#commentary on representation

[miss-rum-hee]

Hey! I was thinking about something and wanted to ask: What do you think of calls for GOOD Slavic representation and Slavophobia being shoved aside (mainly by POC) as being unimportant because "you're just white and already have enough rep", when Slavs of all white people should get the rep. Slavs and Eastern Europeans are usually represented in negative ways. Some examples of movies and TV that are guilty of this other than spy movies are:

Taken and Hostel - Stereotype: "Eastern European S*x Trafficker". Taken, one of the most blatant pieces of propaganda. Basically "Big Strong Eagle Daddy American saves his Beautiful Damsel Daughter from Those Savage Barbaric Albanian Perverts", and Hostel. Hostel is "The American Men Get Tortured by Slovaks", and Slovak people called it out. Albania's government had to make signs showing how nice Albania actually looked to try and fix their bad reputation.

Orphan - Stereotype "Eastern European Killer". Esther is revealed to be Estonian, which is Baltic, which while not Slavic is still Eastern European. She's a killer in a kid's body who manipulates people and even tries to SEDUCE AN ADULT MAN. Ironically, Estonia is closer to Finnish culture than Slavic/Russian culture.

Are You Afraid of the Dark? The Tale of the Nightly Neighbors: Not really a stereotype. Also implied antisemitism too. The main characters are a brother and sister, and their new neighbours from Ukraine are sus. The sister believes them to be vampires (which turns out to be true). The problem is how she talks about Ukraine and Eastern Europe when trying to convince her brother the truth. She's like "Ukraine is around those other places. Hungary, Russia, Romania, Croatia, Serbia, Transylvania". The neigbours are also implied to be Jewish with the surname Braun.

Sabrina the Teenage Witch episode Date witj Destiny. This one is more subtle, and I don't think this had malicious intent as it should be noted, Harvey, one of the recurring characters and Sabrina's boyfriend, is Slovenian-American. But this episode is still kinda sus. Sabrina's dating another man at this point and he gets a business job in the Czech Republic. But Sabrina seems to have a hatred and bias against Czech people. She spends the entire episode trying to keep Josh (the man) away from Prague, she's like "oh with that guy Vojtek Kreszowski" or something, and she makes his trip their miserable. Makes the hotel staff rude, makes the room a sty, to the point where he says it's like he's a POW.

Another subtle one most people don't get. Sixteen Candles is notorious for Long Duk Dong, but a quick and often unnoticed discrimination is there too. the heroine's dad , when talking about her sister's boyfriend, says "we're glad she's not marrying an oily Bohunk". Bohunk is an offensive term for a Hungarian person, so he hates Hungarians, and the boyfriend is Hungarian-American.

Or they get erased (like the new MH G3, despite what people say "Draculaura's still Romanian" when it's clear she's not, "the accents were stereotypical" when Romanians and Russians didn't care, "Abbey wasn't Russian" when she was, with her family's names, as well as being okay with mixed Drac and Clawdeen but drawing the line at Abbey, or the Netflix Witcher getting rid of all the Polish influence from the original books, and even the author calling out how they handled his story and characters).

Just wanted to know what you thought of all of this, and how Slavs get called "racist" for talking about Slavophobia and why they deserve rep even when they clarify they're not trying to make POC seem less important

I think it's pretty shitty ngl. It's hard to put into words, but like....One group's representation shouldn't matter more than the other & treating them that way is not a good thing, but it seems like some people really want to push that crap. They should all have the chance to be shown on screen.

It's kinda goofy how they dismiss Slavs wanting better rep as "oh you're just white you HAVE rep already" considering how the Irish (you know, mostly fair-skinned people) weren't even considered the same as whites for a long ass while. I forgot where I saw this, but back in the 40s, there were legit signs at workplaces saying shit like "Asians/Irish/Blacks need not apply."

The Irish weren't even considered as white for a long ass time, so like, what makes these mfs think Slavs are even considered the same?

[miss-rum-hee]

Because the people in charge don't give a genuine shit about diversity & inclusion in the slightest, they just want money BUT at the same time, they also want brownie points for having "representation". So they put it in there in the most shallow & inoffensive ways imaginable so that they can appear "progressive" & get a good number of folks willing to defend their shitty series to no end.

What’s up with this trend of rebooting beloved cartoons from our childhood and in an attempt to make it progressive and diverse they end up being more racist, sexist, homophobic and offensive than the og cartoon?

