It's this thing on the Internet.

URL to share (right click and copy)

@Shadowlink I love how you turned "uncomfortable" into a state of trauma.

Here let me try to do things your way...

You're clearly not comfortable with these people's feelings. Apparently people caring about these things puts people like you into a state of trauma.

Ever think of therapy?

It might help you come to terms with your inability to empathize with people who face different challenges than you do.

Here let's get more personal. Instead of talking about this random black kid who clearly needs therapy for wanting better representation, let's talk about my girlfriend and how a more diverse cast made her more interested in Star Wars. Please tell me what type of therapy she needs.

@Zero

The fact that he was writing about this nearly 20 years later as a Very Serious Problem indicates more than just 'feeling uncomfortable'.

I have empathy. I just save it for people with real issues, not people who don't have a character they like in a movie or game.

@Shadowlink Uh, the real issues are generally the force behind wanting better representation. Do you not actually understand why people want better representation? Do you actually think it is just about media? Jesus. Please talk to some of these people sometimes.

I mean clearly you don't know what it is like to be marginalized and don't seem to care either, but try to imagine it for a moment. From that perspective you might start to understand why these things are important to some people.

But let's put that all aside. I want your diagnosis for my girlfriend. What mental illness does she have for being more attracted to diverse media that better reflects her reality and which therapy does she need? Tell us Dr. Shadowlink. What can fix her? She needs to become healthy like us white dudes and stop caring about representation. HOW DO WE FIX HER?

@Zero

I just gave you an example where I was just as 'marginalized' if not MORE by the exact same situation this guy felt marginalized by. The difference between us was how we reacted to it.

I picked a character that I liked instead of holding onto a 20 year grudge about how there were no 'Australian' characters who I felt represented 'me'.

And yes, this discussion is about the media. If you have issues in other areas, go deal with those other areas. If you keep bringing media into this, then I am going to debate with you on that basis.

EDIT: You speak of strawmen, did I say your girlfriend needed therapy? No, I was talking about the guy having horrific Street Fighter flashbacks.

Does your girlfriend have any examples of that, where she's held onto some minor imagined snub or hurt by a piece of fictional media for most of her life? If so, sure, we can talk about that then, and help her to move past it.

Details please.

If you honestly think a white male Australian is marginalized in the same way a woman or a black man is holy fucking shit. Are you serious or just fucking with me right now? Educate yourself on the women's rights movement and civil rights movement and then come back and tell me about how being a white male Australian is the same. Or for more modern examples well... educate yourself on current issues that disproportionately face women and minorities in pretty much every white male dominated culture I.E. the Western world.

Yes we are talking about the media, but the question of why diversity matters in the media goes beyond just the media. Which you would know if you spent 5 minutes talking to someone who cares about this issue instead of trying to tell them why they shouldn't.

No my girlfriend isn't traumatized by white male dominated media she just often feels marginalized by or excluded from it (or sometimes openly offended at very racist representations) for very real reasons which I feel like I could probably explain fairly well at this point but would prefer you start talking to actual marginalized people to understand. Hint: they have to do with her day to day lived experiences of growing up in white male dominated culture and facing very real sexism and racism. Experiences you will never have. But may come to understand someday if you learn some empathy.

So please tell me. Why shouldn't this Asian woman's lived experiences influence her interest in and engagement with media? Why should she feel more connected to things made by creators that show a complete lack of concern for not further marginalizing an already marginalized population? What about these types of white male dominated media should make her feel like they will respect her more than the day to day sexism and racism she already experiences from a white male dominate culture? What is she doing wrong that you could teach her to do better with your white dude powers of understanding how an Asian woman should feel and think? Please tell me so I can tell her. She needs to know how white dudes expect her to feel and act in a world they control and marginalize and often openly discriminate against her in.

Better yet keep it to yourself, and we'll continue to be happy to see diversity becoming a more prevalent trend so both of us can better share our media. While you sit around acting like none of this should matter but how far planets are apart from each other in a made up world is something worth arguing pages over. Great position there bro.

Zero said:

If you honestly think a white male Australian is marginalized in the same way a woman or a black man is holy fucking shit. Are you serious or just fucking with me right now? Educate yourself on the women's rights movement and civil rights movement and then come back and tell me about how being a white male Australian is the same. Or for more modern examples well... educate yourself on current issues that disproportionately face women and minorities in pretty much every white male dominated culture I.E. the Western world.

We aren't talking about any of this though! We were talking about characters in a video game. This is what I'm trying to drill into you, and you don't seem to get. Representation in a video game is NOT civil rights. It's not even remotely close.

You clearly need to make that equivalency so you can have a big noble cause that you can feel good about. Which really makes it more about your ego than anything else. Not that you'd ever admit that.


Diversity in media should happen naturally off of it's own back (and it does), not because a whole pile of loud saucepan bangers keep making demands.

So I just explained why this does matter to my girlfriend and you completely ignored it and made up some bullshit about my ego instead. Great job there pal, you're really winning this one.

Fuck it. Let's go back to arguing about important things like planet distances based on a chart 99.999% of fans will never see. Awesome sense of importance.

