Kill the idea that naivety is an unforgivable flaw but cynicism is just wisdom, murder it, chop it up and serve it for dinner, I don’t care, just end this bullshit idea that it’s better to hate than to love and better to rot in miserable bitter resignation than to hope for the best.
I want to address the “darkwashing” thing people are arguing about here.
As a POC with a skin tone more in Lance’s range, to me when you dramatically darken him you are saying he is not enough as a POC with his current skin tone. That our validity as a POC is tied to how melanated our skin is.
There is leeway, I don’t expect everyone to draw Lance looking exactly the same as in the show. But when he looks similar to OPs accurate portrayal here to how the fandom sometimes draws him then yeah, it doesn’t sit well with me. He is already a POC, he already looks like many POC, and when you change him so drastically it’s almost like you’re implying POC that look like him don’t deserve rep.
And some of the Allura drawings I see sometimes too are just… so… ??? Please learn how to draw dark skin tones. Some of you guys be making her charcoal black like… come on… you know she doesn’t look like that. Do you think making a character as dark as possible makes you look more #woke or something? It just looks like you’re trying too hard. You aren’t impressing me.
In the end everyone can draw what kind of fanart they want. I know the people who draw the characters these ways have good intentions, but they are misguided. So maybe if they’re concerned about being #woke they should take into consideration if they are fetishizing/performing representation of a race in an offensive way.
As another POC with skin tone in Lance’s range, I absolutely agree. You’re not being more progressive by making us darker.
I don’t know how to describe why this makes me so angry, perhaps because “darkwashing” isn’t a thing and y’all know damn well that it’s because we don’t see anyone with skin darker than a latte in canon because it’s considered “unattractive”
Why y’all so mad that fanart doesn’t match canon when y’all literally get canonical rep? So what if some people wants to see some characters darker? No one has EVER said that the characters weren’t POC because they were “too light”
Am I literally the only person who thinks this is gross? It’s not even like all the fanart of Lance is darker than canon yet y’all act like it’s the worse offense in history for people to crave characters with deeper skin tones as if it’s a personal attack against y’all
because if you want to see characters in voltron with darker skin colors, hunk and allura are right there. they’re both darker than lance so it doesn’t make any sense to me why people have to make lance’s skin so much darker than it canonically is because “we don’t see anyone with darker skin.”
i’m latina, and lance has the same skin tone as i do. people our color are dealt the double edged sword where we’re too dark to pass but we’re too light to be oppressed. you won’t believe how many liberal spaces i’ve been in where i’ve been told to stop talking about my own experiences with racism because “i don’t have it as bad as people who are darker.” like my experiences with racism aren’t valid because i’ve got a caramel skin color. so yeah, i have been told that i’m not POC enough because i’m “too light.” so it’s comforting to see a latino character with the same skin color as me. it’s validating. it’s validating for a lot of other latinos who are watching voltron.
the fact that people would choose to make him darker makes me uncomfortable because it feels like people believe lance as he is is somehow unsatisfying. he’s not the kind of latino rep that they want, so they need to change him until he’s suitable. and there’s nothing wrong with lance. he’s wonderful cuban rep. there’s nothing about his character design that needs to be adjusted so that it can be more progressive. if you really care about him being POC rep, you’d take him as he is instead of trying to change him. not all POC are dark skinned. sometimes we want to see ourselves in media with lighter skin tones because that’s who we are, especially when latino main characters in animation are so damn hard to come by.
like you’ve literally got a cuban, a samoan, a japanese, and a dark-skinned alien character, each one with different skin tones. i don’t understand why we need to be darkening skin colors when POC are pretty diversely represented in this show.
because if you want to see characters in voltron with darker skin colors, hunk and allura are right there.
Considering the allegory there, treating losing faith as some sort of empowering thing is just UGH this some fake fan bullshit lol
You wanna talk “fake fan”, how bout the fact that in losing her friendship with Narnia, she traded in her bow and arrows and practical armor that most everyone loves for flowing dresses and a focus on makeup. Some people cry till their blue in the face about wanting a variety of representation and practicality in woman warriors but seem to be fine with that getting thrown out the window if it means promoting strict materialism.
Plus, Susan’s story was never finished! C.S. Lewis encouraged his fans to finish Susan’s story because whether she was “lost” or not, she was not on the train when it crashed and therefore would not have been able to join her siblings anyway in The Last Battle.
She’s not “happier” this way, she is lost and now she is alone. Her conclusion would have been to find Narnia and herself again. She did not “find herself” in vapid materialism, that is not Susan the Gentle. That is not the strong, caring archer who ruled Narnia’s Golden Age, friendo.
i will never get over how cha eomma mothers the kids…from waking them up to cooking, from making them drink red ginseng to checking on them the first thing he gets through the door. and particularly, binnie’s endearing call for “N-hyung! N-hyung!” the minute he wakes up…like a child calling for his mother. honestly, people who insists that N is being bullied by the members have completely no clue of how much Hakyeon means to them.
fandom as a whole is migrating away from a mutual appreciation of a story and towards an endless cycle of nitpicking and discourse and frankly that’s just Exhausting
Its just an endless stream of “you’re doing it wrong”. You’re reading this wrong, you’re appreciating this character wrong, you’re appreciating this character too much, you’re not appreciating this character enough, its not enough that I don’t like this pairing but it’s wrong to like it, you’re enjoying this wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
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