#representation done wrong

[marmota-b]

Dvořák is a very common Czech surname, but let's be honest, on ACD's side that was probably just a happy accident. 😄

On the other hand, if Moffat and Gatiss had paid just a sliver of attention, they could have easily known that and for example reused that surname as another homage, with a different first name/initial that made them look less lazy than ACD. But they didn't.

Their research seems to have been limited to knowing that "Good King Wenceslas" had some sort of connection to Czechia, and not even researching shallowly enough to realise the song wasn't Czech to begin with. 🙄

Seriously, in the age of the internet in particular this is such a catastrophic level of failure of research it almost looks deliberate. Except there's no conceivable reason for it to be deliberate, in this particular context (it would be a whole different story if Sherlock was, say, a parody). So, as stated by OP, it just makes a show that's trying hard to look clever look really stupid.

(And while OP did not want to pass moral judgements, and I don't want to rant, I will say this much: in the age of the internet, they're lucky they committed this catastrophic failure of research regarding villainous foreign characters with a sovereign nation with no history of British colonialism and with a very self-deprecating sense of humour. 😁)

I know we like to retrospectively shit on BBC Sherlock for the bad writing, the queerbaiting, etc., but can I just add that as a Czech person, the Czech representation in this show is hilarious, like these character names are a hate crime

(Wenceslas is a male given name & no Czech person spells it like that)

(No Czech person spells Oscar like that either, and Dzundza is an Ukrainian surname)

Not to mention I have no clue where Mofftis got that "Bohemian stationery" idea from, like I don't think we have any kind of distinctive stationery paper?

I am not pointing this out to look morally or, God forbid, intellectually superior to anyone. I just want to share my perspective as a viewer, which is that writers should be aware that at least a few people from that country that you're putting in your story, no matter how small, will probably watch or read it, believe it or not. And they will make fun of you, but more importantly it will pull them out of the story and make them go "huh". If you want to keep up the appearance that your show is very clever, maybe it would help to do some basic research, just a thought

[thursdaymoonrise11]

You know the scene reference ✨

[clfixationstation]

"this ur fave?"

saw this on twt and it did make me giggle because Armin did far worse than Caitlyn ever did, so if you're an Armin fan you realllly can't be going that hard on Cait (said as a massive Armin fan who's eh on Cait).

you can discuss how the narrative of Arcane handled her character or policing as a system, or their differing ideologies, etc, but comparing Caitlyn to Hitler when your fave is Armin, who LITERALLY killed thousands personally and enabled near omnicide (albeit (mostly) unknowingly), is wild. the comparison is extremely distasteful and inaccurate - especially having seen the racist "Caitler" caricature going around.

Caitlyn's crimes are bad enough without such exaggeration: she was a dictator doing evil cop stuff, not committing genocide or waging war for territorial expansion, or even committing mass murder.

It reminds me of the Eren stans I'd encounter back in the day who hated on Catra and it was like. Oh you love your glorious king when he does omnicide but a catgirl does it and suddenly it's too far? 🧐 alright buddy

honestly comparing the crimes of most AoT characters is almost always gonna be a losing battle lol. though it seems twt users are now claiming Mikasa intentionally enabled genocide (though she ended it) and that AoT supports genocide?? it explicitly does not, what are we doing here

[mukoi-the-devoted]

A Cass doodle :)

[alliepretends]

Since I posted one of my Dimension 20 hot takes, and didn't literally explode. I think I'll post the other one that really matters to me.

