Episode's 2017 Diversity Standards

I love the shelf idea! I also think that adding more gender neutral clothing could increase gender diversity.

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Personally, I’m not sure about the shelf idea. I’m not a big fan of “othering” people. I don’t want it to seem like we have “diverse” stories and “normal” stories, if you get what I mean. Diversity should be a normal thing in stories anyway!

I’d be much more of a fan of badges for stories: say, getting an Episode stamp of approval if your story is diverse, as opposed to separating those that have diversity from the others.

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I’m a big fan of Diversity personally. I do like a diverse cast and diverse ideas, but I agree with @ShanniiWrites that adding a Shelf for Diverse stories would be a little damaging in the long run. That line of thinking would only increase segregation of sorts. Like putting a story with a diverse cast and ideas at the back of the bus away from all the ‘normal’ people you know?

The thing that should be important isn’t just diversity - it should be natural diversity. Simply educate people on more diverse cultures and their attire or customs and they’ll naturally become interested in adding these to their stories to give it some depth. The problem arises when people have a quota to fill, so they simply add ‘diverse’ characters that are nothing more than stereotypes because they have no real interest or knowledge of the culture they’re trying to explore

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I feel like people fall into the trap of thinking that a cast of non-white people automatically counts as diversity, too. For example, Black Panther on its own is not a diverse story in terms of race, since almost all of the characters come from the same part of Africa. However, if you’re considering the whole Marvel universe, it does count as diverse because it’s adding African people to the cast of superheroes.

I feel like what a separate shelf would do is say “straight, white, cis people are normal and anything that doesn’t fit that is different and goes in the special shelf”.

In reality, a diverse story simply means a story that includes people from many different walks of life

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I think your intentions are good but I think having a permanent shelf for diverse stories wouldn’t be good in the long run.

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It’s july 2018 and I dont think they done anything they promised. Unless the promise was having feature stories with no plot and breaking their own guidelines then they done that in spades.

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Regardless, if they’re trying to pass it off as the “gender fluidity” story they were promising, that would be disingenuous. It’s a great story, but just not one that fits the criteria.

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I agree. I myself am gender fluid. Newsflash: swapping bodies for one day a week doesn’t count as gender fluid.

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I’m guessing this went out the window. It’s July 31. It’s no longer the beginning of summer.

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So
 do we have any word on this?

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what’s going to happen is someone is going to come along (sooner than later) and make a better, more diverse version of episode (obviously called something else) and all the POC and the underrepresented are going to go write their stories over there where they can better express themselves. it’s only a matter of time. just you wait


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This article holds the truth. Episode is still shit at diversity.

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Seeing that it’s estimated that Episode makes 25M per year they can spare money to push a story with a non customizable POC character. Makes me sick tbh and don’t say it’s getting better because it’s not. :nauseated_face:

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1000000 years later, and these “standards” are still collecting dust :joy::joy::joy::joy:

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I know this topic is going to get shut down, but I want to bring attention to it. There are no featured stories that feature non-customization POC characters besides Instant Princess and if there is a POC character they play second fiddle to the main character who is meant to be white or is customization. Even in featured stories where black characters are featured on the cover the character is still customization. Honestly it’s not hard to tell people of color are an after thought to both community writers and Episode as a whole. This is really discouraging seeing this as a black girl. Honestly if you’re going to give people customization options don’t lock POC features. I’m honestly over the lame excuse that characters need to look a certain way for art scenes. When my character has dark skin with blue eyes and blonde hair she looks dumb.

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I agree, but how do you feel about making limited CC for a reason? I’m writing a story rn, and I’m considering whether I should only include the light skin tones for her love interest. I want to bring light to some race related issues, and it wouldn’t make sense if he/she was a POC.

I love the new skintones, I really do, but I think that the old skiintones should’ve stayed.

It’s not really diversity if you just replace old skintones which some people in the world have them with others.

You guys have added stuff, why not skintones? Unless it’s a different way of adding them, but still, if you can add them why not? You added the visual editor, so than too many skintones shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

I liked the old ones as well as the newer ones, when you do things like replacement t help your story makers you should think about how’d they’d feel. You got a lot of people hyped only to replace the old skintones and make everyone hav to change out their old overlays again, ticking people off.

It’s best to consider whether people would still want the older stuff instead of just replacing it with new ones if you want to instead of if you have to. I have never (Except for GoAnimate) heard of most people who created story makers do that, just two. Instead they added more. Maybe they removed a few stuff but still they never did something, that could cause a backlash that bad.

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I don’t believe that the new skin tones were really meant for diversity. They were changes made so the style could be pushed further - such as adding beauty marks, freckles, and facial hair. It’s all explained in a recent update post of theirs.

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In my opinion, replacing skin tones IS more diversity as the advanced shading on the faces allows for the implementation of more features. Sure, I liked the old skin tones, but I’ll take the new ones over the old ones if it is a step in the right direction to developing new features like freckles, moles, scars, beards, plus-sized faces, and more.

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Not to mention the old skin tones weren’t very accurate. While the new ones still need work, I definitely have more options for my darker skinned characters. Having double the skin tones isn’t helpful if I can’t use most of them. Personally I’d rather quality over quantity.

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