Dr. Seuss's story about "Stars Upon Thars" warned you about Corporate-Media Race-Swapping
The Sneetches lived in harmony with each other. They knew some of them had stars upon their bodies and others didn't, but they knew this superficial difference meant nothing.
Until someone who wanted to make money came along and tricked them into thinking it meant everything.
Imagine someone telling you that the train at the local station that you've been using your whole life wasn't "for you" because it has a star painted on it.
And this snake-oil salesman promises to make a new train "just for you". But all he does is paint over the star on the old train.
And now he's got the old train-passengers who did have stars on their bodies to feel like they're being excluded, and excluded specifically by having something comfortingly familiar taken away from them, AFTER they were accused of keeping that thing all to themselves this whole time.
The train was always available for everyone! There aren't suddenly any MORE trains than there were before!
But now everyone is fighting over the SAME train that everyone used to share and enjoy in peace!
Oh, but the salesman is laughing all the way to the bank!
And don't tell me that the superficial appearance of the train is of vital importance when three of the most popular franchises for decades have included:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, My Little Pony, Transformers, every Disney movie with talking animal protagonists...
So fictional characters have never needed to be HUMAN, bipedal, mammals, or ORGANIC to appeal to EVERYONE.
Compared to that, if you want to claim that you didn't love a character before their skin color changed, you're admitting to a development problem in your own empathy.
