Before I start: I just want to make it clear that you can like a character, game, an artist, a publisher, etc. in isolation while still acknowledging that looked at within the greater context, that thing you like might be contributing to the reinforcement of harmful stereotypes or imagery that negatively effect real people. If you're going to come into this thread to just hand wave what this thread is about then like...don't bother. Honestly.
So I'm a black woman. I'm a darker skin black woman at that. I've been made fun of by other people, including those who had the same skin tone as me, because of it. I've been told I'm a 'pretty chocolate girl' among things. I've had to learn how to appreciate my own skin and not think I'm ugly because of it. The effects of colorism have impacted me in more ways than one and I know I'm not the only one. Often the harmful elements of colorism are hand-waved despite it being so prevalent in the media we consume: from the movies we watch to even the games we play. Here's a definition of colorism:
While black women are definitely not the only minorities lacking in representation nor are we the only ones colorism has impacted, I would like to open this thread by speaking from my own perspective and experiences since black women's voices aren't given a platform a lot on here.
Colorism and black women.
The sexualization of black women.
My favorite video game series is Final Fantasy. I don't have any type of major representation in a series I love and have been playing this series over a decade. If black women are lucky, we might be a NPC in the background or a quest giver. Final Fantasy is 30+ years old and the closest thing we've gotten to a playable black woman is Fran in Final Fantasy XII.
If you've never played FFXII, Fran is part of a race made up of highly fetishized, dark skin bunny women. The following official art piece of the viera should speak for itself:
Again, the viera are highly sexualized and fetishized in-game (there's a sidequest with a white npc wanting to be with one because they're...exotic or something if i remember correctly). While I don't personally like equating them to black women, I have talked to other black women who do see them as representation so looking at it through that lens and that (at least within FFXII) they're exclusively dark skin, it's hard not to view the only major representation that dark skin women have within the single player mainline games as another example of reinforcing the sexualization and fetishization that black women have experienced in the past and currently in the present. Again, these things aren't 'reaches' - these are issues that effect real people. I remember walking down the street with my mom and having grown men honking and cat calling at me. I was probably 12 or 13 at best.
How black women are not allowed to be more than a stereotype.
When I look at a lot of the female characters within Final Fantasy, there is also consistent traits that I see related to them that I know wouldn't apply if we ever got a black female lead because we're rarely ever given the chance to be written that way. I'm talking about being given the chance to be portrayed as soft, vulnerable, desirable, or the romantic lead.
I'm sure the instant reaction to this statement would be "What? Female characters don't need to be love interest or soft, that's weak!!" which 1). there's nothing inherently wrong with a female character being 'soft' or a love interest and 2). black women, especially darker skin women, are often labeled aggressive, undesirable, less need of protection and love. All the female main protagonists of Final Fantasy are all 'fair skinned' white-coded or east asian-coded women. Black women are never allowed to have the 'roles' these lighter skin characters are able to have. Instead we are put in a box that exist to reinforce negative stereotypes about us. Even if this is occasionally subverted, it's usually done by casting a light skin black woman as the lead in something (while this thread is about video games, look at roles black women like Zendaya, Tessa Thompson, and Zoe Kravitz get and ask yourself why darker skin black women don't get those type of roles or exposure).
An example of a black female character not allowed to be more vulnerable or be the 'love interest' is Vivienne in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
When fans saw her, they were excited for her to be a romance option...then it turned out she's wasn't going to be one. Vivienne, at least to me, comes off as almost a personified example of the 'strong, independent black woman who needs no man' trope within a video game except the catch is that...she does have a man in her life. Which honestly? Is totally fine except it turns out she's not romancable because she's actually the mistress to an old, white man. Isn't that great? No. Vivienne is also the 'ice queen' type of character in a way which, again is fine on its own, but to me, her character often felt like a continuation of stereotypes that have been placed on black women whether we asked for it or not: we're seen as hard, cold, and even a 'bitch' (a word that's definitely used about Vivienne). Dragon Age's handling of her never seems as if it's trying to deconstruct any of these stereotypes and it's just played straight. While I desperately wanted to like her, I wasn't able to.
