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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24879 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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A Defense of Race Swapping in Adaptations

In the 13th or 14th century, an unknown author writing in Middle English decided to adapt the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. This retelling cast him as the noble Sir Orfeo, a harper-king of England, chasing his wife, Heurodis, spirited away by the fairy king into the Celtic Otherworld. It's a fascinating adaptation, taking the Thracian demigod's journey to the Greek underworld, and putting it into terms more familiar to English readers of the time. But for me, the most interesting part of this adaptation is at the end. Instead of the tragic ending of the original myth, the story ends with Sir Orfeo and Heurodis happily reclaiming their place on the throne.

I feel like people rarely put the changing of stories in its larger context historically and contemporaneously. Stories are changed all the time, and it rarely goes remarked upon. Modern retellings of the Greek myths for kids often omit some of the more violent or sexual parts of the stories. A recent example of this can be seen in this segment of the video game Immortals Fenyx Rising, where Zeus recounts the birth of Aphrodite. While the original myth, involving the severing of Uranus' genitals, is hinted at in the dialogue, the game manages to make it about a pearl falling from an oyster. These kinds of santized retellings of stories are so widespread that they're barely commented upon by people nowadays, and they have a lineage going back at least to the likes of Thomas Bowlder's 1807 The Family Shakespeare, which included such changes as making Ophelia's suicide in Hamlet into an accidental drowning.

I have a strange relationship to the changing of stories in this way. I can recall being a kindergartner in my Elementary school's library, and finding myself drawn to the nonfiction section where a kid's version of the Greek myths awaited me. Much of my love for mythology grew from that initial exposure, even if I would only encounter the more adult themes of these myths later in life as I read translations of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Ovid's Metamorphoses.

I remember being amused while reading chapbooks from the 1600's , when I found a retelling of the story of the philosopher Diogenes the Cynic, though I also found it a bit odd that a Christian sermon was put into his mouth instead of his original Cynic philosophy.

I have a great respect for stories and the storytelling tradition. Stories help us understand the world and ourselves. They can convey important values, or, when written down, preserve the values of peoples and places far off in time. The people on the pages can become both alien and familiar to us, as we read about what they did and thought about so long ago. I find accounts of cross-cultural encounters like Laura Bohannan's Shakespeare in the Bush incredibly fascinating.

But I think our culture has a strange way of thinking about retellings. Many would consider "Sir Orfeo" in some way to be second rate - a mere retelling, and not a very good one, considering it removes one of the "most important" scenes of the whole myth: where Orpheus turns around, and loses Eurydice to Hades a second time.

But I don't share this view. While the musical Hadestown, another retelling of the same myth, might say:

See, someone's got to tell the tale

Whether or not it turns out well

Maybe it will turn out this time

On the road to Hell

On the railroad line

It's a sad song

[...]

We're gonna sing it anyway

I respect the unknown author of Sir Orfeo for refusing to bow to tradition. This isn't mere novelty for novelty's sake. This is something so very, very human. Seeing a tragedy, and turning it into a happy ending. I love this about us humans. That we see a tale, told for hundreds of years always with the same sad ending, and yet sometimes, we allow ourselves the indulgence of a happy version of the tale. See also Nahum Tate's 1681 retelling of King Lear with a happy ending.

Of course, a great deal of Shakespeare is just retelling stories that would have been well-known to his contemporaries, and of course even the oldest versions of myths we have from the likes of Pseudo-Apollodorus or Ovid or even Homer are not the originals. To me, the fact that we tell the same stories again and again, making changes with each teller is a beautiful thing.

And so I wander back to the topic of race swapping in adaptations. Why is it that when I hear about a 13th century Middle English author changing Orpheus from a Thracian to an Englishman, I feel nothing but delight? Why is it that when I hear about the Turkish trickster Nasreddin Hodja being depicted like this in far flung China it fills me with a strange awe at the unity of the human spirit?

I'm even a fan of changes made to a story for political reasons. I find beauty in Virgil's Aeneid, even if Virgil took some liberties with the existing Greek myths to find a place for Rome, and his opinions on Augustus in the book. Roman propaganda can be beautiful, in the hands of a skilled storyteller.

In the face of stories that have taken every possible form in thousands or hundreds of years of existence, there's something to me a little silly about insisting that Superman's Jimmy Olsen must always be a light-skinned redhead, or that Aragorn was, and can only ever be a white man. The story of Superman is only 85 years old. The story of Aragorn is less than 70 years old. If these characters endure, if your children's children are still telling their tales 1000 years from now, they will take many forms once they are as old as Orpheus is. Once these characters have passed through the hands of a thousand generations of storytellers and interpreters, who can say whether they will be the same. In fact, I daresay they will not be the same. If we could live to see these future takes on Superman and Aragorn, they might seem very strange to us indeed.

Even if I agreed that the decision of large corporations to raceswap well known characters was only made for cynical reasons, isn't that too human? A story that can only have one shape is a dead thing. Books preserve the words of a story, but until they are in the minds of readers, until they are imbued with meaning and given a new, alien shape, one which the author could scarcely have imagined, they are just a graveyard of ink and dead trees.

I have nothing super insightful to add, just thought this was a great post. Adaptations and repurposing cultural narratives are as told as time and as trad as Rome.

How do you feel about communism?

With race swapping, the thing is that it's not all bad and not all good and its that simple. People who completely reject or embrace it are wild.

One of the complexities is that it can take a few forms.

One form is re-examine the story in a different cultural / racial frame. This is completely fair, but you have to allow that people who don't prefer the new frame, or lament the opportunity cost of telling that story in the old frame aren't necessarily racist!

I love Cats! and try to see it when it's on tour in my area. If one year, a major production decided to do a hip-hop remix of the musical, I have no fundamental opposition to such a thing existing. But I can practically assure you that I would find it unappealing personally. However in a world where there were infinate Cats! musicals touring my town every week, I would actually prefer some of them be off-the-wall remixes in every way. But in the real world of scarity, Cats! productions are closer to zero sum. I either have to choose to pay to see a production I like less or not see it at all this year. Suppose, due largely to politics, it became trendy to mostly go forward with the Rap Cats version in the future*. Am I not allowed to be disappointed? Movies based on IP are even more zero sum.

(*There's actually a real analogy. Post George Floyd I will essentaily never be able to see the real cats again because songs were cut and rearanged due to 'racial' concerns about pirates.)

The other kind of race swapping is culture neutral. done in a way where the color or the skin is completely immaterial to the character portray. there is nothing at all wrong with this on its face. But there are three concerns.

  1. It's sometimes just a motte and bailey for cultural reframes. Then all the criticisms above apply PLUS you were lied to to deflect your criticism as racism.
  2. Immersion breaking. Part of what makes high production quality high quality is the depth of the immerision. Cheap sets feel cheap. Period pieces or blood line unrealism can break immersion and feel cheap or hokey.
  3. Meta-trends can also break immersion. If you watch 10 films all with race swapped leads and each on their own works just fine, but you know that the studio heads made big noise about race swapping for the sake of it, about representation, and about making Hollywood less white, etc, you might still have your immersion broken by the clear politics behind the trend, even if each one works self contained.

Meta-trends can also break immersion. If you watch 10 films all with race swapped leads and each on their own works just fine, but you know that the studio heads made big noise about race swapping for the sake of it, about representation, and about making Hollywood less white, etc, you might still have your immersion broken by the clear politics behind the trend, even if each one works self contained.

Ultimately that's what makes it intolerable for me. I don't have a problem with one adaptation doing "what if we tried changing the race of characters in this to challenge their expectations?" But now the entirety of culture seems to be about racism. Every single recent show or movie it seems, if somehow they can't make it all about racism, they will at least try to fit in a subplot or even just a line to remind you of it. Recently I watched The Nun 2, a horror movie about a spooky Nun-impersonating demon happening in 1950s France. What does racism have to do with it? It makes no goddamn sense why, but in this one the main character's sidekick is a an afro-american girl who was sent to a convent, all just so they could fit in a line about how it was better for her to become a nun out in Europe than be black in america. For the rest of the movie, all the things her character does could have been done by other characters.

I mean the typical suspicion is that this has become necessary to secure funding or to be allowed to have a chance to win an award, but it's so damn transparent; it breaks immersion entirely. At this point, it's so overdone, even if it were done with innocent intent, I will resent it. And it's hard to believe it's done with innocent intent, because it would be hard for one not to notice just how oversaturated every aspect of culture is with this message already.

My objection to ethnic swaps is also related to the use of race in (semi)original works; my best recent example is the The Last of Us HBO adaptation, which was overall very good. But I still noticed that no diverse person is ever allowed to be bad,. The closest we got was a reasonable Asian FEDRA school administrator who's technically a fascist, and Marlene, a character that is worshipped by 1/3rd of the cast, is a romantic revolutionary, and who's mild badness is part of the show's entire grey/grey moral choice thing re: Ellie. In "bad" settlement #1, everyone is a beardy Midwestern type you'd see at a MAGA rally, with guns and trucks, and they're obsessed with hunting down one particular guy, who appears to have been the only black man in town (and who has a great moral excuse for ratting on his neighbors, conveniently. In the game, he and his brother weren't being specifically hunted by white people, they were just survivors like the main duo). "bad" settlement #2 is also mono-ethnic. They run into one "good" settlement, which of fucking course calls itself communist and is run by a black woman. It's like Stephen King; black people are so good they're magic. You can always tell who's good and who's bad by where the African-Americans are. The game itself has this too, but it's pretty tame by comparison and I don't have issues with it beyond Noticing.

