Black girls in fiction

[DokiDokiTsuna]

(This isn't just a promo, I swear)
So in the near future I'm going to be starting an original series on my YouTube channel, called LADYBIRD: Runious World. It will not be (fully) animated; I'm planning for it to look more like watching someone play through a visual novel, leaning heavily on dialogue and visuals.

Just another one of my clever tricks to get the most amount of immersive story out of the least amount of artwork (and if you think that sounds easier/more fun than making a comic or novel, then definitely give it a try! There are so many ways to tell a great story; find one that works for you!)

Anyway, as you might have guessed, the girl on the left in the red coat is the main character, a classic cute anime girl who's a little shy and anxious but determined to do her best, and learn and grow throughout the story.
She's also a black girl-- like, not "ambiguously dark skinned", actually black, and even sports a very common hairstyle for black children. And while I was designing her and coming up with her character concept, I realized...you really don't see all those things in the same character very often. ^^; Main character + black girl + kawaii sweetheart is a surprisingly uncommon combination. And I thought it might be interesting to discuss why.

My first thought was that it's just the usual pitfalls of tokenism striking again...i.e. every piece of media that stars a POC isn't allowed to be just media, it must also be 'representation', and as such must prioritize a flattering image over an interesting story. So if your main character is a black girl, she can't be anything less than perfect, strong, and great at everything, and an inspiration to everyone around her (even more so than white girls, whose characters are often pigeonholed the same way).

Even this 'innocent uwu baby' portrayal isn't acceptable, because it implies that she * GASP* isn't 100% independent and sometimes needs help. Never mind that it means she actually has room to grow and that the story can show her struggling with insecurities and overcoming challenges in a way the audience can sympathize and connect with...

I remember someone calling this sort of thing 'respectability politics', and after a bit of Googling, I think that's also a fitting way to look at it. This idea goes even further, implying that a black girl has to "earn" the right to be a main character (or even just a recurring character!) by essentially becoming a paragon. That if she's lacking in any way, or god forbid, immoral, the audience will resent her for it, or even assume her imperfections are proof of the writers' bigotry, rather than just accepting them as an intentional part of the character.

A great recent example of this was the...interesting fan reaction to the black antagonists in Castlevania: Nocturne. I haven't watched the show and have no desire to (believe it or not, I don't like the animation. I think their color compositing style especially highlights the flaws and makes it look ugly, but that's a discussion for another time...) but I did hear a bit about this issue on Twitter. Essentially, certain people seemed opposed to the existence of POC vampires and demons.
Fantasy fans are some of the most racist out there, so that tracks. ^^; But I think there's definitely another layer to it, which I saw people discussing: that white characters have the freedom to be evil and awful and celebrated/desired for it, but POC are restricted to their usual veneers of respectability, even in these fantastical stories.

Never mind that cultures in the global south ALSO have mythology about evil demonic creatures that they can draw from. Never mind that we aren't a monolith, and like any other group of human beings some of us will do bad things and make bad choices. Never mind that villains are interesting ways of exploring human behavior and motivation, and that we should be allowed to see ourselves in those roles without having to justify it and defend it constantly.

...Anyway, I got a little off topic. ^^ My character specifically (her name is Nell, btw) speaks more to a third issue that also limits the kinds of POC MCs we're allowed to see-- the "adultification" of black girls in particular. How they're not allowed to make mistakes or show immaturity not only because of the demands of respectability, but because they're often viewed as adults by society, who should just 'know better'. Their missteps are more heavily scrutinized; they're more often expected to be 'group moms' who just look after the characters who are actually allowed to be interesting.

I think this offers an interesting perspective on the lack of black MCs in YA media, girls or boys or otherwise...it's quite possible that the concept of a black kid of typical protagonist age (14-18) just doesn't really exist for many people? There are black baby children, and there are black adults, but there's just nothing in between...simply because society doesn't acknowledge it.

I could go on about ^this for hours (like, for example, there are a lot of reasons the Spiderverse series does not have contemporaries, and this is one of them. Do you know any characters in Miles Morales' demographic that are actually focused on in a similarly large franchise? I don't)...I'm going to restrain myself, though. ^^;;; My point is that one of my goals for Nell is to go against this sort of thinking, and to do it so blatantly that it makes people think about whether they've seen a character like her before, and to hopefully ask themselves why.

Why haven't they seen many black girl characters who are allowed to be cute and delicate? Why haven't they seen many who are allowed to be cared for and to ask for help? Why haven't they seen many who receive guidance and are encouraged to learn, rather than either automatically knowing everything or being disparaged for their ignorance? Why haven't they seen many who are main characters at all...?