[shyjusticewarrior]

Bernard canonically isn't a twink, y'all just love to fling that as an insult to queer men- fictional and real.

[girl4music]

I honestly find it so interesting how much of an idealistic romantic Gabrielle is in the first season and how her attraction seems to only be to warriors except that one guy that likes to tell stories like she does. Talus. It seemed to be less about attraction and more about recognition. She recognized in Talus a kindred spirit. He was kind and caring and sensitive and empathetic... Just like herself...

But with the warriors - Gabrielle’s interest in them was more obvious and she wasn’t drawing parallels to herself in them, but rather to Xena. And that’s how you knew that she was just substituting her unrealized attraction to Xena with these warriors. Even later on with the female warriors that had interest in her, she was still constantly rooted on her idealisation of Xena. Of being a warrior or with one.

And that would always be unhealthy for her - unless it was Xena.

But yeah, the other romantic interests that weren’t warriors… She was just drawing parallels to herself even though she wasn’t that way either. At least she was very quickly moving away and separating herself from that. Again - just an idealised version of the real person. And look - Perdicus only ever became interesting to Gabrielle when he was no longer just a villager too. When he was also a warrior with a tortured soul. Someone she could save. Someone she could fix...

But she already had that person in her life and she was already doing that job and playing that role for that person. She already had exactly what she was looking for in a romantic partner in Xena. She just never realized it because she mistook her attraction to and affection for Xena as just hero worship and the fantasy of being an adventuress.

Season 1 just lays it on really thick that the Perfect Match for either one of them is clearly each other. They said they weren’t doing this intentionally and you can see that but they understood the romantic interest characters were just paralleling both their lead characters in that the traits in them are the reason they were attractive to them.

It’s much more obvious with Gabrielle than with Xena but even Xena had romantic interests that were just an idealised male version of what she loved in Gabrielle. What she found attractive and desirable.

So really they HAD TO come to the conclusion that they do in Season 2 that it’s EACH OTHER because otherwise you’d just get this paralleling happening constantly and not really a progression. And only Xena’s bad boy attraction ever makes sense because that’s Ares. That’s what Ares does for and to her. He isn’t an idealisation. He isn’t ever a fantasy for her. She genuinely is attracted to him and desires him. That’s the only romantic interest character that doesn’t feel like a poor attempt to cover up the fact that it’s Gabrielle she wants to be with. But then what happens is every "bad boy" romantic interest character she has ends up just being a parallel to Ares instead. So it’s always either just one or the other. Ares or Gabrielle. Dark or Light.

There never seems to be a point where Xena’s paired with a romantic interest to recognize herself like Gabrielle is because it’s never about realizing her identity or sexuality. It’s about balancing her nature.

But even so,... it’s obvious the Perfect Match for her is Gabrielle. And this goes on for 2 entire seasons until the half-way point of Season 2 raises the stakes and they have to acknowledge the truth of what’s going on with the narrative when it comes to the romantic aspect.

The real romance is, always was and always will be EACH OTHER.

It’s like Xena had to be bashed in the head, die and come back life for them to get to the point of ��Oh, it’s you. You’re my true love. You’re my Perfect Match. You’re my soulmate. You're the one for me!"

Even then it takes them half the fucking length of the TV show to even commit to anything actually solid within their relationship. They know their feelings, they know each other’s feelings by that point but they are still so absolutely clueless. 🤦‍♀️ They have to be told. They have to get this information hand fed to them via reincarnation and AU crazy shenanigans before they can be like “Okay, we can’t deny it now. We’re clearly meant to be together for eternity… so should we perhaps go for an actual romance? Should we be an official couple?"

And it’s so meta how they do this because it’s both an in-show and out-of-show thing. It’s like the moment they decide both in-Universe and in real life that this is where they’re going with their progression.

It just works. It works so well for it to happen like this - for them to progress like this - and it is so interesting to delve into and explore the slow burnish-ness to their character dynamic because these characters discover each other in such a way that you rarely ever see in TV. And when you do see it, it’s never two lead female characters.

I’m just so grateful. I am so fucking grateful for XENA and for a team of creators/cast/crew that AGREED! I mean the way they set it up not even intending for anything like this to occur but it just... does.

Steven L. Sears is right. Is it really a surprise that these incredibly dynamic female lead characters would end up as a WLW love story?

