NEWS FLASH: In the future, we may not all be white!
The cast for the movie of The Hunger Games has been known for a while, but a certain segment of the fandom is having a hard time coming to terms with something about it: Namely, that Rue and Thresh, both described in the book as dark-skinned, will be played by African-American actors. Worse, so will Cinna, whose ethnicity isn't mentioned, and therefore must be white.

Hunger Games Tweets has been keeping its eye on some of the worse elements. Warning: Some extremely vile, racist language. Did you know that sweet, innocent girls must always be pale and fair-haired? And gay men can't be black? I'm telling you, it's an education.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go vomit.

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	spacelogic 2012-03-13 08:01 pm UTC (link)
	I've seen worse -- read a comic once where the token Asian dude was named Chang Chang -- but, yeah. :-/ (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	isaiddietpepsi 2012-03-13 10:35 pm UTC (link)
	Heh. I was actually going to write, "Rowling might as well have named her Chang Chang!" at the tail end of my comment, but was too lazy. Yeah, it could have been worse, guess I should look on the bright side. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	coffeebun 2012-03-14 11:43 am UTC (link)
	LOL when I first saw the name I was like, did she seriously name a character "selfish"?? But oh well, yeah, could have been worse. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	isaiddietpepsi 2012-03-14 06:09 pm UTC (link)
	Is that what her name meant? I was more focusing on how 'cho' and 'chang' are both actually surnames, although I've read the defense that 'cho' sorta kinda sounds like the romanization for a Cantonese word. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	full_metal_ox 2012-03-14 09:21 pm UTC (link)
	There's such a thing as people of Sino-Japanese descent--in which case "Cho" could conceivably mean "butterfly", which would make sense as an allusion to her flying prowess (given the tendency of names to Mean Things in Wizardland.) But I may be cutting an author who placed kappas in Mongolia too much slack. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

isaiddietpepsi
2012-03-14 09:45 pm UTC (link)

Yeah, but it's still not really a given name, I think? More like...just a word. I figured if she could give people like Seamus and Igor and Padma and Parvati names that were actual first names, she could have done the same for Cho. You have a point that Rowling likes to give her characters Very Meaningful Names, but that's usually only the case for the "non-ethnic"-ized characters, if that makes sense. Like the aforementioned characters all have very traditional/stereotypical names for their ethnicities, and then you have the characters like Remus Lupin and Draco Malfoy, who seem to have been in a different naming category altogether. And I'm pretty sure that none of this is making sense because I'm being incredibly inarticulate right now.

(And this is where you tell me that I'm 100% wrong and that "cho" actually is a name for people of Sino-Japanese descent, heh. :D)

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	coffeebun 2012-03-15 07:20 am UTC (link)
	Cho-chang means selfish in Fukien, lol. For Taiwanese, cho can mean... low-class, I think? Not sure though. Idk about Cantonese. In Japanese, "Chou" does means butterfly, but it's not often used as a name, and Chang isn't even Japanese. Basically I just find the name incredibly unfortunate. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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