that we shouldn’t be so caught up in the mc and ml’s actions, and that we should “consider the time period” or wtv.
I'm at chapter 16-17, and genuinely WHAT? Why are tan skinned people still being portrayed as uncivilized, barbaric folk? This is historical fiction, which means the author doesn't need to stick to the old "dark-skinned people as slaves and barbarians" narrative. That trope isn't historical accuracy, it's a stereotype that colonizers spread, and fiction gives writers the freedom to reject it.
Before you tell me "the author is just an Asian uwu, baby writer who doesn't know much about the outside world, and you should be grateful tan characters are even included" I AM ASIAN, and these authors clearly know what they're doing, GIVEN that they have even gone as far as to represent the cultural clothing accurate to real life counterparts. This isn't an isolated incident either. I keep seeing the same trope again and again and again, across different stories, which makes it feel less like an oversight and more like a pattern nobody's bothering to question. Or if questioned, they are met with 'No one is asking you to read it.'
Media representation matters, and it's exhausting to watch brown characters get written this way. Especially in a genre where the author has already invented an entire world and could have made any choice they wanted. This isn't a neutral default. And it matters in the real world too, because repeated portrayals like this shape how people perceive and treat the group being depicted, especially when that group doesn't have much other representation to balance it out.
It is that deep. Do you know what popularized the KKK? A dumbass movie shot on a shoestring budget, 'The Birth of The Nation'. Some of you will truly 'It's not that deep' right back into colonization.
All I can do is pray that my people get freed from their colorism and white worship shackles.