#yes theres shitty media with shitty representation

[a-vicious-faithless-angel]

Originally i wasn't gonna post this, n was just gonna keep it to myself but it's insane to me how much fandoms or just people in general cannot seem to fathom anything outside of what they know. They've placed themselves into a box of what they know, what makes them comfortable and what's understandable to them. Anything past that is met with hatred and dislike for xyz. You can't have a morally grey character [ESP FEMALE.] Without accusations of abuse of any of fucking being terrorist [Looks at what people say about Mia Winters.] Fiction is not supposed to always be made for YOU. It's made for anyone, they're not nor SHOULDN'T be limited to yourself. This idea that things cannot be bad or gruesome without backlash destroys so much of what sm media is built on... If a ship between 2 characters can be seen as horrible and disgusting when theres no actual evidence of it being that way yet theres still a push when in all actuality you are allowed to write shitty relationships, its okay to write about the relationships that arent squeaky clean!!!! This idea that if you ship it, it immediately means you support it, has gone so far, when i talk about 4525 [David x Simon] or hell Woods x Hackett. Its not to bring this idea that i want real relationships to fucking be like this, its just an interesting viewing of 2 people trying to make something work. They're fictional characters. They are not real. They're little dolls you play around with, to push n do whatever with. A limit of which is okay and isn't should be there, but we've crossed it so much that, the line isn't even there anymore. Like any difficult subject you handle it with care but it doesn't automatically mean you cant ever talk about it or want to talk about it! Just like how real life is not pure, not all media will be pure and that's FINE. You should talk about villainous characters and their complexity and not be harassed for just liking them. <3333

[sickknotdoom]

keeping my name hidden because i already had really shitty experience when i was like 13 and people were looking fucking anywhere to find any even slight reasons to harass me))

i know this is kind of stupid and not that important to bring up ig but i genuinely do wish there was also adhd representation in sparklecare/cometcare/darkermatters because i love that theres autistic characters! i love that ! but i do wish we also had adhd representation because its also a disability that doesn't really get much representation in media. i would also like to state that i do enjoy sparklecare and all it's other alternatives, however i do see the problems with it, (obviously aside from what i just talked about) and i think it is 100% important to adrress those

from an audhder

-🐀👑

i know i saw a theory about caroline having adhd and kittycorn reblogged it so im basically gonna take that as confirmation given how much important shit is put on the blog as opposed to the comic. im not an adhder but i am autistic and bpd and i feel like carolines moreso coded towards those but they may also potentially have adhd? and yes i understand wanting neurodivergent representation especially in media that basically inevitably caters to neurodivergent creatures like us

also theres already an anon named 🐀 unless youre the same anon

[gib-mir-gift]

i havent seen the new wwdits episode yet so forgive me if this Hot Take™️ is room temperature at best but. i dont think The Marwa/Freddie Thing was meant as a racist or misogynistic thing? from what ive read from everyone talking about it so far it feels more like the writers using nandors past and current narcissism to highlight how shitty he is. it also shows how every time he tries to express himself he only succeeds in making everyone he cares about miserable.

please dont reply to this complaining about wwdits 'using women of colour as a plot device for men' i really dont give a shit. plot has to plot somehow and media, great representation or not, still has a long way to go until that stops so im not gonna complain about the idiotic vampire show doing it. theres other shows that have women of colour that arent plot devices. honestly though every character ever is a plot device so i really dont understand this type of complaint

and while yes i agree that the writers could have done so much better with marwa and they should have put more effort into her plot and nandor stripping her of her autonomy is disgusting,, i knew from the start that shed be another throwaway plot device like jim the vampire, jenna, derek, evie, benji, etc.

i love marwa and im gonna miss her but not everything is about race or gender. sometimes its just about a show doing things to make it unpredictable or interesting or to prove a point about other characters (EX: laszlo cheating jim out of the money he owes, jenna fucking off after being turned, derek fucking off after being turned and the hellhound trial and the wedding, evie fucking off after colin breaks up with her, benji fucking off after... whatever happened with him tbh i cant remember)

other times its just the show not knowing how to properly send off a character and thats okay. its a shitty comedy about vampires its not gonna be perfect and its not gonna have perfect representation or fair treatment of characters. every show is like that

but yeah fuck nandor. while i love him and hate seeing him so miserable so much this season he deserves it tenfold. romantic interests for him are never going to work. weve known this since jan and meg and gail #justiceformarwa