She's also an example of what I feel like is a reoccurring problem with writers taking characters initially planned to be white and not thinking how certain traits will reinforce bad stereotypes once the character is changed to be brown and black (The next character I'll talk about is another example of this). Side note: 'white Vivienne' mods also exist to make her more 'lore friendly' which is again, another bullshit form of colorsim / racism.
The angry black woman.
A example of the 'aggressive, angry black woman' in a video game is Nadine from Uncharted. I've played all of Lost Legacy and played maybe close to half of Uncharted 4 and one thing that instantly bothered me was this scene:
From the music as she begins to beat up Nathan to the framing of the black woman towering over the white man, this just rubs me the wrong way. Nadine herself is portrayed as hyper-aggressive at times and while the context of some of her anger makes sense (in Lost Legacy, she's lost her business), there are also times where I remember Chloe having to tell her to calm down. Chole and Nadine are both women of color but the more 'reasonable' one of the two is the female character who, in comparison to Nadine, has the lighter skin tone. Chloe herself would be considered dark skin in her own culture but in this situation, she is still placed in a higher regard than the character with darker skin than her with how she's treated within the narrative because of colorism - even it might be unintentional.
Again, in isolation you might ask, 'What's the problem? I was not offended by Nadine?'" The problem is that pushing black women as aggressors, whether in real life or in fiction, makes people think we're inherently aggressive people that don't deserve protection or to be believed when hurt:
When Megan Thee Stallion, an american female rapper, was shot by a male rapper, instead of people supporting her, she received people questioning and doubting her story. Her innocence in the situation was questioned, she was accused of being the instigator/aggressor in the situation, and that the man had to 'defend' himself against her because she's a 'big' woman (Megan is 5'10) who was going to 'hurt him'.
Back on the old site when FFXV was coming out (or either had just came out, I can't remember), I remember another female poster saying that FFXV had taken the series 30 years back. I don't know what this person's ethnicity was but that comment always felt so...white centric to me. Lunafreya is a badly written character but in the grand scheme of things, there are a sea of characters that look and act just like her even if she had of been better written. For me, a black woman, one white character sucking wasn't the end of the world. I've never been able to see myself in anyone in Final Fantasy so the series had never went backwards to me: it had never taken any real 'step' to include me in the first place.
Colorism within Japanese Video Games.
Oh boy.
Kingdom Hearts.
Let's just get this one over with. *I'll be referring to the original characters only with this, not disney or final fantasy characters who make cameos within the series.
Kingdom Hearts is a series that is riddled with colorism. From characters becoming darker skinned when exposed to literal darkness to a white man having brown face while under 'disguise', this issue has been the constant elephant in the room since people would really like to focus on Nomura's whacky anime ride or the Disney fun instead. Kingdom Hearts is a 15+ years old series and despite its large cast of original characters, the only dark skin characters in the original series are all evil. For those that do not play Kingdom Hearts, the main antagonist of the original arc within the series is Xehanort, a brown character that's written as borderline cartoonishly evil at times. Xehanort is old and decides to steal the body of Terra, a young and naive keyblade wielder, that is susceptible to darkness. This is Terra before and after the 'body snatching':
Xemas and Ansem: If you want representation, just embrace the darkness!
The issue with colorism is especially notable considering the cast is essentially filled with mostly fair skinned, blue eyed characters and while there are story reasons to explain why characters look the same, at a certain point it becomes somewhat annoying that we can have multiple characters that look like Sora or Kairi yet we cannot have one brown/black character that's not evil or associated with darkness because of the color of their skin. My feelings of annoyance at the continued reuse of designs is also aimed at Verum Rex too. It's a different take on the designs of FF Versus XIII....yet all the characters still need to have fair skinned. It's boring.
There's nothing wrong with a brown / black person being a villain but why are we not allowed to be the main heroes within this series too?
Nier. *This section will contain open spoilers for the Nier Raid in FFXIV.
This has more to do with a specific alt design based on 2B rather than the Nier games themselves as I've only played one game in the series (although I do find it weird that all the androids are one skin color tone regardless of them being what they are but I digress). Anyway, 2B was announced for Soul Calibur and got a cool alt called 2P. 2P was an 'inverse' of 2B's colors: dark skin, white outfit.