@Zero

You may note that I only claim that that's important in the context of the story being told, not of world shattering real life super importance.

Yes and I explained why that's not true to many people in marginalized populations. Well, and you're bein hyperbolic again because we're talking about people caring about things and bringing up issues not giving them EARTH SHATTERING IMPORTANCE.

You didn't answer my questions either. I want to hear how you think my girlfriend should think and act after reading about her very complex feelings on these matters above based on her lived experiences. It's very important that she get more white dude opinions that will write off her experiences as not as important as fucking star charts are.

@Zero

Before I do that, I'd actually want to talk to your girlfriend directly in her own words, not the representation of her feelings as interpreted by her white dude boyfriend.

Awesome! Good start. Finally showing some interest in hearing from marginalized populations.

She's not interested though. Actually I don't think she has ever argued on the Internet period. Not that I know of. She's too nice.

So let's play devil's advocate and assume that I know the views of the woman I have spent almost every day with (except when she travels but then we Skype) over nearly six years on something we not only talk about all the time, but literally talked about in regards to The Force Awakens just the other day. Pretend my characterization of her views came from her and give your response.

I'm eagerly awaiting this one.

Bonus question... she loved The Force Awakens. Pretend you're talking to her and explain to her why a fan like herself should have preferred a theoretical alternative version of the movie with less diversity but more accurate planetary positions. I'd LOVE to hear that one.

Zero said:

White dudes get to have that feeling ALL THE TIME

..Is that what you think? What you really think? What other people think??

I felt way more in common with both Rey and Finn than Poe. WAY MORE.

Shadowlink said:

@Zero

That's just it. I don't have that feeling "all the time" and it's quite frankly insulting that it's assumed that I do.

Yeah, Zero, seriously. I'm not even joking around. You're just assuming that we instantly feel a connection to a character based on skin color? Isn't that....uh, whats the word....kinda racist??

Street Fighter: my initial favorite character was Zangief and then Dhalsim (primarily because of my rich Indian background, and secondly because we both breathe fire and wear makeup) before moving onto Ken, the underappreciated Hadoken Fireball hurler constantly in the shadow of the much more popular Ryu..who isn't white at all.

Zero said:

@J.K. Riki So you think no creators actually care about diversity for any other reasons than quotas? That's an interesting viewpoint, and one that I see no evidence for at all.

The entire prequels were about appealing to as many different groups as possible (including your girlfriend who SUDDENLY has interest in a franchise she never had before). Black Jedis, women with multiple wardrobe changes, tiny kids, more lightsabre duels for the fanboys, etc. They add a main girl and a main black guy, and MORE people want to go see it. $$$$$

Who is the main character of Episode I? (You don't know, because that would placing favoritism on a race/gender.)
Who is the main character of Episode VII? (See above..)

@Mr_Mustache No, what you don't get in your privilege is that you're never at a lack of options for seeing strong, positive, great characters that represent whiteness and maleness. You get to not care because you pretty much always have those options.

But it's deeper than that, because when you're not marginalized, this isn't as important. So of course we can all sit around saying "it doesn't matter to me!" but we're not the ones that society marginalizes.

My GF, for instance, often points out how Asian women in media often show up just to be submissive to white men. Like, literally points it out to me when we're watching movies and TV shows. A lot. It's such a clear trend that it's hard to deny, and because Asian women aren't EVERYWHERE in our media we don't get as many examples showing a wide variety of Asian women as we do, for instance, of white men. And then we talk about how media reflects upon society and how these stereotypes keep trucking along in large part due to media pushing them. She wants to see more and better representations of Asian women. Why shouldn't she? What exists is often conforming to stupid racist stereotypes. But we're not in the same position as she is. We have so many options that we don't have to cringe every time we see some white dude conforming to white dude stereotypes.

Look, I know you guys won't get it and that's fine. Try to understand that not everyone has white male privilege.

PS. She just read my characterizations of her views and said "Ok, I approve."

There you go.

@Zero

It's very hard to respond to your generalized comments because there's nothing specific in there for me to discuss. And besides which, as I already stated, as far as I'm concerned, this is about people feeling marginalized by pieces of media, not by situations in real life that I would argue are much more important.
i.e. cops beating up on black people would be something worth investigating and responding to seriously, whilst someone complaining about not enough black people in Street Fighter would not be. If Shirley's issues fall into the former category, sure, we've got a real conversation in which I'll probably agree with a lot if not all her points. If it falls into the latter category, yeah you better believe I'd dismiss it. Just because someone says something is important to them doesn't necessarily mean it actually is important.

With regards to The Force Awakens, I feel like we're circling closer to the problem here- You seem to think I'm arguing for less diversity. I'm not.

What I'm saying is diversity should be a natural thing done because that's what the creators wanted to do, and not because it was imposed on them by marketing or focus groups or incredibly loud and annoying sections of the Internet.

