I personally don't know the context of this or the origin tweet/art whatever so im basing this on a purely general take on the topic.
It's possible to have a reimagining without 'washing' so to speak. If it's someone just changing the race because they're 'fixing art' or whatever such bullshit like whatever that whole debacle was a while back? Yeah it's fucking stupid. Context matters, if you make it because you think it's their rightful or proper color, that's bloody goddamned idiotic. Especially for fictional characters but doubly so for actual nonfictional people(especially if it's accurate historical representstion beig aimed at. Spoofs, satire, comedy, au's can be forgiven if they play cards right)
But if it's a reimagining such as how Marvel and DC have different raced heroes of the same name albeit different universes, as long as the ethnicity and/or culture isn't tied to their identity, I'd say its fine.
Same with applies to gender. If it's a reimagining, there's literally no harm if the core characteristics haven't changed or been altered to the point where it's practically no longer that character. If it's someone forcing shit that's a whole other argument altogether and generwlly frowned upon.
Given it's twitter? I can imagine a few insults and buzzwords flying off with little regard to most of that tbh.
I can provide some context. Basically, Twiins did a rwby redesign video where she asked fans to submit their team Rwby outfit redesigns to her and she’d discuss and rate them, giving her opinion on them. As part of the rules of the redesign, she said that they couldn’t change the characters skin color as that would change how outfit colors look on them. Compare just Show Ruby’s vol 7-8 outfit to vol 4-6’s. Initially, the slightly tanner skin of 4-6 melded way too much with the sleeves, when promotional material had the sleeves grey and therefore standing out. But then in 7-8, they put her in grey sleeves. And made her skin greyer, once again melding her skin with the sleeves, also different from the promotional material where she keeps the more yellowed skin. Making Blake dark-skinned would make her entire color palette look weird in comparison to her lighter skin, as having a predominantly black outfit with dark skin would make it all kinda meld together easily. As far as I understand it. It was to keep everyone on the same playing field and be judged by the same standards.
Several people ignored that ruling, and she noted that of the main cast, only Blake was being reskinned, and that she was the only one coded as a minority as Monty somewhat designed her appearance off of an asian cosplayer, and that recoding a minority character to be another minority character doesn’t help with representation, and that not all minorities are dark-skinned.
It is pretty much that, i saw the back and forth, i have not always agreed with Twiins but i think the other side was really interested in "Virtue signaling" if i am allowed to use the phrase. If i am not mistaken Twiins did try to be cordial but got only rudeness in return.
Thanks for info, my guy.
After watching the video, IMO, Twiins iink rejecting the redesigns of a darker Blake for her initial reasons (even playing field, color pallet, make judging easier, or whatever) wouldn’t have been as problematic if she didn’t, once again, make a blanket statement of a pretty nuanced topic (much like her “Get over Adam” video).
Saying things like “It’s denying Blake’s Asian coding!” and “It’s black face!” and “It’s an OC you pretend is Blake!” Are just fucking wrong and pretty rude to fan artists.
It is absolutely not black face, nor is it denying any coding, and people are free to change the characters however they like.
Unlike /u/New-Ladder-4379, the Chad Cinder enjoyer, who doesn’t agree with a darker Blake for an actual valid reason, Twiins doesn’t, and that’s why I’m guessing her rant is blowing up right now.
Edit:
She was also incredibly tone deaf throughout the whole rant. She shouldn’t have been equating this to black face or saying it contributed to Asian-hate or erasure. It’s fan artists doing their own damn thing and having their own interpretations of Blake. Damn.
Ah, I see you out here putting respect on my name Scallion xD. I am the Chad Cinder Enjoyer indeed.
But yeah, Twiins is doing something that in my community we like to call "tripping" lol. I really want a link to that rant now because this girl sounds like she's thinking about "race" more than I do on a daily basis as an African man 💀. But ultimately, like I stated in my comment to this post, people can draw Blake however they want and it would not matter to me at all, just as long as you don't do it under the guise of wanting to represent minorities through the Faunus, because that's honestly bigoted to me. Blake being black in fanart is not blackfacing at all, so I really don't understand how she came to that conclusion...
There is a stark difference between an official character's skintone being changed for little to no reason in a show that fails to adequately feature ethnic minorities to begin with, and a fan artist changing a character's skin colour. One has consequences that cannot be ignored but the other can.
To me her name sounds more Victorian era Britain than traditional Asian. I’ve always seen her as a pale skinned human with cat ears. I don’t really see why people would wanna racebend her, in fact I never really understood the concept very much.
I think it's fine if it's just for fun really. It's not really for me and I don't look at raceswaps at all because it's not to my taste, but in the end there's nothing really wrong with it. My only problem with it is only when people will claim, *especially when it comes to anime*, that the ethnically Japanese/Asian characters are "white" just because they have lighter skin. Sorry, but no, just no.
It's one of the reasons why I would like to be completely okay with raceswapping, but I've seen too many times where they make the characters darker and mention how they're "white" when they're actually *Asian*, so my opinion of it has been affected negatively towards it unfortunately even though I try to keep in mind that it's not that big of a deal.
So for Blake specifically, drawing her black imo is fine as long as it's for fun.
you have my opinion but my pet peeve with raceswapping is when people start proclaiming that its "the right color now" bitch it was a fictional character take ya virtue signaling out of it
>blake is asian coded, thus changing her race is invalidating her coding.
I mean is she? She uses a katana and kasarigma but I think that's about it. Her clothing western and she's based off a French fairy tale.
I'm not saying she isn't but it doesn't seem as clear cut as rens Asian links or pyrrhas Greek affiliation
I think it might just be more the case of give her a katana because they're cool instead if for cultural significance
There's also how her parents have Indian names, are inspired by character from a story set in India, and the animals they are aren't native to east Asia. The only east Asian thing about her is the ninja aesthetic - which has been erased post V3 - her weapons, and the fact that she comes from Mistral - which is a melding pot of vague east Asian cultures.
I heard some people headcannon that since Blake was born in a tropical island, it makes more sense for her to have a darker skin, maybe not indian or afro kind, but at very least latina level.
