ASmallShark

The beauty of it is that you could place that exact same dialogue into any time and place in human history and it would make just as much sense, you could have it as a conversation between sailors in a 1600s ship, a group of bronze-age warriors cleaning their weapons, stone age hunters walking home from a hunt, or a bunch of 21st century redditors on the internet, and it would hit just as splendidly.

There was this conversation about if you could have sex with any specific person from any time through human history, which one would you choose? Famous legendary lovers were brought up, queens, emperors and such were popular, might as well fuck Rasputin just to see what the hype was all about, the kind of answers one would expect.

Then some guy said he would choose his own late wife. He went on to talk about how brutal it is, that you might find the love of your life, but there's no promise that this life couldn't be suddenly cut short. That his body aches for hers and how there isn't much he wouldn't do for one more opportunity to make love to her one last time.

Now, I'd like you to imagine a pause in the conversation. A solemn, contemplative moment of silence, with several of the people present nodding in agreement that this is indeed the finest answer - it wasn't a competition, but there's no doing better than that.

And then someone breaks this solemn silence and says:

on one hand, they could give them human skin tones. this could go two ways:

a. they whitewash the characters. this is very unlikely to happen--the only way i could see this occurring was if the political/social climate shifted even further to outright white supremacy and they decided to appease the racists. but again. i don't think this would happen, given their latest efforts to support diversity.

b. they code the ninja as people of color by giving them skintones/features found in people of color. this would draw all the racists into a hate parade. i don't think this is likely either, but hey, they were brave enough to do it with fortnite! normal people were chill with that! it was literally just the racists who were hating!

but seeing as they just keep the yellow skin tone to avoid any possible controversy it just.

well. giving asian-coded characters like nya and kai yellow skin and humanoid design is. questionable to say the least. i know it's not meant to be racist, but if your "racially ambiguous" design is accidentally resembling racist caricatures, maybe it's time to bite the bullet and just give them human skin tones.

the yellow skin and humanoid design combo is just not a great choice. it's one thing when they are lego-shaped, as yellow is the default color for all. it's entirely another when they look like humans and look like the stereotype of asians having yellow skin. it's not "more inclusive" this way. it just means they are taking the easy way out to avoid a larger controversy of... gasp! implying that the ninja could possibly be people of color!

i know it's tricky, and i know they're not trying to hurt anyone or perpetuate any stereotypes. but this design choice unfortunately does that. as an asian, i am not offended by this (also, can we stop using the word "Offensive" when we mean "racist"). my feelings are not hurt--i'm actually typing this while pretty calm. i am critical of this design choice because it unintentionally mirrors racist caricatures, which have caused great harm to my community throughout history. i think it's important we as a fandom community discuss this.

i'm sort of having a mild brain fog moment rn so i can't fully articulate what i'm on about, but i think a lot of able-bodied artists view things like canes and crutches as interchangeable. and they often don't know enough about the wide range of mobility aids to make an informed decision about what their character might actually use based on their disability