Episode's 2017 Diversity Standards

I know because at the end of the day you’re portraying real cultures, so at least make it realistic.

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I’ve been reading a couple of new stories and I’ve discovered that there aren’t enough stories with Latino’s, African American’s or Asian’s. The majority of the stories have main characters that are Caucasian. We need to work on this!!!

-Jasmine

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I support!

Preach, gurl! :v:t6::v:t5::v:t2::v:t4::v:t3:

Are you sick of these posts yet? Well people need to hear about it, authors are throwing in the Asians, the blacks, blah blah the list goes on. But do they ever use those characters? And when I say use, I don’t mean the asian kids going like "Yes I love you so much, would you marry me because I am a stereotypical Hollywood generated Indian Nerd, I mean as in using them as main characters, as influential characters with a meaning to the story, but that is pretty rare. And i’m not surprised, society today is like “omg love yourself for who you are” yet photo shopping my bloody ass (sorry going off topic) but I mean they sugar coat everything, blow everything out of proportion, and trying to brush it off or hide it. Well I ain’t taking it anymore (rage quits).

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Sorry to those who are forbidden to read the dirty A-word I forgot to blur it :wink:

slow clapping In the film industry, and especially in Episode, POCs are just token characters made to make the MC more interesting. They have no real goals or feelings or personalities like the real people they are meant to represent.

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Okay, I’m a little confused. Am I the only one whose dates are all being mixed up for this post? I want to join in, but I don’t know if the comments are in chronological order or not, so I’m not sure what to reply to!

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Mine are all jumbled up as well.

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Because some people hand draw them and it takes time to draw, color, shade, contour, etc…

We had so many hand drawn overlays in DD: SHATTERED that had to be drawn all over again. Art scenes as well.

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In my story (Shadow Hunter: World On Fire) the love interest for the male MC is a POC that is every bit as important as the MC. Bianca has her own personality, goals, dreams and ambitions. She’s also the Assistant District Attorney. She’s strong, confident, and readers have labeled her a good role model. :purple_heart:

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What happened to all of the comments from a few weeks ago? I know I didn’t make those comments up in my head

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September, 2018. We are nearing the two year mark. The article still applies, nothing has really changed. We’ve seen racist and toxic behavior go unchecked by Episode. We’ve seen a new style with people of color still being after thoughts. We’ve seen them not feature a story with a dark skin MC then later releases a knock off version (I’ve seen the arguments for why it is not a knock off. I disagree but even still, one has far more quality and diversity than the other without incorporating stereotypes. Hint: It does not involve pregnancy) What kind of standard is this? We’ve spoken up and been ignored. What kind of standard…nevermind.

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A shitty standard.

I think the dates are all jumbled up. It’s weird! It goes from 16 days ago on mine to May 10 :thinking:

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Episode thinks it can get away with calling its app diverse if it railroads the community authors into shoehorning in diversity in the competitions! They seem to think that they don’t need diverse featured stories with minority characters who are good charcters in their own right… because they can just have a token gay best friend and add in a hijab to their outfits and that’s enough.

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Well, I say that if Episode is “encouraging” us to write about diversity, they need to show us how they want us to do it.

I also do feel the need to mention how toxic it is that competitions add diversity quotas in their POINT system. Can you be any more dehumanising to your diverse cast than to make it a bloody game or point-filling, quota-filling necessity rather than a genuine, thoughtful inclusion? Reducing diversity to easy points that you can gain to make your story win completely negates the point of diversity. It makes it sound like “that easy A class that college students take to give themselves a break”.

Like… “I don’t need to have a good story as long as I have diversity. That will raise my points and hopefully help me to win the competition”. Thank god that’s never happened with the winners… they usually do have a good story as well as being pressured into shoehorning in diversity. But it’s so messed up that it’s the kind of attitude Episode is promoting! It helps people to think that diversity makes a story bad! Could there be anything more toxic than that? We shouldn’t be giving people a reason to claim that diversity doesn’t work or is unimportant. It should be natural in a story, not something people add as an afterthought in competitions to make sure they’re more likely to win.

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the dates are jumbled because they combined multiple threads on diversity into one.
this is another indication of how diversity is clearly not a priority to Episode and it’s stories

my original thread was a resource to teach people about adding diversity to their stories but it was shut down & combined with this thread as another random post thrown into the comments.

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Well, looks like these diversity standards were thrown into a fucking trashcan.

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I find it rather ridiculous that the comments related to the wonky order of the posts were flagged. The thread that was merged is extremely off topic and distracting from this thread, and I think we have a right to 1) figure out what happened, 2) be told what happened, and 3) express displeasure when told what happened since we are literally trying to figure out why this thread is a mess.
But since y’all want to play,

when will we be seeing these standards actually addressed?

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