fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2629 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2629 ⌋

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 071 secrets from Secret Submission Post #376.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 - too big ], [ 1 2 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Which is why Inuit and Alaskian First Nations are practically albino and European settlers in Australia are so dark skinned they're blue-black, I assume? Earth has always been one huge gradient and you can tell exactly where someone lives by sampling their melanin.

And you never see stuff like floating islands.

Or people living right next to lava without bursting into flame.

Alice in Wonderland is an obscure hipster book that no one has ever heard of, since it doesn't exactly follow physics. It was certainly never made into any movies that show a wonderland that doesn't follow physics.

You people are kinda dumb, aren't you? And sheesh, if you're trying to tell yourself that keeping Frozen exactly the same but doing a pallet swap on two characters (four if you count the king and queen) would be utterly out of the realm of belief and make the movie unrealistic? You have issues. Serious, serious issues.

Which is why Inuit and Alaskian First Nations are practically albino and European settlers in Australia are so dark skinned they're blue-black, I assume?

How long, precisely, do you think it takes for a set of genes to change to the extent that they would have to for these things to be true? We're talking tens of thousands of years. Neither the Inuit nor European settlers in Australia have been in their respective locations long enough for either group's skin tone to change overly much (this is particularly true of the Europeans. There is no way that amount of change could occur in a population in only a few hundred years, absent intermarriage).

This does bring up a point, however, that I think would have better served you: people migrate.

And you never see stuff like floating islands.

Or people living right next to lava without bursting into flame.

Alice in Wonderland is an obscure hipster book that no one has ever heard of, since it doesn't exactly follow physics. It was certainly never made into any movies that show a wonderland that doesn't follow physics.

My point, which I apparently didn't make very clearly, isn't that there is never anything unrealistic along those veins. It's that there's almost always something familiar or "realistic" that serves to ground the reader. The books that have fantastical land formations or climate or weather or physical laws generally also contain two things: a) explanations for those elements, and b) a number of realistic elements that exist alongside them.

'Alice in Wonderland' is an interesting example because it does give a lot of readers that "uncanny valley" feeling. That's part of why so many people for so long have chosen to believe that it was inspired by psychotropics. It's also part of why a lot of the adaptations present Alice as a lot more astonished and unbalanced by Wonderland than she appears to be in the book: she is used as the grounding point.

You people are kinda dumb, aren't you?

You must be really frustrated, huh?

And sheesh, if you're trying to tell yourself that keeping Frozen exactly the same but doing a pallet swap on two characters (four if you count the king and queen) would be utterly out of the realm of belief and make the movie unrealistic?

I don't think that myself. But I can see why some people would find it less realistic, and I can also don't think that its current state is necessarily indicative of racism.

I would also add that there is a type of fantasy that aims to be true to a particular time and place while just...adding some magic. To give just a couple of examples: the nations in 'The Killing Moon' were based off of ancient Egypt and Nubia, and so despite the presence of the unreal, the author still aimed to make the world as much like those places as possible; the nations in 'Kushiel's Dart' are based off of France, Scandinavia, and the British Isles, so again, the author aimed to make the world like those places. In that type of story, straying too far from what's "real" hinders what the author is trying to do. If Disney were going for that type of fantasy (which I think they might have been, given the Saami influence and the presence of trolls [and yes, I know that trolls aren't real, but they are a fixture in Scandinavian folklore]), then that potentially adds a whole other level to the discussion.

I'm not frustrated at all. I'm still laughing my ass off that someone honestly read "Characters in an animated Disney movie had to be white because vitamin D" and went "Yes, this is the platform for which I will build my platform for justifying the face I prefer watching white people. It's foolproof!"

Well, I don't know what to tell you, man, or if you'll even ever come back to this thread, but I was more interested in talking about why geographical and racial realism can matter in fantasy (and, well...why realism can matter at all in fantasy). Like I said, I personally wouldn't have difficulty suspending my disbelief if there were principle characters of other races in 'Frozen.' As you inadvertantly pointed out, the nod to realism on that front, if someone wanted it, could be immigration.

Maybe mimi's platform was "I will justify preferring to watch white people." Mine was "a work of fantasy needs an anchor in reality." But perhaps the mistake was in choosing to present it in this thread.

I'm the one that started this side thread (and man did I miss a busy day) but my point was more along the lines of "You can't advocate for ethnic diversity by stomping all over other ethnicities." Also "It is obvious when companies include minorities because they've been told they have to."

When real companies were feeling the pressure from feminist groups to hire more females, they did. And everyone knew that the only reason those females were hired was because there was now a quota of women needed at the office. No matter how talented that woman was, even if she could easily have gotten the job on her own, no one would ever believe it. People rolled their eyes and dismissed them. It didn't break the glass ceiling, it reinforced it. That sort of ham-handedness rarely works.

Also, it should be noted that 'white' is no more a culture than 'Asian' is. Most Disney movies are set in a basic Western European culture, so I was fascinated with the hints of the Sami and the inclusion of some Scandinavian folklore (like the trolls) and I wish they'd explored that more. That isn't anything that showed up in The Little Mermaid, or Beauty and the Beast, or Sleeping Beauty, or Cinderella. Tangled, with it's generic medieval setting, would have been a better choice for having POCs because it's *not* already exploring a different culture.

Yes, I *do* get knocked out of stories/films when things are unrealistic in that manner. The giant, neon "LOOK AT ME, I'M SO ENLIGHTENED" sign gets in my way. There are better ways of handling race relations than this.

NO ONE WILL WATCH A SERIES ABOUT DARK SKINNED PEOPLE DOING SNOW MAGIC
http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140122221731/avatar/images/2/28/Entrance.png

IT WILL FAIL.

http://images.wikia.com/avatar/images/archive/4/4b/20130120155230!Southern_Water_Tribe_waterbenders.png

HORRIBLY.

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140119164142/avatar/images/d/da/Pakku_waterbends.png

Because if you don't have a basis in reality that cold = albino no one will be able to suspend their disbelief at the brown people doing whitepeople magic.

Having a basis in reality is fine. Having the 'reality' be 'everyone's white' is... I don't even know what to say.

How many times does someone have to say "I personally would be able to suspend my disbelief" before you get that the person you're talking to would be able to suspend their disbelief?

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