#it's to cater to white people and mainstream media

[deadthehype]

It’s the same reason a lot of black artists prioritize the Grammys, AMAs & VMAs over the BET, BET Hip Hop, NAACP & Soul Train awards.

#twitter #nore #n.o.r.e. #noreaga #it's to cater to white people and mainstream media #try and be accepted by that crowd #shit is trash

[transpeculation]

i have noticed that while media made for straight women does occasionally romanticise men, it very rarely eroticises them.

like. i’m looking (respectfully) at gay magazine covers with sexy dudes on the cover and they are so erotic, so sexualised, in a way that i just do not see marketed to straight women.

#gay #couple of thoughts not complete enough for the actual post: #1. maybe this is a factor in why compulsory heterosexuality is so often a struggle for bi/gay women? #like i think it is way easier to romanticise someone you arent actually attracted to than sexualise them. #i definitely remember thinking romantic het thoughts as a pre transition kid and just not finding men sexy at all at the time #2. this is very sad for straight women. like they very much are sexually attracted to men but they have nothing catered to that attraction #in the mainstream anyway #3. when men are eroticised it comes off as kinda gay bc of this #like gaston #the big muscles and all the body hair #this is soomething that is only really eroticised in gay media even when it is nominally supposed to be appealing to straight women #4. this is part of why people act like men aren't hot. #part of the male gaze is that women only exist to be sexy #but another part is that men are unsexy #like in himym (terrible show but v. mainstream) lily being into marshall is played as a joke bc the audience is supposed to find him #mildly repulsive. which is wild bc that man is attractive enough to be on tv like hes not my type but hes fine! #also racialisation is a big factor with this #black men are eroticised more south asian men are de-eroticised #im white though so just repeating what ive heard from other ppl irt race

[asharaks]

it is, i think, symptomatic of the way larian has built this brand: bg3 was always marketed as being mature (read: sexual), and that was one of the big draws for players - myself included! especially as media pulls more towards extremes, with mainstream video games starting to get increasingly graphically sexual, graphically violent, and the vogue for 'grey morality' becomes the norm, those boundaries get pushed, and it becomes more and more of a selling point.

larian obviously focused on this, along with the How Do You Do, Fellow Kids brand, the increased accessibility of game devs on twitter, and adopted it heavily into their marketing strategy, and are now pretty reliant on the horny gamer crowd for a lot of their audience, and more importantly, they're doing this on purpose.

which is how you end up in situations like this.

characters (white men) the players want to fuck get centred: they get updates, they get more content, they get favoured. halsin's gone from a side character in EA to a half-fledged romance option, to a full romance option: he shows up in the promotional material, is larian's poster boy for the sex scenes, he gets more content with every update.

now gortash gets more heavily implied situationship lines with the dark urge, because players are horny for him. nevermind that some people aren't playing that way, or that he was originally set up to be a lower-level antagonist; nevermind that if the durge's storyline needed expansion, it should've been with orin and sarevok and bhaal, or that it muddies the writing for the rest of gortash's arc + characterisation: people want to fuck him, so it gets put in the game. it's not even to do with karlach, whose quest so desperately needs expansion! it's specifically catering to the people who want their character to have a Relationship with the slaver, because they're either not interested in or not able to focus on strengthening the weak spots in the narrative: they're just doing things that will net the 'my favourite dating sim' people lmfao.

meanwhile, literal main character wyll gets his quest demoted to a subquest, doesn't get bugfixes, doesn't get a single unique romance greeting after 6 patches and months of requests. he's not a Horny character, so he doesn't get the focus: he's not a player favourite, so he gets nothing. it's just... so unbelievably, indisputably racist, and it's incredibly grim and disappointing to watch it happen in real-time.

