Thread by @HopeMullinax

This is long, but it all factors into Star Wars: Eclipse and #BlackoutStarWarsEclipse
I wanted to talk about the progression of queer content under the Disney umbrella when it comes to various content, specifically the difference between original content and Protected Properties

This is going to be a long strange road to Star Wars: Eclipse and #BlackoutStarWarsEclipse, but it’s important to understand that these things don’t happen in a vacuum. They are all connected inside of one company that Lucasfilm is now part of

Though I’ll get the tl;dr out of the way:

We want a High Republic game. We want Star Wars: Eclipse. We just want it created by a company with better business practices than Quantic Dream. Lucasfilm, we’re asking you to do better. #BlackoutStarWarsEclipse

Let’s get started:

While Disney owns a chunk of the world, it still falls into various categories. Marvel, Star Wars, original content, etc work separately from each other with Big Mouse overlooking it all.
Queer rep and content have progressed at different speeds in these categories.

We’ve seen real progression of queer rep in Disney original content. It’s not the days of Gravity Falls when Disney wouldn’t email Alex Hirsch to take out two gay ladies from his show because they didn’t want a paper trail showing them as bigots
themarysue.com/alex-hirsch-in…

The Owl House is on a historic run bringing true queer rep to the Disney channel, winning a Peabody Award. With another series, in its 3rd & final season, Amphibia is going really freaking gay introducing several queer characters. There are still caveats
out.com/television/202…

The Owl House is being canceled with a shortened third season despite being a Peabody winner, because it “doesn’t hit its target audience" and was "too unique." Fans were quick to call bullshit, but what’s done is done.
cbr.com/why-was-owl-ho…

As someone who was fired from a job for being queer but the reason they gave me was "I was too excited about the merchandise," The Owl House' cancellation felt all too familiar.
But back to the Ted Talk and Star Wars: Eclipse

Like Gravity Falls which slid in queer rep in the final episode, Amphibia’s final season is super gay because there is no fear of it getting canceled. This also happened in Good Luck Charlie when it was ending. Angry moms can't cancel a series if it's ending anyway

There are exceptions like Andi Mack and the High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, but I have not seen either of these so I can’t speak to how the shows handled their queer rep.

We have seen progress in Disney in its original content. While there are caveats, it’s still exciting to see this normalization. What is normalization? It’s a process that makes something more normal or regular. These help to show the queer community as equal with the world.

Now Disney isn’t perfect. Just google “Disney queer rep” and the first three articles on the page are about where Disney’s still lacking in this department. Still, trying and failing is still better than not trying at all. I’ll at least give that to Disney.

But so far, I’ve discussed original content. This changes when you start getting into Protected Properties. Protected Properties are a completely different scenario.
I promise this will come back around to Star Wars: Eclipse. Again, things don't happen in a vacuum

Protected Properties is a term I use when I discuss media in the Disney umbrella that have heightened security around them OR they were created outside of Disney that they acquired
Ex: Disney Princesses, Marvel, Star Wars, and big characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy

Protected Properties play by different rules because they have a bigger audience around them. Usually, they have movies or longevity attached to their names so they hit a wider general audience. There’s a lot more money to gain or lose here.

Disney creators like Alex Hirsch, Dana Terrace, and Matt Braly have been quite vocal about this in the past about how Disney execs are very scared to change when it comes to anything outside the “Disney formula.” Queer rep falls in this too

When you follow smaller creators, it gets easier to see the bullshit within Disney. People like Jon Favreau are treated very differently from someone like Dana Terrace.

You learn a lot about the inner workings of Disney when you follow creators that aren’t part of Protected Properties and you see how and why the corporation is fucked up. This comes back into play with Star Wars: Eclipse in a minute.

We’ve seen some Protected Properties make good headway. The MCU is starting to move faster with queer rep because of the fact there are decades of established characters and stories to support them in comics.

Loki for example has always been genderfluid and queer. It makes it easier for Marvel to showcase that in their show because there are comics to back it up.

Note how it’s in the show, not the movies which hits the much bigger audience and that Chinese market where Disney makes a ton of money. It’s easy to google what Disney censors for the Chinese market, often being LGBTQIA material.

A conversation about Disney and their Chinese market is for another day but definitely go and google “Disney Uighur Muslims” and see how they gave money to a region performing human rights violations and genocide
vox.com/culture/2020/9…

Anyway, back to gay stuff. We’ve seen Protected Properties move slowly in other examples as well. DuckTales writer Sam King was vocal about how Disney execs wouldn’t let her make Penny openly a lesbian.

DuckTales, which has the Protected character Donald Duck in it, has more hoops to jump through when it comes to queer characters.
There is precedence for these properties to have much slower movement when it comes to queer content. This brings us to Star Wars.

As I said in the beginning, under the big Disney umbrella, there are smaller companies. Marvel doesn’t interfere with Star Wars and vice versa. So just because Marvel is moving faster doesn’t mean Star Wars has to.

Lucasfilm has a hierarchy to it when it comes to popularity among all fans. I would assume the importance breaks down as the movies, live-action tv, animated tv, video games, and then books, comics, and audio dramas.

The movies will always have the biggest pull from the general audience and get the most attention. There’s the most money to gain or lose. Until recently with Disney+ launching live action shows, animation was more of a niche thing on cable.

Ahh cable, such an important piece to this puzzle when it comes to queer rep. When you do follow Disney creators, you will know they have been saying for YEARS that Disney is killing their shows on cable.

Because of cable contracts, Disney has to have shows on there. But how many people do you know still pay for that? Streaming is becoming the norm.
Then you see the puzzle come together as many queer and BIPOC led shows are on cable. Not as many people can see it there.

