#beemoov bullshittery

[linaselandbasil]

Whitewashing in Eldarya: A man of science rant about beemoovs bullshit pt.1

What is whitewashing?: this word has a couple of different uses, but in this context I mean deliberately making things more 'white' and thus alienating and erasing POC.

For example, they try so hard to make Lance white. Bitch, just draw him like god intended and stop complaining!

Okay introduction over. Let's cover the less extensive topic I want to talk about.

Huang Huas character design:

She looks weird. I always hated her character design. I think what happened is they didn't know that darker skin has to be shaded different.

She looks grey (in retrospect, this may be coz she wears a lot of orange and yellow, despite having a pink undertone. Although, she should not have a pink undertone, when the skin is this dark, its more accurately described as having a red undertone), probably because the artist messed up and thought that simply lightening her complexion would make her face look less.... I dunno. The point is that it didn't work as intended.

Dark skin is more reflective compared to light skin. It might appear that the glow simply looks more prominent because of the contrast, but that's not all there is to it. Melanin absorbs UV to protect them from sun damage and it also reflects some of it. The absolute darkest skintones of sub Saharan Africans provide as much protection as SPF 25 sunscreen. (The minimum recommended by dermatologists for everyday wear is 50) So, my point is, you can't just use light skin techniques to draw Dark skin. You need to make the contrast between the lightest and the darkest colors more drastic.

Her undertone... It makes me want to just evaporate. I love good art and I love beautiful people, this is simply not it dear. If you look up a tutorial for drawing dark skin they might tell you that the darker you go, the redder to make it. This is because there's five different types of melanin, two of which I'll tell you about. Eumelanin is more prominent in dark skin, it has brown and black subtypes. I, for example have a warm undertone (yellow, not pink) so I have this. Pheomelanin is more prominent in lighter skin and this gives ginger hair and freckles it's red color. (I assume it's a recessive trait, since light skin is a recessive trait) So, in lighter skin, there's a lack of eumelanin, the pink color of the skin is mostly from the blood underneath and the yellow undertone (if you press on your flesh for a long time and release you will see it) is from subcutaneous fat. (which is not white like duckfat) The darker you go, the redder the undertone gets from the eumelanin covring the yellow fat. The blood doesn't get conealed because it's not as deep down as the fat.

Okay, I'm done talking about her skin. Let's get angry about something else: her facial features.

She has basically no afrocentric facial features, I accredit this to the artist not knowing how to draw them, so I'll try not to roast too much.

She has dark skin, which is a dominant trait, but a small nose, thin lips and straight (alright, wavy) hair, which are all recessive traits. This is a rare combination, but not impossible.

(They do have very simmilar face shapes, supporting my phoenix magic skin color change theory)

Her home is the land of the Ren Feng Huang, her people have been described by Erika as "dressed in Chinese style clothes". I feel like this is a microagression, please shut up Erika... She, so far is the only dark skinned Ren Feng Huang. So the case might just be that her Phoenix powers grant her dark skin to protect her from the sun's flames and she's just as white as Huang Chu (who has freckles, that's pheomelanin). Feng Zifu looks vaguely east Asian, but he also has a lot of European features like the sharpness of his cheekbones and his deepset eyes. (And his non-existent lips 💋)

The Feng Huangs are made out to be this holy Saint never did anything wrong ever totally crimeless nation, so they might just have good immigration policies, I dunno.

So anyway, her homeland looks like a very simplified view of 'china'. Bunch of bamboo, cliffs, terrace farming. I assume the climate is what we can expect from "china", humid summers and cold winters. (Although China is fucking huge. The country has more than one climate region.)

For breathing warm, humid air, wide noses are most adapted. For breathing cold, dry air, tall and long noses are adapted, for dry, hot air, hooked noses are most adapted. She appears to have a small, pointy nose with narrow nostrils, which is not well suited for any climate and is a recessive trait.

She has a little mouth ad well as moderately thin lips. Lip size is not that important for survival, but I should note that thin lips emit less heat, therefore they're better for cold environments. Big lips are a dominant gene, thin lips are recessive. If someone has one copy of the dominant gene (one copy comes from each parent) and one recessive, then the dominant gene will determine their appearance, but they can still pass on the recessive gene to their offspring. Some genes work together to make an in-between. Small lip gene+big lip gene makes something in between. (I don't know how recessiveness effects this phenomenon) Two toned lips (pigmentation on top, no pigmentation on the bottom or partial pigmentation on the bottom) are very appropriate in her case, kudos for that. (Im pissed that they forgot it when they drew Lance and Val. I demanded an apology) Also, some people with a lot of melanin often have yellow tinted scleras because there's some of it there too. This used to scare me because I thought they had liver failure. It's not something that every dark skinned person has, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Okay, now about hair. This has to be the most controversial topic for some fucking reason. Thick, dark and curly are dominant traits. Thin, light and straight are recessive. A gene combination of curly and straight work together to make a softer curl pattern or wavy hair. (Wavy hair is just very lose curls, I have wavy hair but it appears straight because it's silky and thick, causing gravity to straighten it. When i was a child it used to be a lot thinner and i had really nice 2A waves.) I don't know what benefits there are to having straight, thin hair, but apparently this weak recessive trait is so beloved by our one and only beemoov that they made nearly every single POC character without curls. Thick, curly hair is better at basically everything it's supposed to do. It shrinks into a dense protective layer, shielding the head from the sun like an afro helmet, it traps more air underneath to keep the skin warm when it's cold, it's straight out just harder to pull out. I don't know which dumbass, cousin banger ancestors of mine decided that straight hair is pretty enough to srlect for, but I digress. I can live with it. (At least I have green eyes, which is the only recessive trait that I find beautiful. It's still dominant over blue though)

Have a look at this handy chart:

Okay I'm done with Hua. Pt.2 is about Lance and Valkyon because I'm low-key obsessed with them. My bebes.

Have a great day! (I swear of this doesn't spark a conversation nothing will.)

[linaselandbasil]

Nobody:

Erika's spine according to beemoov:

Love the scoliosis representation. How progressive.