WATCH ME ACCIDENTALLY THE WHOLE THING.

[elftaint]

So friend of a friend of a friend and I got involved in some arguments about race, and this excellent post about white apologetics came up.

I don't wanna bum everyone out with my incessant drum-beating BUT... people play genderswapped characters - even Seymour, Lord Seme, has done a genderswapped thread, right.

Why are there no race-swapped characters?

Comments

[inurviewfinder.livejournal.com]

Because the potential not to fuck up is virtually nonexistent. Genderswaps are horrifying enough 99.999999999% of the time and they at least operate on a (usually) binary system.

Also because it sort of reeks of fetishism.

But then I'm against any ~swaps that would alter personality anyway.

[seymourelf.livejournal.com]

Because the potential not to fuck up is virtually nonexistent.

Sure, an Indian Cloud would be a lot different from a regular Cloud.

...wait a minute.

binary system

This I grant, though it leads immediately to the question "where are the characters that are gender-swapped BUT NOT ALL THE WAY, or characters with gender-identities in the middle, or third-gendered, etc."

Also because it sort of reeks of fetishism.

I can't agree with this. I think in there are a ton of people who, given the opportunity to make Black Sephiroth and White Barret would undoubtedly do HORRIBLE CRINGE-INDUCING THINGS

...but the term "fetish" implies an unhealthy interest. My stock in trade is unhealthy interests, and I have to say that this one isn't any unhealthier than all the fetishes all of us already entertain.

To put it another way: the eljay RP universe is chock-a-block with AUs of all kind... race is scrupulously avoided. That is, to me, a more pronounced fetishism than actually playing Mongolian Seymour.

But then I'm against any ~swaps that would alter personality anyway.

Fffff. Not everyone has the luxury of your range and attention to detail. Some of us have to get by on kink, and others just have things that they wanna see more of. Personally, I would like to see more of Characters Of Color - is this a fetish? ...Eh, on the level of Riku in an apron and nothing else, welcoming Seymour home from a hard day at the temple with brandy, brownies, and ass. That is to say:

It's something I would genuinely enjoy seeing, and I'd like to know why it hasn't already happened.

[inurviewfinder.livejournal.com]

"where are the characters that are gender-swapped BUT NOT ALL THE WAY, or characters with gender-identities in the middle, or third-gendered, etc."

I'm going to wager it's the same magical place all those non-binary-gendered characters in mainstream entertainment find themselves at.

And yes, yes, the RP community has a huge hard-on for white people and delicately drawn East Asians. I wouldn't describe it as a fetish; it's a default, which is also not exactly stellar, but, again, has more to do with the media the original content comes from.

The other part of why it probably doesn't come up is that it's a lot of work. Gender swap is -- not easy to get right, but at the very least easier. Men and women are present in all canons to some extent, and in all parts of the world, even if the world itself is a made-up one; that alone gives you a huge amount of hints and guidelines of behaviour/history/norms etc. to go on. A race swap (ethnicity swap?) has many many more unknowns, because race is complicated, because if you're dealing with a canon set in, say, Japan, making a character black is going to enact a pretty huge change that has (presumably) no precedent in canon. Unless you're swapping everybody! And that's evenmore complicated in many ways.

Wanting to see more characters of color ≠ IT WOULD BE SO EDGY AND EXOTIC TO MAKE SAKURA-CHAN HISPANIC. The latter is going to feature from the moment race-swap comes into existence, I can guarantee. And I really don't care whether that is a healthy fetish or not, because it makes me ragey just thinking about it and ffffffffffff. Just. No. This is also, I'm assuming, what most people are thinking of when they hear 'race swap', which means that backlash is imminent.

I mean. Yes, it would be very interesting if it were done well, but who is going to put in the effort and do we really want them to risk doing horrific things with it? I think I'd rather just have more non-AU'd characters of color. Aside from the Japanese.

[seymourelf.livejournal.com]

Let me preface this with: it's not that you're wrong. You are never wrong, except about whether or not the longhair always tops. We answered the question ages ago: people don't do race-swapped characters because it's hard and amazingly flame-baity.

You're right about everything you said except I need to quibble about the motivation.

While agreeing that gender is constantly modeled, I disagree that it somehow makes gender EASIER than race. Race is also constantly modeled. All of the protestations that could be made about the ambiguity of race are, I think, quibbles about cultural relevancy.

Because a genderswap or a sexswap involves SO. MANY. CHANGES. Can we really look at the gulf between man and woman, and then the gulf between white and hispanic, and say "white/hispanic is the bigger shift"?

Setting all that completely aside, race-swap would not by a longshot be the most outlandish extremity that characters are pushed to. Here are some of the AUs I have recently seen:

* Characters are personifications of famous Final Fantasy weapons
* Characters are overlaid onto characters from Rent
* Characters are locked into a love hotel and forced to have sex with each other to unlock doors

For some reason, race lives in a place much more critical to identity than, apparently, even gender; it lives in a place much more intensely and sensitively ordered than class or sexuality. It's not a thing anyone can take lightly. Race is too serious business to play with.

My position is basically that the underlying, fundamental, strip-off-all-the-bullshit-and-look-at-the-thing reason that there are not race-swapped characters is because the matter is sensitive beyond anything - and that it's fundamentally so sensitive because ...

wow I am about to say something that would start a flame war even I couldn't live through. PASS! Let's talk about it somewhere else some time, you wild minx.

[vinnie-tesla.livejournal.com]

"where are the characters that are gender-swapped BUT NOT ALL THE WAY, or characters with gender-identities in the middle, or third-gendered, etc."

Watchmen, brancher tells me. I can ask her for links, if you like.

[rem-sama.livejournal.com]

FOR MY OWN RETARDED TWO CENTS a race swap is impossible to do in a goodly portion of fandom because the context of the race in question doesn't exist.

You mention Indian Cloud above and I have to say: how can you do that when India doesn't exist on Gaia? Where does Barret's ancestors, whoever they may be, come from? Is his background the same as, say, an African America? A South African? How can it be when FFVII, as a self-contained universe, has none of these things? Sadly hilarious Ebonics aside, in the context of a fictional world itself, a "race" as we know it might not be at all the same, act the same, carry the same culture, or what have you. And to tack it on for the sake of making it more like an Earth!race seems arbitrary.

Now, if some type of race does exist, if we make a Wutai Cloud, when Wutai is clearly a separate race and culture, that would be different.

Otherwise me, as a stickler for this kind of thing, wouldn't force a race change where the race in question didn't already exist, because you know me! I care about characterization and realistic portrayal of the characters and their world, whether or not they are swapped to another gender/race/species.

Now if I wanted to go FULL alternate universe and play Cloud as, say, a pale Italian immigrant from the Lower East Side at the turn of the century, I would! Except that I'm lazy.

TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT I would rather a.) stick to races and cultures we can actually see in the thing and b.) not have to work too much if I don't have to.

[seymourelf.livejournal.com]

Sa~ Rem-sama, always so wise.

Also I am much moved to discover: Now if I wanted to go FULL alternate universe and play Cloud as, say, a pale Italian immigrant from the Lower East Side at the turn of the century, I would! Except that I'm lazy.

that I mentally disputed this because I was all

that's not a race-swap, Cloud is already white.
....I... suck.

[vinnie-tesla.livejournal.com]

I don't have a pat answer for you, but I will point out that this is not just true of fanfiction/RP, but reality as well. I know several transgendered people personally, but (now that Michael Jackson is no longer with us) ...