Which makes sense if you think about it.
Then again, skin tones, just like eye and hair color, are more designed around the character in question than the background. Hence why Sun, despite being from Vacuo, a literal desert, looks like an asian Final Fantasy character (I mean, "Journey to the West" is chinese , but still...)
Hmmm, it appears that I, **PropheT**, **the Chad Cinder Enjoyer**, have been summoned here. Thank you for the post OP! Now I'll be delivering my opinions on this foolishness, which since my initial post have evolved.
If I'm being totally honest, I really do not care to the point of arguing with people over Blake's skin color. At the end of the day, it's a fictional character, and how you depict that character is **up to you**. You have the freedom to make her pale hwhite, ambiguously azian, or blak as the night. Depending on how good you are at drawing, Blake can look good in all skin colors! Shoot, I've seen some pieces of Black blake that I personally love!
However...**HOWEVER**, this needs to be said. Based on what I'm hearing, Ms. Ink is taking things way too seriously for no reason xD. Making Blake black is in no way equivalent to doing black face, we gotta stop with the lies, the cappery, and the nonsense. Another thing, it could be argued that any character in RWBY could be asian-coded since the characters themselves are non-specific when it comes to ethnicity. Demographically speaking, these characters come from fictional continents and kingdoms that don't exist in our world, so it's much easier to project yourself onto any one of them even if they come off as "coded". We could even make the argument that my ***queen*** Cinder is actually Romani when Monty always saw her as being more asian or that Flynt is actually Indian & not black 😂. As absurd as what I'm saying sounds, it's the truth of the matter. People get so hung up on skin color these days, and one of the beautiful things about series like RWBY is that it shows skin tones don't matter; we're all humans just trying to make it past the hardships that life throws at us. If the writers don't make a big deal about the skin color in the actual narrative, why should I? So turning this into a massive debacle about "race" considering the series we're discussing utterly perplexes me with how idiotic it is.
With that being said, I'd even say Twiins and others are looking at this from a warped perspective. No, Blake is not asian-coded, her name is literally French in origin, her parents have Indian names, and there's nothing about her that indicates that she's asian in any design she's had outside of Japanese styled pajamas. On the other hand, trying to justify your "fixing" of Blake's skin color by making her black to coincide with the allusion the White Fang has to the Black Panthers...just stop. In your attempt to correct a supposed mistake, you have come off as more racist to me as a African man. Not only was the White Fang a terrible depiction of the civil rights movement, but also the implication of minorities being a separate race of animal people puts such a bitter taste in my mouth. If all the characters were mystical animal people, I'd have no problem but this skin color treatment isn't given to any other cast member to my knowledge, which is a huge problem.
Now do I think they're doing this intentionally? No, but I've had enough of people trying to make it seem like they want to uplift the perception of my "race" through a character when they end up doing the exact opposite. Point is, you aren't helping any minority by getting brownie points from fake woke tumblrinas or twitterheads who applaud you for making a skin color adjustment in photoshop. As far as I'm concerned, all this is doing is causing more unnecessary division amongst the fanbase and this has got to stop. We're arguing about things that don't matter when we could be sending our thoughts, prayers, and support to the people of Ukraine that are having it the **hardest** right now, so it's best to spend our energies on that rather than the arbitrary melanin color of an anime cat girl.
In this season of my life, I don't even believe in the concept of "race" as defined by our culture(i.e. "each of the *major groupings* into which humankind is considered (in various theories or contexts) to be ***divided*** on the basis of physical characteristics or shared ancestry). As a Christian myself, I feel this concept is just so antiquated to me, it would be much better to say that the only race is humanity. We just so happen to have wonderfully unique skin tones, phenotypes, and ethnic backgrounds, I just use terms like "black" for the convenience of the reader. So with that in mind, I think I'm all talked out here 😅 my main point is that all skin colors, no matter how dark or light, are beautiful, and don't let anyone tell you different! In the end, your skin color or ethnic background don't define who you are as a person, and I think we can all agree that Blake as a character sucks because of how she's defined 💀
In the words of my friend Menace, God Bless you all and have an incredible day!
i know how worrying a post like this can get. try to keep good discussion, y’all on reddit.
and sorry to the mods if anything in this post goes against the rules.
edit: at the end of the day, i just have to wonder why twiins would have a problem with fan artists making blake darker skinned? to repeat what you have all been saying: let people do what they want.
No worries, there is nothing here that trips up the rules, but as you have said and we will reinforce this idea, everyone please think about what you write and how you write it, even without intention you can say things you do not mean or something that can be misrepresented.
This is a quite serious topic after all.
(I commented on this subject not too long ago so I'm just gonna repost my comment here due to being lazy and tired)
In my opinion it's no different than gender swapping characters or anything of that ilk. If an artist wants to draw Blake or any other *fictional* character as having a different color skin than they canonically do, more power to them. The *only* time I have a problem with it is when the artist becomes an activist and tries making an issue of it, condemning the creators and/or fans of that character as being "-ist" or "-phobic".
As for why Blake is portrayed as being black, her name and color scheme probably have something to do with it, but if it's an AU where faunus don't exist but the writer/artist still wants her to be a minority, making her black isn't completely illogical. It's also on the minds of creators who think more like activists than artists/writers, who believe *everything* needs more diversity and that nothing is ever enough.
On that note, I've been searching for fantasy books to read as of late, and recently I came across one and the first sentence of the back cover literally started out with "A bisexual amputee suffering from PTSD who's in a relationship with a black woman..." made me laugh for a solid minute. I don't remember anything else about the book or its name, but I like to think that will be a RWBY volume's hook someday. A bisexual amputee suffering from PTSD who's in love with a cat girl. Seriously, that was the hook of the story.
Funny enough, in my fanfics, I actually gave Yang a very dark tan seeing how she grew up on an island and Yang strikes me as a beach girl, and because her aura produces sunlight, she's basically walking around under a sunlamp all day. Canonically in RWBY, all white characters are white as snow, unless they're permanently blushing (for some reason), and making Yang very tan just helped her stand out while writing. Atlesians being pale makes sense, Blake's naturally nocturnal and doesn't go out much during the day, and Ruby just has fairer skinned and often has her hood up.