When you have to have diversity but also can't depict anyone diverse as "bad," all the antagonistic roles get concentrated in the non-diverse characters, and any diverse antagonist that sneaks in has a maudlin excuse that makes them tragic and sympathetic, only the straight white male is capable of just being evil.

Even if I agreed that the decision of large corporations to raceswap well known characters was only made for cynical reasons, isn't that too human?

Race based discrimination is also human, but I dislike it. Especially when it goes against myself.

And raceswaps done by large corporations are curiously oneway and match propaganda of my enemies (that positioned themself on their own). I am not interested in race based culture wars but I dislike surrendering even more, so if someone declared themself to be my enemy....

If you are using a scope on a rifle that you happen to know if biased slightly to the right, it's not 'curious' that all of your attempts to correct for it involve aiming further left rather than trying to correct in both directions.

You can argue that under-representation doesn't exist or isn't important or isn't what's actually secretly motivating these things, if any of those happen to be your beliefs.

But, your opponents on this topic have a clearly stated and compact narrative that fully explains their observed actions, it's not 'curious' and it's worth engaging with it at the object-level.

under-representation

Under-representation of whom? Of people from local society? Note that I am not from USA. POC are extremely overrepresented for example in ads or various educational materials compared to actual society. What is done under pretext of diversity. White people are underrepresented if anything.

Note that I do not really care too much about race-based colour stupidity, but at this point it starts to be dangerous and becomes actual discrimination.

My country managed to mostly avoid race-based stupidity due to smaller colour variations, I do not want to start having this mess now. (and it is not like people were more ethical Germans managed to murder millions of people over nose shapes)

In my opinion the difference between pre-modern and modern retelling are the following;

  • Retelling now is mainly born from corporate request based on ideology and not from the necessity of adapting a foreign work to the local audience.
  • But at least 19th century nationalist retelling are good because people that were doing that were good in the arts. The retelling now comes from the contemporary anglo-saxon woke tradition, that is simply not as good at telling stories.
  • And if the retelling come from non-corporate sources, it means that it came from some black or minority ressentement-obsessed person in the West. The Unknown author that rewrote the Myth of Orpheus for sure did not despised the Greeks. I am sure that the modern poc reteller actually despise the Europeans very much.

resentment-obsessed

Robyn Hood by Director X?

Retelling now is mainly born from corporate request based on ideology and not from the necessity of adapting a foreign work to the local audience.

Gen Z is 49% non-white and 21% LGBT.

Just because the location hasn't changed doesn't mean the audience hasn't changed.

This is about adapting to the local audience. That local audience just isn't exclusively you and me anymore.

My metric for judging demographic swaps is how much it breaks the universe the adaptation is set in. For example:

Retelling a Shakespeare play, but setting it in the context of 13th century Chinese court politics. Sounds fun.

House of the Dragon: One of the Valyrian clans is inexplicably African, but otherwise genetics works as it would be expected to. Tolerable, but it would have made more sense to have that clan be merchant lords from the Summer Isles.

Rings of Power: Every race (in the sense Tolkein used it) is inexplicably multiracial. Children don't inherit phenotype from their parents. Commoners use racial slurs about elves having pointy ears but pointedly ignore their complexion. Parts of middle earth where the people are canonically swarthy have the same clunky racial mix as everywhere else. Bad.

Netflix's Cleopatra: Cleopatra, a real historical person who was Greek and looked like this, becomes YAS SLAY AFRICAN QUEEN! Terrible

House of the Dragon: One of the Valyrian clans is inexplicably African, but otherwise genetics works as it would be expected to. Tolerable, but it would have made more sense to have that clan be merchant lords from the Summer Isles.

The hilarious part about this is the parentage of Rhaenyra's children is a major plot point, but despite all the (accurate) accusations of them being bastards, no one ever points out that they're white.

IIRC genetics works differently in the ASOIF universe, otherwise the plot of Game of Thrones(the book) makes no sense. So it isn’t that out of left field.

The Baratheon issue could probably be explained by meiotic drive, where a driving locus is strongly linked to a hair color locus.

All the more ridiculous when Eddard Stark's fate was sealed by a hair color mismatch.

Don't forget WotC's take on the Lord of the Rings, or Amazon's take on the Wheel of Time.

I'll be very honest that I have appreciated a lot of the controversial race swaps from a viewer's perspective just because it helps with keeping characters straight. Part of it really is just the nature of the medium, in my opinion. (Movies, I would argue, are different from TV in that movies are usually guaranteed a certain wattage of star power, while TV showrunners do have to wonder if tbeir actors are charismatic enough for the audience to not be confused by all the brown haired white guys or whatever.)

The good retellings

My earliest memory of a story retelling was that of Chex Quest. A Doom clone made for kids. With the cereal brand "Chex" replacing most of the blood, demons, and foul language with cereal motifs. Looking back on things it seems like a joke, how the hell did that thing even exist? I know there is a legit story behind the game, but I honestly don't want to read it. It is more fascinating to imagine how such a game could be created.

There is definitely something very cute and sweet about retelling adult themed stories for kids. I chuckle every time my young daughters belt out the lyrics to "Rich men north of richmond", and instead of saying "Your dollar ain't shit" they say "your doll er aint chic". That wasn't a reinterpretation I suggest or pushed on them, just what they seemed to have heard.

I also find cleverly disguised adult themes in children's media rather entertaining. The jokes in pixar movies that go over the heads of every kid, but they still laugh as they see their parents suddenly entertained and laughing along with the cartoon.

The Bad Retellings

There is however a hamfisted political messaging that sometimes gets shoved into stories. I find it bad, even when I agree with the message. I'm libertarian, and many of my fellow travelers treat Ayn Rand's books as holy text. I've instead always been highly turned off by some of her books. The short ones like Anthem were great. The long 60 page diatribe in one of the other ones is just ... gross.

The best political literature always seems to be written by the opposition (these are vague recollections, some or all of them might be wrong):

  1. Starship Troopers, a defense of a Fascist military dicatorship, written by Heinlein, who was closer to a libertarian by most accounts.
  2. Shakespear's plays nominally supported the king and monarchy of England, but other have pointed out the subtle and sometimes not so subtle critiques.
  3. Anthem, Ayn Rand's best book IMO, basically just assumed the communists had won, and depicted the shit society that would result.
  4. Terry Pratchett's discworld. I assume Sir Terry Pratchett didn't believe in the efficacy of a dictatorship run by a psychopathic assassin, but damn did he make that system look good.
  5. Bioshock. From what I remember of developer commentary they are generally pretty average liberal sentiments. They actually wrote a great libertarianish character. I think in the followups they continued to write some great politicalish commentary.
  6. Animal Farm, where the communist author turned off everyone from communism.
  7. Ender's Game, where the Catholic religious author has a religious awakening in the character that goes off to speak at funerals. While the secular psychopath older brother ends up ruling the world.

I've written a bit of fiction on my own before, and I kinda get it. I felt I was at my best when a story just came to me from the muses. I let it flow onto the page, and it took me in unexpected directions. I was at my worst when I had some ideas of how things SHOULD work, and I tried to shove them in and make a point.

Some stories written in the modern day just feel like all those authorial instincts and all the inspiration from the muse just got shoved to the side. They had a point to make dammit, and they weren't gonna let a good story get in the way of making the point. Sigh whatever, they ignore the muses at their own peril. No one will like or care about their stories in the future. Some idiot genius that learns to listen to those whispers of the muse will beat them 9 times out of 10 in the long run.

Harry Potter Legacy, the ugly storytelling

I recently beat Harry Potter legacy. Lots of good story telling in most of it. But it had a low point. A trans bartender. There was a disconnect between the face I was seeing and the voice I was hearing. I thought maybe it was some kind of audio mistake at first. Why did this female looking character sound like a dude with a throat problem? Ah, they had to hamfistedly clear it up later, "I use to be wizard, [other character] still recognized me after i became a witch".

Look, this is a freaking magic world. Polyjuice potions can completely imitate someone else, voice included. So whatever magic she/he figured out to change their appearance couldn't also target their voice? Seems dumb.

Also it had the traditional problem that once came with female superheros. They can do no wrong, and they are strong and powerful. She is the only one to stand up to a powerful evil wizard and the evil wizard just ... backs down and lets it go. Unlike every other time that particular evil wizard has encountered a problem. I'm sorry, what? A bar owner is a powerful and scary enough wizard to scare away one of the main villains of the game, while the entire Hogwarts staff, and government of magical England is just kind of an afterthought that the evil wizard isn't worried about at all?

Dumb. The scene should have been rewritten. Trans person shouldn't have confronted evil wizard, they should have hid the player character, and shamelessly lied to evil wizard. After the evil wizard leaves, trans person should have suggested the player character lay low. That would be in line with the behavior of someone that spent most of their life hiding a deep dark secret, and then decided that their highest calling in a magic world was to own a bar. The wasted story and unrealized character growth disgusts me far more than the hamfisted "trans people are great" political messaging.

A bar owner is a powerful and scary enough wizard to scare away one of the main villains of the game, while the entire Hogwarts staff, and government of magical England is just kind of an afterthought that the evil wizard isn't worried about at all?

I will admit, i do love the classic D&D trope of "the bartender is a retired level 18 fighter" and wish more media would lean into that. The evil overlord *isn't * afraid of the king, a level 7 noble, or his guards, a bunch of level 5 warriors (at best). But the old dude who wrecked 15 dragons and seven demon lords, and has his old +5 hackmaster hanging above the fireplace (crossed with a decorative useless sword), and the dusty suit of armor holding the menu is his mithral full plate of speed? Now *that's * who the overlord worries about, plans for, and tries to keep out of the fight.