Star Wars had a strong female heroine in 1977. It had a black main character in 1980. There were howls of outrage from fools when the casting was announced for VII because we had a black storrmtrooper, and ignored the existence of Lando and Mace Windu. It was incredibly dumb and stupid. But, on the other side of the coin we have people praising JJ Abrahms for his inclusion of Rey as a huge achievement despite the examples of Leia and Padme from the previous trilogies.
On both sides we have people singling out characters for praise or criticism based on gender and skin colour. This should not be happening. To do so attributes a level of importance on those characteristics that I thought we were trying to eliminate! Why can't we discuss the characters as they are outside of that?

And so to answer your question, yes I think that if there was 'less' diversity then she should have liked both movies the same, and maybe the 'less' diverse version a little bit better depending on how much being able to see the destruction of another star system from a completely different star system bugged her. (And it bugged quite a few people. because of common sense, not because of the star chart- Why you keep coming back to that, I have no idea.)

If you changed Finn to a white guy does it change his place in the story one iota? His characterization at all? No. Now please note that this doesn't mean I wanted a white guy in the role. It's just an acknowledgement that race doesn't matter here*, and JJ can cast whoever he likes in that role.
Now I don't know his motivations. I didn't say he was trying to meet a quota, but that seems to be the feeling of the people who argued against the casting choice. I don't know one way or another. But I would rather that this casting came about because it was what JJ wanted to do, and not because there was a voice nattering away at him saying 'add more black people'.

Because if your concern in a story is less about the characters and more about if there's enough black people, then that's *you* making race an issue, when it really shouldn't be.


*Finn's race may actually turn out to matter somewhat if theories about him being related to Lando are true. But let's ignore that can of worms for now.

Well, thank you for making your position clear. You think my girlfriend should care more about planet distances than diversity. I'm honestly a bit at a loss for words. White male privilege is strong with this one. It's like you completely ignored her experiences and WHY diversity matters to just focus on star charts.

The idea that diversity doesn't matter to plot and characterization makes no sense to me, to be frank. Like, having a vast majority of white people in a world that clearly has more than just white people isn't a plot hole? Not wanting to show a variety of characters from a variety of backgrounds has no impact on characterization?

Or that wanting to see ourselves reflected on some level is bizarre. Like, do you think it's a huge coincidence that in a world with countless alien species, Star Wars revolves around human beings? Why do you think this decision was made? To save on make-up costs?

Just glad that, yet again, the people in charge disagree with you.

@Shadowlink

I bet a lot of creators would want to make mainstream movies that consist of an entirely black cast, but that's basically forbidden unless it's specifically aimed at a black audience, like a Tyler Perry movie. How come the people who complain about diversity for marketing purposes never seem to complain about that? Why is the default assumption that any movie should have mostly if not all white people and anything else must be some kind of calculated decision? Why do people freak out when Hermione is black in a Harry Potter play when the books never say anything about her skin color either way? All of these questions shed light on the fact that entertainment doesn't just exist in a vacuum and you can't just expect people to shut up and let things play out.

@Zero

Yes, my position, that plot and story, and characters and internal consistency matter more to a story than what coulor the protagonists are.

I guess that makes me a monster.


But thank god we have Zero here, fighting for a world where the colour of someone's skin is the most important characteristic they have.


@Jargon

Because to to all of those people, colour matters as much as it does to Zero. Both sides are wrong.

@Shadowlink

Ok, so color obviously matters to Hollywood. Can you even fathom a Star Wars 7 where all the new characters were black? No, no studio would ever allow it. That's wrong, and yet you think no one should say anything about race in the media, so we're stuck with that wrongness.

@Zero

So basically, what I think doesn't matter at all. Got it.

Food for thought: isn't it weird that these "marginalized" people, the ONLY characters that they can feel any attachment to are those who are almost EXACTLY like them? I don't think "selfish" is the word, but that sets a pretty high bar for acceptance.

Your "Jessika" story up there didn't make me feel happy for that girl at all, it made me go "....uh."

Also, Shirley is CLEARLY off the beaten path when it comes to "typical Asian-American girl," and theres the "stereotype" that Asian women love white men (Zero, do you know any Asian women who like white guys? I figured since you have an Asian girlfriend, she might know some Asian women who like white guys-- WAIT WAIT..). Anyway, Shirley doesn't fit "the norm" (and she doesn't HAVE to) as to what people feel and want in her demographic (TV terms, I work in TV) for lack of a better word. I knew it way back when when you were looking for a birthday gift; I rattled off all these things that any girl would probably love, and you ended up going for some brown sneakers or something that you thought she'd really like. So for HER to measure herself against "media's representation" of Asian women is probably going to be a tall order. Forever. I don't even know where that type of character would fit in, showise, gamewise, or situationwise. "We need an Asian girl who doesn't fit societal norms in here somewhere!"

--Anyway, what about all of those fat guys who eat cans of cheese all day? The only two characters they had anything in common with died before the battle even started on the Death Star and were strangled by a woman in a bikini. SOMETHINGS GOTTA GIVE, MAN.

@Shadowlink

I don't think Zero's mentioned it, but I wonder if Shirley was pleased with the player selection in Street Fighter II? Arguably, the face of the franchise just HAPPENS to be a Chinese female. But I guess that goes against everything we're talking about here..