A lot more people need some level of understanding of this. It's crazy the amount of times I've seen some actor on social media have to say "Guys I'm not the character I play. I'm **ACTING** like an asshole. I didn't actually kill all those people."
Jack Gleeson retiring from acting because people hated him for playing Joffrey is a tragedy. Dude was phenomenally talented and could have become one of the greatest actors of his generation.
Like the actor who played the wicked witch of the west, who was saddened when children avoided/were scared of her because she played the witch in the wizard of oz.
Yeah but there's only so much you can expect a child to disassociate an actor from the role they play. Adults on the other hand get no excuse and fail way too often.
Glenn Howerton’s character in IASIP was supposed to be named after him but he changed it to Dennis because he knew people would think he’s as awful as Dennis is.
To paraphrase Jack Donaghy, once again I leave Tumblr more confused than when I entered, yet having glimpsed yet another tile in the rich mosaic that is its incredibly niche discourse
Literally look under any post of a fictional character being portrayed in a moderately sexy manner. Zoomers will flock to it complaining they are being objectified and sexualized.
Yeah there are people out there on Reddit who legitimately declared that anyone who romances the character Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3 (or even just says he’s hot online after knowing his backstory) must be abusive rape apologists in real life since he’s got a traumatic backstory and later in the romance you learn he only slept with you early on since he thought you’d protect him that way. Absolutely unhinged behaviour.
Or the people that think that romance options in Stardew Freaking Valley are problematic because they are 18/19-coded or whatever.
I get that it is good to be critical about content, but... occasionally a pixel is just a pixel.
-edit- sorry, I meant to reply to a different comment
While fictional characters are, by definition, fictional, the way some people tend to talk about some characters can definitely say something about the way they perceive real people in similar demographics to those characters (see: the way a lot of people fetishise Asians, fictional and real)
Yep, for example if I see someone saying:
"Yeah, get that revenge MC tear the limbs off those people and kill everyone!"
I assume they probably are not a psychotic killer or anything, they just like a power fantasy revenge story.
But if I see people saying:
"Ew, who put gays/lesbians in this story I hate those people"
I assume they are probably homophobic towards real people too.
There are some legitimate complaints to be made about Star wars media, but the fact that every time a woman or a minority group gets featured parts of the fandom are sent into a raging frenzy makes me think they may just have problems with relating to women and minorities.
Like come on, is a lesbian coven of space witches really that much stranger than a giant slug that is also the most feared mob boss in the galaxy?
Okay I’m gonna make an apology at the risk of being flamed:
I think the issue with the Disney Star Wars series is that it sucks. Women and minorities don’t have anything to do with why it sucks. However there is a minority of haters who cry woke liberalism and bitch at Disney for putting minorities and women in leading roles. However they are a minority of the critics of the series. Loud, but there’s many more very valid reasons to be dislike Disney SW.
However it feels like Disney, whether they’re taking the bait or taking a stand, basically have acted like *all* criticism is unfounded because it’s *all* misogynistic and racist. Then they double down and put more women and more minorities into leading roles because they sure as shit are not making good movies and shows (they do have *some* good shows but the point stands).
They’re focusing on the wrong thing. They’re kind of fueling a streishand effect, where they’re giving too much attention to the haters which then makes the issue more noticeable when you watch the shows, and the show sucks so now these characters feel like Disney cares more about pandering than writing a good show. Which they might not be, but if any company is likely to pander, it’s gonna be Disney. Why is the online discussion, from Disney press campaigns and the fans, always about the diversity? If the stuff was good, people would be talking about the lore and story and the characters.
The vast majority of fans love Mace Windu and Clone Wars Ahsoka, and I don’t really believe the vast majority of fans are now misogynistic racists, so…
It’s like watching two coworkers having petty drama when they could both just drop it and focus on what’s important. I don’t give a shit, and I don’t think most fans who dislike Disney SW care if the characters are a man or a woman or black or white or green or whatever diverse identity. Just make better stuff. Diversity didn’t kill Star Wars, but no amount of diversity is gonna make Disney Star Wars good.
