#representation effectiveness

[alwaysbewoke]

here is the sheet. it's an excel spreadsheet so it will download to your computer. this is really important for all the people who constantly say "democrats and republicans are the same." if they're not willing to do the work to either prove or disprove that notion, they're NOT someone ANYONE should be taking political advice from.

[mizusjawline]

I feel really really pissed about the amount of guns Dr Who is starting to feature.

Like??????? Hello??????? The Doctor hates guns???????? UNIT pulls out two giant laser turrets and fires at the bone creatures and the Doctor is just going to stand by and. Let them???????

The Doctor going "if only I had a weapon" and pulling out a gun and firing it at Omega without heasitation??????? What happened to "I'm the Doctor I don't need weapons, I don't need guns, all I need is this screwdriver" ????????

[dirtybiowareconfessions]

Confession: ((in regards to garrus)) BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK HOLY SHIT BARK BARK WOOF BARK BARK RAWR BARK BARK

[logosbot-tm]

I want to see more some like... silly Sanders Sides videos where it's just Thomas doing a regular task and the sides popping up and him having a minor crisis

[disconnectedkat]

On Judging Older Rep By Today's Standards

This wall of text inspired by this take that bioware are pussies for not having an all-pan romance cast until Veilguard. This idea that all past representation is mediocre or bad because today's is better is very irksome. I'm irked.

To begin, a little history:

Bioware has been including queer romance in their games since the early 2000s. First in 2004, when they released Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. This game had a character you could recruit named Juhani. Juhani would become the first LGBTQ+ Star Wars character. She could be romanced by a female player character, though it basically amounted to a couple lines of dialogue. Why so little? Because it was 2004 and they practically had to sneak even that much in.

In 2007, Mass Effect 1 released. This game had arguably the 'safest' queer rep, an attractive woman kissing and having a fade-to-black implied sex scene with another attractive (alien) woman. A while later a mainstream media outlet (Fox News, you may have heard of them) ran a hit piece on the game. They ran the usual stuff, degenerate porn simulator, think of the children, etc. This was a big deal, as having a mainstream, large and popular (unfortunately) news channel targeting your game is not great for several reasons.

Keep in mind this was the, again, arguably the safest queer rep you could go for, and it still received that level of attack.

In 2009 Dragon Age: Origins released. Not much to say here, some time had passed and DA managed to avoid the targeted hate that Mass Effect received, despite having a bisexual man and woman as romantic options.

Mass Effect 2 is believed to have suffered the most from the Fox News debacle. Jack was originally planned as a pansexual character, and while I don't recall if the devs have stated exactly why that was cut, the obvious guess is they feared another round of attacks.

Alrighty, history recap over. Now to address the issue:

"They should've done it years ago." Well, they actually did with DA2 and it received a good amount of flak. Because that was 2010, and this is 2024. Representation is a social thing. It changes and grows as we do. In 2004 Juhani, with a minimal amount of actual content, became the first LGBT Star Wars character. You do what you can and try to push the envelope a little more each time. People struggled and fought for all that old rep you see as not good enough by today's standards.

"They bowed to the bigots because of money." Games, and all media, take money to create. They then need to make money to create more. There would be no Veilguard without the successes of previous games. And unfortunately, in the past that sometimes meant choosing your battles. Frustration is understandable, but misplaced.

None of this is to say that Bioware, (or any company or media, this post is just focusing on them) is beyond reproach as long as they're trying. There will always be things to criticise, and areas to improve, of course. But that isn't what I'm seeing here.

This to me is indicative of a common sentiment I've been seeing far too often in queer and leftist spaces recently, people judging older rep by today's standards and decrying it and it's creators without understanding the history.

[chanelle-lize]

I used to have a really hard time bringing up the fact that I graduated from high school a year late without feeling the need to explain why and insisting that it wasn't my fault while simultaneously kicking myself for how much I sounded like I was just making excuses for something I should take responsibility for.

Then I watched Dimension 20's "The Seven" and suddenly I could simply say that I was a super senior.

The first time I heard the phrase "super senior" was in reference to Antiope Jones, a Black girl who had been held back a year after getting kidnapped and imprisoned by members of a fundamentalist cult, and like, girl, same.

