December 31, 2023- On ethnic coding, forced diversity, and Smurfwine.

Before you read this, here's some background- I am an Ashkenazi Jewish person.

I think Smurfpetal is the character I've put the most thought into. The afro texture of her hair made me imagine her as a black woman, and figuring out how to convey that with a blue-skinned character was difficult. Especially since my version of Smurfpetal is a chef (due to her only line in any Smurfs media ever being mentioning Baker Smurf's smurfberry pies in an app game) and I worried about falling into stereotypes. In the end, the coding probably isn't obvious in the final written product, although it's there in my notes and how I think about writing the character.

I tried creating multiple black-coded characters so that Smurfpetal wasn't the only one, but in the end I really only succeeded in making Smurfwine, who's probably my worst idea yet. See, I tried to connect her to music in the same way Tailor Smurf is connected to his job.

In the 1980s show, there was one Smurf character who was coded as a specific ethnicity (rather than a nationality, as the two things are different). Tailor Smurf wasn't written as Jewish, but his voice actor (Kip King, a Jewish man) intentionally gave Tailor a New York Jewish accent. There's even an interview on the Jimmy Fallon show where Kip King's son jokes around about Tailor being "The Jewish Smurf."

Tailor Smurf being voiced as Ashkenazi Jewish probably came from his job. At the turn of the 20th century, there were a lot of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants coming into New York, and a lot of them became tailors. (That's a link to myjewishlearning.com!)

Seems pretty cool, huh? Connecting a character to an ethnicity for established historical reasons?

And you know how Smurflily kinda raps in the 2020s cartoon?

Yeah, so, I connected Smurfwine to rap music, because the genre originated from, and is mostly associated with, black music artists. As a gimmick- because every Smurf needs a gimmick- I made her bad at it.

I gave her a personality outside of that. I made her shy, and kind, and I gave her a crush on Smurfette (I like having girls who are gay for Smurfette). But we already have shy and kind characters, and her gimmick is already kind of just Harmony Smurf's thing.

So Smurfwine kind of became... redundant. She ended up drifting into the background where she became irrelevant.

When mean internet jerks talk about """forced diversity""" they're usually just anti-SJWs upset that there are women or black people in their video game or whatever. But none of that is forced diversity. Smurfwine kind of is. In fact, she's the only real example of forced diversity I've ever seen. She was a creation made during the stage where I was turning Two Sides from "a vague idea and list of things" into "an actual fanseries", during the step where I started thinking about my work being seen by more people than just me.

I don't regret creating Smurfwine. What I regret is how uninteresting I made her. Her "shy and kind" personality ended up being taken by Smurftulip, who is much more interesting due to being the best friend of a main character. Her "bad at music" gimmick is already taken by Harmony. All that's left is her ethnic coding, which... isn't a personality trait.

All my best characters flow naturally into my head. The trio of Lucinda, Helga, and Waridi; Spinner and Weaver; Smurfholly; and many more. The reason Smurfwine is so uninteresting, and faded into the background, is because her existence was forced for a specific purpose. She's somehow a token black character despite 1. being blue, and 2. the series now having multiple black and black-coded characters. (For example: Lucinda, Helga, and Waridi are names I gave to three background witch girls from Scruple's Sweetheart who I found interesting and wanted to make into full characters. Waridi is black.)

I don't know how to finish this off other than "learn from your creative mistakes, because that's what I'm doing."