What If Choices' Race-customizable LIs Had Surnames Reflective Of Their Ethnicity?: An Experiment Just For Fun (Part 3/3)
Info in Part 1
Part 2
THE PRINCESS SWAP
Derya
This is a special case and not only because Clarke doesn't have a canon surname: the top row of face options are described in the asset files as "Middle Eastern" and the bottom row are described as "Caucasian". Caucasian is used in the U.S. interchangeably with "white" even though the Caucasus region is in east Europe/west Asia and can be interpreted to encompass parts of Turkey.
Clarke's family members (including parents of both face options) all have Turkish names and if I’m remembering correctly, it’s heavily implied in the text and art that their country is based on Turkey. Which makes the name Clarke really confounding. I wanted to replace it with a Turkish name but I couldn’t find anything that sounded remotely similar. So I chose the unisex name Derya because I like how it sounds!!!!!
Devin Rhee
These face options are described in the asset files as “Asian”. The masc face option’s haircut leaves me no choice but to headcanon him (and by extension the fem face option) as Korean. What the extremely common Korean surname Rhee lacks in being spelled similar to Wright, it makes up for in sounding kinda like Wright. If you were hearing it spoken from another room. Lmao
QUEEN B
Ian Wang / Ina Wang
These face options are described in the asset files as “Asian”. As discussed in Part 1, there are not a lot of sound matches in Asian languages or Spanish for King(sley). I did read a theory online that this LI’s name comes from the fact that they’re the counterpart to the MC who is the titular queen of the series, so I went with the thematic route and chose the surname Wang, which means “king” in Chinese and Korean. The fem face option reminds me of several Korean women I know so I headcanon these face options as Korean, although Wang is a rare surname in Korea whereas it is one of the most common (if not thee most common?) surnames in China. So I guess they could also be Chinese?
Ian Reyes / Ina Reyes
These face options are described in the asset files as “Hispanic”. Same as above, not too many Spanish sound matches, king/queen themes and motifs, etc., so I chose the Spanish surname Reyes which means “kings”.
ROOMMATES WITH BENEFITS
Drew Yáñez
This one was so hard lmao. These face options are described in the asset files as "Hispanic" and there were not a lot of Spanish-language surnames that are a sound match for Young.
Drew Yadao
Also a hard one! These face options are described in the asset files as "Asian" which is really broad, and they don't look "typically" East Asian to me or like any East Asian person I know. The masc one reminds me of someone I know who's Filipino so I'm going with that for my headcanon. Again not a lot of sound matches for Young just like in general, and I decided on the Ilocano surname Yadao because it was one of the only Filipino surnames I could find that started with a Y.
SHIP OF DREAMS
Theodore Kassavetis / Theodora Kassavetis
These face options are described in the asset files as "Mediterranean", although the wiki does note that there's a scene where they say they're Greek. So I initially decided on the Greek surname Karakostas since it kept the "K-AR-T" sound pattern from Carter but then I changed my mind and gave them the surname Kassavetis because I like John Cassavetes the Greek-American director.
SURRENDER
Reagan Tong
These face options are described in the asset files as "Asian". The "th" sound in Thorne that's found in very few other languages like come on now don't piss me off. These face options honestly give Vietnamese to me but I couldn't find any Vietnamese surnames that matched Thorne and the Cantonese surname Tong sounded closer in my opinion.
UNBRIDLED
Ryder Villanueva
The face option on the left is described in the asset files as "Hispanic", and the one on the right is described as "Filipino". A unique situation here as many people in the Philippines have Spanish-language surnames and some speak Spanish due to Spain's historical colonization of the Philippines, meaning "Hispanic" can sometimes apply to Filipinos. We're touching on a complicated issue of using "Hispanic" as an ethnic descriptor but this post is not the place to discuss that. Sooooo since Spanish does not traditionally use the letter W (?) there aren't any Spanish-language surnames starting with W, and the only surname from a Filipino language starting with W that I cound find was Wenceslao which I didn't think was a good match for Wilson. So we're going with the Spanish Villanueva which has the initial "il" sound . Also means "new house" which I think is thematically appropriate for this book? Idk I don't have VIP so I can't play it yet and I just read the summary.
Part 1
Part 2
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Sent by anonymous
‘They couldn't name the female LI in Ship of Dreams Thea instead of Theo? That was just TOO hard, huh? 🙄’
POST/CONFESSIONS DO NOT REFLECT THE MOD’S PERSONAL OPINIONS!
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Really, how hard was it for the directors to hire an American blonde actress to play the comics version of Peggy Carter??? Why hire a British actress who acts ao snobby irl??? Why couldn't they keep Peggy's comic version appearance and make her the awesome American rebel that she is? Why make Peggy a snobby British woman who acts like she's better than everyone else, and she's possibly a Hydra spy? I. Just. Don't. Get. It. 😕
There are several possible reasons...
Could be Christopher Markus having an English wife who looks exactly like Hayley Atwell, and wanting to do a creepy Matthew-Vaughn style 'putting his wife in a movie she doesn't belong in' roleplay. Could be Joss Whedon's sad Colonial/Upper Class English fetish. Could be that the director was involved with Indiana Jones movies where the trope of the sexy Nazi babe is a standard, and he isn't as creatively original as Steven Spielberg. Could be someone higher up the chain has a Mary Poppins kink and insisted on swapping in the bossy nannyish English love interest over all the other American love interests Steve has had in the comics (including brunettes!)
None of which justify forcing the (in my opinion) quite sexless Captain America story into a compulsorily-heterosexual shaped hole. That story was built to be a Band of Brothers tale, not Casablanca. It needed to be that.
Which is why CATWS works better, emotionally speaking, than CATFA. Because CATFA expects you to expend emotional energy on the potential-straight-romance-lost plot... when a lifelong best friend whom Steve went to war for just died for him. A film can only carry so much emotion before it collapses under its own weight.
CATWS didn't have that problem. In fact, it would've been even more moving if they'd cut the pointless Peggy schmaltz scene for another Bucky or Steve-and-Bucky-in-flashback scene, as the original script intended. Or better yet, had another 'Steve actually calls out the other white woman for her actions' scene!
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forgot that i accidentally opened ship of dreams when i still had vip. only played the first chapter but this mc is so cute and so is this theo
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