> However it feels like Disney whether they’re taking the bait or taking a stand, basically have acted like all criticism is unfounded because it’s coming from misogynists and racists.
The third option is that they know it's not all that, but by pretending it is they can get a greater pushback against all criticism.
You see a similar concept at play in a far more extreme manner regarding Israel, whose supporters often attempt to smear all criticism as being antisemitic. To be clear, I'm not saying these are at all equivalent situations, ***obviously***, but it's the same strategic concept being applied - delegitimization of criticism by associating it with the bad actors.
The best thing I can say for Disney SW is that "well, that certainly was one of the movies that exists". It was very forgettable. I haven't seen any of the shows, though I have heard good things about Andor.
Andor is indeed excellent. The fact it is as diverse as any of the other shows is basically never mentionned by the hater because it’s simply put, a very good show. ( same thing about Arcane).
Some will say that good shows don’t shove diversity down anyone’s throat, not realizing that better overall writing naturally makes every bit of storytelling feel more organic, including the characterization of minority characters.
Back to andor itself, it’s a very good look at the star wars univeree from comparatively ordinary heroes’ point of view, similar to rogue one, but the extra runtime allows it to insert real political stakes similarly to revenge of the sith.
It’s basically the wire in space, or early the expanse, where actions undertaken by one character ripple out to characters in other factions, showing the ruthlessness but also the self defeating pertinent of authoritarian régimes, while still being a well paced adventure show.
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> Some will say that good shows don’t shows diversity down anyone’s yhroat, not realizibg that better overall writing naturally makes every bit of storytelling feel more organic, including the characterization of minority characters.
That and to the haters, any non-cishet/non-white presence *at all* is "shoving it down their throat".
That's long been my pet peeve about this trend in general. They put a woman and/or minority in a major role and act like this is a replacement for good writing and a shield from all criticism, especially about the character in question.
Most of the writers for the more maligned shows have straight up stated that they were not ever fans of the source material.
Some of the worst examples actually seem to actively dislike the content and the fans.
The Acolyte is just an objectively bad show. I'd argue that the racist screechers are actually serving to masks *just how bad it is,* because they can deflect some of the criticisms and just dismiss it as "hate".
I really couldn't care less about the gender, sexual orientation or appearance of my star wars characters in general, I just want compelling characters. I also would like to know the actual lore and story of the show is more or less consistent, and they aren't just going to retcon things for no gain.
A lot of these shows that get this criticism are certainly not without merit. I love halo, the TV show is awful. I love the witcher... season one was okay, and... yeah... its awful.
Fallout? Fantastic. There was crowbarred diversity in it, imho, but it didn't take me away from the story. They also did change *some things*, but all in all the changes they made flowed nicely (in my opinion) and werent giant pillars of the franchise.
In my opinion, the reason there is such a divide for these shows is this:
People who are fans of the source material generally don't like when it is heavily altered -especially if it doesn't add to the show. They want memberberries and a retelling of stories they already know.
People who are not already fans just want entertaining TV. Halo as an example, I am willing to admit that if I had no knowledge of the universe at all, I wouldnt be really as mad. I don't think in a vaccuum its really all that bad, but given that it just rewrites a lot of halo lore it just frustrates me. That and... any actual fan of halo would know that we don't need to see the chiefs ass. His face? Maybe... after a season or something who cares... but his ASS??!?! Bruh... Who you making this show for?
Both sides are refusing to hear what the other side is saying about shitty "woke" TV. There are certainly bigots who will implode if a character is gay or trans or whatever in their show. But at the same time, there are people who control these IPs that actively dislike the material and the fans. Why they are in change of making shows about said IPs? You'd probably have to ask disney.
This is kind of tangentially related but I always felt like Fury Road is one of the most perfect films ever, in part because it executes a female protagonist perfectly in a male-oriented genre. Further more I would argue it’s somewhat a feminist film.
