Non Kid-Friendly sets

[jimmynick]

2 hours ago, leafan said:

Are you projecting?

No, I'm not projecting - I'm proposing a few places where one might separate progressive from regressive on the spectrum of inclusion, with reasons why someone might not want to include a certain group. I deliberately include women as a group because in the present day, excluding women is regressive. I think LGBT characters are fair play for inclusion, and you seem to think not.

edit: though I have to admit that WWII and Nazis doesn't really fit in there with race, gender, and LGBT identity. So it's not a perfect spectrum.

2 hours ago, leafan said:

I am specifically talking about Lego sets here, mind, not tv shows etc, which I've already established are separate.

People can separate the original media from the toy version to varying degrees, based on their preferences and imaginations. So while a TV show is its own thing, it cannot be completely disconnected from the spinoff toy, especially (*ahem Ninjago*) when the show seems designed to sell the toy.

2 hours ago, leafan said:

No it's not, but I am dismissing those "issues" because I don't care about them.

OK, so you don't care - but this thread is evidence enough that some people do, and does it harm anyone to cater at least a little to those cares? LEGO could easily produce a Creator house set that comes with two male-coded minifigs, plus a dog. And if anyone doesn't like that, they can use their imaginations and say that the figures are "brothers" or "friends" or "roommates"; here I am flipping around the prescription that people who want LGBT figures could use their imaginations to make it so.

2 hours ago, leafan said:

Off-topic - why does the boards time you out? It's a real problem if you forget when typing a long response like this. Luckily I had a backup plan. If it happens to you, open a new tab without closing the original, sign in again and you should be good to post on your original tab. If not, copy contents from original tab to the new one and paste it.

That's unfortunate! I'm sorry this has happened to you; I've never experienced this problem. I use Firefox - how about you?

Edited February 14, 2019 by jimmynick

[JJ Tong (zfogshooterz)]

18 hours ago, koalayummies said:

I think you're onto something here; every set cited by the OP is from a licensed theme. And the respondents point out similar things in non-licensed sets and are ignored.

Indeed. To be honest, I don't really see the point of this thread, everything shown here is pretty mild. There are more extreme stuffs that could've been put in and I'm glad that it isn't the case.

MAB's example of rape and pillaging in a kingdom's sets quite amuses me and I'm still waiting for OP's response to that since he's pressed on this haha. I'll say that it's all in the imagination, it's you that decides if you want things to get weird or perceive it to be violent. If the sets were to be taken at face value, it's definitely not that bad.

Still, I've quite enjoyed reading the discussion that going on here, so I'm not against this thread either 

Edited February 14, 2019 by JJ Tong (zfogshooterz)

[Aanchir]

19 hours ago, leafan said:

I'd love to debate you on this, but frankly, I can already feel the moderators breathing down my neck and I've already been threatened with punishment once for voicing my opinion. I will say that yes, there is nothing wrong with the cultural norm being portrayed in toys.

Funny how plenty of other people voice opinions and don't get punished for it? Could it be there's a difference between harmless opinions and actual harmful prejudices like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, religious intolerance, etc?

19 hours ago, leafan said:

You know what though... It would be interesting to see Lego produce a range of sets specifically designed to do the things you and others talk about here, just to see how well it sells. I'm betting not well - but I suppose that'd be written off as some sort of prejudice.

Nah, it'd just be written off as how egregiously LEGO missed the point by thinking any of what we've been asking for amounts to an entire range of sets based specifically on the idea of LGBTQ+ rep, rather than just for more LGBTQ+ characters to show up in the sets and media of regular product lines.

I mean, Arcee, one of Transformers' first ever and most well-known female characters, has been pretty clearly established as a transgender woman with a female love interest in the tie-in comics from IDW, and I haven't seen it result in any huge uproar against Hasbro in the Bible Belt or other places with puritanical views about gender and sexuality.

