I want to say that it would have been interesting if Craxis was the one who first met MC and attempted to let her stray off her path by making her focus on the marriage rather than the queendom. But it’s like gluing a single sequin to a lump of clay.
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It’s even worse because of the time frame involved. The featured version of Instant Princess was released in February. This was released in early September, meaning that it had to have been tested during the summer and worked on before that. There’s no way not to notice that this means the writing of Positively Princess (to use the term “writing” very generously here) overlaps with Episode buying and revamping Instant Princess, and then dumping Instant Princess oh so conveniently to instead feature a safe, whitewashed version of it with gratuitous pregnancy thrown in.
I really hope the community makes enough noise about this to get the Episode team to address it. This is such a blatant slap in the face to LB that it’s unbelievable. What kind of message does this send? That stories about dark-skinned black girls and their cultures aren’t wanted unless you can slap a white face onto it instead and take out all the culture that made them meaningful to begin with? That stories about being a beautiful princess only mean anything if you maintain the option to make your character a generic white girl? 
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Anti-semitic? How come?
Her facial features and hair strike me as resembling antisemitic caricature, perhaps not blatantly or even egreriously but kind of in a similar way to how Mother Gothel could be considered antisemitic.
Here’s a couple screenshots for direct comparison.
See how Queen Craxis has that thick black hair, something of a hooked nose (hard for me to get a better look at it tbh, but seems to be), and pronounced cheek bones? Even her particular lip and eye shape fit the bill to me. From what little I read, Craxis is also pretty single-mindedly obsessed with having total power and control over the kingdoms - common as far as fantasy supervillain motivations go, but when combined with the rest of her, gives me a bad vibe. The “stealing baby protagonist from her crib in the dead of night” thing likens her to Mother Gothel as well, which makes me suspect they lifted a couple things from Tangled when designing Craxis.
Mother Gothel is just a visual comparison; in actuality, I think the main problem is that they’ve inadvertently designed Craxis as this Evil Fantastical Witch cliche, which can have very similar (if not overlapping) issues.
If you’re interested in looking more at how Mother Gothel can be antisemitic, the blog writingwithcolor shared a post that I thought contained some good points about Gothel’s characterization and visual design + how those things tie back to older European folk tale tropes. I recommend it, since it isn’t overly long and I just know that for me personally, it made some observations I had as a film major and casual folk-tale enthusiast really click into place.
http://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/post/154992689002/so-many-miles-to-go-aworldinneedofmagic
(minor tw for the linked post showing brief examples of antisemitic propaganda in discussion of the issue)
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Hey, thanks for the clarification!
You might as well know, Episode has created another featured story called Positively Princess, but this isn’t what I’m here to speak about it’s more of a rant about the story and to make a noise at Episode. For this story.
Now, I haven’t read any of it (nor do I want to), so I can’t really judge it too hard but from what the screenshots showed it looked like an ok story; directing was good but the plot ran too fast. From first glance when I saw this I was wanting to read the story but then as it gotten more attention some of my favorite authors noticed the echoes of Instant Princess are terrible, impossibly blatant. I was struck by the similarities, when some Episode authors realized this and, more importantly, how much had been stripped away. The diversity and culture present in IP’s design became a sick, pale imitation of the genuine (“Or as we say in Nadal, ‘Girl, byyyyee.’”). Without getting into the Europeanization of the plot or anti-Semitic design of the villain, who looks like Mother Gothel from Tangled by the way, it’s bad. But after all that happened with Instant Princess earlier this year, it feels sickening.
The similarities in the first chapters is where “Sexy stranger” tells the MC that she’s the lost princess of Ilandria. Then when it comes to the Queen of Ghamali, it’s eerily similar to what she said to the MC in Instant Princess.
This story is basically a rip off of Instant Princess adding a pregnancy in the twist. Don’t we already have a story where a normal teenage girl gets knocked up by some prince already? Do we seriously need a second one?
I’m just going to say that I don’t get Episode’s and other author’s obsession with pregnancy. Unplanned pregnancy at such a young age is not glamorous or romantic as episode shows it to be. I just don’t see the appeal of getting pregnant by a one time encounter with a stranger who happens to be a prince or billionaire or student or whatever. What it does show is how episode promotes unsafe sex. just my opinion. They’re making it seem like pregnancy is everything and having children is so important when it isn’t. They are just telling kids that it’s ok to throw away a future that you want to have and just have a kid that will hold you back, personally, there should be stories that tell kids that they should wait until they have kids.
I do want to place a few bets though: I bet the pregnancy aspect of the story will have little to no research into it. If this is an unplanned pregnancy, the topic of abortion won’t be addressed properly (or at all). And the baby will be treated as an insignificant plot accessory.
Even with Episode authors that put unrealistic happy endings for teen couples. Like they have their parents upset but then it is all forgotten since parents accept that their kid is pregnant and get so excited to be a grandma and grandpa. Like whut?! You’re not angry that you learned your daughter is pregnant with some guy?
Not all teen pregnancies have a happy ending per say. Some teens get kicked out of the house by their parents once they hear that their child getting knocked up by some teen boy and they leave them to fend for themselves in the real world.
