so many male characters are held back by the fact that they're not wearing earrings when they so clearly should be wearing earrings

BLACK JEWS (…nuff said.)

Reblogging because there are enough people out there who don’t get that Jews come in Al l hues.

THIS IS THE GREATEST, I LOVE IT. THANK YOU.

Guardians of Las

Made by @guardians-of-las-vyxen

Mohammed Idle (Seth Stormbringer):  Three things can always be observed when Seth appears before someone for the first time: First of all his skin is a rich, dark chocolate. Next, he’s tall (6′0), with a medium, athletic build. Third: his eyes, brows and hair are all a shocking, burning shade of amber orange.

His smile is bright and radiant as the sun, his features soft and gentle. One ear is pierced and he wears a cuff with linked earring that swings jauntily whenever he shakes his head.

Across his back he carries a double-headed axe, secured with a careful network of brown leather straps.. Largely unarmored, the leather bands that connect to his tan breeches are more decoration and intimidation, than anything else.

This is a man who dressed with every intention of stopping someone before they could test the resistance of his Half-blood flesh. His breeches are fitted from the thigh down, the snugness about his rear another token piece of fan-service, marking him either a showoff or a slave to fashion.

When on duty his footwear is doe-skinned, calf-length boots, held in place by laces that crossed over themselves multiple times knotted with sideways, off-balanced, bows.

The Bearer – Inari

A protector and provider to farmers and common folk, Inari left an island of their own creation and traveled to Illthdar when a distress signal was sent from the Goddess Vvekw. Hoping to offer their aid, they were not expecting to find themselves near powerless upon arrival. The limitations on magic being what they are, Inari does best to offer their assistance, but their habit of keeping secrets and withholding vital information is proving to be the undoing of many.

The Banished – Date Toshiiro

Stripped of his title and exiled from his home, Toshiiro’s choices were to enlist in the order or starve. Once a high lord and now a commoner with an attitude, he hasn’t made friends easily. With a chip on his shoulder the size of the mountain he was born on, he is by his own admission a work in progress. Forgetting a life is never easy, and ghosts of the past have a way of haunting us forever.

The Chaos Maker – Seth Stormbringer

A half-blood that arrived in Illthdar as a child, Seth endured a trial by nature the likes of which nightmares are made of. Forced to struggle on his own in the wilds of new and terrifying land, it was considered a miracle he survived. Caught and dragged kicking and screaming to Las, Seth tried to make a new life. He adjusted, but storms are always on his horizon and as things get worse, so too do they.

The Wanderer – Lerki of Goldbirch

Born to a nomadic tribe of Venin, Lerki is not one to stay still. Coming from a culture that bows to the will of the elements, he’s finding life difficult in a place that does not bend with the wind. Known for making poisons and rumored to be insane, he is mostly avoided. With his thoughts always faraway, it’s easy to underestimate him, but wise not to. 

The Assassin – Tundra

Cocky, headstrong and from a planet beyond Earth, Tundra has seen stranger things than Illthdar. Raised to be a perfect solider for a shady organization, he was always taught that having emotional attachments was a weakness. In a world that cares less for him than he does for it, he’s finding it increasingly hard to pretend like his actions and the people around him don’t matter.

A second set of fan aesthetics for the upcoming book series by @illthdar.  Meet Team Two! Team one can be found here.

The first book in the Illthdar series, Guardians of Las, is on sale now!

A Rainbow of OCs Part II

Inari, The High Elders and some of my favorite boys from the series Illthdar - Guardians of Las! It’s one of my absolute favorite stories and if you like fantasy I highly recommend checking it out!

Keep updated on the book and it’s release date over here -> @illthdar

A Rainbow of OCs Part 1 is Here

The first book in the Illthdar series, Guardians of Las, is on sale now!

https://www.feedaread.com/books/Illthdar-Guardians-of-Las-9781839451508.aspx

One thing that does bother me in stories is when the main characters are a team and there’s only one or two female characters and the female character(s) are always the heart of the team, the most generous, the most loving and emotional, the most altruistic. Like I love soft emotional characters it just bothers me when that’s the only representation for female characters

@illthdar wanna introduce Seth?

Seth, everyone’s favourite black jew-muslim, the glue of his team, the darling tower of a man! Absolutely the perfect example of a heart of gold.

Likewise, Abaddon, demi-demon, gender-flux, pint-sized, sweetheart/badass.

People are going to hate me saying this – and oh well, I’m used to tumblr hating me and my opinions – but I feel like Jk Rowling was queerbaiting, if not unintentionally.

Hear me out before you breathe flames all over my nice pink sweater.

As a person of color, you grow up seeing famous white authors who don’t necessarily *hate* people of color but are uncomfortable writing about us. Why? Because they don’t want to misrepresent or turn us into an offensive token, so in an attempt to spare people of color that usual horror, they keep all their “minority” characters off to the side in minor roles.

In this situation, people of color are tolerated, acknowledged as existing, used as background decorations to pay lipservice to diversity, but not really included in the narrative. A text book example of this would be Dragon Age Origins, in which people of color exist but are relagated to the sidelines, and the two brown people who have speaking roles aren’t important enough to be three-dimensional characters who exist throughout the story. Duncan dies in the opening (you have to get his background from a book), and Isabella is just there to teach you a skill (and be a hypersexual stereotype).

