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@oldearthaccretionist​

For those unaware what this post is referring to: animation has a pretty long history of featuring POC in leading roles but only by hiding them in a magic/transformation narrative, one where they turn into an animal or some other creature for most of the film. While no doubt unintentional on the part of their creators, who might not be aware of how common the trope is (and how few POC stories there are in western animation which DON'T utilize it), the end result is the same. It's still minimizing the amount of time a POC actually appears as a POC, often in ways that strip them entirely of racial markers. How extensively Soul will fall into this trap remains to be seen, of course. The film's not out yet and Pixar teasers aren't always the most indicative of the story. But it's still worth examining that particularly in Soul's case, the image of a soul is not set. A bear is a bear is a bear, but a soul could look like anything. It's a distinct choice, if again probably an unintentional one, to make them blue amorphous creatures devoid of all race. It's a choice that even ties in with another problematic trope, which is the casting of POC characters purely as alien roles (usually with a non-human skin tone such as blue or green).

honestly the best thing i’ve done in the past year was replacing “i wanna die” with “i wanna commit a crime.” same humor and sentiment without the suicidal ideation

Ah, the ‘ol scream and sleep.