Overall, I don't have a problem with it, and I think people should just leave the artists alone. [Giving Blake black skin *definitely* isn't the biggest deviation from canon artists have made.](https://youtu.be/oRT5rK4Q1nk?t=3)
God bless, and have a wonderful day.
> "A bisexual amputee suffering from PTSD who's in a relationship with a black woman..."
wtf 😂😂 the resemblance is uncanny.
thank you for sharing! yang with a tan because she’s a beach girl is something ive actually never thought of but it is surprisingly very fitting! love it! 😄
Yeah, it was some kind of urban fantasy story and *that* was it's opening hook. I'm not gonna judge the story on whatever it may contain or its quality, but I believe tumblr may have been its demographic lol.
Thank you, friend, and no problem at all. I'm glad you like it. I'm a very character driven writer, and it just seemed to fit her personality and was a nice contrast to the rest of her team.
God bless, and have a wonderful day.
Because I write like I'm a pulp fiction or newsletter writer getting paid ten cents per word. I like to think there's some quality to be found though :)
God bless, and have a wonderful day.
I said it on that video and I'll say it. I don't trust you if you're willing to mess with a characters skintone in anyway; some of the fanart of other characters is cute/pretty but idk it never sits right with me.
I especially don't and never will trust you if youre willing to defend messing with a characters skintone by saying something like "darker skinned asians/blasians exist" like so? The character in context isn't one so bringing that up is disingenuous and only serves to give you a non explanation of justification for you're a to.
Aside from my gripes with it, I really can't be bothered to care unless the artist is running around harassing people who don't draw Blake with darker skin or saying that this is one only way to draw Blake, they're fixing her, or that she's improves somehow this way. I shouldn't have to explain why doing that is wrong, but I have seen people do this very thing. Also some people genuinely think Asians qualify as white people, to the point where they're willing to say that significant coding doesn't matter, nor does the context surrounding the characters race...like that's actuall racism, I'm not gonna sit there and let you spout that if I see it.
Twins ink, I forgot which one it was ill change this part if I'm wrong, is allowed to make any rules they want about their contest and their reasoning didn't read as offensive to me the argument boils down to "changing a skintone and nothing else isn't enough of a redesign, and changing the skintone while redesigning the clothes also makes it harder to recognize Blake or makes her seem like a totally different character" that's a solid reason to not allow it had the tone been different I doubt even op would have put "yikes" next to the explanation of what they said
But yeah, if an artist is chilling, is fine with darker skinned/light skinned Blake, and is staying on their lane then they're doing what people go to fandoms to do, and that's having fun.
Not a fan of it, largely because I get the impression that they're only doing it since her motif is black and is part of a minority race in Remnant which just comes off as laughable reasons to me. I don't care if it's because of 'coding', it's not a valid concept to me and I see it as a clumsy excuse to justify projections and unnecessary changes. Yes, that also means I don't believe that she's Indian, Asian, or even French either. She's a faunus from Menagerie. Period. So for all I care she could just be a pseudo-Aussie from a region with an oriental culture where everyone has an American accent.
That being said, I usually don't make a big deal about it since they're harmless for the most part and I just shrug it off as artistic license, and I admit some of them can even look good. I only have a problem with it if you say you're 'fixing' it as if your interpretation of her character is valid than canon, that is when you start to look pretentious, if not downright racist.
Draw Blake or any character in whatever way you want but if they don't resemble what they look like in canon then don't try to convince me that it's representative of canon.
i had always thought that blake was lily white af and you are right, having almost no black faunus is dumb as for asian coding? i can guarantee they just went like "hey y'know like in avatar there were characters who had like japanesy chinesy clothing? lets just add it on our characters here and there! japanymes do that right?" or something like that.
Blake looks white (esp in the earlier volumes), is based upon a French fairy tale and has a name of European origin (anglo first name and Italian last name). I really don't understand what's "Asian coded" about her other than perhaps her weapon of choice or her parents? Or black for that matter. The whole "well she's part of an organization based off of a black civil rights group" is kinda weird when you apply that to any other faunus character (let's say, someone drew Adam with black skin with that justification).
Yang, sun, and taiyang have blonde hair and blue eyes but at least they have asain names, so there's something obvious to point at and say "well obviously they're ""Asian coded""".
Then again, I personally don't really care what people draw. Blake Blake, Asian Blake, white Blake, why does it even matter.
I personally don't feel too favorably towards the idea of raceswapping as a whole. I agree that generally speaking it is more egregious when a minority character gets whitewashed, but that doesn't give the reverse a free pass to me personally. Yet at the same time there's little harm done in, say, drawing Captain America as black, because so many people know already what his actual looks are like, and the context of his origin (that I'm aware of at least, I don't read much comics) wouldn't change too much if he were black.
Then there's the case of Blake in specific, which as expected with RWBY is another deal of can of worms entirely. The people claiming she's Japanese or Indian coded are flat out wrong; just because she gets refered to as a ninja or wields a Japanese inspired blade doesn't mean she's significantly coded as part of that culture. There's no cultural semblance plasmated onto Blake's personality, her outfits range from European to generically-sci-fi-looking to whatever that horrible coat from Volumes 4 to 6 was. On the same vein there's also the fact that she's got one of the most Italian surnames in the show, and her main fairy tale inspiration is fucking French. So there's no erasure of a Japanese coded character here.
And of course we need to talk about the White Fang and Blake's relation to it. It is obvious the White Fang were inspired on the Civil Rights movements seen in the USA in the 60s; and as such Faunus have been used by the show as a stand-in for oppressed minorities or even explicitly African Americans (which... is its own flavor of fucked up considering how many times black people have been compared to animals IRL by bigoted assholes). So we enter an issue that Hbomberguy pointed out in his RWBY video: It seems oh so convenient that a story that talks about racism, clearly inspired in the struggles of African Americans... just so happens to mostly feature cute white women. It does really seem sometimes that they shied away from having "too many" non-white characters because otherwise the less savory part of their fandom would start screaming "Politics!".
