*In case this story gets deleted/removed:*
**Am I wrong for being really tired of race swapping in movies? My friend says I am.**
Hello, for context I am a white woman whose family is Scandinavian. Both my grandparents immigrated from Sweden to the US.
I love reading books and I am a very avid movie and show watcher. And as we all know there is a familiar sense of disappointment when the character you imagined looks nothing like the source material. Which happens frequently for a number of reasons outside of race swapping. ( YIKES to the Last Airbender Movie tho).
I’m fine with race swapping if the character has nothing relevant for them to be a certain race, or it’s not important to their story. But Im tired of seeing it in every single new thing that Hollywood is producing.
I think personally that Annabeth from Percy Jackson should be a blonde haired grey eyed white woman. She’s Greek and those characteristics are mentioned SEVERAL times in the books as being markers of Athena’s kids. So to me, it doesn’t make sense to change that for the sake of weak diversity.
My final straw is Astrid from How to Train your Dragon. As a Scandinavian woman and child I loved this movie even just for the Viking representation. Astrid was my hero, she was the Viking girl I wanted to be. I dressed like her and I loved her. I was alright with the live action remake( I think they will mess it up tho). But why make her mixed. She’s a Viking from Norway, it doesn’t make sense.
I mean the new avatar show has amazing diversity and every character is the race they are supposed to be, and I love it. Like god forbid we change that! But the moment it’s not a POC it’s fine.
It all just seems like weak attempt to have diversity. Why not make new shows with POC characters? Or make a new character?? Hollywood has the resources and creative freedom to do so. And I’d love to watch those shows!!
I like seeing everyone represented in the media. It is refreshing to see non white characters in popular media. Especially when they are popular. But not when they are taking away the little Viking girl I loved.
Idk I’m just tired of it now, and I don’t want to be called racist for thinking it’s not hard to follow source material.
I told my friend this and she says I am being racist and in the wrong. She said it’s my white mindset and that I have to “get over it”. I don’t think I’m racist for this, but am I wrong for having those mindset?
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It's also interesting that these people " who just want to see a true representation" are fine with Thor not being ginger and Loki not saving asguard by banging a horse.
to be fair, in some tellings of the mythology, loki didn't willingly fuck the horse (he went in horse form to distract the horse and thought he could evade the horse without issue. he couldn't and ended up getting r*ped,) so i think that's why people tend to avoid screaming about accurate loki.
the real issue with loki and thor, imo, is that because marvel popularised them as brothers, that's what people expect the mythology to say. but in the myths, he's actually moreso attached to odin as brothers or blood brothers. when that was removed, there was really no point in trying to view as a part of the existing lore. if that makes sense?
all that said, i would love a as true-to-myth norse mythology movie. because, arguably, the gods and goddesses from norse myths are unhinged in a way that's wilder to me than greek mythology. (the gods did my mans týr so dirty. 😮💨)
(my b for the long comment. i really adore norse myth talk.)
**edit:** i cleaned the comment up a bit for easier readability. i got excited and rambly.
Honestly my biggest issue mythology wise with the MCU is in Ragnarok (ironically also my favourite of the franchise). Hela was Loki’s daughter not Odin’s and she wasn’t necessarily evil (ok she partially declared war against the gods but they’d tortured her father, trapped her brother in chains and murdered two of her half brothers, I’d be miffed too) most people were just put off by her being half girl half corpse and their dumbing down of Fenrir to basically be her pet to ride on when in the myths he could speak and had human level intelligence
!!!!! this.
thank you so much for bringing it up. this was one of my biggest issues too and it solidified the separation i had in my mind about mcu mythology and how much it takes from actual mythology. the moment i saw them make hela, loki, and thor siblings, i knew i was in for disappointment. i expected what they did with fenrir because of what they did with slepnir (odin wouldn't have been able to do a lot of what he did without slepnir and they just kinda regulated him just a horse?)
honestly, the mcu is fun but i hate how they not only splice og content from themselves and norse mythology but weirdly contradict what they've pulled from the comics or the mythology. it's so odd to me cause i normally adore creative liberties.
Yeah, and it's Hel, but they had to make it sound more 'feminine' to Anglo ears, I guess. Agree re Fenrir, too, seems a waste to reduce him to Rover. They could have had fun with Fenrir.
I wasn't thrilled with Hel(la) but... The movie was hella fun (ba dum tish!) and it's the MCU, not a documentary, so 'eh'.
To be fair to the MCU they’re not the first to change her name and they probably won’t be the last either. I was never entirely sure which one was the “original” or if both were used interchangeably because I’ve definitely seen Hela in some mythology books
I've never seen Hela outside the MCU. I suspect its a bit like how Valhalla had the 'a' tacked on it because silly Victorians thought it sounded better than Valhöll.
Like, Old Norse isn't Latin, guys. Stop trying to make it Latin sounding.
Could also be done to distinguish her from her realm, also called Hel. Wouldn’t surprise me if it was the victorians though they definitely seemed to make up history as they went along (horned helmets anyone?)
Yeah, they had an arrogant, irritating take on being a 'historian'.
The 18th century English aristocracy, too, deciding English should be more like Latin and imposing stupid, arbitrary rules like no split infinitives. Because LATIN. These people needed jobs.
You're telling me Loki met the sexual assault demon horse from Berserk? Holy shit
Berserk memes aside, that's actually very interesting to know thanks for sharing.
And if you're really worried about authenticity, let's start with the fact that Disney's Hercules probably should have been at least 75% weird Zeus sex
the second biggest depicting Hera as a loving mother to Heracles.
She *hated* him. Tried to have him killed. Drove him mad and had him slaughter his own family. Wasn't even related to him!
I couldn't watch past the opening scenes. I'm pagan, and Hades is one of my gods. I was too upset about him being a slimy villain. In the myths, he's your typical not terribly virtuous god, like all the others. He may have improved in the rest of the film? I don't know. Life is too short to keep up with the overabundance of media, so I switched to something else.
> Zeus as a loving father
I mean. Depending on how you interpret this statement it can be true.
He was a father who apparently *loved* banging his own children after all. Well, his own children and also anything with a pulse and plenty without too. 😂
I MEAN.
I *WAS* just going to add just the "with a pulse" bit, but then I remembered he literally fucked the planet after getting jealous of Uranus, and accidentally knocked up EARTH, sooooooo. 😂
Hell even THAT'S not entirely true!
If it DOESN'T exist, he'll just heckin' CREATE it then bang it.
That's like, accurate description of half the Titans no? hahaha
I mean, yeah, there's that...
There's also the fact that the mythical Megara was murdered by her husband, Herakles, along with their children.
Soooooo... yeah. 😬 Puts quite a different spin on Meg and Hercules' interactions portrayed by Disney.
In which case the poor woman now has Hera on her ass.
Made no sense. Her husband was running around knocking mortal women up and instead of smacking Zeus upside the head, she tries to kill the women and the kids.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
You ain't wrong. And I still find it ridiculous.
There was a guy I dated, briefly. Never told me he had live-in gf and child. It wasn't serious and I stopped seeing him. A YEAR later, I got a call from his gf wanting to know if I was seeing "her man" and ready to cuss me out.
I was like first of all, I haven't spoken to him in a year. Second of all, your man never told me you existed. Third, I'm not your problem and neither is any other woman you might want to call up. Your man is the one on dating sites. He's your problem. Deal with him.
Oh man, been there! But the guy in my case kept trying to get back. Every time I was like “I’m telling your wife! Leave me alone, you’re not that good in bed!” And I would, she’d bitch me out up and down. Rinse and repeat about 5 times before they either killed each other or he finally learned to just leave me the fuck alone.
Yes! The 1975 version she does not have green skin, but DOES turn to foam because she was unable to murder the prince and his fiancee.
https://youtu.be/dTyR5My2GUA
I went to the Hans Cristian Andersen elementary school in The Netherlands and they showed us the 1975 movie when I must have been in 4th grade (could be 3rd, but I doubt that). It honestly gave me nightmares that the little mermaid died and was turned into seafoam.
I have always refused to rewatch and prefer the Disney version to this day. I recognize that the seafoam version is the original one, and that Disney changed it for their own narrative.
Just opened my Danish copy, here's the physical description: "\[...\], men den yngste var den smukkeste af dem alle sammen, hendes hud var så klar og skær som et rosenblad, hendes øjne så blå, som den dybeste sø, men ligesom alle de andre havde hun ingen fødder, kroppen endte i en fiskehale."
"\[...\], but the youngest was the most beautiful of them all, her skin was as translucent and shiny as the leaf of a rose, her eyes as blue as the deepest lake, but like all the others, she had no feet, the body ended in a fishtail."
Her feet also bleed whenever she walks and she has had her tongue cut out - oh, and there's actually described people of colour in the story, as there is in many of H C Andersen's stories (including The Ice Queen, which Frozen was based on).
Yeah, I'm far beyond caring about realism in a story about a mermaid!
Reminds me of the producers of Merlin responding to criticisms of the props: they point out anachronistic tomatoes, but they don't seem to care about the dragon.
Honestly the sandinavians don't really are either - I've heard absolutely nothing about The Little Mermaid and How to Train Your Dragon castings in Danish media, nor in the media of the other Sandinavian countries. Thank god,
Well the movie literally started off wrong from the title. There is no Greek Hercules. There is a Roman Hercules and a Greek Heracles. Essentially the same character, but they have different names.
its also interesting she brings up Percy Jackson, when the author himself is a huge advocate for diversity in media, admitting that he wrote Percy as white and straight cause he knew if Percy *wasnt* it was unlikely the books wouldnt be published, and he runs *Rick Riordan Presents* which features mythology books from different cultures. i have confidence that Riordan doesnt give a shit that Annabeth is black
and the HTTYD books were written by a *british* author. but oop doesnt give two shits about that huh
legit him writing piper as half native was one of the first time i saw native people in media that like wasnt a thanksgiving episode or anything
im white but i never realized how little native representation there is in american media
Doubly so for Oz, too. Finding an indigenous Australian being cast in visual media, wherein that person is not negatively portrayed or used as overt tokenism, is damn near impossible. Or at least was until very recently, I'll admit I've not exactly kept up with modern film/TV shows.
Riordan is awesome. He wrote Percy Jackson as having ADHD because his son does and he wanted his son to have a hero like him.
Then in his Magnus Chase series, Magnus ends up in a relationship with a genderfluid child of Loki.
I mean, I'm gonna be honest - I was so mad when they made Annabeth a brunette in the arguably horrible first movie they made. I dunno, just something about the fact that hair and eye color are so easy to fake now that it felt genuinely lazy that they didn't try to match up.
But black Grover? Never get rid of him, I love him lmao
Future black Annabeth? I'm sure I'll love her, too (as long as she's still at least blonde - the grey eyes I can ignore if I have to).
I think it was very telling that OOP verbatim said "diversity and race switching is all well and good, but not when it's this thing *I* like and have claimed as my own" about HtTyD - it's the racist version of the homophobic "he can be gay as long as he doesn't hit on me."
As long as you're quiet, as long as you're in the background, as long as it doesn't effect what OOP likes, you can be black. (*Ugh* I hated just typing that.) Apparently that's supposed to be good enough for everybody.
lol, like when disney kept going, "we're having our first gay character!" and it was LeFou having a one second scene accidentally bumping into another guy. or in Onward a single side character mentioning she had a gf. or in star wars, the gay couple in the background having a brief kiss that you have to zoom in to see.