2P was well received online which...led to Square-Enix taking note and deciding to use her. Things go downhill from there. SE decide to make a 2P figure to milk her popularity:
Well...she's at least still somewhat brown right? Anyway, SE would go, "Us? Using a brown skin in a positive light? Hell no!". So 2P gets added to FFXIV as part of the Nier raid and she looks like this:
She's white. People tried to claim that those upset were overreacting. That it was just the 'lightning' and wait till the raid was out to judge. Again, 2P started off with darker skin (I've updated the OP to show just how dark 2P was in SCVI; she does not have a 'tan') until they slowly and completely white washed her:
They also turned 2P into the antagonist of the raid. So 2P, originally the brown skinned alt of 2B, was stripped of the skin color that made her unique in the first place and then made evil because...reasons I guess. Even when we get representation, it's taken away from us and ruined.
Final Fantasy.
There a a lot of examples you can pull from with FF. However, there is one game that could've (and should've) been lead by two brown people and yet they look like this:
FFXII has easily one of the least diverse cast in the series with most of them being white, blonde, or both outside of Fran. The princess of a desert city that is inspired by the middle east is probably one of the most whitest female characters in the entire series. From her home to her character design, a lot of things about Ashe are taken directly from cultures where brown people are the majority and yet somehow they reached their limit in regards to using these cultures for inspiration when it came down to making her a brown woman. Brown people are rarely shown as royalty or in major positions of power in video games so this could've a big deal and instead...we got what we got.
FFXII (as well as other games in the series such as FFVII) also have issues with evil characters' skin turning brown as they reach 'maximum evil'. Sephiroth, probably one of the palest characters in the game, suddenly has his skin turn brown during his Safer Sephiroth form at the end of the game.
Vayne Solidor, the main antagonist of FFXII, turns into a monstrous-looking, dark skin man...for some reason at the end of the game.
There are definitely other examples of colorism I wish to touch on that is within FF as well with other series but I don't want to make this OP overly long so I'll stop here. I hope people actually read what I have to say and can contribute to this thread in a meaningful way without downplaying or handwaving any of these issues away. Please feel free to share any examples of colorism in video games too as I want this to be a discussion we can all learn from. Going forward, I would really like to see more female characters who look like this because they deserve to be represented:
So I'm a black woman. I'm a darker skin black woman at that. I've been made fun of by other people, including those who had the same skin tone as me, because of it. I've been told I'm a 'pretty chocolate girl' among things. I've had to learn how to appreciate my own skin and not think I'm ugly because of it. The effects of colorism have impacted me in more ways than one and I know I'm not the only one. Often the harmful elements of colorism are hand-waved despite it being so prevalent in the media we consume: from the movies we watch to even the games we play. Here's a definition of colorism:
While black women are definitely not the only minorities lacking in representation nor are we the only ones colorism has impacted, I would like to open this thread by speaking from my own perspective and experiences since black women's voices aren't given a platform a lot on here.
Colorism and black women.
The sexualization of black women.
My favorite video game series is Final Fantasy. I don't have any type of major representation in a series I love and have been playing this series over a decade. If black women are lucky, we might be a NPC in the background or a quest giver. Final Fantasy is 30+ years old and the closest thing we've gotten to a playable black woman is Fran in Final Fantasy XII.
If you've never played FFXII, Fran is part of a race made up of highly fetishized, dark skin bunny women. The following official art piece of the viera should speak for itself:
Again, the viera are highly sexualized and fetishized in-game (there's a sidequest with a white npc wanting to be with one because they're...exotic or something if i remember correctly). While I don't personally like equating them to black women, I have talked to other black women who do see them as representation so looking at it through that lens and that (at least within FFXII) they're exclusively dark skin, it's hard not to view the only major representation that dark skin women have within the single player mainline games as another example of reinforcing the sexualization and fetishization that black women have experienced in the past and currently in the present. Again, these things aren't 'reaches' - these are issues that effect real people. I remember walking down the street with my mom and having grown men honking and cat calling at me. I was probably 12 or 13 at best.
How black women are not allowed to be more than a stereotype.
