fucking weeb (affectionately)
It’s time for a game.
I thought about diversity in media. Books, Movies, Comics, whatever.
I create a lot of stories and OCs. I don’t share a lot of them online but they are there, running around in my head. Most of my characters are very german, like me.
Lately, diversity in Media has become more and more talked about. And more and more media gets critizised for it - either not having much diversity or having forced diversity or diverse characters that just feel wrong because they are portrayed badly. This has me thinking about why so many of my characters are just white europeans or do not really have an ethicity (because fantasy) but are white. Some asians where in the mix but it took me years to even have one black OC.
It’s because I’m german.
Look, black people for example have been living in America for multiple generations now. There are black Americans living there with their own culture, own struggles and own history in that country.
And then there is Germany and I don’t think I have to tell you why a few generations back, non-german people where not really living in germany. (The entire country was run by racist people that commitied genocide, if you need a reminder.)
Of course that isn’t the case anymore and non-german people are immigrating to germany again. We also had big waves of refugees coming here.
But it’s still like one or two generations only. There are more Asian people than Black people, and also more asian people that grew up in germany, but still not a lot. Most black people I see on the streets didn’t live here for very long yet, and depending on where you live, you don’t see a lot of them (Big cities like Berlin obviously have more non-german people living there than smaller ones). And I feel like people from other countries tend to stick together, probably because people where raised so diffrently. Especially people from islamic countries don’t really seem mix with germans and stay amongst each other.
So of course young me did not really think about drawing a dark skinned person, because I never really got to know them. I barely created a few east asian ones because there where more of them where I grew up, but I didn’t really get to know them either.
And when I did make a black character, I felt really unsure what to do with them. I know one black person, and they are mixed and grew up in germany without the black parent, so they know not more about other peoples culture than I do. If I ever create a comic about my character, I wouldn’t feel confident writing her without getting something wrong.
Big Studios, like Disney for example, can and should hire a diverse cast of ceators to make their movies, so that they can be diverse and accurate. But a book written by one person, spcifically if it’s a hobby project, might be not as diverse because their live isn’t as diverse. That’s probably also why manga and anime aren’t really diverse, because the culture in japan isn’t really either. And in the end, we are inspired by our own life.
I want to make my art more diverse, and this was just going trough my head while thinking about it.
oops i tripped and dropped my
youtube frontends
oh no this one has sponsorblock support
oopsie poopsies this one is its own standalone client
aw fuck my android boy!!
Me? Doing art? Impossible.
Capcom town is such a cute Idea to celebrate your games. I love it when companies put effort in their websites. The little Jill getting chased around by Nemesis. A building having a view into Phoenix office. The fact that Devilotte is there at all.
It helps that I love Capcom but specifically pxz 2 has so many characters I love I aaaaah
Btw this francise is a great rabbit hole because it has so many games in it and you probably haven’t heard of a lot of them if you’re not very deep into the Japanese gaming world. Like a good chunk of them never released outside of Japan. The first game in the series, Namco x Capcom itself, never got out of Japan.