Yeah, a lot of people fail to lean into the idea that D&D kingdoms that embrace leveling are, functionally, anarchic, and that there is no functional inherited monarchy anywhere, because power doesn't flow from the will of the people or having an overwhelming army, it flows from character levels, which can't be transferred or removed. It means that you can have the storybook endings where you kill the Evil Overlord and that does legitimately end the threat, but it also means that once anyone in an area reaches high enough level, they become de facto immune to the local government, and they get a veto over it that they can enforce with violence themselves.

Try to raise taxes on the retired high-level fighter? He can take a month off to go to the capital and murder everyone in the royal family and most of their defenders. Planning a military campaign against a nearby nation that would threaten the importation of the specific cultivar of hops that the retired adventurer prefers for his ale? Better hope he doesn't hear of it and show up to kill you and your army first.

And that's just the martial types. The high-level rogues can do all of this without you having any idea who they are or why they're doing it; it just is known that attempting certain kinds of governmental actions gets you murdered in your bed without anyone knowing who did it or how, and there's just too many categories of nation-state-level fuckery that high-level primary casters can commit to list here.

That being said, you get some fun results when you lean into the implications. In a campaign world I ran, there was an inn run by a full-on retired demigod who ended up being a sort of one-building buffer state between a kingdom and an empire; neither of the states risked any kind of military action in the area for fear of provoking him into leaving retirement, and both sides also ceded a good amount of unofficial territory where they didn't try to enforce their will just to make sure that no civic official got lost and made a nation-ending mistake. The results of all this was that I had a nice little low-level zone carved out for the PCs to start their adventure and learn about both nations and the world in general, and let them experience gentle scaling as they moved away from their starting area, plus give them a growing mystery when they returned periodically.

Ha! That is a fun trope. Would have potentially been interesting if that had been the trope they went with, but they didn't. She just bought the bar because she worked there waiting tables as a student and liked hanging out. It gave off more of a "I never escaped my hometown" vibe than a "retired level 18 fighter" vibe.

As funny as that is, this sort of thing used to drive me crazy about old RPGs. At some point you start asking why isn't the world run by bartenders.

The same reason the world isn't run by 160IQ geniuses with multiple PhDs really. Turns out running the world is a chore.

Just wanted to note that Orson Scott Card is Mormon, not Catholic and George Orwell definitely did not consider himself as a communist, but rather a socialist.

Edit: Also, imo, a book with a more interesting tension with Card's religious beliefs is Ender's Shadow in which the child genius main character has some extremely lucid thoughts about why religious people are mistaken.

I'd be surprised if those were the only two things I got wrong in that list.

Well the regime in Starship Troopers also very much isn't fascist but very strongly liberal, but that's a conversation in itself.

It's fascist in the loosest "the fasces is a good metaphor for an important concept" sense, but by that point the definition is so watered down that even Hilary Clinton ("It takes a village to raise a child", and obviously "Stronger Together") fits it.

In an arguably more important sense the politics in Starship Troopers are much less fascist than every modern country in the world. The mainstream modern approach to military service in times of existential (or too-often less-than-existential) crisis is the draft. We force people to take new jobs or be imprisoned, but instead of just backbreaking work in a field they'll also be getting shot at by and ordered to kill strangers, and since in the USA we'd like the Constitution to not stop us we somehow claim this service-which-isn't-voluntary doesn't count as involuntary servitude. One question Starship Troopers is trying to answer is: if you actually want to forbid slavery, then how do you still get enough people to take such horrible individual risks in service of a collective good freely?

a defense of a Fascist military dicatorship

Arguably "military dictatorship" here is the least accurate claim. A military dictatorship has a military leader or small junta in charge of everything; in the Starship Troopers' world the military leadership isn't even allowed to vote until after they become civilians, at which point an ex-General and ex-Admiral each get the same one-person one-vote that any single-term ex-Private got to start exercising decades earlier. If they win an election after that point, the connection between political power and military service is just the same indirect "it helped the voters respect me" that e.g. Eisenhower got.

Even "defense of" here is only like 95% accurate. There's a lot of self-justification coming from within the system about why they think it's a good system, and Heinlein did seem to be happy with most of that, but even in-universe they admit that the way the system got started was basically "there was some serious war, and afterward the veterans just didn't want to trust anyone who hadn't had their backs during."

Very obviously the race swapping is done in a very one sided direction while the opposite is condemned as cultural appropriation, racism.

It has a culturally genocidal element and is not unrelated to afrocentric ahistorical lies. It is cultural appropriation to the extreme.

I don't object to societies having their own version of Shakespeare plays with their own actors. Or adaptations like Departed and the such. But there is a point where this gets a more sinister racist hue, and this has already happened. The ideology of marxist nationalism or liberal nationalism for groups like blacks and other progressive beneficieries of progressive stack is key part of what is happening. And it is about racist devaluation of the history and culture of certain peoples to the benefit of other peoples and also under hateful spite from the perspective of an ideology that sees white ethnic groups as evil. Cultural marxism like original marxism promises utopia once the class enemies/ethnic enemies, oppressors are destroyed. This is part of said mistreatment, humiliation and destruction. Is cruelty and it is immoral and ought to be stopped and punished.

Ideally this tactic of not noticing this, or earnest inability to see what is happening should be accurately perceived as supporting this racist extremism and not be tolerated but treated as pathological and hateful. The slippery slope to hell includes massive amounts of downplayment and understatement while it is ongoing to bring us there.

It isn't all that complicated really. If you support massive double standards status quo at expense of X you really are a racist out to get X. What the policy is like in the actual is what we are primarilly debating. Because else you can tactically support how it is implemented by technically promoting it in the abstract. At the very least if you want to talk about abstract race swapping, you need to do the work to show that you aren't supporting the actual policies implemented today, in the way they are implemented today.

In a more general sense which should be less of the focus than how "race swapping is good actually" would be applied in practice today, which is in a blatant one sided manner, but still:

I believe that people have a right to have their own history, culture, traditions and that being respected. And while it is harmless for a different people to sometimes play with them, it is disrespectful towards groups for their own original history to be distorted and that is different from the way the original people are depicted. Race swapping if not limited promotes distortions of history. That is the difference between portraying historical figures as a different race and ethnic group that distorts how the original material and history is viewed to more minor local adaptations. Humanity has a long history of ethnic cleansing, and removing local names, cultures, and icons and replacing it with ones of another ethnicity. This race swapping can facilitate this and be a part of it. And it is today part of it.

Plus, authoritarianism in favor of antinationalism and anti-religion anti-nation, anti-race has already been tried and found to be extremely repressive and destructive. Even if it was possible to apply this in an even handed manner, it would still result in quotas applied and authoritarianism. And it is destructive of some of humanity's richness to deprive it of its nations and peoples and unique histories. In addition to cultural genocide, this ideology can lead to mass murder and has lead to it in the USSR especially, both in terms of genocides of ethnic groups (that weren't total genocides) and other targets of mass murder under a supposed antidentitarian utopian end. The end result is not diversity but a far left monoculture, and you get tribalism and repression in favor of the "antidentitarian" extremist faction who are intolerant of more moderate tribalists, who are more moderate tribalists on ethnicity, religion, etc.

This isn't what we got today. What we got today is blatantly bigoted concern trolling that promotes race swapping and extreme anti-identitarianism to its outgroup so that is retained (like extreme nationalists are extreme antinationalists for the nations they want to destroy and conquer) but this critique is nowhere near as present and excuses are made for progressive stack groups. We can see that anti-identitarianism didn't work on its own premise of eliminating anti-identitarianism.

Certainly not only in that it promotes extreme tribalism of antidentitarian tribe, but also ethnic conflict and other forms of conflict still spinns and groups which have an identitarian ethnic agenda such as outright tribalists for their own ethnic groups and liberals and other progressives that support racist discrimination in favor of ethnic ingroup and against ethnic outgroups hiding behind antidentitarianism have taken over what now pretends to be antidentitarianism which plays motte and bailey games.

Its tactical support of not caring about your culture/race promoted towards the outgroup. This necessitates for those who want to promote the general pro race swapping attitude to oppose the current status quo and the current movements with their motte and baileys, if they really are something different than them.

Of course, I have also argued against race swapping* in the abstract even if we were to agree that the way it is implemented today is blatantly racist the reality is that it is bad in that case as well but also anti-identitarianism has failed under its own goals and leads to racist movements that carry the pretense of anti-identitarianism to use it to undermine the outgroup at the benefit of the ingroup. What has happened and is happening is telling us what is the trajectory of this extreme antidentitarian approach.

  • I am not per se against it in a much more limited sense. Local analogues of culturally globally dominant productions for example. Not what is happening here. We actually have the historically illiterate nonsense of Afrocentrism being implemented. The end point of it is that Afrocentrist nonsense, especially where they apply towards europeans becoming taboo and hate speech to question.

It has a culturally genocidal element and is not unrelated to afrocentric ahistorical lies. It is cultural appropriation to the extreme.

I don't buy the concept of cultural appropriation. I've learned too much about things like Greco-Buddhist art and Daoist Christian syncretism to think there's anything wrong with "appropriating" cultures, even in the most sacred of contexts.

There's a difference between treating another culture or group with dignity and respect, and refusing to do anything with that culture's art, fashion or stories. I actually think it's a bit racist to refuse to let cultures mix and mingle as is their natural tendency historically. It would be much easier for humans if everything always stayed separated into Platonic ideals, but the reality is that especially in the Old World everything was very connected and ideas in one part of Europe might find their way to India or Japan given enough time historically.