When I look at a lot of the female characters within Final Fantasy, there is also consistent traits that I see related to them that I know wouldn't apply if we ever got a black female lead because we're rarely ever given the chance to be written that way. I'm talking about being given the chance to be portrayed as soft, vulnerable, desirable, or the romantic lead.
I'm sure the instant reaction to this statement would be "What? Female characters don't need to be love interest or soft, that's weak!!" which 1). there's nothing inherently wrong with a female character being 'soft' or a love interest and 2). black women, especially darker skin women, are often labeled aggressive, undesirable, less need of protection and love. All the female main protagonists of Final Fantasy are all 'fair skinned' white-coded or east asian-coded women. Black women are never allowed to have the 'roles' these lighter skin characters are able to have. Instead we are put in a box that exist to reinforce negative stereotypes about us. Even if this is occasionally subverted, it's usually done by casting a light skin black woman as the lead in something (while this thread is about video games, look at roles black women like Zendaya, Tessa Thompson, and Zoe Kravitz get and ask yourself why darker skin black women don't get those type of roles or exposure).
An example of a black female character not allowed to be more vulnerable or be the 'love interest' is Vivienne in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
When fans saw her, they were excited for her to be a romance option...then it turned out she's wasn't going to be one. Vivienne, at least to me, comes off as almost a personified example of the 'strong, independent black woman who needs no man' trope within a video game except the catch is that...she does have a man in her life. Which honestly? Is totally fine except it turns out she's not romancable because she's actually the mistress to an old, white man. Isn't that great? No. Vivienne is also the 'ice queen' type of character in a way which, again is fine on its own, but to me, her character often felt like a continuation of stereotypes that have been placed on black women whether we asked for it or not: we're seen as hard, cold, and even a 'bitch' (a word that's definitely used about Vivienne). Dragon Age's handling of her never seems as if it's trying to deconstruct any of these stereotypes and it's just played straight. While I desperately wanted to like her, I wasn't able to.
She's also an example of what I feel like is a reoccurring problem with writers taking characters initially planned to be white and not thinking how certain traits will reinforce bad stereotypes once the character is changed to be brown and black (The next character I'll talk about is another example of this). Side note: 'white Vivienne' mods also exist to make her more 'lore friendly' which is again, another bullshit form of colorsim / racism.
The angry black woman.
A example of the 'aggressive, angry black woman' in a video game is Nadine from Uncharted. I've played all of Lost Legacy and played maybe close to half of Uncharted 4 and one thing that instantly bothered me was this scene:
From the music as she begins to beat up Nathan to the framing of the black woman towering over the white man, this just rubs me the wrong way. Nadine herself is portrayed as hyper-aggressive at times and while the context of some of her anger makes sense (in Lost Legacy, she's lost her business), there are also times where I remember Chloe having to tell her to calm down. Chole and Nadine are both women of color but the more 'reasonable' one of the two is the female character who, in comparison to Nadine, has the lighter skin tone. Chloe herself would be considered dark skin in her own culture but in this situation, she is still placed in a higher regard than the character with darker skin than her with how she's treated within the narrative because of colorism - even it might be unintentional.
Again, in isolation you might ask, 'What's the problem? I was not offended by Nadine?'" The problem is that pushing black women as aggressors, whether in real life or in fiction, makes people think we're inherently aggressive people that don't deserve protection or to be believed when hurt:
When Megan Thee Stallion, an american female rapper, was shot by a male rapper, instead of people supporting her, she received people questioning and doubting her story. Her innocence in the situation was questioned, she was accused of being the instigator/aggressor in the situation, and that the man had to 'defend' himself against her because she's a 'big' woman (Megan is 5'10) who was going to 'hurt him'.
Back on the old site when FFXV was coming out (or either had just came out, I can't remember), I remember another female poster saying that FFXV had taken the series 30 years back. I don't know what this person's ethnicity was but that comment always felt so...white centric to me. Lunafreya is a badly written character but in the grand scheme of things, there are a sea of characters that look and act just like her even if she had of been better written. For me, a black woman, one white character sucking wasn't the end of the world. I've never been able to see myself in anyone in Final Fantasy so the series had never went backwards to me: it had never taken any real 'step' to include me in the first place.
Colorism within Japanese Video Games.
Oh boy.