#also #and I can't believe I'm saying this #it feels like character assassination against enver 'can't be in a room with you without 5 robocops for protection' gortash. like come on. #stop trying to make him sexy he'll never be sexy #he's a slaver. #i feel like larian have backed themselves into a corner where they have to pander to this side of the fanbase #because they've encouraged it so strongly that now it feels like a majority share of their audience are here for the sex #bg3 #larian critical #bg3 fandom critical #to be clear. Yes i am being a hater #baldur's gate 3

[portraitofadyke]

I think Our Flag Means Death is a very unique show in a way that they don't care to cater to mainstream media. And yes, by mainstream media I mean the general straight people.

I think it's very important that we have feel-good shows like Heartstopper. A few years back, a tv show about two queer boys in high school would be unthinkable. But its plot generally revolves around explaining queerness. Sure, it's nice. It's definitely the show I would watch with my family if I were a teenager and wanted to come out again (I had to watch glee with my mom to do that. not optimal). It's the show where teenagers find love and themselves, but sexuality is constantly discussed, explained, sanitized. It's the show straight people will watch. And that's good. We do need shows like that.

But Our Flag Means Death doesn't even bother trying. It's a show about mostly middle aged people, most of them not white, most of them queer in one way or the other. It's really a game of spot the hetero, like someone said. And the characters are not sublte about it. They have sex for fun, something most characters don't have in tv shows, definitely not queer characters. They make dick jokes. They are not all conventionally attractive and they know it, and the writing doesn't care. They are all people before they are queer representation.

Stede's storyline in s1 is in a part about discovering himself and his sexuality, but it's not obnoxiously repeated. Instead, it's played in a natural way. Stede's storyline is ALL about finding himself, yet it's not just about that. Just like Ed's storyline, it's about toxic masculinity and allowing himself to have fine things and self-hatred and finding his place in a world, something most of us can relate to. Hell, none of us were even sure the main characters were going to kiss and end up together, we were all so sure it's a queerbait. But this show doesn't bait its audience. It's not afraid of weirdness. It embraces it instead. There is a nonbinary character. No, they are not a mermaid. Call them jim. That's it. Yes, Lucius and Pete got engaged. Everyone there knows what mateolage is, congrats. Olu and Jim never break up and then Archie shows up, then Zheng, and we all know. We all know.

Two men nearing fifty have a deep, romantic moment where one of them appears as a mermaid, and it's treated as the profound scene it is without ridiculing it. This would never fly in a 'mainstream' media. It would have to be downplayed. Here, it saves Ed's life.

The show tells you racists suck, but it doesn't tell you in a condescending, finger-waving way catered to the white people. Instead, it sets your ship aflame and burns you alive, runs a knife through your hand, puts poison in your drink and kills you.

This is a show for adults, for queer people of all kinds, and it does not give a fuck if anyone else gets it. It's so rare to find a tv show that caters to us, yet alone a tv show that's genuinely good and caring and so well loved.

This is a show that basically straightbaited its audience in the first season, that's how much they don't care.

Idk, I just feel that it will take ages for another show like OFMD to exist in a world full of MCU and media that tries so hard to be liked by everyone it loses its personality and charm. Rant over

#ofmd #yes i am rewatching for the millionth time #just felt like talking about ofmd and how important it is for the milkiont time #it's not perfect but it is to me

[kianamaiart]

Sure you know about the entire Beanhead artstyle, the stuff people been booeing and hating back in 2015-2021-today due to its minimalistic look and repetitive use in most media. Anything to say regarding that?.

LOL it's annoying.

My explanation/rant got long haha (under the cut)

Like I get it, it's very prevalent nowadays, but every era of tv animation has a ~style~ that a good chunk of mainstream shows fall into. And if you reaaaally look at the entire catalogue of shows that have come out in the past decade, there's actually a good amount of variety. The problem is most people are just looking at the 5 most popular shows that are out at any given year.