The ideology of marxist nationalism or liberal nationalism for groups like blacks and other progressive beneficieries of progressive stack is key part of what is happening. And it is about racist devaluation of the history and culture of certain peoples to the benefit of other peoples and also under hateful spite from the perspective of an ideology that sees white ethnic groups as evil. Cultural marxism like original marxism promises utopia once the class enemies/ethnic enemies, oppressors are destroyed. This is part of said mistreatment, humiliation and destruction. Is cruelty and it is immoral and ought to be stopped and punished.

I think you're seriously misreading the situation in a number of ways. You see victory, and call it defeat.

When the Greco-Bactrian kingdom started depicting Buddha in Greek-style statuary, was this a humiliation for the Buddhists or the Greeks? No, of course not. If anything it showed the strength of Greek culture and of Indian Buddhist culture that when these two great cultural groups mixed they produced something new.

Western culture has been so successful that a Puerto Rican man made a musical about one of America's Founding Fathers and it was wildly popular. Was it a humiliation that many of the cast in Hamilton were black or Hispanic? Of course not, this is a sign of American and Western culture's strength, not its weakness.

I believe that people have a right to have their own history, culture, traditions and that being respected.

I'm sorry, but I honestly can't unlearn how artificial nations are. Modern Greeks learn about the Classics, even though a lot of Greeks are descended from the Ottomans and haven't got a bit of Hellenistic blood in them. The majority of French people didn't speak French until surprisingly recently in history. The drindl and lederhosen are the costume of specific regions of modern Germany, and not Germany as a whole.

It's all fake, fake, fake.

Not our nation of course. Our nation, uniquely among all nations, is autochthonous and authentic. It's totally real and wasn't the result of decades or centuries of nationalist agitation to make us think of it as primordial and true.

Plus, authoritarianism in favor of antinationalism and anti-religion anti-nation, anti-race has already been tried and found to be extremely repressive and destructive.

I think "nationalism" only makes sense if you are a nation. Yes, yes, I pointed out how nations are fake above, but the United States really isn't a nation. I like someone's description of it as a "civic state." Americans trace their origins to a common civic history, not a common birth like Japan or France.

At one point it might have been a proto-nation of primarily anglo origin, but today it is such a mess of ethnicities that I doubt if it can truly make itself a single nation, though the growing circle of those considered "Han" across Chinese history might provide an interesting template going forward. Certainly, "white American" has become somewhat of a group, as well as "black American" and those ties might be enough to call each group a nascent "nation." I just don't know if I buy that as a solid glue to hold together American society though.

Like, is it a humiliation to anglo Americans that many white Americans love institutions created by, of and for anglo Americans? Is it a humiliation that the anglo Founding Fathers can sometimes be depicted by people of obviously non-Anglo (if still white) actors?

Its tactical support of not caring about your culture/race promoted towards the outgroup. This necessitates for those who want to promote the general pro race swapping attitude to oppose the current status quo and the current movements with their motte and baileys, if they really are something different than them.

I don't know - I think Western culture is pretty awesome, but I'm not a chauvinist about it. I also appreciate (in Kipling's sense of the word) many of the non-Western cultures I've been exposed to. None of those cultures are "pure", isolated islands for the most part. Oni from Japan might have some influence from Indian rakshasa, and so on and so on, the lists of cross-cultural pollination are endless.

I'm pro-race swapping because I'm a student of history and the humanities, and those fields show again and again that you just can't keep a "pure" form of a culture around for any length of time. New circumstances always arise. There's always another tribe or nation or people along the horizon, ready to throw your conception of the world into disarray, or who just has a really cool story that you can't wait to put your own spin on.

It is bothersome that you dodged in your support of race swapping the issue of discrimination, and how race swapping involves a heavy dose of a choice to discriminate against whites for blacks.

I don't buy the concept of cultural appropriation. I've learned too much about things like Greco-Buddhist art and Daoist Christian syncretism to think there's anything wrong with "appropriating" cultures, even in the most sacred of contexts.

There's a difference between treating another culture or group with dignity and respect, and refusing to do anything with that culture's art, fashion or stories. I actually think it's a bit racist to refuse to let cultures mix and mingle as is their natural tendency historically. It would be much easier for humans if everything always stayed separated into Platonic ideals, but the reality is that especially in the Old World everything was very connected and ideas in one part of Europe might find their way to India or Japan given enough time historically.

Actual history is full of ethnic cleansing and conquerors repressing the culture of the conquered, destroying its symbols, delegitimizing the native ethnic group and asserting the culture of the conquerors. Cultural appropriation to the extreme is a much different thing than the reality that nations have cultural influences with each other. It is distorting my view to think I am promoting no cultural interexchange. Although there does come a point that you don't have an evolution of the same influenced by the foreign, but something completly foreign non continuous to the past.

The reality is that the marxist nationalist and liberal nationalist movement promoting anti-identitarianism against its outgroup also includes black nationalists, jewish nationalists, in the USA hispanic chauvinists and others, and a direct part of its agenda is the threat of native identity and promoting foreign to it identities. The agenda of dissolution of national communities comes along with hatred and mistreatment towards them and flows from that very source.

This can not be seen as a procces that results in a continuation of the same civilization but a displacement of it that promotes hatred towards its symbols and distorts its history. And there is a real rise of Afrocentrism, not only with black cleopatra, and other depictions of historical european figures as black, but a general arguement that they were there first and were significant. This does fit into cultural genocide.

I'm sorry, but I honestly can't unlearn how artificial nations are. Modern Greeks learn about the Classics, even though a lot of Greeks are descended from the Ottomans and haven't got a bit of Hellenistic blood in them. The majority of French people didn't speak French until surprisingly recently in history. The drindl and lederhosen are the costume of specific regions of modern Germany, and not Germany as a whole.

Modern Greeks are actually descended from ancient Greeks and so you promoted here nationalist propaganda against various ethnic groups. https://www.science.org/content/article/greeks-really-do-have-near-mythical-origins-ancient-dna-reveals

And you have confused the relationship with the Ottomans. Erdogan, the president of Turkey had a Greek grandfather. Most Turks in modern Turkey are historically descendant of turkified locals with some lower level of admixture by Turks. Actually Christian groups did not intermix much with the muslims but the muslims did get locals through conversion and through even methods like blood tax were they recruited from Christian families through force Janisaries.

And with some ancestry with other Ottoman subjects. It is more that some of the Ottomans were Turkified Greeks than the opposite. Plus at those times there was real seperation between groups.

Regional diversity has reduced among the development of modern nations that resulted in more homogenity. And yet the bonds that tie Frenchmen with each other and what they have in common are significant.

It isn't the same with those outside said nations which don't possess cultural, identity, ancestry, historical commonialities.

The biggest antinationalists towards other nations tend to be foreign nationalists who have mistreated them. However in modernity we also have another phenomenon. The hatred towards nations and religions in general has lead historically to a marxist movement that has lead to both attrocities and repression. Its a hatred and a prejudice, it isn't a good thing that you aren't able to respect people identifying with their national communities and try to undermine them.

It really is impossible to seperate antinationalism with the preferences of nationalists for nations they despise and with local antinationalism and self hatred. precisely because it is hatred it isn't a defense of western civilization since people of different identities outside of it, whose movements have talked negatively about western civilization as well, gets to put their identity front and center and also there is displacement of natives of western civilization with those outside of it which carry their own tribal different identities.

I think "nationalism" only makes sense if you are a nation. Yes, yes, I pointed out how nations are fake above, but the United States really isn't a nation. I like someone's description of it as a "civic state." Americans trace their origins to a common civic history, not a common birth like Japan or France.

No there is a historical American nation. America was created by a particular people and there is even part of mythology about piligrms.

At one point it might have been a proto-nation of primarily anglo origin, but today it is such a mess of ethnicities that I doubt if it can truly make itself a single nation, though the growing circle of those considered "Han" across Chinese history might provide an interesting template going forward. Certainly, "white American" has become somewhat of a group, as well as "black American" and those ties might be enough to call each group a nascent "nation." I just don't know if I buy that as a solid glue to hold together American society though.

If there isn't enough glue to hold things together isn't your rhetoric part of what is destroying the glue? What should hold USA together? Wokenes? We also see this same agenda you have promoted for old world nations so don't tell me it is just for the USA. Its nations in general you call fake.

Actually Anglos were primarily the historical American nation. But there was some room for assimiliation of whites in general mainly north europeans into a wasp identity. Then there were others and yes that did undermine the anglo nation but there was also less undermining with people like the Italian Catholic Scalia who said he tried to assimiliate into Anglo culture, and more with those who didn't.

A white Italian pretending he is a white Anglo in a story representing the American founders is more respectful and less distorting of historical America than pretending that American founders were black. If we had a story of Irish, Jews, Italians, Greeks, and Russians pretending that the American founders were that and not primarilly Anglos, it would be culturally destructive.

The smoother actually evolution of USA as a multiethnic nation is after having made a lot of room for those outside of the historical American nation to also respect the historical american nation. Which also there has been some continuing white ethnogenesis of a different sort through white americans becoming more mutt.

The alternative is antinativist racism and a glue of non whites of the world unite. Its intersectionality. Its a form of racist tribalism that already includes a heavy dose of racist discirmination and demonization, and will end in even worse tragedies, no matter how people who support it try to focus on the positive side. I believe a multi-ethnic identity that respects historical America and its continuing peoples even if it has made room for others is the way to avoid conflict and make justice. But it does require limiting immigration to not further damage the historical American nation. A bit like what Putin said that Russians are the Russian forming people but Russia is not only for Russians.

