I your average weird geeky British Nigerian. Lover of video games, fantasy stuff, deserts, cute things, fine boy no pimples, fashion, steampunk and many other ish to name a few.
Photo reblogged from In Constant Contradiction with 12 notes
Kate Hart: Uncovering Young Adult Covers
Source: katehart.net
Post reblogged from Angry Trekkie with 32 notes
Race in Fantasy: A Primer
cross-posted from my blog, Scribbles & Sonnets
I’m writing a fantasy series. To be specific, I’m writing a multi-ethnic, supernatural, steampunk high fantasy series. If you’re not sure what I mean, I’ll give you some reference points. Think the television show “Heroes” meets “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” meets “A People’s History of the United States” and throw in some colonialism, imperialism, racism, and other -isms. I’ve always loved the fantasy genre every since I was a kid and here are some things I’ve noticed about the genre (books, film, television and video games) in regards to race:1. Dark / Brown people are bad.
Dark people are almost always the villains in high fantasy series. I say dark because notions of race are different in imaginary worlds but that doesn’t mean that racism in our world doesn’t carry over through the author’s depiction of dark people. J. R. R. Tolkien specifically stated in The Lord of the Rings trilogy that all of the men who joined Sauron were dark-skinned, and that the pirates were supposed to look “yellow” or Asian. Sound racist? That’s because it is.
In David Eddings’ Belgariad and Mallorean series, the story is told from the perspective of the Alorns (also known as white people) who fight a war with the Angaraks, a race of people with “yellow skin” and “slanted eyes.” They’re often referred to as “yellow dogs.”
In Terry Brooks’ Shannara series, which spans hundreds of years and generations upon generations of humans, dwarves, elves, trolls, etc. the dark elves are the ones who are evil. Read: dark-skinned elves.
Game of Thrones, the new HBO series based on George R. R. Martin’s series A Song of Fire and Ice has to this point (one season and four episodes of the second season in) only included three kinds of brown people: the first is a tribe of horse-lords call the Dothraki who the white protagonists view as savage, backward, and ignorant. Then there’s a cursory appearance of a black pirate, who is in the scene for approximately five minutes. In the last episode, there was a black person who is in charge of a city called Qarth (supposed to be modeled off of Egypt) and he has approximately two lines.
or…
2. Dark / Brown people don’t exist
There are plenty of other authors that wash their hands of race entirely, with token brown characters here and there or no brown people altogether. Harry Potter comes to mind, with only two or three named characters of color in seven books. A fantasy phenomenon, easily the most popular series of all time, and there are no people of color who figure prominently in it? Something about that just seems wrong.
Roger Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles has absolutely no people of color in it at all - and this series centers around the ability of the main characters to alter reality as they see fit. So you’re telling me that a group of people who can alter the very fabric of space and are all white?
Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn Chronicles are completely devoid of any brown people. Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games only makes mention of two who are named, and they both serve as tools to help the protagonist. They don’t have inner lives or desires or anything remotely like character development because they only exist to further the plot.
3. Brown people exist to be exotified and ogled by the white protagonist.
Jaqueline Carey’s Kushiel series is guilty of this particular trend: she sets up a pseudo-Renaissance world where the protagonist is a facsimile of a white European (seems French to me) and along her travels and journey she meets strange looking yellow-skinned and brown-skinned people. She marvels at how barbaric and savage their customs are. She feels pity for them when something bad happens and feels maternalistic towards them because they aren’t civilized enough to understand what’s going on around them.
Twilight is another series very guilty of this: Jacob is Native American and a werewolf and it’s not a coincidence. All of werewolves in Twilight are Native American, further reinforcing the stereotype that Native Americans are savage, wild, and uncivilized.
and the very rare…
4. Some people are brown and that’s okay because race doesn’t exist!
My beloved Star Trek is guilty of this one, as is Star Wars, The Matrix, and many other science fiction films. Just because we’re in the future doesn’t mean we’re post-racial. As much as I love The Next Generation, there is not a single mention of race in regards to Geordi LeForge (Levar Burton) or Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg). Since Worf (Michael Dorn) is a Klingon, I guess I could see how race wouldn’t be the same for Klingons, and I can even see the argument that because there are races other than human racism within the human species no longer exists… but that’s pretty farfetched to me.
Heroes does this as well, and not only does it refuse to acknowledge race, but it kills off the majority of its characters of color in the first season and then replaces them with blonde white women!
I would put The Hunger Games in this category as well because of the way race is never discussed other than as a descriptor of appearance. Collins had the opportunity to comment on systems of oppression and offer some insight on race as a hierarchical structure but she shied away from it.
