let me start this off by saying i like tma :) it’s a fun show, and i think you can tell by my url and icon and recent reblogs that i’m in pretty deep 😰 but it’s not a perfect show, and i haven’t seen many people talk about the racial issues in the podcast, so i thought i’d take a crack at it. also i am indian so ✌️
jonathan sims / “jon of color” x white martin
i think everyone in the fandom draws jon as a person of color despite him having no confirmed race which is pretty cool. but given that it’s generally accepted that jon is Not white, certain interpretations of him can be a little… uncomfortable.
don’t describe jon feral or savage. just don’t. that word has some ugly connations, as white people have an ugly history as describing non-white cultures as primative and their people as, well, feral savages. i think this is mostly a joke, as feral became the Cool Tumblr Word to use but it hasn’t lost its implications.
along this vien, it’s a little uncomfortable for me to see jon’s monsterous characteristics exaggerated to the the point where he is a threat to (a usually white) martin. moc are often unfairly viewed as violent and abusive, particularly if they have white partners, and while i don’t think i’ve seen anyone push this that far, it’s still a choice with harmful implications. please don’t misinterpret this as me saying don’t call martin a monsterfucker or something, i just think it’s worth paying attention to how you have his abilities manifest. jon is not unnecessarily violent (at least as of writing this, post E166). he feels guilt when destroying something as evil as not-sasha and is constantly paranoid of how his actions can hurt those he cares about.
it’s also a little racist in my opinion to portray jon as a dirty, unclean person. to be clear, i’m not saying drawing him with unkempt hair or disheveled clothes is problematic, but saying that he doesn’t shower or groom himself ever is uncomfortable. people of color are unfairly viewed as dirty by white people for centuries, often as an excuse to justify imperialism as a way to cleanse them, so it’s obviously not great to perpetuate this. that being said, i can see that jon is certainly the type to lose himself in his work and i suppose he has dry skin according to nikola ordinov, so i suppose what i’m really saying is don’t push this idea too far. and it’s also very bizarre to have (again usually white) martin serve as some sort of caretaker to him. i’m once again being very clear so i am not intentionally misconstrued, this isn’t me saying martin shouldnt care or help him, obviously not, but the idea that jon cannot have good hygiene without (white) martin’s aid in some way is racist.
racism against asian people
tma is unusually particular about not confirming the races of most characters (my opinions of this choice r mixed btw) so when the race of someone is confirmed, it’s worth noting.
the haan family is “east asian” and likely “chinese” (mag130). there are two members of this family that are present in the statements: john haan and his nephew tom hann. they are both closely tied to the flesh and john hann is a cannibal. i hope why you can see why this is uncomfortable. rusty quill’s members are all white (except for one person) and as far as i can tell, the team working on tma specifically is all white. for a group of white people to tie two chinese characters as literal cannibals or otherwise weirdly into meat is disgusting. chinese people already have a multitude of racist stereotypes regarding what they eat (you’ve probably heard the “dog eating” stereotype) and this seems to be a manifestation of that
alright well that’s it then :’/ i’m not an “expert” on racism, i’m just basing this off my own personal experiences. feel free to ask for clarification or lmk if i forgot something. ❤️
(to start off my response, i am brown. i am writing this here now just so no one has to ask later)
one, holy shit, this post nails so many things on the head. thank you op for the breakdown.
two, though, allow me to slip a little bit more nuance in by dividing them into ‘fan behaviour’ and ‘podcast behaviour.’ for example, everything regarding the haan family is podcast behaviour, created by RQ, and has nothing to do with fans, but it’s something that should be considered when fans go on to make their own interpretations of characters without any confirmed race or skintone traits. i hope that makes sense.
i want to talk more about podcast behaviour– op, i hope you’re okay with me doing that here! specifically, i wanna talk about that last bit– about only the races of antagonists being confirmed, and maybe try and shine some light on why that is, and why it might be hard at this point for RQ to give us canon races of the protagonists.
it all comes down, i think, to the voice actors. the protagonists are primarily made up of RQ staff, with exceptions being jonny’s literal parents. and as neuroticarchivist pointed out, RQ staff is heavily white. this means that the VAs for most of the protagonists are white. and with the ongoing “debate” regarding casting poc for poc roles, it would be an act of extremely bad faith for Rusty Quill to take a character played by a white person and say “okay, this character is actually x (non-white) race. it would not fly. i personally would not want something like that to fly; voice actors of color have it hard enough as it is, and the magnus archives is a major player in today’s audio drama.
keeping that in mind, then, the best solution is to keep the depictions open to the audience, because the other option is to just say “all of these protagonists are white.” which also would not fly, considering the number of poc villains confirmed in tma. keeping interpretations open has the double advantage of avoiding that sort of situation and encouraging varied fan depictions so as not to tread on how people imagine the characters, because, after all, audio drama is not a visual medium, and i imagine part of the appeal for creators is that ability to get different responses from different people.
the one character exception here is basira. to my knowledge, basira’s VA is Black, and so basira could in theory be confirmed as Black. some reasons i could imagine for why they haven’t done this are:
consistency. if they confirm the race of one protagonist, there would definitely be a rush of people asking about the others. and because of their imagine as you like policy, which, as explained above, is honestly the best move right now, that would be difficult to navigate.
basira’s original last name and current name could imply that she is Arab or south asian (not necessarily, though, as i believe they’re also Islamic last names, and not all Muslims are from those regions) and afaik frank voss is not. so that sort of conflict would again bring up the question of who gets to be cast in what roles, making it better not to specify
the easiest characters for races to be confirmed for, then, is those characters that don’t have VAs when they’re introduced, because then VAs can be cast to them. the best example of this i can think of is annabelle cane, who has featured prominently over the seasons, but only just received a voice actor, chioma nwalioba.
and of the non-speaking characters, statement givers are nearly always referenced in first person, leaving only the figures they speak about to be described. a statement giver isn’t going to describe their family or friends by their race, most likely, so they’re out too. because of the conceit of tma, basically the only people who get described in statements are Avatars and other recurring spooky singles. and this group strongly skews towards antagonists.
obviously, though, it’s not 100%. adelard dekker and oliver banks, for example (both Black) avoid the antagonist camp. that being said, the number is low compared to the number of villains.
the best way to solve this problem would have been to cast diversely from the start and have gone from there; unfortunately it seems that RQ was a lot smaller when magnus started and working from their own limited talent pool. i certainly hope RQ decides to hire more poc going forward, but that’s outside the scope of this post.
and at the end of all of this i’d still like to say: fuck the treatment of the haan family that was hella gross RQ