No,... because how else could they have progressed individually? This was the natural trajectory because it made the most sense for both characters to evolve in this way AND to be their Perfect Match. And it is a queer narrative all the way through from episode 1 to the last because... at the end of the day THEY were the heart of all of it. Everything that happens, every narrative choice, every theme, every plot arc twist - it all wraps extremely tightly around their love story. It doesn't matter whether it was initially intended or not. It was THE WAY the story was heading naturally because it's a queer narrative and they let these lead characters evolve the way it felt most right and I feel they really took this relationship seriously as a romantic one precisely because they didn't just make it about a romance. That their "have their cake and eat it too" made this show phenomenal and I don't care what anyone says. It's THE BEST WLW representation.

But only because the creators/cast/crew went there. Only because they agreed. Only because they allowed it. Deep fucking RESPECT!

[c-schroed]

First things first: The world of Nimona is a marvellous piece of worldbuilding. That being said...

The local cuisine quite clearly is skewed towards Tex-Mex dishes.

And can we please talk about that lovely little startle of the waiter. Such a great animation! I finally fell in love when they showed him for one additional, sweet split second. With the now obsolete nachos. Poor guy. Excellent movie.

[miss-rum-hee]

This whole thing is ass

This is a jar full of major characters 

Actually it is a jar full of chocolate covered raisins on top of a dirty TV tray. But pretend the raisins are interesting and well rounded fictional characters with significant roles in their stories. 

We’re sharing these raisins at a party for Western Storytelling, so we get out two bowls. 

Then we start filling the bowls. And at first we only fill the one on the left. 

This doesn’t last forever though. Eventually we do start putting raisins in the bowl on the right. But for every raisin we put in the bowl on the right, we just keep adding to the bowl on the left. 

And the thing about these bowls is, they don’t ever reset. We don’t get to empty them and start over. While we might lose some raisins to lost records or the stories becoming unpopular, but we never get to just restart. So even when we start putting raisins in the bowl on the right, we’re still way behind from the bowl on the left. 

And time goes on and the bowl on the left gets raisins much faster than the bowl on the right. 

Until these are the bowls. 

Now you get to move and distribute more raisins. You can add raisins or take away raisins entirely, or you can move them from one bowl to the other. 

This is the bowl on the left. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?

You can’t tell for certain, can you? Adding or removing a raisin over here doesn’t seem to make much of a change to this bowl. 

This is the bowl on the right. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?

When there are so few raisins to start, any change made is really easy to spot, and makes a really significant difference. 

This is why it is bad, even despicable, to take a character who was originally a character of color and make them white. But why it can be positive to take a character who was originally white and make them a character of color.

The white characters bowl is already so full that any change in number is almost meaningless (and is bound to be undone in mere minutes anyway, with the amount of new story creation going on), while the characters of color bowl changes hugely with each addition or subtraction, and any subtraction is a major loss. 

This is also something to take in consideration when creating new characters. When you create a white character you have already, by the context of the larger culture, created a character with at least one feature that is not going to make a difference to the narratives at large. But every time you create a new character of color, you are changing something in our world. 

I mean, imagine your party guests arrive

Oh my god they are adorable!

And they see their bowls

But before you hand them out you look right into the little black girls’s eyes and take two of her seven raisins and put them in the little white girl’s bowl.

I think she’d be totally justified in crying or leaving and yelling at you. Because how could you do that to a little girl? You were already giving the white girl so much more, and her so little, why would you do that? How could you justify yourself?

But on the other hand if you took two raisins from the white girl’s bowl and moved them over to the black girl’s bowl and the white girl looked at her bowl still full to the brim and decided your moving those raisins was unfair and she stomped and cried and yelled, well then she is a spoiled and entitled brat. 

And if you are adding new raisins, it seems more important to add them to the bowl on the right. I mean, even if we added the both bowls at the same speed from now on (and we don’t) it would still take a long time before the numbers got big enough to make the difference we’ve already established insignificant. 

And that’s the difference between whitewashing POC characters and making previously white characters POC. And that’s why every time a character’s race is ambiguous and we make them white, we’ve lost an opportunity.

*goes off to eat her chocolate covered raisins, which are no longer metaphors just snacks*

[iguessitsjustme]

I'm just sayin. Rose knew exactly what the fuck she was doing when she guilted Jack into joining that dinner. She fucking knew what she was doing

[madootles]

d***** can get fucked for refusing to advertise this movie. it really is so good and the many artists and creatives who put their jobs on the line to bring this story to us deserve all our appreciation and love. 

