It’s not stupid. I promise. It’s not stupid to turn into your 5 year old self and get happy beyond measure for the little things. It’s not stupid to be proud of yourself for completing a load of laundry and washing the dishes. You aren’t lame for patting yourself on the back when you chose a salad over a burger. You’re taking care of yourself and each victory – no matter how small – is worth celebrating.
The thing with telling “cliche” stories, but with representation, is… these stories aren’t cliche for us.
Picture this. The people at the table next to you have been getting chocolate cake as a dessert for YEARS. After every meal, they get a chocolate cake. Now, it’s been years, and the people at that table can barely stand chocolate anymore. They want maybe a cheesecake. Or lemon mousse.
But your table? Has NEVER had chocolate cake. Mousse is also good, but you are SO hungry for that chocolate cake, cause you never had it before, and it’s brand new for you, and you’ve been watching the other table eat it for YEARS.
That’s what’s like getting a “cliche” story that’s representative. Has it been done a million times before? Yes. Has it ever been done for US? Well… no. Maybe it’s the 500th chocolate cake in existence, but all the other chocolate cakes weren’t meant for us (girls/PoC/queer folk/disabled folk/etc)
So it being cliche is not a bad thing. You may not want chocolate cake anymore. But we want our slice too.
This post got a bit of traction! FYI, my original point was about The Dragon Prince!
I don’t care how many times Elves, Dragons and Medieval Europe have been done before. Now it’s Elves, Dragons, and Medieval Europe — only people of color exist, women constitute half of the population, and disabled people are living their best lives. THAT hasn’t been done to death before. THAT isn’t cliche for us.
It’s maybe the FIRST TIME many of us get to enjoy “Elves, Dragons and Medieval Europe”. This is our first chocolate cake. I don’t want it to be smart and substitute chocolate for strawberry. I JUST WANT MY DAMN CHOCOLATE CAKE. I’VE WAITED FOR IT GODDAMNIT.
Incidentally, the same point can be made about Eragon. Whine all you want it’s Tolken-fanboy-plagiarism. I can’t hear you over the sound of WOMEN FUCKING EXISTING.
What you’re talking about is tropes, not cliches. Tropes are setting concepts or character concepts or story concepts that show up frequently in fiction. These are inherently neutral and are only bad or good if the writing using them is bad or good.
Cliches on the other hand are kind of tired and boring and have nothing fresh or new about them. Cliche is a word to describe a trope, plot, or concept that was badly written and executed rather than just familiar. Someone can take a trope that has the potential to be good and make it cliche with bad pacing or boring dialog or unrealistic character growth, etc.
I’d argue that the Dragon Prince is just using some common tropes, not cliches. The setting dressings are familiar since we’ve been over-inundated with Tolkien-esque western European fantasy, but the execution makes it fresh. Even aside from the representation (which is great) you have snappy dialogue (written in a colloquial style instead of that boring formal style most fantasy defaults to), some interesting worldbuilding, great characters, and already some dark and interesting themes. It takes some very familiar tropes and makes them fresh with good writing, character design, voice-acting, etc. Something isn’t a cliche if it’s executed in an interesting way, no matter how familiar the setting elements are.
But back to the idea of cliches (which the Dragon Prince is not particularly guilty of), cliches are still bad writing, and if that kind of bad writing shows up in a piece of media with lots of representation, it’s still bad in a quality sort of way. So the people that want to grabby hands at fiction that has representation that retreads well-tread ground are certainly in their rights to and sometimes it’s written very well. But if it’s not, if it truly is cliche and boring, it’s also okay to reject something if it’s not your jam. Representation is, in and of itself, something that can make something fresh, but if it has boring plots and terrible dialogue it’s just good representation, not good storytelling. And it’s okay to reject that. (And I think some would argue that something can’t be good representation unless it is good storytelling, but ymmv).
The thing is you should only be rejecting it for yourself, not telling someone else to. If another person wants to cling to something badly written and cliche just because they see themselves in it, let them have it. But also recognize you’re allowed to reject it for yourself and to criticize the writing of it because you want something more. People should lay off anyone else that wants to grabby hands at representation even if they don’t like it. Let them have their cake.
