Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

The Ducktales reboot introduced gay dads last month!

 

I heard.

Not diverse related per say but that show is doing WONDERS with modernizing classic Disney characters. Even Daisey and Donald's relationship in that show now has weight to it.

 

Whoo-oo!

 

What's a Ducktales?

 

I don't know if you are being sarcastic or not.....

If you aren't then Ducktales is an old Disney show from the 80's that has been rebooted. It's about Donald Duck, his three Nephews Huey Duey and Louie and their great Uncle Scrooge who is the richest duck in the world and great adventurer.

 

Also, life is like a hurricane.

 

that Rapunzel is in a canon relationship with Eugene could have something to do with it? But what do I know.

did not know that a new MotU series was planed. Here's to that it will be good.

I recently binged lots of old cartoon/comic only MotU characters and there were more female characters than you would think, hopefully some of them will make a reappearance as returning characters and members of the MotU.

 

I don't know if you are being sarcastic or not.....

 

What's a duck?

 

Okay not TRYING to turn this into a She-Ra thread (Well okay I am but that's not the point ) but this was a good interview and I think it's a mindset I hope more creators (And execs) have too



Noelle Stevenson Said:

The irony though for me is that as a shipper it gave me what I wanted and what I needed to tell a good story in more ways than one. A rarity for a show to give me what I wanted yet tell the story it needed. Can't say any piece of media has ever done that for me.

Spoiler

Sure Catradora is canon but so is Entrapdak (Hordak x Entrapta) and I get to live in the good timeline

 

I step away for a few days and suddenly everyone's talking about the cartoons my kids and I are watching together to get through the pandemic (well, TCW, too, but otherwise this is a pretty comprehensive list). It is a cool time for animation and animation has really, in a very short time, taken the vanguard on this sort of thing, and in a super classy way.

 

No worries Joel, I usually end up turning this thread into a star trek or superhero one for a page or two on occasion

 

Oh good, I don't feel as bad then

Now lets expand this conversation and I'm sure this has been brought up before ...But to build off of She-Ra, one of the best things about this show is not only is this a show with a primary queer relationship as the main crux but I think what's so important or at least fascinating is that it's not really about being queer.

What I mean is...Adora and Catra don't question there feelings for each other as "Is this right or wrong to be in love with another girl" sort of way because in Etheria...Queerness is normal. Gender fluidity is normal, multi-racial relationship is normal (One of the human side characters has a crush on a lizard guy) . They get to just focus on themselves and not the wider concept of 'being in a gay relationship'. This allowed Catra and Adora to focus on just them because....they are them. They have problems sure but none of those problems are "Is being gay right or wrong" because those restrictions don't exist in Etheria

In Season 4 when Non-Binary and fan fav Double Trouble arrives on the scene nobody bats an eye on them being non binary. All the characters use the proper they/them pronoun without a second thought or question it.

I think it's important for fantasy worlds to start to consider that they don't have to be confided to "real world" issues in a regard. Like create a fantasy world were queerness, genderfulidity, interracial relationships are all normal and accepted. That way kids/young adults can then see or imagine a world where that stuff can be the norm. Give them something to strive for. Obviously yes Etheria and those fantasy worlds are still gonna have problem and bad guys but even the bad guys still respect gender pronouns.

Heck not even our ultimate big bad is going against those things so much as it's a general "against free will" sorta egomaniac thing going on.

Now obviously how you build your fantasy/science fiction world depends on the story you wanna tell and if you wanna delve into certain prejudices and not. But if you are making a fantasy world...then....You can make one where those prejudices don't exist because...they shouldn't (Or at least nothing says they have too), show a world that probably should be, where if someone has two moms or two dads or a someone wants there pronouns to be they/them...then no one bats an eye. And I think for a kids show with a TV-7 audience...that's important to show. It makes She-Ra almost...almost utopian in that regard but still shows people having problems in other areas.

Obviously what works for She-Ra won't work for everything else because again...The story and the universe you wanna tell will require different rules and circumstances. But that's why it's called fantasy...escapism...we get to escape from those harsher parts of the world and maybe go to one that we'll...a world that we wanna be in and maybe we should be in.

I hope I'm making sense here, but it was something someone brought up and another reason why I admire She-Ra among other things and hope more fiction takes notes from moving forward.

Anyway, this was a good breakdown of the Season 5 finale which i'll put a spoiler tag because the thumbnail has a spoiler and I wanna give people time

Spoiler

Also here are few more thing about She-Ra which I love in terms of it's diversity, but I'll also put spoilers because of it's certain relationships that devlope

Spoiler

Entrapta while not explicit is a good representation of someone on the autism spectrum.
Hordak is a good representation of someone with Chronic Illness and disability
Entrapta and Hordak falling for each other means we have a fully functional autistic woman and a chronically ill/disabled man in a healthy relationship
All the ways the characters are drawn are so unique and diverse. Some are more chunky then others, some are big and muscular, some are skinny, a wide range of the human experience.
It handles trauma, PTSD, and abuse cycles REALLY well, as well as overcome said abuse cycles.

Oh yes.....Animation in general is telling quite fascinating stories these days.

She-Ra
Kipo and the Wonderbeast
Owl House

Avatar the Last Airbender on Netflix now too...so you might wanna add that to the list.

 

Sorry for the DP but when you got CNN covering She-Ra now that's kinda cool



Also, while not the first time....It is also important to state that by doing this She-Ra took a pre-established and genuinely popular property (I mean She-Ra/He-Man all the Master of the Universe Stuff is generally in the pop culture mind to a degree) and making them a OFFICALLY CANON GAY ICON....That's sorta important on its own.