Does Zevran count as not-white??? I always felt he was a white Spainard with a tan. But if he’s actually a poc, then he’s the only remotely important person of color in Dragon Age Origins who also gets to live through to the end of the game.  

Rowling has done the same thing with all her queer (or potentially queer) characters. She doesn’t hate queer people, but she tolerates us enough to acknowledge that we exist. Gay people are allowed to be gay – as long as they’re gay OVER THERE OFF SCREEN.

So Dumbledore couldn’t be gay in the books but in some announcement after the books were well and done. Tonks and Lupin – the two potentially queer characters – were conveniently smashed together in an unlikely pairing to squash all rumors of gayness (which I thought was a shame). And Harry Potter’s son will never really be gay on stage, just in little hints and subtext.

No, Rowling doesn’t hate queer people (said without sarcasm). She’s uncomfortable writing them or trying to represent them well, in which case she shouldn’t be writing them at all.

My mantra for the last five years or so for white writers has been this: include us well or don’t include us at all. Period.

There is nothing so shitty as being misrepresented or half-represented. If you want to write about a minority but don’t have the balls, the knowledge, or the inclination to learn, then don’t bother.

And this problem isn’t Rowling’s. It’s not up to her to represent queer people. The bigger issue is the fact of so few queer writers on the market. We aren’t allowed to represent ourselves and be our own voice.

As a queer writer myself, I work tirelessly to make agents and publishers see past the sexuality of my characters and see people. But in reality, publishing houses only care about MONEY. So they will sign whatever mindless, vacuous shit will appeal to straight white people (Twilight, anyone?) whether the writer has talent or not because that’s where they believe the money is at.

I am basically saying that publishers will sign any story the think will sell to the straight white majority, not that Rowling has no talent. She is vastly superior to Meyers in every conceivable way.

In short, JK Rowling doesn’t hate queer people. We all know this. But I also don’t think she’s purposely queerbaiting. I think she had a desire to write about queer people but didn’t know how to do it well and was afraid of making a mistake. Her first mistake? Writing about queer people when she had these fears in the first place.

That old saying “write what you know” has weight. Straight white writers should write what they know, while publishing houses should allow queer people and people of color to be their own voices.

Yeah. It’s that fucking simple.

Today I was working on my outline for my new fantasy novel (right now it’s just a mash of ideas) and I realized that if it was ever published, it would be heckled as “the black lesbian Harry Potter” even though the story is actually nothing like Harry Potter and the character is not a lesbian, just queer.

Also, it’s just one book, and the character goes from a child (who learns magic at a sort of school – again, nothing like a real school and more like a monastery) to an adult throughout the story. In the end, it’s nothing like Harry Potter, but people would see the similarities and say so.

Can you imagine what it’s like to write something and have it watered down into the black version of everything else? Last year I wrote a graphic novel about a black female super hero, and in the back of mind, I knew she’d be called “black supergirl” if she ever saw the light of day. But she was nothing like Supergirl. If anything, my character is better than fucking Supergirl. At least she gets to live out from under the shadow of a Superman counterpart….  or would she? The second she was published, the world over would accuse me of copying, even though the story was nothing like Superman.

Black people are never allowed to just be people. Our stories are never just stories – they’re black stories. Our characters are never just characters – they’re black characters.

No, we don’t walk around “aware of our otherness” because we don’t see ourselves as strange and other. We see ourselves as normal human beings, and it’s everyone else who has to treat us like baffling animals behind glass.

All these people preaching about a post-racial society like to forget that we are still segregated. We live in separate neighborhoods, we go to separate schools, and in the book section of every story, every black fantasy writer has been shoved away into BLACK fiction.

Because god forbid anything written by a black person should just be FICTION.

Is there a section for queer fiction? Is there an inter-sectional section for black queer fiction, where the hatred comes together to closet away people who have two minority backgrounds instead of one????

Sometimes I look at my steampunk novel – which is about a woman of color falling in love with a female robot, yup – and I wonder just how hopeless it is for me to see it in print.

Being black is hard. Being queer is hard. Imagine being black and queer.    

JK Rowling can’t. And that’s why she should’ve just left minorities alone. I think she was screwed either way, as people would have criticized her for not having one important brown person at Hogwarts, even though brown people live in Britain everywhere, especially Indian people.

Again, the problem isn’t Jk Rowling. Her writing is just a symptom of a world where we are still so segregated, she has no clue how to write about people of color or queer people without being offensive.

Ursula Le Guin could write about people of color without screwing up because she was exposed to them regularly. She saw us as people, not stereotypes, and that’s how she avoided being racist.

If we can tear down the walls of segregation that are still firmly, invisibly in place, we will see a lot fewer baffled straight white writers and video game developers and more people who understand and appreciate each other.

I just wonder how fucking long that’s going to take. I don’t believe people truly WANT to break down these barriers. If anything, people have been working tirelessly to keep them there for all manner of reasons: greed, power, grand delusions of superiority, or a sheer hatred of those who are different from them.

In short: when we have a better world, we will have better writers.

A Rainbow of OCs Part II

Inari, The High Elders and some of my favorite boys from the series Illthdar - Guardians of Las! It’s one of my absolute favorite stories and if you like fantasy I highly recommend checking it out!

Keep updated on the book and it’s release date over here -> @illthdar

A Rainbow of OCs Part 1 is Here

bro . .. let me homoerotically tend to your wounds . . . . bro hold still . . . . bro you are so stupid . . . come on let me kiss you better . . .