Yes, but you’re saying they don’t have too. I’d hate to sigh argue and stuff, but I really don’t agree with what you’ve been posting. Your argument is that people shouldn’t have to write about this stuff. I think that they should! It would really open the eyes to the authors and readers to learn more about other races and/or religions. It would be educational in this messed up world where races and religions are misrepresented and insulted by the news and crimes. Even the LGBTQ+ community should be talked about more.
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I stand by what I said, No one should be forced to.
If a person wants to, they can freely do so. That goes for anything.
Again, You just stated yourself you are afraid to misrepresent.
If there is another person who can do it better, and they want to, then they should.
My point is no one should be forced.
You are conflating news (reporting for the most part actual facts and events) to a story?
That’s like comparing a fairytale to a biography. two different thing for two different purposes.
it appears you did not actually read what I wrote.
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“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete”
I feel that this is kind of important to bring up? Yes, stories are just for entertainment, but they can affect us in so many different ways. These are just Episode stories, but honestly, there are so much deeper meanings to it.
I’ll just share this video and then yeet out of here.
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No one should be forced to write about anything they don’t want too. But Episode is a company. They are given our time, endorsement, and money. There’s nothing wrong with asking for a wider representation in the stories they write/feature. It’s the same as in all media.
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If you’re scared you can simply ask poc on forums for help
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Um wow… I never refuted the definition of a story. I said you clearly don’t understand the power they have… which you clearly don’t since you don’t seem to understand the fact that something which is entertainment doesn’t have to be purely entertainment. In fact, there is no story out there which doesn’t contain political, religious or moral messages in them. That’s whether or not the author is conscious of putting their own biases into their work. It’s not that difficult to understand, really. Stories have a lot of influence. That has nothing to do with the definition of what they are. It’s a side effect of creating a story. Nothing is created in a vacuum and everything you write has the power to persuade people or make them think People who don’t understand that are more susceptible to it.
Um, what are you talking about? When did I say anything of the sort? If you’ve read my older posts, I have said multiple times that enforcing strict diversity standards creates writers who include diversity purely out of obligation, which does more harm than good. This is about EPISODE as a company, not about individual writers. We don’t need to force writers to do anything. There are already plenty of talented writers on the platform who write amazing stories containing lots of diversity. The question is why Episode is failing to feature THOSE kinds of stories. The community writers do a much better job of diversity than the company itself… the professional company. Please don’t create a strawman version of me and my arguments. I understand it’s much easier to seem like you have a point when you’re extending someone’s arguments to ridiculous means, but it doesn’t make any sense in the grand scheme of things. You waste your time. I waste my time. Neither of us is happy.
And why exactly would including diversity in stories lose them money? Are there people out there who would refuse to read a story just because it’s got some black people in it? That’s called racism.
And the World Wide Web was created by an English man. Does that mean there should only be English websites on the internet? There are plenty of capable writers from all over the world. Why do you think Episode should only feature American writers?
“people” being who? Heterosexual people read heterosexual stories. LGBTQ people on this app only have heterosexual featured stories. Maybe the occasional throw in of a possible lesbian relationship right at the end because they suddenly tell you that your character was bi all along even though the whole story was about 2 guys, but out of all the featured stories in Episode’s history, there has not been a single gay MC. FEATURED stories. As I’ve needed to say many times, the community writers do a lot better.
Also, don’t make up statistics. There are over 4% of people in the US who identify as part of the LGBT community as a whole. And that’s without taking into account all the closet people an the fact that the younger generations are more likely to come out. I’d put my money on Episode having a higher percentage of LGBT people than USA as a whole.
Yet Episode doesn’t feature writers like this.
Do you not know the difference between “realistic” and “influential”? Never read a fable where animals talk in your life… that teaches kids lessons about sharing or patience? Just because something is fantastical or set in a different world, it doesn’t mean it isn’t being used to comment on issues we’re facing. As I’ve said, stories aren’t written in a vacuum. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings and anyone who went to high school can pick out 1 or 2 ideas of his that were put into the world of elves and dwarves which are meant to make us think about our own world. I can give you two right now. The Ring represents the temptation of sin. Tolkien’s descriptions of the beauty of the landscape are meant to remind people of the beauty of nature and the evil of deforestation. I can’t believe you actually think you know more about writing than people who dedicate their whole careers to assessing the importance and significance of certain stories. People are drawn to certain stories at certain times for a reason. Literature professors didn’t just choose literature for fun. It’s because they’re able to identify the importance of stories that aren’t “realistic”. The world isn’t all black and white. It’s not that either something is openly and overtly meant to persuade you or it’s not. You can’t write without validating and justifying your own moral principles.