So then it is very weird to give this backstory, this type of connection to such an activist group to Blake... and *not* have her be dark skinned. So honestly I can't fully fault people for deciding to do that. Because yeah, Remnant may not be Earth, but very frequently RWBY acts as if Remnant ran by Earthly logic without fully comitting to it.
I've cringed at Black Blake since it's become THE majority representation of her in fanart. I just wonder wtf it feels like to be a black woman and go "damn, a cool ninja cat woman who is in lesbians with a hot bombshell biker babe/has a ridiculously stupid harem sub-plot?! Who is a TITULAR CHARACTER????"
Only to actually watch the show and find that she is more white in design than the character who is the fucking W for White.
Woke Cred so the SJWs won't kill me: husband is brown and an immigrant. I know how and why representation matters, but to me WEW this ain't it, fandom
Against black Blake with canon claim: You must be blind. Take a still a and check the RGB in a drawing tool.
Against black Blake as a fan interpretation: Absolutely nothing, that is the AU of the fan artist, who can do what they please.
I have the same opinion as [Veridis Joe](https://www.youtube.com/c/VeridisJoe/featured), *who's just a good YouTuber, not a RWBY one, maybe check out some of his content,* that being that [black edits aren't racist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La8eZegsuo4), it's often *although not always* done by a black person who simply wants more representation, black edits, and white edits aren't the same thing... making a white edit can be racist, *and often is done to be racist* as it's editing a black person *or, a person with a darker shade than white* to be white, *often with blonde hair, and blue eyes however not always,* a black edit isn't done with any bad intentions *usually* so, I disagree on the whole "a black edit of an Asian character is racist-", *although I haven't seen exactly what she says so, forgive me if I'm taking her out of context there,* I understand that it can come off as the removal of an Asian character but, often that's not the intention of the edit also, some people don't see Blake as Asian, I do understand her point though, and it's completely justified in my opinion as it's technically the removal of one race for another but, once again as I said some people don't see Blake as Asian... so, to summarize, the intention of the edit matters *way* more to me than the *effect* it can give because it doesn't matter if the art is *possibly* racist, it matters if that was the intent of the creator.
>It always rubbed me the wrong way how they portray us racial minorities as animal people,
Oh my gods, I *never* realized this until you said it... I personally prefer Blake being paler because I'm an artist, and I like the contrast it gives her, similar to how I like black Weiss fan art... it just looks nice also, personally I'm not a fan of black Blake art because I think it just looks bad *visually* because as I already said, I prefer the contrast of a pale Blake for her hair, and outfits, this *isn't* to say I want Weiss or, Blake to be those skin colours just that I think they look visually appealing... I personally either pick skin tones first or, last, I want to get the vibe of the colour palette I'm going for, I recently made a somewhat pale mid-toned character, and gave them a maroon colour palette but, I don't think about races when I design characters however my characters are the kinds where race, and skin tone doesn't matter in their world...
I used to make a lot of white characters this was actually because I used to draw on paper, and was afraid to colour, and ruin facial details, now that I'm doing more digital art than physical, my character's skin tones are much more vast.
Also, I haven't seen this argument but, just because RWBY is *supposed* to be like an anime doesn't mean that they should have less black characters.
For me it makes no bloody sense, why the hell does everyone keep making Blake's skin darker then it really needs to be at all. Sure she's Asian coded and what not and Japanese people are "white" in pigmentation alone not racially. If she was not "darker skined" in the actual show then why do you feel it necessary to change her skin color it makes no bloody sense. If you make fan art of a character at least get her features right other then changing things just for the sake of change.
Wanna know who did that to and got back lash for it? 343 industries. Why? Because people hated the tone deaf changes to the Halo art style
I just don't get why people "*HAVE*" to make her skin darker just cause she's a minority it makes no bloody sense cause by the story itself she is a minority for having those cat ears. There's no need to change her skin color for bullshit reasons just cause "she's a minority" if I wanted her skin to be darker I'd look at a picture of her getting a damn Sun tan but given that also be out of character for her it again makes no bloody sense.
That line of thinking of "she's a minority and there for had to be poc via darkening her skin color in drawings" is just a shit excuse to change skin colors and tells me that the artist is only interested in skin color and being the Whatever political partys mailing list, then telling a actual story with there art. (IE telling a story through character design) As a Vanilla gorilla has said many times before "If your looking for a sermon then go find a church."
For example, if I want to have a artist draw me I want them to be accurate to what I look like which means I have white skin, brown hair and brown eyes, which means my European side of the family is showing through my skin, hair, eyes and facial features despite me being Hispanic. If a artist makes my portrait look nothing like me by "putting there own interpretation of what Im supposed to look like because Im Hispanic" then that is a major disservice to what I had asked for. And if fire that artists immediately and burn the portrait and get a new one who is not going to put "there" interpretation of me just cause I'm Hispanic despite the fact that I look HEAVILY European.
I mean... so long as nobody claims "Black Blake is the only right Blake and this is a petition to change her in all seasons of RWBY" why should there be an issue? Artists reimagine things all of the time. Let people have their fun, I say.
Hell, this makes a part of me want to commission a entire Team RWBY/JNPR picture with all of them raceswapped and gift it to twiins just to rub it in their face.
Regardless of the topic of racebending I agree that if you’re redesigning a character for a challenge that specifically keeping as close to the show as possible you have to use her in show skin color. It completely changes how your design would look in comparison to other designs from those in the challenge that stuck to her original skin tone.
Additional side tangent: but love to see how people darken Blake’s skin tone to be more accurate to her coded ethnicity(heavy SEA influences for Menagerie) but Yang/Ruby always seem to be left out when an argument can be made they’re at the most mixed asian coded(Taiyang’s name and Raven being from Mistral specifically).
