Cancelled “C List Youtuber” Lindsay Ellis Tells Her Side of the Story
A story of Twitter, outrage, and the weaponisation of racism
Video Essayist, fiction author, and YouTube personality Lindsay Ellis unwittingly became the latest “Twitter Villain” last month when one of her Tweets went viral. (In a bad way).
After watching Disney’s latest animated film ‘Raya and the last Dragon’, Ellis Tweeted;
“Also watched Raya and the Last Dragon and I think we need to come up with a name for this genre that is basically Avatar: the Last Airbender reduxes. It’s like half of all YA fantasy published in the last few years anyway.”
People across Twitter interpreted this Tweet as a “straight white person” mashing all Asian fiction content together in a way that suggests media properties can’t be unique if they’re Asian.
Ellis’s opinion of the film wasn’t isolated however, and came days after many other ordinary people, entertainment channels, and film reviewers also drew comparison between ‘Avatar the Last Airbender’ and Disney’s ‘Raya and the last Dragon’. Not because these properties are set in Asian countries and feature Asian characters, but because the plot and many character motivations share a lot of noticeable similarities.
