If you haven’t started already, start archiving/downloading everything. Save it to an external hard drive if you’re able. Collecting physical media is also a good idea, if you’re able.

Download your own/your favorite fanfics. Save as much as you can from online sources/digital libraries. Recipes, tutorials, history, LGBTQ media, etc. It has been claimed, though I can’t find the exact source if true, that some materials about the Revolutionary War were deleted from the Library of Congress.

It’s always better to be safe than sorry and save and preserve what you can. Remember that cloud storage also is not always reliable!

I'll be adding more to this list, if anyone else wants to add anything feel free!

Whenever someone says - as praise OR as homophobic criticism - that Noelle Stevenson “made” She-Ra into an LGBT brand I think they should know that the lead character designer of the original was a lesbian who also said that the entire studio behind He-Man and She-Ra was “the gayest place in town.” And like, honestly, you look me in the eye and tell me a straight person drew a single one of these character’s outfits.

A SINGLE one.

While I’m on about how people misunderstand these cartoons I’d also like to rant again about their intended tone. If you’ve never seen the original He-Man PLEASE find and watch some episodes (tons are on youtube) because I guarantee you have the wrong mental image of what He-Man is like. He is not a macho Conan the Barbarian ripoff. He’s a big goofball softie who hates hurting anybody and even talks to Skeletor with an absolutely bottomless patience. He won’t directly punch anybody or ever use his sword directly on a sapient being. And that’s NOT!!! Network mandate!!! Other cartoons at the time were in fact showing more direct violence! It was a deliberate creative decision to make He-Man a gentle and nonviolent hero!

Same goes for Bravestarr, the studio’s first all-original series that wasn’t commissioned by a toy company. Bravestarr is a Native American space sheriff who hates using guns and tries to handle “criminals” by talking things out first. Again, a deliberate decision and not some kind of parent-teacher mandate! That She-Ra designer who called the whole studio gay was also the daughter of the studio founder Lou Scheimer and together they had a specific goal of making cartoons for all ages and genders that showed forgiving, tolerant, compassionate heroes!!!

It is I N S U F F E R A B L E that some newer comics and reboots are so much more aggressive, that they’ll have Skeletor and He-Man roaring and screaming and threatening each other with murder and it’s presented like that’s how they were “meant” to be. No it isn’t! Authentic He-Man wishes Skeletor would calm down and join him for arts and crafts! Netflix She-Ra actually does capture She-Ra’s original personality pretty well and was not at all the softened or watered down series its detractors say it is. if anything Netflix She-Ra was still slightly edgier and darker than 80′s She-Ra! I have heard that the CG Netflix He-Man is cute and silly again because it’s aimed at kids, which is great. I haven’t really gotten into it but these franchises should always be for kids and they should always be nice. They were created to be nice!!!!!!! Fabulous Secret Powers isn’t funny because it twists who He-Man is but because it is EXACTLY who He-Man is!! You don’t GET it! Kevin Smith doesn’t get it! Most of the people complaining about Kevin Smith’s reboot don’t even get it either!!! NOBODY still complaining about the she-ra reboot gets it!!!

i hate to barge in on a post like this (i rarely ever see anyone actually *defend* filmation, and we’re talking in the general world of animation discussion, not just reboots. and i hate getting into big discussions and debates) but i want to make a few comments:

Erika Scheimer was not the primary character designer at Filmation. I’m not sure what her major role at the studio besides voice direction was. I believe she may have been involved in series development though! Adora/She-Ra’s design was by a woman named Diane Keener. Another woman, Alice Hamm, designed Castaspella. (For what it’s worth, developmental design drawings were done by multiple artists and all played a part into the final designs of the characters.)

BraveStarr was co-developed with Mattel much like She-Ra was, but to a lesser extent. Mattel merely had toy rights while Filmation was the rightsholder of the show and characters. Mattel wasn’t kind to BraveStarr, they released the toy before the show (which Lou Scheimer specifically didn’t want) because their sales were hurting. Mattel made some bizarre requests and alterations, from as little as saying BraveStarr shouldn’t wear gold because it’s not a “masculine color” to bigger issues like downplaying, if not completely ignoring his Native American heritage.

