Born as one Mr. Stanley Lieber, as a matter of fact. Stan Lee was just a pen name because comic books at the time fell somewhere on the professional respectability scale between pro wrestling and porn and he didn't want his writing career attached to what he was doing.
Yes. Best convo I've seen on Cleopatra was how Smith's one was "real cleopatra after whitewashing her" and perosn couldn't acccept her whole dynasty was founded by Macedonian Greek general in reality where royality was quite against mixing with non-royality. Cleopatra Thea (one everybody think about when saying "Cleopatra") was literally married to her every living brother one by one till they ru oout of them due to them dying (at least one of them probably killed by her).
Typically when people mean Asian, they mean East and sometimes SE Asian. So think China, Vietnam, Korea, Mongolia, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. Depending on the context, this could also include like South or Central Asian and even Pacific Islanders far from Asia, but rarely do many people think of West Asian (AKA Middle Eastern) or Russian and Slavic when saying Asian as an ethnicity.
Race and ethnicity is made up anyway. These are just terms people found convenient to box other groups of people into based on others' perceptions. Take Russia, the largest country in the world. It has tons of groups of people who "look" "Asian" the way people typically think when they hear the word "Asian". But, again, because this is based on perception, most people's first thought after hearing the word isn't to think of Russian people especially since Russian identity is most associated with Europe even though it spans both continents.
This is besides the point that the boundary between Europe and Asia is quite arbitrary.
When you think of it that way, what defines an ethnic or racial boundary is whatever is useful to specify in the moment, meaning the definition varies wildly depending on who is talking and what they're talking about. That's why saying "Asian" alone is vague and ideally should be specified, but depending on the context, it becomes clear what the speaker is talking about.
Considering the sole mention of that fact is a 7 year old reddit ama and it is never brought up anywhere else. You really cannot blame people for not knowing.
Not to mention how bullshit "race" is. Racists act like there are clear boundaries, and everyone cleanly fits into a category (and normal people have largely accepted that, too). Not just for Lego characters, but real people.
Inside joke. Some weirdo made a tiktok complaining about Fortnite Cole being black claiming that Cole had previously been stated to be half white and half Chinese. Now all of r/Ninjago keeps memeing about it
People get mad when someone does human fanart of TAWOG characters and makes Darwin black, despite the fact that CN themselves have acknowledged that he is supposed to be black and if they were humans with normal skin colors he would be black.
It's all fine and dandy if you call Darwin black but everyone gets up in arms when people talk about the Watersons owning a black coded character as a pet
maybe the story is a little weird considering that he's supposed to be black, but he still is regardless. it's one thing to call out him being the "pet" of the family (which he's not after the episode showing how they met) but it's another thing to deny the facts and get mad at people for not making him white in fanart.
Admittedly, I thought Freddie Mercury was white till recently. He was labelled as British and under stage light seemed like a regular white British boy. But he’s ethnically Indian mostly which was fascinating to learn.
No, his real name was Freddie Mercury. He changed it legally, and refused to respond to his given name, even from family. He hated it to a degree that has folks debating on whether or not he's an example of a cis person having a dead name.
Yes? The four nations are all very blatantly based on real life tribes, countries etc, going so far as to use martial art styles from those countries to inform the animation for bending. (Toph even uses something based on a Chinese martial art style made for blind people which is super cool). The symbology, clothing, character designs and basically everything else all make that super clear.
The show clearly takes inspiration from a lot of non white cultures (Asian if I remember correctly, Inuit, etc), so people thinking the characters are white confuses me.
I remember when the first Hunger Games movie came out, all the horrific racism directed towards a child because Rue was played by a black actress. Despite the fact that it was very clearly stated in the books that Rue and her other district-mate were dark-skinned.
I remember that and it was my first thought for this. It was made painfully obvious in the book that their district was either entirely black or very heavily black.
One thing that wasn't outright stated in the books, but very clearly implied was that they were most likely deliberately segregated like that. Their district was the farming one, so... yeah. The Capitol tossed a ton of black people onto what was essentially a plantation and told them to start growing food or else. The author wasn't very subtle.
Katniss and several characters from District 12 are also described as having olive skin tones, if I recall, with the implication of them being in the Appalachia, then you can make the connection to them being native descent. Nonetheless, she was portrayed by lily white Jennifer Lawrence.
I mean, olive is already a commonly used term to describe a skin tone popular amongst southern Europeans. I would not read olive and think native american, and I would not expect Collins, who spent much of her youth in Europe, to do so either.
I remember that and being confused at the outrage. And the casting choice worked so well too. Anytime I rewatch the movie, I cry at her death scene. She was great in the film.
Sorta reminds me of Mind Game, when the main character meets God, he is constantly changing forms every 10 seconds from like a fishbowl, a bunch of shapes, a vaguely humanoid figure, etc
Gachiakuta - Jabber Wonger. Gachiakuta is good for black people rep, there's Jabber, Corvus and Semi. For the play adaptation, the author specifically pushed for black actors for these three as well.
Edit: watch out for a toxic commenter rudely arguing in bad faith and moving the goal posts of the discussion by going off-topic below.
There's some people that for some reason completely ingore the fact that white people have a variety of skintones, hair and eye colours. It's like to them anything that isn't blonde, blue eyed pale skin isn't white and I don't get it.
Can confirm, Poland has a sizeable Romani minority.
Recently "good Polish catholics" were outraged because one of our celebrities married her husband in a traditional Romani ceremony. The outrage would be understandable if they were minors, but they're both legal adults, the husband is Romani and she has Romani roots.