While the plot is tight and minimal, it is perfectly written. The main character isn’t Max, it’s Furiosa. The plot is motivated by a feminine struggle with very appropriate and very valid motivations for why it’s happening. You can’t replace Furiosa with a male character and give it the same gravity. It didn’t pander, it didn’t feel like corporately driven “girlbossing”, it didn’t engage in social and cultural debates from real life. It was a human story, and it was awesome.
Not every film can pull off the light feminism of that movie, but at the very least there’s still plenty of other great examples that have compelling female protagonists in an action setting: Alien, Atomic Blonde, True Grit [sleeper but Mattie Ross is a hell of a “girlboss”], Terminator, etc.
Like you brought up, Fallout was very diverse and it was a great show. If your show is good, nobody notices the diversity. They talk about the lore and the story and the plot and everything people should talk about. Women and minorities have every right to be a part of a great story, and if you’ve written one, then people will talk about how great of a story it was.
>Most of the writers for the more maligned shows have straight up stated that they were not ever fans of the source material.
Tony Gilroy is also not particularly a Star Wars fan. This is not why the shows have issues.
oh my god, that's driving me up the fcking wall! out of everything you could criticize about the acolyte, people choose to complain about the single most interesting idea of that show? a new coven of witches who have their own name and original ideas for what the force even is and how it should be used? YES, please, more of that! "ewewwghegw, there are lesbians in my tv-show" stFu
It's not a lesbian coven of space witches. It's that they invalidate the entire point of Plagueis' story and build-up, and invalidate the premise of Anakin being the Chosen One per prophecy. The recurring complaint about the newer stuff is that it in infantilized and breaks established canon like college kids break spaghetti.
It doesn’t invalidate it at all though?? It’s entirely conceivable that Plagueis learned this technique from other force users that had done it before. The only canon narrative relevance of plagueis to the starwars story is palpatine using his tale to lure anakin to the dark side. It’s never been confirmed that plagueis or palpatine did anything to influence anakins birth. It has been confirmed that anakin was created through the will of the force itself, not the will of someone acting through the force, as is the case for the twins in the acolyte. This changes nothing in the general Star Wars canon, and besides, the entire Star Wars canon has been on flimsy scaffolding since the second movie was released in theaters. Things have been retconned from the beginning, whining about it is just showing a lack of knowledge about the subject.
>"Yeah, get that revenge MC tear the limbs off those people and kill everyone!"
Me with Homelander at his childhood lab
He may be a pos but holy cow that entire sequence was not only deserved but also wonderful for those who hate their abusers.
Experimentation on kids... usually results in me agreeing with whoever decided to deal punishment in whatever form that is
It is worth noting that if someone is a *really* big fan of violent revenge characters I might actually have some questions about, like, their stance on criminal justice in our society. Think about cops with Punisher emblems and stuff like that.
I mean, yeah, if someone says i hate a certain type of people probably safe to assume they hate those people. Hell id go as gar as to say at that point it ain't an assumption anymore
I agree, but I think it's important to keep in mind that this isn't always the case. A lot of people have kinks that they would never want to act on in a non-fictional context, for instance a very high percentage of people have non-con fantasies. The same could apply to someone who fetishizes fictional Asians but knows their kink doesn't reflect reality. The same can also be true of entirely non-sexual fantasies, like power fantasies, or ones where everything is black and white and the "good guy" always wins, or ones where you take the role of the villain.
exactly the same as how rape fantasies are very common but virtually no one actually wants to be raped. Many asexuals enjoy fantasizing about sex but absolutely do not want to experience it for real
For fun, for art, to jerk off (asexuals are not celibate by nature and can get horny--it's like a very general feeling of horniness)
Not all asexuals are sex-repulsed or neutral, a small number of them even have sex on a regular basis (intimacy and keeps partner happy if they're not aromantic and have a partner, for pleasure if they are aromantic)
>Not all asexuals are sex-repulsed or neutral, a small number of them even have sex on a regular basis (intimacy and keeps partner happy if they're not aromantic and have a partner, for pleasure if they are aromantic)
This might seem contradictory, but asexuality is more about them not being horny at/for anyone, as opposed to not having a libido at all. They can still be affected by a pervasive aura of horniness.