The discourse around aroace Riz is really hard for me. And I find it really hard to be empathic toward people who think about it differently than I do. And I think it's important to put that lack of empathy in context. Fandom (and by this I mean the broader fandom culture, not D20 fandom specifically) has generally been an extremely hostile space for aromantic people. Shipping is the central pillar of fandom engagement and dialogue. And a romantic lens is typically the very first lens applied to the source material when it is brought into fandom spaces. By that I don't just mean it's what people think about first, I mean analysis tends to pass first through the lens of romance, and then only things the romantic lens can't lay claim to are left for other kinds of analysis. Even for aromantic people like me, who very much enjoy romance when it exists in the realm of fiction, it's hard not to feel like there's a message in that. "Characters, and the fiction they exist in, are only valuable when seen through the lens of romance. Regardless of the genre of the source material. That's because romance is unquestionably the most important and defining feature of life. Unless it's sex." This can get pretty extreme if you become a fan of something with an especially strong central ship (like a Supernatural), where it can feel like literally all analysis of any aspect of the work has to tie back to the ship. In my experience, the sub-culture of fandom, for all its trappings of queer acceptance, is far more arophobic and aro-hostile than any other culture or sub-culture I participate in. Not because fans are actively making anti-aro posts or hate aro people, but because romance is elevated as the primary element of human experience. The only one really worth talking about and exploring. The only one worth writing fics about or dedicating massive posts to. It is worth noting that the Dimension 20 fandom (and, based on my experience, actual play in general) seems to be less romance-focused than other fandoms. There's lots of gen fic. There's lots of discussion that doesn't focus on romance. But that doesn't mean the Dimension 20 fandom somehow exists separately from overall fandom culture. The baggage of that larger culture still informs this fandom.

And that's why the way Riz gets talked about feels like such a slap in the face. He is the first example I (and I expect many others) have encountered of a heavily-coded aromantic character popular with fandom. And yet, that hasn't freed him from the fandom scramble to read him through the lens of romance. I'll admit to being a bit of an extremist on this. I know that for many aromantic people having a single qpr that fills many of the needs of romance is really an important part of their experience. Many of my aromantic/aspec friends feel this way. But I don't even like qpr Fabriz. Because even though that is an authentic and important part of aromanticism to represent. With a character like Riz, whose fears are explicitly based around the lack of access he has to coupledom, qpr Riz still feels like an attempt by romance-oriented fandom to jam the first aromantic character the sub-culture gets its hands on into something that looks enough like traditional coupledom that no one has to change their romance-oriented outlook. The myth of the OTP can live on if you just change some of the verbiage. I know there are arospec people that would also feel excluded if fandom fell in line with my perspective and kept Riz as far away as possible from anything resembling romance. I don't actually know what the right solution to these problems is. We got thrown one bone and there's a bit of a desire to fight over it (Wikipedia's list of aromantic characters has 18 characters, and while that's not all of them, it's a decent percentage). But I did want to put this out in the world. Because I feel like there's a lot of context and baggage missing from this discourse. And all I really want is to have fandom still be able to treat an aromantic character as valuable even when they can't neatly pair him off

[needanaccount2readarcaneposts]

[fisherrprince]

Okay so okay so hmmm. The "shadow" of the Dark Knight is meant to be some representation of a part of one's soul, specifically the darker emotions and reflections of oneself, so would Alisaie's be Alphinaud since they're twins? Someone she constantly compares herself to and finds herself Lacking In Relation To Him (In her own mind, he is smarter, he is kinder, he is more rational, he Knows What To Do More Than Her), which would force her to slowly learn that You Are Good Enough As You Are Alie-

grabs you slowly pulls you towards my wip folder looks around. it looks like wol. it looks like the wol the strongest the best the winner until they confront it and it changes shape into just alisaie, just herself she’s competing with. the wol pushes her to be better, she pushes herself to be more. the wol is what she wants in a teacher. herself is what she needs to confront

[eloquentsisyphianturmoil]

Dear silm fandom, concerning Fandom meta. Might be provocative for some.

‘The silm fandom is misogynistic’ ‘Feanorian fans are misunderstanding the characters’ ‘Silm fans hate Elwing’ And so on.

Can we stop? Your opinions are not better if you like feanorians. Your opinions are not better if you like peredhil. This is not black and white. I won’t argue ‘not all silm fans’, because I recognise that we have problems. But condescension will not fix them. Thank you.

[petrichormore]

(Partial explanation/partial rant in regards to q!BBH’s famous Dodging of the Question)

Um okay here we go

q!Bad is not being manipulative, or playing with Forever’s feelings like q!Baghera says - or at least he’s not doing it intentionally.

CC!Bad confirmed that his character is extremely oblivious. He even said that he was taking an “aromantic approach” to his character. Granted, q!BBH is not canonically aromantic, but he is definitely aro-coded. I really relate to him because his confusion surrounding romance mirrors mine as an aromantic person. And I’ve had people call me manipulative, for this exact reason.