So a story saying all non-white people are evil is fine if it isn’t “real”? That’s ridiculous, ignorant and narrow-minded. Stories can be used to justify bad behaviour and make racism seem normal, whether it’s “real” or not. It doesn’t matter if a story is real or not. The ideas it presents are very, very real and have a massive impact on the way people think. If you’re introduced to heroic acts through film like sacrificing yourself for another person and these things are seen as good, you’re going to react positively to them in real life too. Stories make you think, whether you’re aware of it or not. If LGBT people are always seen as camp and flamboyant in stories, that has an effect on how people see them in real life, too.
So because it ALSO entertains and people read it for that, the messages don’t affect them? Silly, silly, silly.
Yes, because a political leasder would only use one means of propaganda. It’s not like he’d also present his ideas in his own autobiography. I mean, CLEARLY you can turn off your morals when you want to write a story. It’s not like that’s impossible or anything. I wish I could see the world this narrowly. It would make me feel a lot happier. Ignorance is bliss, as they say;.
I gave Hitler as an example for you to understand an extreme, since clearly the more subtle messages in stories allude you. Don’t try to stretch out my argument to ridiculous proportions. It’s really not attractive. It also doesn’t make you look particularly good. I mean, it’s really not that hard to see what I was saying. I’m a little speechless that you think an example of how messages can influence people is me calling the community Hitler. I mean, if you couldn’t get that, no wonder you don’t get the power of literature.
Again, I’ll say this for the 500th time: I THINK THE COMMUNITY IS DOING REALLY WELL. I DON’T WANT ANYONE TO BE “FORCED” TO WRITE ABOUT DIVERSITY THEY DON’T FEEL COMORTABLE REPRESENTING. THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE INDIVUDAL WRITERS, BUT THE COMPANY WHICH ISN’T FEATURING OR PROMOTING THE STORIES THAT ARE GOOD FOR DIVERSITY THAT ALREADY EXIST.
Because I’ve already said that Episode needs to find writers who write about different places instead of just the same places and feature THOSE people TOO, I am not going to justify this with a response.
And that’s why Episode needs to find people who DO know about Japan and Africa and who ARE gay and gfeature them TOO. I don’t know how many times I need to repeat myself. The problem isn’t that people are writing stories about what they’re used to. The problem is that Episode is only featuring and promoting American, middle class, white stories. Other stories are ALREADY on the platform. Amazing stories. The COMPANY just never features them.
Jesus, when did I say anything pertaining to that? You’re being ridiculous. Am I being pranked right now?
One more time, and say it with me: This is about EPISODE and how EPISODE as a COMPANY is failing to meet THEIR OWN diversity standards. I am disgusted that a bunch of mostly TEENAGE GIRLS are doing better than the COMPANY which promised to deliver on diversity almost 2 years ago. It’s disgusting that the COMMUNITY is doing better than the professionals who put together the app. No individual writer should EVER be forced to add diversity they aren’t sure about. Diversity should also be NATURAL to the AREA that the person is writing about. I’m disgusted that EPISODE doesn’t even have to write the stories. All they have to do is FEATURE writers who WANT to write about people from other places in the world… yet they haven’t even done THAT yet.
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The way you word things can always impact on how others feel. Especially when it comes to sensitive and serious topics. Word it the right way, you can get your point across. Word it the wrong way, people will take it badly and they won’t get your point. There’s no excuse for how you did it. Each of those will have either a positive or negative impact. Whichever one you got, is what you deserved. - Shadow (Me)
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The problem here really is the people who think that adding diversity to their story is a chore. Every country in the WORLD has some form of diversity or other. It’s okay to be worried about not representing it right and THEREFORE deciding not to include specific types of diversity in your story. That’s fair enough. It’s better to not say anything than to resort to stereotypes and diversity “out of obligation”.
