I think the discussion of how representation and marketing intersect is an interesting one. It seems like a lot of the frustration around how it's handled stems from how large companies do it. They run the risk of doing it in a way that comes off hollow and superficial, even for the people who benefit from being represented (like the LeFou example mentioned earlier.) In some cases, it's intentionally done to stir up controversy, which I feel like is really disrespectful to marginalized groups who already experience hate just by existing.
But it still works, and that's what matters here.
There's been a really big push to make corporate-produced media more diverse in the past 10 years or so, but no matter how many diverse stories are pumped out in the next few years, it's not going to compare to the decades of stories where certain types of characters were not included for one reason or another. (I don't think any individual stories are to blame here, or that they're even bad for not being diverse, but when there's an overarching pattern where some people are only represented in 'lesser' roles or not at all, that's where I can see people having an issue.)
This mainstream focus on diversity is still seen as fresh, and there's a section of the audience who will be content just knowing that there's a lead character like them for once. Even if they don't like the story, they may continue supporting it because if it's not popular, media makers could decide that "No one wants to read a story with a [insert identity here] character." I'm sure some very savvy marketers know this fear and capitalize on it to generate the most response with minimal effort.
I do agree that only advertising what marginalized identities are in your cast and saying nothing else about your work isn't the most effective way to advertise. In written advertisement, like what's often done on the forums, it matters a little more to give extra details, even if you're responding to a thread that's only asking for "Hey, show me some series with [identity] characters." Marginalized or not, people are going to want to know about the tone, the plot, genre etc.
But heavily advertising them is different.
In visual forms of marketing like commercials, you can get a lot of information without it really having to be said, especially if the thing being advertised is a pre-existing property (ex. In Jurassic Park, you know they're gonna be running from some dinosaurs.)
Most of what I've said so far has been in the context of bigtime corporate media. Two very important differences about Tapas are the creators and the readers. A large portion of both creators and readers here are marginalized in some way. It's less likely that a Tapas creator is going to use diversity as just a quick way to get readers. They're more likely to have diverse stories simply because they want to see more of them. Readers know this and want the same thing, and because of this, adding diversity is less likely to generate conflict here. Tapas creators tend to have a smaller reach anyway, so they're unlikely to start discourse big enough to gain the amount of readers for it to be worth it.
The identities themselves are very important to marginalized people in their daily lives. It affects how they're seen by others, which affects how they get depicted in media, and that creates a feedback loop even if it's not the only factor contributing to why they're discriminated against. So even if the identity itself doesn't influence much, and the story is just advertised as "Hey, this is sci-fi with a black main character," just that alone could be important to draw in a reader who really likes sci-fi, but never got to see someone like them be the protagonist.
In a different world, there would be enough stories for everyone to go around and factors like this would be too vague to hook people, but that's not the world we live in right now.
...I think that's all I had to say. Hopefully, this didn't come off too antagonistic to anyone. I just think it's an interesting topic, and it seemed like everyone was kind of on the same page and just saying it in different ways. So that's it.
