[id: 10 gifs from season 2, episode 21 “the maquis part 2” from the tv series “star trek: deep space nine”, the gifs show commander benjamin sisko, and major kira nerys in sisko’s office.

1st & 2nd gif: sisko is standing inside his office, he talks to himself ““establish a dialogue.” what the hell does she think i’ve been trying to do?” kira comes into sisko’s office, she calls out to him, “commander.” but sisko picks up once more from where he stopped with his rhetorical question, “just because a group of people belong to the federation,”

3rd gif: the camera cuts to kira. sisko is still talking, “that does not mean that they are saints.” kira interrupts sisko, “excuse me.” but sisko asks her instead “do you know what the trouble is?” kira shakes her head before replying, “no.”

4th & 5th gif: the camera cuts back to sisko, who walks from behind his office to stand in front of kira. “the trouble is earth.” sisko starts to reply, and kira interjects with a “really?”, sisko continues, “on earth, there is no poverty, no crime, no war. you look out the window of starfleet headquarters and you see paradise. well, it’s easy to be a saint”

6th gif: the camera cuts to a close of kira, she is listening to sisko, “in paradise, but the maquis do not live in paradise.”

7th, 8th, 9th, & 10th gif: the camera cuts to show sisko pacing back and forth, before stopping in front of kira. he is clearly frustrated and agitated by starfleet’s response to the situation “out there, in the demilitarized zone, all the problems haven’t been solved yet. out there, there are no saints, just people – angry, scared, determined people who are going to do whatever it takes to survive, whether it meets with the federation’s approval or not.” /end id]  

of hollowed stone

of course, the best part of any character's corruption arc is their cool new outfit

Sun peaking through snowy trees on Canada’s west coast, BC [OC][4812x7215] - Author: jcbeedie98 on Reddit

that "OKAY SO" before someone u love starts infodumping.......... most blessed feeling in the world

Yesterday our DM told me that my warlock can keep his skeleton minions in his bag of holding 💀

There’s also a large grey area between an Offensive Stereotype and “thing that can be misconstrued as a stereotype if one uses a particularly reductive lens of interpretation that the text itself is not endorsing”, and while I believe that creators should hold some level of responsibility to look out for potential unfortunate optics on their work, intentional or not, I also do think that placing the entire onus of trying to anticipate every single bad angle someone somewhere might take when reading the text upon the shoulders of the writers – instead of giving in that there should be also a level of responsibility on the part of the audience not to project whatever biases they might carry onto the text – is the kind of thing that will only end up reducing the range of stories that can be told about marginalized people. 

A japanese-american Beth Harmon would be pidgeonholed as another nerdy asian stock character. Baby Driver with a black lead would be accused of perpetuating stereotypes about black youth and crime. Phantom Of The Opera with a female Phantom would be accused of playing into the predatory lesbian stereotype. Romeo & Juliet with a gay couple would be accused of pulling the bury your gays trope – and no, you can’t just rewrite it into having a happy ending, the final tragedy of the tale is the rock onto which the entire central thesis statement of the play stands on. Remove that one element and you change the whole point of the story from a “look at what senseless hatred does to our youth” cautionary tale to a “love conquers all” inspiration piece, and it may not be the story the author wants to tell.

Sometimes, in order for a given story to function (and keep in mind, by function I don’t mean just logistically, but also thematically) it is necessary that your protagonist has specific personality traits that will play out in significant ways in the story. Or that they come from a specific background that will be an important element to the narrative. Or that they go through a particular experience that will consist on crucial plot point. All those narrative tools and building blocks are considered to be completely harmless and neutral when telling stories about straight/white people but, when applied to marginalized characters, it can be difficult to navigate them as, depending on the type of story you might want to tell, you may be steering dangerously close to falling into Unfortunate Implications™. And trying to find alternatives as to avoid falling into potentially iffy subtext is not always easy, as, depending on how central the “problematic” element to your plot, it could alter the very foundation of the story you’re trying to tell beyond recognition. See the point above about Romeo & Juliet.    

Like, I once saw a woman a gringa obviously accuse the movie Knives Out of racism because the one latina character in the otherwise consistently white and wealthy cast is the nurse, when everyone who watched the movie with their eyes and not their ass can see that the entire tension of the plot hinges upon not only the power imbalance between Martha and the Thrombeys, but also on her isolation as the one latina immigrant navigating a world of white rich people. I’ve seen people paint Rosa Diaz as an example of the Hothead Latina stereotype, when Rosa was originally written as a white woman (named Megan) and only turned latina later when Stephanie Beatriz was cast  – and it’s not like they could write out Rosa’s anger issues to avoid bad optics when it is such a defining trait of her character. I’ve seen people say Mulholland Drive is a lesbophobic movie when its story couldn’t even exist in first place if the fatally toxic lesbian relationship that moves the plot was healthy, or if it was straight.                          