However, if you actually, actively have a personal ISSUE with representing ANY OTHER GROUP in your story, I think that’s when things go wrong. I’m not talking about worrying you might not do it well. I’m talking about fighting against people wanting diversity at all
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What the flying fart are you on about?
Where are you even getting your statistics from? “LGBT” making up 1% of the population? Population of what and where? And even so, is that justification to NOT include LGBT characters?
You said yourself that these stories don’t have to real. Okay, you’re right on that. But doesn’t that give you more of an incentive to be…creative, since writing stories falls under CREATIVE writing?
If you want to write white fanfiction, you have CNN and Vogue magazines for that. I mean…they fall under entertainment too lmao.
This trainwreck of a condescending post talking down on POC and LBGTQ for simply needing ACKNOWLEDGMENT that we’re fucking real is the same as people arguing that the actress who was cast as Starfire isn’t black (in the live Teen Titans show lmao). As if Starfire is white and not orange. I can’t even read fantasy stories without cringing at writers, whether it’s on Episode or generic YA fiction.
You’ve missed every single point of every post written and thought out here. You’ve given me whiplash back and forth on strawmen arguments. You’ve even admitted you’re not gay (because clearly only gay people are part of LGBT, not trans or queer people lol), so you don’t know how you’d go on about writing a said simple character. That in itself is alarming in the post where you’re trying to excuse the Episode staff in not getting their shit together.
People read stories for a variety of reasons. Good reads are sort of…given? No one wants to read a boring ass story. People want to read to relate, to immerse themselves and in some way, LEARN through the lens of other characters or observe. Other reasons include awareness, pure entertainment and thought provoking discussion, etc.
Stories aren’t real. There’s another side you’re really missing: they’re not, so why not broaden your horizon?. If your randomly pulled out statistics were SOMEHOW true, shouldn’t that give you even more of a reason to write such characters in?
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Go off sis! I STAND!!! 
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Literally, she took everything we said the wrong way and tuned it out. It’s like she never listened to a single word. She keeps saying are forcing it when we said MANY times we aren’t and saying that the problem is they ignore other minority groups. We are asking for more, not forcing it. And yet she still tries to put us in the position. And smaller amount of people? So POC and LGBT+ is a smaller amount of people? And if you don’t mean that and you meant us people wanting Representation, it’s still wrong. We aren’t a small amount, we are varieties of people wanting the best for our community. Honestly I cannot…
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oh.my.god. what episode whats to do is create more diverse casts but they havent okay? and they should have, authors should also have diverse casts. its not that hard, this thread has basically become a headache.
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We shouldn’t have to ask, it should be done already Period!
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I wanna know what areas that POC and LGBT are in the “1%” are residing in tbh.
Like where the hell is your story based in? Texas?
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I don’t even want to bother reading any stories written by someone who thinks needing diversity is “asking too much.”
Like nah man nah. My attention span and patience is far too low for that.
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It’s pretty sad when adding a male MC would be diversity. It’s pretty sad that Episode doesn’t have the resources to allow us to write stories about the transition of a transgender person. I’d either have to make them pre or post transition.
But above all, what’s the saddest thing of all is this othering of minority people: “I can’t write about them because they’re too different and weird. I wouldn’t understand how to write them”. I mean, at the end of the day, we’re all human and you’re going to find people of all walks of life, faiths and sexualities who have a lot in common with you, even if there are some differences. An American Chinese person is going to be affected also by their American nationality and upbringing. It’s likely that they’ll share more in common with you than someone who has lived in Shanghai their whole lives, since they grew up in a very similar way to you, so it’s not difficult to represent them. Probably that’s partly the fault of people asking for diversity: getting offended too quickly instead of just taking writers to a side and explaining what’s wrong and how they can do better. It scares people off. That’s something that a lot of us need to work on.
But that’s not an excuse to pretend minorities don’t exist. No one HAS to put diversity into their stories and I REALLY don’t recommend putting in diversity that’s unusual in the area you’re writing about or that you don’t understand. However, unless you live in a bubble, you’ve met and interacted with minority people: asexual, agender, transgender, bisexual, gay, aspergers, dyslexic, ADHD, ADD, physical disabilities such as an amputee, people with hearing impairments, blind, dyspraxic, bipolar, social anxiety, religious, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, socialist… these are all types of people who may not be represented in your story and are ALL over the world, regardless of skin colour.