[Innocynce]

Sounds awesome!
Hopefully people will stop being obsessed with the "norm" now days, and enjoy (what I feel is) more natural.

Also your post makes me wanna start up one of my comics again, I didn't really put in as much thought as you have; but the energy's kinda similar? For lack of a better word..

Also your artstyle's great, I'm very jealous!

[Gladoilus]

when it comes out can you post it on here please? I love it

[DokiDokiTsuna]

If you'd like to learn more about it, I made an introductory video last month:

The second half (and a good bit of the intro) is mostly just me complaining about RWBY. ^^; But the majority of the video is dedicated to explaining the main characters and the world they explore.

[IndigoShirtProd]

I have to commend you for the amount of thought behind how you plan to frame this character, because you're right about how black girls don't get many opportunities in media to be naïve, ignorant, or childlike without be ridiculed for it. I think back to the shows I watched as a kid where there were black girl characters and, as the side characters they always were, they were usually the most competent and/or compassionate person in the room (thinking of Numbah 5 or Suzie from rugrats, even Garnet for SU)

Why haven't they seen many who are allowed to be cared for and to ask for help? Why haven't they seen many who receive guidance and are encouraged to learn, rather than either automatically knowing everything or being disparaged for their ignorance?

I agree with this over all trend of not just adultification, but also parentification of young black girls where not only are the expectations higher, but also managing taking care of other people in spite of age or experience. I think some people may see it as a disservice to frame black characters, still, as having a multitude of negatively perceived traits. I don't agree with this, but that sentiment is slowly fading over time.

And I also do mean this as self promo, but I've taken a different approach when it comes to character creation and that is, instead of focusing on one character and doing an in depth analysis with their story, taking a lighthearted concept and making all the characters black people. That would be my Candy Crew series where all the character are black and based on different confections and candies. Framing it this way just allows for all the characters to take on every kind of role without putting them in a box like "mature, advice giving black best friend" or "athletic, cool black guy who plays basketball."

[DokiDokiTsuna]

And I also do mean this as self promo, but I've taken a different approach when it comes to character creation and that is, instead of focusing on one character and doing an in depth analysis with their story, taking a lighthearted concept and making all the characters black people.

OMG, I actually tried something like this once! Although I felt really weird about it...I felt like I would inevitably be questioned "why is everyone black" and not be able to give an articulate response. Plus I was much younger and still just starting to learn how to design black characters...I didn't have many ideas, which made everything a struggle. ^^;
Recently I revived the concept and reworked it a bit, but I dropped it again after a day or two...hearing you say that makes me want to look over it again. ^^

Also, if you'd like to promo your work (like posting links and such), I don't mind! I'm only cagey about it because, for me personally, it's not something I do very often around here. ^^;

[IndigoShirtProd]

.I felt like I would inevitably be questioned "why is everyone black" and not be able to give an articulate response.

I worried about that too. So I came up with two responses. One is in universe: you know who there are historical black colleges, well this would be a historical black private school. And the other is, "why isn't everyone black?"

Plus I was much younger and still just starting to learn how to design black characters...I didn't have many ideas, which made everything a struggle. ^^;

I was in the same boat, and I still think I could do more in terms of character design. Candy Crew is still lost in the whirlpool of preproduction so I'll just link off to another thread that has some character concept art:

https://forums.tapas.io/t/show-off-your-concept-art/76766/12?u=indigoshirtprod

[bulgariansumo]

OP, are you me? Making a linear visual novel version of my stories is something that crossed my mind so many times. Also congratulations on having a start date for yours. It looks really cute!

Coincidentally, I also have a black girl MC (though she shares the position with 7 others) who has a similar personality to yours, except she's not shy.

A lot of the stuff you've mentioned is stuff I've noticed/heard other people talk about in relation to black characters, the lack of main character roles, the limited personality types, the fact that they're almost always in kind of a best friend mentor role compared to other characters, even if it's something as simple as being stronger emotionally or slightly cooler. Not that those kinds of characters are bad, but it's the lack of variety that's the problem, right?

Marina from Splatoon 2 really struck me because I don't think I've ever seen a shy black character at all before her. Miles Morales similarly because aside from a few shows from the 2000s that, even if they're looked back on fondly never really had the popularity, black boy MCs aren't seen that often either. It was so nice to see them both becoming beloved.

That if she's lacking in any way, or god forbid, immoral, the audience will resent her for it, or even assume her imperfections are proof of the writers' bigotry, rather than just accepting them as an intentional part of the character.

