by writing in this way, our flag means death invites the attention. it comes from not being a product of whiteness, but a product of diverse and inclusive writing. it comes from the actors having input on their characters, their designs, and their backstories. stede and izzy in particular, but every white character on the show, are written not just as people but as *white people* and that difference comes from the fact that its got a hugely diverse writing and production team, to be honest. because as a black woman in america, i am always aware that i am *not* defaut, that my perspective is not the norm, that to many people writing from the black pov is a Very Special Episode topic at best.Īnd our flag means death knows that, because they don’t write whiteness to be neutral and default, but as something commented on.

the tags and comments i see in my activity feed definitely support that this is happening in the ofmd fandom (and no one should feel ashamed of that!)īut here’s the thing: that’s a privilege.

there’s an awareness, of course, that they are a white person, but i would bet dollars to dimes that the vast majority of white people tend to think of themselves as people more than white people. this show analyzes whiteness, and it does it in a way that i think is easy to miss, because its not making a great production of it, anymore than it makes a production of the rest of its interrogation of toxic masculinity (because whiteness/white supremacy are pretty big elements in toxic masculinity), but the thing about all of these characters is, ofmd writes them in such a way that there isn’t the background assumption of white as neutral white as natural white as non-racial, white as default.Ī LOT of media writes from the perspective of white as neutral, normal, and natural, mostly because white people don’t tend to consciously think of themselves as white. The first is that ofmd invites the racial conversation. This is a meta on izzy and stede, but it’s also a meta commentary on fandom, and like, american (and canadian and european and white-dominated society as a whole) i guess, but i’m going to start with the reasons i talk about race so much in ofmd in particularīecause i’m involved in a lot of things! i watch a lot of shows, read a decent amount of books, follow along with a number of stories, but the one i’m mainly talking about race in, right now, is ofmd, and it’s for - two real reasons.

Piranesi book fanart