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Oh my god, there have been so many long comment, I honestly appreciate that everyone’s so head in and enthusiastic about their opinions.
Really, give you hand a break.
This is going to be short:
We need to look at perspectives.
For sexuality:
The reason why there are BI stories, etc, are because authors want to give reader’s a choice, and there will be more readers if the LGBT readers are also reading. Also, the diversity topic is a really huge topic right now, LGBT stories are written for LGBT people (Mostly, I would say). As a straight person, I don’t read LGBT stories, because I can’t relate. So it’s all got to do with relating. I would say mostly LGBT people write LGBT stories, and sometimes authors write BI stories to have diversity.
For race:
Now, the ting is, being fair to races is a huge thing right now as well. Same goes for this. Now authors are implementing more races in their stories because of this controversial topic.
However, with so much of this going on, this is now becoming a cliche. I’m sure you know the pattern.
Episode’s point of view:
They are an app that makes money, and whatever is the most popular obviously helps. Episode does a lot and they are discussing with us. They run on money, and without the money, Episode won’t have this community. I know it’s incredibly frustrating when you see this view, and sometimes I feel as if it’s only money, but honestly… I can’t really defend them but it’s hard for an app to make decisions based on numerous opinions from different perspectives.
I agree, this app was made by the American developer PocketGems. So it’s more America-based. I understand that some people wouldn’t want more America based stories, but in the end, everything is up to the author. By influencing their decisions (main characters) they create something that doesn’t really belong to them, in a way, they’re out of touch, they aren’t what they envisioned. Perhaps that’s why some of these characters seem empty or with no character, just someone with diversity- and see, this happens so much it’s starting to become tiring.
Again, I understand background characters obviously should be diverse- this is real life (unless in fantastical world, but that could be too) but the main character’s are what the author’s envision- I’m pretty sure they don’t mean to not include other race’s, but this is their story. It’s their’s.
There’s an argument of not being enough diverse characters. Another way would be to make those stories yourself. After all, stories are revolved after what the author wants,
Another argument made was that minorities exist, and that you will be able to write about them because they’re the same as you. Well, everyone could have the same hobbies, etc, but if a straight person was to describe a heated passion between a LGBT couple, I still would find it pretty out of touch. It’s just not your way of thinking, and vice versa. That’s sexuality, ADHD, etc. Obviously, you could look at interviews, and that would be quite accurate. This might be able to be achieved, but the author would have to put in a lot of effort to remake their whole idea. However, I must say, it’s just, really hard, to understand, say, how does someone really feel with cancer? It’s subjective to everybody. Yes, there should be more influential, less cliche and uneducational (and I’m only talking about the ones that influence people inn a bad way) stories, but it’s not right to force this on authors. other than that, not everyone has a best friend of a different color. Yes, there is, and there are stories (especially now) with it, but if you live in different regions, it’s different. It needs to suit the story, so yes, of course in some places this would be very natural, and if in some place like America, this is very normal as well, but it’s also normal to not have a best friend of color.
Mostly, the whole argument revolves around what’s accurate. An accurate representation of LGBT, race, and place.
And, in the end, what’s important is that there isn’t a negative community towards this. It’s positive, and there isn’t a story that will portray LGBT as bad, etc (as of now).
Again, it’s only my opinion, so feel free to roast me for dinner.
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The problem with this is that there are stories made from all over the world. Episode just focuses on festuring a US narrative. It would be nice for them to not have the same formula:
- Middle-class
- High school or university
- Straight girl
- Boy troubles
- Obsession with physical appearance
- Trivialisation of sex
- Bad boy
- Nothing better to do with their lives than obsess over guys who don’t treat them well.
- American
It would be nice for there to be a featured story which ticks less than 4 of those boxes.
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“Diversity is much more than race, religion or sexuality. Diversity is people, just multitudinous people who are different.”
Seems like everyone ignored this.
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In this context people are talking about racial/ethnical diversity, gender diversity, sexual orientation diversity etc etc. There’s a lot of ways characters can be diverse, but since popular/featured stories already have a decent amount of personality diversity, that’s why we’re choosing to focus on this here :). People do complain about the lack of diversity in characters’ personalities though, just in a different way and in different wording.
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