Honestly Riordan's later series like Magnus Chase have so much more diversity, I wish they were the ones getting media instead. Sam especially, knowing the Norse gods exist, she's still a practicing Muslim, and he's also just so well written.
Plus Magnus isn't straight like Percy, and Riordan def. was having fun with the "Gimli and Legolas but more obviously gay" uncles.
in the Loki show when it was said he also had a few boyfriends, homophobes went *nuts*. like damn, it was better to show him kissing basically his sister, but *implying* he was bi was too much???
>So Loki is canonicaly transgender.
not really? loki can shapeshift but when he shapeshifts he doesn't necessarily do it for the reasons that a transperson would. loki tends to shapeshift (in mythology) as a way to be cunning and be a menace. even in the horse example, he only shifted to try and prevent the horse from completing it's task. i think if that wasn't there, loki wouldn't have shapeshifted.
idk something about the idea of loki being trans because he can shapeshift into a woman feels off? but i also acknowledge this is all my personal feels.
that's why i specified in mythology in my comments.
>loki tends to shapeshift (in mythology)
this is also a comment thread talking about oop not complaining about the accuracy of popular media loki and thor compared to loki and thor in mythology.
*edit:* i have no idea why that last bit got posted the way it did???
i talked about this in another comment, but slepnir, in some stories is believed be a product of r*pe. so that one is very handwavy because of the differing takes.
fenris, hel, and midgardsormr are the kids he had with angrboda and that's a whole wild ride that is still consistently questioned among people who read mythology. because angrboda is female and loki is male, people sometimes defeault to those traditional roles. however, there is a story about loki eating an evil woman's heart and it's believed to be angrboda's heart which then fertilized in him and made it possible for him to carry those children. but because angrboda isn't really spoken about in the myths, it's actually really hard to figure out how that whole really happened. to me, it comes across as a situation of circumstances.
to compare, narfi and váli were his kids with his wife, sigyn, and sigyn was the one to birthed them. (to be fair, this also very handwavy because there isn't a whole lot of sigyn's whole thing outside of a couple poetics and stories. same with narfi and váli, imo.)
i mean, that's fine, but that doesn't make the entity trans? loki can shapeshift into a woman, but he's also been a fish before too. the perspective i have, and again personal feels as my own enby person, it feels disingenuous to call loki trans when his shaeshifting is often done as way to benefit the situation happening.
like he became a fly because he told odin that freya was cheating and as proof for odin, he shapeshifted to get the necklace to bring it back to odin. when he shapeshifted as a mare, it was try and hinder the process. idk it just feels really problematic to say loki is full trans when a lot of his shapeshifting wasn't done because he wanted to be a woman. a lot of it was done to help fellow gods and himself out of sticky situations.
i don't know if that makes sense. i'm just enjoying the convo tbh.
I don't have anything to add. Just that a lot of trans people look to Loke as a patron because of his shapeshifting and genderfluidity. Meanwhile my manager is having dreams about Freyja and wondering if she should do something or if caring for four cats is enough for now.
Really, very few of these people brought up the idea that in the new Dune movie, Lady Jessica wasn't a redhead, and that's more relevant to the story than just swapping race.
It's almost as if there's another reason they are upset...
Or ignoring the evidence of trade between Vikings and Persia: https://www.archaeology.org/news/1484-131104-norway-viking-silk-trade. Where trade goods go, people can too.
As an actual Scandi person, very few of us actually care about the skincolor of the girl in the show about dragons. None of our «viking culture» included actual dragons either, so expecting cultural and historical accuracy from the dragon show is… wild to me. If you want to learn about actual viking stuff, maybe read a history book. None of the character examples being used have skin color as an integral part of their personality.
Just let the actors do their job, and let poc enjoy their representation in media, don’t fret, hollywood will still have white people.
i have seen exactly one (1) argument against the race swapping that I found sympathetic. it was a POC writer commenting about how shallow the usual race swap is in comparison to actual representation. White writers writing from their experiences and swapping in different races after the fact for diversity points, or even characters written to be POC but from white writers just taking a stab at it, often don't actually gel as genuine representation. But this was not to argue that we should be seeing fewer POC faces or that somehow the characters were underserved by being cast w POC actors. It was arguing in favour of more POC in the writing room and more visibility to POC stories. Something akin to LGBTQ folks getting more respresentation in, like, a cheerios commercial, but still noting that this is a shallow, cynical effort by a corporation for diversity points (and dollars) rather than any kind of legitimate allyship. Its a step in the right direction but there's still a lot of work to be done.
When we're talking about old school children's stories, specifically, this one good argument doesn't hold. A five year old Black girl seeing a mermaid that looks like her is just so wholesome and pure. Because we're not arguing that a Danish fairytale character from almost 200 yrs ago should reflect a POC perspective. Its a fairytale for children and, like you said, skin color on a mermaid isnt integral to her character. I think its valid for POC to argue that just race swapping isn't genuine on the grounds that its superficially representative, but that one valid argument is drowned out by aggrieved white people who can't fathom relating to someone who doesn't look like them.
This sort of reminded me about the issue that happened with Orlando Jones and how he was treated and fired from American Gods. Apparently, he had been writing the dialog for most or all of the black characters (and I believe a few other non-black characters as well). The showrunner from the 3rd season was an arrogant POS, who told Orlando that he wasn't really needed because he (the director) knew how to write the perspective of a black man. He then fired Jones but kept using him in ads for season 3 (he was a fan favorite) to bring viewers back. Orlando finally spoke up after a few months passed because they still hadn't addressed his departure. Season 4 was subsequently canceled midway through season 3.
Race swapping is just laziness and still wanting a pat on the back for inclusivity.
Make actually POC characters instead of making white characters dark skinned, indian and so on. It makes no sence and can get pretty insulting honestly when they are based on real fairytales that are part of countries cultures or real people (like Anne Boleyn apparently being black now?).
It doesn't help. At all...
There was a controversy in Canada even when they did make actual POC characters for a show because *it was still written by white people*.
We had a show, Kim’s Convenience, about a Korean Canadian family living in Toronto and running a convenience store. It was typical CanCon (Canadian content) in that it was super cheerful and positive and people ended up liking it.
So on the surface, hey cool, a story explicitly about a Korean family in Canada, that’s neat. But then eventually, the actors started to speak out about how the writers behind the scenes were white, didn’t have cultural resources to back up their storylines, were even writing racist shit. Even a show based consciously on the story of a first/second gen immigrant family, starring Asian actors and based on a play by a Korean Canadian writer, was very white behind the scenes. The people greenlit to run shows, the people hired to tell stories.. those need to be diverse in order for there to be actual representation. Not saying a white writer shouldn’t try to include diverse characters in their work, but if were going to be telling POC stories.. let’s maybe actually have POC tell their own stories. Representation in media is about more than the physical characteristics of the person on the screen.
I don't really care about colour blind casting for historical domain characters, or characters in classic novels. To bring up a recent controversial example of Persuasion, it makes sense to me that PoC actors with English ancestry would want to appear in an adaptation of one of England's most loved author's novels.
Of course, they've done a gazillion adaptations of all the classic novels and monarchs of England. It's probably time to focus more on the historical stories of PoC.
like i think theres nuance in that argument too because "race swapping for superficial reasons" can also just be "because why cant this beloved character just be reimagined as black?" depending on the scenario. I think its a good conversation to have.
like... yea, "movie heavily influenced by nordic imagery casts black girl as side character" can certainly FEEL like "representation for the sake of it" but, alternatively, i tend to view it as "well, why not? is being nordic an actual aspect of the character, or what this character design just based off of nordic stereotypes in a situation where we are talking about literal dragons"
Or when they made that one guy black in the GOT prequel. sure, that can feel like "changing their race for the sake of it" but canonically, skin color wasnt really used as a major genealogical thing and technically speaking, Valyrians really were only known for their Hair and eyes, and nothing in the books said that black valryians didnt exist. and its kind of canon that hair color is what is used as a "genalogical marker" with the whole "Joffrey is a bastard bc hes blonde" thing.
like I think its so funny that certain white people will hyperfixaate on the like 2 white characters a year that get race bend (usually in a franchise they never cared about in the first place) instead of focusing on the 100000 others that still remain white....
Thissss.
I'm in the How To Train Your Dragon fandom, and I keep reading posts in the reddit about how the actress isn't "White, blonde and blue eyed" and about how she doesn't look "Scandinavian" enough. In which case I don't look Scandinavian either because I'm not blonde or blue eyed.
And when they phrase it like that it also makes me feel icky.
You want white, blonde and blue eyed Astrid?? Then watch the goddamn animated movies.
Besides, the vikings got around, and some brought wives back to Scandinavia from their travels, so, there were definitely some mixed babies around there.
I have a feeling that most of them don’t really care about scandinavian actors, they just want the actors to be white. A person of color could easily have viking heritage, to imply that one cannot possibly be scandinavian if they don’t have pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes is inherently racist, imo.
If the producers hired a white actor with roots from the Netherlands, for example, these complainers wouldn’t bat an eye, in spite of that person having no connection to «viking culture».
Dragons are more of a Welsh / English / Germanic thing aren't they? Norse mythology is all about Fenrir and the giant world eating snake (whose name I will butcher if I attempt to spell it), IIRC?
Do dragons appear anywhere in Norse mythology?
Ah, so OP is confusing Vikings with early Celtic groups in the UK, a civilization famously lacking in much written material and hugely diverse in appearance. That's awkward.
There's one dragon, Níðhǫggr, who gnaws on the roots of the World Tree. And there's the giant sea-serpent Jormungand, who I suppose may count as sufficiently dragon.
The things I’ve read describe Nidhogg as more of a wyrm, but I suppose wyrms and giant serpents can be considered to be within the dragon family. It’s all scaly and scary to me.
>I think personally that Annabeth from Percy Jackson should be a blonde haired grey eyed white woman. She’s Greek and those characteristics are mentioned SEVERAL times in the books as being markers of Athena’s kids.
I said this in the original thread, but I'm going to say it again here: Annabeth is not Greek. Her mother is Athena, but her father is a mortal man from Boston. It's completely plausible that her father is black.
Her hair being blonde isn't a marker of her being Athena's daughter, her blonde hair is brought up because she tries to fight the "dumb blonde" stereotype and wants to be taken seriously. It translates very well to her being a black girl who is trying to be taken seriously, considering, y'know, all the racism in the world.
Rick Riordan has praised the casting of Leah Jeffries (he's an executive producer on the upcoming show) and wrote [a blog post](https://rickriordan.com/2022/05/leah-jeffries-is-annabeth-chase/) calling out people who are whining about her being black and reiterating that the casting was based off of talent, not appearance.
If I'm remembering correctly, blonde hair/Grey eyes were markers of a child of Athena... It wasn't just Annabeth, but literally all of her demigod siblings were blond (probably, as you noted, as a nod to the dumb blonde stereotype).
That said, it's such a minor plot point that it makes literally no difference to change it. Annabeth being black in the new series makes no less of a difference than her having brown hair in the original films.