[treetownconfessions]

odd question, but any characters in different media that remind you of flippy and fliqpy?? more specifically the whole shitty-DID-representation-alt thing they have going on

yes! uh, hm, i mean i wish i could remember them now. but theres a TON of manga and anime that have this kind of trope, though the level of care put into it varies

[constellaj]

Have any of the Phandom ever pointed out how it doesn't look good that a good portion of the human bullies are people of color? Like, I want to think it's unintentional on the writers part, but aside from Tucker and Valerie, who started out as a mean girl, every other not white character is a jerk

ok a) yes and this is a hartman hate club but. b)

-the main bully, like THE singular bully, is dash, who is just a rich white blonde man

-kwan is actively shown to be the ‘nicer’ of the bullies, hes forgiving and kind and gentle a lot (’hey im sure it was an accident’ and ‘the fluffy clouds all look like footballs’)

-star is also one of the popular bullies and shes white

-paulinas portrayal is messed up in every way (shes like an irredeemable shallow bitch, shes the ‘sexy latina’ stereotype, etc...) but at least she is a love interest sometimes instead of a straight up villain (for me personally i think her self-centered ‘bitchy’ attitude is actually perfect and i love her for it although i do understand that the writers were probably not celebrating it)

-the only other casper high characters we see are danny, jazz, sam, val, and tuck. danny and jazz are siblings so if one was white the other ‘had’ to be white (eschewing adoption and mixed race kids). sam is jewish (although a lot of ink could be spilled on the shitty implications of writing a jewish character who is secretly rich). val is written a LOT like an ‘angry black woman’ stereotype before she becomes the huntress, but she does genuinely get am arc and becomes a close friend of danny (for a time anyway). and of course tucker is black. 

yes it seems very disproportionate and i dont want to defend it but i think its worth pointing out that we may be conflating the number of characters in Danny’s friend group with the number of characters in the popular kids. we SEE more popular kids by and large because danny only has sam and tucker; dash, star, kwan, paulina, dale(?), other miscellaneous background bullies, valerie, etc etc (its also worth noting that a lot of unnamed bullies are white). when you take the main trio and the main 4 bullies (and we count sam be jewish as nonwhite), dannys friend group is actually only 30% white while the bullies (dash, star, paulina, kwan) are 50% white; and even in that group, kwan is (as previously mentioned) played as more of a big softie half the time

the QUANTITY of characters of color in the popular kids is higher, yeah, but thats because theres a larger group. a group of 200 people will have more poc than a group of 5 people just because thats how numbers work

of course this doesnt excuse the writers for playing into a lot of shitty stereotypes to pull this off (sexy latina, angry black woman, secretly rich sjw jew) (weird how that only happens with women :thinking emoji:) but i dont necessarily think that the villains are disproportionately poc. and thats only considering students at casper high; when you factor in ghosts the ratio tips hard into all-white 

(vlad, betrand, and spectra have human forms that are definitively white; freakshow is white; sidney poindexter (and HIS bullies) are white (/italian, however you count that); technus’s facial structure is very white; johnny 13 (and potentially kitty) are also p clearly meant to be white; the only times you can say a ghost ISNT white is when it deliberately relates to the backstory ie with desiree (which again, is another stereotype but right now we’re only looking at numbers) or hotep-ra. the ghosts are also always bigger antagonists than the humans bc thats the main point of the draw)

like yeah a good portion of the human bullies ARE poc but thats just because we know more bullies than we know friends of danny (loser nerd has no friends lol). im not trying to defend it and say it isnt problematic at ALL per se but i do think its worth noting that in terms of numbers its not really. THE worst it could be. when i started watching dp for the first time i was actually impressed by how many poc attended casper high; i couldnt believe that the main popular girl love interest wasnt white. theres a lot of representation in the background cast too. no it sure isnt perfect and we can definitely do better now (and we probably could have done better than) but i definitely dont think it was malicious.