Of course had they restricted migration in previous decades, the glue would be even stronger. In any case, black Americans like white Americans are an ethnic group, but they are an ethnic group who unlike white Americans, their ethnic identity is not repressed whatsoever and have a strong seperate ethnic identity. Even many of those on the right like Tucker Carlson tend to be pro those blacks who see blacks as their people but also see themselves as Americans and like white Americans.

Conflict can be avoided if we punish antinativist racists and enforce the necessity of respecting the interests and rights of groups that progressives disdain. Doing so would not encourage nativist extremist racism since the extremis attitutes are predominently on the antinativist side towards europeans and adjacent groups. Moreover there is no issue with promoting in general a consistent stance that relates to respecting your own nation and its rights and is existence while also respecting the rights to others. And since multi-ethnic societies often lead to conflict and attempt of different ethnic groups or coalition to dominate the rest, and it really does undermine the rights of native people this can work better with homogeneous societies which also try to respect others rights.

Practically yo uare going to have in certain places of the world multii-ethnic society and you don't side with dissolving it as a multiethnic society, then it is necessary in my view to try to maintain the peace and a certain mutuality of respect. This aspect exists to an extend although with much extreme far left dogma with intersectionality where there is some promotion of mutuality of respect among left wing groups.

I wouldn't enforce quotas based on population but it is a good norm for people to respect white Americans a group, and I say this who I am not an American.

Is it a humiliation that the anglo Founding Fathers can sometimes be depicted by people of obviously non-Anglo (if still white) actors?

We see quotas and a real slippery slope. No reason the race swapping can be just "sometimes". But yes it can be humiliation and more than that if done systematically enough it can be cultural genocide if there is an agenda to distort and delegitimize depicting ones ancestors with their own people.

Also, it is a fact that foreign peoples do not identify with the founding fathers in the same way historical Americans did and even some who successfully assimiliated to said nation. Nor do we see as with the Turks for example who are quite nationalistic, any attempt by the race swapping faction to force the newcomers to abadon old allegiance and align with the historical American nation. Rather, they legitimize a POC seperate identities and grievances against western civilization. And where the original story is changed as an appeasement it signifies that it can not be celebrated on its own merits precisely because who the founders were matter. A distorted picture is disrespectful of the historical American nation. Plus we can't forget the recent films that race swap europeans and propaganda from BBC how blacks were there from the start. There is an Afrocentrist agenda promoted that will only becomesmore pervasive and unquestionable and when that happens I don't expect you to argue against it.

I'm pro-race swapping because I'm a student of history and the humanities, and those fields show again and again that you just can't keep a "pure" form of a culture around for any length of time. New circumstances always arise. There's always another tribe or nation or people along the horizon, ready to throw your conception of the world into disarray, or who just has a really cool story that you can't wait to put your own spin on.

You were critical of race swapping just recently, so I wouldn't take your claim that you are pro race swapping at face value absent of who is race swapped. Since the race swapping is from white to non white yes you are in favor, but otherwise I am not convinced you are pro race swapping as a general principle.

htps://www.themotte.org/post/667/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/137944?context=8#context

Yourself have said in regards to a mod race swapping from non white to white:

If someone in your orbit decides to add a mod that turns all the characters into BIPOC they/thems, and you became aware of it, would you not immediately jump to a conclusion on why they might have done such a mod? Modifying the media you consume is theoretically morally neutral and apolitical, but once your media habits become public they are subject to public scruitiny.

So you are willing to think a sinister motive for race swapping in general when it is from non white to white but not for the opposite.

I am not going to personally attack you and call you names for it and it isn't an irrelevant outside the direct issue view. It really is the core of my claim that this faction is inconsistent so it would be unfair not to be able to quote since is the my central thesis about anti-identitarianism. So in a restrained manner about it without refusing to make the argument I do believe your previous stance does counter your current pro race swapping stance and reinforces my argument that the so called anti-identitarian faction is inconsistent and carries with it particular sympathies. It is for some ethnic groups and against others while its general view of being against identity in general does not apply in practice in how they operate. Its concern trolling the outgroup when it is convenient to do so.

If it was about opposing identity politics in general, there would be more support of race swapping in the ways that gores progressive mythology and that is controversial to the groups of the progressive stack.

Beyond this specific case, rather than waiting for proof before a shadow of a doubt, I would argue that based on experience of how the general faction has operated, we should not be giving the benefit of the doubt those who present as anti identitarian when it is harmful to non progressive ethnic groups, but consider them to be behaving by purer motives only if they themselves demonstrate to begin with an attitude that is itself indicative of someone disrespectful of also the identities that are especially indulged in American politics. Like the black one. Anti-identitarianism can be seen as the genuine and not motte and bailey, only if it promoted to begin with in a manner that disrespects the progressive sacred cows too, and also we see this movement and the people with this ideology operate in this manner for a long period of time so we can judge how it acts on the long term, and we can conclude that "yes, now this is not the same motte and bailey we are used to".

However, even a consistent anti-identitarian could end up having to content with the problem of what Trotsky called positively collectivism of individualism, and the ruinous consequences of this kind of ideology that even when followed sincerely often people end up victimized akin to foreign conquest with their culture and society disrespected and them hated for having a national or religious community. This marxist mentality does not lead to nationalist extremists or religious fanatics restrained, but hateful anti-identitarian tribalist extremists who hate more moderate people wanting their nations and their heritage to exist. I condemn the worst fanaticism of this anti-identitarianism which can't tolerate the continuing existence of nations which are part of the richness of humanity.

And there is a reason why even right wingers like Carlson are willing to tolerate a certain level of tribal identity for blacks for example. It isn't just appeasement, but there is a basic respect to their right to being part of their community.

You are not going to be able to impose this collective individualism without a heavy amount of repression, and it won't have good ends. But in practice this coalition does this against white ethnic groups and not against black and certain other progressive aligned ethnic groups. Maybe it is against Japanese too. Since race swapping in general sense is seen as more defensible than particular racism, and also it isn't accurate to claim that the issue is race swapping in the abstract, it isn't charitable to those negatively affected by this process to pretend that the debate is about race swapping in the abstract.

So in a very real sense we can see that the the nations you primarilly focused upon which were european nations are fake. Not whether all ethnic groups are fake. But much more so the real issue in regards to influential organizations that pretend indigenous europeans are not indigenous.

Not our nation of course. Our nation, uniquely among all nations, is autochthonous and authentic. It's totally real and wasn't the result of decades or centuries of nationalist agitation to make us think of it as primordial and true.

There are some more recent nations but plenty of ethnic groups with a long history. Also there are peoples who are descendants of the same people who lived in the area but assimilated into different ethnic groups. Like many Arabs in the near east, before arab invasion they were part of the native grecoroman culture, and before that conquest part of other local groups.

Actually both foreign conquerors and in modernity marxists and leftists have used plenty of heavy handed methods to oppress nations. Nations have survived and resisted even foreign occupation so it is a distortion to pretend it is all about nationalist repression and propaganda. These kind of heavy handed methods wouldn't be necessary if nationhood was a feeling inorganic, based on just propaganda and repression and not representing the bonds of people sharing culture, shared destiny, identity, ancestry, religion, history.

Nobody is autocthonous in a literal sense but in the way the term is applied, plenty are. It means in practice being part of your region for a rather long time. It is a loss of nuance and understanding to pretend this concept doesn't apply to plenty of peoples. And it is useful concept to recognize that there are those who rightfully belong in a place and more complicated cases and of course interlopers. One could use the same logic of all property being derived originally through some theft to justify stealing in regards to property rights. Or undermine property rights as marxists have done. So I refuse this logic of cultural marxism that leads to the destruction of nations and disrespects their rights and brought so much unnecessary misery in the world. Its a fundamentally broken ideology that fails under its own premises and can never bring the utopia it promises but only destruction against the targets it resents.

Modern Greeks are actually descended from ancient Greeks and so you promoted here nationalist propaganda against various ethnic groups.

Fair enough, I stand corrected on this point. It doesn't fundamentally undermine my position that nations are artificial.

So in a very real sense we can see that the the nations you primarilly focused upon which were european nations are fake. Not whether all ethnic groups are fake. But much more so the real issue in regards to influential organizations that pretend indigenous europeans are not indigenous.

I considered including a few paragraphs on things like Hindutva in India, and the erosion of diverse languages and cultural groups in Indonesia, but I didn't think it was necessary.

My basic opinion is that humans are social primates with hardware designed for groups of ~150 individuals. Using this hardware, we've managed to create social technologies that allow for greater numbers to be part of organized wholes: religions, nations, etc. Really, it's remarkable that we've been able to create social technologies that allow millions or billions of humans to work together. Whatever else you might say about the current capitalist world order - its ability to coordinate the actions of billions of humans is truly remarkable.

Nations being a social technology does mean that they're "fake" - we did have to invent them. I don't deny the existence of "clans" or "extended families", but I do think once you've reached a certain size it is only ideology and centralization of power that allows us to conceptualize such things as "Han", "Yamato", "French" or "Mexican."

htps://www.themotte.org/post/667/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/137944?context=8#context

Yourself have said in regards to a mod race swapping from non white to white:

If someone in your orbit decides to add a mod that turns all the characters into BIPOC they/thems, and you became aware of it, would you not immediately jump to a conclusion on why they might have done such a mod? Modifying the media you consume is theoretically morally neutral and apolitical, but once your media habits become public they are subject to public scruitiny.

So you are willing to think a sinister motive for race swapping in general when it is from non white to white but not for the opposite.

There is no contradiction between what I said there, and what I am saying now. I was then and am now in favor of people making and using mods for video games of any kind.

