What To Expect With My Main Couple...

Yanina and Peter are an interracial couple. 

She is white and first/second-generation Eastern-European American. 

He is Black and multiple-generation African-American and Caribbean-American.

Yanina is from working-to-middle-class people. Her family began late in the 20th century to arrive in the US from political upheaval in Eastern Europe. Elders worked in factories and mills in the new country to eventually starting their own businesses and branching out on a whole in different fields. They still remember their Eastern-European roots by frequenting other Eastern-European cultural businesses, eateries, as well as creating opportunities within their communities.

Peter is from upper-class people. His family is Old Money. Between ancestors buying loved ones early to live in small enclaves, outsmarting the system, investing amongst themselves and in the broader American scale, helping other Black people to build larger communities as well as intermarrying monied West Indians and wealthy Africans, his family's different branches are at varying levels of wealth.

~  ~  ~  ~

I have established that Yanina grows up in a lower-middle income neighborhood. She is also around different ethnic groups. Her friendship circle has been diverse.

One thing I wanted to establish is when Yanina and Peter are dating, that he IS NOT the first Black person she has interacted with! Though I'm a sucker for interracial romance, I can't stand that trope, and it is usually with a white person dating outside, that this is the first encounter of the 'other' when they end up in a romantic relationship!

Now, I understand certain cultures discourage inter-dating, and even dating on a whole. Those are exceptions. What I will not tolerate in the stories I enjoy is when the white (or any other race/ethnicity) character is inter-dating someone and they have NEVER interacted with those people beforehand! Especially when the character lives in a multicultural community!

I can understand if you've never dated an Eastern-European, but, depending on where you live, I'm sure you've gone to school with/bought from/or even been assisted in a medical office by someone who is Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, or Russian. 

You don't know how annoyed I get when, in most comedy shows, the white character dates someone outside their race, and they say "I have never interacted with someone like you before!" No no no no no no NO. 

Though Yanina dating Peter is dating a Black person for the first time, it is NOT her first time being around Black people. She's had Black schoolmates, she has Black friends (NOT 1. Or 2. Or 3. She has MANY). She's had Black teachers, and, as an adult, has Black coworkers. She also is an aspiring spoken word poet and looks up to many poets, not all of them white, and her mentors are Black and from other ethnicities as well.

As I said before, there are always exceptions and valid excuses, but it gets annoying when there are obviously other folks in these characters' worlds and they only interact with them when they're dating or in a romantic relationship with them? 

So, my question to those other stories: if that couple breaks up, does the character NEVER EVER INTERACT with that group again? 

Makes no sense! Especially when one lives in communities that are often than not, diverse.

Thank you for allowing me to rant, dear readers and we will see each other again!

Decolonizing my own work...

When I drew a cat character back in high school, this was around the time I began to formulate characters for my Tabber the Red series. One of the more important female characters, a male student called her 'thunder thighs'. A male character 'looked gay'*.When working on characters for my scifi dog comic, one athletic-looking female character 'looked like a lesbian', as if one's body type determined one's orientation! 

I have gotten a lot of flack, criticism, and insults towards my OCs (original characters) since I could put pencil/pen to paper. And when people attack my characters, I feel as if they're attacking me. One particular hurtful comment was when a close friend and fellow artist told me to kill off my main female character because she wasn't 'good enough for the main male character', who happened to be a gangster! 

Now you probably noticed a pattern here. Most of the harshest critiques are towards my female or femme looking characters. We already know why this is and I can discuss it another time, but, the point of this post is to understand how important it is to me as an artist to show diversity even within my speculative fictional worlds. That's why even my anthro cat characters will have locs and braids. That's why I make sure that this October artist month, when I show my Tabber the Red fantasy-sword&sorcery characters who happened to be tattooed, scarred, or wearing mendhi and/or henna, I put a footnote that all those body markings have nothing to do with war or becoming a warrior and everything to do with cultural/ethnic/tribal/national identity. 

Since I pull inspiration from real-life beliefs and practices, the same respect I will accord to others, I will do so for my fictional people. To me, culture and ethnic identity is important and not to be appropriated as gimmick or 'trendy'. I'm doing my research. I'm speaking to others. I will learn, so that when my characters express themselves, the identity will be as seamless as the 'air they breathe'.

There will be more 'decolonizing' for my OCs and in my writings. Just you wait and see.

*That character that was called gay? It seems that even if that person meant it as an insult, I realized while writing the character that he is indeed QUILTBAG and I'm writing in his sexual identity and orientation into the story. So, I guess that long ago person did me a favor by 'outing' my cat character!