And the reason for these styles being pushed is because they ARE appealing. Appealing to kids. The demographic of most of these shows. I think people forget that focus testing exists. Kids are the people who are streaming these shows, watching on cable and buying toys (or rather their parents). Networks aren't gonna cater to teens/young adults/a much smaller demographic who likely know how to find and watch the shows they like for free. And as much as it may seem like online fandom has an impact, networks won't notice unless it's reaaally benefitting them monetarily.

I understand that people may not like this style, and that's alright, but I take issue when creators and artists are attacked for it. Most of us don't even draw in the style of the shows we work on (ex. i work on big city greens, but draw mostly anime-esque stuff on my own time). I don't speak for all of us but I don't think it's a stretch to say that a good chunk of us would LOOOVE to pitch stuff or have shows with more variety in style. But at the end of the day, most of the stuff on mainstream tv is "a product" to be sold. It sounds cynical, but it's true, and networks are usually gonna play it safe and pick up stuff that has a winning formula, and part of that winning formula at the moment is this particular style.

I think people also fail to take into account that animation is hard lol. Simple designs mean easier animation. Most American studios unfortunately do not have in house animators and animation is done overseas. Because of this storyboards are hardly storyboards anymore. They're cleaned up key poses so that there's less room for error when shipping everything over. Those errors being hard to fix because 1. a lot of the time there's a language barrier, 2. it takes a long time and 3. it's expensive. Every artist on each end of the process is already overworked, so any way to make the process easier is ideal.

If people want to see different styles in animation, they gotta support the stuff that's different and trying something new! And support it more than the kids and said kids' parents who are being catered to. That means streaming said shows (legally), tuning in on cable, buying merch, etc. I know it's a lot to ask for, and not everyone, understandably, has the means to, but a lot of the time, networks/studios/companies see everything in black and white. If a show is not a complete success, then they will assume the problem is because it's not following that winning formula I was talking about earlier. Trying new things is a risk in their eyes.

It's not hopeless! Just look at Spiderverse and its impact on the style of animation we're currently seeing in feature/movies. Us artists WANT to do different stuff and make inspiring work, but we need that viewer support!

#long post #basically capitalism #also bean mouth style is cute #there's worse styles out there hahaaha

[olderthannetfic]

I am not American so this an actual question: Why do people never use those American names in writing? Kayleigh, Keinleigh, or Lakesha, Shalissa? Saw those names on real people, but no one in America uses names like that in stories? And apparently for the latter names it's racist as well, but those names are actually names people have! So what gives?

--

People absolutely use those names in writing.

White Mormons writing boring het romance novels use ones like the first two all the time.

Really, I cannot emphasize enough how annoying romance novel names are to me. The reason I wouldn't name a character these names is that they look stupid.

I also associate them with demographics of white people I rarely write about.

In fic, you'll see the occasional OFC mary sue badfic with a lead with a name like this. It just depends on the author's own milieu and what names they consider normal.

--

The latter two sound like black people from the city. If you know enough to write black people from the city, great. Much of fanfic fandom is either too white or too suburban, and US media is not kind to such characters, so there's not a lot of incentive to use such names in fanfic.

Publishing overall is very racist and so are book-buying audiences, so a lead named Lakesha will not sell well unless positioned just right. Or at least that's the theory. But it's a theory that affects what mainstream US books you're probably hearing about.

When I've lived in places with black-focused bookstores, I've occasionally run across trashy fiction for a black, urban market, usually from small indie presses that cater to a black audience. Those authors know what they're talking about and will certainly name their characters names that make sense for the setting.

For me personally, it would be hard to tell the difference between an actual name and a racist parody name someone made up. I can tell when a name "sounds black", but that's not enough knowledge to pick a name correctly.

The black people I know offline mostly do not have names like this. I think it's because they're relatively rich, live in relatively non-black areas, and face a lot of pressure to pick names white people find more comfortable. Having a "whiter" name on job applications gets you interviews you will not get with a "black" name both because of racism and classism. A lot of it is probably also regional.

