mearchy / dilfneto

That was a really, really good day.

Slow morning start. Didn't do much until about 10, when I decided to take my meds and go to Mickey Ds. In the drive through, I got my APPROVAL LETTER FOR MY THIRD MMCC KIT!!! EEEE!!!

No fix list! I have the first approved Post Imperial Master kit! It's approved and I'm going to be able to troop in it for May 4th!! I have bragging rights forever!

So that delayed the rest of my day while I texted absolutely everyone who might care about that. By the time I was done freaking out, it was time to go to the college for my appointment filling out the FAFSA. Not great but I'm glad it's done and the guy who helped me was lovely. Before heading home I picked up some leather dye.

Got home, and discovered my amazon package came! New shoes and 9 volt battery holders! So I dyed the belt loops for my new holsters, did a few finishing touches on my flak vest, and upgraded my helmet fan. Then went to get celebratory Approval Tacos with Cyare. We had a nice night, and I did some work on my big final accounting project.

And Andor season 2 is tomorrow. Things are great- that was such a kickass day. Currently procrastinating going to bed because I don't want this epic day to end.

Leaving this daily journal public because I want the day my PI Master kit got approved on blast for all to see!!

I've already made a tumblr post about this but I want to talk about it again on a website where I don't have to worry about phrasing things in a way that I'm okay with getting spread around to dozens, possibly hundreds, of strangers.

The fandom pretty much agrees that the animated clone model looks absolutely nothing like Temuera Morrison, who is a Maori man, and the clones look like pretty generic White Guys. I agree with this, and it's especially egregious with the bad batch, who bear basically no resemblance to the clone model, and certainly none to Tem.

The animated model has straight hair with the exception of some cadets clearly based off of Daniel Logan, who has wavy hair. Temuera Morrison has very curly hair. (See tumblr post for a couple pics from one of the few movies he grew his hair out for.) The animated model is very angular, while Tem has a rounder face shape and features.

For years the tumblr fandom has been aggressive and accusatory about fanartists whitewashing the clones. I think this is a problem for several reasons.

1- Bringing attention to the fact that a professional animation studio creating models for one of the biggest media corporations in existence did a shit-awful job at representing a Maori man is different from getting after fanartists who want to draw their blorbos. Of course fanartists should think about this too, but it's different. You should not attack individual people in the same way you would attack a company.

2- A lot of fanartists are young, probably teenagers, who don't have a wide base of artistic expertise yet. They have a comfort zone and have not stepped outside of it. They probably haven't thought of going back to use the Jango Fett actor as a reference instead of just referencing the characters they are drawing. This isn't a moral failing and everybody needs to stop acting like it is.

3- What has ended up happening is that the fandom has created a culture of fear where you had better make it CLEAR that when you're drawing a clone, you are not drawing a white man. The fandom has failed to motivate people to draw Temuera Morrison. So long as you are not drawing A White Man.

And this has created a strange phenomenon where people will draw the clones with a significantly darker skin tone than Tem has. His skin tone, depending on how much sun he's had lately, varies from quite pale to a warm medium tan. I've seen fanartists drawing the clones as black, complete with a delineating line where their palms are light. Drawing a Maori man as a black man isn't as progressively inclusive as everyone seems to think it is.

I keep seeing people bemoaning the 'loss of melanin' specifically- especially with Echo, who, sure, looks like a damn ghost now, but with all the clones in general. The animated model skin tone is not the problem. These are men who grew up on a planet with like 8 days of sunlight out of the whole year and they were inside for those 8 days anyways. They live in armor. They aren't getting tan. The melanin is not the issue.

Especially wild is when I see skin tones that are darker than Tem has ever had, but they leave the hair... straight. Or give the clones loose fluffy wavy curls.

And I feel very confident in saying that fanart of clones who just sort of look like if you race-bent the animation model to be black (in the more extreme examples of this) is a result of fandom witch-hunt fear culture. Fanartists feel like if they don't make it clear that they are Not Drawing A White Man they'll get cancelled. So they draw A POC Man but don't really bother actually looking at Temuera Morrison.

Just... either draw Temuera Morrison or draw the animated model. Stop inventing a third guy that doesn't look like either. And I'm not going to cite some Moral Impetus or guilt trip anybody- which is exactly the sort of shit you get on tumblr and exactly the kind of thing that got us to this point in the first place. Draw either Tem or the animated model for me, because the third guy annoys me.