It's unfortunate that such should be so politically charged these days. I generally enjoy imaginative character redesigns. I don't see why "race-swapping" should be treated any differently than genderswapping. Neither does anything to harm the original character, merely reinterpret them. If anything it's more inclusive.
It's unfortunate that such should be so politically charged these days. I generally enjoy imaginative character redesigns. I don't see why "race-swapping" should be treated any differently than genderswapping. Neither does anything to harm the original character, merely reinterpret them. If anything it's more inclusive.
I don't know if you're being serious with the "i don't see why" in that statement. But to anyone who honestly doesn't : like the other comment calling it double standard. (Not saying it's not) It's just history. History of descrimination, prejudice, racism, inequality and so-on. What's that have to do with artwork of fictitious characters decades or possibly centuaries removed? There's more pictures of Nessa from 2019's Pokemon Sword/Shield, with her race "intentionally" altered to be white (ignoring any false flag white-washing controversy, You know the ones). Than pictures of Tifa Lockhart the internet super bae since 1997, with her race altered period. That's not an answer btw. If I had to guess. Since there have been genuine racist depictions in art since forever, question everything and everyone guilty until intention is proven. Just a guess though I can't speak for no one, nor should I. I'm an asshole.
It's sad that it's difficult for a black artist to even exist on social media without people harassing them or threating them because they drew a character a different skin color. All I got to say is, let them have fun and don't be a racist asshole
I'm just recalling the incident with one of the pokemon girls where people were flipping the hell out because someone didn't draw her dark enough. Or the time when a girl called hair buns on a character in Animal Crossing space buns instead of afro puffs (?) and accidentally set twitter on fire. Them there's countless incidents of tumblrites redrawing characters with darker skin, different builds and other attributes and saying they "fixed" the original design. Point being is that the internet seems to have a stroke when a darker character is drawn even a little lighter, but it's fine when people completely change the race of a white character. I'm perfectly fine with this, honestly, I don't really care, but I think denying that there is a double standard is kinda ridiculous at this point.
I don't know if you're being serious with the "i don't see why" in that statement. But to anyone who honestly doesn't : like the other comment calling it double standard. (Not saying it's not) It's just history. History of descrimination, prejudice, racism, inequality and so-on. What's that have to do with artwork of fictitious characters decades or possibly centuaries removed? There's more pictures of Nessa from 2019's Pokemon Sword/Shield, with her race "intentionally" altered to be white (ignoring any false flag white-washing controversy, You know the ones). Than pictures of Tifa Lockhart the internet super bae since 1997, with her race altered period. That's not an answer btw. If I had to guess. Since there have been genuine racist depictions in art since forever, question everything and everyone guilty until intention is proven. Just a guess though I can't speak for no one, nor should I. I'm an asshole.
I understand why people flip out over such depictions. I stated in the first sentence of my post that such things were politically charged. I'm saying I don't condone such reactions and believe race-swapping should be as benign, fundamentally, as altering any other aspect of a character in fan-art. It should still be subject to criticism, as just because it can be done doesn't mean it can't be done poorly, but it shouldn't be viewed as intrinsically problematic.
It's sad that it's difficult for a black artist to even exist on social media without people harassing them or threating them because they drew a character a different skin color. All I got to say is, let them have fun and don't be a racist asshole
It's sad that it's difficult for an asian artist to even exist on social media without westerners harassing them or threatening them because they drew a character with a different skin color.
Maybe we could all just stop attacking people over harmless fanart, using "Representation" to justify lynch mobs?
I'm just recalling the incident with one of the pokemon girls where people were flipping the hell out because someone didn't draw her dark enough. Or the time when a girl called hair buns on a character in Animal Crossing space buns instead of afro puffs (?) and accidentally set twitter on fire. Them there's countless incidents of tumblrites redrawing characters with darker skin, different builds and other attributes and saying they "fixed" the original design. Point being is that the internet seems to have a stroke when a darker character is drawn even a little lighter, but it's fine when people completely change the race of a white character. I'm perfectly fine with this, honestly, I don't really care, but I think denying that there is a double standard is kinda ridiculous at this point.
Because there's no such thing as blackwashing. It is a double standard, because things were never equal.
To quote Dr. King: “Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up.”
Because there's no such thing as blackwashing. It is a double standard, because things were never equal.
To quote Dr. King: “Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up.”
Indeed. So, let us normalize switching skin colors in any direction since that's what true equality is. There is also no propaganda or another sinister intent behind that action then.
Because, once there is normalized behavior, people will eventually stop asking why the skin color was changed in any direction and then you will have erased the racial slur. But this process is still young, so I can see why people are getting offended by changing dark skin color to a lighter skin color. However, prohibiting one way to reach that equality won't solve the issue, but it may even radicalize people because they're viewed as morally inferior when the intent was just to use a different color scheme for a character in a non-propagandic (i.e there was no racist intent) way.
