She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

[MissKittyFantastico]

No human male who was of she-ra watching age when it first came out has nostalgia for it, because none of them cared about it back then.

I'll admit I wasn't there at day one in the 80s - I discovered She-Ra in the 90s, via a friend who had some of the old VHS collections ('Duel at Devlan' through to I think 'Friendship') - but I feel like I came by my fandom and nostalgia pretty honestly. I'm pretty confident I'd have been hooked on She-Ra if I'd seen it back in the day, because I loved He-Man and super loved Teela, and it's basically more He-Man except there's like a dozen Teelas - the reason I didn't ever watch it then is because I was young and dumb, and the Barbie-as-hell toy commercials did nothing to override my knee-jerk "it's for girls" reaction. But we watched the hell out of those VHS tapes, I listened to the Masters Cast podcast, snapped up all the DVD collections as soon as they came out, wrote and illustrated (and I suck at art, so that's no small undertaking) my own She-Ra fanfic remake just for fun, with LotR-scale battles and Tara (and, yeah, all the classic costumes) because of course I did... human, male, She-Ra fan. Not saying the old show didn't have enormous shortcomings, but I love it, and have since long before a remake was even rumoured at.

I'm not disagreeing that a lot of the so-called 'controversy' over the new show is a pile of crap, mind. Just saying, we can call out the fake-outrage bullshit for what it is without unilaterally erasing classic She-Ra fandom just to undercut the opposition even more. Maybe some of the people kicking up a fuss are genuine fans of the original... and also toxic assholes. Heck, there's probably some folks who love the original and, without being pricks at all, don't like the new look - it's a pretty heavy redesign after all. They likely just can't speak up much, because starting up a conversation about how they kind of preferred the more curved golden breastplate to the angular new one immediately draws in half a dozen dickheads 'agreeing' by shouting about how she looks like a boy.

Me, I've finished watching all the episodes out now, and I know the actual target audience was young girls, but I feel like the creators managed to also make it a love letter aimed right at my own personal She-Ra fandom, so that's nice.

[Worffan101]

I've heard good things about it, and if it isn't as unintentionally homoerotic as the original He-Man I will be very disappointed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ5LpwO-An4

Oh, there's nothing unintentional about it, trust me.

On the one hand, it's great if they're trying to be more inclusive and have openly gay characters, ESPECIALLY for a kid's show so that kids are normalized to the idea of gay people being normal folks earlier.

That is not how it works in my experience. No one is born racist, homophobic or sexist, these things are learned. Little kids are happy to play with any other little kid no matter what they look like or what sex they are.
Its the attitudes of their parents that start them down that road, but peer pressure in Middle school is the killer because hating whoever the cool kids hate frequently nets you popularity points.
I'm not saying that cartoons for kids with gay people in them is a bad thing, I just very much doubt that they help normalize anything because little kids don't care about that sort of thing, its adults and teenagers working on their impressionable minds that does the damage and by that time a cartoon is going to do nothing to help them.

I think they do--if the main character on a popular show is X, then X becomes more acceptable to the kids. Also, there's a tendency in our society to consider LGBT issues "adult", which is why breaking that down and pointing out that gay kids have the same, say, romantic issues as straight kids, stuff like that, will help equalize society.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Well, MissKittyFantastico, I stand corrected.

[Madner Kami]

I find the tonal difference between display, behaviour and implication off-putting.

You have the mostly happy-go-lucky behaviour of everyone, who are generally "behaving like kids". You have a graphic style that implies your protagonists being kids. But then said kids are labelled as "8 foot tall lady with a sword", while they don't appear to even have grown out of puberty. Catra is a "Force Captain" of the Horde and looks like she hasn't even reached puberty yet, even by cat-people standards, all the while she's complaining about a "sparkly princess" to what I can only identify as her 6th grade class-mates and somehow this show is about a fight between the apparently only adult left on the planet Hordak, Master of the Evil Horde, who rules over Etheria with an iron fist, can transform his body into all sorts of imaginable weapons (I suppose this has survived into this incarnation), who is a Master of both Science and Magic and whose older brother is supposedly the Evil Overlord who rules a galaxy spanning Empire of Evil. And he is fighting 12 years olds and gets defeated. What. The. Fuck.

I deeply dislike this trend of mixture of tonal and visual roller-coaster whiplashing not just in this show, but in general. Granted, this show isn't going full on bonkers like other shows have (*cough* Teen Titans SD *cough*) and I do absolutely not mind child-protagonists in the least, for example Avatar has done it right. They are children, they behave like children and they are generally treated like children, not necessarily within the confines of the world (after all, they are superpowered beings worthy of being treated like a legitimate threat), but by the show itself. Aang, for all the power he has, is never described as a "8 foot tall Dr Manhattan", because he's a fucking 12 year old human being.

