Post by dunsporce in LOOKING AT WRITING BLACK CHARACTERS comments

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Really interesting zine, thank you for making it. I think we share a lot of the same media niches, so I can recognize a lot of the media you're talking about. I can understand to the frustration with finding characters that are central and active participants in the plot and ALSO black in these genres. Thank you for making art that you care about, and I hope you're able to find community in the indie creative communities

The rest of this is white yapping so feel free to stop reading here

While it's kinda straightforward to look up "fantasy books by black authors" and get a wide-ish pool to choose from (although they're mostly north american in mainstream book lists), it's a lot harder to find manga inspired, 2000s scene inspired (mostly thinking of hazbin and panty stocking here but idk the right term for that), and jrpgs that are made by black people and thus depict a black person's life accurately. You're filling a needed niche by being yourself and making what you like making

I've seen criticism of making a character with an anime face and not adding lip lines or a wider nose because it's lazy and doesn't look black, so it's interesting to see the perspective of someone that prefers it that way. I guess anime faces don't look much like any one person to begin with, so why start trying to be detailed with one single race?

Thanks for introducing me to a few more rpgmaker games to check out, and for making cool stuff. I just noticed you have a dress-up game and it's definitely going to consume my life for a few hours

malaika28 days ago (7 edits)

Yeah, to be honest it's complicated cause of the entertainment industry and the diaspora (and the state of the entertainment industries in Africa itself which you know is where most black majority cultures are). There just aren't a lot of black studios able to make work centered on black people in comparison to like white studios or studios from majority cultures (like Japan, Korea, etc) and you know, there's probably like a small amount of black mangaka in Japan, a very tiny amount which means the diversity of storytelling is lower. There's actually like a lot of studies on it and you might be interested in the movie genre of blaxploitation (which sounds horrifying but it's cool LOL)

While there are black people making fiction and things that I read, every time I see another black person in these spaces, it's like "holy shit HI." Outside of that, most of the black dominated works I read are not in this sphere.. Though I still enjoy it and it influences my work even if I can't talk about with anime loving peers lol.

Mmmm. The face thing. There are plenty of black anime artists who draw the typical anime face or draw Everyone with wide noses, but I rarely see just one or the other so it makes me uncomfortable when it's just something that needs to be applied to us. It's creepy to me also because white and Asian people are drawn the same in anime (and often other brown people too honestly), so I just feel like it's dehumanizing when pushed as an absolute rule just for Black People. Like I never have seen my lips as being particularly larger than my nonblack peers. I have a wide nose but I don't think about it a lot and plenty of black people don't so it's strange.

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