again also worth restating: the only main recurring irredeemable asshole at the popular table IS dash. paulina’s just a ditz and dannys allowed to crush on her; kwan is baby (literally); valerie has an entire arc. dash, the white boy, is the singular student whos defining trait is being an asshole; even when you THINK hes having development (pirate radio, micro management) he completely undoes it by the end of the episode. i think making the whitest popular kid also the biggest most irredeemable bully was a sick call (also mr lancer is a strong antagonist oftentimes in casper high and he is also white; principal ishiyama isnt white but shes never an antagonist while lancer is)

all in all i like that dp just has a lot of characters of color and its never really addressed like tucker just Is Black and sam just Is Jewish its never like a thing(TM). again i keep saying it but this doesnt excuse it, i just dont think its like, horrible or anything. u can be critical of media and recognize its flaws while also recognizing its successes and not assuming its automatically doing the worst thing it could

[angel-archivist]

cracking the code abt the lgbt characters for straight ppl and lgbt characters for lgbt ppl its like. the amount of struggle they sprinkle in. like if its "oh to be different and suffer 😔😔™" thats dEFINITELY for straight people. but if its "oh my god im none binary pogchamp i have truama but its not related to my identity anyway look at all the bis and pans and epic trans omg ✨ el ge bee tee queueueu commuhnity" that is for us 😔💖 yum pogchamp homies of the gays

Its about the tokenization or the queer stories being told my cishet women, im oh my god im so happy this cishet man/cishet women is going to talk to ME about Queer trauma and provide a shitty representation of what its like to be queer in 2018. Like oh my god, his families ALL accepting except his dad kind of makes homophobic jokes sometimes ://// 

Versus Queer people writing stories based on their own struggles being trans, gay whatever and actually SHOWS the nuances in relationships and yes some people get accepted by their families and that's amazing!!! thats the trouble with havign your super cool queer story only focus on White gay men you dont get different PERSPECTIVES you dont SHOW how complex it is to be queer and make the cishet allys feeling ‘comfy’ with the queer community their like: wow enough activism for today *ignores queer people of color, disabled queer folks, ND queer folks, and trans people in general*

when QUEER people write from THEIR suffering then its a stonger story they KNOW how complex and frusterating and dangerous it can be to be queer even know is ‘2o2o woWOWWOOowoo  homophobes still EXIsT HAHah??” yes bart homophobes still FUCKING exist you just SAYING its 2020 doesnt get rid of the bigots 

And back to the tokenization: 

Cishet ppl writing queer characters into media: wow look how quirky they are OR look how just like us they are look how well they blend into cishet society look there is only ONE queer character and maybe some bicurious characters haha 

Queer people writing queer characters: and theres a lesbian and some enbies and bisexuals and pansexuals and there all fuckign badass and amazing and their trauma isnt just from being queer and isnt the focus of the story but is still IN THE STORY 

sorry this is LONG i get pissed when i think about cishet queer media 

[karamanero-remaking-blog]

livegroove replied to your post “kin policing is so damn stupid like as a poc some white 14 year old on...”

Wasnt that whole discourse started by people that were faking their race and age and lying about being intersex/trans girls lol

yes and i find it Very Interesting how ive damn near NEVER seen an actual poc complain about it let alone an actual asian because, lets face it, it’s more an asian issue than anything since most of the ID community is anime based (like yeah theres some western media so ofc theres latinx and black and assorted other ids as well but i feel its a Minority comparitively) like literally every person ive ever seen complain or have it in their byf has been white,,,

like genuinely the only thing this discourse has accomplished is creating an endemic of race faking (which turns into a bigger issue when mixed kids are then pressured to ‘prove’ their race in increasingly ridiculous ways like ive deadass seen people ask for pictures of someones PARENTS like that isn’t the most invasive shit in the world ntm RACIST) and an even worse endemic of people reaching to claim characters from asian media are ‘uncoded’/abuse of the term ‘coding’ to begin with (which i honestly consider worse bc that’s erasure of representation and it’s shitty) while simultaneously making a buncha kids feel guilty and unsafe in their own coping mechanisms.

BUT I DIGRESS tldr i think the discourse is dumb ableist white nonsense but what else is new.