[ SECRET POST #2389 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2389 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Avenged Sevenfold]


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[Professor Layton]


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[Yoroiden Samurai Troopers (Ronin Warriors)]









Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 015 secrets from Secret Submission Post #341.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Wait, are you sure you got the right Gaiman book here? Because I know Anansi Boys has had a ton of issues like that, and I really thought Shadow was white when I read American Gods (granted, it's been a little while, but still).

I'm really confused here...

[morieris]

I got partway through the book & I thought he was half Native American.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm pretty sure there's a few times he's asked if he does have Native American ancestry, so it's not like that was out of nowhere. Also, y'know, all the buffalo-god mysticism. Personally I always thought that the point was that he was a product of the American melting pot, and therefore nothing specific other than "not caucasian."

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't catch it either, though I fully admit I missed it in Anansi Boys (I don't feel very guilty about that though, I hated that book).

I swear to god if his name being Shadow was supposed to be a clue to his ethnicity...

[(Anonymous)]

Pretty sure his name was supposed to be the tip-off for what his "job" was, in regards to Wednesday and the other gods.

[(Anonymous)]

I just spent like ten minutes trying to track down the quote for you and failing, but the summary of the in-book explanation is that he was a shy little kid, and was always hanging around his mother like a shadow. I can't speak to authorial intent, though.

[(Anonymous)]

Given the reveal of who he is, mythologically, I think 'Shadow' was as much a dark ironic joke as anything.

[(Anonymous)]

I know Sam was pretty certain he had native american in him somewhere....

[(Anonymous)]

...I read the whole book and thought Shadow was a dark-skinned POC pretty much all the way through...

[(Anonymous)]

Well, we know for good and damn sure that he's at least half-white.

I don't remember much about his mother though, and maybe there's something I missed there. But I just don't remember anything that would indicate that he's a POC.

[(Anonymous)]

Half-white? Uhhhh no, his mother is mentioned as having dark skin, and he's asked a few times in the narrative if he has First Nations (Native) ancestry, so I'm pretty sure neither of those could be considered "white." (I.e., European.)

.....Unless you are the F!S SJW who thinks Spanish and Middle Eastern people are white....

[(Anonymous)]

It's not explicitly stated, but it's implied. Like, a lot of people ask him if he's part black/Native American, and I think his mother was described as having dark skin or something.

[(Anonymous)]

Really? He's described as having coffee-coloured skin. It's made clear that his mother was a black woman. In one of the very first scenes, a guard asks him if he's a [slur for Hispanic] or part [slur for African-American]. It kind of takes some wilful blindness to read him as white.

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't read the book in like 5 years. I really don't have a fine command of the details of the book at all, I honestly just don't remember and it confused me.

[(Anonymous)]

I know he's definitely mixed, but I don't recall it ever being stated exactly what his mother's race was?

[(Anonymous)]

She died of sickle-cell, so while there's a chance she could be Hispanic, I'd be very surprised if Gaiman didn't intend her to be read as African-American.

[rapunzelita]

It's deliberately left vague.

[(Anonymous)]

Shadow's mom is described as dark, and she died of sickle-cell disease; I'm pretty sure she's African-American.

Shadow's ethnicity is never fully revealed, but his skin is the shade of "coffee and cream", leading people to guess that he's either Native American, half-black or Hispanic.

I don't mind people thinking Shadow could be mistaken for white, because Gaiman's style of writing makes everything ambiguous, but I don't know how you missed that Shadow was described as waaay darker than your regular white guy on several occasions.

(I read the book a few weeks ago lol)

[(Anonymous)]

Eh, I blame it on the book just plain not being able to keep my attention so those details sailed right on by me.

[dragonimp]

His mom died from sickle cell anemia and I think (it's been a while since I read it) was described as having dark skin. I always took Shadow as midway-dark nobody's-sure-what-race-he-is kind of mixed-race.

[(Anonymous)]

yeah again it's been years since I read the book, and I pretty much remembered nothing about Shadow's mother. It looks like I just plain remembered it wrong (and I think I was also confused because there is another Gaiman book where there's similar issues despite the race of the characters not really even being slightly ambiguous)

[ooh_mrdarcy]

[(Anonymous)]

da

Another anon who thought he was black, or mixed. dunno why, figured it was 'cause he started small and scrawny then grew up all of a sudden (and all ppl irl I know who did this were black or mixed)

[(Anonymous)]

Irony here is that I started reading American Gods, found out Shadow was a burly bouncer-type, somewhere got an image of him having dark skin (apparently from the text that I can't remember), felt guilty for stereotyping, and forced myself to think of him as white.

Can't win for losing.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow. I'm sorry, anon, but I laughed.