If I wanted to name a character, I'd do some research and choose a relatively common name with its most common spelling for safety. 'Lakesha' can be spelled that way or 'Lakeesha', 'Lakeisha', Lakisha, or Laquisha, among others. This one's, what, Arabic originally? That and Swahili seem to be the ultimate origins of a lot of names we associate with urban black communities. There are plenty of patterns here: I just don't know what they are.

--

Basically, naming characters requires a metric fuckton of sociological knowledge and just being American isn't enough to know about every demographic in the US.

Research is perfectly possible. People do it all the time for naming characters. It's just more work than picking a type of name you already know a lot about.

And on top of that, names sometimes tell you race, class, region, etc. and people may not be writing characters for whom these names make sense.

[beeleafinurself]

still on my byler bullshit and I've had something that's really been bothering me and I kinda want to put it out there.

so I've seen a lot of... aggression towards the idea of stranger things having mostly queer characters. it's so new to me and something I had never seen in fandom before. It got me thinking "why are there so many people dead set on mileven being endgame?"

I loved season 1 and 2 mileven, it was sweet and Mike looked at El like she was his world. Now though, it seems less real, Mike seems very disengaged, much more engaged in preserving some sort of relationship with Will (and trying not to seem gay).

This post really got me thinking. Stranger Things, through it's entire run time, has been about not conforming and sticking behind the people who matter most to you.

We all know the eyewitness byler reference, but eyewitness isn't very mainstream, it's another one of those shows catered for the queers, it's a gay show! That reference being made in Stranger Things was targeting a specific demographic; queer people (or fans of queer media).

I propose this goes a bit deeper than that one reference, I propose this show wasn't made for the straight people at all. You may think it sounds crazy, but it really does irk me to even discuss Stranger things with people who aren't fellow "freaks and weirdos." The conversation is typically frustrating, these people just don't understand.

Like with my brother! My brother is my best friend but this instance describes my point well. I was talking about my current DnD character and my brother said "DnD? Like the stranger things board game?" Uh.... no?? I think you mean DnD like the biggest RP table top game ever created??? He just didn't know it! And why would he?! I'm the nerd in this family, not him! But something about him saying that rubbed me wrong.

What the hell am I getting at? I'm saying that Stranger things wasn't for my brother, just like like how his sports documentaries aren't for me. I think that stranger things is one of the most extreme cases of media going outside it's demographic. It was supposed to be a sense8, or a heartstopper, but it went too far outside it's intended audience.

So I guess that's why some mileven fans are viscerally upset by the progression of byler. I think this sort of feels like a reverse queerbait, a hetbait if you will. Straight people usually just get what they want, super popular shows don't have gay main characters! But I don't think Stranger things was wrote to be popular in the first place! It was for the weirdos, the nerds, the gays. Hell, one of S4s villains is a white Christian basketball captain, I really don't think the show was made for other white Christian basketball captains to watch!

Just, I don't want to gatekeep, I hate that shit. But I know that if byler had be advertised from the start so many of the fans now wouldn't have even touched it. So I guess I just feel like these people that weren't even Invited need to calm. Down. You weren't even supposed to be here, don't blame us for you not figuring it out sooner, I've shipped byler since season 2 idk where you've been!

TL;DR:

edit: this is sort of mileven neg but PLEASE mileven shippers give me your thoughts, I would genuinely to hear your perspective!

#byler #stranger things #mileven

[qqueenofhades]

I mean, yeah, but neither Bernie nor AOC are radical at all. I think asking the left to be quieter won’t bring any good. Young leftists are loud and sometimes annoying, true, but they should be able to exist without catering to the more right wing sensibilities and not be called racists for that? Like? So someone’s dad read an article about Bernie that called him a radical, and? How is that anybody’s problem? People are allowed to exist loudly. Also I think a lot of American leftists are poc actually, not whit? Might be a misconception, I’m not USA American, I think I just saw statistics somewhere, so that’s like meaningless. But in the 60s most leftists were poc! So??