So, since then, instead of anxiously spinning out any time I tried to tell a personal high school anecdote, I could just say I was a super senior, and then my brain would auto complete that statement with "like Antiope Jones" and I'd feel good about myself because Antiope Jones Is That Bitch.

That's what the problem had been the whole time. I wasn't worried about how other people would perceive me; I had been struggling with how I perceived myself.

Thanks, Aabria.

[ashetheentity]

[predictablesloth]

❗️The Election & Representation in Film❗️

Aka we're about to loose all our queer rep.

-> Before November 6, after the Agatha All Along finale, I told my friend that no matter my opinion on the last episode, I was taking it as a win, because the Agatha/Rio kiss could be the last sapphic, live action kiss to air on television.

-> Because the far right politicians who will soon control our government approve book bans in their respective states, there's every reason to suspect that they'll try to pass bans on the gay ass content Hollywood puts out.

-> If you can, get cds or dvds (or torrents, ends justify the means) of your favorite queer, feminist, and generally social justice-oriented digital media, such as music, movies, and tv shows. Documentaries and children's programs especially.

-> If you have the means to, purchase them directly from the source to show monetary interest.

-> If you want that renewal, that next season, to see a ship get together finally, or just to not get brainwashed by white supremacists, then join in the fight.

-> Otherwise, it won't just be homophobic executives blocking projects, the law will be too.

[classicslesbianopinions]

the more i see the post about like. having friends with "wildly varied" interests or whatever but the examples given are having an advanced degree in greek tragedy and writing minecraft fanfiction the more annoyed i get. the incongruity between greek tragedy and minecraft fanfiction exists entirely in the moral value you are implicitly placing on it by assuming they are incongruous.

[urfavcrime]

dsmp is still SO insane to me. still not completely convinced it wasn't a social experiment. it is something that can never be replicated again due to the really specific circumstances that attributed to it's creation and popularity

[aceofspades42]

Todays hot take:

I want clichés represented with queer characters that arent like twink and top

Like give me a stereotypical mean girl with a girlfriend

Give me a t4t quarterback and his cheer captain girlfriend

Give me an outcastXsocial butterfly qpr

Give me a conflicted main character in a lovetriangle turned polycule

Give me an ace "chosen one"

Give me a nb prom court

Give me a queer coming of age story that's a little cliché because cliché stories can be fun too

Does this make any sense or is it time for me to head to bed?

[br1ghtestlight]

on one hand i get the criticism that inanimate insanity needs more disabled writers etc of marginalizations they aren't a part of but on the other hand inanimate insanity doesn't have a "writers room" its literally two (2) entire people doing all the writing for the show now and they're understandably very protective of their work so just "hiring more writers" is not a serious possibility

personally if id been working on a project for a decade and a half and it was extremely personal/close to me and something only me and a handful of other people i trusted very very much had really written/plotted out stories for i would be extremely apprehensive of anyone else doing ANY amount of writing for it. i mean i wouldn't feel comfortable just "hiring another writer" for my own ocs..... like these are literally my guys i created them?? im the Understander of them and i don't really trust another person with them or their stories

BUT i do think a sensitivity reader (probably soomeone they already actually trust vs just a random fan) would probably be for the best. even though there are already disabled queer and mentally ill etc etc people on the crew having someone to help objectively look over everything who doesn't have any bias might be a good idea. i would be worried about how fans would react if they disagreed with the sensitivity reader/s with the way things are portrayed but hopefully everyone could be reasonable. i dont know if they'll do that though maybe they're just gonna stop having disabled characters

[sarenhale]

Fulgrim, the man that girlbossed too close to the Emperor

[alinahdee]

[nanaluvren]

Oh hey, look!

Turns out every one of us who had legitimate concerns about DAV actually being what we were told (sold) it was or what we hoped it would be…were not, in fact, “just hateful a**holes” out to ruin everyone else’s enjoyment of the game, but instead, were 100% entitled to doubt BioWare and this whole project.

Uh.

Funny that.

History repeating itself…Seems to be the theme these days.

[biggesthomuradefender]

i wanna make an analysis comparing homura to butterfly symbolism/metaphors bc i feel like there’s smth there.

the butterfly effect, for one.