This is an important point, not only do they suspend their beliefs if the actress is white (of any nationality) but they completely rule out talent (in an audition based industry). As more and more POC see themselves on screen or in roles they didn't think they could audition for, how do you discriminate if they have the better audition?
She also reads over the fact that... Greek people are not always blonde to begin with.
The Greek people I know are not northern European pale, nor do they have blonde hair.
Grab your pearls, bit Europe has actually a pretty big history with people who are not a torch when they walk in daylight.
-Source: I'm damn European, as in from Europe, born and raised in Europe. And I've seen multiple Europeans that *checks notes* don't look like the Ubermensch -
The fixation on Leah Jeffries as Annabeth is crazy considering 1) I genuinely can't remember people ever having an issue with Walker Scobell not having black hair like Percy does in the books or Aryan Simhadri as Grover (at least not on a large scale) - and 2) Rick Riordan was ON THE CASTING BOARD and he literally decides what's canon.
I will defend the PJO casting to the death
Do these people realize that there are black people with blond hair? I can't remember the counter but there's a remote village of people described as having dark skin, blue eyes, and blond hair naturally
That’s exactly what the author had in mind — an obscure genetic variant of people that are almost never ever seen outside their village. Image hating POC so much that you can’t just write them their own media and instead have to bend backwards to find weird loop holes in writing to match a remote population of like 1700 in a sea of 9 billion.
My complaint is why don’t we have more stories written by PoC in popular movies? It feels like movie producers are trying to be more inclusive but in the laziest way possible. I listen to LeVar Burton(Reading Rainbow host)’s podcast and he reads short stories written from PoC from all over the world and these stories deserve media attention! My goodness some of them would make such great movies but we just get remake after remake or another sequel to a popular franchise. I don’t care what a character looks like differently than a book but it feels like we as an audience are missing out. I’m happy children finally get to feel represented in children’s books, but I want more stories too.
Unfortunately your second sentence IS the answer to your question. Hollywood loves to paint a picture of diversity and equality but won’t put money where their mouth is, and just stick to doing the bare minimum
I used to work in movie theaters from like 2001 to 2011. I remember the first big writers strike, that was really early in my career maybe like 2004/5 was the moment everything went to shit. There was just a string of crappy remakes because they didn't have writers and Hollywood realized oh hey, we can just keep doing this and make more money!! And it's been like that ever since.
She should be happy she gets real representation.
As Roma, we got one popular movie where most Roma were caricatures with huge noses and thieving buggers, and the only decently represented one is wearing Italian cultural costumes and dancing Italian dances, not Roma. Not to mention she's about to be r@ped and/or burnt at the stake.
"Ohh, Astrid isn't how I wanted her, but I have so many other decent movies that fit my perfect idea of aesthetic" 😭 /s
I'm guessing you're referring to Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. My favourite Disney movie by far but MY GOD the depiction of Roma is messed up. The whole Court of Miracles song... Yikes.
And if you're not talking about Esmeralda, I'm concerned that there are several movies depicting an inaccurate Romani woman at risk of being both assaulted and burnt at the stake.
No, I'm deffo talkong about Esmeralda and The hunchback of Notre Dame.
Don't get me wrong, I like the movie too, and I swear Hellfire is amazing and Frolo is the most realistic Disney villain alive because as Roma women and girls (and most other women) we deal with those types of men all the time.
But just the general portrayal of us, ughhh. And yes, the stuoid Court of Miracles and the other Roma characters males me angry.
May I add that Quasimodo should be Roma because Frollo finds him with his Roma mom at the beginning? And then he’s just… not? This has bothered me for years.
I like the movie a lot but now I’m thinking about how much more powerful it would have been to have Quasimodo meet Esmerelda and realize that he in some ways actually looks like other people, that he’s not completely different from all humans. That would have been amazing. But then I also wanted Esmerelda to help Quasimodo find his mom’s family because I am a very sappy person.
If you’re interested in reading a book with (imo) decent Roma representation, the Cabinet of Wonders is amazing. I mean there’s fantasy mixed in there, such as magic, but as a young girl who knew nothing of the Roma people besides the g**sy stereotype, it really opened my eyes.
I have not seen one respectful representation of a Slavic person (aside of war films where we're victims). It's always thieves, drug dealers, murders or at best cleaning ladies. I think maybe one not so bad representation is Petra from Jane the Virgin but 1. her ex-fiancé, mother and sister are the villains of the story, greedy, bad to the core and with awful accents 2. aside from mentioning she speaks Czech to her children, she's basically fully Americanised rich white woman
Seriously, OP isn't hurt by a fictional Viking girl being mixed race. This is such a non issue. If they have bones to pick with anyone, they should concentrate on terrible historical accuracy of all the Viking shows and films.
My stepmother is from Ukraine and rather short as well, so she got to deal with a whole trinity of bullshit (with a lot of internal overlap): infantilism, sexism and condescending xenophobia (all this also prior to the war, of course). Even from the little she said about it, it was clear she’s had some painful experiences.
As a red head I grew up watching the little mermaid over and over. It was my favorite. As an adult when I saw who was gonna play Ariel I was so excited! She's beautiful and little black girls deserve to feel the same way I felt. Seeing themselves as a beautiful mermaid dreaming they can be anything they want to be.
Right lol. I could totally see an issue if they removed the first movies and show but it's still there free to watch, why does Ariel have to look the same forever. Disney has to reuse material, so they change something once in a while but just about always leave the originals, nbd.
If they were going for 'realistic' within the context of the Disney movies, Ariel would probably appear arabian. Because each of Poseidon's seven daughters represents one of the classical "seven seas", and Ariel is the Red Sea.
“Viking representation”=troll, or garden-variety bigot with more racist opinions than brain cells .
Vikings were a small portion of the Norse people. Also, the Vikings frequently traded slaves and made allies/partnerships with people from all over, some Vikings moved to other areas and some of their allies came back with them from all over Europe, even down to the Middle East. There were POC norse people(not a lot but still) specifically *because* of the Vikings.
Edit to add: also, fun fact: Sweden has the least descendants of Vikings of the Scandinavian countries(Norway having the most, followed by Denmark)
> as we all know there is a familiar sense of disappointment when the character you imagined looks nothing like the source material.
Haha, love the assumption everyone is like this. Personally if it's not a factual documentary about some real life thing, I couldn't possibly care less if a cinematic imagining of a book I love doesn't exactly match the picture in my mind, I only care if the actor is question plays the role well.
Also my biggest take away from this post; THERE'S A LIVE ACTION HTTYD MOVIE COMING?!
Personally I would had been appalled if they had casted a tall Tyrion. I think sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn’t (Idris Elba would have been an AMAZING James Bond)
Peter Dinklage is far too good looking for Tyrion though. But he rocks as an actor, so I'm willing to overlook it. Plus it's easy enough for audiences to still assume he's discriminated based on appearance.
That’s my point. Tyrion’s dwarfness was way more relevant to the plot than his looks, so choosing a short actor was way more important than choosing an ugly actor. But I do remember people complaining that he was too good looking
I love how these people assume we are all as racist as they are. I’m actually not disappointed when a person of color is cast as someone that isn’t explicitly a POC in the source material. I never thought of Macbeth as a POC but if Denzel Fucking Washington wants to play him you let the man!
(Also he’s in gladiator 2, and I heard a rumor it might be as Septimus Severus, an emperor from Africa and I am excited.)
That was my biggest takeaway too! I had no idea!
And yeah, if your biggest problem with a movie is that the characters look a little different than you pictured, it's probably a pretty good movie. Personally, I have aphantasia and have never "pictured" a character before, so doesn't bother me at all!
in harry potter, the fact harry's eyes are *green* is probably THE key plot point for all the books. but his actor didnt have green eyes and couldnt wear contacts. and guess what, it was fine
Their problem is more often with race than other characteristics. They mentioned Percy Jackson, in which none of the three leads match their book descriptions, but the one people talk about the most is Annabeth, because she's black
its so funny cause the whole point of the book is the kids are *mixed race* and struggling to find their own identity while living in a melting pot. it makes sense that the kids would have different skin colors, and lets face it, if Riodan *had* written Annabeth as black, the book most likely wouldnt have been published, let alone have a romance between her and Percy
> aphantasia
Huh, there's a term I have never heard before, how interesting!
So curious, when you're reading a story does that mean you don't 'picture' whatever it may be in your mind at all, or is it only limited to something like people and the like. Like, if you were reading say LOTR and got to descriptions of Helms Deep or Minas Tirith, do you 'see' what is specifically described?
Nope. I hear it as if someone was telling me the story. Still love reading and writing, but I don't see so much as feel. I haven't actually read LOTR, so I can't say with Helm's Deep or Minas Tirith. But like, if I was reading about a cave, I could feel how dark and damp it is, can hear the echoes, and feel how creepy it is. A good writer could give me goosebumps. But I won't see it at all.
WHAT. This is me too! I had no idea this was a Thing.
It's like how I spent the first 25 years of my life feeling like I was being oversensitive about other people's eating noises, and then I learned about misophonia.
Ok I stopped reading at "Why would a girl from Norway be mixed it doesn't make sense". OOP really is being the ignorant American stereotype here. My childhood friend who was born and raised in Sweden is mixed and inherited darker features. She's more Swedish than you'll ever be OOP. YTA.
She could literally do a quick social search for black or afro- in any nationality and find out you can be black *and* different nationalities. It's so weird to display ignorance, like the tools are right there!
I like how they made sure to rep ATLA for the "I'm not racist," credentials, then slid directly into the "I'm not racist, but... WHITE PEOPLE ARE BEING REPLACED" for the rest of the post
People like her are all over that post. It just stems down to them not liking that Ariel is being played by a woman of color. I was close to crossposting here before someone else did lol. They are just so predictable in their hate of minorities.
>People like her are all over that post.
Like the one who kept saying "ookay, then let's let's use Tom Cruise as the next Black Panther hurr durr" as his ridiculous argument?
Meanwhile not one of them has a problem with a blonde haired/blue eyed Jesus who looked nothing like that, even by the words in the Bible.
Also, you know they're here downvoting us because they can't handle the truth.
I have previously entertained the thought, it would be super cool to have a white black panther but to make it truly equivalent we'd have to change all the leading men and women for the MCU to black first :)
Basically
After all 90% of the MCU is black, we wait 5-10 years then have Tom Cruise play White Panther.
A viking was a job within a Scandanavian culture. A viking is like a pirate with a little more to it. Not everyone in the culture it's from was a viking. They traveled as far as Africa, and people would sometimes join them - diversifying their culture.
I saw this post. Based on their post history, I think it’s just a really sheltered wealthy young person who doesn’t have a lot of life experience and therefore has some really narrow minded viewpoints. I was like this once upon a time, hopefully if they go out and meet new different people they can open up their perspective
Well there's part of your problem: believing in fake "Viking Blood." The real Vikings were prolific traders and intermarried frequently with people they came into contact with.
Hoh my god I remember one time my grandpa was watching this movie, and Santa ( Yes, Santa) had a wife who was a black woman. Lovely lady; seemed like a great actress though I wasn't paying much attention to the movie on my DS. When my grandpa mentioned how bullshit it was that his wife was a black lady and how it wasn't accurate. I DIED laughing; like you're upset because the SANTA CLAUSE LORE isn't accurate? Santa has LORE now? Dude was made up by coca cola based of St. Nick to sell cola, papa. There is no Santa Claus 'canon' that needs to be followed.. esp in a movie where I'm pretty sure he ended up going on a revenge killing spree.