Like, I'm all for making new characters and all for diversity in terms of sexuality but taking pre-established characters as well I think has bigger impact because lets face it....audiences aren't as willing to accept new things as they are to see the old thing again, and again, and again.

Be thing for Superhero's

Like if we ever got a gay Batman or Superman or heck one not colored/animated as a white dude (or played by one on film)....Well...I know I'd be down for it.

Heck imagine if they decided to make Luke Skywalker Gay...I'd be down for that too. The whole kissing his sister thing was a phase he got over

But yes...I think if we can, and if sexuality or ethnicity doesn't define the character, I don't think the harm of making him/her a different ethnicity...or sexuality for that matter.

(I feel like I stepped on a landmine by saying this but oh well )

 

Don't be silly, Luke Skywalker is ace.

 

If we made look canonically ACE....I'd love that too

Ace deserves rep too

And Non-Binary, we need more They/Them characters.

Also the importance of diverse production staff

 

We've watched those for sure and we go waaayyyy back with ATLA. This kind of stuff is what we do and always have done, really. We're just kind of an "animation with quality worldbuilding and rep" sort of family.

 

That's great to hear, considering how... well, atrociously poor some media does at portraying characters who are on the spectrum *COUGH Sheldon COUGH*. And how it sometimes turns out that characters to whom fans on the spectrum find themselves relating are in that position by complete accident. Tilly wasn't intended to be autistic? Really??

Like Mary Wiseman says in a reply to her tweet, it's great if fans can relate regardless of the intention, but it's still nice to see instances where the intention is definitively there.

 

Oh yes I love it especially since Entrapta is one of my favorite characters #BestPrincess ;p.

Spoiler

And by giving her a relationship with Hordak, we get a fully functional autistic woman in a very healthy relationship with a chronically ill/disabled person...It's great!

IN FACT

Granted this was a tumbler post however one person in our She-Ra community pointed out that maybe (Though this was never confirmed) that Adora...Our main character might also be Autistic too...and even did a good breakdown as to there thoughts



Great little breakdown of evidence this was back in Season 3 I believe way before the finale hit and like the tweet said it's great that people can relate to it in so many ways!

Another example is how many people see Catra as someone with BPD and obviously PTSD.

That's great! Hope She-Ra gets a good watch when you have the time. Also another suggestion is Tangled the Series on Disney +, it's such a great show severely underrated and really expands the Tangled mythology in ways very surprisingly but clever.

 

Oh, if I wasn't clear when I jumped into this, She-Ra was something we followed the hell out of from start to finish. It's interesting because I'm of the OT generation and grew up thinking all things MOTU were pretty lame compared to SW etc. and never would have expected a MOTU-related reboot to be that awesome in so many ways. I'm a single dad and my kids and I have always bonded over both fantasy/SF and animation (starting with first run TCW); they're both in their late teens now and as they've found their gender identities it's been really cool for all of us to see the genres and forms we love just vaulting to the forefront in representation where other media lags pretty sadly. Like I said, it's a cool and hopeful time in at least that respect!

 

It's interesting how a lot of the MOTU stuff riffed on Star Wars (I mean being 80's most things were)

and one of the big reasons I got into the 2018 reboot of She-Ra was because it reminded me a lot of the Sequel Trilogy at the time.

Whether intentional or not, it just did and that was the initial hook for me...Before falling in love with the characters and all that.

 

https://progressive.org/magazine/letter-nephew/

 

The official Star Wars twitter account tweeted this today:



And it's... something, for sure.

People and companies who have the voices and platforms should absolutely be speaking out right now, and I can't count the number of celebrity tweets I've liked over the past few days, but the specific wording of this one... I dunno. Tricia Barr tweeted a thoughtful reply to it:



And to further that:



Is this corporate faux-wokeness? Easy to tweet out and pat yourself on the back for without actually putting your money where your mouth is? Or is SW doing a better job of meaningful representation than the replies give it credit for, and is this an important tweet regardless? Does reminding the world that you have black employees make a difference at all to the state-sanctioned murder of innocent black people that keeps happening? I'm genuinely curious what others' takes on this are.

Also note that Pixar, Marvel, and other Disney-owned properties tweeted out the exact same image as Star Wars:

 

You've said it a lot better with this one line than what I've tried to articulate below. I'm tired and fumbling here, and I apologize:

The most literal interpretation of this is a part of what I would like to see Disney do. Donate. Donate to protestor bail funds, to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, to charities and scholarships and outreach programs that focus on the Black community.

Their statement ends with "speak out" -- I hope that is not the end of Disney properties speaking out on this subject. Their platforms are so immense, the incredible number of ears and eyeballs they have the potential to reach -- there is such an opportunity here to amplify Black voices. Justice advocates, community activists, Disney's own employees -- amplify them using Disney's presence on television, YouTube, social media, and other publishing platforms, both online and offline. Give them airtime, link their essays, signal-boost petitions and fundraisers. (And again, move some of that $$$ toward donations!)

I apologize for not addressing one of the significant and broader points of your post (meaningful representation in Star Wars, previous efforts and fumbles in that area, and how to effect it going forwards) and for only focusing on immediate/short-term actions/reactions by companies in my post. But I saw that tweet and it's been kinda rankling me all evening, I think because of how perfunctory and vague it is. I don't see any plans or intentions or concrete steps for them to take in it...