[ SECRET POST #2469 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2469 ⌋

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

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.


















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 055 secrets from Secret Submission Post #353.
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

[dreemyweird]

I'm so confused about this whole thing. Is there even any canon evidence suggesting that either of the protagonists is more likely to be a PoC than white?? If no, then why all the "no he's a PoC you racist shit!" wank??? Why can't there be both PoC and white Carloses and Cecils?

(or is the secret about the fact that people want some shirts to have PoC!Cecil? Because I'm not sure what you meant.)

Either way, meh. Your friends are missing the point.

[nan]

The problem I've seen most people have with it is that since their races haven't been specified (Carlos is suppose to have dark skin but that's all we know) everyone who draws/writes them as white is just defaulting to white because of Reasons.

I can understand the argument and I like seeing a wide variety of Carloses and Cecils but damn, it gets ugly pretty quickly.

[(Anonymous)]

unless it happened in a recent episode (I am not caught up), Carlos was described as being "dark" in general-- not his skin or his hair, just in general; so that could mean he is pitch black from head to toe, that he has a dark tan, that he has dark hair, that he has a dark demeanor...
He's basically as ambiguous as Cecil.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, but he is described as "dark, delicate-skinned" and the morons in question are too stupid to hear the obvious comma and think he's saying dark(skinned), delicate -skinned.

I agree that there is no reason Carlos isn't a POC, but insisting that anything above ebony is too light is bullshit (and racist, because it erases all POC who aren't black).

[(Anonymous)]

What the people who say "it's racist that the default is white" don't get: The blonde/white/third eye Cecil isn't a headcanon all white people came up completely seperate from each other, but rather, it's a popular design that got copied because people liked it and people are lazy.

[(Anonymous)]

oh my god

go on tumblr and suggest that Carlos might be white

I DARE YOU

There's a blog about this

[insanenoodlyguy]

That just finds any example of white carlos and gos "no, carlos is POC."

To be fair, they don't encourage dogpiles (though I'm sure it happens) But that's the entire, goddamn blog. Just saying that again and again and linking.

Re: There's a blog about this

[(Anonymous)]

I love how they also do it with unshaded sketches or simple lineart.

Re: There's a blog about this

[(Anonymous)]

there are-- or at least were-- MULTIPLE blogs dedicated just to this.
And that just makes me sit and think, wow. What a world that we live in, that multiple people are bored enough and have enough free time to sit around doing nothing but scouring the internet for (often poorly-drawn sketches) character interpretations they don't like and making commentary on them.

To these people I say: get a real hobby. Or, better yet, get a job.

[forgottenjester]

Mmm, well, Carlos is supposed to be dark skinned. Cecil has no description, really.

The wank as far as I can tell is because some people wanted to start a discussion about race. A bunch of people who liked white Cecil felt attacked and got defensive. Some of the people who wanted to talk about race then got nasty. Now it's kind of a free-for-all where people attack anyone for anything.

Generally, there are four main groups but only three are really active in the wank.

[(Anonymous)]

what groups?

[forgottenjester]

From what I can tell the four groups are:

Group 1) People who headcanon white Cecil and think anyone talking about race is stupid. (A lot say this in borderline racist ways.)

Group 2) People who headcanon not-white Cecil and say anyone who doesn't is racist. They also think the "every headcanon is valid" argument is an excuse for racism.

Group 3) People who have either headcanon but say everything is valid and so everyone should shut up. Don't ever talk about race again. Show's over.

Group 4) People who have either headcanon and think that every headcanon is valid but recognize race talk is important in the large context. However, they think tumblr is horrible at it and stay quiet.

Groups 1-3 are generally in the wank. 4 might be but it's rare. (This is completely just based off my personal observations of fandom so take it with a grain of salt.)

[crazed_delusion]

I Black-listed 2 people and found that I can usually go on the tag now with little desire to stab people anymore.

[forgottenjester]

Huh. Interesting. I just don't read text posts anymore. I scroll quickly until I find art, see if I want to reblog it, and move on.

But to be completely honest I go through my old art reblogs more often and check the artists for anything new they may have drawn or reblogged themselves.

I should probably get the thing that lets you blacklist people and things... eh. Oh well.

[erinptah]

Carlos is a POC. That's not ambiguous. The creators have expressed bafflement that anyone interprets him as *not* a POC.

Cecil, meanwhile, gets almost no physical description (and that's a deliberate move on the creators' part), so he can be interpreted any way at all. There's likely some subconscious societal racism going on when the majority of listeners default to thinking of him as white -- but of course Tumblr has a way of taking that observation and going way overboard, because Tumblr.

[(Anonymous)]

A I said: I think it's more a mix of lazyness and "Oh hey, I like that interpretation" after they saw a single, early fanart that got popular- because it's not just the skin colour a lot of the Cecils share, it's the complete design that's very similar. So it's not so much a case of "all interpret him as white because default" in my eyes.

[starphotographs]

These people always fail to mention that the way Carlos is depicted is pretty homogeneous, too. I mean, I guess you could argue that it makes some sense because we have slightly more to go on than we do with Cecil, but... Uh, not that much more, all things considered.

It's just one of those screwy memetic things, I think. People tend to find something and just stick with it for no real reason.

[dreemyweird]

Thank you! I didn't know that. [though technically the creators' opinion is not a part of the canon and, as far as I understand, Carlos was described as simply "dark", I do think it would be more natural to interpret him as a PoC given this information]

[chardmonster]

I think a decent share of it is that the blond hair/third eye/purple look is just cool. I'm not sure many people would have been so fucking dedicated to white cecil if that hadn't come about.

Source?

[insanenoodlyguy]

I've seen a few people say this, but none with citations. I'td be good to have some word of god on this but I'd like to actually see it.

Re: Source?

[(Anonymous)]

Different anon.

Shit, I read it in an interview somewhere. I will see if I can dig it up.

Re: Source?

[erinptah]

Joseph Fink on Twitter: "first time I've seen carlos depicted as anything but white. which is refreshing. I mean, it's right in the name"

(Which ignores the fact that there can be white people named Carlos, but confirms that Night Vale's Carlos is not supposed to be one of them.)

As a bonus, on Cecil: "Getting a lot of emails cuz I guess it says somewhere on tumblr that I said Cecil is white. Don't know where that came from. Never said it."

So they're similarly insistent on keeping Cecil canonically non-racially-identified, no matter what headcanons people come up with.

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder what the demographics of the fandom is, though. When no descriptions are given, I think the majority will envision a character to be, to some degree, similar to themselves. There definitely have been studies that show that even PoC default to whiteness in a lot of situations, but then that's such a huge, deeper problem in society that getting pissed at fandom and calling them racist for defaulting to white is fucking stupid and missing the point entirely.

[erinptah]

I agree that there are also valid non-racism-related factors contributing to the way Cecil gets headcanoned, and that people on Tumblr are not always great at reasonable, logic-based discussion (on race or on anything else).

[(Anonymous)]

Or... and this is me just being crazy, most of tumblr is white and want to see themselves in the character. It's literally no different that any PoC that interprets him as their race.

I think seeing him as your own race is far less insulting that trying to cherry pick a race you think is least used and then bitching at anyone's differing interpretation.

I'd be more insulted that they're all young and stupid attractive because god knows we can't ship uggos.