Context is also quite important on this, and even if you ignore the history of whitewashing, that doesn't change the fact that there should be questions on why there are those who are quick to take one of the few characters in a property who has dark skin and convert them into a character with light skin to match the majority of the cast.
Provence said:
Indeed. So, let us normalize switching skin colors in any direction since that's what true equality is. There is also no propaganda or another sinister intent behind that action then.
That would only make sense if we had reached an equal state where having lighter or darker skin didn't matter, but there is quite a bit of societal pressure for lighter skin colors. The emphasis that beauty and lighter skins go hand and hand is the norm at the moment, which can even be seen in Japanese works where they're commonly emphasizing the whiteness of a characters skin when describing their beauty. Right now that bias needs to be broken first so that there isn't the stigma for a character to have dark skin.
I love how everybody is making this into a conversation about civil rights, and not about how you just shouldn't be an asshole on the Internet. Saying "this character is better now because I made her darker/lighter-skinned" is just as dickish as saying, "this character is better now, because I made her sexier/a loli/a bimbo/etc." Period. What is so hard with just politely saying, "Oh, I just prefer the character this way" without being a dick? (The answer: it won't earn you brownie points on today's media-culture-driven Internet.)
Isn't that true to other artist too, tho? I remember the Nessa thing that because the artist didn't make her skin color "black" enough, the artist got harassed?
When black artists make a non black character dark skinned, it's not to say "Here I fixed it" It's because they just wanna make their own version of the character and have fun, An artist on twitter named Thuminnoo drew herself as Kiki and she got death threats and racist harassment because of it
The fact were even having a race debate over a drawing is just sad and pathetic
So we're just going to completely ignore all the of the artists that literally said "I fixed your shit" because they didn't like something another artist made? It's not something that's limited to drawing characters with darker skin than normal, but that certainly happens. This literally happened just the other day. That artist was white, but there are still plenty of black artists that do this too.
And if giving characters darker skin just for fun is okay, then why isn't the reverse okay? We're talking about fanart, which has literally no bearing on Representation whatsoever. Drawing Nessa with light skin doesn't change that she canonically has dark skin, her Representation hasn't been erased. And yet the artist for post #4410638did get death threats and insults, and I saw just as many PoCs supporting the behavior as there were condemning it.
NO ONE should be getting death threats over this, it's stupid.
Gyaru culture also exists. And it's not like there isn't a market for darker skinned characters in anime and in general. Nessa being a good example for females. She has 1.7k pieces on this site alone.
Here's the thing though, in depictions how often is becoming darker skinned associated with something negative versus something good? How often is becoming a gyaru character tied with positive traits versus negative traits?
Liszt6 said:
It's common for the Japanese to, yes consider pale skin beautiful (I utterly refuse to use the term whiteness, because that's both a charged term and frankly inaccurate), but in American and quite a few other cultures, tanned skin is considered more beautiful while pale is considered unhealthy.
Modern tanned skin is tied to wealth and status, tying in that one can afford the time to not work among the majority of the working class (much like paler skin was and still is associated with in various parts of the world), but I'd also point out that you're conflating tanned skin with darker skin tones. You're not going to see many people want to go out and have their skin actually darkened to the point of having a skin tone like Africans, while on the other hand skin whitening to try and get closer to looking Caucasian is still a major thing across the world.
Flipping a character's skin tone to another one out of context doesn't seem like an issue, but because of how pervasive the culture pushing people to believe that their own dark skinned tones are less beautiful than lighter skinned tones, changing dark skin toned characters to match the predominate light skin toned characters merely helps to reinforce the idea that there was something wrong with having dark skin tones. In an ideal world we wouldn't have this issue, but we do not live in an ideal world and we also do not live in a void detached from the contexts of our reality.
Let's all just, stop debating. This isn't 4chan or Reddit
You are the one who literally made a case of people taking other people's work and "Fixing" them by recoloring their skin color as people just having "fun", even tho it's quite disrespectful to the one who made it in the first place...
NO ONE should be getting death threats over this, it's stupid.
I don't imagine many reasonable people would take that approach and you're preaching to the choir as even in heated debate I doubt that's where this comment section was leading.
However you can search Nessa on this site, check the deleted images. And find blatantly racist and indefensible art of her. Just so we're clear I remember those pictures uploads. There were retaliation art for the Nessa "white-washing" controversy.