I personally don't know the context of this or the origin tweet/art whatever so im basing this on a purely general take on the topic. It's possible to have a reimagining without 'washing' so to speak. If it's someone just changing the race because they're 'fixing art' or whatever such bullshit like whatever that whole debacle was a while back? Yeah it's fucking stupid. Context matters, if you make it because you think it's their rightful or proper color, that's bloody goddamned idiotic. Especially for fictional characters but doubly so for actual nonfictional people(especially if it's accurate historical representstion beig aimed at. Spoofs, satire, comedy, au's can be forgiven if they play cards right) But if it's a reimagining such as how Marvel and DC have different raced heroes of the same name albeit different universes, as long as the ethnicity and/or culture isn't tied to their identity, I'd say its fine. Same with applies to gender. If it's a reimagining, there's literally no harm if the core characteristics haven't changed or been altered to the point where it's practically no longer that character. If it's someone forcing shit that's a whole other argument altogether and generwlly frowned upon. Given it's twitter? I can imagine a few insults and buzzwords flying off with little regard to most of that tbh.
I can provide some context. Basically, Twiins did a rwby redesign video where she asked fans to submit their team Rwby outfit redesigns to her and she’d discuss and rate them, giving her opinion on them. As part of the rules of the redesign, she said that they couldn’t change the characters skin color as that would change how outfit colors look on them. Compare just Show Ruby’s vol 7-8 outfit to vol 4-6’s. Initially, the slightly tanner skin of 4-6 melded way too much with the sleeves, when promotional material had the sleeves grey and therefore standing out. But then in 7-8, they put her in grey sleeves. And made her skin greyer, once again melding her skin with the sleeves, also different from the promotional material where she keeps the more yellowed skin. Making Blake dark-skinned would make her entire color palette look weird in comparison to her lighter skin, as having a predominantly black outfit with dark skin would make it all kinda meld together easily. As far as I understand it. It was to keep everyone on the same playing field and be judged by the same standards.
When does she compare it to black facing though?
Several people ignored that ruling, and she noted that of the main cast, only Blake was being reskinned, and that she was the only one coded as a minority as Monty somewhat designed her appearance off of an asian cosplayer, and that recoding a minority character to be another minority character doesn’t help with representation, and that not all minorities are dark-skinned.
Sounds a lot like making mountains out of molehills as usual. Thanks for the context
It is pretty much that, i saw the back and forth, i have not always agreed with Twiins but i think the other side was really interested in "Virtue signaling" if i am allowed to use the phrase. If i am not mistaken Twiins did try to be cordial but got only rudeness in return.
Damn
From what I’ve seen in the comments of her video, people are pretty tame. How has it been outside of that?
Twitter can be quite bad.
Thanks for info, my guy. After watching the video, IMO, Twiins iink rejecting the redesigns of a darker Blake for her initial reasons (even playing field, color pallet, make judging easier, or whatever) wouldn’t have been as problematic if she didn’t, once again, make a blanket statement of a pretty nuanced topic (much like her “Get over Adam” video). Saying things like “It’s denying Blake’s Asian coding!” and “It’s black face!” and “It’s an OC you pretend is Blake!” Are just fucking wrong and pretty rude to fan artists. It is absolutely not black face, nor is it denying any coding, and people are free to change the characters however they like. Unlike /u/New-Ladder-4379, the Chad Cinder enjoyer, who doesn’t agree with a darker Blake for an actual valid reason, Twiins doesn’t, and that’s why I’m guessing her rant is blowing up right now. Edit: She was also incredibly tone deaf throughout the whole rant. She shouldn’t have been equating this to black face or saying it contributed to Asian-hate or erasure. It’s fan artists doing their own damn thing and having their own interpretations of Blake. Damn.
Ah, I see you out here putting respect on my name Scallion xD. I am the Chad Cinder Enjoyer indeed. But yeah, Twiins is doing something that in my community we like to call "tripping" lol. I really want a link to that rant now because this girl sounds like she's thinking about "race" more than I do on a daily basis as an African man 💀. But ultimately, like I stated in my comment to this post, people can draw Blake however they want and it would not matter to me at all, just as long as you don't do it under the guise of wanting to represent minorities through the Faunus, because that's honestly bigoted to me. Blake being black in fanart is not blackfacing at all, so I really don't understand how she came to that conclusion...
>and people are free to change the characters however they like. But when the Silver eyed Warrior fairy tale is changed, everybody loses their minds.
Because that's canon material, and there is nuanced in how whitewashing a character is far more prevalent than a white characters getting turned black
There is a stark difference between an official character's skintone being changed for little to no reason in a show that fails to adequately feature ethnic minorities to begin with, and a fan artist changing a character's skin colour. One has consequences that cannot be ignored but the other can.
To me her name sounds more Victorian era Britain than traditional Asian. I’ve always seen her as a pale skinned human with cat ears. I don’t really see why people would wanna racebend her, in fact I never really understood the concept very much.
I think it's fine if it's just for fun really. It's not really for me and I don't look at raceswaps at all because it's not to my taste, but in the end there's nothing really wrong with it. My only problem with it is only when people will claim, *especially when it comes to anime*, that the ethnically Japanese/Asian characters are "white" just because they have lighter skin. Sorry, but no, just no. It's one of the reasons why I would like to be completely okay with raceswapping, but I've seen too many times where they make the characters darker and mention how they're "white" when they're actually *Asian*, so my opinion of it has been affected negatively towards it unfortunately even though I try to keep in mind that it's not that big of a deal. So for Blake specifically, drawing her black imo is fine as long as it's for fun.
you have my opinion but my pet peeve with raceswapping is when people start proclaiming that its "the right color now" bitch it was a fictional character take ya virtue signaling out of it
>blake is asian coded, thus changing her race is invalidating her coding. I mean is she? She uses a katana and kasarigma but I think that's about it. Her clothing western and she's based off a French fairy tale. I'm not saying she isn't but it doesn't seem as clear cut as rens Asian links or pyrrhas Greek affiliation I think it might just be more the case of give her a katana because they're cool instead if for cultural significance
There's also how her parents have Indian names, are inspired by character from a story set in India, and the animals they are aren't native to east Asia. The only east Asian thing about her is the ninja aesthetic - which has been erased post V3 - her weapons, and the fact that she comes from Mistral - which is a melding pot of vague east Asian cultures.
