I was thinking about jumping into TDP, but after reading this, nope. Fuck this guy and his company.
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Allegations of toxic workplace environment towards women at Wonderstorm (The Dragon Prince) come out
- Thread starter KoolAid
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So much for catching up on The Dragon Prince. Plenty of other interesting stuff to watch instead.
with actual representation that doesn't feel token or vague
thank greyskull for people like noelle stevenson and rebecca sugar
I was pretty indifferent to this show before tbh, the first season didn't leave that much of an impression on me and I was actually just debating whether to bother watching season 2 when this news came out.
Hopefully they keep him on a very tight leash with the Netflix live action remake. Heck, hopefully they even fire him. They're both involved, right?
Oh, good. I remember hearing the original creators were involved to some degree.
E: Ah, he was an exec producer, not a creator on that show. Whew.
the original creators are involved: Michael DiMartino and Bryan Koneizto (sorry for butchering your name Bryan lol) are acting as showrunners. Aaron Ehasz was the "head writer" for Atla which basically meant he led the writers room on the show. He's had no involvement in the franchise outside of this role with the original series.
EDIT: ah you beat me lol
Yeah well I figured google exists and I could save others the trouble. I was a fan, but I'm not so much of a fan that I remembered who was and wasn't a creator, ahaha
I'm one of those people who thinks Aaron Ehasz's involvement was a deciding factor in A:TLA's quality, but no creative product, no matter how much I enjoy it, is worth people being the victims of behavior like this. Dude shouldn't be working in studios, let alone be in a position of power, if he can't treat women with respect.
Wait what's token and vague about the representation in TDP? The show is literally entirely about racism.
I mean if you just look at what She-Ra and Steven Universe its pretty clear. TDP has a gay couple who were parents of a side character who are already dead when the show begins.
She-Ra and SU don't tokenify their representation and don't fridge them either.
Revealing the backstory of a character isn't fridging. That's by definition not what fridging means in a narrative or why it was criticized. That character's parents also aren't the only gay characters in TDP. TDP, SU, and She-Ra are all positive examples of representation in media. Where there doesn't have to be a lore reason for the show's universe to be diverse. They just are because of the people behind those shows.
The same show whos creator actively stifles the feedback of their female, queer, and POC employees and gaslights them? Not sure I agree with you in regards to TDP.
Not to mention the women who are saying this about Aaron say there's only one woman left in their creative team. Not sure that I feel like the representation in the show feels that honest anymore.
I mean, I like avatar but really don't give a shit about it in the scheme of things. I don't comment on stuff like this anymore because it's just exhausting. The guy is clearly a shitty people manager running a shitty work environment. Not much else to say though.
Feels like the 2 of you are talking about entirely separate things. A show can have positive aspects even when problematic people are involved in the production. Crossing Eden isn't in any way saying the treatment of the women on staff isn't terrible just because the characters are diverse.
ATLA doesn't really have anything to do with this. It's just a job that Aaron Ehasz worked on at a high level, and he gets mentioned a lot in ATLA threads because he contributed a lot to that show, and his contributions were missed in the sequel (Korra). Aaron was also a Story Editor on Futurama, but that doesn't mean that Futurama is particularly worth mentioning. Aaron might be a bad company manager, but he wasn't managing a company before Wonderstorm/The Dragon Prince.
I decided to put together a bit of a Who's Who, for people trying to unpack the tweets.
Aaron Ehasz was the Head Writer on Avatar: The Last Airbender. That means he was in charge of the Writer's Room, had input on the scripts for every episode, and was basically the #3 guy on ATLA, behind showrunners Mike and Bryan. He got a job writing at Riot Games (the company recently in the news for it's terrible work culture), where he met Justin Richmond and Justin Santistevan. The three of them decided to leave Riot and form their own company (Wonderstorm) to make a cartoon (The Dragon Prince).
Wonderstorm (in LA) looks like it's made up of around 20 people including the three founders (the animation is done by Bardel Animation up in Canada). Apparently Wonderstorm once employed 4 women, but one of them quit at an unknown time, two quit recently, and one apparently still works there.
Danika Harrod was the Community Manger. Lulu Younes was the Writers' Assistant. The Writers on The Dragon Prince were largely Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond, who co-wrote 2/3rds of the episodes in seasons 1&2, while Devon Giehl and Iain Hendry co-wrote almost 1/3 of them, and Neil Mukhopadbyay contributed one episode.
