Ok, please don’t kill me for asking this…

I’m black, and I wanna do an Afrocentric cosplay of Jeff, the Killer. I’m planning on getting dreads or braids for it, but I also thought about maybe doing some Vitiligo-type makeup for it. but idk if that’s okay to do or if that’s offensive.

I don’t have vitiligo, I never did. The reason I ask if it’s okay to imitate this is because Jeff the Killer is canonically a burn victim due to either fire or chemicals. Sometimes, if you have dark skin and get burned like that, you’ll have white patches left behind once the skin heals which look a lot like Vitiligo. I’m unsure of what lines can and cannot be crossed when it comes to doing theatrical/character makeup other than “don’t do blackface”

Im autistic, so if some of the stuff i say is offensive just be aware that wasn’t my intention, thanks!

  • Cock_Inspecting_Asexual@lemmy.worldOP
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    2 months ago

    But if I was a person with vitilligo, I might be a lot more upset by it, especially considering that the character is a horror character meant to be scary to look at.

    jeff being burned white is not why he’s scary but alright 😭😭😭😭 Jeff the killer is “Scary” because he cut a whole smile into his face and killed off his whole family. if someone assumes the Vitiligo makeup was only added to make him “Spookier” I feel like that says more about them than me. I want the Vitiligo makeup because it adds more character to my version of Jeff The Killer. Dark skin, long black dreadlocks and these bleached white patches on his skin… It all apart of the character design, MY design. It’s cool as fuck, and if anything should be the opposite of offensive seeing more black people like me still active in the Creepypasta community.

    I thought over it for some weeks, and tbh- if someone is truly offended by it, 9/10 their getting offended for someone else, or are getting themselves mad over what deadass isnt that offensive at all.

    I feel like this sorta goes back to that whole thing of just white people(dont kill me for saying this it’s just an anecdotal observation ;w;) being offended for something that fr doesnt effect them, no offense… Jeff’s skin being pale is not his horror aspect, if people really knew who he was, then they’d know that and just respect the choice I made on the cosplay. This is like going to see a certain movie or a haunted house and then being offended because someone has on Burn-victim makeup/SFX scar makeup. I always thought It’s weird asf for people to just kinda- pick and choose what they wanna be offended by and what they dont. Like If I wear blinding white eye contacts; the ones that make you look like you have no iris, that your eyes are blind or all white; I’m not mocking those who already have blind eyes, it’s a cosmetic and nothing more, especially if its just for a goofy little cosplay like a ghost or Storm from X-men.

    Offensive is me wearing the makeup without the cosplay, putting on white splotches and scar tissue SFX and then just walking around like that in public where there is no convention; It wouldnt be in a costume either, it’d just be the makeup. That I can understand, cus unless it’s just to see how convincing you can make your SFX makeup look, there’s no real reason for someone to be doing that tbh, and if they wanted to spook people, there’s plenty of other wounds and scars they could go with.

    “I saw another comment in this thread saying that portraying black characters as a cosplay is different than doing Vaudeville-style blackface, but most people in the cosplay community would disagree with that. Nobody has a problem with people playing characters who are a different race than the cosplayer, but the consensus tends to be that you shouldn’t change your skin color to do it. It’s heavily discouraged. “I can’t take off my race at the end of the day” is something I’ve heard from black cosplayers a lot when this discussion comes up.”

    Me putting white splotches on my skin to portray a character that is a burn victim of some kind or that they had had lost melanin on some parts of their body body due to a traumatic injury to their skin ain’t changing my race tho 😭 Like- I’m still black, I’m just applying small splotches of pale colored scar tissue to my face to look as though I’d been affected by a bleach attack… Which jeff was. His skin was bleached and set on fire. I’m not painting my whole face white XDDD that’d defeat the purpose of me making it afro-centric.

    The rule tends to be that you shouldn’t change your skin color unless it’s a fantasy color like purple, green, etc. It very likely will be offensive to someone. Technically blue skin can also be considered offensive, as there are people in this world with blue skin, The Blue Fugates come to mind. But I don’t think any of them care at all about someone painting themselves blue so they can look like papa smurf.

    To be honest, I’m not really sure why I asked in the first place 😭😭 I think I was just really paranoid at the time and thats why I hurriedly went and made this post. My general existence is an offense to most people by default, so me doing some funky makeup ain’t gonna make much of a difference in that fact XD I’m cosplaying a fictional emo serial killer, any effort of being tasteful then is now automatically lost by that fact