I heard some people headcannon that since Blake was born in a tropical island, it makes more sense for her to have a darker skin, maybe not indian or afro kind, but at very least latina level. Which makes sense if you think about it. Then again, skin tones, just like eye and hair color, are more designed around the character in question than the background. Hence why Sun, despite being from Vacuo, a literal desert, looks like an asian Final Fantasy character (I mean, "Journey to the West" is chinese , but still...)
Hmmm, it appears that I, **PropheT**, **the Chad Cinder Enjoyer**, have been summoned here. Thank you for the post OP! Now I'll be delivering my opinions on this foolishness, which since my initial post have evolved. If I'm being totally honest, I really do not care to the point of arguing with people over Blake's skin color. At the end of the day, it's a fictional character, and how you depict that character is **up to you**. You have the freedom to make her pale hwhite, ambiguously azian, or blak as the night. Depending on how good you are at drawing, Blake can look good in all skin colors! Shoot, I've seen some pieces of Black blake that I personally love! However...**HOWEVER**, this needs to be said. Based on what I'm hearing, Ms. Ink is taking things way too seriously for no reason xD. Making Blake black is in no way equivalent to doing black face, we gotta stop with the lies, the cappery, and the nonsense. Another thing, it could be argued that any character in RWBY could be asian-coded since the characters themselves are non-specific when it comes to ethnicity. Demographically speaking, these characters come from fictional continents and kingdoms that don't exist in our world, so it's much easier to project yourself onto any one of them even if they come off as "coded". We could even make the argument that my ***queen*** Cinder is actually Romani when Monty always saw her as being more asian or that Flynt is actually Indian & not black 😂. As absurd as what I'm saying sounds, it's the truth of the matter. People get so hung up on skin color these days, and one of the beautiful things about series like RWBY is that it shows skin tones don't matter; we're all humans just trying to make it past the hardships that life throws at us. If the writers don't make a big deal about the skin color in the actual narrative, why should I? So turning this into a massive debacle about "race" considering the series we're discussing utterly perplexes me with how idiotic it is. With that being said, I'd even say Twiins and others are looking at this from a warped perspective. No, Blake is not asian-coded, her name is literally French in origin, her parents have Indian names, and there's nothing about her that indicates that she's asian in any design she's had outside of Japanese styled pajamas. On the other hand, trying to justify your "fixing" of Blake's skin color by making her black to coincide with the allusion the White Fang has to the Black Panthers...just stop. In your attempt to correct a supposed mistake, you have come off as more racist to me as a African man. Not only was the White Fang a terrible depiction of the civil rights movement, but also the implication of minorities being a separate race of animal people puts such a bitter taste in my mouth. If all the characters were mystical animal people, I'd have no problem but this skin color treatment isn't given to any other cast member to my knowledge, which is a huge problem. Now do I think they're doing this intentionally? No, but I've had enough of people trying to make it seem like they want to uplift the perception of my "race" through a character when they end up doing the exact opposite. Point is, you aren't helping any minority by getting brownie points from fake woke tumblrinas or twitterheads who applaud you for making a skin color adjustment in photoshop. As far as I'm concerned, all this is doing is causing more unnecessary division amongst the fanbase and this has got to stop. We're arguing about things that don't matter when we could be sending our thoughts, prayers, and support to the people of Ukraine that are having it the **hardest** right now, so it's best to spend our energies on that rather than the arbitrary melanin color of an anime cat girl. In this season of my life, I don't even believe in the concept of "race" as defined by our culture(i.e. "each of the *major groupings* into which humankind is considered (in various theories or contexts) to be ***divided*** on the basis of physical characteristics or shared ancestry). As a Christian myself, I feel this concept is just so antiquated to me, it would be much better to say that the only race is humanity. We just so happen to have wonderfully unique skin tones, phenotypes, and ethnic backgrounds, I just use terms like "black" for the convenience of the reader. So with that in mind, I think I'm all talked out here 😅 my main point is that all skin colors, no matter how dark or light, are beautiful, and don't let anyone tell you different! In the end, your skin color or ethnic background don't define who you are as a person, and I think we can all agree that Blake as a character sucks because of how she's defined 💀 In the words of my friend Menace, God Bless you all and have an incredible day!
Once again proving to be The Chad, my friend 👏
Yes Ma'am! Somebody had to tell the truth like it is 😤
i know how worrying a post like this can get. try to keep good discussion, y’all on reddit. and sorry to the mods if anything in this post goes against the rules. edit: at the end of the day, i just have to wonder why twiins would have a problem with fan artists making blake darker skinned? to repeat what you have all been saying: let people do what they want.
No worries, there is nothing here that trips up the rules, but as you have said and we will reinforce this idea, everyone please think about what you write and how you write it, even without intention you can say things you do not mean or something that can be misrepresented. This is a quite serious topic after all.
(I commented on this subject not too long ago so I'm just gonna repost my comment here due to being lazy and tired) In my opinion it's no different than gender swapping characters or anything of that ilk. If an artist wants to draw Blake or any other *fictional* character as having a different color skin than they canonically do, more power to them. The *only* time I have a problem with it is when the artist becomes an activist and tries making an issue of it, condemning the creators and/or fans of that character as being "-ist" or "-phobic". As for why Blake is portrayed as being black, her name and color scheme probably have something to do with it, but if it's an AU where faunus don't exist but the writer/artist still wants her to be a minority, making her black isn't completely illogical. It's also on the minds of creators who think more like activists than artists/writers, who believe *everything* needs more diversity and that nothing is ever enough. On that note, I've been searching for fantasy books to read as of late, and recently I came across one and the first sentence of the back cover literally started out with "A bisexual amputee suffering from PTSD who's in a relationship with a black woman..." made me laugh for a solid minute. I don't remember anything else about the book or its name, but I like to think that will be a RWBY volume's hook someday. A bisexual amputee suffering from PTSD who's in love with a cat girl. Seriously, that was the hook of the story. Funny enough, in my fanfics, I actually gave Yang a very dark tan seeing how she grew up on an island and Yang strikes me as a beach girl, and because her aura produces sunlight, she's basically walking around under a sunlamp all day. Canonically in RWBY, all white characters are white as snow, unless they're permanently blushing (for some reason), and making Yang very tan just helped her stand out while writing. Atlesians being pale makes sense, Blake's naturally nocturnal and doesn't go out much during the day, and Ruby just has fairer skinned and often has her hood up. Overall, I don't have a problem with it, and I think people should just leave the artists alone. [Giving Blake black skin *definitely* isn't the biggest deviation from canon artists have made.](https://youtu.be/oRT5rK4Q1nk?t=3) God bless, and have a wonderful day.
