I rizzed in with a W cap from Ohio 🎶

Didn’t this have something to do with male temple prostitutes? Something about it being a pagan ritual to ensure a good harvest? My recollection is blurry, but I swear I read that somewhere.

Then Randy Savage breaks out the steel chair, right?

With some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Wait, really? I heard that what happened is they’d decided to be sneaky by patenting the control system for a heavier-than-air flying machine since they couldn’t patent the idea of the machine itself. Do you have sources I can research?

I try not to assign a motive to opinions either, so I’ll try to explain further to ensure you can fully understand my viewpoint.

My requirement that a character’s qualities have sufficient justification applies to white characters as well, hence my Wakanda example. As you said, that would be incongruous change, and the thing that makes it incongruous is the fact that you’re dealing with an exception. It’s important to note that, in many works that take place in a version of the real world, especially modern America, white people are assumed, even by non-white viewers, to have an inbuilt justification for existing in a story by virtue of being considered the ethnic majority - not saying that’s a good thing, or a bad thing, just that that assumption exists. Since that is not the case in the context of a cloistered Sub-Saharan African nation, any white characters that appear therefore require more specific explanations for their presence. This is, needless to say, why every white character in Black Panther is a foreigner.

Thinking about it, though, I also realize now that Annie is perhaps a bad example, since the original story also takes place in the United States iirc, and any story set in an American city can automatically be reasonably assumed to have people from all walks of life living there, so no explanations are really needed. Even if you were to also make Daddy Warbucks black, and set it in a time period where a wealthy black man would be considered an unusual or exceptional thing, all you would have to do is have some visual indication of how he got his money (such as a framed business degree, for example), and suddenly his status not only makes sense, it also subtly establishes something about his character (“He defied the odds through hard work and intelligence!”) that can be built upon as the story progresses. In fact, ideally, you want that level of characterization for every character, regardless of whether they’re a minority.

Really, it’s in the more fantastical examples that things start to become muddled, since in-built justifications can’t exist in a world that is not like our own. But that also means that you can be looser with your explanations, since in fantasy settings, internal consistency is more important than realism. In my Little Mermaid example, you probably didn’t question the idea of mermaids looking like humans from the same part of the world, despite the fact that if merfolk were real, they would live underwater and thus have no need to evolve different skin pigmentations. Consistency is the reason for this. But in The Lord of the Rings, which is implied to be set in our own world’s mystical past, dark-skinned humans already exist, and since they come from a far-off continent, their complexion can be reasonably assumed to be way it is for the same reason as in real life: An adaptation to an equatorial climate. So when Rings of Power introduces black elves, and then does NOT have them also come from another part of the world, that consistency is broken unless an alternative explanation is given.

Hopefully I’ve expressed my perspective clearly and concisely. Any type of person can exist in any setting and any story, so long as any concerns about potential inconsistencies are acknowledged and addressed. At the other end of the scale, you can even dismiss those concerns entirely and deliberately tell a story with zero regard for historical accuracy. What matters is that it’s a conscious design decision and that the audience is aware of what to expect going in. Knowing those expectations is a big part of the balancing act of being a writer.

Neither does trying to apply arbitrary labels to people in an attempt to discredit them. Ad hominem is considered a logical fallacy for a reason. If you think I’m wrong about something, show me why you believe that, and I will concede if your arguments are valid. So far, you’ve instead opted to call me a sealion for suggesting that a socially-harmful blanket generalization like “men are bad and dangerous and don’t respect women” requires more proof than someone’s personal anecdotes and feelings. You’d want proof if someone on the internet was calling black people criminals or women gold-diggers or trans people child molesters, and as I’ve already had to state previously, discrimination and prejudice do not become okay based on how you personally feel about the group you’re discriminating against. If they did, then the douchebag in the comic would be morally justified.

“Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.” - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Listen. I am not angry at you, but I feel you need to understand a few things.

First of all, attempting to twist what I say to support your existing assumptions about men is not the way to engage in healthy discourse. If you go into a thread looking for something to get offended about, you’ll find it, regardless of whether it’s actually offensive, and if you go into it already totally convinced of your own moral superiority, you lose out on the opportunity to learn something.

Secondly, while I’m on the topic of assumptions, not wanting to approach someone for fear they’ll prematurely judge you is absolutely a reasonable decision. At the very least, it’s hardly more unreasonable than the notion that everyone bigger than you is going to kill you if you say the wrong thing. Yes, obviously it can happen. I’m not arguing that. But if some guy on the internet demanded that you prove to every man you talk to that you’re not going to falsely accuse them of raping you if they tell you they aren’t interested in you, you would rightfully tell him to fuck off, because A) proving intentions is impossible, B) you could just as easily just never talk to men instead of jumping through a bunch of hoops, and C) you should not have to. Besides, if women being murdered for rejecting men is really as scarily common as you claim, then by your logic, having fewer men approaching women is a good thing, and therefore, calling men fragile for giving up on dating is counter-productive to your assumed goal.