My post there was descriptive, not prescriptive. I was saying that media habits that become public are subject to public scrutiny. This is undoubtedly true. I said nothing about myself attributing "sinister motives" to other people either way. People's private "vices" are their own business.

Even if there were unabashedly white supremacist mods being made, they don't seem to have lead to any real world harm, and so I don't see a need to prioritize them as an issue.

It is bothersome that you dodged in your support of race swapping the issue of discrimination, and how race swapping involves a heavy dose of a choice to discriminate against whites for blacks.

Anti-identitarianism can be seen as the genuine and not motte and bailey, only if it promoted to begin with in a manner that disrespects the progressive sacred cows too

I apologize if I've misread you, but I don't think you've understood where I'm coming from. My entry point into this topic is much more tied up in my aesthetic philosophy than any pro- or anti-identitarian sentiment.

I didn't omit discrimination in my argument because it somehow escaped my notice as a possible motivation for race swapping. I omitted it because it is completely immaterial to my reasons for supporting the creation of new artistic expression inspired by what has come before.

I'm fully in favor of roasting progressive sacred cows as well, if that is something someone wants to do. Nothing I said implied I wasn't, and I have consistently maintained that I would be in support of things like white Othello or white John Henry when pressed.

I think you're seriously misreading the situation in a number of ways. You see victory, and call it defeat.

If they had started out not having white characters at all, and then decided they had an interest in white people and started adding cultural elements with the race changed to something else, and if they did this out of a growing respect for the cultures with the whites in them, that's victory. If they had started out having white characters and then took them out, and they didn't respect the culture that those characters came from, that's defeat. It's especially a defeat if it's done under circumstances which don't allow anyone to legally create non-racelifted versions of the characters.

Japan creating a Japanese version of Spider-Man is victory for the culture that produced Spider-Man. Amazon changing races in Wheel of Time is a defeat.

don't buy the concept of cultural appropriation.

Do you buy the concept of desecration? The idea of wishing to act upon that which others value, because you know it will dishonor or devalue that thing for them?

If you recognize this mode of behavior, do you think it is a good thing?

Was it a humiliation that many of the cast in Hamilton were black or Hispanic?

No, it is a humiliation that for many people, the founding fathers can only be respected if they are reimagined as black or Hispanic.

You see victory, and call it defeat.

To the extent that I value the Founding Fathers, it is for specific reasons. If others value them for completely orthogonal reasons, that is not a victory for my values, and may in fact be a defeat.

Was it a humiliation that many of the cast in Hamilton were black or Hispanic?

To the extent that it was a symptom of the creeping racialization of American society, yes, it was in fact a humiliation.

I'm sorry, but I honestly can't unlearn how artificial nations are... It's all fake, fake, fake.

Like our elections, amiright? ...Oh, shit, no, that's probably the super serious and absolutely unshakably real part that we're supposed to treat as sacred and beyond questioning, since that's the primary mechanism by which we keep the peace between ~350 million fractious, heavily-armed and not terribly sociable murder apes. I mean, you've correctly identified that the idea that we're some sort of common, cohesive culture and values-set to unify us is laughable, so it's a good thing we have indestructible, immortal rules-based systems that are impervious to defection or manipulation or loss of trust, right?

Yes, yes, I pointed out how nations are fake above, but the United States really isn't a nation.

No, it's really not. And it's the sort of thinking you're displaying here that made that the case.

Is it a humiliation that the anglo Founding Fathers can sometimes be depicted by people of obviously non-Anglo (if still white) actors?

If we really are reducible to white Americans and black Americans, given that I'm not black, someone cheering for the black Americans isn't cheering for me or mine. This seems to me to be an absolutely fantastic reason not to reduce us to so ignoble a state as our race, and I will continue to resist all efforts to do so. That includes people deciding that the only way the Founding Fathers can be appreciated is if they're race-swapped and translated into rap.

There's always another tribe or nation or people along the horizon...

One might be forgiven for observing that only a self-described "student of the humanities" would frame this fact as a hopeful, optimistic eventuality. Perhaps you should lean a bit harder on your history, and the record of how new tribes and nations and peoples usually affect those who came before.

Maybe I would believe it wasn't solely about cultural conquest if:

A) It didn't only seem to happen in one direction, male > female, white > minoritized.

B) It didn't extend to actual, literal historical figures; BBC nonsense about black Romans and portraying pas English queens as black.

C) Proponents of race swapping didn't immediately crow about things like "ha, Aragorn is black now, take THAT white men!"

But as we don't live in that world, I'm forced to conclude that it is merely a hostile cultural takeover and attempted erasure of my culture and people from as much media and history as possible.

The problem with race swapping is that people (rightfully) associate it with lazy cash grabs. Characters like Miles Morales generally have pretty high approval ratings because he is an interesting character in his own right and they didn't just make Peter Parker black. They actually put them in the same movie in a pretty creative way and I think most people appreciated that they actually put in effort. But when I see a "diverse" character that is just making Ariel black with some woke tropes inserted in the old story then I make the jerk off hand sign until the end of time. I also think people aren't dumb enough to not realize it's anti-white and essentially iconoclasm as part of a coordinated demoralization campaign. But I honestly have no problem with race swapping in theory. I would have probably watched an Idris Elba James Bond for example as long as they made his back story interesting.

The problem with race swapping is that people (rightfully) associate it with lazy cash grabs.

To clarify, are you arguing that people only get upset that they're not being pandered to?

No I mean it is literally the laziest shit ever and terrible art and is rightfully hated. It should be hated even by people who love diversity and hate white people. I also personally don't like it because I think it's anti-white iconoclasm that is part of a coordinated demoralization campaign. However, I also don't agree with hippies and the New Left from the 1960's, but even I can admit they made a lot of amazing art. If woke people were making good art, I could appreciate it even if I disagree with the messaging. But it's terrible and it's woke so to me it is just absolute dog shit. It's in the same tier as Christian movies like God's Not Dead just with higher production values. Often it's even worse than fan fiction. It's the perfect snapshot of America: trying the same tired ideas over and over again with worse and worse results and with less and less white people.

But I think in theory you can do race swapping well. I used Idris Elba as an example because if they redid the backstory where Bond is a code name and they created an interesting and unique black character it could be good. And I Thought the Miles Morales movie was pretty good even if it's pretty "woke" for lack of a better term. And as much as I don't like it, we do live in a more diverse society so that will be reflected in movies, but at least they could bother to make them decent occasionally.

Characters like Miles Morales generally have pretty high approval ratings because he is an interesting character in his own right and they didn't just make Peter Parker black.

People can repeat this as many times as they like, but I refuse to believe it. At best, it just feels like historical revisionism.

Miles was very much made as a black Spiderman, and only worked when they actually, y'know, killed Peter off. It's telling that the only way they made Miles work as a character when matching him up with the original was by changing the original completely - making him older, wiser, and a little more cynical.

No, Miles is just a bad collection of racial tropes pasted onto the original, and very much a racial takeover of the worst type - oh, and he has a hot blonde girlfriend, because that's what always happens with black characters in American comics, for some reason.

'Comic book popularity' is a worthless measure when the entirety of comic book sales in America are outshone by a single manga series. 'But the movies' are a worthless measure given all the sheer effort they had to do to make it work, and when people talk about 'Into the Spider-verse', all I hear is stuff about Miguel O'Hara.

So, no, I disagree. I place Miles alongside all the other race-swaps - worse, because people keep trotting him out as 'one of the good ones', when he really, really isn't.

I've never read a comic book in my life so those could be different. I thought the first movie was pretty good though and I went in expecting to hate it. Also isn't he gay? All I know about him is that movie and people's impression of it and the video game which people seem to really like.

The problem with race swapping is that people (rightfully) associate it with lazy cash grabs.

I agree, but I think the problem is the lazy cash grab, not the race swapping. All of Disney's live action remakes have been dull and uninspired, and the race swap in The Little Mermaid was hardly its biggest problem. Let's start with the fact that they somehow turned a lean 83 minute movie into a two hour and 15 minute slog!

Obviously, I prefer good storytelling and craft to bad storytelling and craft, when deciding my media diet. I would like to hope the vast majority of people do, though the evidence is strong that the masses prefer "junk food" more than works that are profound, thought-expanding, etc.

This is me, though I think a lot of the mania for “race swapping” has more to do with the terrible state of Hollywood writing and, as someone mentioned below, cost cutting than any desire to create minority heroes.

The evidence comes through quite clearly.

First of all, other than Morales, these are not new characters telling new stories in ways that are different than the “white” versions of these stories. In almost every case, what changes are made to the character are almost always superficial, and can often be very obviously inserted into the white character by adding a few throwaway lines of dialogue, or simply recasting the role. If you took those bits away from the character, they are still the original version. The little mermaid isn’t really that different from the original 1990s version. Rey, other than falling for Kylo Ren doesn’t do very much specific to being a woman. She’s a male character played by a woman.

Second, the way these films are marketed is pretty obvious. There had been female leads in adventure stories before. Aliens has a female leas, and she’s pretty badass in my opinion. Star Trek Voyager had a female captain (and a black captain in DS9). The stories weren’t sold as “minority character takes over”, but as stories in their own right. The preening of telling the audience, repeatedly, and at every opportunity that the minority protagonist is superbadass and has it so much harder than any mere man isn’t there.

I agree, but I think the problem is the lazy cash grab, not the race swapping.

The problem, such as it exists here, is that our society so undeservingly valourises minorities, that race swapping functions as an aegis against people calling out your shitty product for being shitty. "They're not upset because our product is low quality, they're just RACIST! Quick, buy our shite and tongue-bath it online to show how NOT RACIST you are!"

