a serious question about roleplay.

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hello! i'd like to preface this by saying that this an actual serious question i've been thinking about for weeks now. i'd appreciate if you took the time to answer with the same level of seriousness as well. feel free to comment down below or pm me your thoughts. this is also a safe space! i won't judge you for your thoughts or opinions. i'm just really interested in what other people and what other POC think.

how do you feel about white people roleplaying Black faceclaims? think about your answer for a little bit. i still don't know how i feel myself. now, how do you feel about white people roleplaying BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color)? is your answer different from the first question? how do you feel about people in general roleplaying as another race that isn't theres? for example, an asian person roleplaying as a Black faceclaim. or a hispanic person roleplaying as an asian faceclaim.

i'm honestly starting to feel a little uncomfortable with the thought. i'm not korean, but i am asian. i've been roleplaying in the kpop roleplay community for several years now, and i've had different faceclaims with different backgrounds in the kpop industry. it never really hit me how weird this concept is until this year, when i started to think more critically about roleplaying in general. i think oc/fl twitter has really made me analyze the line between OOC and IC because it's sooooo OOC there. and i have no issue with that because i'm pretty OOC as well, even if i say it's just part of my character.

i've seen that people will bash white people to no end (valid because some white people are sick. emphasis on some.) just because they're white and in the kpop roleplay space. it started to make me think about what we have to say about roleplaying these races that aren't ours...putting on korean faces because it's the aesthetic and borderline izing them. isn't it weird? this concept...i don't really know how to feel about it anymore. roleplaying, to me, started out as simply writing and wanting to write with other people. it's so different nowadays. sometimes i just feel like i'm catfishing? does anyone feel the same? especially to those who are also on fl twitter? i've never felt this way before when i roleplayed on facebook or instagram, but those were at times when i was much younger and didn't think so much about my actions. now, i just feel like it's really weird to present yourself online as a faceclaim from a different race––not matter if you're white or a POC.

please do let me know your thoughts if you're reading this.

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yifaniverson #1 Mar 4, 2021 16:21:27

hi! i saw this randomly on my feed, and though it's a little late i want to answer your question because i've been having similar feelings about fandom.

i haven't engaged in roleplay for a very long time (and the type of roleplaying i did was au roleplay so it was more about story building than it was about impersonating idols), but i'm having conflicting feelings about writing fanfiction based on real life people. i started to question whether it was right to write about people that i don't know in real life and portray them in certain ways or doing certain things.

but it boils down to this: we don't know these people personally. no matter how convincing it may be, the personas they put in front of the media is just that - a persona. we don't know who they really are or what type of person they are (i feel like the recent assault and bullying scandals really hammer this point). so when we're roleplaying or writing fanfiction about people, we're not pretending that we are them or that we know them, but we are simply expanding on the personas that we, as fans, have constructed of them. so i would say for roleplaying, it is more about emulating their perceived personalities instead of "catfishing".

but again, it depends on what type of roleplay. i'm not very familiar with the roleplay scene now, but if it's anything like it was 7 years ago, then i would say au roleplay is not problematic even when the roleplayer has a different race from the faceclaim because they are merely using the face (and to an extent, the persona) of the idol to construct a new character. of course there's a caveat where the race of the persona is integral to the character.

now as for ooc/ic roleplay, the line gets blurry and problematic there. if you're simply emulating the personas of these idols (maybe you'd think a certain idol has a bubbly personality, another idol is more cold, etc.) or simply having fun with others i see no harm. but if the roleplayer feels like they embody the identity of the idol, including the race and the culture to the point of ization - now *that* would be the problem.

hope i contributed something useful to the conversation! i think it's good that we're questioning whether our fandom practices are correct. i think k-pop needs more of that.