BraveStarr was also not the first all-original series from the studio, nor was it the first not commissioned by a toy company. Filmation’s complete output of toy-related shows amounts to three total: He-Man, She-Ra, and BraveStarr. (Ghostbusters had a series of action figures, but was more or less the side effect of a floodgate He-Man had opened.) And even then, Filmation ultimately had complete creative control over all non-toy BraveStarr product.

I don’t think the idea of a serious, gritty He-Man is necessarily bad, granted the only MOTU content I digest is by Filmation. (I think the early pre-Filmation minicomics played it straight?) But, you are absolutely right that He-Man’s moral compass was NOT network mandate. Hell, He-Man was made for syndication, i.e. to be distributed to individual stations. There was no network! Lou Scheimer had previously done a lot of shows with pro-social values, to which one network head actually chewed him out for:

And yes, Filmation’s morals were woven into the stories. Do you want to know why shows like G.I. Joe had PSAs at the end? Because He-Man did it. But they didn’t understand it.

As for He-Man and She-Ra’s gay appeal, I think Erika said it best:

I’ve been, at this point, a longtime Filmation fan. And back in late 2020 I was going through a horrible time in my life. In Spring 2021, I began thinking about Filmation’s product, and after jokingly swearing off their 80s shows for not being “obscure enough” for quite a while, I watched BraveStarr: The Movie. This inspired me to pick up He-Man and She-Ra.

And what happened was really beautiful. I was not only brought out of a slump, I was so incredibly happy. I was proud of myself. These shows made me feel a certain way, and She-Ra particularly really helped me feel good about my identity. It sounds so damn stupid and silly, but I had literally never felt better about myself in my life.

The rush kinda died off around the time Revelation was announced. There’s always some point where I find myself nose deep in the catacombs we call internet discussion. But goddamn, I still love these shows. I love Filmation. Lou Scheimer was the Animation Guild’s TV life support when these shows were being made, as all the other studios were sending work overseas to circumvent the union and not pay their artists. It cost around $300,000 to make an episode of BraveStarr, which was a very high amount at the time. Towards this point in Filmation’s life, their animation was getting better and better. Two shows in production that never aired didn’t even use their infamous stock animation system!

A French conglomerate forcibly shut down the studio after buying it in 1989, right after promising to keep the studio running, and I feel that was one of animation’s biggest losses, the opinions of animation buffs be damned. (I’ve seen honest-to-god one person say “I like the French now!” upon hearing this fact. Really?)

Tangent aside, I am very glad to see someone speaking the praises of these shows, because they really did wonders for kids. They can still do wonders, I think.

P.S. Netossa and Spinnerella are absolutely gay. There was a song cut from the episode they appeared together in.

I know this post has gotten long now but I’m glad to get more accurate clarifications from (and to at all even see) a real filmation fan. Genuinely every little thing about filmation is so fun to learn and it’s sad that it’s mostly remembered for ostensibly making cheap and hokey cartoons.

I’m pretty sure I’m the only person around here who was actually working at/for Filmation during the general period being discussed. After a couple years of scriptwriting experience at Hanna-Barbera, Lou Scheimer hired me in 1981 to do series development work for him. I wound up with an office just down the hall from the initial He-Man/She-Ra team working under Art Nadel.

I can confirm that Lou was absolutely committed to creating animation that was as good as it could possibly be. The whole place resonated to that sense of needing to get what they were doing right. Lou was a fabulous and congenial boss who made the rounds of the studio every day to see if there was anything he could do to help you produce the result you were after: the kind of boss who you were never afraid to see turning up at your office door.

And yeah—for whatever it’s worth, in my experience Filmation was unquestionably (in terms of the employee base) pretty gay. 😄

We’re winning.

