Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1916997-20160123215734/@comment-27213286-20160125153720

Eskaver wrote: Frulna wrote: With a show like OUAT it can be quite difficult to put minorities into th show. It has to stick to the source material at least somewhat. Most of the stories they use as source are based in Europe and Europe is mainly white. Theat is also the same with sexual orientation, name one character from any of the source material they have been using that is not straight. The only one I can think of is arguably Elsa, depending on which fan theories you want to believe. The show has and will continue to have mainly straight white people because that is what makes sense for it to have. Not every show has to have a token black person or token gay friend to be a good show. I am perfectly ok with and don't see anything wrong with the people they have cast or the way they have handled the minorities they did have. And then of course there's a bit os a discrepancy. As we all know Once twists the source material and Disney stuff into its own so that is no excuse. They genderbent Jack and they made Lancelot black, I'm certian they can do whatever they choose as the souce material doesn't effect diversity. Plus, Europe didn't come up with all those tales in a bubble as they exist and had existed in other cultures in  slightly different forms.

I can easily play Hades' advocate and ask you: What character can they not reinterpret? What character in their story is defined as Straight? The answer is none of them as this is truly their show and they can have a Latina Evil Queen have a completely different reason for killing a much older Snow White who became friends with Red Riding Hood who was never the wolf and the meets Ariel who's not a princess and can change her legs at free will because Ursula is a goddess and then there's a nother Ursula who's not purple. Oh wait, none of that is the same as the source material.

So, technically they can't change the disney inserts oif Elsa and Merida and fam, but saying they sort of have to make the characters "white" and straight because that's the source material is a total shamble as the show is about twists on twists and genderbending, morality bending and changing how you thought things were.

And on the topic of minority characters: the problem is the disproportionate amount that are killed, enslaved, and are generally unhappy, or shafted offscreen. The other problem CoolDude brings up is that they have hardly any representation of others when the "white straight cast" interacts with the white staright extras and then that noone would have a problem with it.

They don't need token characters, but they do need to handle the minority characters better. Including women because half the time they are weak, abused, evil people. While King Aurthor is known to be Welsh, Lancelot's country of origin is never told in the original source, so he would be one of the few characters with no specific country of origin. The connecting of the differetn realms and source material is of course unique to the show but that is the point of the show, to connect everything. As far as red riding hood goes, her story has been told and changed many times as it started in the 10th century but in many of the tellings the girl is the wolf while in others the wolf tricks the girl into cannible eating her grandmother. Impossible to say what the first telling of the story was. Ursula is not purple in the little mermaid origin either. Ursula is not even given a name and is only referred to as the Sea Witch. I don't think the little mermaid from the original tale was a princesss either, that might of just been something Disney added in for their interpretation of the story. None of the source material for OUAT is a Disney original. And yes the characters are defined as straight because they all have set love interests within their story. Weak, abused, or evil describes the majority of the cast so of course it will describe most of the women as well. I don't feel like they have to fix anything with the way they handle minority charachters or with the amount of them they have. It would be beter for them to just write the story they way they see bet fit without having to worry about not being able to push to the side for a few story arcs or kill off a character ecause they must keep them front and center for diversity reasons. Who really cares if the cast is diverse, isn't the story and storytelling more important anyways?