And for what it's worth, I've seen you argue plenty of times that LEGO Castle sets should come back even after the last take on that you considered "real" Castle appeared not to sell well. It's interesting that in this case, an entirely hypothetical product line not selling well would be proof that the contents of that theme have no reason to exist, while real themes not selling well presumably just means LEGO didn't do them right.

19 hours ago, leafan said:

Another thing I didn't say. Of course it's not the only way to indicate these things, but the other ways don't matter in terms of the visual representation in a Lego set.

Why not? Plenty of LEGO characters wear clothes and accessories or have decorations in their homes that reflect aspects of their identity. So the idea that a LEGO set couldn't do that as a subtle indication of a character not being straight or cisgender seems pretty dubious. Never mind other possibilities like having a shirtless male swimmer minifigure with top surgery scars.

19 hours ago, leafan said:

It's not embarrassing for me because I'm not arguing that this made up stuff should be visually represented in Lego sets and that anybody who disagrees is a "transphobe" or whatever other phobe.

The fact that you've indicated that you were waiting for my "hand" to be shown, shows that you're not really interested in civil discussion but rather showing how my beliefs are wrong so that you can point the finger and say "Haha, gotcha! Transphobe".

I wasn't "waiting for your hand to be shown." I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt and hope that you weren't outright transphobic, and just felt LGBTQ+ rep was unimportant for other reasons. But then you went ahead and just blurted out (multiple times now!) that LGBTQ+ identities are "made up stuff". It seems like telling a transgender lesbian that you think those parts of her identity are made up, on a public forum where a higher level of decorum is expected, would be a pretty embarrassing gaffe to most people with any tact or self-awareness.

And I find it a little hard to believe that YOU were interested in civil discussion if you'd put a blatantly insulting, unnecessary comment like that in your post in the first place. So please spare me the pretense that you were somehow totally ready to have a friendly debate until I called you out on a prejudiced statement you voluntarily put out there for everyone to see, and that somehow that makes me the one going out of my way to make enemies.

Then again, I suppose it should be telling that you took an offhand comment ACKNOWLEDGING the point you seem so intent on making, that some people think LGBTQ+ characters are not "kid appropriate", and started persistently challenging me for presenting it as something that anybody should reasonably disagree with it.

Even though you claim not to care about LGBTQ+ characters showing up in sets, it doesn't seem like you've had much concern about the thread's main topic about forms of controversial content that already appear much more prominently in past or current sets. By comparison, it seems like you're extremely invested in making a case for why LGBTQ+ content should not under any circumstances make any appearance in non-licensed themes. It sounds like you care a lot about LGBTQ+ stuff, except only as a threat to your scientifically unsupported belief that they're "made up" rather than as a something that affirms a reality that has been increasingly scientifically supported and publicly accepted over the past several decades.

19 hours ago, leafan said:

Ok well obviously I haven't seen these Facebook conversations, but you didn't frame it that way, so do a better job at communicating at why you label people that way:

" I mean, I've had homophobes and transphobes on Facebook try and tell me that LGBTQ+ characters in LEGO set or themes would not be "kid-friendly". "

None of that touched upon individuals rights or morality.

I think it should go without saying that when I refer to people as transphobic or homophobic it's because those people say transphobic or homophobic things. It's amazing how easily people jump to the defense of unnamed people and groups of people if they're referred to only by their prejudices. It seems like these days calling anybody prejudiced in any way, whether it's historical figures whose prejudices are well documented or random people experienced in one's own lifetime, the legitimacy of that characterization gets questioned. It's like people who don't experience those types of prejudice firsthand are skeptical about whether they've ever even occurred in real life.

And the idea that straight and cisgender characters are appropriate for kids' toys but LGBTQ+ characters are not rather blatantly communicates a judgement on the relative morality of those groups. I don't see what's so ambiguous about that.

Edited February 14, 2019 by Aanchir

[Captain Nemo]

Well, that was something. 

I think this thread has gone on for long enough. 

So disperse everyone—thank you!