Race in Visual Novels

[carosene]

This topic could explode into flame-war quickly... so hopefully we can have an intellectual discussion without anyone getting upset.

There's a lot of OELVN games that take place in Asia, and have characters that are light-skinned South-East Asians. Which is logical. VNs originated in Japan, it's normal that a lot of people making them would be also Japanese or have an interest in Japan or just feel that that's where the medium generally takes place.

There are also games that take place in Western countries and primarily have characters who are racially and ethnically European.

And then there's games that take place in an unspecified place and have characters that I call "whasians"--characters who could be light-skinned South-East Asians or they could be white Europeans. (If this term is in use and offensive someone please let me know. O.o)

Aaaand that's pretty much it.
Some games have a token character who is ambiguously brown.
But the representation of specific races--black people, East Indians, Latinos, Middle Eastern people... is severely lacking.

I know this is at least partly because a lot of our community's art is inspired by VNs and anime and manga--where everyone is Asian or white or whasian with the rare ambiguously brown character.
But a lot of us come from much more diverse countries than Japan.

So, my question for you is
1. What are your thoughts on race in VN games?
2. What is the racial make-up of your game(s) and what are your thoughts about it?
3. Let's name all the non-white non-light-skinned-South-East-Asian characters in OELVNs! So yeah, ambiguously brown characters, black characters, all that we can think of!

I start!
Banong from "The Fucking Question"
Ime from "<3" (Well, she's a robot, but she's still ambiguously brown!)
Marlain from "Dream Savior Gakuen"
I don't remember their names, but there were a couple black characters in the Heileen games...

[LVUER]

I think there's already a thread like this in the past. I forgot the link (you could search it but I'm busy atm). The title is "Ethnicity in VN" or something like that if I'm not mistaken...

[Snowflower]

I think there's already a thread like this in the past. I forgot the link (you could search it but I'm busy atm). The title is "Ethnicity in VN" or something like that if I'm not mistaken...

Perhaps you are thinking about this?

[sake-bento]

I think there's already a thread like this in the past. I forgot the link (you could search it but I'm busy atm). The title is "Ethnicity in VN" or something like that if I'm not mistaken...

There was a recent thread on this topic, but it devolved into a flame war, so it's best not to revive it. If we can have a great discussion, I'm all for it, so this thread will stay alive for now. bo_o


Date Warp: Janet is Indian.
Heileen: Ebele and Robert are both of African origin
Bionic Heart: Tina (not sure, but dark skin ahoy)
Card Sweethearts: Carla is Brazilian.

Magical Diary has at least one dark-skinned character. I'm currently writing a Hawaiian boy right now (>.>).

[Auro-Cyanide]

Yeah, here it is http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... f=4&t=9346 , though technically that is about ethnicity, not race. Though most people end up talking about race anyway as if it equates to the same thing. Which it doesn't.

I don't feel much either way. It is really the creators choice. I certainly don't care about race enough to really bother what race a character is. I don't think people should care. Some people come from homogeneous communities and others come from more heterogeneous ones. That has an impact. Your reference material also plays a role.

At the end of the day, you could have this conversation about many things. Like, why don't characters have different nose shapes? Everyone has different noses and yet people tend to draw them all the same.

I have a couple darker skinned characters, but I never really consciously sought to make them that way *shrug* They just are. That is the way they popped up in my imagination and so that is the way I drew them. I never think "Oh, I have to make this character black because everyone else is white" or "I NEED to have a racial mixture". I let my characters be who they need to be. And I would be extremely annoyed if someone said I was wrong for having a cast of white characters. That just means they are thinking about the wrong things and they are the one's with a problem with race, not me. Ever seen that South Park episode?

[Suikama]

Yeah, here it is http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... f=4&t=9346 , though technically that is about ethnicity, not race. Though most people end up talking about race anyway as if it equates to the same thing. Which it doesn't.

I don't feel much either way. It is really the creators choice. I certainly don't care about race enough to really bother what race a character is. I don't think people should care. Some people come from homogeneous communities and others come from more heterogeneous ones. That has an impact. Your reference material also plays a role.

At the end of the day, you could have this conversation about many things. Like, why don't characters have different nose shapes? Everyone has different noses and yet people tend to draw them all the same.

I have a couple darker skinned characters, but I never really consciously sought to make them that way *shrug* They just are. That is the way they popped up in my imagination and so that is the way I drew them. I never think "Oh, I have to make this character black because everyone else is white" or "I NEED to have a racial mixture". I let my characters be who they need to be. And I would be extremely annoyed if someone said I was wrong for having a cast of white characters. That just means they are thinking about the wrong things and they are the one's with a problem with race, not me. Ever seen that South Park episode?