This one's tricky to balance. The most guaranteed way around it that I've found is just to have more than one character of any minority demographic if I can. But this isn't always feasible.

Sometimes you create a character that falls into a trope or trend, and you're left with the decision to keep them the same or change that character trait. I feel like keeping them the same is not a bad thing so long as the character is fleshed out. It's still possible to create a character that people love.

The more diverse your casts are, the more likely you're going to brush up against this, because it's impossible to be every demographic. There's just gonna be some stereotypes that you don't know. Just focus on telling the story you want and not actively being a jerk, and I feel like most people will appreciate that.

Me being who I am, I often think of how my characters compare to stereotypes/trends/etc, even the ones that I do share things with.

Anyway, I have two black girl MCs. I love them a lot, I think about them a lot, and seeing OP and other people talk about their characters made me happy. It makes me want to talk about mine, too.

But this post is already long enough, so I'm putting it under this summary.

Roxie is very bubbly, sweet, and friendly. She also doesn't make any effort to conform to social norms and will basically LARP whenever, so despite being one of the oldest members of her space crew, she comes off as one of the more childish ones.

'Comes off' is the key word here, because she is also the main medic despite feeling like she lacks the training, and the crushing weight of that responsibility is never too far from her mind. In order to compensate for that, she's a stickler for safety.

Other things about Roxie: She's physically the strongest in her crew even though she's one of the least imposing. She has an active imagination which lends well to her creativity but also provides her with near-endless scenarios of things going wrong. Her closest friends would probably kill to protect her.

My other character, Mai, is from a series I haven't started writing yet, so I'm not sure how much I should talk about her, but I could talk about her all day.

Mai is overwhelmingly cocky and has the talent to back it up. Otherwise, she's kind, but her arrogance and her tendency to get into fistfights make peers steer clear of her.

Both Roxie and Mai struggle with a need to be perfect. For Roxie, it's more in the background, while for Mai, pretty much all of her issues revolve around it.

Roxie's been in a lot of situations where she's been prompted to prove her nerd cred, and some of her competitive behavior is a habit of trying getting ahead of this. There's some other stuff going on with her, but I haven't gotten to it yet in the story, so I'll stay quiet. It should come up next season, though.

That's all I can say without turning this into an essay.

Mai is under the impression that she is incapable of having problems. This either causes or exacerbates all of her problems. Even though she doesn't think she needs it, she is seen as being worth helping and understanding by at least one person. It doesn't fix anything, but it's a start.

[thepenmonster]

I personally follow the "Make a character, ethnicity be damned" approach. Some say that doesn't create authenticity but I counter that thought with authentic to which member of that background?

There are a lot of Korean people who hate kimchi and plenty of white people who will devour Jamaican jerk. who says a black girl can't be a ditzy magical princess?

Losers, that's who.

To sum up: Make that girly black girl as girlish as can be.

[ButterflyEmpress]

I think another reason is that cute shy black girls are also seen as unrealistic or will be accused of not acting "black"(whatever that means).

I can't wait to see LadyBird when it comes out. The premise and character designs are really cool! The visual novel video type approach is a really good idea. I never really thought of telling a story that way. Will it have voice acting and animatics? Or will it only be stills and music?

I also have a series planned that takes in a post apocalyptic world. Two spirits devastated the world after waking up to battle, resulting in humans cursed to become monsters when experiencing high negative emotions and magical girls blessed with the power to revert said monsters. I was thinking of making it a commentary on toxic positivity, with the lead struggling to be optimistic and cheery like her teammates.

[theyrebothakilogram]

I watched a youtube video awhile ago that had similar points, but it was talking about trans characters and how they're not allowed to be fun characters because they have to be perfect representation which severely flattens the character. I've seen a specific phrase online a lot that goes "let black kids have fun" people will have it in their bios and videos, and it mostly refers to how people are tired of the typical black pain story, especially when it's told by people who aren't even black, and how they would much rather see black characters that have their own personal conflicts that aren't just racism, as well as seeing black characters that are allowed to have fun and let loose. Your project looks really cool and I look forward to seeing it completed!

[NellieVP318]

Why haven't they seen many black girl characters who are allowed to be cute and delicate? Why haven't they seen many who are allowed to be cared for and to ask for help? Why haven't they seen many who receive guidance and are encouraged to learn, rather than either automatically knowing everything or being disparaged for their ignorance? Why haven't they seen many who are main characters at all...?

I 100% agree. Looking back at my own black characters, I sadly kinda fall into the "stereotypes" of strong black girls/woman. I noticed the only time black girls/women characters are allowed to be weak are usually related to racial issues or "struggle stories". Don't get me wrong, those works are valid. But we rarely see a shy and meek black girl character who is simply allowed to be cute and just be a child. I would also like to see more socially awkward black girl characters. Frankly, I'm kinda over the whole "strong black girls/woman" thing and ready to see more complex black characters.

