I promised myself that I would never ever bring it up because I have enough stress in my life already and these discussions take up a lot of time and energy and require a lot more witt and eloquence than I posess.
But.
This wound has been out there for many many years, and I feel that now it starts festering again, and since I have taken it upon myself to preserve our history, I feel that it would be simply wrong to remain silent when I have something to say.
So, you probably know I make fenhawke renders in XPS using models extracted from da2.
My Fenris model uses these textures
But I must point out that I had to manually edit them to look like this, because the original game textures look like this:
(I believe they do, because the dude who shared the models only did the extracting, and is not known for editing textures)
Want to know why I did what I did?
Because I spent much much MUCH more time looking at fanart of Fenris, than playing the actual game, and at some point it started feeling wrong to me to have him so pale. My vision of him was influenced by the fandom.
That doesn't change the fact that THAT's how he looks in the game.
Can you see where I'm going with this?
Come and tell me that it's impossible to take him for a generic white dude.
Racism is bad, duh
Whitewashing dark skinned characters is bad, DUH
Many of you may have gotten immersed in the wide world of modding (I can't do it, all known mods change too much about Fenris for my liking, and I need him to have his iconic features), but
can we please stop pretending that Fenris in the original game was obviously depicted as dark skinned?
Because that's some stupid bullshit that has caused and still causes a great number of people, mostly artists (often casual fans), a great deal of distress, and outright promotes bullying hiding it behind an image - illusion - of social justice.
Yeah, in 2014 we got Dorian and Krem and some others in DAI, finally seeing what people of Tevinter look like.
But guess what? In 2012 we had no idea, and could only guess. Back then we actually had discussions about this, offering opinions and not being afraid to talk? In 2012 we did not really know how to portray Fenris, and artists made their own choices.
In da2 the only tevinters we encountered were
For the best, probably, because had they been depicted as dark skinned, that would have likely become a case of some very unfortunate implications. Looks pretty hopeless to me, either way.
ETA: and of course I forgot Fenris's SISTER
I'm not saying that racism is not an issue in this fandom. It is, obviously, like anywhere else.
But can you imagine a person who played DA2 (exclusively, without getting into DAO or DAI or trying to explore the fandom and looking at more fanart), taking a liking to Fenris and deciding to make fanart of him and sharing it with the fandom, and then having angry anons come to their ask box accusing them of racism? For depicting Fenris in the only way that is known to them?
Think about it for a minute.
I've witnessed a number of such happenings over my time here, and I've been around since 2012.
If you take the time to look at our old fanart, you'll find various depictions of Fenris. Some darker, some lighter, but back then NOTHING could be considered wrong, because we had too little to go on.
It would have been funny had it not been so bloody SAD to see older pictures circulating the net and read comments filled with rage and hurt over whitewashing brown characters.
I get it, you want to fight for justice, but THIS is not JUSTICE.
That right there is some act 3 Meredith level of lunacy seeing blood magic everywhere and condemning innocent mages.
Before you decide to go harass an artist who made a picture that does not match your vision, take a few minutes to think about how justified it would be. Weigh your options and at least choose your words carefully.
I shudder to think how many potential fans had been put off and turned away from this fandom, left wondering wth is wrong with us.
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ETA: concerning lighting
https://www.tumblr.com/fuckyeahmhawkefenris/772588487945879552
And here's a brilliant clarification from someone familiar with the theoretical part https://www.tumblr.com/fuckyeahmhawkefenris/789446507334172672/hollyand-writes-turbootaku-mrnicholas