This isn’t me going after q!Baghera or anything - she has never done anything wrong ever! But she is, however accidentally, very much representing how society and alloromantics don’t really understand the aro experience. At least from my perspective.

… I don’t know, it’s disheartening to see people on twitter claiming that q!Bad is being malicious when he clearly isn’t purposefully trying to hurt anyone. CC!Bad is doing a pretty good job of representing my experience of being aromantic even if he’s not trying to, and it sucks to see people holding this against his character even though I did kinda expect it.

And I kinda understand to an extent, because CC!Bad does know what Baghera means so I can see how it comes across as him toying with the idea of 4halo because he is, but the character isn’t.

[eliounora]

red white and royal blue was so cheesy and predictable I enjoyed it thoroughly. making banal queer romantic comedies is hard but necessary work

[faggotcitosis]

i watch the umbrella academy very casually with no emotional attachment or reaction but seeing elliot page always irks me bc i am reminded about the fact that when he did that stupid magazine cover shirtless you could see his fake abs in high detail which looked unbelievably ridiculous attached to how skinny the rest of his body was

[erosologist]

who knew that reading a smutty book where the fmc has three boyfriends and those boyfriends are boyfriends and it’s basically 500+ pages of filthy sex would get my creative juices flowing again??

[sinners-go-to-drink-the-wine]

i want to hear the new hozier feature, but I'm still kind of annoyed at lucy dacus for that all white/skinny/famous masc mv after doing an open call for submissions

[bumblerhizal-art]

my client is innocent your honor

based on some modern au shenanigans from discord

[competentcormorant]

We need to talk about Secrets of the Songwing and LGBTQ representation.

Dreamworks. Hey. Sup.

Remember when you made Secrets of the Songwing?

That one Rescue Riders special where they tried to do the representation thing but ended up making something that honestly borders on genuinely insulting, despite being surprisingly beautiful on the surface?

Because I remember. Secrets of the Songwing lives rent free in my head. Do I love it? Just a little, to be honest. I find ending sequence is genuinely beautiful. Here’s why it’s shit representation. If you also have feelings I’m open to discourse in the comments :)

The story follows the Rescue Riders (as well as a bunch of side characters whose appearance in the story makes ZERO sense without the show to prop them up) as they attempt to thwart Melodia, a rogue Songwing dragon who hypnotizes other dragons by singing to them. Melodia is heavily implied to be gay, but this is only revealed at the very end of the movie.

Right off the bat, this story has some extremely dark undertones, including the implication that hypnotized dragons will forgo food and sleep, and will simply sing until they die. That’s not why we’re here. I promised bad representation.

As the story progresses, Melodia hypnotizes some of the Rescue Riders dragons, and the rest of the team begins to concoct increasingly ill-conceived plots to get them back. (Side note: This movie has an excessive reliance on earplugs and being unable to hear hypnosis song. Unfortunately, these are magical plot earplugs, and they block Melodia’s singing but literally nothing else, because writing cause and effect is difficult. Additionally, I suspect they paid the writers in Swiss cheese instead of money.)

Things escalate, and Layla (a Rescue Rider) identifies Melodia as a Songwing dragon. (“I didn’t realize at first, because songwings usually travel in pairs”) OH REALLY? YOU DIDN’T RECOGNIZE THE MASSIVE SPARKLY SINGING RAINBOW DRAGON BECAUSE THERE WEREN’T TWO OF THEM? Suuuure Layla. Remember this line. It will be important later.

Eventually, the riders manage to get the still-hypnotized dragons to return to Berk. (Sorry, knockoff Berk) There are a few pointless plot threads involving show characters, and then Melodia shows up at Not-Berk to hypnotize the Vikings as well as the dragons she already controls. At this point, her motive has not been established beyond “I want everyone to sing with me.” While it is implied that she’s lonely (and, going off of the single offhand comment Layla made earlier, missing her “songmate,” as Songwings travel in pairs) this implication of loneliness only really occurred to me in hindsight, and is inexplicably and poorly explained to the audience by Dax, another rider, at the very end. This movie’s 4 year old target audience probably have NO CLUE why this massive rainbow dragon is flying around trying to hypnotize everyone to “sing with me forever.”

