Episode's 2017 Diversity Standards

I don’t even understand why do people freak out because of body parts overlays. It takes few seconds to make one :woman_facepalming:t4:

Yeah, but seriously some people have some of the older ones as their own skintones, one girl said that one was a dead center match for hers, I would’ve fixed them, but if they had to replace because of issues I’m fine.

I’m not one of those people, but if I had to go back and fix 130 episodes (Of which someone may have) Of old limelight skintones, that would suck.

I did feel like you, however the 130 senario I came up with just now ruined that.

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someone had to fix 130 episodes?

omg :disappointed_relieved:

That was a made up scenario, but it’d explain the anger, and is unfortunately possible, so it could’ve happened. ):’

Yikes. Glad it was made up :slight_smile:

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I know I’m not the only person who speaks out about this topic, but I think it needs to be considered by Episode. There’s a lot of things that happens in the Episode community on here and on Instagram about Episode making and promoting more diverse stories. I agree with them because I feel that Episode should have more diverse stories. There’s nothing wrong with appealing to ALL audiences that read stories on the app.

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Agreed. Episode themselves are encouraging people to write more diverse stories for contests, but it falls flat when you read their official stories. I feel that it’s important for them to pay attention to what the community is saying about both adding diversity and implementing it correctly. If they listened, did their own research, and put what they learned into practice, I’d actually be willing to read more featured stories. That being said, there are some wonderfully diverse user stories out there! They just require more searching than should be necessary.

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:clap::clap:

I agree with you!

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Although Episode come a long way from its humble beginning, especially in terms of diversity, minorities, religions, are still not properly represented or recognized.

This thread is a tool to help you…

  • Include more diversity in your story
  • Understand stereotypes aren’t reality
  • Identify offensive representation and correct it
  • Find example of stories that understand diversity and how to use it

White, straight, or cis-gendered shouldn’t be the default. We might not be able to prove that to the entire world, but we can start with Episode.

Leave question, thoughts, and advice. I’ll try to get back to you as soon as possible.

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I don’t have any questions right now, but I’d like to acknowledge that that line is so beautiful. As for advise I would say that if you want to accurately represent a culture/race/religion/sexuality etc. that you aren’t apart of the best thing to do is make sure your characters are fully fleshed out human beings with thoughts and feeling and a personality separate from insert-historically-shat upon-group-here.

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Thank you!:sparkles: I completely agree. Most stories use POCs as token characters, there to make the story more interesting and decorative. They should have goals, thoughts, and personality like the people they’re meant to represent.

I think it’s good but with diversity authors write what they know.
If the writer hasn’t met a gay or a Muslim before and only go by what they’ve seen in the media that charcter will end up being a stereotype.

Diversity should fit the story shouldn’t actually stand out at all should flow naturally.
The biggest thing is don’t write what you don’t know unless the author is willing to do a lot of research that way it avoid stereotypes which majority of authors won’t do.

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Recently I was interested in going back to doing Episode to try and make a game version of one of my stories I was writing. But then I received a major set back that prevented me from doing what I wanted. In my story, my characters are all about diversity. A couple tall people, short people, people with different body types, like girls with smaller/bigger chests, guys with a weaker/stronger build. But one of the biggest problems is what’s supposed to be one of the many surprises in the story. One of my characters was supposed to (Spoiler in case I ever do proceed and create the story) be a girl pretending to be a boy. I tried to work around it, but it’s hard with limited clothing choices where I can’t cross dress my characters and not having much unisex clothing. And going back to before, there is only really one true figure for the distinctive genders at the moment. I can’t make one of my characters, who’s described to have a rather feminine work, or one of my other characters, who is supposed to have no chest to give her that childish vibe. As much as I want more clothing to be coming out constantly, I can find my way to work around the clothing stuff, but I NEED to have more diversity in body types and heights for both genders. Cause not every girl has a big chest or a perfect slim build and not every boy will have a strong looking figure.

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I’ve always also wanted different body types too. Bc there’s only one: and that’s like the model type of body. What about the mesomorphs or endomorphs???
Not only that, but I also wish there was female clothing, ya know, without the chest. Think if you were a child…you wouldn’t exactly even have a chest.
But I agree with you! Diversity is cool, and Episode should do more stuff about it!

  • Dasha
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Completely support you with this! I really hope Episode comes out with different body types and such.

A lot of people have asked for this on the Diversity Standards post and we all support it. It’s stupid how if you make children, they have large chests and stuff. Like you said, different clothes should be in male and female for people like cross dressers, transgender people, etc. Hopefully they come out with different body types and clothes soon :slightly_smiling_face::crossed_fingers:

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I am so glad, and so are a lot of other people, that Episode has now upped their diversity standards, however there are still a lot of problems. Some authors just stick (don’t take this into offence) a black person in as the stereo typical role, or the Asian as the nerd, as an Asian, I get very angry when people always make Asians as the creepy nerd!

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Totally! And I don’t want to take anyone’s choice to write the story as they see fit, but I’m kind of getting tired of Latinx culture being portrayed as only using Spanish to curse. I understand that not every writer who creates dialgue for POCs is fluent in the language, but please, do a bit more research into the culture your bringing to the forefront, whether a main character or a best friend.
Write what and how you want, but please try and be considerate of others.

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