[goblinofthelaboratory]

so I've heard discourse about nonhuman rep for nonbinary people, aro/ace spec, neurodivergence (especially autism), etc. amalgamating a few different opinions I've heard, I propose that not all characters of those types should be inhuman, all inhuman characters must be at least one of them. your alien/robot/cryptid/other nonhuman understands gender and romance and sexual attraction and human social norms? unrealistic do better

[miss-rum-hee]

Mfs will put down a million fucking rules on how you gotta portray black characters and then wonder why nobody wants to write/create black characters anymore.

How to write fic for Black characters: a guide for non-Black fans

Don’t characterize a Black character as sassy or thuggish, especially when the character in question is can be described in literally ten thousand other ways..

Don’t describe Black characters as chocolate, coffee, or any sort of food item.

Don’t highlight the race of Black characters (ie, “the dark man” or “the brown woman”) if you don’t highlight the race of white characters.

Think very carefully about that antebellum slavery or Jim Crow AU fic as a backdrop for your romance.

If you’re not fluent with AAVE, don’t use it to try to look cool or edgy. You look corny as hell.

Don’t use Black characters as a prop for the non-Black characters you’re actually interested in.

Keep “unpopular opinions” about racism, Black Lives Matter, and other issues pertinent to Black folks out the mouths of Black characters. We know what the fuck you’re doing with that and need to stop.

Don’t assume a Black character likes or hates a certain food, music, or piece of pop culture.

You can make a Black character’s race pertinent without doing it like this.

Be extremely careful about insinuating that one or more of a Black character’s physical features are dirty, unclean, or ugly.

Feel free to add more.

[hermesseus]

[[ VENGEANCE SAGA SPOILERS ]]

I definitely believe it was Ares who aided Odysseus in Six Hundred Strike because Jorge has said that Ares has a power similar to Athena's quick thought that comes with heightened anger and adrenaline and Odysseus definitely sounds more rageful in the song.

Also I don't think Athena would have suggested torturing a god with his own weapon/symbol, even if Poseidon is her rival.

(I have not read the Odyssey so if the answer is known, yk, I didn't know that)

-- Fin 🍾

[thatstudyblrontea]

the real issue is whether indeed there can be a true representation of anything, or whether any and all representations, because they are representations, are embedded first in the language and then in the culture, institutions, and political ambience of the representer.

E. W. Said, Orientalism

[miss-rum-hee]

Atp, POC just means "black people & black people ONLY"

Why do people act as though only white and black people exist. Whenever people talk about artist light-skinned characters being drawn as dark-skinned, they automatically think they’re talking about white characters.They can’t seem to fathom that other races have light skin. Now, I’m not very well-versed in slang or white or black or even American, but I thought POC meant people who are not white. I’m more of a lurker but the fandoms I lurk the most in are anime fandoms. I see a lot of people redraw Asian characters as black  and they act as though that’s representation. They are Japanese. Most Japanese people aren’t dark skinned, what are you trying to achieve? I started wondering if I understood the definition of POC incorrectly and it actually means people who are dark skinned. I even once saw a black artist on tumblr say that Asians aren’t POC.

[girl4music]

For straight allies they really were such good sports about this stuff.

Other straight allies that play queer or queer-coded characters would be much more hesitant to talk about the queer representation. But they always acknowledged the parts of the show that resonated for the LGBTQ community and they talked about it openly and lovingly.

I'll always have such gratitude to Lucy and Renee because I know that this is something that could have ruined their careers. But they didn't ever ignore. They didn't even recoil. They really embraced us as fans and they listened to what it was that made these characters so important for us. They fully acknowledged the interpretation that these characters were queer and they even understood as to why.

They wouldn't have paid any attention to a queer narrative otherwise.

I would have loved to have seen those other takes where they had Gabrielle go back to Potidaea and have Xena chase after her instead because that poker face she had on never fooled me. She was just as affected and influenced by their "first meeting" as Gabrielle was. 🥰

[mysticdragon3md3]

'Nimona' | Scene at The Academy by  Oscars

[are-they-plural]

Reasoning: not provided (probably that her emotions are depicted as different people and the inner workings of her mind as a "headspace" of sorts)