Melodia is not a sympathetic character, because her supposed loneliness is never on display for the audience. All we see is a happy go-lucky dragon stealing free will with some mediocre songs.

Continuing with the plot, Melodia hypnotizes the entire population of Not-Berk. Only a few Riders are left unhypnotized. Exessive screen time is dedicated to making Melodia appear selfish, having the entire village pass her fish while no one else eats. Why? Why not make her sympathetic? This choice to make her completely villainous until her defeat is an extremely strange choice for a character the writers intend to redeem suddenly at the very end.

In the background, Layla is having a subplot about being able to sing in front of people, because only a better song can break a Songwing’s spell. Does it make sense? Not really, but this plot is set up and loosely held throughout the movie, so I really can’t complain about it.

Anyhow, Layla and Melodia have a song battle, and Layla wins, unhypnotizing the knockoff Vikings of Not-Berk. Right until the end of this song battle, Melodia remains unchanged, attempting to keep control. When Layla wins, Melodia’s personality shifts entirely.

Melodia sinks in on herself, and says “help? you’d help me?”. She is immediately FORGIVEN by Layla, saying “you said you lost your songmate, right?” (No, actually. She never said that. The only previous mention of a pair of dragons in any capacity is when Layla brings it up as a trait of the Songwing species. The conversation this line references never happened.) While I can forgive some plot holes in low-budget kids movies, this inconsistency is so blatant and problematic that it makes the ENTIRE PLOT OF THE MOVIE (That loneliness can make people to terrible things, and that those people can still be redeemed. This plot is utterly mishandled, to the point that they literally have Dax TELL MELODIA that “You lost the other half of your pair, and you’ve been trying to replace it with dragons and people.” YEA DAX, I think Melodia would know. Why not have her say it herself? OR SHOW HER BEING LONELY? Oh sorry, I forgot, you think kids are morons, and your writers are actually trapped in a basement signaling desperately for help).

Anyhow, this inconsistency- referencing a conversation about Melodia’s songmate that didn’t happen, makes the ENTIRE PLOT POINTLESS, because the writers FORGOT TO ESTABLISH THE LONELINESS, which was LITERALLY THE WHOLE POINT. (I genuinely could not believe that there wasn’t context for Layla’s line, so I rewatched the movie. Several times. Layla is referring to an event that didn’t happen)

After this series of increasingly odd writing choices, the movie moves on to a genuinely beautiful ending sequence.

No joke there, I just love it. Melodia is presented with a sound amplifying devise Layla used for a bit during her singing confidence sub-plot, and she uses it to call for her songmate. In a vacuum, this sequence is incredible. Cantana, her songmate, hears her, and they have a brief reunion duet.

With the rest of the movie as context, it has the single glaring issue of releasing a horrific, unsympathetic villain with zero repercussions.

Hell, if that scene had been framed as “what you did was bad, but you aren’t, so we’ll help you as long as you never do it again,” I would have no issues (again, kid’s movie. I can accept a simple, forgiveness-heavy narrative).

But while I understand a movie trying to teach young children forgiveness, this is TERRIBLE. Melodia doesn’t appear repentant, she appears manipulative. She suddenly changes tune after being defeated and outnumbered, and then gets to walk away Scot-free.

While I don’t object to having gay villains in movies, any more than I could object to straight villains, I do object to heavily relying on established gay villain tropes. (May I remind you this is a magical, singing, selfish rainbow dragon)

But ultimately, by biggest problem with this movie is that “being gay” is a substitute for a redemption ark. Seriously. That’s such a dumb sentence. I SOULD NOT have to write that.

You can make Melodia an unapologetic villain (who also happens to be gay).

You can give Melodia (who also happens to be gay) a redemption arc.

But you CANNOT do this.

Dreamworks, this is a dumpster fire. Please think before you release movies.

What the fuck.

Stop paying your writers in Swiss cheese.

It’s still better than How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. Change my mind, you cowards.

[sensitivegoblin]

Gender vent

Its mostly just silly dumb feelings