There's also an element of "the so-called writers care more about hamfisting their precious representation and sermoning their diversity spiels through the script than about actually making a good product". The product is more often than not just a vehicle for propaganda, and so much the better if it entails the desecration of something a group of their hated enemies (whites, men, nerds) holds dear. Hollowing out an IP and puppeteering the corpse to spout your dogma is the ultimate in cultural conquest.

I think the alternative view is that they’re sermonizing and hamfisting representation as a mostly successful way to sell a shitty product that if it weren’t diverse wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. I can’t remember the last movie I saw that had me thinking about it more than ten seconds after the credits roll. That’s not diversity, that’s shitty writing. Most modern movies are playing the same CGI action tropes and the same jokes and the the same franchises over and over. The world of Hollywood writers have been drinking their own kool aid for half a century with no new ideas allowed.

I think that what you’re describing is fetishized anti racism. I’m not even sure how much the writers and producers care about anything they produce. It’s just used to avoid criticism as criticism of something with a diverse cast is racist.

But I’ll point out that even the shows that are produced without special attention to diverse casting are equally shitty, and equally as poorly thought out. Picard isn’t spectacularly diverse, but there are all kinds of plot holes and plot armor and so on that really make the show hard to watch. It’s everywhere and I think it’s a big problem.

Elba as bond I think is an interesting point. Mainly because most of the race swapping doesn't seem to be for any reason other than race swapping.

Remember when Halle Berry was Catwoman? Aside from the movie being garbage I don't remember anyone caring that Catwoman had been race swapped and that was because they chose an A-list (maybe at the time) actor with talent to play the character. Or when Michael Clarke Duncan was Kingpin? How about Sam Jackson as Nick Fury? Will Smith as Jim West? Similar feelings I assume will resonate with an Elba Bond. How about Morgan Freeman as Red in Shawshank Redemption?

It just feels like regardless of acting ability fifteen years ago they'd race swap Bond to Elba, or Doctor Who to someone with the star power of like Chiwetal Ejiofor. But nowadays they'll race swap the doctor to a third lead on a Netflix comedy. I'm sure he's a good actor but it's just an easy trend to spot where the race swapping also ends up making things cheaper production-wise. The Little Mermaid's black, "who's playing her?" someone who's black. The doctor is black, "who's playing the doctor?" someone who's black, and gay, and wasn't born in the UK. I think it's obvious that it feels different now because they really do it different now and it has a lot to do with agenda pushing or the pretense of agenda pushing to get a cheaper actor.

Catwoman is a particularly interesting example of race-swapping, because her actresses were white, white, black, white, black, white, white, and mixed black/white. The first black Catwoman was Eartha Kitt, in the final season of the Adam West Batman TV show, taking over from Julie Newmar (TV) and Lee Meriwether (movie). Catwoman was white again when Michelle Pfeiffer played her in Batman Returns; then back in black when Halle Berry played her in Catwoman; white with Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises; still white with Camren Bicondova in Gotham; and most recently split the difference* with the mixed black/white Zoe Kravitz in The Batman.

In the live-action versions, Catwoman has firmly established a pattern of inconsistency on the question of her race. Eartha Kitt's portrayal was still part of the original live-action Batman franchise, and was long enough ago that if it was influenced by politics, it wasn't modern politics. (Plus, Kitt could chew the scenery with the best of them, and the Adam West era was extremely camp.) Berry and Kravitz can be fairly described as continuing the legacy of Kitt, rather than an appeal to Modern Audiences (/echo effect); there hasn't been a one-way racial ratchet, as Catwoman has switched back and forth multiple times; and given that Gotham is a major metropolis (no pun intended), any ethnicity is reasonably plausible.

*Technically, for the second time. Halle Berry is usually described as a black actress, but she's the daughter of an interracial black/white couple, like Zoe Kravitz.

Once again I'm reminded that American racial vocabulary is fucking weird. I have seen Catwoman and there is no way I'd assume Berry was black if not told.

Seconded and endorsed.

A bit rambly, but I wanted to take it beyond race swapping to bring up what I feel is the elephant in the room, copyright.

Adaptations are not made equal. I think it's worth drawing a line between third party adaptations, and the copyright holders rubber stamping an iteration of their Brand for Current Year. Most of the complaints I see are about the second kind, new iterations from the same corp.

I find it especially understandable for people to loudly complain about adaptations they dislike for one reason or another for characters that are "ongoing" with a lot of entries in the franchise like Superman, because changes tend to bleed forward. Even if it's a reboot or whatever, I'd say that changes for a character constantly 'in print' by the same publisher are a little bit closer to changes done in the middle of a TV series than it is to someone else coming along hundreds of years later and copying the good bits from an old and complete story.

Complaints about a Dracula movie will tend to take the form of "This particular movie is bad", complaints about entries in long running copyrighted franchises tend to come with annoyance that a version that audience member liked didn't get made, and anxieties for the future of the franchise in the audience's lifetime. Let's take Bob, he likes James Bond but doesn't like Daniel Craig. As long as Daniel Craig was James Bond that means Bob's favorite actor does not get to be, other companies are NOT free to take up the reins and make a James Bond adaptation with Bob's favorite actor. They can make other spy things but to remain in the legal clear, they would be forced to change other elements that Bob does not want changed.

Another angle is the fear of George Lucasing/memoryholing of old versions, which is also much less of an issue for old public domain stuff anyone can legally print an infinite amount of copies of.

A bit rambly, but I wanted to take it beyond race swapping to bring up what I feel is the elephant in the room, copyright.

To extend this further, even in the absence of copyright, you'd have contentions over what symbols and stories should mean because you can only have one cultural consensus on anything - that's the meaning of the word consensus. Demanding that people not care about what others say is pointless, especially when some consensuses are rooted in what is moral or not.

Who are the Ghost Busters? A group of men who fight ghosts in the 1980s? That's not the answer some people want.

Who is Ariel? Is she a black mermaid? That's not the answer some people want.

I actually fully agree with you here. I think it will be interesting to see what happens when Superman becomes public domain in 2034, and the Hobbit in 2043. It is rather unfortunate that copyright terms are so long that very little current pop culture will be available within our own lifetimes, though.

There's a difference between adapting an ancient story to better suit your immediate geographic & cultural mores and constructing a beat-for-beat remake of something that's like 30 years old where the only difference is that the cast is made up of the right suite of POC.

It's also a matter of tone. A lot of modern race-swapping feels more deliberately combative to the source material.

I am all for completely swapping the culture of a story. Shakespeare in space with aliens could be awesome (maybe, it might also suck depending on who does it). The Magnificent Seven was The Seven Samurai in the Old West, and Yojimbo was Red Harvest in Japan. Go for it!

In a slightly different framework, Catholic art often depicts the Virgin and Child in localized versions, wearing traditional garb and looking like the locals, whether Mexican or Chinese or Italian or Thai. https://www.flickr.com/photos/mojotrotters/5522889053 That obviously doesn't mean people think Mary and Jesus were east Asian or blonde, it's just a way of portraying their universal applicability to all people.

You can even just race swap various characters without explanation, like when Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves played brothers in Much Ado About Nothing, and no one cared because it was Shakespeare.

It's the ham-fisted diversity point scoring that drives people nuts, where they randomly change a character, then expect you to notice and be impressed at how they are portraying diversity without actually addressing how that change would work in the story.

like when Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves played brothers in Much Ado About Nothing

Half-brothers

I don't think very many people have a problem with things like West Side Story, with an entire culture swap?

Or things like The Princess and the Frog, where the black heroine has a reasonable place and culture. I don't remember anyone complaining about moving the setting, because it made sense.

The Little Mermaid might have been interesting if they had an entire Black Mermaid culture, complete with a black king, and a sensibly different aesthetic than Ginger Mermaids. The problem isn't that mermaids must be ginger, but that they didn't really do anything interesting with the changes, which seems lazy and boring.

It might be interesting to have an Othello where everyone is black, except Othello, who is asian or something, and the Jew is some other minority people have opinions on. But having his race stand out and get commented on suggests that he should at least look like he comes from a different group than everyone else.

The problem with lazy race or gender swapping is that it's lazy, not that it never makes sense to clothe stories in contemporary culture.

the Jew

You mean the wicked betrayer Iago? In my high-school class analyzing Othello we were taught that Iago was an example of prejudice and ethnic discrimination that would have been popular at the time. Anti-Spanish prejudice that is.

Perhaps I should watch the Patrick Stewart Othello if it's available online. I've basically forgotten it all, and am just left with bits emphasized in pop culture like "pound of flesh."

Othello was about "pound her flesh", not "pound of flesh".

I guess you've forgotten it all then, because that one's from Merchant of Venice.

Lol, I have. I should just stick to 2000s Disney, apparently.

The "pound of flesh" was from Merchant of Venice, not Othello.

Race-swapped Othello has been done, with Patrick Stewart playing the title character.

Figures it would be, it's always tempting to spin out a new Shakespeare variation.

These kinds of santized retellings of stories are so widespread that they're barely commented upon by people nowadays, and they have a lineage going back at least to the likes of Thomas Bowlder's 1807 The Family Shakespeare, which included such changes as making Ophelia's suicide in Hamlet into an accidental drowning.

"Bowdlerize" has had strongly negative connotations for more than a century. And that's despite the fact that Bowlder's editions were meant for children, rather than trying to push them on everyone or replace the original.

I don't find race swapping to be necessarily bad, but it's often at the very least a red flag.

