I my opinion it usually doesn't tend to work, and detracts from/devalues the source material. The "The Witcher" adaptation springs to mind, and Amazon's "The Wheel of Time" already has left a sour taste in my mouth. In the latter case it's maybe even more pronounced since I remember the books fondly (those that I read) and the differences between people have always played a rather large part in the background of the world building. Not only does needlessly "diversifying/switching" the cast make no narrative sense, it hugely undermines the story telling. It's even compounded by the fact that we know the ideal casting for the series that the author himself created back in the day before his death, and it's nothing - going by race/ethnicity - like Amazon's.Something which seems to happen fairly often in fiction, particularly visual media, is taking an established character and swapping the race or gender. Maybe you are taking one of the most iconic characters in anime and getting Scarlet Johansson to play her, or you think Achilles should be a black man.
So does this work? Are there any examples where this has made a story better or improved on a character? Is it just quota filling or is there actual merit to diversifying pieces of fiction for a visual audience?
So does it work? Or is it always a failure?
Swapping the Gender or Race of a Character in Fiction
- Thread starter Harlock
- Start date
Katee Sackoff as Starbuck wasn't what ruined Starbuck, it was the whole premise of NBSG that ruined Starbuck...and for that matter all sci fi that came after it.
When Kathleen Kennedy and the danger haired orcas at ILM refer to the SW Sequels "Galacticafying Star Wars" in internal memos.
When Kathleen Kennedy and the danger haired orcas at ILM refer to the SW Sequels "Galacticafying Star Wars" in internal memos.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
I think even if you ARE Trans, the hormones and surgery aren't necessarily so seamless afterwards
Better to just dress as the opposite sex
I've only seen TvTropes spoilers and some fanfics, but man.....that ending was REALLY fucking idiotic
The hormones and stuff aren't seemless, but it is their body and their choice.
The world's most violent placebo, that leads to a drop in IQ points, psychosis, diabetes and heart disease.
There were only three things about NBSG that were great. The Soundtrack, Edward James Olmos and Mary MacDonald and that's it.
Well, I guess you could count Grace Park as well. She reminds me of Jessica Alba, in that she got cast for her sex appeal and yet ended up holding her own against far more experienced Actors even managing to steal scenes from Oscar caliber performers (Back when the Oscar meant something) while she was at it. Then just floundered for the rest of her career.
Any way outside of those three, maybe four things..the rest of it was subversive garbage that was basically an airborn Ebola strain that utterly destroyed modern sci fi by the precedent it set. It will go down in history as one of the most influential science fiction shows and simultaneously the most destructive.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
Yup their choice in the end, if they regret it, they have no right to blame it on others
That said, it’s kinda weird but I think the western take on LGBT sorta purposely lacks things like hotness and cuteness the way Japan likes it
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
If we’re gonna talk about stuff that made precedents and destroyed genres
I think the MCU helped destroy Comicbooks, though the seeds for its distortion and destruction were already around with the many Far Left authors/artists
They already were doing race bending, remember Thor? Heimdall’s a black dude even if he’s from a race of Norse Gods....I’m pretty sure the ancient vikings would note how surprisingly multiracial their Gods were
That's because pride culture in the west is about deifying ugliness, unconventional looks and poor hygiene. If you're part of that culture. You're about making regular people feel as uncomfortable as possible..part of that is why so many Troons that are part of that wing of the movement turn out to be pedos.
That being said a lot of lesbians and transpeople tend to be more right wing and those are fairly chill and tend to put a lot of effort into their appearance. Funny how that divide is growing...too, with more coming to this side and abandoning the pride movement.
Any way...
You could Race and gender swap Magneto and Luthor @Spartan303 is probably cringing reading this and I don't blame him at all because 99% of the time it's an absolutely stupid and pointless thing to do. But it is doable...in some situations.
A good example is basing Lex Luthor off Telly Savalas..who lets be real..probably would have been a perfect Luthor if he'd have lived long enough to voice the guy in the DCAU..Right down to growing up in a ghetto and knowing quite a few people who became mini Luthors.
Like my idea for a black Magneto...it would..require you touching on subject matter that would make journalists spazz but you could do it.
Like if you absolutely had to make Luthor black...You could cast Avery Brooks as Luthor and make him the son of a Jamaican, or Bajan or Haitian immigrant or make him one himself. The gang wars and poverty he experienced on his island as a kid in the 60's and 70's and the self destructiveness of certain groups in the Metropolis ghetto he migrated too left him convinced that it was only by ruthlessness, genius and excellence that one became more than they were. Luthor, who was born special, born brilliant but still had to crawl his way up hates superman for being given everything and needing to earn nothing.