BTW, I like the design of your MC. She looks cute and as a former fan of RWBY, this vibe looks cool!

[coco-ji]

First off, Lady Bird looks super cute and fun! Congrats on your future launch. That's really exciting!

Oh man, there is SO MUCH that I agree with in this thread. I can't count the amount of times I've spoken up complained about these topics with my best friend for as long as i've been consuming media. Growing up, I would have loved to see more cutesy black girls that could make mistakes and explore the world with no pressure or strings attached in the same way white or non-black characters can.

For me, this is also a complicated subject that I hesitate to discuss in public spaces at times. Because I Do like to portray my black fem characters as strong (though not indestructable). And I do really appreciate characters like Garnet, who I think was mentioned in the thread. With that being said!! It is important to keep showing black girls in lots of different roles so tropes don't get sealed in media. It does suck that I feel like I've seen the same black "Mom" character over and over again as an example. Speaking of racism in fantasy, the way I pulled my hair out when (SPOILER AHEAD) the clearly black-coded Nehemia from the Sarah J. Maas books got martyred for the progression of the storyline and the development of the light-haired, light-eyed MC when Every. Single. Other badass female character throughout the rest of the series got to keep their lives, do magic, ride dragons, get hot elven boyfriends, and have their happy endings. Like why. for what??? Let me also mention that Nehemia's people were ALL enslaved. wow ok. and she was very much overly compassionate towards the MC and suppressed pretty much all of her own suffering so that the MC wouldn't worry about her. Eye Roll (SPOILER OVER). I don't really know what the conversation is around that choice (i try to stay away from stuff like that for my own sanity), but made it really hard to fully enjoy that series for that specific reason.

I like that you mentioned Nocturne from Castlevania bc I definitely wish we could have more black villains without people being weird about it. Or at least morally gray characters. With my own OC, Anari, (who is one of four main protagonists) I did kind of intentionally design her as the cool strong type, but I also wanted her to have a dark past/present. Ironically, I was inspired by the concept of Spiderman for her character (she's a spider spirit, she wears a "mask" to protect her true identity) Her darker aspects: Anari works as an assassin. And she's not torn up about it either lol. she kills people for money and she's honestly fine with that. Additionally, she has been in a toxic relationship for a very long time and much of her development is trying to overcome that.

Overall, it's been really fun to take this character who seems like she has everything together and potentially could be that group parent for the rest of the cast, but instead she gets to make selfish decisions and looks out for herself, while also having her soft moments or her silly moments (because the story is a comedy at the end of the day).

Thanks for sharing bc it's nice to see other black creators breaking up expectations for black girls and black people in media in general. I'm always happy when I see it and I don't feel alone for having a black girl with a modern afrocentric design going off on adventures in the fantasy worlds with all the other mythical creatures haha.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Will it have voice acting and animatics? Or will it only be stills and music?

Mostly stills and music, but I'm going to challenge myself to animate at least one scene per episode. ^^ If the series catches on, I will definitely consider opening auditions for voice actors, since I've already done it for other projects.

wo spirits devastated the world after waking up to battle, resulting in humans cursed to become monsters when experiencing high negative emotions and magical girls blessed with the power to revert said monsters. I was thinking of making it a commentary on toxic positivity, with the lead struggling to be optimistic and cheery like her teammates.

That sounds SUPER cool; I hope you go through with it! ^^ Always love commentaries on toxic positivity~

I don't really know what the conversation is around that choice (i try to stay away from stuff like that for my own sanity)

...Based on everything you explained about the character, I would hope that conversation addresses the (HIGH) likelihood that Nehemiah is a direct reference to the 'mammy' stereotype. o_O Like, all of that can't be accidental...most likely, the author was trying to be "topical" by creating a character that mirrors the role of the archetypal black housemaid (i.e. "and now, ladies and gentlemen: watch as I create a Black Character(TM) to remind everyone of the awful tragedies black people experienced during the 20th century! Only someone as educated, progressive, and brave as me could even attempt a storyline like this...! I'll be expecting my Good Person Award in the mail~")

...Meanwhile, the idea that black readers in the present day (a) exist, and (b) might feel othered by this narrative, goes totally ignored. =/

I'm always happy when I see it and I don't feel alone for having a black girl with a modern afrocentric design going off on adventures in the fantasy worlds with all the other mythical creatures haha.

I can only hope it'll be more common someday~