Man you took the words right out of my mouth :V

Yeah it exists, but in general it shouldn't make that much of a difference. We're all still people after all right?

[Auro-Cyanide]

Yeah it exists, but in general it shouldn't make that much of a difference. We're all still people after all right?

Exactly. The only reason I would acknowledge a character's race as important is if it is important to the story. Someone dealing with racial discrimination at school. The dying out of a race. Regional races. That type of thing. In these cases it is important to acknowledge and understand the circumstances. But if race has no direct consequence to the story, why should anyone care?

[carosene]

Lol, I choose to post this when the last thread was posted only a couple months ago... XD Sorry guys...
Well, if people keep talking and it manages not to become a flame war than that's awesome?

Yeah, here it is http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... f=4&t=9346 , though technically that is about ethnicity, not race. Though most people end up talking about race anyway as if it equates to the same thing. Which it doesn't.

Glad to hear someone else say this.
For those of you who may not know the difference, this is what I was taught:
Race: A category that was decided for you based on biological markers.
Ethnicity: Your cultural heritage that you identify with.

It's confusing because a lot of the times they have the same name.
Example: You can be racially white and ethnically Jewish, or racially South-East Asian and ethnically Korean-American, etc.



Auto-Cyanide, you have some good points, but I'm going to (respectfully XD Prevent flame war!) disagree with you.

I find whenever I discuss issues of race in the media, I argue that positive representations of non-white groups need to be shown to encourage equality. The argument quickly turns into whether or not racism still exists in my culture, and if it does exist, is it big enough to be a "problem." (Spoiler alert: White Americans, especially Republicansv who live in all-white communities, don't think it's a problem.)

So, here's my response: Visual media creates a standard of "beauty."
The obvious example is we put the most beautiful actors and actresses in movies and on TV shows, and a lot of them started out as models.
When a viewer looks at that standard of beauty and doesn't find anyone that vaguely resembles them--no one of their race or their skin tone, what kind of message does that send?

For example, when was the last time you saw someone on your TV with the skin tone of Alek Wek?

Her image is almost shocking, isn't it?

Obviously we don't have the influence of TV or movies or whatever, but we are creating a visual medium, and as such, I think we have the option to see and create new kinds of beauty that reflect on different players.

Auto-Cyanide, I wouldn't tell you to make a member of an all-white cast of yours to a different race. But I think that we as creators should think critically about our reader's perception of race in our visual novels.

[Auro-Cyanide]

@carosene. I get your point, and it is probably the most predominate way of thinking about it. I think this is because race and racism is still such an issue. There are definitely different ways of approaching it, and they can all prove to be effective. While some may hold up an image of a black woman and say "She is black and beautiful", I prefer to just think that she is beautiful. Race has never been that important to me. I notice it of course, it is a bit hard not to, but being surrounded by so many races and having only meet a handful of openly racist people, I don't know, it has never coloured the way I see people. I see quite a few people of such dark skin tone regularly. There are a couple families that live around here, very tall with ebony skin.

Once I was talking to one of my friends from high school at uni while she was with some of the people from her class. Her, and all of them, where Asian. I thought it was kind of funny being the odd one out. It doesn't happen very often here. Usually you are surrounded by at least 3 different races and I don't think I have meet anyone recently that wasn't of mixed blood. Everyone seems to have 10 different heritages

I suppose that I think that by drawing attention to race, you can sometimes inadvertently just highlight racism, on both sides. I know racism exists, but I have personally decided to not try to make things equal in a forced way, but just expect everyone as human. Instead of trying to make my work more or less racially mixed because I feel other races are under-represented, I just tell the story and let the characters exist as who they are. This is probably a very naive way of thinking, but I think that if everyone thought like this, racism wouldn't be a problem.

It is like the episode I mentioned where

the characters are assigned to redesign the city flag, which shows a black man being hung by white people (yeah I know, insensitive X( ). The adults argue over the need to eliminate racism and the preservation of history. The kids, however, think that the whole issue is over execution, and not race. Race wasn't an issue for them.

As stupid as that show can be, sometimes they say a lot of stuff that makes sense.