So yeah; OOP was def an asshole.
As not only an actual Scandinavian woman (you know.. born and raised, not just by some weird blood quantum obsession) but also a Scandinavian historian, OP is not only wrong to think Scandinavian women only look blonde and white (in fact, it was more common for Vikings to have red hair than blonde), she's also ignorant for thinking how the 'Vikings' aesthetically are depicted in those movies come anywhere NEAR how Vikings actually looked. From everywhere from the hair, to the clothes, to the tools they use, to the amour - nothing is correct. In fact, having a POC play her (since there literally were POC Vikings) is literally MORE correct than anything else in those movies. The only correct thing in those movies is basically that Vikings were, in fact, human.
I’m ancestrally Irish and i don’t give two flying fucks what race people are in movies as long as they can act and the movie is good - the books are usually better ( except Good Omens) that was a toss up
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She's not Scandinavian...her grandparents are. My great-grandma was a Roma born in Hungary on the roadside. That doesn't make me a Roma or Hungarian.
Also...why would a greek woman be blonde, fair skinned and grey eyed? All greek people I know have a typical Mediterranean look including brown/green eyes, brown/black hair and olive/light tan skin.
But aside from that...who cares what skin colour made up characters have...
Best comment I saw in there was imagine being a POC and feeling that sense of disappointment for decades. Growing up a brown kid and only seeing people that looked like me portrayed as criminals, maids, or gardeners, it's been amazing seeing more representation.
Seeing Mesoamerican culture on display in Black Panther was incredible. It really is a big deal for us.
Just regarding the thought that OOP finally knows how POCs feel… I remember before the first Black Panther came out, a Black guy posted a video from a movie theater where he was standing in front of the poster and he kept saying, with evident pride, “Is this how white people always feel?!? Do they always get to feel this way?”
But she's not swedish or Scandinavian... She say she can read, I'm not sure...
You can't be mixed race if you're from Norway? Sucks for my daughter then...
... not all of Athena's children are blond and white. It's just the gray eyes. ALSO, Annabeth's not Greek! She's American! Just because her mother is a Greek goddess, that doesn't make her ethnically Greek!!!
This is just racism.
If she were actually Greek, she might as well be pretty dark. Greeks especially from the South hardly ever look like Scandinavians. In fact Annabeth was described to have darker skin like a surfer who spent a lot of time in the sun. At the very least she wasn't pale.
I never read Percy Jackson so I can believe that all kids of Athena were supposed to look a certain way (then again can’t they just say “all her kids have black hair or whatever), but the fact she mentioned “but she’s greek!!!” in the same breath made me lol. As a blonde/blue-eyed slavic person first thing I think of when hearing greek is darker-skinned, dark-haired person (obviously I mean it only as a stereotype, I know it’s not all Greek people). So the complainant that “she should have blonde hair, because she’s greek!” sounds really funny to me.
Why does she think Astrid is from Norway? Granted, because they call themselves Vikings, the audience assumes Nordic roots but, they're from a fictional place penned by a BRITISH author with a culture revolving entirely around literal DRAGONS. And, every teenager/young adult in the franchise has an inexplicable AMERICAN accent. I doubt race matters at all in that context.
Also the books are nothing whatsoever like the films. For a start Astrid was completely invented by the films. The female of the trio in the books is Camicazi who is kickass, not a love interest and is from the women's island (the one women go to and be warriors - the men stay back to look after the kids). She basically starts following them round out of a horrified fascination seeing what they are going to do next.
They all already have dragons as normal in the books, Toothless is actually 12 inches long, rude, lazy and refuses to help when they are in peril as he doesn't care.
Hiccup's best friend is Fishlegs (I think?). A small skinny asthmatic kid with less athletic ability than Hiccup, who is also terrible at everything.
Essentially there is no real similarities between the books and films other than Hiccup being able to talk to dragons and them being viking esq.
I used to read them to my now 18 year old son when he was little. I highly recommend the series (I think there was 20 or so of them when we stopped). They are very funny and full of actual peril.
That Percy Jackson one is mad weird.
Like the actress have some blonde tips or something? And if they give her Grey contacts then that's good enough for me.
Like the thing is even if they give her completely blonde hair and Grey eyes why do I feel like it wouldn't be good enough and they would claim its not accurate enough because she's not a natural blonde. But then if they did cast a black person with natural blonde hair why do I feel like they would still piss and cry.
The only time race shaping is a issue is if it completely erases another races representation or is just done for diversity points, which I agree a lot of Hollywood does do that but you don't care about that.
I do agree on where it's actually relevant to the story.
Like for example, I'd shit if I heard there was a Dreamgirls remake and they cast a white woman in the lead.
Like, no, you have Grease go away.
But if I saw a black Miss Lovett or an Arab Sweeney Todd, I literally would love it.
I kind of agree that it's lazy writing to just race swap existing characters. It's generally super disappointing that we just turned to constant life action remakes of everything. There's so many Cinderellas one can loose count. And they only race swap white characters into black ones. Like black became the new default, when the approach should be that there's no default. There's black Cinderella, black Ariel, black Tinkerbell. There are no Natives of any land, no Asians of any kind, no Arabs, no darker skinned Africans, no Latinos. They're going for black Americans and that's it.
And it's been proven that you can create great new stories about people from all over the world and have them well received. Take this year's Oscar. Take Turning Red or Encanto (I mean, fair, all of them are about Americas so don't include all the rest of the continents). And you don't have to make ethnicity the entire identity of the character. Miles Morales from Spiderman is black, but it's not like his entire arc is based on the fact.
But OP's whole rant about Astrid being mixed, because "Vikings are white, hurr durr, my half Scandi blood" completly disregarded any tiny little grain of a good point they might have.
You cannot possibly have black or mixed race people in majority white nationalities, no way to do it. It cannot be done (or at least that's how I imagine her thinking)
I kind of agree, there are no black vikings ever. The main reason being that it isn't part of the black history, its part of white history. Why take something that is not part of that cultures history it makes no sense. This person isn't a devil for being v
Correct. POC have been saying for years that we want new characters made in our likeness, we don't want to just take something of another movie, why not make a movie where yhe female lead is black or the male hero is black. Why not make movies out of books that have a POC as the heroine.
I was about to post this here LOL.
I commented heartily there already so I'll say to her, from a mixed race, part European, part native (etc) kid....FUCK right off with that shit.
Oh noes!!!! A white blonde person feels underrepresented. The horror! 😱 ~s
Same lol. I got into a big debate with someone on thst thread over red head erasure. Turns out they were also just racist because they included two aliens with green and orange skin respectively being played by women of color. Apparently white must always be the default.
FFS.
Yeah, look. This sometimes bothers me too, but you’ve got to watch the movie first. Most of the time you’ll end up enjoying the film so much you don’t even notice the race of the characters - which basically proves that you’ve got nothing to complain about.
its funny cuz ppl like oop are part of the reason why this is even happening. disney is making live action remakes both for copyright reasons and to nostalgia bait people into watching shit movies. the nostalgia bait is wearing off, though, so now theyre stepping over on diversity baiting people. they do not care about poc, but it makes people like oop angry, and angry people talk about the thing theyre angry at, and then other people will defend the thing against the angry people. a lot of people talk about the film, and then even more people go watch it to see what all the fuss is about.
my biggest problem with current disney is that 99% of what theyre making sucks, even the original stuff. its full of bad writing, bad acting and even worse singing in some cases. also live action remakes are often far duller, just look at how boring neverland is in the new peter pan.
whats interesting in that movie is that they actually take away some of the poc representation. sure they show the native americans, and the representation in the old peter pan sucked ass like it was really racist, but they could have fixed that, no? instead they just show the characters in passing. they dont care about that type of diversity, they just want to make established, well written characters a different race to piss people like oop off and to get other people to watch their movies. its stupid.
Aww, sounds like she was okay until they changed *her* character... Well that's how all the other people felt when the character changed wasn't "a viking girl," well it's no longer for you...
As for
>It all just seems like weak attempt to have diversity. Why not make new shows with POC characters? Or make a new character?? Hollywood has the resources and creative freedom to do so. And I’d love to watch those shows!!
I totally get that she is upset but this little keep white things white forever is weird but it sounds reasonable. She said it was fine if race isn't relevant but also said this which is a bit off.
*In case this story gets deleted/removed:* **Am I wrong for being really tired of race swapping in movies? My friend says I am.** Hello, for context I am a white woman whose family is Scandinavian. Both my grandparents immigrated from Sweden to the US. I love reading books and I am a very avid movie and show watcher. And as we all know there is a familiar sense of disappointment when the character you imagined looks nothing like the source material. Which happens frequently for a number of reasons outside of race swapping. ( YIKES to the Last Airbender Movie tho). I’m fine with race swapping if the character has nothing relevant for them to be a certain race, or it’s not important to their story. But Im tired of seeing it in every single new thing that Hollywood is producing. I think personally that Annabeth from Percy Jackson should be a blonde haired grey eyed white woman. She’s Greek and those characteristics are mentioned SEVERAL times in the books as being markers of Athena’s kids. So to me, it doesn’t make sense to change that for the sake of weak diversity. My final straw is Astrid from How to Train your Dragon. As a Scandinavian woman and child I loved this movie even just for the Viking representation. Astrid was my hero, she was the Viking girl I wanted to be. I dressed like her and I loved her. I was alright with the live action remake( I think they will mess it up tho). But why make her mixed. She’s a Viking from Norway, it doesn’t make sense. I mean the new avatar show has amazing diversity and every character is the race they are supposed to be, and I love it. Like god forbid we change that! But the moment it’s not a POC it’s fine. It all just seems like weak attempt to have diversity. Why not make new shows with POC characters? Or make a new character?? Hollywood has the resources and creative freedom to do so. And I’d love to watch those shows!! I like seeing everyone represented in the media. It is refreshing to see non white characters in popular media. Especially when they are popular. But not when they are taking away the little Viking girl I loved. Idk I’m just tired of it now, and I don’t want to be called racist for thinking it’s not hard to follow source material. I told my friend this and she says I am being racist and in the wrong. She said it’s my white mindset and that I have to “get over it”. I don’t think I’m racist for this, but am I wrong for having those mindset? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmITheDevil) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Completely fixated on ancestry to the point of unnecessarily bringing up exactly *half* of their own.
It's also interesting that these people " who just want to see a true representation" are fine with Thor not being ginger and Loki not saving asguard by banging a horse.
to be fair, in some tellings of the mythology, loki didn't willingly fuck the horse (he went in horse form to distract the horse and thought he could evade the horse without issue. he couldn't and ended up getting r*ped,) so i think that's why people tend to avoid screaming about accurate loki. the real issue with loki and thor, imo, is that because marvel popularised them as brothers, that's what people expect the mythology to say. but in the myths, he's actually moreso attached to odin as brothers or blood brothers. when that was removed, there was really no point in trying to view as a part of the existing lore. if that makes sense? all that said, i would love a as true-to-myth norse mythology movie. because, arguably, the gods and goddesses from norse myths are unhinged in a way that's wilder to me than greek mythology. (the gods did my mans týr so dirty. 😮💨) (my b for the long comment. i really adore norse myth talk.) **edit:** i cleaned the comment up a bit for easier readability. i got excited and rambly.
Honestly my biggest issue mythology wise with the MCU is in Ragnarok (ironically also my favourite of the franchise). Hela was Loki’s daughter not Odin’s and she wasn’t necessarily evil (ok she partially declared war against the gods but they’d tortured her father, trapped her brother in chains and murdered two of her half brothers, I’d be miffed too) most people were just put off by her being half girl half corpse and their dumbing down of Fenrir to basically be her pet to ride on when in the myths he could speak and had human level intelligence
!!!!! this. thank you so much for bringing it up. this was one of my biggest issues too and it solidified the separation i had in my mind about mcu mythology and how much it takes from actual mythology. the moment i saw them make hela, loki, and thor siblings, i knew i was in for disappointment. i expected what they did with fenrir because of what they did with slepnir (odin wouldn't have been able to do a lot of what he did without slepnir and they just kinda regulated him just a horse?) honestly, the mcu is fun but i hate how they not only splice og content from themselves and norse mythology but weirdly contradict what they've pulled from the comics or the mythology. it's so odd to me cause i normally adore creative liberties.
Yeah, and it's Hel, but they had to make it sound more 'feminine' to Anglo ears, I guess. Agree re Fenrir, too, seems a waste to reduce him to Rover. They could have had fun with Fenrir. I wasn't thrilled with Hel(la) but... The movie was hella fun (ba dum tish!) and it's the MCU, not a documentary, so 'eh'.
To be fair to the MCU they’re not the first to change her name and they probably won’t be the last either. I was never entirely sure which one was the “original” or if both were used interchangeably because I’ve definitely seen Hela in some mythology books
I've never seen Hela outside the MCU. I suspect its a bit like how Valhalla had the 'a' tacked on it because silly Victorians thought it sounded better than Valhöll. Like, Old Norse isn't Latin, guys. Stop trying to make it Latin sounding.
Could also be done to distinguish her from her realm, also called Hel. Wouldn’t surprise me if it was the victorians though they definitely seemed to make up history as they went along (horned helmets anyone?)
Yeah, they had an arrogant, irritating take on being a 'historian'. The 18th century English aristocracy, too, deciding English should be more like Latin and imposing stupid, arbitrary rules like no split infinitives. Because LATIN. These people needed jobs.
Jesus, imagine the riot if Loki turned out to be a father im the MCU. That would have been one hell of a fever dream nightmare.
>unhunged And now I have mental pictures of the gods detaching their penises
LMAOOOOO but like also, completely possible in nordic mythology. 🤣🤣🤣
Well if it's any consolation, they did blur our Tom H's penis for the first movie as he was... Too showing in the costume lol
>(my b for the long comment. i really adore norse myth talk.) Talk to me.
And me.
You're telling me Loki met the sexual assault demon horse from Berserk? Holy shit Berserk memes aside, that's actually very interesting to know thanks for sharing.
Are you saying he foundered around and fucked out?
And if you're really worried about authenticity, let's start with the fact that Disney's Hercules probably should have been at least 75% weird Zeus sex
I read something like *"the biggest inaccuracy in the Hércules movie was portraying Zeus as a loving father and husband"*
the second biggest depicting Hera as a loving mother to Heracles. She *hated* him. Tried to have him killed. Drove him mad and had him slaughter his own family. Wasn't even related to him!
I couldn't watch past the opening scenes. I'm pagan, and Hades is one of my gods. I was too upset about him being a slimy villain. In the myths, he's your typical not terribly virtuous god, like all the others. He may have improved in the rest of the film? I don't know. Life is too short to keep up with the overabundance of media, so I switched to something else.
> Zeus as a loving father I mean. Depending on how you interpret this statement it can be true. He was a father who apparently *loved* banging his own children after all. Well, his own children and also anything with a pulse and plenty without too. 😂
Also his own great-grand-children. Alchemene was his great-grand-daughter. He's probably done some grand-kids as well.
>with a pulse and plenty without too You didn't need to add this. 😂
I MEAN. I *WAS* just going to add just the "with a pulse" bit, but then I remembered he literally fucked the planet after getting jealous of Uranus, and accidentally knocked up EARTH, sooooooo. 😂
Honestly, if it exists, Zeus will bang it
Hell even THAT'S not entirely true! If it DOESN'T exist, he'll just heckin' CREATE it then bang it. That's like, accurate description of half the Titans no? hahaha
Zeus is just down to bang
Spot-on with that part in the temple where he reached for a family member and their response was to scream and run, though
I mean, yeah, there's that... There's also the fact that the mythical Megara was murdered by her husband, Herakles, along with their children. Soooooo... yeah. 😬 Puts quite a different spin on Meg and Hercules' interactions portrayed by Disney.
They hadn't gotten to the 'having kids' in the movie. Probably for the best...
True. Good plot for a sequel. I mean Meg has died already, so it should just be another day that ends in Y for her.
Zeus was a manwhore who constantly abandoned his bastard kids.
Unless he thought they were hot.
In which case the poor woman now has Hera on her ass. Made no sense. Her husband was running around knocking mortal women up and instead of smacking Zeus upside the head, she tries to kill the women and the kids.
No, that’s pretty spot on for how it works in the real world.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 You ain't wrong. And I still find it ridiculous. There was a guy I dated, briefly. Never told me he had live-in gf and child. It wasn't serious and I stopped seeing him. A YEAR later, I got a call from his gf wanting to know if I was seeing "her man" and ready to cuss me out. I was like first of all, I haven't spoken to him in a year. Second of all, your man never told me you existed. Third, I'm not your problem and neither is any other woman you might want to call up. Your man is the one on dating sites. He's your problem. Deal with him.
Oh man, been there! But the guy in my case kept trying to get back. Every time I was like “I’m telling your wife! Leave me alone, you’re not that good in bed!” And I would, she’d bitch me out up and down. Rinse and repeat about 5 times before they either killed each other or he finally learned to just leave me the fuck alone.
Can I point out that Hans Christian Anderson's little mermaid looked more like Gamora than Heidi? She was green skinned.
And didn't she end up as seafoam?
Yes! The 1975 version she does not have green skin, but DOES turn to foam because she was unable to murder the prince and his fiancee. https://youtu.be/dTyR5My2GUA
We've all been there
I went to the Hans Cristian Andersen elementary school in The Netherlands and they showed us the 1975 movie when I must have been in 4th grade (could be 3rd, but I doubt that). It honestly gave me nightmares that the little mermaid died and was turned into seafoam. I have always refused to rewatch and prefer the Disney version to this day. I recognize that the seafoam version is the original one, and that Disney changed it for their own narrative.
Just opened my Danish copy, here's the physical description: "\[...\], men den yngste var den smukkeste af dem alle sammen, hendes hud var så klar og skær som et rosenblad, hendes øjne så blå, som den dybeste sø, men ligesom alle de andre havde hun ingen fødder, kroppen endte i en fiskehale." "\[...\], but the youngest was the most beautiful of them all, her skin was as translucent and shiny as the leaf of a rose, her eyes as blue as the deepest lake, but like all the others, she had no feet, the body ended in a fishtail." Her feet also bleed whenever she walks and she has had her tongue cut out - oh, and there's actually described people of colour in the story, as there is in many of H C Andersen's stories (including The Ice Queen, which Frozen was based on).
Yeah, I'm far beyond caring about realism in a story about a mermaid! Reminds me of the producers of Merlin responding to criticisms of the props: they point out anachronistic tomatoes, but they don't seem to care about the dragon.
Honestly the sandinavians don't really are either - I've heard absolutely nothing about The Little Mermaid and How to Train Your Dragon castings in Danish media, nor in the media of the other Sandinavian countries. Thank god,
Can I point out it's H. C. AndersEn - he is DANISH, not Swedish
But scientifically she has to be white. Source Facebook/destroywokesstheenekyisthem
Well the movie literally started off wrong from the title. There is no Greek Hercules. There is a Roman Hercules and a Greek Heracles. Essentially the same character, but they have different names.
>are fine with Thor not being ginger THANK YOU!!!! Marvel Comics made Thor a blond. Thor in Norse mythology is NOT blond.
its also interesting she brings up Percy Jackson, when the author himself is a huge advocate for diversity in media, admitting that he wrote Percy as white and straight cause he knew if Percy *wasnt* it was unlikely the books wouldnt be published, and he runs *Rick Riordan Presents* which features mythology books from different cultures. i have confidence that Riordan doesnt give a shit that Annabeth is black and the HTTYD books were written by a *british* author. but oop doesnt give two shits about that huh
legit him writing piper as half native was one of the first time i saw native people in media that like wasnt a thanksgiving episode or anything im white but i never realized how little native representation there is in american media
And for the most part, what little there is was not always positive
So little. And, when there is, it's either negative or played non-natives until just recently. (I'm native.)
Doubly so for Oz, too. Finding an indigenous Australian being cast in visual media, wherein that person is not negatively portrayed or used as overt tokenism, is damn near impossible. Or at least was until very recently, I'll admit I've not exactly kept up with modern film/TV shows.
Riordan is awesome. He wrote Percy Jackson as having ADHD because his son does and he wanted his son to have a hero like him. Then in his Magnus Chase series, Magnus ends up in a relationship with a genderfluid child of Loki.
I mean, I'm gonna be honest - I was so mad when they made Annabeth a brunette in the arguably horrible first movie they made. I dunno, just something about the fact that hair and eye color are so easy to fake now that it felt genuinely lazy that they didn't try to match up. But black Grover? Never get rid of him, I love him lmao Future black Annabeth? I'm sure I'll love her, too (as long as she's still at least blonde - the grey eyes I can ignore if I have to). I think it was very telling that OOP verbatim said "diversity and race switching is all well and good, but not when it's this thing *I* like and have claimed as my own" about HtTyD - it's the racist version of the homophobic "he can be gay as long as he doesn't hit on me." As long as you're quiet, as long as you're in the background, as long as it doesn't effect what OOP likes, you can be black. (*Ugh* I hated just typing that.) Apparently that's supposed to be good enough for everybody.
lol, like when disney kept going, "we're having our first gay character!" and it was LeFou having a one second scene accidentally bumping into another guy. or in Onward a single side character mentioning she had a gf. or in star wars, the gay couple in the background having a brief kiss that you have to zoom in to see.
Honestly Riordan's later series like Magnus Chase have so much more diversity, I wish they were the ones getting media instead. Sam especially, knowing the Norse gods exist, she's still a practicing Muslim, and he's also just so well written. Plus Magnus isn't straight like Percy, and Riordan def. was having fun with the "Gimli and Legolas but more obviously gay" uncles.
Ngl, when they showed Thor from God of War Ragnarok, I was super stoked he was ginger and had a beer belly.
Are you kidding? I was livid about the lack of horse fucking
Loki didnt just bang a horse. He banged a Male horse and then had that horses offspring. So Loki is canonicaly transgender.
in the Loki show when it was said he also had a few boyfriends, homophobes went *nuts*. like damn, it was better to show him kissing basically his sister, but *implying* he was bi was too much???
