Why The Raven Cycle isn’t getting any diver$ity cookie from me.
This contains mild spoilers, and text from The Raven King.
The way Henry was introduced in BLLB was unforgettable. We saw him making an offhand rape comment. This is pretty common. See All For the Game series by Nora Sakavic where their lone!good!moc could be seen making the same proclamation throughout the series. I am willing to let it slide, maybe, this is not about race.
Moving forward to The Raven King, we get to know Henry Cheng better. He’s half Chinese and half Korean. His mother Seondeok is a Korean dealer of illegal antiquities. White authors can’t seem to write East Asians without associating them with mob, yakuza, and mafia? Another example: All For the Game series by Nora Sakavic
This is the part where it gets nauseating.
“Principles? Henry Cheng’s principles are all about getting larger font in the school newsletter,” Ronan said. He did a vaguely offensive version of Henry’s voice: “Serif? Sans serif? More bold, less italics.”
Blue saw Adam both smirk and turn his face away in a hurry so that Gansey wouldn’t see, but it was too late.
“Et tu, Brute?” Gansey asked Adam. “Disappointing.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Adam replied.
It was explicitly stated Henry’s second language is English. I’m going to assume Ronan is mocking the way Henry speaks, the intonation or accent of his voice. Whichever fucking way I look it is racist. Nobody even called Ronan out. The gross thing, the author made it into an “inside joke” for pynch.
This didn’t end right there. We have another pynch scene where they made a punchline out of Henry’s ethnicity.
“Adam made puerile jokes at Henry’s expense (He’s half Chinese? “Which half?”) and sniggered clannishly; Blue called them on it (“Jealous, much?”): Gansey told them to put aside their preconceptions and think about him.
Really? This made into the final publication? Minority’s ethnical identity isn’t a subject for crass puns. Blue and Gansey’s meek intervention is not going to pacify me. I’m not here for this. Once again, this become a “cutesy” pynch scene.
These vile ~scenes~ about Henry’s otherization serves no purpose. It doesn’t contribute anything to the plot. You can reason out the narrative is implying Adam and Ronan are jealous (of Gansey’s new attachment to Henry,) but the author could’ve made a different approach of executing that. This is deliberate.
Another troubling scene with Henry and Blue
It was this: Blue, teetering on the edge of offence, saying, I don’t understand why you keep saying such awful things about Koreans. About yourself. And Henry saying. I will do it before anyone else can. It is the only way to not be angry all of the time.
Great another Korean character written by white author who might or might not be experiencing internalized racism. Sounds familiar? See Ellen Oh’s intake of Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell.
I see a lot of bloggers here are now clamoring for Henry, maybe it’s because he’s greatly sculpted, or because he’s Asian and his characterization speaks to you. If your reason is the latter, I have news for you. There are plenty of Asian authors specifically Chinese, and Korean, who are out there doing a spectacular job at it. Here are some of them; Jenny Han, Renee Ahdieh, Cindy Pon, Malinda Lo, Ellen Oh, Maureen Goo, Marie Lu, Lydia Kang, Amy Zhang, Celeste Ng, S. Jae-Jones, and more.
Can you imagine all the upperclassmen sitting around talking about Neil? Exchanging all the little things they learned about them that day?
like
Matt slamming into the girls dorm hissing, “he hates vegetables, he told this to me, he hates vegetables but he loves fruit.” And all the girls gasp.
“He sent me a TT A TT emoji from his English class.” Renee says. She’s been saving this information until just this moment when they’re all together. She’d seen it in the middle of her tutor session and delicately touched her fingers to her mouth.
“Nicky taught him that.” Matt snaps his fingers and points at her, excited that he knows another thing.
“He hates his English class, it bores him to tears but he said it’d be useful.” Dan says.
“Isn’t he taking a speech class or something? Maybe it’s for interviews?” Allison says, because being pulled into The Great Neil Josten Mystery is honestly the best thing to happen in weeks. The first time she laughed since, well, ya know, was when Neil ate a beet for the first time in the cafeteria and immediately stuck his tongue out far enough for the beet to fall off.
"What could his english class be useful for? What could he mean. Does he want to be a writer? Does he like books? What’s this about?“ Matt paces around the room and they just spend hours breaking down everything they know about their new fox.
Until the fox in question comes in to hang out with them before his practices with Kevin. And their heads just snap to him like “NEIL.”
And it startles him every time.
If you want to know exactly what hell feels like, fall in love with me.
Haiku on Destructive Habits (via whispersinnthedarkk)
(via nitesuke)
i can’t get adam parrish: spontaneous sleeper off my mind like…..
adam routinely falling asleep on gansey’s shoulder whenever he sits shotgun in the pig
ronan being put on ‘crash watch’ during latin because everone knows that adam hates sleeping in class but sometimes it just happens
(crash watch includes taking adam’s notes, waking him up ~gently~, and being a good boyf)
adam and persephone having naps in cabeswater after he finishes his training for the day
sometimes blue encourages adam to sleep when they hang out. usually he ends up sprawled over her lap and snoring loudly as she watches sitcoms, and usually orla or persephone document it in the form of like 60 pictures
blue had one printed and taped to her wall
noah and adam staying up late and talking and talking until they end up cuddled on adam’s bed (adam is lil’ spoon ofc)
adam sleeping in the hondayota during his breaks
ronan and adam staying up studying for finals and adam eventually slumping over and crashing on ronan’s lap (ronan’s face is so red google earth can see him through the roof of st. agnes)
Paris is always showing its teeth. When it is not snarling, it is laughing.
Les Misérables, Part III, Book I, Chapter XI (via sextmen)
aristotle & dante quotes: 7/?
I wanted to tell them that I never knew that people like Dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren’t meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys.