fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3661 ]

[ SECRET POST #3661 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3661 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Star Trek: The Next Generation, S01E04 "Code of Honor"]

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03.

(Boku No Hero Academia)

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04.

[Shaun the Sheep]

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05.

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06.

(FAKE)

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07.

[Drakengard]

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08.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 15 secrets from Secret Submission Post #523.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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01. http://i.imgur.com/peLzSbP.png

I think why it looks so bad is because the artists just take a character and darken/lighten the skin a few shades, without bothering to learn about different facial features/structures.

Damn, these colours are atrocious.
And yeah, I agree. A lot of people create some pretty wild racially insensitive caricatures or bland ambiguously brown people in their attempt to draw "progressive" fanart.

Holy shit I knew this person. We were friends on tumblr for the longest time. She's black, and looks pretty good too, so i doubt its about not caring what black people look like, she started drawing about a year and a half ago. Or has it been two years now? I honestly can't remember. But it's not been long, I think the inexperience is whats more to do with it. And also the fact she's young. 17? 18? I can't remember sorry haha. I gotta admit though, bad colors here, her older stuff had better colors that looked more balanced with eachother iirc. I stopped following her around the xmen stuff because she gets so intense about things and its all she would post about... although I feel sometimes thats a good thing to be that passionate as it gets you to produce. But yeah, i never really focused much on it. I think I remember her making a post about how she just desired/wanted/felt a need for more dark skin characters and also she could strongly relate to the struggles of the xmen.. something like that. It stuck with me because I too felt a similar desire about certain things in my life but I also wondered if her art would ever be used for something like this... However i feel from this image used that it's gone and focused more on how dark a skintone she can make them rather than seeing characters doing something. I wonder if shes depressed from it all. If you're out there reading this, stay strong!

Sorry for textwall but it's probably the first time I've known someone who's been made a secret about!

Best of luck to her.

A llot of POC fanartists are so used to drawing only white fandoms that they really aren't any better at drawing POC than white people are. It's not like drawing specific facial features is genetic.

Wow, who knew that drawing capability isn't inherently linked to ones race?

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2017-01-12 13:47 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2017-01-12 22:03 (UTC) - Expand

I hope she doens't see this and get discouraged. I think it's a really impressive picture for a young beginner.

Some times I think they're probably just inexperienced and have few examples to look to.

But yeah, just taking a character and changing the shade of their skin... often it looks really odd or outright bad. Different people have different features, whether that's body shape or facial structure. Taking a white character and coloring them brown, it's kind of missing the point of making art that shows the diversity of people imo

I mean, look at this! there's a lot of variation
http://cedarseed.com/portfolio/human-types/

(It doesn't help that skin is more than just a scale of lighter and darker, there's all kinds of different hues, and as a general rule artists seem to be great at picking out pale skin tones and terrible at picking out anything darker than 'tan'.)

oooh thank you for the link bb ;)

I've seen this art. I just thought that was her style. Probably because it's so obviously not meant to be lifelike.

I know where you're coming from in general (I look at fanart!) but was it necessary to get so specific? I feel like it's a lot kinder to just assume an amateur artist is trying some things instead of publicly saying her art is awful she sucks at race-bending and you wish she actually tried.

Professionals struggle with this too.

A lot of problems could be solved if people used a reference.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of artists who drawn non-racebent POC characters and who do an amazing job at it because they actually know how to draw POC facial features and aren't just taking a white character and using the fill tool to turn them brown. Racebending stuff always just looks so cringeworthy to me because it's so clearly done for SJW brownie points instead of an actual desire to draw more POC characters.

I've almost written an identical secret several times before, omg I can't stand it. I hate that middle-eastern beak nose they give to anyone with brown skin. worst of all are the people who draw darker skin tones as so desaturated, gray, and washed out, to the point everyone looks like corpses.

(also, am I... right in assuming that's supposed to be Magneto? it strikes me as um. disastrous to raceswap his character when being Jewish during the Holocaust is a pretty essential part of his character...)

I believe he's been drawn as visibly romani (and I don't know if that's a thing, I do think his family is supposed to be romani-jewish in the comics ??) so it doesn't contradict the holocaust narrative.

Magento is only Jewish in the comics. He has children (Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and a third/dead child, at least until the comics decided to retcon them out) with Romani woman but isn't Romani himself.

It still wouldn't contradict his story if he was Romani, but I don't think any canon has ever made him so. Just someone who briefly married into a Romani family.

Romani people are not black though.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2017-01-12 15:49 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2017-01-12 16:27 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2017-01-12 19:40 (UTC) - Expand

I hate it how people draw canonically light-skinned non-Caucasian people as super dark, as if that makes them "really POC" or something. It's a dangerous stereotype in itself that Romani people or Jewish people or indigenous people have to be dark-skinned, because it overlooks structural and racial prejudice in favour of a simplistic light vs dark scheme. (In Australia, this idea of light-skinned=not really POC was part of attempted genocide, in my lifetime, so it really pisses me off to see it used supposedly in service of social justice.)

(In Australia, this idea of light-skinned=not really POC was part of attempted genocide, in my lifetime, so it really pisses me off to see it used supposedly in service of social justice.)

Was that apart of the whole breed the colour out bullshit? Or something else entirely?

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2017-01-15 07:47 (UTC) - Expand

Yeah I agree.

I could never really put my finger on why this bugs me so much, but this is it. There's already enough of the real world arguing what 'counts' as POC and it's depressing to see that dragged into fiction like this. It feels incredibly racist to say someone's skin isn't enough for them to be part of their heritage.

There's definitely a problem canonically considering these characters (most media does not cast anyone actually Jewish to play Magento and his kids, never have they cast someone Roma to play the twins, the comics are inconsistency about what skin tone and features the twins are allowed to have) but I don't think this is the way to go, particularly when it comes to Magento.

I HATE when fanartists do this to Japanese characters from anime as if their being Japanese isn't ~exotic~ enough to count as tumblr SJ points without them also having dark skin, and despite looking absolutely nothing like that in canon.

Yeah, as an artist I can sympathize. Painting skin isn't easy to learn, and can look terrible in the meantime. But, as others have said, adding unique racial features goes a long way.

I hate the way this artist draws Magneto and his descendants so much. How fucking self-absorbed and insensitive and short-sighted do you have to be to think it's a good idea to racebend A JEWISH MAN WHO LIVED THROUG THE HOLOCAUST.

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