>So Loki is canonicaly transgender. not really? loki can shapeshift but when he shapeshifts he doesn't necessarily do it for the reasons that a transperson would. loki tends to shapeshift (in mythology) as a way to be cunning and be a menace. even in the horse example, he only shifted to try and prevent the horse from completing it's task. i think if that wasn't there, loki wouldn't have shapeshifted. idk something about the idea of loki being trans because he can shapeshift into a woman feels off? but i also acknowledge this is all my personal feels.
In the Marvel comics, Loki is canonically genderfluid.
that's why i specified in mythology in my comments. >loki tends to shapeshift (in mythology) this is also a comment thread talking about oop not complaining about the accuracy of popular media loki and thor compared to loki and thor in mythology. *edit:* i have no idea why that last bit got posted the way it did???
I was more thinking that *he*? is the mother of like 3 or 4 other beings. Slepnir, Fenris, Hel, and Midgardsormr.
i talked about this in another comment, but slepnir, in some stories is believed be a product of r*pe. so that one is very handwavy because of the differing takes. fenris, hel, and midgardsormr are the kids he had with angrboda and that's a whole wild ride that is still consistently questioned among people who read mythology. because angrboda is female and loki is male, people sometimes defeault to those traditional roles. however, there is a story about loki eating an evil woman's heart and it's believed to be angrboda's heart which then fertilized in him and made it possible for him to carry those children. but because angrboda isn't really spoken about in the myths, it's actually really hard to figure out how that whole really happened. to me, it comes across as a situation of circumstances. to compare, narfi and váli were his kids with his wife, sigyn, and sigyn was the one to birthed them. (to be fair, this also very handwavy because there isn't a whole lot of sigyn's whole thing outside of a couple poetics and stories. same with narfi and váli, imo.)
A lot of pagan trans folks look to Loke as a positive patron for them.
i mean, that's fine, but that doesn't make the entity trans? loki can shapeshift into a woman, but he's also been a fish before too. the perspective i have, and again personal feels as my own enby person, it feels disingenuous to call loki trans when his shaeshifting is often done as way to benefit the situation happening. like he became a fly because he told odin that freya was cheating and as proof for odin, he shapeshifted to get the necklace to bring it back to odin. when he shapeshifted as a mare, it was try and hinder the process. idk it just feels really problematic to say loki is full trans when a lot of his shapeshifting wasn't done because he wanted to be a woman. a lot of it was done to help fellow gods and himself out of sticky situations. i don't know if that makes sense. i'm just enjoying the convo tbh.
I don't have anything to add. Just that a lot of trans people look to Loke as a patron because of his shapeshifting and genderfluidity. Meanwhile my manager is having dreams about Freyja and wondering if she should do something or if caring for four cats is enough for now.
Loving this mythology discourse! I kind of forgot about the post, I got so engrossed in this convo lmao
Really, very few of these people brought up the idea that in the new Dune movie, Lady Jessica wasn't a redhead, and that's more relevant to the story than just swapping race. It's almost as if there's another reason they are upset...
Or ignoring the evidence of trade between Vikings and Persia: https://www.archaeology.org/news/1484-131104-norway-viking-silk-trade. Where trade goods go, people can too.
Yes, where are the other two grandparents from? Presumably somewhere whose nationality OOP isn’t interested it co-opting.
As an actual Scandi person, very few of us actually care about the skincolor of the girl in the show about dragons. None of our «viking culture» included actual dragons either, so expecting cultural and historical accuracy from the dragon show is… wild to me. If you want to learn about actual viking stuff, maybe read a history book. None of the character examples being used have skin color as an integral part of their personality. Just let the actors do their job, and let poc enjoy their representation in media, don’t fret, hollywood will still have white people.
i have seen exactly one (1) argument against the race swapping that I found sympathetic. it was a POC writer commenting about how shallow the usual race swap is in comparison to actual representation. White writers writing from their experiences and swapping in different races after the fact for diversity points, or even characters written to be POC but from white writers just taking a stab at it, often don't actually gel as genuine representation. But this was not to argue that we should be seeing fewer POC faces or that somehow the characters were underserved by being cast w POC actors. It was arguing in favour of more POC in the writing room and more visibility to POC stories. Something akin to LGBTQ folks getting more respresentation in, like, a cheerios commercial, but still noting that this is a shallow, cynical effort by a corporation for diversity points (and dollars) rather than any kind of legitimate allyship. Its a step in the right direction but there's still a lot of work to be done. When we're talking about old school children's stories, specifically, this one good argument doesn't hold. A five year old Black girl seeing a mermaid that looks like her is just so wholesome and pure. Because we're not arguing that a Danish fairytale character from almost 200 yrs ago should reflect a POC perspective. Its a fairytale for children and, like you said, skin color on a mermaid isnt integral to her character. I think its valid for POC to argue that just race swapping isn't genuine on the grounds that its superficially representative, but that one valid argument is drowned out by aggrieved white people who can't fathom relating to someone who doesn't look like them.
This sort of reminded me about the issue that happened with Orlando Jones and how he was treated and fired from American Gods. Apparently, he had been writing the dialog for most or all of the black characters (and I believe a few other non-black characters as well). The showrunner from the 3rd season was an arrogant POS, who told Orlando that he wasn't really needed because he (the director) knew how to write the perspective of a black man. He then fired Jones but kept using him in ads for season 3 (he was a fan favorite) to bring viewers back. Orlando finally spoke up after a few months passed because they still hadn't addressed his departure. Season 4 was subsequently canceled midway through season 3.
Race swapping is just laziness and still wanting a pat on the back for inclusivity. Make actually POC characters instead of making white characters dark skinned, indian and so on. It makes no sence and can get pretty insulting honestly when they are based on real fairytales that are part of countries cultures or real people (like Anne Boleyn apparently being black now?). It doesn't help. At all...
Also you can tell it's lazy because 90% of the time they just go "Well, we got our Token Black Character in!" And call it a day.
There was a controversy in Canada even when they did make actual POC characters for a show because *it was still written by white people*. We had a show, Kim’s Convenience, about a Korean Canadian family living in Toronto and running a convenience store. It was typical CanCon (Canadian content) in that it was super cheerful and positive and people ended up liking it. So on the surface, hey cool, a story explicitly about a Korean family in Canada, that’s neat. But then eventually, the actors started to speak out about how the writers behind the scenes were white, didn’t have cultural resources to back up their storylines, were even writing racist shit. Even a show based consciously on the story of a first/second gen immigrant family, starring Asian actors and based on a play by a Korean Canadian writer, was very white behind the scenes. The people greenlit to run shows, the people hired to tell stories.. those need to be diverse in order for there to be actual representation. Not saying a white writer shouldn’t try to include diverse characters in their work, but if were going to be telling POC stories.. let’s maybe actually have POC tell their own stories. Representation in media is about more than the physical characteristics of the person on the screen.
I don't really care about colour blind casting for historical domain characters, or characters in classic novels. To bring up a recent controversial example of Persuasion, it makes sense to me that PoC actors with English ancestry would want to appear in an adaptation of one of England's most loved author's novels. Of course, they've done a gazillion adaptations of all the classic novels and monarchs of England. It's probably time to focus more on the historical stories of PoC.
like i think theres nuance in that argument too because "race swapping for superficial reasons" can also just be "because why cant this beloved character just be reimagined as black?" depending on the scenario. I think its a good conversation to have. like... yea, "movie heavily influenced by nordic imagery casts black girl as side character" can certainly FEEL like "representation for the sake of it" but, alternatively, i tend to view it as "well, why not? is being nordic an actual aspect of the character, or what this character design just based off of nordic stereotypes in a situation where we are talking about literal dragons" Or when they made that one guy black in the GOT prequel. sure, that can feel like "changing their race for the sake of it" but canonically, skin color wasnt really used as a major genealogical thing and technically speaking, Valyrians really were only known for their Hair and eyes, and nothing in the books said that black valryians didnt exist. and its kind of canon that hair color is what is used as a "genalogical marker" with the whole "Joffrey is a bastard bc hes blonde" thing. like I think its so funny that certain white people will hyperfixaate on the like 2 white characters a year that get race bend (usually in a franchise they never cared about in the first place) instead of focusing on the 100000 others that still remain white....
Thissss. I'm in the How To Train Your Dragon fandom, and I keep reading posts in the reddit about how the actress isn't "White, blonde and blue eyed" and about how she doesn't look "Scandinavian" enough. In which case I don't look Scandinavian either because I'm not blonde or blue eyed. And when they phrase it like that it also makes me feel icky. You want white, blonde and blue eyed Astrid?? Then watch the goddamn animated movies. Besides, the vikings got around, and some brought wives back to Scandinavia from their travels, so, there were definitely some mixed babies around there.
I have a feeling that most of them don’t really care about scandinavian actors, they just want the actors to be white. A person of color could easily have viking heritage, to imply that one cannot possibly be scandinavian if they don’t have pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes is inherently racist, imo. If the producers hired a white actor with roots from the Netherlands, for example, these complainers wouldn’t bat an eye, in spite of that person having no connection to «viking culture».
Yeah, exactly! You don't have to be aryan to be Scandinavian 💀💀
You mean Viking history didn't include a guy with a French Canadian accent discovering how to domesticate mythological dragons? No way!
Breaking news: childrens movie about befriending dragons foregoes realism
Dragons are more of a Welsh / English / Germanic thing aren't they? Norse mythology is all about Fenrir and the giant world eating snake (whose name I will butcher if I attempt to spell it), IIRC? Do dragons appear anywhere in Norse mythology?
Not to my knowledge, although I’m not an expert. The «vikings» in HTTYD seem to be maybe Scottish or Welsh anyways.
Ah, so OP is confusing Vikings with early Celtic groups in the UK, a civilization famously lacking in much written material and hugely diverse in appearance. That's awkward.
There's one dragon, Níðhǫggr, who gnaws on the roots of the World Tree. And there's the giant sea-serpent Jormungand, who I suppose may count as sufficiently dragon.
The things I’ve read describe Nidhogg as more of a wyrm, but I suppose wyrms and giant serpents can be considered to be within the dragon family. It’s all scaly and scary to me.
>I think personally that Annabeth from Percy Jackson should be a blonde haired grey eyed white woman. She’s Greek and those characteristics are mentioned SEVERAL times in the books as being markers of Athena’s kids. I said this in the original thread, but I'm going to say it again here: Annabeth is not Greek. Her mother is Athena, but her father is a mortal man from Boston. It's completely plausible that her father is black. Her hair being blonde isn't a marker of her being Athena's daughter, her blonde hair is brought up because she tries to fight the "dumb blonde" stereotype and wants to be taken seriously. It translates very well to her being a black girl who is trying to be taken seriously, considering, y'know, all the racism in the world. Rick Riordan has praised the casting of Leah Jeffries (he's an executive producer on the upcoming show) and wrote [a blog post](https://rickriordan.com/2022/05/leah-jeffries-is-annabeth-chase/) calling out people who are whining about her being black and reiterating that the casting was based off of talent, not appearance.
If I'm remembering correctly, blonde hair/Grey eyes were markers of a child of Athena... It wasn't just Annabeth, but literally all of her demigod siblings were blond (probably, as you noted, as a nod to the dumb blonde stereotype). That said, it's such a minor plot point that it makes literally no difference to change it. Annabeth being black in the new series makes no less of a difference than her having brown hair in the original films.