Danika apparently quit because of how Lulu was treated, and Lulu apparently quit because she was treated like a lowly assistant. It's been said that (among other issues) Lulu's voice was not heard on women's or LGBT issues (despite being an LGBT woman), due to an insistence that the writing in the show should come primarily from Aaron Ehasz, since the bulk of the credibility of this show is coming from him as the writer.
Diandra jumped into the conversation because she had worked at Riot games back when Aaron was hired there, and she was assigned by Riot to be his assistant, even though that wasn't part of her original job description. Aaron apparently treated her badly as an assistant (and also flipped the table on her entire department), and then Riot fired her, even though Aaron had told her that her job was safe. Then Aaron got weird when they met outside of work and tried to avoid her when she tried to confront him, and he seemingly tells other people that he thinks she's a creepy stalker. Diandra is not connected to Wonderstorm/The Dragon Prince.
Huh? They are just summarizing what's contained in the Twitter threads. Seems like a pretty accurate summation of the available info.
I think it would be better to link the original threads...
They are linked in the thread and they're a damn mess to follow, because Twitter is a bad website.
The summary is helpful, unless you wanna point out some specific flaw in it?
You're stirring shit for no reason. That summary is the least biased version and summary of events someone could make. They literally just explained everyone's roles and what each person claimed. Stop this stupidity.
Mmm, knew her at Riot and remember the "drama" around when she left. Never really dug into it, but this isn't surprising.
What is surprising is that I know other people at Wonderstorm (former Riot) who left Riot because of anti-women sentiment in the creative department. So it's weird to see it's also going on at Wonderstorm.
I didn't mean to try and define anyone's grievances, or anything like that. I just came at it from a position of reading Diandra's twitter thread, and then realizing that Diandra was from Riot, so she was not one of the three women who quit Wonderstorm. Danika and Lulu quit Wonderstorm. Diandra is just offering support, and a similar/related experience. The third woman who quit Wonderstorm is someone else who hasn't come up yet (near as I can tell).
It just took me a minute to figure that out, so I figured I'd try to list the involved parties, and who sits where, to make it easier to follow the actual statements.
Sorry if I stepped on anyone's toes. I know this is a sensitive issue.
It just took me a minute to figure that out, so I figured I'd try to list the involved parties, and who sits where, to make it easier to follow the actual statements.
Sorry if I stepped on anyone's toes. I know this is a sensitive issue.
Gets accused of abusive behavior, instead appeals to the fans and points out how nice they are so clearly he can't be bad.
Pretty crazy. He was praised by Diandra so I wonder what happened.
Wait, what happened with this?
I'm watching it right now and it's so charming, very inclusive too.
I was just thinking it's a shame that Netflix didn't even give it a chance, releasing it with literally zero promotion.
It's too little kiddish for me. I want to like it but I feel like I'm watching a show for 10 ear olds. Steven Universe was better about this.
I was completely heartbroken when I read Danika's tweets. This guy should lose all seniority or lose his job immediately. Everyone in the company who could do something to diminish his impact on women is morally obligated to do it. Why does management never fucking act like management should.
I mean that's not true if you only watch the first few episodes of either show. By season 3 She Ra isn't the "kid show" you think it is. Just like SU is different after 50 episodes or so.
I mean cookie cat, dude.
I'm disappointed in the head writer (and the other unnamed head people at Wonderstorm who according to Danika were also dismissive to her and the other women)
I'm still gonna try to watch the show, partly because I still feel attached to the characters and the story (if my avatar is any proof), partly because one of the people who've come forward is also saying she does not want to call for a boycott, and partly because a show is more than the head honchos: it's also the animators, the voice actors, and others in miscellaneous departments whose livelihood depend on the show.
I just hope Wonderstorm takes the effort to take a deep good look towards themselves and make changes and that the TDP community listens to the ones coming forward, but considering the head writer's bad statement and that some places of the community are also dismissing the women's voices, I probably shouldn't hope.
I'm still gonna try to watch the show, partly because I still feel attached to the characters and the story (if my avatar is any proof), partly because one of the people who've come forward is also saying she does not want to call for a boycott, and partly because a show is more than the head honchos: it's also the animators, the voice actors, and others in miscellaneous departments whose livelihood depend on the show.
I just hope Wonderstorm takes the effort to take a deep good look towards themselves and make changes and that the TDP community listens to the ones coming forward, but considering the head writer's bad statement and that some places of the community are also dismissing the women's voices, I probably shouldn't hope.
