please remember that your characters are more than the minority groups they belong to. they should, as a general rule, have personalities too
I don’t care how diverse your cast is if they’re all pieces of cardboard with the same or stereotyped personalities. When I see minority cast that are terribly written, it feels like the writer put them there to fulfill a diversity credit, not that they actually care about showcasing diversity. And that frustrates me.
I remember when my brother played…uh…m…metroid??? And told me the main character of this space adventure was a badass woman who could kick you across space. My eyes lit up and my brain was like “Girl! Girl! Girl!” Because there was a video game character who was me, a girl. Where previously I’d only seen predominantly male protagonists. It’s the best feeling in the world when you feel like it’s you on the screen and on the page.
But to find out that they have no personality? That the black guy is a drug dealer and the Ho-Chunk are in wild west grasslands? That’s devastatingly horrible. It ruins whatever diversity the author ever attempted to get at.
Please be diverse. Please give them a good backstory. Please give them a personality.
“This is my letter of love to all my LGBTQ fans. Continuously throughout my career, you’ve always been so vocal about what a positive impact I’ve had on you – that I’ve instilled joy, hope and love in you at times when there was none. That my music is an inspiration. That my story gives you hope.
But I have a secret to share with you. You see, it’s actually you that lifts me up. The unwavering loyalty. the lack of judgment. The unapologetic truth. Acceptance! Your stories are what inspire me, bring me joy and make me and my sons strive to be better people.
Across the board, Maximum Fun podcasts do not provide transcripts with their shows. Without transcripts, whole populations (including deaf and hard-of-hearing folks, neurodivergent people, people with auditory processing disorders and more) cannot access audio mediums like podcasts.
Jesse Thorn, owner of Max Fun, has said that part of the reason for this is a lack of demand, and that he thinks deaf and hard-of-hearing people won’t find the humor in many of the podcasts by reading them. Not only is this incorrect, it puts the responsibility of accessibility onto disabled people. It also ignores the fact that for many, reading is the only way to access certain media like podcasts.
It is imperative that content creators build accessibility into their products from the start. Otherwise, they are sending the message that their work is for able-bodied people only. Jesse Thorn stated that he was willing to revisit his decision not to provide transcripts in the future. So it’s very important that Max Fun fans let him know: we care about accessibility! We want to be able to share the shows we love with disabled friends and family. We want transcripts!
Sign to show the folks at Max Fun that a truly accessible, inclusive network is something we care about!
Please sign and reblog! Share on facebook and twitter too if you can!
(also, please let me know if there are any accessibility issues with this site, i’ve never used this platform before. thanks, y’all, you’re my favorites.)
we’re basically halfway there! thank you all so much. if accessibility is important to you, please sign & share!
It’s what happened to Jews in Germany in 1938 when their passports were declared invalid. That is what is beginning to happen here, now, to Hispanic citizens along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Oh, is it bad to compare the GOP to Nazis? Well, if members of the GOP do not like being compared to Nazis, they should consider not behaving exactly like Nazis.
Hispanic U.S. citizens, some of whom were in the U.S. military, are not being allowed to renew their passports. This is reportedly happening to “hundreds, even thousands” of Latinos, according to a report in the Washington Post. They’re getting letters from the State Department saying it does not believe they are citizens. The government claims their citizenships are fraudulent. “I’ve had probably 20 people who have been sent to the detention center—U.S. citizens,” Jaime Diez, an attorney in Brownsville, told The Washington Post.
The Washington Post also reports on ICE officials coming to citizens’ homes and taking their passports away. This is an escalation from a few months ago, when Americans were detained by ICE officials just for speaking Spanish to one another.
The administration is currently launching an effort to take citizenship from people who they suspect of fraud in obtaining it. Fraud in these cases is exceedingly rare. The last time the government tried to strip people of their citizenship was, according to Columbia Professor Mae , during The Red Scare of the 1950s. As Ngai remarks, McCarthyism is not typically remembered as a good period in American history.
There is good reason to believe that this could portend still worse things to come for the U.S. Hispanic population, unless people begin to speak out loudly, and fast.
2nd Edit: Someone asked “What Can Be Done Abroad?”
Thank you for asking!
1) Get the word out in your home country’s print and broadcast media and internet. People in the USA really don’t get how suppressed our press has become and it’s only getting worse by the day. Part of it is getting any one topic to surface long enough above the churn, which is an intentional tactic being successfully used by the political party in power.
2) The one thing that no one is the USA is not seemingly able to do at all is get attention onto the Republican party as a whole for how complicit they are in all the illegal activity. If anyone can throw some weight in that direction, it’s an elephant in the room that we REALLY need to get lots of attention on.
3) Support sanctions against the US for our human rights violations.
NO MATTER WHAT THE RESULTS ARE OF THE 2018 USA MIDTERM ELECTIONS, NONE OF THESE PROBLEMS ARE GOING TO STOP UNLESS WE GET TO WORK STOPPING THEM.
I can’t tell you what actions you should take, because I don’t know what
talents you have at your disposal. Do you have legal skills to help
people who may be threatened by these new changes? Use them. Can you
write about what’s going on? Write about it. Do you have a church or
place or worship to help organize refuge for the persecuted? Do so. Do
you have time to call your senators and congressmen? Call. Keep calling.
Make them hear you.
Mathee's Blog 