Drillary Clinton
Banned
That something as seemingly innocuous the topic has bigger implications when coupled with the myriad of other microaggressions.
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'Stop Giving Evil Characters Brown Skin'
- Thread starter Shaanyboi
- Start date
That something as seemingly innocuous the topic has bigger implications when coupled with the myriad of other microaggressions.
Bobo Dakes
Member
This "small thing" is the result of a larger "real" issue.
Spring-Loaded
Member
At what point does an issue become a "real one" though?
Taco_Human
Member
wewlad.......MttThms, he just does't get it.
I don't know man. I'm just one individual and and I don't have all the answers.
I suppose you're implying that I'm saying that it isn't an issue today? I mean, you can twist my words around to make it mean that, I suppose.
I don't know what you want me to tell you man.
Why can't we all just love each other?
Bobo Dakes
Member
Just gonna assume (hope) he's really young. I was pretty dumb and stubborn on forums from 14-19.
I still have stuff I need to work on years later. Just hope he learned SOMETHING from this.
Bobo Dakes
Member
Spring-Loaded
Member
Why come into the thread and say people shouldn't discuss then? Like, I don't walk into a board meeting at a law firm and tell them they need to practice law "the right way" when I don't know shit about law.
So why would you do that when you admit to not knowing anything?
Not knowing anything is different from not having all the answers
I know I might seem like the ignorant bad guy but this conversation, if we could even call it that, is very one sided against me. I'm not ignoring your guy's points but I'm not exactly agreeing with you guys 100%
Bobo Dakes
Member
Not a bad guy, just ignorant.
Drillary Clinton
Banned
We're not implying you're a bad person and hopefully that isn't what you take away from this.
Saucycarpdog
Member
You can design a memorable villain without resorting to tired cliches in appearance. Just look at Vaas or Pagan Min in the Far Cry series.
Bobo Dakes
Member
Dark purple aura, red glowing eyes.
I've even seen some narratives do light corruption.
Or better yet, don't make a glorified clone, but I digress.
I think Kid Icarus Uprising did the best job of this, Dark Pit isn't evil, he's just dressed in black and has a more aggressive personality (relative to Pit at least). Not to mention, they primarily call him Pit Two in the game, so I don't even know where Dark Pit came from.
deriks
4-Time GIF/Meme God
I guess this is not a valid complain.
I mean, we have a ton of white bad guys, so we can't have "evil" dark skin guys? It's not like "oh, they're evil because of skin".
Also, as some people said, is more like a japanese-culture-thing.
HOLY SHIT!
I mean, we have a ton of white bad guys, so we can't have "evil" dark skin guys? It's not like "oh, they're evil because of skin".
Also, as some people said, is more like a japanese-culture-thing.
HOLY SHIT!
Weltall Zero
Member
Can we discuss a topic like normal beings without being rude to each other? Especially when your point of view is "it's natural for dark skinned people to be seen as evil".
If they have turned evil, like possession, you can change their eyes to unnatural colors or something.
If the character is just evil, then they can just act evil. Maybe havebthem giveba deranged expression every now and then. It's not hard to make somebody seem evil without making them dark skin. That isn't even tonsay thatvsn evil character shouldn't ever have dark skin. It's that the dark skin should not be used to distinguish between who is goodband who is evil.
We've had examples in this thread. Here are some other examples:
Devil Jin from Tekken (half man half beast)
Shadow forms in Persona 4/5 (bright yellow eyes and creepy smile, intimidating voice)
Majin Vegita from Dragonball Z (giant M on his forehead)
The argument isn't stop having villains with black skin, it's think of something better than darkening the skin when they turn evil.
Again, several examples have been posted in this thread. The Persona series uses unsettling yellow eyes, malicious expressions, voice modification, different voice acting, evil looking aura, and different mannerisms to convey this.
Darkening skin is fucking lazy.
Even if they're not an "evil version" of a character, there's a problem if you think an inherently evil character needs darker skin to properly convey that.
Messofanego
Banned
Seeing this passed around on Facebook, this is blowing up.
I can't believe this is being asked like it's an actual dilemma. Like how can we possibly denote a character is evil without making the skin darker?
I mean, you only have to look to basically anything live action where darkening a person's skin for such a reason is a rather clear "no go", to see that it's hardly a requirement for fictional characters either.