Source: angrytrekkie
Post reblogged from Deal With It! with 83 notes
is dehdglsedhglsael
My four year old little brother was looking at my computer over my shoulder
I was on the Korra tag
Whitewashed Korra fan art was on that tag
He said that white Korra was prettier
I want to break something
SoLDN: WHITEWASHING ISN’T A BIG DEAL. CHILDREN DON’T NOTICE IT
HMMPF!
Mary: This is depressing but not surprising at all…
Source: slytherinmyswagkorra
Post with 17 notes
You’re too dark to be a Hobbit: Race row after British-Asian woman claims she was discriminated against on set
Quite old but whatever
Peter Jackson’s already troubled Hobbit film has become embroiled in accusations of racism after an extra claimed she was told she was too dark to play one of the diminutive Tolkien creatures.
Briton Naz Humphreys, who has Pakistani heritage, attended a casting session in Hamilton, New Zealand, last week and stood in line for three hours only to be told her skin tone was not suitable.
The Waikato Times said video footage from the audition showed the casting manager telling people they were looking for light-skinned people to play Hobbits.
He reportedly tells the would-be Hobbits: ‘I’m not trying to be… whatever. It’s just the brief. You’ve got to look like a Hobbit.’
Ms Humphreys, who is in New Zealand on a working holiday with her husband, told the newspaper: ‘It’s 2010 and I still can’t believe I’m being discriminated against because I have brown skin.
‘The casting manager basically said they weren’t having anybody who wasn’t pale-skinned.’
The would-be extra, who is just under 5ft tall, had hoped for a bit part in The Hobbit - a two-part prequel to the Oscar-winning Lord Of The Rings films.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1334147/The-Hobbit-race-row-British-woman-claims-wasnt-white-film.html#ixzz1qMDSd1fg
But Hobbits aren’t White, it’s not set in our world look at the map it’s all fantasy. Does it say that the race is White European no it does not.
LOL
Post with 3 notes
You know what is one of the stupidest most annoying defenses for whitewashing in fanart and in films for Avatar:TLA/ Legend of Korra (or any type of mystical world that is not set in some pan-euro word) fandom is?
That “This is not set in our Earth, this is not our universe there is no________here”
This is really stupid and so bloody weak. These people love to ignore everything and want to pull up map and wikia bios saying that the nationalities are Air Nomad not Tibetan or what have you.
Alright let’s just forget all about context and real word influences and fucking Chinese characters written every fucking where. We can forget about architecture and mythology and names and weapons use and everything and all the attention to detail
Let’s apply this “Not set in our world” logic to something else.
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien everyone knows about this book/ films and all that stuff. We are going to forget about all the European themes, mythology and so on… and go with the “not set in our world” excuse. Let’s look at the world map of Arda.
And the middle earth continent. I don’t see no europe around these parts
And according to Wikia Bios it says nothing of any of the characters being European or ever white. according to his wikia bio Legolas is a Elf from Mirkwood not Italy so he can’t be white. I always assumed he and everyone else were just People of Colour who were light skinned probably stayed inside a lot no wonder they were so pale. (I think fan-poodles are turning rabid right now)
OH wait that’s bullshit.
It’s really stupid to think that real world cultures, prejudices and cultures have no influence in a fantasy work of fiction. (Honestly has anyone seen the racist depiction of people of colour in LOtR, the area that is supposed to be Africa the people over there are fucking demons)
This is a weak argument that needs to die, I honestly see it everywhere even in defense of Dragonball’s word. Really bitches really? compare and contrast.
The dragonball map looks like Japan flipped and rearranged
This excuse/argument is very weak, get a new one and I’ll gladly smash it.
Video with 189 notes
Avatar Remix - A.V.A.T.A.R.
(Anglos Valiantly Aiding Tragic Awe-inspiring Races)
Mashup of White Saviour Films
Uploaded by lewistonvideomaker
A.V.A.T.A.R. (Anglos Valiantly Aiding Tragic Awe-inspiring Races) is a fast‐paced media mashup that highlights the overplayed racial tropes of Hollywood cinema using James Cameron’s multimillion‐dollar epic Avatar as its visual anchor. The hilarious visual juxtapositions and accompanying soundtrack of baffling one‐liners spliced together from seventeen films are both a humorous jab at racism in our supposedly liberal popular culture, as well as a media literacy tool for deconstructing how whiteness and Other-ness is portrayed in mainstream films about humanitarian crises. This piece builds on our previous work, 300 Epithets, that analyzes the archetypes used in the nationalist right-wing film, 300.
