#again this isnt a defense! It was still so invasive and had a real negative impact on Dan as he talked about

[normiewizard]

ok so the recent wave of criticism against the invasion of privacy and fetishization of real life lgbtq people is REALLY refreshing and important. BUT I don’t think we can have these conversations without really looking at the reasons why this keeps happening.

 For a community that is so harmful to closeted people, it is overwhelmingly made up of closeted people! A lot of these are kids with no other concept of a queer community. The amount of closeted, repressed kids relying on social media as an outlet has created an environment in which fetishization is the same as pride. Shipping real people gives lgbt kids hope for a real relationship. Outing and Fictionalizing real people gives them the opportunity to have lgbt role models or closeted/questioning role models that they otherwise wouldn’t have had access to.

It is ABSOLUTELY still toxic. A lack of boundaries and empathy for public figures definitely plays a role, but looking at it as only an issue of bad allies or creepy straight people won’t lead to a solution.

[marcomardon]

heyy so i know that it wasnt your post but i was hoping could elaborate on the legends part of that post about negative points about dctv. english isnt my first language (and im a little lazy) but i really want to fully understand it. " yes, you can enjoy legends, but yes you should also acknowledge ....within five minutes (they don’t even mention Jax’s chronic pain anymore)."

yeah sure thing, hopefully i can expand on this well enough:

…it’s been incredibly antiblack,…

2x04, “abominations” was on all accounts, a white man’s attempt to show the viewers what racism was like, and pretend that it’s over now so we should feel… good? they put the two black mains (the only characters of colour as series regulars on the show) undercover by having a historically important black man killed so one of the mains could impersonate him while the other pretended to be a slave.

(i will give this episode 1 thing and it is jax saying “I get it might be difficult for you to understand this, but I’ve been black my entire life, Grey. And honestly, I can’t think of a time period we could go to where I wouldn’t face some sort of racism.”)

2x16, “doomworld” was specifically antiblack because of amaya’s death. this episode aired at a time when the flash was going through a season-long plot to save iris, and having two WOC mains dying to affect everyone else on their show is uh…. fridging. where female characters are often killed, maimed, or otherwise assaulted for male characters to feel anger, sadness, emotions at all, or to be motivated to go after the “villain” of the story. in this case, we have leonard freezing and shattering amaya, in the most literal sense dctv has ever gotten with the term “fridging” – all because the writers and producers wanted us to be able to feel how mick and leonard’s partnership was unable to be fixed. they wanted “real consequences” for that episode and the way to do it is … kill the black woman. i guess. after she spent most of the episode brainwashed by damien darhk and had to be ‘saved’ from her brainwashing from sara and nate.

one might argue that almost everyone died in the doomworld universe, but amaya was the only one to die in the actual episode “doomworld” and her death was about her being mick’s friend. compare it to ray’s death – he had his heart ripped out by eobard because ray is too trusting. it fits him. he has a big heart. we even saw it. he got a death 100% about him. amaya did not. 

…aired an episode chock full of anti-Asian specific racism,…

2x03, “shogun”, was uh… i’m not sure how to describe this one so i’m mostly sourcing from other people here, but this review by a japanese viewer is the best way to explain, here’s her summary:

In grotesquely stereotypical White Saviour fashion, Nate has a fling with Masako Yamashiro who is engaged to marry the shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu.

Ray’s suit is stolen and he does a nonsensical stereotypical “sensei” montage trying to push Nate to embrace and understand his new metahuman abilities.

The team arrives later on to help them fight the shogun and his samurai, all while making tacky quips about ninjas because the mispronounced Japanese by supposedly Japanese characters just wasn’t enough to fill up the offensive quota.

Ray and Nate have to make the sacrifice of destroying Ray’s suit to defeat the shogun and of course Nate undermines Masako’s opportunity to be the hero because it’s a White Saviour trope episode, after all.

and as ari said best, “the writers watched three whole episodes of naruto before writing this episode”

honestly the singular good thing about this episode was that they hired an asian director, kevin tancharoen, aka the love of my life, but there’s only so much he can do with a shitty script. at least the episode looked visually amazing. 