The genesis of his rivalry isn't jealous, but contempt. He views the younger paragon as an entitled, spoiled little upstart and an illegal alien, unlike Luthor and his father who paid their dues and earned the right to be an American citizen. The fame and accolades Clark gets by existence, being things Luthor had to earn and the fact that the Daily Planet fawns over him when he gets punched through a neighborhood by some marauder from the stars but Luthor has to deal with the press shitting on him when he demos his old ghetto and builds high rises and uplifts the lives of everyone who used to live there by turning them into employees of the new people who do. To him is symptomatic of the rot and decay of the society he once loved that has now begun to praise and celebrate the weak.
Cast him as a much older man, one who despite his age and lack of superpowers still owns any room he is in, still has the bravado and confidence backed up by a supremely deadly intellect that makes it a legitimate threat when he eyeballs darkseid and tells him under no uncertain terms that this Galaxy is his and the New God better take that to heart if he wants to play around in Luthor's sandbox.
To Luthor, Clark isn't a godling, but a weakling, a border hopper and a social parasite. An obstacle to batter down not just to enhance his own image and to return the spotlight to himself but to strike a blow for the world that was and the world that Luthor believes should still be.
You can do it like that...it aint..perfect...but you can do it.
What you can't do is cast a blackman as Luthor and have him call attention to Clarks skin color and babble about racism and oppression and "of course the white savior gets all the press even when he's a deranged vigilante and I'm an honest business man..HOW SHWAY..HOOWW?!"
Because no incarnation of Luthor would ever be so fucking weak (in his mind) as to ever debase himself to think that any hardship he suffered and any roadblock he experienced was over something as droll and collectivist as racism.
Naw, racism was for the bottom feeding weaklings who lacked the will. Luthor just demo'd their shitty apartments and built up a fucking financial district that's the envy of the world over the bones of their dead crack mammy's.
Racism is for that flying, preening, malcontent, idiot. Who was lamenting the displacement of the rat-people whose lives Lex Luthor God King of Metropolis, the modern day Ramses, Imhotep, Isaac Newton, Einstein and Alexander the Great all rolled into one...just improved by giving them jobs for the first time in their miserable, unfulfilled lives.
And so on...
Magneto was kinda raceswapped already, he became jewish about 20 years afterwards. It was done really well to, as his survival of the holocaust spurred his take on mutants needing a separate homeland to be safe, like zionism for mutants.
I'm aware of that but we both know what they wanna do with him and it aint an intelligent switch.
I don't think they can do it to him though, as he's already a minority (though admittedly the woke don't give a shit about jews).
TriforcedLink
Well-known member
I still remember that time a few years ago when the Zelda fandom suddenly got hit with "Should Link be a girl?" bullshit.
Usually with the terrible justification of Link's personality already being blank (Which is bullshit given how other Nintendo mascots don't really have that memorable personalities themselves.) and ignoring Zelda.
It even spread to Spacebattles back in the day.
Usually with the terrible justification of Link's personality already being blank (Which is bullshit given how other Nintendo mascots don't really have that memorable personalities themselves.) and ignoring Zelda.
It even spread to Spacebattles back in the day.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
I thought that supposedly those blanks already have lots of personality
I mean Doomguy doesn’t talk even before the 2016 game and yet I’ve seen people talk and essentially say he’s got lots of personality via his actions alone
Though speaking of genderbending, I don’t think you can trust the West today to do that one right so much
Make a male character female or replace him with a female and I think there’s a good chance that appearance wise they’d be skin, androgynous or masculine looking ladies instead of hot or cute Rule63 types
Hollywood looks to really love skinny chicks
It's been shown to work when it isn't being done to score political points. A famous example I'd point to is that in the film adaptation of The Shawshank Redemption. and Irishman is played by Morgan Freeman, and they even make a joke out of it in the movie. I'll even take what is apparently an unpopular opinion and say that I liked the new female Starbuck, at least early on. I loved her in the miniseries and the first part of the first season, but then they went all angsty with her spiraling further and further into patheticness until they finally put her out of her misery, only to bring her back again for another round, and making her into a mystery box on top of it.
The problem now is that it's become so political thanks to the identity politics crowd. I just loved how they all freaked out over the Major from GitS being played by ScarJo, when in the source material it states that her body looks Eastern European, and that it literally doesn't matter because the whole point is that her body is fully prosthetic - she's a brain riding around in an android body basically. And since this was an adaptation, they could have just as easily Americanized it (much to the grief and consternation of weebs everywhere) and set it in a US city like LA or NY and it wouldn't have mattered. So my main problem with the movie is that it was so focused on copying imagery from the two anime movies and referencing shit from all the other adaptations of the manga, that it completely missed the point of the work and divorced all that imagery from its context to basically make eye candy.