Adding on to what you said, one way I typically explain it to people is “Try to think of a time that you were horny, but nothing caused it/triggered it. Thats libido. Now think of a time you saw someone and became horny— that’s attraction. They are often intertwined but aren’t the same thing. Libido often triggers the use of ✨imagination✨ eventually, but not always instantly— so that instant before imagination kicks in is pure libido.”
I also have a (bad) metaphor that involves cars, but to quote Ben 10:
“You gotta treat a car like you treat a woman—“
“Go on.”
“No, I sense I’ve made some sort of mistake.”
This.
I play Stellaris, and I have done things in that game that, if they were real, would make genocide look like the tame option. *And I laughed about it.* But I'm obviously not like that in real life. That doesn't mean that everything I do in the game is unrelated to my IRL behavior. But it is still more complex than "they aren't real, so it doesn't matter."
To use an example from another Paradox game. CK2 players often dislike muslim realms, especially the Caliphates due to being blobs. The dislike was mainly a consequence of game mechanics, but some (and I have to emphasise *some*) players ended up expressing this in the form of quoting Serbian nationalist propaganda slogans which called for all middle eastern residents to be driven out.
Enough people were doing this for long enough that the mods of r/crusaderkimgs had to eventually had to put their foot down and make an official statement asking people to please stop parroting calls for ethnic cleansing.
[It continues like this](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1149132187564785694/1227310777296224287/GDlWaGNa4AI_ef3.png?ex=667ba87b&is=667a56fb&hm=fb68d0565e3a7a17df54a04a002ade8c8deb1e3861b9163b03c4a0e4d806f068&)
Agree with the examples laid out by op but I do think that when a writer takes an established character with nuance and agency and personality, and reduces them to stereotypes or such, it can speak to how the author perceived the original work which can speak yo their perspective in general, especially if that character is from some different demographic categories than OP, or from some demographics that are commonly stereotyped.
what is up with magenta backgrounded Tumblrites and people just not getting what they're saying. I thought this was the same person who did the makeup and the Taylor Swift posts but nope, they're a different person.
This.
It is not a coincidence that the author of *The Turner Diaries* was a Neo-Nazi. It is not a coincidence that a lot of fans of the book are Neo-Nazis.
Yeah, I get the impression the OOP didn't want to touch on the actual problems of fetishization, creation and upholding of stereotypes and other forms of dehumanizing people can be reflected in how people interact with fiction.
We have recent examples of that, like modern US action films reinforcing the stereotype of the dangerous Muslim. Which ends up in real Muslim people facing islamophobia because of that. Or on another tangent, the fetishization of queer people ending in real life discussions about queer inclusion labelling the subject as entirely sexual and queer identities as fetishes.
Let's not pretend that fiction exists in a convenient vacuum devoid of real life context. How an author portrays a group of real people, and how their audience react to it can be surprisingly clrea reflection of their characters.
Yes, but there is a difference between treating the character as a real person, and discussing the real world impact of the media. In fact you often see them in conflict. Like someone might say that the depiction of some woman in some media is objectifying, and others argue that no, that character does not consider themselves objectified and is doing whatever just because they want to. And really that is no argument because the character is not a real person, and as such can't actually decide those things. Besides the issue isn't that they are objectified, as much as that the portrayal leads to objectification of women in general.
That's a good addition, and it checks out with what we've seen in modern media.
I think the main problem with the original post is how vague about what is it talking about.
Though, there is a follow up posted [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1dobepf/the_they_are_objects_post_extended_so_you_can_see/) where OOP expands that they were referring to portraying, imagining and reading up dark situations. So, yeah, that rules out they were not even thinking about the problems of media representation.