All that said, Dragon Prince isn’t even close to cliche. It’s good representation and genuinely good. And retreading old paths like western european fantasy ground is fine as long as you have new things planned for that playground.
Also women have been in fantasy stories FOREVER. Tales Series, Fire Emblem, Bravely Series, ATLA and LOK, most fantasy and Isekai anime that aren’t SAO clones have had strong female characters (Ex – InuYasha, Yona of the Dawn).
Even Lord of the Rings had Arwen Evenstar and Eowyn. And there’s Tamora Pierce too. And Dragonriders of Pern.
Women in fantasy are NOTHING new. I don’t know why OP is acting like having women in fantasy is something shocking or radical.
Also we shouldn’t hold something to a lower standard just because of representation. This means that writers are going to be able to get away with providing women/lgbt/poc with low quality stories by saying “well it’s for rep!! So nothing else matters!” And this will lead to outsiders typecasting ALL MEDIA meant for those groups as inherently bad.
That’s what happened to romance novels, they were written cheaply because “they’re for women”, which lead to anything with romance in it being seen as “girly” and “bad.”
Women/lgbt/poc deserve better than that and we shouldn’t let bad storytelling or cheap writing slide for reasons like this.
i haven’t seen any noise about this on tumblr yet, but a fire has completely wiped out a small town in california.
they’re calling it the camp fire. over 20,000 residents have been evacuated so far, the last area estimates i heard were over an hour ago at 18,000 acres and its still zero percent contained.
this is the smoke from about 18 miles away from the fire three hours ago. if you know anyone near chico, paradise, oroville or durham california you might want to check they’re okay
call me ignorant but i genuinely don’t understand why sports have to be split up by gender.
@ everyone in the notes talking about physical performance: if that were the case, then sports would be divided by physical performance. that’s a thing you can measure. that’s a thing that varies by individual. a weak man and a strong man would be an unfair fight in boxing/wrestling/MMA, which is why they divide those sports up into weight groups based on physical performance. but they also further segregate them based on gender. chess is segregated by gender for no reason but sexism. if it’s actually about skill and physical ability, then measure those and separate people by those metrics. don’t do some bullshit gender segregation and pretend like men and women are inherently on different levels no matter their individual abilities.
💅
Remember that time a teenage girl struck out Babe Ruth? That’s fucking why. Men are afraid of being beaten by women.
Shooting is a sport that has no reliance on strength and so any allowance for gender variation is irrelevant.
The last time there was a mixed competition (1992) a chinese woman named Zhang Shan won it.
It’s often presented as for the benefit of women. After all, they’ll be heartbroken when they‘re hurt or bested by men.
Projection is a hell of a drug.
this is why they drug test Serena like crazy. the believe no woman should be that good. let alone a black woman.
and black women have always been considered “manly” and less feminine.
also can we talk about how surfing is segregated as well? like how the dude who won this years international surfing cup or whatever was given $30,000 worth of prize money, while the woman who won the women’s comp was only awarded like $16,000 of prize money???? or whatever it was. but I know it was either half or less than half of what the man won. like why can’t they get the same prize money and when they’re competing internationally in the same competition? they surely have the same level of skill and talent.
the pay gap in sports between men and women is fucking insane.
The pay gaps, not to mention lack of sponsorships for women athletes who don’t look like models is insane. If you weigh over 250 pounds, no one will sponsor you. It’s why most female Olympic-class weightlifters live in poverty/out of their cars.
Sports are performance separated tho, d1, d2, d3?
If you don’t think there’s a huge difference in men and women’s athletic performance then you’re blind. The tea is ICE cold
Have you ever seen a twitter thread (or, in this case, two!) that so perfectly expressed everything you’d felt over months and months of harassment persistent? With all credit to @blackblobyellowcone, who is clearly amazing and completely gets it– not just why us women write and read the erotica that we do, but the history behind the censorship we, as a gender, have experienced. Bravo.
Seriously modern fan discourse is Victorian era prudes screaming about how fiction is corrupting the “poor innocent young women” and how their fantasies are “evil”
Except in the Victorian era it was done by men. Today it’s done by OTHER WOMEN.
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