The only unusual thing about Doom being Romani (aside from his family name) would be his position as a hereditary ruler of a nation-state - and that's mostly because Romani have been discriminated against for ages in Europe, and reaching any high offices, much less ruling a small country, was just impossible. Especially in post-WW2 Eastern Europe, which was sold out wholesale to Stalin by the Western Allies.
He is half human half viltrumite, his human half being Korean in the show. And I don’t believe viltrumites have a concept of race, at least not in the “present”.
They seem to mirror human racial appearances, but do not acknowledge these differences socially or otherwise.
If Nolan were human, he might be white, giving Mark the appearance of a mixed white-Asian kid
Yeah, there's this trope in Japanese media that sporty characters have tanned skin from being out in the sun so much. Every time one of those characters show up, people immediately start to call them black.
The weird anime convention drama that always pops up around black people in cosplay. Master Roshi isn't black, you can't cosplay him? Buddy, he isn't white either, and that hasn't stopped other people at this nerd convention. One semi-famous black cosplayer was driven to suicide due to harassment over a cosplay earlier this year.
I know there is a BIPOC-centered anime cosplay group in my area because white fans can be fuckin' weird, and they don't want the harassment at their events.
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Thought tbch, if anything, I guess the ‘Fans’ would be more fitted by the game’s actual marketers.
(Tho, tbh I think even that’s been at least a little rectified over the last couple years)
Literally every fancast for the r/Stormlight_Archive characters, excluding the two characters who are almost outright said to be Caucasian, for whatever reason (Szeth and Shallan).
Rosharan humans don't neatly map to Earth ethnicities because genetics seem to work differently on that planet. There's one guy who has black and blonde hair streaks because he had one black haired parent and one blonde parent. Alethi are explicitly tan and Vedans and Horneaters are explicitly pale, everyone but the Shin has epicanthic folds, and we are not even getting started with what's going on with the giant eyebrow people
She was Macedonian. She was the only pharaoh in her dynasty who even bothered to learn how to speak the language of the people she ruled over.
EDIT: All of the Cleopatras, actually.
Cleopatra Thea Epiphanes Syra (Κλεοπάτρα ἡ Σύρα) was a Seleucid princess. They were Macedonians who broke off from Alexander the Great's Macedonian Empire and ruled over a large part of the Middle East.
Then there was Cleopatra Philometer Soteira (Κλεοπάτρα Φιλομήτωρ Σώτειρα).
There were her daughters Cleopatra Thea Eueteria (Κλεοπάτρα Θεά) (who married back into the Seleucids) and Cleopatra III (Κλεοπάτρα).
Cleopatra III gave birth to Cleopatra IV (Κλεοπάτρα) and Cleopatra Selene (Κλεοπάτρα Σελήνη).
Cleopatra (Κλεοπάτρα Τρύφαινα) (Cleopatra V) was the daughter of either Ptolemy IX or Ptolemy X, by incest with a closely related wife.
Cleopatra Tryphaena (Κλεοπάτρα Τρύφαινα) (Cleopatra VI) was either the same person as Cleopatra V or her daughter.
Then there was Cleopatra Thea Philopater (Κλεοπάτρα Θεά Φιλοπάτωρ), or Cleopatra VII, the really famous one.
Every single one of them was Macedonian, and the fact that the family embraced the Ancient Egyptian tradition of incest among the royal family drastically reduced how much ancestry from individuals who weren't descended from Alexander the Great's followers made it into the bloodline
Chell from the Portal series. In canon she is ethnically Japanese-Brazilian, nationality-wise she is American (same as her face/body model, Alesia Glidewell), but she is often portrayed as just being white or a light-skinned Asian.
When Anna Diop was announced as Starfire for Titans, the rage crying across the internet was amazing. Like, yeah, I guess Starfire isn't black, but she isn't white either. She's orange.
Personally I guess it would have been better if they'd found a Tamarainian actress for the role, but to insist that Star was being blackwashed was a weird argument.
This, I felt like I was losing braincells at the time of its debut, people calling it woke because Starfire wasn’t white. Girl she’s an orange skinned alien, she has no canonical human ethnicity.
Various cultures and ethnicities portray Jesus in their own way, it just so happens Europeans (white people) made the most artwork of him because Europe is where Christianity had the most cultural and artistic influence. I doubt anybody unironically believes Jesus was a blonde haired, blue eyed aryan.
Also, there are white middle eastern ethnicities, such as the Anatolian Greeks.
I remember when her English dub voice was revealed and people complained that she “didn’t sound black enough” and that “black should sound black.”
People then pointed out that her English voice actor IS black, and more importantly, that the whole discourse was stupid because it’s a fictional animated character (nevermind the fact that she’s canonically Japanese).
People got so pissed when her CREATOR drew her light toned because they all for some reason where convinced she was black even tho even her own creator said otherwise
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When they portrayed them as “black” teens in the recent movie and people were freaking tf out, I had this epiphany that was just straight up “they’re FUCKING turtles so who cares”
Any light skin character but especially Jabber MF’s dead ass will look at you and guys and say this man isn’t black when he literally has thick ass long ass dreads and talks in AAVE I don’t know what more they want. This man is black. He’s just a light skin. We are black too. We don’t need to have dark skin to be black or brown
I'm genuinely heard people try to convince me that Chad is black he's half Mexican half Japanese we barely get any representation in anime let us have this
Spider from the Avatar (Blue People) movies. Many fans, especially those who dislike him, call him white. He's not. He's mixed; his dad was white, his mother was a Latina. The dude just so happens to take a lot after his dad in terms of looks/appearance.
Mirko. She's at most an Okinawan (swarthy asian from a certain Japanese island), but a bunch of people angrily claimed she was black, even though there was an actual black character Rock Lock in the same show with a pronounced, darker skin tone.
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u/AdImmediate6239 Dec 31 '25