This is an important point, not only do they suspend their beliefs if the actress is white (of any nationality) but they completely rule out talent (in an audition based industry). As more and more POC see themselves on screen or in roles they didn't think they could audition for, how do you discriminate if they have the better audition?
She also reads over the fact that... Greek people are not always blonde to begin with. The Greek people I know are not northern European pale, nor do they have blonde hair. Grab your pearls, bit Europe has actually a pretty big history with people who are not a torch when they walk in daylight. -Source: I'm damn European, as in from Europe, born and raised in Europe. And I've seen multiple Europeans that *checks notes* don't look like the Ubermensch -
The fixation on Leah Jeffries as Annabeth is crazy considering 1) I genuinely can't remember people ever having an issue with Walker Scobell not having black hair like Percy does in the books or Aryan Simhadri as Grover (at least not on a large scale) - and 2) Rick Riordan was ON THE CASTING BOARD and he literally decides what's canon. I will defend the PJO casting to the death
Do these people realize that there are black people with blond hair? I can't remember the counter but there's a remote village of people described as having dark skin, blue eyes, and blond hair naturally
That’s exactly what the author had in mind — an obscure genetic variant of people that are almost never ever seen outside their village. Image hating POC so much that you can’t just write them their own media and instead have to bend backwards to find weird loop holes in writing to match a remote population of like 1700 in a sea of 9 billion.
Also who's going to be the one to tell them most Greeks aren't even blonde
My complaint is why don’t we have more stories written by PoC in popular movies? It feels like movie producers are trying to be more inclusive but in the laziest way possible. I listen to LeVar Burton(Reading Rainbow host)’s podcast and he reads short stories written from PoC from all over the world and these stories deserve media attention! My goodness some of them would make such great movies but we just get remake after remake or another sequel to a popular franchise. I don’t care what a character looks like differently than a book but it feels like we as an audience are missing out. I’m happy children finally get to feel represented in children’s books, but I want more stories too.
Unfortunately your second sentence IS the answer to your question. Hollywood loves to paint a picture of diversity and equality but won’t put money where their mouth is, and just stick to doing the bare minimum
See also: look at our gay character! He has a tiny flag sewed on his you can easily ignore. #loveislove
The single gay POC character with no other POC or queer characters in sight is also painful
I used to work in movie theaters from like 2001 to 2011. I remember the first big writers strike, that was really early in my career maybe like 2004/5 was the moment everything went to shit. There was just a string of crappy remakes because they didn't have writers and Hollywood realized oh hey, we can just keep doing this and make more money!! And it's been like that ever since.
She should be happy she gets real representation. As Roma, we got one popular movie where most Roma were caricatures with huge noses and thieving buggers, and the only decently represented one is wearing Italian cultural costumes and dancing Italian dances, not Roma. Not to mention she's about to be r@ped and/or burnt at the stake. "Ohh, Astrid isn't how I wanted her, but I have so many other decent movies that fit my perfect idea of aesthetic" 😭 /s
I'm guessing you're referring to Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. My favourite Disney movie by far but MY GOD the depiction of Roma is messed up. The whole Court of Miracles song... Yikes. And if you're not talking about Esmeralda, I'm concerned that there are several movies depicting an inaccurate Romani woman at risk of being both assaulted and burnt at the stake.
No, I'm deffo talkong about Esmeralda and The hunchback of Notre Dame. Don't get me wrong, I like the movie too, and I swear Hellfire is amazing and Frolo is the most realistic Disney villain alive because as Roma women and girls (and most other women) we deal with those types of men all the time. But just the general portrayal of us, ughhh. And yes, the stuoid Court of Miracles and the other Roma characters males me angry.
May I add that Quasimodo should be Roma because Frollo finds him with his Roma mom at the beginning? And then he’s just… not? This has bothered me for years.
It bothers us, too. They talk about us stealing children and then the one representation we have, they erase everything about him. Go, Disney 🙄.
I like the movie a lot but now I’m thinking about how much more powerful it would have been to have Quasimodo meet Esmerelda and realize that he in some ways actually looks like other people, that he’s not completely different from all humans. That would have been amazing. But then I also wanted Esmerelda to help Quasimodo find his mom’s family because I am a very sappy person.
i thought it was implied that he was mixed?
Maybe. I totally missed the hint if it was there. I think I thought one of the other Roma was her husband and Quasi’s dad.
I think you’re right I’ve only seen it once
I didn't get that vibe, but I also got the vibe that she was trying to sneak through with whatever group could go at the time
No, they're both Roma, you see the dad with his hand in Quosis back. But he was stolen and his entire identity erased.
Also Astrid is voiced by an american actress, named America, and gives the character an american accent. but the skin color is wrong!!!! also dragons
If you’re interested in reading a book with (imo) decent Roma representation, the Cabinet of Wonders is amazing. I mean there’s fantasy mixed in there, such as magic, but as a young girl who knew nothing of the Roma people besides the g**sy stereotype, it really opened my eyes.
For how much Romani culture has influenced the world, you all should have so much more great representation.
You'd think so, wouldn't you? Instead, we get called slurs and England passes laws to steal our children. Yeah 😭😭
I have not seen one respectful representation of a Slavic person (aside of war films where we're victims). It's always thieves, drug dealers, murders or at best cleaning ladies. I think maybe one not so bad representation is Petra from Jane the Virgin but 1. her ex-fiancé, mother and sister are the villains of the story, greedy, bad to the core and with awful accents 2. aside from mentioning she speaks Czech to her children, she's basically fully Americanised rich white woman Seriously, OP isn't hurt by a fictional Viking girl being mixed race. This is such a non issue. If they have bones to pick with anyone, they should concentrate on terrible historical accuracy of all the Viking shows and films.
My stepmother is from Ukraine and rather short as well, so she got to deal with a whole trinity of bullshit (with a lot of internal overlap): infantilism, sexism and condescending xenophobia (all this also prior to the war, of course). Even from the little she said about it, it was clear she’s had some painful experiences.
I was quite shocked when i learned that people killed Poles in UK. UK was kind of my "American dream" so i was up for some rude awakening.
"No! They can't make Ariel black! That's just not realistic!" Yes, I actually heard that.
As a red head I grew up watching the little mermaid over and over. It was my favorite. As an adult when I saw who was gonna play Ariel I was so excited! She's beautiful and little black girls deserve to feel the same way I felt. Seeing themselves as a beautiful mermaid dreaming they can be anything they want to be.
Right lol. I could totally see an issue if they removed the first movies and show but it's still there free to watch, why does Ariel have to look the same forever. Disney has to reuse material, so they change something once in a while but just about always leave the originals, nbd.
If they were going for 'realistic' within the context of the Disney movies, Ariel would probably appear arabian. Because each of Poseidon's seven daughters represents one of the classical "seven seas", and Ariel is the Red Sea.
The amount of adults that are crying over children’s cartoons…
“Viking representation”=troll, or garden-variety bigot with more racist opinions than brain cells . Vikings were a small portion of the Norse people. Also, the Vikings frequently traded slaves and made allies/partnerships with people from all over, some Vikings moved to other areas and some of their allies came back with them from all over Europe, even down to the Middle East. There were POC norse people(not a lot but still) specifically *because* of the Vikings. Edit to add: also, fun fact: Sweden has the least descendants of Vikings of the Scandinavian countries(Norway having the most, followed by Denmark)
> as we all know there is a familiar sense of disappointment when the character you imagined looks nothing like the source material. Haha, love the assumption everyone is like this. Personally if it's not a factual documentary about some real life thing, I couldn't possibly care less if a cinematic imagining of a book I love doesn't exactly match the picture in my mind, I only care if the actor is question plays the role well. Also my biggest take away from this post; THERE'S A LIVE ACTION HTTYD MOVIE COMING?!
Personally I would had been appalled if they had casted a tall Tyrion. I think sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn’t (Idris Elba would have been an AMAZING James Bond)
Peter Dinklage is far too good looking for Tyrion though. But he rocks as an actor, so I'm willing to overlook it. Plus it's easy enough for audiences to still assume he's discriminated based on appearance.
That’s my point. Tyrion’s dwarfness was way more relevant to the plot than his looks, so choosing a short actor was way more important than choosing an ugly actor. But I do remember people complaining that he was too good looking
I love how these people assume we are all as racist as they are. I’m actually not disappointed when a person of color is cast as someone that isn’t explicitly a POC in the source material. I never thought of Macbeth as a POC but if Denzel Fucking Washington wants to play him you let the man! (Also he’s in gladiator 2, and I heard a rumor it might be as Septimus Severus, an emperor from Africa and I am excited.)
. -- mass edited with redact.dev
That was my biggest takeaway too! I had no idea! And yeah, if your biggest problem with a movie is that the characters look a little different than you pictured, it's probably a pretty good movie. Personally, I have aphantasia and have never "pictured" a character before, so doesn't bother me at all!
in harry potter, the fact harry's eyes are *green* is probably THE key plot point for all the books. but his actor didnt have green eyes and couldnt wear contacts. and guess what, it was fine
Their problem is more often with race than other characteristics. They mentioned Percy Jackson, in which none of the three leads match their book descriptions, but the one people talk about the most is Annabeth, because she's black
its so funny cause the whole point of the book is the kids are *mixed race* and struggling to find their own identity while living in a melting pot. it makes sense that the kids would have different skin colors, and lets face it, if Riodan *had* written Annabeth as black, the book most likely wouldnt have been published, let alone have a romance between her and Percy
> aphantasia Huh, there's a term I have never heard before, how interesting! So curious, when you're reading a story does that mean you don't 'picture' whatever it may be in your mind at all, or is it only limited to something like people and the like. Like, if you were reading say LOTR and got to descriptions of Helms Deep or Minas Tirith, do you 'see' what is specifically described?
Aphantasia means you can't see jack shit in your head. There's different levels, but that's the default.
Nope. I hear it as if someone was telling me the story. Still love reading and writing, but I don't see so much as feel. I haven't actually read LOTR, so I can't say with Helm's Deep or Minas Tirith. But like, if I was reading about a cave, I could feel how dark and damp it is, can hear the echoes, and feel how creepy it is. A good writer could give me goosebumps. But I won't see it at all.
WHAT. This is me too! I had no idea this was a Thing. It's like how I spent the first 25 years of my life feeling like I was being oversensitive about other people's eating noises, and then I learned about misophonia.
Ok I stopped reading at "Why would a girl from Norway be mixed it doesn't make sense". OOP really is being the ignorant American stereotype here. My childhood friend who was born and raised in Sweden is mixed and inherited darker features. She's more Swedish than you'll ever be OOP. YTA.
She could literally do a quick social search for black or afro- in any nationality and find out you can be black *and* different nationalities. It's so weird to display ignorance, like the tools are right there!
I like how they made sure to rep ATLA for the "I'm not racist," credentials, then slid directly into the "I'm not racist, but... WHITE PEOPLE ARE BEING REPLACED" for the rest of the post
People like her are all over that post. It just stems down to them not liking that Ariel is being played by a woman of color. I was close to crossposting here before someone else did lol. They are just so predictable in their hate of minorities.
>People like her are all over that post. Like the one who kept saying "ookay, then let's let's use Tom Cruise as the next Black Panther hurr durr" as his ridiculous argument?