Kingdom Hearts.
Let's just get this one over with. *I'll be referring to the original characters only with this, not disney or final fantasy characters who make cameos within the series.
Kingdom Hearts is a series that is riddled with colorism. From characters becoming darker skinned when exposed to literal darkness to a white man having brown face while under 'disguise', this issue has been the constant elephant in the room since people would really like to focus on Nomura's whacky anime ride or the Disney fun instead. Kingdom Hearts is a 15+ years old series and despite its large cast of original characters, the only dark skin characters in the original series are all evil. For those that do not play Kingdom Hearts, the main antagonist of the original arc within the series is Xehanort, a brown character that's written as borderline cartoonishly evil at times. Xehanort is old and decides to steal the body of Terra, a young and naive keyblade wielder, that is susceptible to darkness. This is Terra before and after the 'body snatching':
Xemas and Ansem: If you want representation, just embrace the darkness!
The issue with colorism is especially notable considering the cast is essentially filled with mostly fair skinned, blue eyed characters and while there are story reasons to explain why characters look the same, at a certain point it becomes somewhat annoying that we can have multiple characters that look like Sora or Kairi yet we cannot have one brown/black character that's not evil or associated with darkness because of the color of their skin. My feelings of annoyance at the continued reuse of designs is also aimed at Verum Rex too. It's a different take on the designs of FF Versus XIII....yet all the characters still need to have fair skinned. It's boring.
There's nothing wrong with a brown / black person being a villain but why are we not allowed to be the main heroes within this series too?
Nier. *This section will contain open spoilers for the Nier Raid in FFXIV.
This has more to do with a specific alt design based on 2B rather than the Nier games themselves as I've only played one game in the series (although I do find it weird that all the androids are one skin color tone regardless of them being what they are but I digress). Anyway, 2B was announced for Soul Calibur and got a cool alt called 2P. 2P was an 'inverse' of 2B's colors: dark skin, white outfit.
2P was well received online which...led to Square-Enix taking note and deciding to use her. Things go downhill from there. SE decide to make a 2P figure to milk her popularity:
Well...she's at least still somewhat brown right? Anyway, SE would go, "Us? Using a brown skin in a positive light? Hell no!". So 2P gets added to FFXIV as part of the Nier raid and she looks like this:
She's white. People tried to claim that those upset were overreacting. That it was just the 'lightning' and wait till the raid was out to judge. Again, 2P started off with darker skin (I've updated the OP to show just how dark 2P was in SCVI; she does not have a 'tan') until they slowly and completely white washed her:
They also turned 2P into the antagonist of the raid. So 2P, originally the brown skinned alt of 2B, was stripped of the skin color that made her unique in the first place and then made evil because...reasons I guess. Even when we get representation, it's taken away from us and ruined.
Final Fantasy.
There a a lot of examples you can pull from with FF. However, there is one game that could've (and should've) been lead by two brown people and yet they look like this:
FFXII has easily one of the least diverse cast in the series with most of them being white, blonde, or both outside of Fran. The princess of a desert city that is inspired by the middle east is probably one of the most whitest female characters in the entire series. From her home to her character design, a lot of things about Ashe are taken directly from cultures where brown people are the majority and yet somehow they reached their limit in regards to using these cultures for inspiration when it came down to making her a brown woman. Brown people are rarely shown as royalty or in major positions of power in video games so this could've a big deal and instead...we got what we got.
FFXII (as well as other games in the series such as FFVII) also have issues with evil characters' skin turning brown as they reach 'maximum evil'. Sephiroth, probably one of the palest characters in the game, suddenly has his skin turn brown during his Safer Sephiroth form at the end of the game.
Vayne Solidor, the main antagonist of FFXII, turns into a monstrous-looking, dark skin man...for some reason at the end of the game.
There are definitely other examples of colorism I wish to touch on that is within FF as well with other series but I don't want to make this OP overly long so I'll stop here. I hope people actually read what I have to say and can contribute to this thread in a meaningful way without downplaying or handwaving any of these issues away. Please feel free to share any examples of colorism in video games too as I want this to be a discussion we can all learn from. Going forward, I would really like to see more female characters who look like this because they deserve to be represented:
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