"YaeVizsla;c-1598563" wrote:
"Arbitrator;c-1598351" wrote:
This has got to be one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve ever seen. Oh God forbid that Revan is a white male! The horror! /sarcasm
Get over yourself. There are a multitude of awesome heroes/villains from all races, ethnicities, and species. I’m so sick of SJW’s trying to act like being a white male is a bad thing. Why can’t we all just have awesome heroes/characters that we can relate to?
Revan IS a white male.
The exile, Meetra Surik, IS a white female.
SWTOR is an amazing game whose storyline also deals with the continuation of Revan’s story. As such, part of the storyline should be regarded as “KOTOR 3”. Revan is awesome. Drew Karphysyn, the creator of Revan, even wrote the storyline behind Revan in SWTOR.
The only reason you are allowed a choice of sex/gender when playing KOTOR was to be inclusive to both males and females and allow players to play the game as their “own” story. The actual canon version of Revan is a white male.
SW:tOR, KotOR, and the Revan trilogy are all non-canon.
Every depiction of Revan is equally non-canon. And as this chain of releases is explicitly celebrating the anniversary of KotOR, one could easily assert that the most relevant non-canon Revan of them all is KotOR Revan. Who is an AFGNCAAP.
That said, even if we rewind to before the Disney buyout, when these multiple works were all canon, they were just that. All canon.
And that's a word that gets misused a lot. "Canon" is a word appropriated by media from religion. It does not mean a timeline or historical account. It does not mean the work is necessarily factually consistent, though that is often preferable. The book of Genesis has two completely distinct stories of creation back-to-back.
"Canon" refers to a body of work officially deemed worthy of consideration.
In Legends, novel Revan, the poorly shaven white dude going through the events of the novel, was canon. SW:tOR Revan, also a poorly shaven white dude, was canon. KotOR Revan, the user-generated and user decision guided player character with the entire potentia cloud that generated was also canon. They are all part of the overall body of work officially deemed worthy of consideration. All of these versions were canon, even when they were mutually exclusive.
"I hope any version of Revan introduced to the game respects Revan as the user-generated character they were in KotOR," is not, "Being a white dude is bad!" However, representation matters, and we have a disproportionately massive number of white men dominating Star Wars. What's more, back then, it was much more dramatic. We didn't have Finn and Rey and Amilyn and Rose and Ciena and Grand Admiral Sloane and Dr. Aphra. Which made the fact that you could actually make, say, a black woman, and she actually has some agency in a Star Wars story important.
Given it took us eleven movies to get one black woman on the big screen with a name, I'd say we're not quite even yet. Heck, unless the Sith Assassin is secretly black under there, we currently have zero in Galaxy of Heroes. Not that I blame them for not picking Val as one of the Solo toons.
Given the choice between respecting two of the Revans, or all of them, why not make Revan gender neutral? Especially when the version that would be disrespected is the one whose anniversary we're supposedly celebrating right now.
Yes, yes if you consider the buyout none of the “legends” material is no longer OFFICIALLY canon... until Disney specifically makes it so. Heck even for the most part none of the Old Republic was really ever “official canon” for the Star Wars universe. It was all “expanded universe” which now falls under “legends” for Disney.
The point remains that white, male Revan WAS considered the “official canon” for that particular story before the buyout. The KOTOR games gave a choice for inclusivity to allow players to play their own story. This is something Bioware is well-known for, “create your own story, make decisions that alter your story”.
There aren’t separate “versions” of Revan. Revan in the novels, which WAS considered canon at the time, follows the light-side path of Revan, and Revan is a white male. SWTOR Revan is the exact same canon Revan from the novels and is a white male. The video game KOTOR simply features light/dark paths and both genders/sex just for inclusivity’s sake. Bioware has always been a very inclusive company and nearly every game they have created allows players to choose different paths. Just because KOTOR allows this, doesn’t mean that there isn’t an official canon to go by.
My point is that it doesn’t matter what race/gender someone is, but the fact that changing a character from what IS/WAS considered official just to fit a narrative from people who want to feel “special” is absolutely ridiculous. If a black, female character is wanted then Disney/Writer’s should go create a black, female character who is just as interesting as Revan.
Representation matters of course, I am not saying it doesn’t. I just don’t believe in altering a character just to fit someone’s “special” wants. If canon Revan is a white male, then leave him alone. Make another character that is a black female and write their own story that makes her just as interesting as Revan is to everyone else.
Revan shouldn’t be changed to “black female” just because someone wants that. Revan is a character that made his own choices, his own mistakes, his own decisions, his own adventures, just as much as Anakin made the choices that led to him becoming Darth Vader. What if Boba Fett all of sudden was changed to a Hutt? Or Palpatine is now a Tusken Raider... Don’t alter characters, create new interesting ones with their own flaws, morals, story, etc...
For Revan to truly be represented they would have to make 4 models:
Jedi Knight Revan (Original Revan)
Sith Lord Revan (Fallen Revan)
Revan (Revan Redeemed)
Revan Reborn (SPOILER: When Revan dies, his dark side half manifests itself into a physical form that is willing to do whatever it takes to destroy the Sith Emperor.)
All of these models would “canonically” be a white male. Drew Karpyshyn is the creator of Revan, and if he created Revan as a white male, that’s what Revan should be. If you, “Yae Vizsla” ever get hired by Disney to write a character novel then you can make a black female character that hopefully will be just as cool as Revan is. There is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to represent every ethnicity, but altering an original character is not the way to go.
Also, it’s not about “getting even” when it comes to character development. It’s about making interesting characters that people enjoy. It doesn’t matter if they are white, black, brown, yellow, blue, red, orange, human, alien, etc...
White “over-representation” in the Star Wars universe is a fallacy. Star Wars is a huge universe with characters from numerous ethnic backgrounds and several different species. The original movies were made in the 70’s so of course when actors were being searched for there were more white actors at the time than there were black actors. USA was predominately made up of caucasians so of course there is a larger representation of white people.
Wouldn’t you love to see a day where everyone quits being SJW’s and instead of a movie throwing in a token black character, a token Asian character, and just token characters in general that we actually get interesting characters from all ethnic backgrounds?
Look at The Last Jedi... if you can’t tell how littered with “Social Justice” the movie is then you are blind. All the supposedly “good guys”, The Resistance, are represented by a variety of ethnic backgrounds but the supposedly “bad guys”, The First Order, are predominately white males...
I just wish people would quit pushing political agendas and just make interesting movies with interesting characters from all ethnic backgrounds.