Gotta say, you're nicely proving my point here (and that of the previous anon). When someone points out that white Western leftists' rhetoric is alienating people with different experiences of "socialism," including older immigrants from non-American countries, you immediately jump to HOW DARE YOU CALL US ALL RACISTS AND TELL US TO BE QUIET??! Like my dude, my pal, my friend. That's quite a logical leap and represents the exact thing we're talking about here, so thanks for helping us demonstrate it.

That's not what I was saying and not what the other anon was saying. We're saying that this kind of exact jumping-to-conclusions, "you're definitely wrong and not us" mindset is what is harming the American leftist attempt to recruit a broader coalition that exists in the real world and not just on majority white, majority native-born American, majority-young spaces on social media. It's rather telling that you equate "ask leftists to be more productive and useful and realistic about their message if they actually want to make any real social change" with "STOP TELLING US TO BE QUIET!!!"

Anyone who has read my blog for any amount of time knows that I am not by any means quiet, or telling anyone else to be quiet, about leftist/progressive/liberal/anti-Republican policies and ideas. What I'm actually asking them to do is be smarter about it, which is often taken as a personal attack. Likewise, you're confusing "leftists" with "Democrats," which is not the case. Many people of color in America (though not all) are Democrats or usually vote for Democrats, because Republicans have taken a hard turn into open racism and white supremacy since at least the 1980s. These people do not necessarily identify as "leftists," in the sense that social media/Terminally Online Leftist Twitter defines it, and indeed, most of them don't. African-Americans are one of the Democratic Party's most core constituencies, but they largely identify as mainstream liberals or Democratic centrists. The far-left movement in America is very small and very white, for reasons I have talked about before, and this is the exact kind of rhetoric that is not helping it expand.

Likewise, both myself and the anon pointed out that it didn't matter if Bernie and/or AOC or anyone else calling themselves "socialist" was radical or not. We specifically discussed the historical context that makes certain groups deeply hesitant and/or flat-out unwilling to associate with that label, even if they otherwise vote for Democrats or support Democratic ideals. This is not some nanny-state slap on the wrist reprimanding young leftists for being "loud." It's pointing out that their so-called political strategies are often bad, and they're not making any of the change they claim to want, but they are looking Holier Than Thou on social media, which is deeply useless as praxis and only contributes to extreme-right revanchism. So like. By all means, be loud. But don't be stupid about it, and don't act like people who have concerns should just be blown right past and complained about as "how is that anyone's problem?" Because that is the exact core difficulty with a lot of Online Leftist messaging and why it is almost completely ineffective as an "opposition" force to fascism.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #oy

[asianismwithaudrey]

Why is diverse representation in mainstream media important?

While we know that many 'woke' consumers of media are critical of shows/tv/movies for lacking it, do we truly know exactly why diversity is so important?

Representation in the media of cultural minorities is so crucial because it validates the existence of these groups and showcases their experiences. Media is an extension of our society. It should reflect the people who are in it. To whitewash or exclude these groups in the media denies their existence, causing them to be overlooked in reality. While it may seem like fake tv, what we watch influences our real lives.

Diversity is so crucial to the youth population of media consumers because of the impact that media has on explaining the world in which we live. Young people are malleable in the sense that they learn from what they see. In watching tv shows or movies, they apply what they see to the real world. If they see an actor that looks like them (i.e. race, gender identity, etc.), or represents them in some capacity (sexual orientation, religion, etc.), they can see themselves and relate to the character, a critical aspect of connecting with media. In only casting white actors or writing stories that don't showcase ethnicity, the mainstream media will only cater to the singular demographic, losing a wide range of the mainstream audience.

#diversity #hollywood #mainstream media

[omegawizardposting]

When people say that masc/fem is an overrepresented dynamic in gay media, I'm just like, "Where? Where is the content specifically catered to me?"