Weltall Zero
Member
I'm confused. If you have no "answer" as to when an issue is small or big, then how did you decide this particular one is small?
Indeed, why? To me, there's no higher expression of love than standing united against discrimination directed towards any of us, no matter how it manifests.
I would portray an evil character as doing evil deeds. You know, like evil people in real life don't always have am "EVIL" neon sign pointing at them? Many of the most memorable evil characters in fiction are those who don't have any "oh noes the evilness" cliches painted all over them, and thus both respect the viewer to not be a five year old, and take the time to actually tell us why and how they specifically are evil, rather than generically evil because of their looks (which, really, doesn't get much more shallow than that).
In real life there is no way to tell evil people from good people. Thus, in fiction, any visual shorthand you use to signify evilness is going to be insulting to people with that trait. It's really not rocket science. At some point this was Asian people for west designers, and for some reason now it's brown people for Japanese designers. Or are you guys going to argue that the "yellow peril" stage was not really that racist? Seriously, you guys show a worrying lack of historical memory.
Again, you can't (and shouldn't) use "evil" visual signifiers that are present in normal humans without them being insulting (besides plain lazy), but if you just can't be fucking arsed to show and not tell, there's a ton of widely accepted signifiers that aren't blackface-level offensively racist, including:
- Evil smile.
- Evil laugh.
- Evil voice.
- Contemptuous stare.
Notice how many of these cues seem straight out of a Disney cartoon? Well, there's a good reason why. Alternatively, and since we're getting into the realm of cartoonishly evil, use any of the myriad fantasy signifiers:
- Unnatural eyes (color and/or glowing).
- Monstruous limbs.
- Evil Wings (TM).
- Etc etc.
So please, next time you regurgitate again "dark has always been evil" etc. please give it a couple seconds thought.
Persona is such a good example of my point above, because besides the "shadow version" of characters (that need to be visually signified so that there's no confusion with the originals), these are the evil guys in Persona 3 and 4:
https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.ne...r_50881.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120325141014
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pChj-l4icoU/maxresdefault.jpg
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/megamitensei/images/9/92/P401_11_rh.jpg
Edit: Turned the images into links since apparently spoilering them doesn't work on mobile.
Alright, I agree with you guys that a better evil character design which isn't just darkening it's skin color is a better character design. I have no issue agreeing with you guys there. My argument was on the racial side. For example, why hate on Scar? It's not like he went from being a colorful lion to a darker one. And furthermore, I don't find it to be racist just because he's darker... That's all I'm saying... Why did race have to come into it in the first place?
Citation on someone calling you racist before this post?
Bobo Dakes
Member
And here I thought we were getting somewhere.
Race comes into the conversation simply because perceptions of colour naturally affect some races far more than others. Even without the consideration of race, using characteristics inherent to a person as a shorthand for evil is still a bad thing. As I said before nobody complains about The Hulk, or Devil Kazuya and the like, because there's nobody with green or purple skin to be negatively impacted by it.
I agree that some examples - such as Scar, and especially Dark Samus - are poorly chosen.
Bobo Dakes
Member
The problem isn't a dark skinned villain (at least in the OP). The problem is a designer signifying the corruption of a good white guy by giving them dark skin.
Bobo Dakes
Member
Look at my post above you.
Some guy at SNK before it shut down and reformed a bunch of times so who knows if they even work in the games industry anymore.
NoKisum
Member
DevilDog
Member
It's an analogy like yin yang, Person A loses the light and falls into the shadow.
Nintendo having made improvements to the portrayal of the Gerudo in BoTW is less likely to draw people's ire at this point. Unless we break it down to specific teams in which case whomever responsible for the Validar/Robin thing deserves a cactus up the ass.
That's not the only argument the video makes though. The latter part of the video focuses on simple antagonists, not corrupted heroes. The title also implies that it's a widespread phenomenon which doesn't actually seem to be the case. Disney is even named as one of the worst offenders while only very few of their villains qualify.
http://www.listal.com/list/complete-list-disney-villains
Bobo Dakes
Member
And that translates into skin color how?
NoKisum
Member
After a Google search, I realize my comment was a bit too broad.
