“This representation was groundbreaking for the time and a lot of people liked it” and “This may have aged poorly and many modern audiences from the group don’t feel represented by it and are bothered by aspects of it” are not mutually exclusive

see also: “it’s okay to feel uncomfortable with these pieces of media due to their clumsy—if not harmful—depictions” and “some people still enjoy them, despite their flaws, especially older people who grew up without the same amount of representation we have today, and it’s not your place to tell someone they can’t like it”

additionally: "it's impossible to properly analyze a work without considering the context of the culture it was made within, you cannot approach it entirely from a modern perspective with modern sensibilities and standards because you may find yourself condemning something that has value because you don't understand why it was made the way it was for the audience it was trying to reach, and truthfully it is actually important to think about why even incredibly problematic works were made they way they were, because it makes us more aware of how our own biases and assumptions might influence the art we create today, as well as the realities of historic oppression people in power might want us to forget or at least pretend they weren't complicit in"

every time people make a character go through severe life-altering physical injuries and then decide that they’re still able-bodied and look and act completely unaffected after the fact i want to throw tomatoes at my screen

real quer people do not exist only to be “good representation” for the entire queer community.

a queer person who fits queer stereotypes is not “bad rep” — they’re a real human being who is being who they are and living their own life. it isn’t their job to be anything that they’re not just so that you, other queer people, or the community will “look good”.

You’ve heard of competing access needs. Now consider:

Competing representation needs.

But no, seriously. This is one of the biggest things that pits people against each other in fandom spaces.

You’ve got people who need stories where men get to have completely platonic deep friendships with other men, need stories where men can be affectionate and support each other emotionally without it having to be romance. You’ve also got people who need stories about men being romantic with men. Both of these are valid. Whether either is canon doesn’t really matter because transformative works are allowed to be transformative and transformative works are works in their own right. It’s right there in the name.

But because there can only be One True Fanon, instead of acknowledging that different people have different needs and taking a live-and-let-live approach, you usually end up with both groups fighting to throw the other one under the bus first for trying to “steal” their representation.

Please no Oppression Olympics clowning on this post. Everyone needs stories. It’s an immutable part of the human condition.

The thing with telling “cliche” stories, but with representation, is… these stories aren’t cliche for us.

Picture this. The people at the table next to you have been getting chocolate cake as a dessert for YEARS. After every meal, they get a chocolate cake. Now, it’s been years, and the people at that table can barely stand chocolate anymore. They want maybe a cheesecake. Or lemon mousse.

But your table? Has NEVER had chocolate cake. Mousse is also good, but you are SO hungry for that chocolate cake, cause you never had it before, and it’s brand new for you, and you’ve been watching the other table eat it for YEARS.

That’s what’s like getting a “cliche” story that’s representative. Has it been done a million times before? Yes. Has it ever been done for US? Well… no. Maybe it’s the 500th chocolate cake in existence, but all the other chocolate cakes weren’t meant for us (girls/PoC/queer folk/disabled folk/etc)

So it being cliche is not a bad thing. You may not want chocolate cake anymore. But we want our slice too.

At this point, I feel like I need to staple the sign to something. Or someone.

You know what, I'm updating the sign because everyone said "oh Neil, please let them kiss in season 2!" and he simply smiled as another finger on the goddam monkey's paw curled

Wanna add this for the people genuinely freaking out about Neil’s answer

OP turned off reblogs

“You just want every fictional character to be gay!”

No, of course not, don’t be silly. That would be unrealistic.

I want a lot of them to be lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, and asexual, too. 

People bring up 9/11 to derail or shut down so many conversations, that whenever I’m talking to someone about modern history and politics that actually do relate to 9/11, I have to cringe and preface it with, “okay, not to make it all about 9/11, but it is definitely related to 9/11. I’m so sorry. I also do not want to talk about 9/11.”

This post brought to you by a recent conversation I had with someone about reactionary trends in American media and a backslide in many different kinds of representation post-2001.

I’m not going to deny that Tumblr purity culture is a thing that exists, but I feel it’s worth pointing out that a very big chunk of the apparent tendency for LGBT-friendly media to be held to impossibly higher standards than media with no LGBT representation whatsoever boils down to a calculated misdirection.

The people who are all in favour of LGBT representation in principle, but manage without fail to find a reason to object to any particular instance of LGBT representation?

Those are homophobes.

Acting like they’re 100% on your side when talking theory while simultaneously shitting all over any attempt to put that theory into practice is how they get you.

say it with me everyone:

i’m praying this doesn’t get hijacked by another racist again

shoutout to all the pan people who struggle to find characters to relate to and see their identity represented in, because writers refuse to write pan characters and say they’re pan on screen.

shoutout to all the pan people who find characters they relate to and see their identity in, but those characters are never celebrated for being pan, because fans and media erase or ignore their pansexuality.

shoutout to all the pan people who struggle to find validation in their pan headcanons/interpretations, because hardly anyone has pan headcanons and pretty much everyone just assumes unlabeled multisexual characters are bi.

shoutout to all these pans, because y’all deserve fair, explicit, celebrated representation and validation and support for your headcanons.