I found his bio on societyofpresidentialdescendants.org and it was so delightful I had to copy paste the whole thing:

“Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave it to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale (BA, 1977), and was trained to be a museum curator in the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (MA, 1980). A decorative arts curator at the Newark Museum for thirty-seven years before he retired, Ulysses has never stopped writing for the sheer pleasure of it. Aside from books on Victorian furniture, art pottery, studio ceramics, jewelry, and the White House, Ulysses created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel, appeared in 2012. His most recent novel, Cliffhanger, was released by JMS Books in December 2020.

“Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of 45 years. They have two grown children, adopted in 1996.

“Ulysses is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant. His late mother, Julia, was the President’s last living great-grandchild; youngest daughter of Ulysses S. Grant III, and granddaughter of the president’s eldest son, Frederick. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City. He is also on the board of the U.S. Grant Presidential Library and Museum at Mississippi State University.”

And frankly, the novels sound like they slap:

Desmond was nominated for a Lambda Award.

“With his husband of 45 years.” You kids don’t know ... they got together before AIDS, at the peak of the Gay Glam Life. They stayed together as their generation died around them, and made through it to the point where they could marry and have a legal family. He looks like a chipper preppie who never had a serious thought or care in the world, but it took *incredible* determination, commitment, and also luck to get here.

45 years ago is 1978.

He and his husband got together when it was a crime to be gay in almost 3/4 of the US states. They saw the beginning of the AIDS epidemic - saw their friends die around them, saw the horrific negligence and cruelty of the medical industry and politicians and religious leaders alike declaring they should all die - and managed to stay together through that, through the fight for the right to live together legally and eventually the right to have their relationship recognized by the state.

...Some of the Boomers are actually okay.

So look. I agree there should be more queer folks involved in the creation of media, particularly mainstream media. (Other groups too but I’m speaking on queer folks right now.) Queer people are underrepresented and shoved to the side and poorly portrayed and that sucks, and there should be more of us involved, particularly when it comes to telling our stories.

HOWEVER

Nothing good comes of the idea that ONLY queer folks should tell queer stories or portray queer characters, or that it’s okay to critique and harass straight folks purely for telling queer stories.

Why?

1. Segregation is not going to work in our favor. We know how “well make your own, then” plays out when the other group has the resources and institutional power. Especially if there’s no one even making them pay lip service to “separate but equal.” It’s not going to be any better if the segregation is self-imposed.

2. Saying straight folks can’t make queer media gives them a convenient excuse to simply not include any queer characters at all in the majority of stories, and I thought we hated that? I thought that was explicitly a bad thing? We WANT straight creators to be doing their best to write us well so we’ll be represented in a full range of mainstream media. Saying they can’t do it right and shouldn’t try lets them off the hook.

3. It puts closeted queer creators in a bind. Either they stay closeted and be harassed by angry queer folks, they come out and expose themselves to harassment from bigots, or they simply never tell queer stories, their own stories. The world gets worse for some subset of queer folks and fewer authentic queer stories get told. Net loss.

4. It makes the small pool of out queer creators the arbiters of queer narratives, which sucks for people who don’t see themselves well represented. There is no single definitive queer narrative and the smaller the pool of Approved Creators the more we risk instating a false one.

5. It opens the door to further divisions within the community. If a straight person can’t possibly understand a trans person well enough to write about or act them, can a cis gay person? So should a cis gay man ONLY write characters who are cis gay men? Ridiculous. No, all queer people are not alike and do not have the same experiences. So either we need to overcome that to learn about and empathize with other people and stand in solidarity, or we’re all going to splinter off into our own little bubbles which, again, is explicitly bad for both our real-life community and our fiction.

We want people to write about others who aren’t like them. We want people to write about others who aren’t like them. We also want people like us to have the opportunity to tell our stories but making it an exclusive privilege can only backfire.

My Favorite Queer/Coming Out Scenes

Insider is creating a database to track queer representation in children's cartoons. I searched through it a bit and it's pretty cool. I wished it had some links to sources of confirmation to some of them and I'm not sure exactly how accurate it is, but it seems accurate enough at first glance. You can check it out yourself if you want.

Have you ever wondered whether or not you’d be canonically queer if your life was a story? Look no further. This quiz will tell you your canon queer status. 

i guessed correctly! 😂