Not to mention the dangers of having unsafe sex. Like you could get STD’s and if the guy is lying to you that he does not have like a Sexually Transmitted Disease, you are going to get that disease anyway.
Basically the "baby daddy" Dalton, is probably nothing more than a hit and quit type of guy or they could just make him " wanting to be with the mc and be the father of the baby" cliché. Even I forgot to say that there are going to be some teen dads that will step up to be the father and there are some teens that will not step up to be the father of the baby.
People are sayin’ this is a good story. Uh, bitch where? The first episode already gave me a bad impression and a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t WANT anymore hot and bad boys and sexy strangers, it’s just overused anyways. Can I PLEASE just have an original featured story for ONCE IN MY LIFE?
They literally took a beautifully written story with actual people of color who have strong ethnic ties and made it a cliché story. Releasing this story is an insult to injury, frankly, regardless of whether the intent is personally malicious. It’s disrespectful to LB’s heartfelt creativity and human spirit. It’s dishonest.
We as a community need to make enough noise about this to get the Episode team to address it. This is such a blatant slap in the face to LB that it’s unbelievable. What kind of message does this send? That stories about dark-skinned black girls and their cultures aren’t wanted unless you can slap a white face onto it instead and take out all the culture that made them meaningful, to begin with?
What I want to see that Episode should do instead of all of this shit of bad boys, mafia and gangs. They should be promoting stories that deal with real-life issues like mental health, overcoming abuse and racism, stories that promote treating people fairly instead of this.
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very long.
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This last paragraph is the only thing i need to support your post. I’ll read the whole thing eventually after i type this XD
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I only read this story to see all the overlays, backgrounds, animations, hairstyles, clothing, beards so I can internally yell at episode.
I usually try not to be biased, and it’s a good story from the aesthetic point of view, but they have to work on their plot. it’s overused, fast forwarding, and not very interesting.
No offence.
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I recently read positively princess on episode. I WAS SHOOK BY THE AMAZING CHARACTERS, the new hairstyles, the new beards but most of all:
ANIMATED ANIMALS!! There was an animated horse in the 2nd Episode, who was moving SO realistically…
The ears, the neck was perfectly animated…
I wish episode would give such features to the creators as well!!! New hairstyles and new tattoos, and ANIMALS!!! The directing by @Dara.Amarie was flawless.
This is just a recommendation to read positively princess and
A REQUEST TO EPISODE TO GIVE US THESE FEATURES TOO.
State in the comments if you want the same!!
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Definitely support 
I read Positively Princess too and because I’m a former rider, seeing a horse in a story made me like ‘OMG, FINALLY!!!’ 
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Support! I’ve wanted animated animals ever since I started writing episode. And the positively princess have so many annimations unseen and they even have so many outfits and hairstyles! SUPPORT!!!
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I support too. They have like tons of hairstyles I’ve never seen before!
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Thank you to all who are supporting this thread!! Sorry if I am not able to reply to each one of you but each support means a lot!! Thank you!!
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As amazing as the new features it is showcasing is, I advise you don’t support this story.
It is a white-washed rip off of Instant Princess. 
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No I thought so too at first. But if you check Dara amarie’s Instagram story she explains that positively princess was in works months before instant princess was released. And episode didn’t want to complete the story then as instant princess closely matched their plot. However I like both the stories.
Oh wow animated horses. They looked so amazing and realistic.
I just wanted to clarify a few things about that statement that was made about the time frame of Positively Princess and Instant Princess because the explanation you saw is missing a few details.
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Instant Princess was not a brand new story when it was published as a Limelight story in February 2018 (it wasn’t released in March. They placed it on the Black History Month shelf that took place the third week of February. It had been an ink story for over a year. In fact, Instant Princess Ink had been featured on a shelf some time in mid or early 2017, so Episode was aware of its existence and content before the time frame the director stated PP was written, which was towards the end of 2017.
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As directors of featured stories are aware, it takes several months of preparation to release a featured story. Staff I’ve spoken to in the past have given the standard time frame of between 6-9 months. If Instant Princess came out in February 2018 with customized backgrounds and exclusive outfits, that means that Episode had been working on featuring Instant Princess since at least towards the end of 2017 or mid 2017, meaning the time frame would have overlapped because the director of Positively Princess stated that PP was written in the end of 2017.
The fact of the matter is that the content of Instant Princess existed long before Positively Princess was written, and the time frame for Episode acquiring the rights would have landed around the time frame that the director stated PP was written. If Instant Princess was dropped because of similarities to a featured story that was written after Episode acquired the rights, then that is a very disturbing reason to drop the story, especially because Instant Princess was an opportunity for Episode to make good on their promise to improve their lack of diverse stories and Positively Princess strips away all of the rich diverse elements that were in Instant Princess.
I just wanted to clarify why people are upset about Positively Princess because the information you have is missing a lot of little details that make a huge difference!
Also, I hope we can get animated animals some time soon too. That would be so cool. I’m really curious to know how the horse animation works.
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Positively Princess having a new feature as nice as animated horses does not change the fact that it’s too similar to Instant Princess for comfort at best and an outright plagiarized, whitewashed version at worst. That shouldn’t be forgotten, and Episode needs to address this.
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Stories are not even slightly similar.