The Pressure of Being a Black Creator

Comments · 1.6K

• VE

  @VenusOrionComics · 4 months ago (edited) · pinned

  This video isn’t about attacking anyone. <br> <br>It’s about discussing the creative pressure many creators face when people expect their art, characters, or stories to fit a specific identity box. <br> <br>I wanted to speak honestly about my own experiences as a Black indie comic creator, while also opening a broader conversation about creative freedom, identity, and authenticity in storytelling. <br> <br>Curious to hear your thoughts respectfully: <br>Do you think creators today are pressured to represent their identity in specific ways?<br><br>My Website: <a href="http://www.venusorioncomics.com/">www.venusorioncomics.com</a>

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• CA

  @cartoonlex · 4 months ago

  “I’d rather fail being myself than succeed pretending to be someone that I’m not.” Wise words.

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• BL

  @Blackhope15x · 4 months ago (edited)

  &quot;Everyone keeps telling me how MY story is suppoded to go. Nah. Ima do my own thing.&quot; -Miles Morales

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• AN

  @ANDLESCO · 4 months ago

  People: &quot;I hate stereotypes, they hurt society.&quot;<br>Also people: &quot;how can I enjoy your cartoon without racial stereotypes!!&quot;

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• SA

  @salcaalpaca3428 · 4 months ago

  Not every black creator needs or wants to make the next Boondocks

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• DE

  @deandredukes95 · 4 months ago

  Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t!<br><br>You can’t win with these people!

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• LA

  @lazilycatharticone4191 · 4 months ago

  Stand firm on YOUR art, ten toes down. God has given YOU a gift to create, dont let others bully you into creating what you dont want. It&apos;s YOUR ART.

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• RO

  @RobZombiiAnimations · 4 months ago

  As a black animator:<br><br><br>F*ck &apos;em. Yolanda Briggs&apos; design is freaking gorgeous!

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• ME

  @mechajay3358 · 4 months ago (edited)

  This topic goes back to that one episode of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air when Will and Carlton tried to join a black fraternity and one of the members didn&apos;t want Carlton because he wasn&apos;t &quot;black enough.&quot; He responded with &quot;Being Black isn&apos;t What I&apos;m Trying To Be, It&apos;s What I Am.&quot;<br><br> There&apos;s always that section who wants the representation to be specific to their standards.

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• DA

  @dallassegno · 4 months ago

  Imagine being a fiction writer and being told you can only write non fiction. Forever

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• CR

  @Crimsontears83 · 4 months ago

  Gotta love those people. &quot;Anime needs to change their stories to validate us amd make more Black characters &quot;<br>Black creators make black manga with black characters. Same people, &quot;Not black enough. Too much like anime &quot;.

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• PO

  @pootlovato8237 · 4 months ago (edited)

  As a black artist myself, there is a lot of contradicting people in the black twitter community that I completely stopped listening to when i started to realize their opinions of blackness was actually influenced by a lot of discomfort towards blackness that didn&apos;t fit their box of what blackness was. Blackness has to imply going completely against what whiteness is in their opinions, even when there are aspects of blackness that just doesn&apos;t adhere to those rules OR are a contradiction in of itself when you look at black standards. these are the same crowd of black twitter users who also claim that ice spice is black but were calling women like anok yai or Indiyah polack were &quot;eurocentric&quot;, and went from calling Olandria &apos;afrocentric&apos; &nbsp;when she was struggling on loveisland to find love to suddenly &apos;eurocentric&apos; when she started becoming popular for her looks. Same people who also complained about black women posting collages of long natural black hair, or the &apos;clean girl aesthetic&apos; saying, again, it was eurocentric and doesn&apos;t fit a black aesthetic. There seems to be an association with blackness as needing to fit a very specific box otherwise it&apos;s not black at all. And i think this comes from a discomfort of being represented outside of the boxes other people put them in through western media. I get it, but to put other black artists down that are essentially indirectly or directly fixing this problem by taking black people out of the box and putting them in different context, is quite literally bullshit. They need to learn how to sit with their discomfort and why it bothers them so much to see black people in different scenarios or spaces or aesthetics that aren&apos;t familiar to them.

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