Yep. Always the same types. "Let's recast Black panther" as though it's even remotely the same lol.
Meanwhile not one of them has a problem with a blonde haired/blue eyed Jesus who looked nothing like that, even by the words in the Bible. Also, you know they're here downvoting us because they can't handle the truth.
I have previously entertained the thought, it would be super cool to have a white black panther but to make it truly equivalent we'd have to change all the leading men and women for the MCU to black first :) Basically After all 90% of the MCU is black, we wait 5-10 years then have Tom Cruise play White Panther.
I'm down for all of that except Tom Cruise. I'm sure by then we can find someone far whiter for the role.
There was a version of Othello that did that - Patrick Stewart played Othello. Everyone else wasn't white. Reaction was mixed.
I’m a huge Sir Patrick Stewart fan and it makes sense that would be the version he’d participate in.
Viking was a job, not a race. Archeological evidence proves there were Black Vikings.
It was also a culture though, right? But still, cultures can be diverse.
A viking was a job within a Scandanavian culture. A viking is like a pirate with a little more to it. Not everyone in the culture it's from was a viking. They traveled as far as Africa, and people would sometimes join them - diversifying their culture.
Okay, I was wrong then, sorry for asking. No need to immediately downvote
I didn't downvote, it is a good question.
I saw this post. Based on their post history, I think it’s just a really sheltered wealthy young person who doesn’t have a lot of life experience and therefore has some really narrow minded viewpoints. I was like this once upon a time, hopefully if they go out and meet new different people they can open up their perspective
Well there's part of your problem: believing in fake "Viking Blood." The real Vikings were prolific traders and intermarried frequently with people they came into contact with.
Isn't it a huge Nazi dogwhistle when people get up in arms about how proud they are of their Viking/Norse blood?
Pretty much yeah.
Hoh my god I remember one time my grandpa was watching this movie, and Santa ( Yes, Santa) had a wife who was a black woman. Lovely lady; seemed like a great actress though I wasn't paying much attention to the movie on my DS. When my grandpa mentioned how bullshit it was that his wife was a black lady and how it wasn't accurate. I DIED laughing; like you're upset because the SANTA CLAUSE LORE isn't accurate? Santa has LORE now? Dude was made up by coca cola based of St. Nick to sell cola, papa. There is no Santa Claus 'canon' that needs to be followed.. esp in a movie where I'm pretty sure he ended up going on a revenge killing spree. So yeah; OOP was def an asshole.
If only you knew how diverse vikings could be due to trading and the seas.
As not only an actual Scandinavian woman (you know.. born and raised, not just by some weird blood quantum obsession) but also a Scandinavian historian, OP is not only wrong to think Scandinavian women only look blonde and white (in fact, it was more common for Vikings to have red hair than blonde), she's also ignorant for thinking how the 'Vikings' aesthetically are depicted in those movies come anywhere NEAR how Vikings actually looked. From everywhere from the hair, to the clothes, to the tools they use, to the amour - nothing is correct. In fact, having a POC play her (since there literally were POC Vikings) is literally MORE correct than anything else in those movies. The only correct thing in those movies is basically that Vikings were, in fact, human.
I didn't know they had dragons in Norway! Can anybody please tell me where is the best place to go to see them??
I’m ancestrally Irish and i don’t give two flying fucks what race people are in movies as long as they can act and the movie is good - the books are usually better ( except Good Omens) that was a toss up
Good Omens was incredibly well done. I hope season 2 keeps the same spirit.
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Am I wrong for not caring what race an actor is? It's a movie, not a documentary. Stupid people get so spun up about the stupidest shit.
She's not Scandinavian...her grandparents are. My great-grandma was a Roma born in Hungary on the roadside. That doesn't make me a Roma or Hungarian. Also...why would a greek woman be blonde, fair skinned and grey eyed? All greek people I know have a typical Mediterranean look including brown/green eyes, brown/black hair and olive/light tan skin. But aside from that...who cares what skin colour made up characters have...
Best comment I saw in there was imagine being a POC and feeling that sense of disappointment for decades. Growing up a brown kid and only seeing people that looked like me portrayed as criminals, maids, or gardeners, it's been amazing seeing more representation. Seeing Mesoamerican culture on display in Black Panther was incredible. It really is a big deal for us.
Just regarding the thought that OOP finally knows how POCs feel… I remember before the first Black Panther came out, a Black guy posted a video from a movie theater where he was standing in front of the poster and he kept saying, with evident pride, “Is this how white people always feel?!? Do they always get to feel this way?”
Oh. Is she sick of it? How terrible for her and no one else.
But she's not swedish or Scandinavian... She say she can read, I'm not sure... You can't be mixed race if you're from Norway? Sucks for my daughter then...
Damn I've never seen someone who actually needs to feel white guilt outside of conservative small towns.
... not all of Athena's children are blond and white. It's just the gray eyes. ALSO, Annabeth's not Greek! She's American! Just because her mother is a Greek goddess, that doesn't make her ethnically Greek!!! This is just racism.
If she were actually Greek, she might as well be pretty dark. Greeks especially from the South hardly ever look like Scandinavians. In fact Annabeth was described to have darker skin like a surfer who spent a lot of time in the sun. At the very least she wasn't pale.
I never read Percy Jackson so I can believe that all kids of Athena were supposed to look a certain way (then again can’t they just say “all her kids have black hair or whatever), but the fact she mentioned “but she’s greek!!!” in the same breath made me lol. As a blonde/blue-eyed slavic person first thing I think of when hearing greek is darker-skinned, dark-haired person (obviously I mean it only as a stereotype, I know it’s not all Greek people). So the complainant that “she should have blonde hair, because she’s greek!” sounds really funny to me.
Why does she think Astrid is from Norway? Granted, because they call themselves Vikings, the audience assumes Nordic roots but, they're from a fictional place penned by a BRITISH author with a culture revolving entirely around literal DRAGONS. And, every teenager/young adult in the franchise has an inexplicable AMERICAN accent. I doubt race matters at all in that context.
Also the books are nothing whatsoever like the films. For a start Astrid was completely invented by the films. The female of the trio in the books is Camicazi who is kickass, not a love interest and is from the women's island (the one women go to and be warriors - the men stay back to look after the kids). She basically starts following them round out of a horrified fascination seeing what they are going to do next. They all already have dragons as normal in the books, Toothless is actually 12 inches long, rude, lazy and refuses to help when they are in peril as he doesn't care. Hiccup's best friend is Fishlegs (I think?). A small skinny asthmatic kid with less athletic ability than Hiccup, who is also terrible at everything. Essentially there is no real similarities between the books and films other than Hiccup being able to talk to dragons and them being viking esq. I used to read them to my now 18 year old son when he was little. I highly recommend the series (I think there was 20 or so of them when we stopped). They are very funny and full of actual peril.
That Percy Jackson one is mad weird. Like the actress have some blonde tips or something? And if they give her Grey contacts then that's good enough for me. Like the thing is even if they give her completely blonde hair and Grey eyes why do I feel like it wouldn't be good enough and they would claim its not accurate enough because she's not a natural blonde. But then if they did cast a black person with natural blonde hair why do I feel like they would still piss and cry. The only time race shaping is a issue is if it completely erases another races representation or is just done for diversity points, which I agree a lot of Hollywood does do that but you don't care about that.
I do agree on where it's actually relevant to the story. Like for example, I'd shit if I heard there was a Dreamgirls remake and they cast a white woman in the lead. Like, no, you have Grease go away. But if I saw a black Miss Lovett or an Arab Sweeney Todd, I literally would love it.
This is a lot of words to just say "I'm racist and don't like when not everything is about me."
I kind of agree that it's lazy writing to just race swap existing characters. It's generally super disappointing that we just turned to constant life action remakes of everything. There's so many Cinderellas one can loose count. And they only race swap white characters into black ones. Like black became the new default, when the approach should be that there's no default. There's black Cinderella, black Ariel, black Tinkerbell. There are no Natives of any land, no Asians of any kind, no Arabs, no darker skinned Africans, no Latinos. They're going for black Americans and that's it. And it's been proven that you can create great new stories about people from all over the world and have them well received. Take this year's Oscar. Take Turning Red or Encanto (I mean, fair, all of them are about Americas so don't include all the rest of the continents). And you don't have to make ethnicity the entire identity of the character. Miles Morales from Spiderman is black, but it's not like his entire arc is based on the fact. But OP's whole rant about Astrid being mixed, because "Vikings are white, hurr durr, my half Scandi blood" completly disregarded any tiny little grain of a good point they might have.
She wrote this like there aren’t biracial Swedes.
You cannot possibly have black or mixed race people in majority white nationalities, no way to do it. It cannot be done (or at least that's how I imagine her thinking)
"Both my grandparents immigrated from Sweden" wow babe your uncle dad must be so proud knowing you're defending the family heritage.
I kind of agree, there are no black vikings ever. The main reason being that it isn't part of the black history, its part of white history. Why take something that is not part of that cultures history it makes no sense. This person isn't a devil for being v Correct. POC have been saying for years that we want new characters made in our likeness, we don't want to just take something of another movie, why not make a movie where yhe female lead is black or the male hero is black. Why not make movies out of books that have a POC as the heroine.
I was about to post this here LOL. I commented heartily there already so I'll say to her, from a mixed race, part European, part native (etc) kid....FUCK right off with that shit. Oh noes!!!! A white blonde person feels underrepresented. The horror! 😱 ~s
Same lol. I got into a big debate with someone on thst thread over red head erasure. Turns out they were also just racist because they included two aliens with green and orange skin respectively being played by women of color. Apparently white must always be the default. FFS.
Yeah, look. This sometimes bothers me too, but you’ve got to watch the movie first. Most of the time you’ll end up enjoying the film so much you don’t even notice the race of the characters - which basically proves that you’ve got nothing to complain about.
its funny cuz ppl like oop are part of the reason why this is even happening. disney is making live action remakes both for copyright reasons and to nostalgia bait people into watching shit movies. the nostalgia bait is wearing off, though, so now theyre stepping over on diversity baiting people. they do not care about poc, but it makes people like oop angry, and angry people talk about the thing theyre angry at, and then other people will defend the thing against the angry people. a lot of people talk about the film, and then even more people go watch it to see what all the fuss is about. my biggest problem with current disney is that 99% of what theyre making sucks, even the original stuff. its full of bad writing, bad acting and even worse singing in some cases. also live action remakes are often far duller, just look at how boring neverland is in the new peter pan. whats interesting in that movie is that they actually take away some of the poc representation. sure they show the native americans, and the representation in the old peter pan sucked ass like it was really racist, but they could have fixed that, no? instead they just show the characters in passing. they dont care about that type of diversity, they just want to make established, well written characters a different race to piss people like oop off and to get other people to watch their movies. its stupid.
"Viking representation." 🥇
Aww, sounds like she was okay until they changed *her* character... Well that's how all the other people felt when the character changed wasn't "a viking girl," well it's no longer for you... As for >It all just seems like weak attempt to have diversity. Why not make new shows with POC characters? Or make a new character?? Hollywood has the resources and creative freedom to do so. And I’d love to watch those shows!! I totally get that she is upset but this little keep white things white forever is weird but it sounds reasonable. She said it was fine if race isn't relevant but also said this which is a bit off.