As for your Sir Orfeo example, I have much more respect for a full-scale consistent race/location/culture swap than inconsistent piecemeal swaps that seem as if to attempt a replacement of the source material.

"The Wiz" is fine. Disney's "The Princess and the Frog" is fine. Disney's "The Little Mermaid" remake is not fine, but it would have been if they called it something different and marketed it differently.

I'm not anti-race swapping; it can add to the work and is usually neutral. I do have a narrow complaint about how it's often done in fantasy. Ostensibly isolated villages show the full panoply of human skin tones (sometimes even lineal descendents!), as do each different fantasy race, which makes it harder to suspend disbelief. I'd much prefer e.g. LotR to make all the elves black than to make every hamlet a multiracial paradise.

I think some of the issue is that film as a medium is closer to a raw pretended reality than other storytelling mediums. In an opera, a young man might be portrayed by an adult woman, and in a Shakespearean play a woman might be played by a boy, but in a film we expect that the world being portrayed is fairly close to what is "actually happening" in the story, and when that expectation is challenged it might pull us out of the story.

But there are plenty of exceptions to this rule. Musicals are an obvious example, where something completely unrealistic happens all the time. And some forms of Indian cinema might have breaks from reality that would be jarring to Western viewers, but completely natural within that cinema tradition.

That said, it's not hard to imagine an explanation like "fantasy world genetics are different from real world genetics" or something along those lines. That's obviously more of an issue for something like LotR, which is an imagined past for our world, but with enough epicycles you could pre-authorize any changes along these lines.

That said, it's not hard to imagine an explanation like "fantasy world genetics are different from real world genetics" or something along those lines.

You could, but that gets awfully hard to justify when the main character uses his knowledge of Mendelian genetics to discover infidelity. "Children consistently inherit hair color from their parents, but skin tone is pseudo-random" would require a lot of epicycles, and I don't think they even had one.

In fact, the support for piecemeal race-swapping I've seen has actively avoided in-world justifications, and boils down to "because it's [current year]" when it isn't "because fuck you, bigot".

there's something to me a little silly about insisting that Superman's Jimmy Olsen must always be a light-skinned redhead, or that Aragorn was, and can only ever be a white man

Exactly! And that's why it's way past time that John Henry be depicted as a trans pan differently abled bi-racial Latinx!

Oh, but John Henry is different? Why?

Magic:The Gathering puts out a deck of cards depicting Aragorn as black. Well, woo-hoo, except why is Arwen still white now? Race swap everybody, or admit you're only doing it to sell more tat.

Tar-Míriel being mixed race in Amazon's "Rings of Rip-Off" didn't bother me. Giving Elendil a made-up daughter and Pharazon a made-up son so they could have a very weak and wet semi-sort of romance bothered me a lot more. The dirty little psychopath Harfoots bothered me more. Dísa popping up out of nowhere with not even "yeah she's a princess of the Stonefoots" bothered me more. Having Galadriel decide to swim the entire Atlantic Ocean, no biggie, bothered me more.

Changes need to be organic, not "how many boxes off the DEI bingo card can we tick?". Mixed-race Tar-Míriel? Can be defended, since we don't know who her mother was and what the maternal bloodline was like - it's possible (however far-fetched) that some of the loyal and faithful Easterlings or people of Harad were included with the Houses of the Edain that were gifted Númenor in the past. But the rest of it - the black Elf? Yeah, and where does he come from? Where are the other black Elves? When you only have one black Dwarf, one black Elf, etc. then it's plain you're not adapting to local circumstances, you're box-ticking. If the 13th century adaptor had changed Sir Orfeo to be a British harper-king, but left everyone else Thracian, we'd see the reason that was a poor choice.

Exactly! And that's why it's way past time that John Henry be depicted as a trans pan differently abled bi-racial Latinx!

Oh, but John Henry is different? Why?

You seem to assume something I don't agree with. Sure, bring on every variant of John Henry under the sun! Give me a white Black Panther, or an Asian Othello - nothing is forbidden in storytelling. I have experienced multiple versions of Cyrano de Bergerac, and I would imagine if you asked a person 100 years ago about a version where he's a little person, they would have thought it strange, and yet I loved Peter Dinklage's portrayal of the character in the musical.

John Henry is not an exception to what I say. Even sacred figures like Buddha can sometimes wander across cultures and become a Catholic saint.

Changes need to be organic, not "how many boxes off the DEI bingo card can we tick?".

I'm curious what you think the process is for a change to be "organic".

Do you also think Kirill Eskov's The Last Ringbearer, which recasts the orcs as the good guys, is inorganic?

Do you think the decision of Marvel's writers to take the originally red-haired Thor and turn him into a blonde character is "organic"?

Do you think that the manuscript traditions of the Mahabharata where the lower caste character of Karna is made more powerful is "organic"?

To me, there is no "organic" or "inorganic" retelling of a tale. There is only the storyteller's art, and what you make of the material you are given. If I was retelling the Greek myths, there are parts I would embellish and polish and things I would omit and they all feel perfectly natural situated in the particular time and place I am in. Saying any of the changes I would make are "inorganic" is to assume there's some way I "should" be telling the story, which I reject.

To me, there is no "organic" or "inorganic" retelling of a tale. There is only the storyteller's art, and what you make of the material you are given. If I was retelling the Greek myths, there are parts I would embellish and polish and things I would omit and they all feel perfectly natural situated in the particular time and place I am in. Saying any of the changes I would make are "inorganic" is to assume there's some way I "should" be telling the story, which I reject.

If all art is organic, you should prioritize a bit more trying to argue against the authoritarians today in control over the race swapping issue.

Since those who are now in charge share your ideals when it comes to art they appreciate but not when it comes to art they label as all sorts of ist. Which relates also with the race swapping they are doing. Clearly some art is better than others in their eyes because it ticks diversity or ideological boxes.

In which case you need to be arguing more against them and it seems your voice is joining them.

You seem to assume something I don't agree with. Sure, bring on every variant of John Henry under the sun! Give me a white Black Panther, or an Asian Othello - nothing is forbidden in storytelling. I have experienced multiple versions of Cyrano de Bergerac, and I would imagine if you asked a person 100 years ago about a version where he's a little person, they would have thought it strange, and yet I loved Peter Dinklage's portrayal of the character in the musical.

Then your proposal isn't particularly relevant since what you say you are in favor and what is happening are quite different. Race swapping in practice is not the one that white black panther happens. I think it is important if you are true to your claims of favoring race swapping in an even handed manner, to oppose the current way it is implemented.

Or you don't care if it is evenhanded and race swapping is good anyway, at any point, even if blatantly one sided? In that case it is suspicious and it seems you are converging with an one sided agenda. It is easy to argue general principles in favor of the outgroup getting it, if you are out to get your outgroup. More convincing if you argue it in a way and in a time and place that would benefit what one suspects your outgroup to be.

It's interesting that you reference the Mahabharata, because I've seen different adaptations of it and I have noticed that the character is made more heroic or a champion of the underclass or what have you, but they've been building him up since at least movies in the 60s.

So that's organic.

Do I care that Marvel movies made Heimdall black? For about three seconds, then I went 'well the comics version of Thor is so different from the mythological original, why not?'

Now, if they made Thor black... but Marvel do squeak past this with the multiverse notion of all kinds of variations on our Earth so that heroes here may be completely different on other planes or not even exist.

Do you also think Kirill Eskov's The Last Ringbearer, which recasts the orcs as the good guys, is inorganic?

Yes I do, but I also understand the political reasoning behind it.

I think the white version of Black Panther is The Phantom, but okay. Give me white Black Panther and Asian John Henry.

Except we won't get them, and you know why as well as I do. So your coyness about "why shouldn't Aragorn be black?" isn't simply "times change, peoples change, we adapt to our own local circumstances the legends we inherit from other cultures". Aragorn should be black! But John Henry should never be anything other than what he is! White Aragorn is racist, but black John Henry is just the way things should be.

"Organic" is not "hey, we need more Purples in this movie. Focus groups show that Purple Representation is the hot new topic. Just write in a few Purples, doesn't matter if it makes any sense or not".

Except we won't get them, and you know why as well as I do.

As big Hollywood movies, maybe not. But even I am sometimes surprised at what people are able to come up with.

Miku Binder Thomas Jefferson might have been super cringe, but I also think it was 100% sincere and "organic", even by your own standards. Some Gen Z artist saw Hamilton, and liked that depiction of Thomas Jefferson by a black actor in a play enough to take it one level further. That's just how people interact with media in this day and age.

Look at this list of Undertale AU's. All of that seems completely organic to me. Some people just like imagining their favorite video game characters in a cozy coffee shop, or as vampires, or whatever. This is only even scratching the surface - there are Undertale AU's that have their own Undertale AU's that have their own Undertale AU's with videos on Youtube that have thousands of views. It's a wild rabbit hole.

If I never have to read another! god! damn! coffeeshop! AU! I'll be a happy camper 😀

Look at this list of Undertale AU's. All of that seems completely organic to me.

Sure. Many changes from the original in fanfiction are organic.

That doesn't mean the same is true for changes in published works.

Now, if they made Thor black... but Marvel do squeak past this with the multiverse notion of all kinds of variations on our Earth so that heroes here may be completely different on other planes or not even exist.

While generally disliking random swapping, I really enjoyed the Loki variants, which were absolutely in line with the theme of the character and show.

What I'm finding really odd is that Loki season one was all over my dashboard on Tumblr (and yeah, the variants were indeed funny). But season two? Not a sausage. I'm very curious as to why that is, but nobody seems to be talking about it and I have no idea why.

Just another victim of the general burnout on Marvel?

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