That’s not to say we can’t ever question the larger patterns in stories about certain demographics, or not draw lines between artistic liberty and social responsibility, and much less that I know where such lines should be drawn. I made this post precisely to raise a discussion, not to silence people. But one thing I think it’s important to keep in mind in such discussions is that stereotypes, after all, are all about oversimplification. It is more productive, I believe, to evaluate the quality of the representation in any given piece of fiction by looking first into how much its minority characters are a) deep, complex, well-rounded, b) treated with care by the narrative, with plenty of focus and insight into their inner life, and c) a character in their own right that can carry their own storyline and doesn’t just exist to prop up other character’s stories. And only then, yes, look into their particular characterization, but without ever overlooking aspects such as the context and how nuanced such characterization is handled. Much like we’ve moved on from the simplistic mindset that a good female character is necessarily one that punches good otherwise she’s useless, I really do believe that it is time for us to move on from the the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all model of good representation and start looking into the core of representation issues (meaning: how painfully flat it is, not to mention scarce) rather than the window dressing.

I know I am starting to sound like a broken record here, but it feels that being a latina author writing about latine characters is a losing game, when there’s extra pressure on minority authors to avoid ~problematic~ optics in their work on the basis of the “you should know better” argument. And this “lower common denominator” approach to representation, that bars people from exploring otherwise interesting and meaningful concepts in stories because the most narrow minded people in the audience will get their biases confirmed, in many ways, sounds like a new form of respectability politics. Why, if it was gringos that created and imposed those stereotypes onto my ethnicity, why it should be my responsibility as a latina creator to dispel such stereotypes by curbing my artistic expression? Instead of asking of them to take responsibility for the lenses and biases they bring onto the text? Why is it too much to ask from people to wrap their minds about the ridiculously basic concept that no story they consume about a marginalized person should be taken as a blanket representation of their entire community?

It’s ridiculous. Gringos at some point came up with the idea that latinos are all naturally inclined to crime, so now I, a latina who loves heist movies, can’t write a latino character who’s a cool car thief. Gentiles created antisemitic propaganda claiming that the jews are all blood drinking monsters, so now jewish authors who love vampires can’t write jewish vampires. Straights made up the idea that lesbian relationships tend to be unhealthy, so now sapphics who are into Brontë-ish gothic romance don’t get to read this type of story with lesbian protagonists. I want to scream.      

And at the end of the day it all boils down to how people see marginalized characters as Representation™ first and narrative tools created to tell good stories later, if at all. White/straight characters get to be evaluated on how entertaining and tridimensional they are, whereas minority characters get to be evaluated on how well they’d fit into an after school special. Fuck this shit.                            

I’ve had people fuss at me for writing sassy effeminate gay men.

My bff in college was a sassy effeminate gay man. I write them being cool because of someone I love and miss who was very goddamn cool, thank you very much.

If you avoid stereotypes, you create obligations. “No effeminate gay men” means compulsory masculinity for them, and no representation for the ones that actually exist. “No angry black women” = black women not allowed anger. “No bury your gays, no dead women that’s fridging” or the like limits one’s ability to genderswap characters or put a same-sex romance into a story if the character in question is dying. “No queerbaiting or anything that can be accused of it” means bisexual characters can’t end up with the opposite-sex love interest if there’s a same-sex one around.

Obligations are a shitty thing to do to a story, and even worse to do to actual living people.

The real solution is more stories with more representation so the stereotype-hitting ones are a fraction of the total message, but also, well-rounded characters whose stories are built to showcase them as real whole people whose coincidence with a stereotype is only a part of them, should not be thrown out with the bathwater, so to speak.

The opposite of stereotyping is not puritanical avoidance of stereotypes. The opposite of stereotyping is complexity.

Finally restarted that Spider-Man fancomic I tried to make in 2018, hopefully I’ll get further than the first page this time

my favorite trope is when someone believes they’re hard to love and someone who loves them like it’s breathing.

R.G. Dice Boutique on Instagram

this is how every person on this site talks about fictional men

the concept of “plot armor” has done irreparable damage to media analysis and literacy. “oh the only reason this character didn’t die is because they need to be alive later in the story” you don’t fucking say.

mmmm you know how in the franking stein novel victor dies so thee monster just kills himself. except. thee monster literally had all of vicky’s notes and shit. theoretically, he knew what the ‘’’cure’’’ to death was. wouldn’t it have been so so so sexy conceptually if after victor finally experienced the sweet escape of death, hoping it’ll bring him back to his loved ones, only for thee monster to bring him right back?

Mr Guillermo Del Toro hear my plea

[Image Description: A screenshot from the show Totally Spies, showing the characters Alex and Clover. Clover has earbuds in and is smiling, while Alex is removing one of her earbuds to yell in her ear. Alex is captioned "me begging myself to finish my wip" and Clover is captioned "me daydreaming about a new story idea" / End ID]