Maybe that's true in fandom spaces and, like, BL, but I honestly can't think of any mainstream media in the west that features this dynamic. Most gay male romances are between young white twinks or two guys who don't really fit into masc or fem archetypes.

I'm sure there's some I've forgotten, but man, big masc guy x hyperfem twink really isn't the gay media juggernaut y'all think it is.

[iwtvdramacd18]

I remember another user saying something along the lines of, “white people now have all the information on systemic racism at their fingertips and they still are ignorant about racism so expecting Lestat to learn his lesson even after two black boyfriends is naive” and I that’s something I think people in the fandom who don’t want Nicki to be black or a poc don’t get

I COMPLETELY agree.... I feel like in general there seems to be discomfort in recognizing that both Lestat and Daniel do racist things, but because they aren't staring Louis in the face and hitting them with that hard r it's not the very clear in your face racism that's walking you neatly through This Is Racism. A lot of it is microaggressive, I have seen talk recently about people not recognizing instances where Lestat has been racist to Claudia that ofc as a black girl turned whatever I am now I thought were blaringly obvious, and I'm glad there are people being receptive to learning stuff like that. But like I said in a mainstream media field that does majorly cater to white audiences, where characters are usually either "I straight up will spit on a black child if I see one" or "I was racist in the past but now I have Learned" to see a more nuanced portrayal of racist behavior isn't received with the same familiarity and ease

#answered #I just don't find it realistic #for lestat who famously doesn't learn from his mistakes #to get married to louis nearly die and come back marching for civil rights I'm sorry #meta

[onethousandrbirds]

like, there's a lot of legit critique to be had about mainstream queer media (which works gets to be big budget and stylish? what ends up replicating the bougie values of cishet society? whiteness???) but i do find it endlessly fascinating at how often "this is cringe, therefore it is bad and the reason par excellence why Real Queer¹ Art™ doesn't get made" or "the existence of this thing that i already wouldn't even care about b/c it exists in a genre/medium/etc. that i don't care to engage with is the WORST THING EVER because it caters to an audience of people who want/need something that i don't and the landscape of art is a zero sum game" bubbles to the top

¹ the goalposts for what that even means is constantly shifting, bt-dubs so that empty signifier can mean art made by people i already like and not by those i don't want to

#medium post? #like the whole 'this is cringe' is sophomoric and representative of you mistaking your affective reaction for objective meaning #but whenever ironic homophobia (oh we should lose our rights b/c this thing exists) pops in i start seeing red

[lunarsilkscreen]

Alternate Take on Blade

The first Iron Man, which starred Shaquille O'Neal (Americas tallest black-irish film star), had a lot of problems that superhero movies often had. They were almost always cheesy, campy, spectacles that gave the superhero a hundred of different quotable phrases, and were intended to cater to the bridge between generations for parent/child so they could have a sort of cheesy shared culture.

This, is part of what we would call 'White Culture" in America. It's really why people of color, well the black community mostly *really* dislike nerd and geek culture. Because of it's inherent lack of color. Which, was on purpose, but not *that way* it was supposed to be a sanitized unrealistic view. For kids.

But then, it's white kids that get to live in that privilege of *not knowing* to begin with, isn't it?

Even as comic books got more gritty, things stayed the same in movie land. Except for movies like Spawn well...

The 90s were chock full of grittier (maybe not realistic, but grittier) films, like teenage mutant ninja turtles, which say what you want about it's silly camp, it *was* grittier. Which came in the wake of the Tim Burton Batman movies.

I'm going to pause for a second here to address the white-asian cultural divide. It's this time period (between 80's and 90s) that we see the emergence of kung-fu movies, and every movie Japan had to throw at the American mainstream at the time.

