Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

Look, really wasn't trying to pick on Sweden, it's just that the Nordic countries are, stereotypically anyway, the source you'd turn to for a monochromatic blond-haired blue-eyed population.

 

Yes but even Europe today has some diversity

 

In any case, I think the consensus is that the Clone Wars animators need to be hit over the head with pretty much every preceding work of canon featuring Mandos. In hardcover format.

 

Welcome to my world

The only good thing about the episode was the fight. Why is it so hard to get good fights in a series called The Clone Wars?

 

I think it's been pretty much decided by this point that the New Mandolorians are very, very different from everything else involving the word 'Mandolorian' in the EU. This is needlessly confusing yes, ut the incongruities can be pushed under the rug that way.

Time and money. Complex fight choreography is expensive to produce and cumbersome to manage. Additionally, with the way computer generated animation works, showing characters in a 'damaged' or otherwise unusual state means creating an altered model (my favorite example comes from Beast Wars, where they had to make something like 4 versions of Dinobot for the different stages of 'Code of Hero').

 

Yeah, while I've come to accept the New Mandalorians as a pacifist faction within the larger culture...I'm really tired of the all white, blue-eyed, blonde brigade. Like Rob, I was hoping maybe something could be done with the crowd shots. Would it have been that difficult to use heads and hands from the Onderon character models with New Mando clothes? I guess so. And still no aliens, either. Great...

It really is seriously disappointing when one of the most explicitly inclusive societies in Star Wars—whether in regards to race, gender, species, or sexuality—is remolded into something so terribly bland.

With Jason Fry's retcons that establish the New Mandalorians as a separate but stand-along faction to the warrior clans, there's a surprising amount of Fridge Logic/Horror that arises with how they differ.

'Scuse me while I award you the internet you just won by referencing Code of Hero...

 

True but some parts of Europe have been diverse a good long time. But its not all that different from America. Diversity is concentrated in major cities.

 

We have discussed the Rebel briefing on Home One before and folks seem spilt on how "diverse" that scence is, given the still high proportion of WHM's, especially among the Rebel pilots. I still think that Lucas deserves ALOT more credit for the diversity in that scence. Regardless of the exact count of aliens, females, WHM's, and the like, the following fact still remains:

Lucas chose a middle aged woman to the the leader of the Rebellion. Lucas chose a alien male to to be the highest Rebel military officer. THAT is something that at the time was probably far more suprising and groundbreaking to fans in 1983 that it was to the vast majority of us 20-30 somethings. I truly believe that Lucas was making a statement in the characters of Mon Mothma and Ackbar.

--Adm. Nick

 

Not sure if that's been talked about before, but I just saw the Dramatis Personae of The Last Jedi ... out of a total of 17 there are 6 humans (4m, 2f), protagonist & cover boy among them, "of course"; still, the quota could be worse.
What struck me as particularly interesting though was the (relative) diversity of professions, including some that we normally don't get in SW novels: apart from the usual resistance fighters and criminals we get:
# Antarian Rangers (yay!)
# a Gray Paladin (yes, we knew that; but: different Force traditions FTW!)
...also some more down-to-earth professions such as:
# mech-tech
# journalist (well, former journalist, and we knew that, but at least it's something like a relatable professional background)
# police prefect
...and lastly, wonderfully,
# poetess!

Because even though it's not directly related to the point of this thread, I do think we need more characters with day jobs that are not "Jedi", "smuggler" or "Sith lord".

Oh, and I5 is listed as "sentient protocol droid", which I like.

 

You know, now that you mention it, we don't discuss diversity of age very much do we. I mean, it is not as bad as race and gender issues, but it can still be noticeable in media. Especially when it comes to female characters: in a lot of fiction, if the RA had a female leader, she would be Leia instead of Mothma. And when you do see old women, they either look ridiculously young (Mara is a big offender here) or a stereotypical hag, instead of a very stately looking person like Mothma.

In particular, your comments reminded me of this character again:

And it makes me thing of the human female pilots of Rogue Squadron....who, as far as I can remember, are all young and pretty (though Plour gets a lot of diversity points for being very masculine and never getting an aseop on how to be more feminine, even after it is revealed she is a princess).

Come to think of it, the human males are also young and handsome, whereas there was more than one aged and frumpy looking pilots at Yavin.

I agree completely.

 

Random House posted a preview. (Front matter and what looks like the first pages of every chapter, confusingly... though I didn't look at it too closely, so may be wrong.)

 

More like probably awesome until you read what she considers "poetry".

 

There once was a man called Palpatine,
Who had a very big concubine,
One of whom gave birth to a swine.
The boy had three eyes,
And that made him cry,
Which was why he was always confined!

 

No offense, Zor, but that was probably the botchedest Nonlimerick I ever read

(Intentionally, I guess )


EDIT: but we should totally have a Limericks thread sometime!

 

How dare you question my masterpiece! I have been working on my Trioculus Opera for the past ten years!

 

Back to the drawing board, I'd say.

 

Scored the Last Jedi DP and got a 76, which is one of the highest scores yet--and there's still the possibility that "Degan Cor" could turn out to be nonwhite.

It's great to see Pol Haus will be back as well, and it's very interesting that Kajin's not in there--I had actually assumed that was him on the cover, not Jax.

Oh, and "Aren Folee", awesomely, looks to be a Millennium Falcon reference.

 

I'm still waiting for Thrawn: The Musical. Because he should have a Disney villain song.

After a quick research, I dare you to watch the Gaston song from The Beauty and the Beast and imagine Thrawn and Pellaeon in there.

 

Me too... also I thought his storyline was the most interesting one of the the last CN installment, so I'm kind of disappointed he won't be in this... unless he is, and is just not listed or listed under a pseudonym. But then, why would you spoil the surprise by putting him on the cover?

Because, come on, no way that tously boy on the cover is our grizzled film-noir hero Jax.

...come to think of it, he reminds me a little of boy Anakin...

 

Relevant: Bleeding Cool has done an analysis of the gender demographics of the top five comic publishers' staffs. Short version: not great anywhere, but DH wins. One more reason to root for them keeping the SW contract.

 

Interestingly enough, I finally got around to reading the newest Mass Effect comic series yesterday, and I was thinking just last night how diverse each page looked in terms of all the different species you could see in the background rather than just a page full of WHMs, so Dark Horse definitely seem to put more effort in than most people.