Tumblr user Internleland is now hospitalized because an entire blog was dedicated to threatening them, and they’d continually get death threats on their own personal blog. From what I’ve gathered this caused a nervous meltdown, they became suicidal, and had to go and get help. They voluntarily submitted themselves and are hopefully getting better.*
Internleland is a queer POC, and White Vale decided it was their job to “stop them”. From what exactly? Internleland was vocal and called out racist BS, and tried to advocate racial diversity and critical thought over the overall whiteness of Cecil. I suppose White Vale couldn’t let that happen…
*Is what I’ve heard, please correct me if I’m wrong.
Here’s some more info on the subject.
But here’s the deal, if you’re in Night Vale you should try and point out racist BS too. Talk about it as openly as you can.
Night Vale should be a safe place, and it’s obvious it isn’t. Everyone has to do their part to help. Someone is hospitalized because we didn’t do our job as a community to dissuade racists from getting comfortable in this fandom. We’ve failed Internleland, we’re failing others, too.
Talk about it. Mention it. Don’t be silent anymore.
Just to clarify a few things: He went to the ER based on his already existing health issues to do with his severe anxiety although he was even recieving death threats before that. He did briefly mention before a huge bulk of them happened that he was feeling suicidal and then had flushed his medication away.
A lot of what has happened to him has been a constant build up, and other queer fans of colour have also been outspoken about the constant racism in the fandom only to be ignored entirely or to be sent threats and other racist messages. Opia-apito, a disabled native american, has also been harassed off of this site from the fandom with people being extremely racist towards them. This has been something that has been continually happening and the majority of the fandom has just willfully ignored it or has told the people of colour who are rightfully outraged about the treatment they have recieved that they should “shut up” or they should be “nicer” and have even been told they are apparently Just As Bad as the White Supremecists that have been trolling the #pocecil tag on and off for the past six months, a tag that was created by a person of colour and to be a safe space for fans of colour.
Internleland however was recently the victim of a very direct attack against him. He’s been on the recieving end of vicious messages whenever he would speak out about the racism in the fandom, but a huge portion of what happened in the fandom recently was to do with an incident involving theaceofhearts36 as mentioned in Cecilos’ post above. There is a lot of stuff that went down before the main bulk of death threats but someone has managed to put all of what happened in a nutshell here. When the original #wtnv revolution was created, internleland noticed theaceofhearts36 reblogged the initial post and so brought it up that we did not feel safe sharing a space with someone who has actively disregarded his safety and endorsed a blog created by someone who wished death upon him. A lot of people became agitated about his post and that was when the death messages started (tw very graphic description of suicide). When fans of colour were appalled at the treatment internleland was recieving, people from the tag continued to dismiss and disrespect them, to the point where even one of the original creators of the tag made it clear that they dont care for the safety of fans of colour by saying “rants” about racism were did not belong there. Said “rants” were queer fans of colour legitimately concerned about their own safety and the harm being caused to internleland, tagging in what was SUPPOSEDLY meant to be a “safe space”.
Not long after this, internleland made a public post about a relapse in his mental health. After he admitted himself to the ER, he checked his tubmlr and saw 13+ death threats in his inbox. That was when he left tumblr.
He has since then wrote up this post after all that had happened. Since a lot of us have finally started being very vocal about this subject, the maintags have been flooded with people trying to talk about as if this is to do with “headcanon shaming”. We’re talking about the health, safety and well being of REAL fans of colour and so far the response from people has been insulting people for speaking up and constant derailment from white fans.
We should not stop talking about this, and it is up to all of us, especially the white fans, to help support those who are discriminated against, to make this fandom a much safer place. To stop derailing the conversation by saying “cecil could be [inhuman characteristic]/my headcanon is okay/hate breeds hate both sides are as bad as each other” as to avoid taking responsibility. We do need to take responsibility and call out those who refuse to understand the real importance of tackling racism if we want this to be a better place. We can do so much better than this, we all deserve a much better fandom than this.
A POC ended up in the hospital for WTNV? What happened?