Though thanks to the pandemic, Disney has moved faster putting their cable shows on Disney+. Molly McGee had several episodes up on D+ before cable which is SO WELCOMED to see whatsondisneyplus.com/the-ghost-and-…

This brings us to our first big Star Wars queer rep milestone: Star Wars Resistance. Orka and Flix were the first onscreen queer couple of Star Wars making history as such.

There has been queer rep in books and comics, but that’s a trick too. Books and comics hit the smallest part of the fandom. That’s the minority of everyone who consumes Star Wars. This is not normalizing queer rep to a general audience.

Resistance was a step in the right direction. As an animated show, while still niche, it’s hitting a wider audience than the books and comics. So Orka and Flix were a big deal but there were several caveats to it:

1) Remember that Star Wars is a Protected Property. It plays by diff rules. At no point IN SHOW do they ever confirm Orka and Flix are a couple. The producers confirmed it in an interview like J.K. and her Dumbledore reveal. So it’s not fully queer content indiewire.com/2019/09/star-w…

Because little kids aren't going to look up articles saying they're a couple. This is missing the mark on normalization for queer content. It's a step in the right direction, but they never fully stepped over that line in Resistance

2) Resistance was finished before TROS was even written. Any fan of the show will say it was rushed and incomplete. Do you know what else was happening at that time? Disney was getting ready to launch Disney+ with Clone Wars S7 as a flagship show

This left Resistance in cable hell. It makes it easy to argue the gay show with the BIPOC cast can get canceled for poor ratings if it’s on dying cable with a new streaming service coming. It seems it was a placeholder for Clone Wars.

Resistance, for its good and bad points, got screwed over by Disney. It never had the chance that Star Wars Rebels and Clone Wars had on Disney Channel and Cartoon Network, both shows running when cable was still fairly popular.

Look at what we got since Disney+ launched? Where is the queer rep? It’s pretty nonexistent. The Mandalorian? Nothing. Clone Wars S7? I mean I ship Trace and Ahsoka, but that’s not queer rep. At most, it's queer coding. Bad Batch? Nothing.

That’s because Star Wars on Disney+ is hitting a wider audience, driven by a global pandemic and keeping everyone at home with nothing else to do. This Protected Property has stalled in queer rep on screen because they can’t hide on cable anymore.

This brings us back to the minority of the franchise: books and comics. This is where all the gay stuff is happening. While having the most diversity and progression in the franchise, it’s hidden away from the general audience and not normalizing these things in the franchise.

And we’re coming up on the one year anniversary of the gayest time in Star Wars ever: The High Republic. I love the High Republic. Hell, it got me through this shitty year. I’ve fallen for the characters, story, and so much Star Wars.

There are so many queer characters.
Last week, I made a shirt for my Etsy store, and I couldn’t fit all the queer characters on the shirt! And I missed some too! THERE ARE SO MANY! This is the first time I’ve had this problem in Star Wars!

https://twitter.com/HopeMullinax/status/1470516441891983360

The High Republic has been such a joy. We know that it’s moving up the Star Wars hierarchy ladder too with shows like The Acolyte coming. The High Republic will be on a live action screen for a more general audience to see. This is a win for normalization.

Now I do have my concerns, as The Acolyte will be set at the END of the High Republic. That makes me wonder if the gay will be stripped out. But with non-binary actor Amandla Stenberg as the lead, I was starting to finally feel okay about queer rep FINALLY moving forward in SW.

I never fully trust Disney. If this thread says anything, they have over and over burned me as a fan with their track record and sneaky tactics. Lucasfilm falls under that umbrella too now, and we’ve seen that corporate side come out with John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran.

Then they announced Star Wars: Eclipse. I was elated! I was excited! The High Republic was going to hit such a wide audience! And then the words “Quantic Dream” came up on my screen. My reaction matched so many others

https://twitter.com/Digi_Gator/status/1470846503455494147

People know that name and what it means. Gamers know that’s a company with a CEO with abhorrent behavior towards queer people, women, and its employees.

https://twitter.com/SnapsCube/status/1469175003438534661

I honestly wasn’t surprised. I'm not surprised at all when Disney continues to do this shit. Again, I point to this thread as proof. I’m not surprised that corporate Disney and Lucasfilm teamed up with them. But it felt like such a slap in the face.

By pairing with Quantic Dream, Lucasfilm and their Big Mouse overlord say that this behavior is okay. Instead of continuing to normalize queer content, they are instead normalizing these horrible actions saying it's okay. I hate that THR legacy is being sullied by Quantic Dream.

I just know the Luminous writers are probably chomping at the bit to say something, but Big Mouse holds those contracts tight. Just look at the tear John Boyega and Oscar Isaac went on against the company the moment they were out of contract.

It’s sick that this very gay and positive era is going to Quantic Dream, but it’s not the end. There are things we can still do. The game is still years away. Lucasfilm can get another company and actually google and research them this time. It’s not too late to change.

Because I want Star Wars: Eclipse. I want this game. I want to see THR come to life and play as these characters. I just want it to be with another company with better business practices.

So when we say #BlackoutStarWarsEclipse, we’re not saying cancel it. We’re asking for Lucasfilm to do better. To research companies before working with them. We’re asking to find another home for this game. Until they do, I refuse to put my money towards Star Wars: Eclipse.

I love Star Wars. I love Disney shows. We can love these properties while still calling out the bad business practices and asking for change to happen. They’re not mutually exclusive. I will keep putting my money towards THR books and queer shows like Owl House.

But David Cage and Quantic Dream won’t get a dime of my money. Star Wars: Eclipse can stay on the store shelf for me unless Lucasfilm changes and does better.
#BlackoutStarWarsEclipse

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk and go watch Owl House, Amphibia, and The Ghost and Molly McGee to support queer and BIPOC content on Disney+