Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle being POC in Gotham High!: a Does Racebending Count Feature

April 18, 2020April 17, 2020 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 5 Comments

Oh snap! This is literally my SECOND post in my Does Racebending Count? discussion feature and I knew I was waiting for the perfect topic! This post here today is dedicated and honored by the release of DC Ink’s Gotham High by Melissa de la Cruz and illustrated by Thomas Pitilli! Do you know how much I was so into this graphic novel even before I opened the book?! Okay, not gonna lie… I could see some color on that cover, and I didn’t mean the artwork okay?

But it makes me think about something… was I only into this graphic novel rendition because there was finally some POC in the mix that weren’t just in the background?

Let’s discuss.

Does Racebending Count: Battle Royale & The Hunger Games

October 24, 2019October 23, 2019 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 7 Comments

I was reading a post recently – maybe a few weeks ago or so – that brought up one the movies and book series that has literally haunted my heart and soul ever since I heard of it:

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

Amanda is the one that brought it up – and I found her post so here it is for you to check out – and I was like “OMG yesssss I couldn’t even finish this movie because it was so hard for me to watch.” And I remember seeing both of the books at one of my libraries growing up and I never picked it up because I was just not prepared to read about kids having to kill each other for sport.

Does Racebending Count: a New Series

September 19, 2019September 19, 2019 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 18 Comments

In conjunction with my Diverse or Nah series – ~~that only has two posts but it’s really not set in stone to be very consistent so please don’t confront me about that because I’m still working on it~~ – I wanted to talk about the idea of Racebending characters in different novels or other forms of entertainment, for the sake of claiming diversity.

Why?

I’ve seen so many different cases where people will want to change the skin color and the ethnicity of an already established character (and nothing’s wrong with that, I’d love to see that honestly) but make everything else about them the same. Is that okay? I don’t really know. Is that an okay option to include diversity in entertainment? Or is it just a cop out for not allowing #ownvoices creators to actually create their own stories and use others like them to portray their characters?