[IonicMomo]

The GxB VN I was working on for NaNoRenO (still unfinished, due to a backlog of coursework...but never mind that) has a black female protagonist. Is there a particular reason for this? Not really. I'm not black, I'm actually Indian. But regionally, it makes sense, because the story is set in Detroit where there is a large African-American population. Incidentally, the two possible love interests are white. Now I know someone is going to make a fuss about this, but I honestly wasn't consciously thinking about the races of the characters when I designed them. I actually designed both of the males before I designed the female protagonist. And, at any rate, the fact that she is black is unimportant and has no relevance to the plot. I don't think it's even mentioned. It's just there. The story doesn't address any racial issues, but I think that bit of racial diversity adds a layer of realism, because does take place in a region where there IS diversity.

(It may or may not be unrealistic that I avoid addressing the issue of race altogether, especially in a city with a history like Detroit, but it really didn't have a place in the story I was telling.)

[LVUER]

I think it's normal to have a black-skinned love interested in place where there are lots of dark-skinned people (and it would be a little strange if it actually not).

Kinda like RE5 case. People scream it's racist because it feature black-skinned zombie. Come on!? I mean what's so strange if there are black-skinned zombie in Africa? And it would be (a little) strange too if Sheeva isn't dark-skinned woman too... (I mean Chris would definitely need a local teammates).

[Snowflower]

I think it's rude if you put a misfitting token dark skinned character into the plot that makes no sense. I don't judge by the colors of the characters' skin, but if it's misfitting then it would definitely get me to think "What?!" With any race for that matter

& if certain race is used in a negative way, I don't appreciate it.

So bottom line, if it's what the plot calls for, mostly positively, I am all for racial diversity in VNs

[chensterrain]

I'm definitely for racial diversity, but I also definitely agree that characters should just be whatever race you imagine them to be - nothing irritates me more than when a minority character is totally defined by their race / ethnicity, and put into a story solely for the sake of diversity. Of course, it's often pretty hard to tell what race a given character is even intended to be, especially if you're working within the anime style (or any style where characters' facial features are pretty similar no matter what); quite a few of the characters in the game I'm working on aren't white, but it's pretty hard to distinguish say, Iranian and North African and light-skinned mixed-race from the Northern European characters. The main character is vaguely tanned and is meant to be of indeterminate ethnicity, but you wouldn't know it unless you put her next to one of the lighter-skinned characters. There are quite a few clearly non-white characters in the game, though - the main winnable boy and his cousin are ambiguously brown, and a few of the side characters (see avatar :B) are clearly black.

Either way, I think it's best not to think too much about character ethnicities - it's great to have all races represented in VNs, but I'd rather have a homogeneous cast than one with token minorities put in to make a point. (Unless they're very well done, I really dislike heavy-handed race morals in stories, especially when the character concerned is the only minority character in the cast. My life doesn't revolve entirely around my race, y'know! It's that sort of thing that makes me vaguely leery of stories where the main selling point seems to be the non-white main character, despite being non-white myself.)

(...That said, having more brown people in VNs would be pretty awesome. Hurr )

[Elenakiara]

Oh yay! xDD I'm glad I can talk a bit more on this topic since my thread kind of went down the drain last time... >////<''

For me, like some people already mentionned, I wouldn't put in a token character just so that I have diversity in my stories. xD I think it really depends on the situation and the character himself/herself.
For my roman story, I'll mostly put ligher characters because they fit the roles, but I'm definitely going to go more diverse in my city-based stories. It just makes the story more real in a way. xD

Also, I'd like to add that I feel racism appear when people use the color of a person's skin when talking about them... D: Like on "What Would You Do?", where when white boys did something bad, people just said 'boys'. As if that's the norm. But when black boys did the same thing, they said 'black boys'... u.u'' tsk tsk tsk

[papillon]

Magical Diary has a large cast... let me see if I can remember everyone.

Virginia, Donald, and William are black (and siblings)
Isobel is mestizo
Kyo is East Asian (edit: So is Suki. See, I did forget somebody!)
Pastel is half South Asian and half Sylph.
Damien is... blue. And a character who won't even appear until a later game is almost certainly gray.
Corrinna is ambiguously brown because she's a minor character at this point and I haven't written her full backstory yet. I originally intended her to be black, but I now think she may be mixed-race, and she's only onscreen for about ten seconds in this game anyway, I'll work it out in the sequels.
I also have notes on characters who never have and probably never will appear on screen, to fill out the freshman class numbers. Of those, one is arabic and one is filipino. No one knows this but me though.

Personally I find it hard to imagine a school in the US where everyone is white! (Well, I suppose in some locations in some states it would happen, but certainly not usual...)