I don't know how that factors into all this conversation. But I mean there's no light skin alternating equivalent to drawing a dark skinned character as an ape. To which you might say that's completely and 100% different. I'd agree, but the intention behind those kinds of pictures is pretty obvious to all of us right? While we can say that another picture that isn't BLATANTLY racist clearly has no such intention. There are people who'll see it regardless.
Also you think this comment section is something. Go to one of those Nessa pictures comment sections.
You are the one who literally made a case of people taking other people's work and "Fixing" them by recoloring their skin color as people just having "fun", even tho it's quite disrespectful to the one who made it in the first place...
The artist who drew this didn't say they were fixing it, she was just doing her own version of the characters and no I'm not defending the people who say they "Fixed it" Those people are smug and annoying and do deserve some criticism
The artist who drew this didn't say they were fixing it, she was just doing her own version of the characters and no I'm not defending the people who say they "Fixed it" Those people are smug and annoying and do deserve some criticism
Well, yeah, as far as I know, it's just the artist way of drawing the characters and didn't take other peoples art and recoloring it to "fix" it, I don't think anyone here is angry at the artist of this particular art.
Well, yeah, as far as I know, it's just the artist way of drawing the characters and didn't take other peoples art and recoloring it to "fix" it, I don't think anyone here is angry at the artist of this particular art.
I will say that anyone who is angry at this is just as stupid at the entire Nessa fallout.
Well, yeah, as far as I know, it's just the artist way of drawing the characters and didn't take other peoples art and recoloring it to "fix" it, I don't think anyone here is angry at the artist of this particular art.
Yeah recoloring over someone's drawing and saying you "Fixed it" is pretty bad, but if it's an original drawing I think it's ok just as long as their reasoning is not dumb
If people want to lighten or darken their skin, what does it matter to you? Does this hurt you in any way? Does it even really matter? And I'm curious. Do you really think that making a big deal out of race is going to make the problem go away, or make it worse? Because frankly I see one of two ends to that, and they're both bad.
The issue is why they want to change their skin tone. If it is only due to societal pressures, then yes it does hurt not only me, it hurts everyone living in that culture. Just because you don't see the problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist and doesn't mean it isn't hurting you as well. If the choices are between making a deal out of it or ignoring the problem, it's obvious the only option is to make a deal out of it because ignoring a problem never resolves it.
I grew up in a blessed environment thinking that these kinds of things would have no impact on me, but as I grew up I easily became more aware of how these things have impacted and still impact those that I love.
I think saying something is ignorant without explaining why is pretty ignorant.
Fine, lets put this in neutral terms. We have two competing soccer teams, A and B. Team B's goal is made three times the size of Team A's, the referees are former players from Team A, and the rules are that if Team A scores a goal the points are worth five times than if Team B scores a goal. After playing through half the game they finally decided to go "well these rules are unfair, so we're going to make it so all points scored are the same regardless of which team scored it" it won't change Team B's situation because the referees are still former players from Team A and it's still inherently easier for Team A to score a goal than Team B. You can't turn around and say "well Team B are a bunch of whiners because they're complaining even though the rules are fair now." If you want equality you have to level or at least make more level the playing field and making sure that those who make judgements are as fair as possible, and calling out the problems is the only way to bring awareness that the playing field and the referees aren't level and aren't unbias to begin with.
You can claim that if we didn't recognize race then it wouldn't be a problem, but that is only possible if you started from a point where race was never recognized to begin with. Once it has been recognized and that has influenced the playing field for so many people in the world, you have to recognize race to be able to resolve the problems that exist today because of our race based past that still impacts and influences things today.
And how do we solve the problems? Should we reset the scoreboard and level the playing field? What would that mean, in real terms?
The solution is always the hard part, but we need to recognize the problem to try to understand it and to be able to think about solutions to try and remedy it. I don't think we're in a situation where simply resetting the scoreboard would make things better, but I do think we need a proactive effort to be able to put those right now in a unequal position to not only be judged equally but also be able to live equally. This for the most part means having greater representation and inclusion in positions that make judgements and decisions. More variety of thought of course opens more routes to conflicting ideas, but it also opens the door for overall more ideas and more potential solutions to problems that hopefully could give us a route to try and benefit everyone. It also allows us to recognize problems we may not have been aware of at all.
As for a culture, I think having more representation and inclusion in the media would also be a benefit. The main thing should be showing that in the end we're all humans and we all have the same basic human wants and desires regardless of the color of our skin. It's easy to draw lines between groups that appear differently, but understanding the fundamentals of what makes us the same is what helps us reach middle grounds to try and have a conversation. Knowing then how the hurdles one may have simply because of the color of their skin (or gender, orientation, etc) and how that can impact meeting our basic human wants and desires helps those who do not experience it to realize how an unfair field impacts the lives of those around them, and that if they themselves were in that same situation how they too would face similar hardship.