The problem now is that it's become so political thanks to the identity politics crowd. I just loved how they all freaked out over the Major from GitS being played by ScarJo, when in the source material it states that her body looks Eastern European, and that it literally doesn't matter because the whole point is that her body is fully prosthetic - she's a brain riding around in an android body basically. And since this was an adaptation, they could have just as easily Americanized it (much to the grief and consternation of weebs everywhere) and set it in a US city like LA or NY and it wouldn't have mattered. So my main problem with the movie is that it was so focused on copying imagery from the two anime movies and referencing shit from all the other adaptations of the manga, that it completely missed the point of the work and divorced all that imagery from its context to basically make eye candy.
Oh I just hate "woke" shit in general. Identity politics is inherently based in bigotry and prejudice, and I won't abide that no matter where I see it, because whereas I am all about fighting stereotypes, they are about making stereotypes and sticking dogmatically to them, with much hatred and abuse reserved for those who refuse to think or act the way the woke crowd thinks they should. It's also no coincidence that the shit they write turns out to be shit, because for them, there is no nuance - they have a child's outlook on everything. The good guys are unquestionably the good guys and will always win because they are the good guys, and the bad guys are stupid and will lose because they are the bad guys. Their main characters are inevitably Sue/Stus because nothing bad can happen to them, because in their minds this would represent an attack on the group that the MC is up there as "representation" for.
Which is confusing in light of their proclivity to turn around and attack that existing audience. To be fair, I don't think the remakes are as much about taking less risk the way they used to be so much as they are about spreading the woke gospel, essentially taking well recognized brands and changing them to support their politics in order to leave no other alternatives for those who do not share their politics. Which is also coupled with arrogance on their part that they represent a silent majority who will totally be their new audience, which is why getting rid of the old audience is actually a goal. Hence why there have at times been boasts of "if you don't like it, don't watch it" only for them to be surprised and outraged when their product fails - they genuinely believed that they had a new "woke" audience to replace the old one.
Again, there are good books that have a 'woke' message. I cited a bunch earlier in the thread. Te issue is when they write fiction to prove a political point instead of writing fiction with a political point. Unless you are very, very good, the first will not come out well.
Either those books are trying to be egalitarian rather than "woke" or they're just slightly better at being propaganda - I can't know which unless I read them, and I doubt that will ever happen. This doesn't change the fact that identity politics are inherently bigoted and prejudiced, and anything written to be "woke" reflects this.
Could you elaborate more? I'm kind of curious. I actually liked the miniseries and the first season up until Adama's little coup, which then went on to be completely forgiven and forgotten about as the show returned to what became its status quo. The stuff with the Pegasus showing up and Admiral Cain was good, too, I thought, up until she died because Baltar let that Six out. It was a definite upswing from the rest of the second season, I thought.
Firebat
Well-known member
That depends on the character. Some characters have specific focal points - themes, places, stories or beliefs they are tied to - which do not work well when gender/race is changed. Other are pretty clay-like and can be swapped without much issue.
To take a few examples:
- Batman has to be rich white guy, because Batman's seminal tragedy is a demonstration of how utterly broken Gotham is. There is no salvation in Gotham, no matter how rich you are and how privileged background you were born into. To make him anything else is to reduce that chief point that drives Batman's crusade against the tide of insanity.
- Superman is an allegory for a perfectly assimilated immigrant joining American society, wholly adopting the very essence of American ideal. Superman might not necessarily be adopted by farmers, he might not necessarily be white or "he", since the fundamental backbone of his character is ideology tied to a fairly diverse country, not a specific background.
- Wonder Woman has to be a woman, because
However putting Starbuck on the cover feels wrong because I don't think 2003 Starbuck was a re-interpretation of the original one - more like another character entirely who inherited the legacy call sign.
She was a perfectly serviceable character on her own and ultimate dissatisfaction of her storyline was more tied to overall direction of the ending than anything inherent to the character. Deus ex machina is all right and good, but three deuses ex machina were too much. Expecially with one of them stomping around for all to see.
If that was indeed the intent, they have failed spectacularly.
Granted, they have failed spectacularly in general, but there isn't any recognizable BSG heritage in Sequel Trilogy.
Navarro
Well-known member
His family is also meant to be old-money, pseudo-aristocracy as befitting the old pulps and adventure novels that inspired him.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
Superman (Hernan Guerra)
Hernan Guerra, was the genetically-engineered son of General Zod and Lara Lor-Van, who was rocketed to Earth as a child from the doomed planet Krypton following Jor-El's murder by Zod. Upon his arrival on Earth, Hernan was raised by a family of honorable and hardworking Mexican migrant farmers...
superman.fandom.com
Say, know Justice League Gods & Monsters’ Superman?
Yes, I know there are Superman fanatics who’d hate him for the edge, but he’s a pretty interesting character
Plus, he’s not really Clark to begin with just as Batman and Wonder Woman aren’t Bruce and Diana