BlackHeart Biohazards

I wish more fanfic writers were empathetic to tops and doms. I think a lack of empathy there explains a lot of the fandom discourse around the idea that it’s racist to make characters with darker skin the top or seme or whatever.Part of why it bothers people, I think, is that in fandom spaces—for a variety of reasons—people have somehow come to a consensus that it’s fine to have submissive and degradation oriented fantasies, but not fantasies about making someone submit or doing the degrading. SOME people don’t let themselves think about the interiority of those that could actually deliver them what they want, sexually. And I don’t even just mean actual sex! I can tell when a fic author actually gets off on topping or domming. Those people are kind of rare in fandom, but their fics really stand out if you know what you’re looking for. Side note—I think there’s a lot of untapped potential in whump writers, who could probably write really wonderful nasty smut, but who are ashamed of writing something sexual and worried about backlash (so they just stick to narrative torture for now).If you instinctively think that writing a character as a top or dom means they’re incapable of having interiority or complexity because YOU can’t write a compelling top or dom character for shit, then you might also think that any writing of people of color as tops or doms is inherently bad or offensive writing. And this is sad for everyone, but it’s especially sad for the actual tops and doms of color in the real world who have to read people saying that they don’t exist, or that characters who feel like them are offensive and racist. Ironically, the people who claim that writing a character of color as a top or dom automatically makes that character a racist or brutish stereotype are reenforcing that stereotype. I want to see more compellingly written top and dom characters who have actual wants and conflicts. Give me more woobie, extremely emotional doms. Give me self esteem issues, or the struggles of being mistreated by subs, or feeling reduced to what they can provide sexually but not seen as a good person outside of that, please. tldr; I wish more people knew that it’s not an insult to write a character as a top or dom, and therefore that it’s not an insult to write a character of color as a top or dom.