[RobbyB1982]

Aang, for all the power he has, is never described as a "8 foot tall Dr Manhattan", because he's a fucking 12 year old human being.

Context though.

In She-Ra, she LITERALLY turns into an 8 foot tall giant. She actually transforms and becomes different looking. Her normal form isn't labelled as such, her different looking powered up form is. And the characters are all designed to be teens, and look like teens.

The fact that they're not as busty or muscular as our media tends to make even teenager characters isn't a slight. Later on you see them as actual kids for comparison, and no, they are not drawn like kids, they're absolutely teenagers.

Over in Avatar, the culture of that world has had centuries to get used to benders doing magic, and the role of the Avatar specifically, who has consistently been on the side of balance and good (and Korra later explained why that's always the case) and a grand bargain between all four nations to always train the Avatar to be one of all nations. So everyone understands and knows the concept from the getgo.

But even within that culture, for most the series, anyone outside his circle of friends refers to him as just "the Avatar" and he is TREATED like an ungodly force of nature, that gets credit and blame for whatever his past selves did rather than whatever Aang did. Even his friends show fear when his eyes go glowy and he loses control.

After he pulls a giant water monster out of his arsenal at the end of season 1, season 2 explicitly tries to turn him into just a weapon to be pointed without any concern at all for his feelings. Even Aang himself tries to give up his human side at the end of the season for the sake of controlling the raw power and he just can't do it, and nearly dies for it. Until the very end of the series where, lo, he gets his full power going, loses control of himself and lets the sheer force of nature take over, and then even comet powered phoenix lord is a chump against him.

[PapaPalpatine]

I watched a couple of episodes and I'm, at best, lukewarm on this one. Strip away the She Ra branding and you're not left with much that Madoka Magica and Sailor Moon haven't already done (and at that, done much, much better).

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I dunno man. The characters are all pretty vivid, likeable, and well, adorable. Also show me another cartoon with this level of butch gals!

Seriously, it's so...every character has a rich and vivid different design and makes me go "Ahh she's wonderful! ;-;"

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

and GAAAAY! 8D
Axgxhsigthlwe the prom episode is SO BEAUTIFULLY GHEY!

[CmdrKing]

I think they do--if the main character on a popular show is X, then X becomes more acceptable to the kids. Also, there's a tendency in our society to consider LGBT issues "adult", which is why breaking that down and pointing out that gay kids have the same, say, romantic issues as straight kids, stuff like that, will help equalize society.

I'd add on this: seeing yourself on screen matters. A lot. And while young young children generally don't have a concept of attraction yet, having stories in their memories to draw upon can help immensely in contextualizing those feelings when they do emerge.

And let's be real, the busy bodies pushing against such representation know it. If a kid has words and language and stories for their experiences as they grow up, makes it impossible for them to convince them it's somehow weird or sinful or unnatural, however it gets phrased that day.
(Heck, this is true for *adults* too. Spend about 15 minutes in the queer parts of twitter for example, you'll find a dozen stories of people who knew something was different but they could only figure it out and explore it once they had words to describe it. Language and stories are foundational for human thought.)

[Worffan101]

I think they do--if the main character on a popular show is X, then X becomes more acceptable to the kids. Also, there's a tendency in our society to consider LGBT issues "adult", which is why breaking that down and pointing out that gay kids have the same, say, romantic issues as straight kids, stuff like that, will help equalize society.

I'd add on this: seeing yourself on screen matters. A lot. And while young young children generally don't have a concept of attraction yet, having stories in their memories to draw upon can help immensely in contextualizing those feelings when they do emerge.

And let's be real, the busy bodies pushing against such representation know it. If a kid has words and language and stories for their experiences as they grow up, makes it impossible for them to convince them it's somehow weird or sinful or unnatural, however it gets phrased that day.
(Heck, this is true for *adults* too. Spend about 15 minutes in the queer parts of twitter for example, you'll find a dozen stories of people who knew something was different but they could only figure it out and explore it once they had words to describe it. Language and stories are foundational for human thought.)

Well said.

That's why I think that we should flood media with LGBT characters, to correct the imbalance, before we go back to edit. I mean, it took HOW long for "The Incredibles 2" to accurately portray a realistic family dynamic (superpowers aside) in the movies, after decades of cartoon stereotypes? Get the representation first, then refine down to the good stuff.