The Crow, which kind of capstone's Bruce Lee's career in the worst way was among these. His son, Brandon Lee, starred this undying martial artist/superhero in this gritty realism that hadn't been seen before. At least not in the west. (If you don't include RoboCop, which is different because it's TECHNOLOGY and not MAGIC BIRDS)

This confluence of Asians and White people in the American mainstream of cinema, but black people are always relegated to the token friend of campy, silly, main character. Is really, what I think, is what makes that cultural perception of Asianness being inherently White. Because a lot of the Asian Actors at the were chosen for how closely they resembled the average white guy.

Then we look at cartoon, like My Hero Academia, which purposefully use low detail faces and includes characters that can tan. And you have these characters that anybody can identify with. They can see themselves in them more so than kids could with your Johnny Test and Dexter's Lab.

But anyway, and then Blade came out. A lot of people say "It's the granddaddy of modern superhero films" and while that might be partially true, I think that idea of the modern superhero movie was already a long time coming.

Blade did something else entirely that no other movie could do. It broke the mold for black actors to act in more serious roles. And it only happened, because of the perception that superhero films were inherently unserious.

They wanted a Token Black guy hero, but what they got was Wesley Snipes playing blade. And this happens, mostly I think because black producers didn't realize what they were making at the time.

But you know who did? The white nerds and geeks that black people found inherently white bread, and lacking a cultural consciousness.

Wesley Snipes did something no other actor could do at the time, in a role that no other actor could play at the time. And changed what the main "black" trope often seen in mainstream media, while also saying to the black community "It's ok to be a f* nerd. Nerds are cool".

And for years after we get the main black character that is a hard ass Mother F* (thanks Sam Jack).

And we get to the soyboys of today. And what has the concern of many people today. The change of that main black hero trope into something softer.

Some people fear that means going back to the old "token" trope (arguably Jackson is the current "Token".) And that must be terrifying to see.

But at the same time, movies and media have a tendency to reflect the population as a whole (at least the one footing the bill anyway). And this is because Nerds are F* cool now. Urkel has become Stephãn, and he kept his genius mind as well.

And it's all thanks to Blade.

[neotrances]

like yall don’t even get it u never have to think twice about seeing urself on tv or in media in general you could open almost any novel and your people would make up 98% of the story, yall r treated as the default always, like this is kinda beyond just “representation matters” bc do u have any idea how ridiculous it is for people in their 20s to find out the new ariel is black and be shocked by it? like that’s how little we see ourselves and prefacing this with fuck disney bc obviously other sources of media exist but mainstream media is catered to whites, and that is a privilege that many of you don’t realize exist

[bright-eyed]

Long post

Part of me thinks the whole relatability in books problem is overblown. Like the only people who refuse to read books that aren’t “relatable” are not the people who engage in reading or even much of anything with any depth anyway so like lost cause.

But also, I feel like they took this argument of “we need more representation in literature because certain voices and perspectives are being purposefully excluded from the mainstream and I would like to see more works told from perspectives that appear more like my own because as it stands it feels like my slant of experience is not seen as an expression of a universal humanity” (good) and that became “representation in literature - and every sort of art or media - is an arbiter of our perspectives and of what we are allowed to be, and we are incapable of experiencing common feelings outside of the bounds our social classes and identities, as intrinsically distinct types of people” (nonsensical also contradictory to the original intent).

And it’s weird because it feels like only wanting to read “relatable” books thing is a backlash to the inclusion of new perspectives but one that still conforms to this new paradigm, and I guess what sort of backlash it is would partially depend on who you were. Wealthy cishet white men refusing to read books they find “unrelatable” sends a different political message than minorities including women doing the same due to the fact that most of the western canon is catered to those men in a deliberate political effort that lasted centuries. Nevertheless to have anyone refusing to read anything on account of its “unrelatability” underscores an age-old reactionary political idea that there is something inherently different about being a minority, which is part of what kept those minorities excluded for so many centuries - though now the tone has changed and that difference is considered a moral strength rather than a moral failing, at least in some circles.