Photoset with 597 notes
White people stop this shit. And most of these images are from the 21st century so… yeah
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Scream Queens. I really couldn’t with this episode but I did like Tanedra’s response
FFWD to 6:50
Video with 17 notes
SO for my media and film studies class we were asked to compare older and modern media representation. I did mine on race so I was comparing old Blackface cartoon with some films.
Like Norbit = Scrub me Mama with a boogie beat
and then I found this gem of Lil Wayne and the rest Make it Rain
Link reblogged from Action Chick with 22 notes
Action Chick: Black America vs the Diaspora →
So I’m kind of pissed off about that Kelis comment stating that we (British) people don’t talk about racism in England. This is not the first time an American has expressed shock about what is going on the UK. Racism in the UK is not a secret. We do talk about it. We also talk about classism,…
Source: actionchick
Link reblogged from Here be dragons! with 38 notes
color·blinding: Why doesn't anyone care about Asians? →
I have wanted to write this post for a while, but did not have the right vocabulary, and was afraid of making too emotional of an appeal. I was also worried about doing anything like pointing fingers, assigning blame, or generally creating a divide amongst POC on Tumblr.
And then, today, as I was…
I’m Asian myself, and from what I’ve found from reading the words of or talking to non-Asian POC, many of them find the racism among Asian groups directed against them to be extremely off-putting (to put it lightly), which is understandable. I myself have seen many discussions among Asians about racism that included bullshit like, ‘Why is it okay today to be racist against Asians, but not Black people?’, and it’s not just one Asian saying it — I even wrote about it last night on tumblr when that shit came up in a discussion about anti-Chinese slurs, and hell, even this post I’m re-blogging has a vibe of pointing fingers at other POC. Can you see why a non-Asian POC would see that — the dismissal and erasure of their own struggles — and not want to help? And the ‘model minority’ myth perpetuated by white people doesn’t help, and only furthers their ‘divide and conquer’ strategy against POC — but I can absolutely see how another POC could see how Asians (especially East Asians) statistically have it better in terms of wealth and access to universities, for example, and be annoyed when Asians act as if they are more oppressed.
I am NOT saying ant-Asian racism doesn’t exist, is less serious, etc. — I think we all know that it does, and that there are also huge disparities between groups of Asians (eg. East Asians versus South-East Asians, immigrants versus second-generation) and we’re not a monolith even within an ethnic sub-group — but I can see how someone could see that and think, ‘Why should I care about the issues of a group that statistically seems to have it made while my own people generally do not and ARE ignored everyday’. Wasn’t one of the annoying thing about OWS how white people were acting like poverty didn’t exist until it started hitting middle-class white people, even though it has been affecting Black people and Latinos forever, among even more racist shit coming out now? That doesn’t sound like, ‘Everyone cares about racism against them’ to me.
I don’t really want to talk FOR non-Asian POC and have already done too much of it here, and for that, I apologise if I stepped out of bounds. That said, I think it’s worth listening to the ones who aren’t so keen on fighting anti-Asian racism to try and understand their perspective as well — there are posts on tumblr and elsewhere if you look hard enough for them. But I think we Asians also have to look internally and do the work in eradicating any racism among our own group or we’re not truly standing up for social justice either. And from my own experience, and I obviously do not speak for all Asians, apathy and internalised white supremacy are issues within Asian communities as well that we need to look at — I grew up being told not to say anything when faced with racism because it ‘attracts trouble’ and that I should smile and nod to white people when they were being jackasses to me (but fuck that), and I do find that outside of activist communities, quite a few assimilated Asians are extremely adverse to being called POC (as if it makes them dirty somehow to be associated with brown people) and want to fit in with white society instead.
Source: colorblinding
Link reblogged from color·blinding with 38 notes
color·blinding: Why doesn't anyone care about Asians? →
I have wanted to write this post for a while, but did not have the right vocabulary, and was afraid of making too emotional of an appeal. I was also worried about doing anything like pointing fingers, assigning blame, or generally creating a divide amongst POC on Tumblr.
And then, today, as I was…
Source: colorblinding
Photo reblogged from color·blinding with 71 notes
“COLOR doesn’t MATTER”
Try being an actual Black Person I dont mean dressing up in Black face. URGH»»STOP THIS FUCKERY!
“Calls for a color blind society are calls to erase the fingerprints of history rather than to deal with their consequences.”
Shit like this is so fucking juvenile. Read a god damn book people.
Nevermind the fact that while calling for a color blind society, whoever thought it wise to Photoshop this image of Jolie put her in black and yellowface. And not just any yellowface either — but the face of a geisha.
FAIL
Source: twiiztidheart
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