Next target: Masaaki Ishikawa
lol @ people referencing yin/yang
surely they're not stupid enough to be doing this seriously right?
The guy responsible for designing Twinelle?
surely they're not stupid enough to be doing this seriously right?
The guy responsible for designing Twinelle?
Stuggernaut
Grandma's Chippy
Stereotypes are a hard issue to navigate. Sucks that they are there, and sucks that people can't seem to recognize them when they do them.
Traditionally games are dark vs light in the literal sense of the words, basically bright light, vs shadow.
Maybe if games universally played THAT side (Shadow) of it more than generic dark it would be less perceived as a stereotype? I dunno.
I can see how this can feel subjective too. I mean just because I personally do not look at dark skinned games characters as an attempt to profile a race or skin color, does not mean someone else doesn't see it that way. Doesn't mean I am wrong and they are right, but it also does not mean I am right either.
Bottom line, there are ways to navigate the issue I think that can be perceived less, negatively. But it's a very difficult road to navigate I imagine.
And someone will always find issue, somewhere.
Traditionally games are dark vs light in the literal sense of the words, basically bright light, vs shadow.
Maybe if games universally played THAT side (Shadow) of it more than generic dark it would be less perceived as a stereotype? I dunno.
I can see how this can feel subjective too. I mean just because I personally do not look at dark skinned games characters as an attempt to profile a race or skin color, does not mean someone else doesn't see it that way. Doesn't mean I am wrong and they are right, but it also does not mean I am right either.
Bottom line, there are ways to navigate the issue I think that can be perceived less, negatively. But it's a very difficult road to navigate I imagine.
And someone will always find issue, somewhere.
Spoilering images doesn't work on mobile GAF. You should just post the links as a URL if you are trying to hide it.
It's not really that "subjective". Validar is very much a caricature of a middle eastern dude, people generally aren't referencing Dark Link because he's not a black or a brown person- he's a monochromatic Link with a literal black overlay. Even if we were to say that Tetra and WW Zelda are the same race but with a "tan" change, it's a poor look to have a character "fixed" or "restored" by whitening them.
DevilDog
Member
It can translate into anything. The artist can choose to externalize what the character feels inside.
Bobo Dakes
Member
All right, I'm tagging out. If you think you're coming in here with a fresh perspective as to why this complaint isn't valid, it's been covered already in any of the previous pages.
Some arguments are true (Robin/Validar, Evil Ryu) some don't hold up that well (Dark Pit, Dark Samus), but overall it is a valid complaint. We're not sitting calling people racist, anyone could easily have the best intentions while offending another group they never considered. Just use your judgement and don't be a stubborn asshole about it.
Some arguments are true (Robin/Validar, Evil Ryu) some don't hold up that well (Dark Pit, Dark Samus), but overall it is a valid complaint. We're not sitting calling people racist, anyone could easily have the best intentions while offending another group they never considered. Just use your judgement and don't be a stubborn asshole about it.
Drillary Clinton
Banned
And you don't see how equating evil to a skin color is a problem?
There's something remarkably hilarious with someone thinking that someone feeling... "yang" or whatever inside translates them to being a brown dude. Dark Link isn't racially brown or black, he's literally a monochromic shadow. Which is fine. Same with Dark Pit or Dark Samus; the latter of which isn't even a person it's a dark blue mass of living radiation.
But you see, it's yang. Everybody gets that!
NoKisum
Member
Yep. Article from the same site essentially says that Twintelle pushes the stereotypical notion that all black hair is weaponized.
Guess he has to go too now.
Nah, reception seems generally positive.
If you're going to choose an example don't make it a shit one.
Drillary Clinton
Banned
So you're going to use a different article by a different writer to discredit this one?
I kinda think that twintelle article is a stretch but then again, I don't get to decide how people of color feel.
NoKisum
Member
Same company though. It's like when someone at IGN posts a low review score and everyone's like, "Well, everyone at IGN are assholes who get paid for reviews anyway." No matter what, the authors of said publication sites represent the company as a whole. And as far as MIC is concerned, both Violent Ken and Twintelle are racist characters. VK's designer is out of a job (presumably), why not Ishikawa?
And for the record, I love Twintelle, and am actually upset that we couldn't play as her in the Testpunch. (Perhaps she's not balanced yet?)
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