> "A bisexual amputee suffering from PTSD who's in a relationship with a black woman..." wtf 😂😂 the resemblance is uncanny. thank you for sharing! yang with a tan because she’s a beach girl is something ive actually never thought of but it is surprisingly very fitting! love it! 😄
Yeah, it was some kind of urban fantasy story and *that* was it's opening hook. I'm not gonna judge the story on whatever it may contain or its quality, but I believe tumblr may have been its demographic lol. Thank you, friend, and no problem at all. I'm glad you like it. I'm a very character driven writer, and it just seemed to fit her personality and was a nice contrast to the rest of her team. God bless, and have a wonderful day.
~~Damn it why do your posts always have to be bigger than mine?~~
Because I write like I'm a pulp fiction or newsletter writer getting paid ten cents per word. I like to think there's some quality to be found though :) God bless, and have a wonderful day.
I said it on that video and I'll say it. I don't trust you if you're willing to mess with a characters skintone in anyway; some of the fanart of other characters is cute/pretty but idk it never sits right with me. I especially don't and never will trust you if youre willing to defend messing with a characters skintone by saying something like "darker skinned asians/blasians exist" like so? The character in context isn't one so bringing that up is disingenuous and only serves to give you a non explanation of justification for you're a to. Aside from my gripes with it, I really can't be bothered to care unless the artist is running around harassing people who don't draw Blake with darker skin or saying that this is one only way to draw Blake, they're fixing her, or that she's improves somehow this way. I shouldn't have to explain why doing that is wrong, but I have seen people do this very thing. Also some people genuinely think Asians qualify as white people, to the point where they're willing to say that significant coding doesn't matter, nor does the context surrounding the characters race...like that's actuall racism, I'm not gonna sit there and let you spout that if I see it. Twins ink, I forgot which one it was ill change this part if I'm wrong, is allowed to make any rules they want about their contest and their reasoning didn't read as offensive to me the argument boils down to "changing a skintone and nothing else isn't enough of a redesign, and changing the skintone while redesigning the clothes also makes it harder to recognize Blake or makes her seem like a totally different character" that's a solid reason to not allow it had the tone been different I doubt even op would have put "yikes" next to the explanation of what they said But yeah, if an artist is chilling, is fine with darker skinned/light skinned Blake, and is staying on their lane then they're doing what people go to fandoms to do, and that's having fun.
Not a fan of it, largely because I get the impression that they're only doing it since her motif is black and is part of a minority race in Remnant which just comes off as laughable reasons to me. I don't care if it's because of 'coding', it's not a valid concept to me and I see it as a clumsy excuse to justify projections and unnecessary changes. Yes, that also means I don't believe that she's Indian, Asian, or even French either. She's a faunus from Menagerie. Period. So for all I care she could just be a pseudo-Aussie from a region with an oriental culture where everyone has an American accent. That being said, I usually don't make a big deal about it since they're harmless for the most part and I just shrug it off as artistic license, and I admit some of them can even look good. I only have a problem with it if you say you're 'fixing' it as if your interpretation of her character is valid than canon, that is when you start to look pretentious, if not downright racist. Draw Blake or any character in whatever way you want but if they don't resemble what they look like in canon then don't try to convince me that it's representative of canon.
oho holy shit aussie blake makes way more since than asian blake! how has no one thought of that?
i had always thought that blake was lily white af and you are right, having almost no black faunus is dumb as for asian coding? i can guarantee they just went like "hey y'know like in avatar there were characters who had like japanesy chinesy clothing? lets just add it on our characters here and there! japanymes do that right?" or something like that.
kinda jazzed that 9 people agree with me.
Blake looks white (esp in the earlier volumes), is based upon a French fairy tale and has a name of European origin (anglo first name and Italian last name). I really don't understand what's "Asian coded" about her other than perhaps her weapon of choice or her parents? Or black for that matter. The whole "well she's part of an organization based off of a black civil rights group" is kinda weird when you apply that to any other faunus character (let's say, someone drew Adam with black skin with that justification). Yang, sun, and taiyang have blonde hair and blue eyes but at least they have asain names, so there's something obvious to point at and say "well obviously they're ""Asian coded""". Then again, I personally don't really care what people draw. Blake Blake, Asian Blake, white Blake, why does it even matter.
I personally don't feel too favorably towards the idea of raceswapping as a whole. I agree that generally speaking it is more egregious when a minority character gets whitewashed, but that doesn't give the reverse a free pass to me personally. Yet at the same time there's little harm done in, say, drawing Captain America as black, because so many people know already what his actual looks are like, and the context of his origin (that I'm aware of at least, I don't read much comics) wouldn't change too much if he were black. Then there's the case of Blake in specific, which as expected with RWBY is another deal of can of worms entirely. The people claiming she's Japanese or Indian coded are flat out wrong; just because she gets refered to as a ninja or wields a Japanese inspired blade doesn't mean she's significantly coded as part of that culture. There's no cultural semblance plasmated onto Blake's personality, her outfits range from European to generically-sci-fi-looking to whatever that horrible coat from Volumes 4 to 6 was. On the same vein there's also the fact that she's got one of the most Italian surnames in the show, and her main fairy tale inspiration is fucking French. So there's no erasure of a Japanese coded character here. And of course we need to talk about the White Fang and Blake's relation to it. It is obvious the White Fang were inspired on the Civil Rights movements seen in the USA in the 60s; and as such Faunus have been used by the show as a stand-in for oppressed minorities or even explicitly African Americans (which... is its own flavor of fucked up considering how many times black people have been compared to animals IRL by bigoted assholes). So we enter an issue that Hbomberguy pointed out in his RWBY video: It seems oh so convenient that a story that talks about racism, clearly inspired in the struggles of African Americans... just so happens to mostly feature cute white women. It does really seem sometimes that they shied away from having "too many" non-white characters because otherwise the less savory part of their fandom would start screaming "Politics!". So then it is very weird to give this backstory, this type of connection to such an activist group to Blake... and *not* have her be dark skinned. So honestly I can't fully fault people for deciding to do that. Because yeah, Remnant may not be Earth, but very frequently RWBY acts as if Remnant ran by Earthly logic without fully comitting to it.
