I just saw this now and I am ?????
Tumblr, you need to take a time out.
White washing is NOT when a poc is portrayed as a (non-white) ethnicity other than that of your personal preference. Diversity does not exclusively mean black people, a fact I really didn’t think needed saying.
Lapis Lazuli: This precious stone was first mined in Afghanistan as far back as 7th millennium BC. And today the biggest quantity still comes from different regions in Afghanistan and Pakistan (some also come from Russia, USA, Mongolia and Chile).
Southeastern Kingdom: Feyre is white, the whole human realm seems pretty white, and so “southeast” for her might just be the middle east. It’s down south and it’s to the east.
Swaying date palms and sand-swept palaces: this immediately made me think of The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, aka somewhere in Iraq (it is undecided on the exact location). And it was of ancient Hellenic culture, aka ancient greek.
Myrrh and figs: The fig is strictly native to the Middle East, specifically Syria and Anatolia (from there, the fig has been transported to North Africa, Spain and Italy, South America, Mesopotamia, Iran, India and most recently in California.) Also *exasperatingly waves arms towards the bible and the quran*. Either you believe in one of these documents or you merely see them as old story books, but either way the things written in them are old as shit and both myrrh and figs are mentioned. A lot. Also, fun fact, the amount of figs I have eaten when invited to dinner at a Middle Eastern friend’s house is more figs than I have eaten outside of these dinners in my entire life put together.
Dark skin: Literally the vaguest description of a poc skin color ever, not indicating any particular etnicity/poc.
TL;DR
You can imagine Helion any way you want. You can write fanfics, write head canons, paint him and edit him as a black man. Neither the author nor the artists will come after you for going with your heart and your own valid image of him. But the fact is that he was written as a poc from the Middle East and so the artist gave him features that are characteristic for poc from that region. So it’s flat out wrong to say Charlie is white washing them just because you are not happy with the kind of poc portrayed.