Checklist for Screening Adoption Media

I thought for the benefit of adoptive parents and my unending quest to find better stories about adoption, (plus subjecting myself to some of the worst Adoption movies *ever*) that I’d do a favor and compile a list of things you might want to consider when screening adoption movies. Because while one group might have something that offends them, another group might miss it…

To be absolutely clear, I am not saying that one should not watch a movie if you find one of these things in it, but to seriously consider how you plan to discuss if, and if you should/be willing to. (I still avoid movies where adopted people are spawn of the devil/possessed. I’d recommend strongly against such movies.) I split it in systematic order. Your story you are screening might be problematic with adoption if… Damaging to Adoption, General: - Soapbox meets adoption. – X social issue is better or explained because the person is adopted. – Arguments about Nature v. nurture through using adoption. - Adoption is painted as super easy to go through. Hey! No home study, be home in a week… Look, you can “select” your child. - God *makes* adoption happen, magically without a court system…. (There are books out there like this…) - Arguments that it “simplifies the story” if one uses adoption or gives a character “more freedom” See, quotes by strip author of Annie and JK Rowling who argued this. Guardian interview, “…but Harry HAD to be an orphan - so that he’s a free agent, with no fear of letting down his parents, disappointing them?” Which kinda indicates that children who are orphans or adopted are loved *less* by their adoptive parents. Do you really want to expose them to that? - Foster, Adoptive or relinquishing parents were or are abusive, mentally or physically, especially to serve the plot. (See Harry Potter, among lots of others) - Abortion and adoption are used as intersections to make a point about one or the other. - Lack of variety shown about adoption. So the singular adoption story, rather than politely nodding to other POVs. Especially when there is more than one adoption story. (See Once Upon a Time, once they got complaints, they *quit* addressing it. TT)

- Treated as a social experiment.

Keep reading

tumblr is all for traumatized, mentally ill, and battered characters…oh that is until they start showing signs of being traumatized, mentally ill, and battered such as: anger, severe anxiety, poor social skills, and symptoms that aren’t someone quietly having a panic attack

You deserve representation. You deserve to be able to see yourself reflected in media.

Beyoncé’s Lemonade: A Lesson on Appreciating Art That Wasn’t Made for You | Consequence of Sound (via luxuriousvulgarity)

When I was younger and more abled, I was so fucking on board with the fantasy genre’s subversion of traditional femininity. We weren’t just fainting maidens locked up in towers; we could do anything men could do, be as strong or as physical or as violent. I got into western martial arts and learned to fight with a rapier, fell in love with the longsword.

But since I’ve gotten too disabled to fight anymore, I… find myself coming back to that maiden in a tower. It’s that funny thing, where subverting femininity is powerful for the people who have always been forced into it… but for the people who have always been excluded, the powerful thing can be embracing it.

As I’m disabled, as I say to groups of friends, “I can’t walk that far,” as I’m in too much pain to keep partying, I find myself worrying: I’m boring, too quiet, too stationary, irrelevant. The message sent to the disabled is: You’re out of the narrative, you’re secondary, you’re a burden.

The remarkable thing about the maiden in her tower is not her immobility; it’s common for disabled people to be abandoned, set adrift, waiting at bus stops or watching out the windows, forgotten in institutions or stranded in our houses. The remarkable thing is that she’s like a beacon, turning her tower into a lighthouse; people want to come to her, she’s important, she inspires through her appearance and words and craftwork.  In medieval romances she gives gifts, write letters, sends messengers, and summons lovers; she plays chess, commissions ballads, composes music, commands knights. She is her household’s moral centre in a castle under siege. She is a castle unto herself, and the integrity of her body matters.

That can be so revolutionary to those of us stuck in our towers who fall prey to thinking: Nobody would want to visit; nobody would want to listen; nobody would want to stay.

#it’s so so important to remember that representation is not one-size-fits-all#what is empowering to one person might be exhausting and oppressive to someone else#some people need stories about having the strength to save themselves#some people need stories about being considered worthy of being saved#some people need inspiration for their independence while others need validation that they don’t have to be able to do everything themselves#before you lash out against something PLEASE stop to consider:#is this inadequate and/or damaging representation?#or is it just something I don’t personally relate to? [X]

It’s been half a decade and I still haven’t found an articulation of the complexity of “representation” as concisely and precisely mindblowing as @hungrylikethewolfie’s here.