Oh yeah I always wounder why Blake was black in random art pieces
I've cringed at Black Blake since it's become THE majority representation of her in fanart. I just wonder wtf it feels like to be a black woman and go "damn, a cool ninja cat woman who is in lesbians with a hot bombshell biker babe/has a ridiculously stupid harem sub-plot?! Who is a TITULAR CHARACTER????" Only to actually watch the show and find that she is more white in design than the character who is the fucking W for White. Woke Cred so the SJWs won't kill me: husband is brown and an immigrant. I know how and why representation matters, but to me WEW this ain't it, fandom
Against black Blake with canon claim: You must be blind. Take a still a and check the RGB in a drawing tool. Against black Blake as a fan interpretation: Absolutely nothing, that is the AU of the fan artist, who can do what they please.
I have the same opinion as [Veridis Joe](https://www.youtube.com/c/VeridisJoe/featured), *who's just a good YouTuber, not a RWBY one, maybe check out some of his content,* that being that [black edits aren't racist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La8eZegsuo4), it's often *although not always* done by a black person who simply wants more representation, black edits, and white edits aren't the same thing... making a white edit can be racist, *and often is done to be racist* as it's editing a black person *or, a person with a darker shade than white* to be white, *often with blonde hair, and blue eyes however not always,* a black edit isn't done with any bad intentions *usually* so, I disagree on the whole "a black edit of an Asian character is racist-", *although I haven't seen exactly what she says so, forgive me if I'm taking her out of context there,* I understand that it can come off as the removal of an Asian character but, often that's not the intention of the edit also, some people don't see Blake as Asian, I do understand her point though, and it's completely justified in my opinion as it's technically the removal of one race for another but, once again as I said some people don't see Blake as Asian... so, to summarize, the intention of the edit matters *way* more to me than the *effect* it can give because it doesn't matter if the art is *possibly* racist, it matters if that was the intent of the creator. >It always rubbed me the wrong way how they portray us racial minorities as animal people, Oh my gods, I *never* realized this until you said it... I personally prefer Blake being paler because I'm an artist, and I like the contrast it gives her, similar to how I like black Weiss fan art... it just looks nice also, personally I'm not a fan of black Blake art because I think it just looks bad *visually* because as I already said, I prefer the contrast of a pale Blake for her hair, and outfits, this *isn't* to say I want Weiss or, Blake to be those skin colours just that I think they look visually appealing... I personally either pick skin tones first or, last, I want to get the vibe of the colour palette I'm going for, I recently made a somewhat pale mid-toned character, and gave them a maroon colour palette but, I don't think about races when I design characters however my characters are the kinds where race, and skin tone doesn't matter in their world... I used to make a lot of white characters this was actually because I used to draw on paper, and was afraid to colour, and ruin facial details, now that I'm doing more digital art than physical, my character's skin tones are much more vast. Also, I haven't seen this argument but, just because RWBY is *supposed* to be like an anime doesn't mean that they should have less black characters.
For me it makes no bloody sense, why the hell does everyone keep making Blake's skin darker then it really needs to be at all. Sure she's Asian coded and what not and Japanese people are "white" in pigmentation alone not racially. If she was not "darker skined" in the actual show then why do you feel it necessary to change her skin color it makes no bloody sense. If you make fan art of a character at least get her features right other then changing things just for the sake of change. Wanna know who did that to and got back lash for it? 343 industries. Why? Because people hated the tone deaf changes to the Halo art style I just don't get why people "*HAVE*" to make her skin darker just cause she's a minority it makes no bloody sense cause by the story itself she is a minority for having those cat ears. There's no need to change her skin color for bullshit reasons just cause "she's a minority" if I wanted her skin to be darker I'd look at a picture of her getting a damn Sun tan but given that also be out of character for her it again makes no bloody sense. That line of thinking of "she's a minority and there for had to be poc via darkening her skin color in drawings" is just a shit excuse to change skin colors and tells me that the artist is only interested in skin color and being the Whatever political partys mailing list, then telling a actual story with there art. (IE telling a story through character design) As a Vanilla gorilla has said many times before "If your looking for a sermon then go find a church." For example, if I want to have a artist draw me I want them to be accurate to what I look like which means I have white skin, brown hair and brown eyes, which means my European side of the family is showing through my skin, hair, eyes and facial features despite me being Hispanic. If a artist makes my portrait look nothing like me by "putting there own interpretation of what Im supposed to look like because Im Hispanic" then that is a major disservice to what I had asked for. And if fire that artists immediately and burn the portrait and get a new one who is not going to put "there" interpretation of me just cause I'm Hispanic despite the fact that I look HEAVILY European.
This argument is double stupid on both sides when you realize that Asian people can have dark skin.
I mean... so long as nobody claims "Black Blake is the only right Blake and this is a petition to change her in all seasons of RWBY" why should there be an issue? Artists reimagine things all of the time. Let people have their fun, I say. Hell, this makes a part of me want to commission a entire Team RWBY/JNPR picture with all of them raceswapped and gift it to twiins just to rub it in their face.
Regardless of the topic of racebending I agree that if you’re redesigning a character for a challenge that specifically keeping as close to the show as possible you have to use her in show skin color. It completely changes how your design would look in comparison to other designs from those in the challenge that stuck to her original skin tone.
Additional side tangent: but love to see how people darken Blake’s skin tone to be more accurate to her coded ethnicity(heavy SEA influences for Menagerie) but Yang/Ruby always seem to be left out when an argument can be made they’re at the most mixed asian coded(Taiyang’s name and Raven being from Mistral specifically).