honestly i hope the discussions happening in the she-ra fandom about representation make any aspiring white creators hoping to join the animation/entertainment industry take a moment to confront their own internal biases and question if/why they default to making white characters

+ that includes ambiguously brown characters like catra who have no discernible culture attached to them. i'm just going to be real, i fall into this bracket and know compared to my peers who are poc privilege allows me less barriers of entry into the industry.

wanting to take up space in the industry and having the ability to do so is a huge privilege in the first place. that doesn't make the goal of wanting to be a writer less valid, but it does mean that my voice is already overwhelming in the industry.

white creators need to sit in discomfort about wanting to be hired, but also knowing that more writers/creators of color NEED to be hired in your place. it doesn't matter that i'm lgbt, bc in my experience white lgbt writers think white lgbt rep = all lgbt rep, and this is false.

like, pursue your dreams. i'm not saying not to. but please understand that as white people trying to enter a predominantly white field we need to learn to step back, think critically about roles that are offered to us and turn them down if they are inappropriate for us to take,

and make actual actionable steps toward making sure your writing is not creating or contributing to "representation" that's just hollow caricatures or too ambiguous to even count as meaningful representation. yes, even in fantasy setting where "rl countries don't exist."

if you become a showrunner or story editor, you have the power to hire writers (story editors) and designers, artists, voice actors, admin and production teams, etc, and it's your responsibility to do proper outreach and hire out of your immediate pool of references.

but for us entering the industry, if you are contributing to conversations about how the representation in your favorite show is hollow, think about why and how you would contribute to creating that representation if you were given a spot in their writer's room.