The issues of course will not be resolved easily and will obviously take a long time, as easy as it might be to learn lessons it's also unfortunately just as easy for us to unlearn them. The only thing we can do is try keeping our overall direction toward a path that make us all more human together.
I personally can't really blame anyone who would have issues with this, mostly because of intent. Since you don't know whether the artist decided to do this for fun or for other malicious reasons (it does not help when you have the most recent knuckles thing that happened). Especially with all the hate being flung at Asian artist for having light source affect darker skin tone characters. I almost feel like those that attack them forget that light does effect everyone no Mather the skin tone, you can come out darker if you stay in the sun for too long, or if you have a bright light near you, how it reflects on you skin tone can look lighter etc... :0 but even when I say all that after seeing her replies in the tweet I 😬 don't know if it was all for fun...
Black persons can say the N-word with next to no true negative repercussion, while others get backlash. - Double Standard. Right? But you do know why though? So apply that to this. The movie 'White Chicks' or Dave Chapelle pretending to be white for a sketch acceptable, while instances of blackface regardless of context get backlash. - Double Standard. Right? But you do know why right? So apply that to this. Artist that change light skinned characters to dark skinned receive considerably less negative attention than the reverse. - Double Standard. Is it completely different? I mean I don't wanna bring up the history of black fiction/art/depictions vs. white. I'm already downvoted enough.
Liszt6 said: I'm perfectly fine with this, honestly, I don't really care, but I think denying that there is a double standard is kinda ridiculous at this point.
Then is this comment acceptable : I'm perfectly fine with this, honestly, I don't really care, but I think denying that there is racial disparity/tension is kinda ridiculous at this point.
What even is a racist white depiction? I'm not saying you 'Can't' be racist towards whites. Relax. I'm asking what can an artist do to explicitly depict racism against whites (without text). I'm not creative or racist enough to know. You could draw them as a K(3) member... But you do see the difference in those racist depictions right? One is drawn as a member of an establish and thriving racist regime member and the other is turn into an animal or as a slave or with a particular fruit or food or exaggerated body parts etc-etc...
TL;DR : The double standard exist for a reason. Know that(That's all). Not bow to it or not question it or stop push back against it. There is a reason for it. No : Not to say it's justified. No : Not to defend it. No : Not to take sides. My only reason for commenting from the start was people saying they don't know why there's a double standard. That's been my only dog in this 'fight'. Why that drew any ire, I honestly don't know.
You guys know...instead of having this long of a debate, you can just add the artist to blacklist and never see anything from them again, don't you? It's not like they're the ONLY artist doing this on many social medias, it's just happened that this one artist's work got uploaded to Danbooru and got approved. It's basically the same argument 'oh there's countless gods out there, but why only your god is relevant?' Just close your eyes and pretend nothing matters.
I get why it exists, but at the same time, two things of note. I don't get why it has to exist, and I don't get the extremity of it's existence.
Sorry if this comes off as super dismissive. You weren't the commenter I was responding to your first line of "I get why it exist" is proof of that. It's just billions with billions of opinions. It might seem like a cop-out answer to "Why it HAS to exist". But I mean it is what it is. There's dozens(probably more) stories about how even if humanity had literally nothing to fight over. We'd still be at each others throats. And I personally don't think those stories are wrong.
I will say this: the artist is black and Japanese, and she loves both halves of her background. I think this kind of art is neat, it just explores different character designs.
Liszt6 said: As for how to be racists against whites? Kinda hard, because from what I've seen, we hate each other or are pretty friggin proud of our faults. Hipster? Yup, we hate those. Rednecks? They love how utterly trash they are. Europe has been a cultural pissing contest for a couple millennium or so. You'd actually have to pick a specific culture or sub culture to be racist against, and then you'd have every other other "white" person backing you up, and more than likely them laughing at themselves.
Nor very related, but you made me remember a conversation I had after watching Marvel's Black Panther movie. In the movie, in various points it was repeatedly declared that the Wakandans, since they had such advanced technology and culture, should use it to protect not only themselves but "our people", meaning, they had a duty to protect all the black people in the world.
I, being considerably uncultured, got confused. How can black people see themselves as one group of people? Do black people REALLY see themselves as one single culture? Because, as a white, I know the people with my white/pale skin color are not united by it at all. White people have lots of segregation, we barely see each other as similar.
It's sad that it's difficult for an asian artist to even exist on social media without westerners harassing them or threatening them because they drew a character with a different skin color.
Maybe we could all just stop attacking people over harmless fanart, using "Representation" to justify lynch mobs?
You do realize that the artist is half-Black, half-Japanese?