And finally, I must say, accusing other people of having “hurt fee-fees” is pretty brazen of you, considering that you’ve done nothing but respond with hostility and insults, whereas I’ve tried to be considerate of your feelings and even straight up apologized to you. Clearly something must happened to you to make you feel the way you do about men, and I sympathize with your situation, but I speak from experience when I say that having trauma does not make a person entitled to spread hatred. As you said, if a man is not a murderer, then in an ideal world, that would be the end of it. But you have made it clear through your words that whether someone is a murderer or not is less important to you than whether or not you fear they could be, and when you judge people by that metric, you become part of the problem you claim to want to solve.

Pull me into the plot with believable and relatable characters and I’ll never question why they’re the race/gender/sexual orientation they are.

That’s the right attitude to have about it. 👍 Audiences love closure and they love verisimilitude. If I’m watching a movie and I’m shown how (or can reasonably assume from context that) a character having certain traits makes sense, it doesn’t strain suspension of disbelief at all and can turn a great movie into an outstanding one. And I think that’s something that screenwriters need to pay heavy attention to, because there are no bad ideas, there’s only bad execution.

In fact, just for fun, let’s take the two movies you mentioned as examples. I haven’t watched either of them and know little about them. If you were to tell me “write scripts for adaptations of these two stories where the main characters are black”, it would be lazy, disrespectful to the viewer, and arguably even racist to just do that without giving it any forethought - they’d be as out of place as a white man in Wakanda. But if you put down, for example, “this adaptation of Annie takes place in the cultural melting pot of modern-day New York City” or “Ariel and her sisters are all different races because Triton has taken many wives from all over the world”, and then make that clear through context clues, now the idea of them being black no longer feels like an afterthought, it feels like it was a conscious decision and that time and attention was given to making them feel like they belong. And while it would frankly be better for studios to knock it off with the constant rehashing and write new stories (not everyone likes Jordan Peele’s stuff, but few would call it derivative), a remake done with care and respect is better than one done without them.

To offer a shortened version of the reply I gave to another user who asked that same question, barely at all. But many men are so afraid of becoming that one in a million example that they don’t want to take that chance. The same can be said of women who are afraid of being murdered for turning a guy down - they feel the risk isn’t worth the reward. While both of those fears are understandable, I personally feel that they are also contributing to the degradation of the dating pool, which is what leads to situations like the one in the comic, as fewer well-adjusted men choose to approach women and more poorly-adjusted men come in to take their place. The solution is obvious, but it’s also difficult: People need to be better to each other by taking more chances and giving more chances. Otherwise we’ll have more lonely people in ten years than we already do.

It’s actually not common at all. But the few examples of it happening were bad enough that it has deterred a lot of men from approaching women at all. Plus, regular, reasonable guys don’t like the idea of asking out a woman who’s immediately afraid he’ll kill her if she says no, not just because they don’t like the idea of potentially making her uncomfortable just by approaching her, but also because even if she says yes, a relationship that has that level of fear or distrust right off the bat is doomed. Which of course leads to a vicious cycle, where the only men asking women out are douchebags, and then those women’s perception of men becomes worse. Nobody likes this cycle, but the only way to fix it is for people to be better to each other.

A sharp wit is more attractive than any physical feature.

Screenshotted for posterity.

The older I get, the more I come to realize that the true virus killing this planet is not humanity, but inhumanity.

I… legitimately have no idea why you think I’m a misogynist. I say the things I say because I care about and respect women. The last thing I want is for there to be more douchebags out there harassing women because Zoe Quinn or some other sleazy online opportunist with a victim complex stands to make money by diluting the seriousness of women’s problems. Those people are just as bad for you as they are for me. So if I worded that in a way that could be interpreted as misogynistic, then I sincerely apologize, because clearly there was some sort of miscommunication along the line somewhere.

On that point we are in perfect agreement. If it makes sense for the story and the actors are being picked based on merit, diversity will only serve to improve the end product. I personally would prefer more original films and fewer remakes, but I doubt I’m alone in that statement. 🤷‍♂️

Okay, that Breakfast at Tiffany’s example is definitely in bad taste. Thankfully, as far as I’m aware, that sort of thing doesn’t happen in movies anymore.

That being said, to say it’s “a positive” to outright replace white people in movies is also in bad taste. More specifically, it runs counter to your message, as it not only implies the “great replacement” conspiracy theory to be true (thus causing racists to feel vindicated), it also reads as racist toward non-white people by implying that the best they can hope for is white actors’ sloppy seconds instead of their own stories. Media is not a zero-sum game. There don’t need to be fewer white cowboys for there to be more black ones.

Lashing out doesn’t exactly make you look like a stable, confident individual yourself, nor will it particularly inspire people to take your problems seriously. Just as the douchebag in the comic will not earn the respect or affection of women by calling them bitches, so too will you not convince men to treat you as an equal by immediately calling them fragile. I implore you to reflect on that. It’s better to make friends than enemies.

People like increased diversity when it’s tasteful and meaningful and adds value to the finished product. Unfortunately, I keep seeing examples of people associated with movies continually adding distasteful and meaningless pandering instead, continually dangling rage bait by insulting men (especially white men) on camera, then continually acting surprised when their movies continually make no money because people won’t watch a movie if you continually tell them it’s “not for them”. So no, I would argue that it’s not “too risky”, because if it wasn’t, they wouldn’t keep doing it.