(let me know if you need more on this point since i’m pasting from other people here)

…erased a Jewish man’s identity,…

i’m not 100% sure if bette means martin stein or ray palmer so let’s talk about both.

martin stein, in his 8 appearances in the flash before moving over to legends of tomorrow, mentioned his faith in at least half of those. he has now been in 33 legends of tomorrow episodes + flash again for the “invasion!” crossover + kinda “duet” and hasn’t mentioned it once. he participated in a christmas dinner with the team, we’ve seen his wife clarissa in various forms, and now lily and still no mention. i’d have to look closer at the set of his office on the waverider for anything in the background, but i doubt there’s anything. the closest we’ve seen is mick congratulating him on now having a daughter with “mazel tov” in 2x10. 

ray is a little trickier and i had lenny rewrite my explanation here but dctv is all about showing characters like felicity, martin, and rory, with big references to holidays, their menorahs, the torah, and less about showing smaller references like dropping yiddish into a conversation or their quirks about keeping kosher. since we don’t have any of them (except snapper carr on supergirl) with these small references, we just see generic characters, who everyone assumes to be agnostic. the few pieces of evidence i think we have for ray being jewish are donna smoak’s excitement over he and felicity dating, and that he and martin are the most educated people on the waverider, with how judaism places a strong value on education. so when ray plans a christmas dinner, it’s not earned as an ironically jewish act, it’s just white guy.

….and fixed someone’s disability within five minutes…

nate heywood’s backstory was that his parents more or less had him in a bubble, because they were afraid his hemophilia would cause him to die. hemophilia is a disorder that interrupts the body’s ability to clot blood, which is how people normally stop bleeding from even small cuts or bruises. if you have hemophilia, if you start bleeding inside your body, then you are in serious danger.  

basically, it was the writers’ attempt to give a character an excuse for not having had as exciting of a life as the rest of the characters have had, and a reason why developing steel powers to protect his skin would be personally relevant to him. 

what would have been more interesting is if he kept the hemophilia and gained the steel powers anyway, as a first and more solid line of defense than his skin was, preventing him from bleeding at all. if i was in his situation with hemophilia and suddenly gained steel powers i literally would not turn them off for fear of … sara with knives, probably, and any small accident near her meaning not being able to stop bleeding. but you know, ray’s super serum cured his hemophilia, since there is no current real world cure for it at all. this is not the first time we’ve seen miracle cures on dctv though, with… felicity. malcolm. leonard. hartley. charles mcnider. probably more. 

…(they don’t even mention Jax’s chronic pain anymore).

the last time we heard about jax’s chronic pain, his torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), was 1x05 when he had to run across the prison yard. he was limping after he got there, and limping when he got back on the ship. we’ve seen jax run a few times with no negative results, implying gideon fixed jax’s pain, i guess, yet another miracle cure. 

people with things like deafness (like me!), or blindness, or chronic pain, or hemophilia, or missing limbs, or partial paralysis very very rarely have positive representation on screen, and here dctv is, curing everyone. especially for ailments and disabilities that don’t have cures, or are even part of people’s identities. we’re seeing characters go through a healing process that we will never have (or don’t want), and the writers just keep writing more “miracle cure” situations. “how tragic, look, we fixed their problems perfectly” for nate’s hemophilia or leonard’s missing hand or “look at this assistive technology that makes their lives 100% perfectly back to normal” for malcolm’s hand, felicity’s spine, charles’s vision, and hartley’s tinnitus, and not often showing the struggles even with the technology.it’s the disability equivalent of the white hero complex.

if anyone wants to add anything or correct me please do since i am not black, asian, or jewish, nor do i specifically have hemophilia or chronic pain.