So like, the idea that we can’t understand books written by men from like the 18th century for example because there’s an unpassable bridge between us and them is not a new idea; it’s actually a deeply conservative idea. It’s a “you couldn’t understand literature because you’re other, you’re not one of us, so we’re going to censor the few of your contributions that we allow to make it comprehensible to real human beings like us, you’re a side project in the great noble work of mankind” argument. The progressive inversion of that would be to say: “yeah I’m a member of a so-called minority group removed from this writer by class and gender and 300 years of history etc but there is still something intrinsically human that ties me to this person and to say that is impossible would be to deny one of us our humanity, and it will probably be me. Like, there’s actually nothing that separates me and them, I dare you to tell me how I’m wrong, etc. All the horrors they are capable of and all their flaws and sufferings and struggles are mine, and all their heroics and glories and strengths are also in me. How the world processes what we are might look different but at our heart we are the same. To say otherwise is to carry on the legacy of suppression and othering.” It looks cleaner now, to otherize, because the legacy evolves and camouflages itself into new times and it always takes a while to pick it out from a new environment, but the act is the same cuz people always have a drive to do this for whatever stupid reason. The same human drive that gives rise to things like nationalism and stuff. Anyway

i guess the thing for me is that literary works are a lot like people in that they’re defined less by the vessel than what they carry, even if their vessel changes the face of the way they interact with the world. Relatability is a superficial way of looking at us cuz we’re all always more, and we can change and be contradictory and expansive even to ourselves. We’re bigger on the inside cringe but yeah. When is anyone ever just what they appear to be, or what society deems them to be? That’s a belief you can only have if you’re living in a state of constant bewilderment and denial. Are we so eager to believe there are distinct bounds to what we are capable of being or experiencing, does that idea console us or help us make sense of the world? It might make us feel like we’re safe because it gives us parameters and a code but then we’re left confused and in denial when inevitably the contradictory world gets in anyway and we experience things we had prematurely decided were impossible. Also the idea that there are certain realms of human experience that we are blocked away from is always a denial of our autonomy and humanity and it’s never going to help us understand anything about anything. And it just makes us cruel and stupid. Anyway um

Basically tldr the call for representation was a call for including more people in the definition of humanity and to share more art and forms of beauty, but now for some people it seems to be more about separating people into different types of humanity with different levels of subjective worth and understandability. Which is just a remix version of what we were doing 100 years ago. And the people who were being excluded historically don’t even benefit from this because their humanity is still being denied and can still be denied in a world where it is commonly accepted that there are irrevocable differences between types of people. Am I making sense????? It’s just not helping and it’s dumb. And annoying

Also on top of that the call for meaningful representation turned into “we need to include certain identities in order to check off a box so more people will buy our content and our work will be inherently moral” and “reading previously-excluded perspectives to perform politically instead of just seeing those perspectives as intrinsically worth reading even if they weren’t bolstering your identity as a moral and politically progressive person or giving you whatever exposure you think you need to make yourself superior or something” which are also not humanizing endeavors but that’s a whole other post and I need to stop cuz I didn’t even mean to write this one

Ugh

#saw a paragraph-long post about relatability in literature and thought i can write a paragraph-long post about relatability in literature #as if i can write a paragraph-long post about any opinion i have about anything #kennapost

[olderthannetfic]

Honestly, by this point I'm almost impressed by how people make literally anything racist white people's fault, especially in mainstream Asian content reaching the West. "This racist depiction of a character in this East-Asian created media was solely created to cater to the Western market." "The reason the Asian market is so infatuated with white skin is because of white people colonisation." "In the West we have these stereotypes, so this character who's based on a really old historical creature must be based on these Western stereotypes." "The only reason Asian producers create content based on European stories, myths and legends, is because they want to cater to the Western market." The reaching is fucking impressive but in a bad way, because it just takes away the agency of these cultures, but also seems to infantalize their history of their own racist issues, colorism, and what have you.

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