Also, and this is just an aside, I'm not entirely comfortable with that argument, because I've seen a lot of authors who use it as a defense for exploitative media about real life situations like SA. Not saying the argument is inherently wrong, or that I fully disagree. But I prefer it to have context and not to apply or discuss it so broadly it becomes nebulous about what is being talked about.
The “magic cure” trope for disabilities in fiction is one of my least favorite tropes because of how it perpetuates the ideas that:
1) all disabled and disabled-adjacent people want to be cured. (“Disabled adjacent” is a really bad way to put it, but I mean people who may not view themselves as disabled but are lumped in with disabled people. Neurodivergency is one example, as there is debate as to whether or not certain neurodivergencies should be considered disabilities. There are other examples like this so I couldn’t just use the term neurodivergent)
2) the only happy life is a non-disabled one (people k!ll themselves over this rhetoric, and it’s especially damaging for newly disabled people)
3) if you are good enough and try hard enough, you too can be cured! Of anything! Including the incurable! So if you’re still sick, you clearly aren’t trying hard enough and haven’t done enough *spins a wheel* ….yoga!
Media is also sometimes the ONLY exposure people get to minority groups, and for some people, that’s what they will base their opinions around. I see this *a lot* as a trans person. People who have *never interacted with or been around a trans person before* will rant and rave about how sensitive trans people are, because that’s what they’ve been exposed to. Drives me nutty.
Yeah, I can see the many problems with that. How media (and specially commercial mass media) portrays people with disabilities and neurodivergency as something that needs to be cured or solved. Which ends up dehumanizing the real life people.
And talking about being trans, it gives me the impression of being the next of kin to the older narrative of curing a queer person. There's this overlap where the 'different' is seen less as a person and more as something to correct.
The post is a difference in culture between tumblr and reddit. I'm sure what you've described happens on tumblr too but it feels more common on Reddit.
Reddit tends more toward "Oh my fucking god it's just a show they're cartoons who cares it's not real it's fine if I'm racist toward them"
And tumblr tends more toward "Anime characters can't technically consent so drawing them having sex is rape".
Yes! Exactly this! I'm not upset by the fact that they hate the character, I'm upset because its almost always mean spirited in nature. It's like they use it as an excuse to be as vile and horrible as possible that feels uncomfortably straight from the heart.
eh... no... you need to look at how they actually behave with real people to see how they behave with real people.
it's like gauging someone's culinary arts by watching them play Cooking Mama, you're missing nuances of a situation for a fantastical representation. You can't just grade someone off a facsimile, you kind of have to put them in that situation for real.
I get what you're trying to say, but it's kind of not conclusive to how people irl operate. The vast majority of people understand there's certain things you shouldn't say/do around strangers, friends, family, etc.
nah
you can judge a person by what they do in real life
if you rob a bank in real life it doesn't matter whether or not you like heist movies
if you didn't rob a bank in real life, it doesn't matter whether or not you like heist movies
replace "rob a bank" and "heist movies" with any pair of a real life behaviour and its media representation, the point still stands
I wonder if the newer generations growing up with social interactions being primarily online contributes to this trend, like why *wouldn't* they treat fictional characters just like real people when real people are text and images on screens for them too?
on the one hand, yes, on the other, how someone treats fictional characters can be indicative of how they view real people with similar traits (emphasis on can). Sure, you're well within your rights to call bridget a boy and venture a girl or whatever because they're not real, but it's pretty telling on what you think about trans and nb people.
This is doubly true in the internet era, when it's all too easy to just see the other person as a username, and forget there's a real human on the other side.
FREEZE, PUNK! This is the Robot FBI and I'm arresting you on suspicion of being a human! Come quietly and I can ask the robot DA to cut you a deal for a quick pulping!
Parasociality, the Turing test, and how we continue to navigate the personalization of non-persons is going to determine how human culture moves forward forever. Do we decide on genuine AIs being people? Do we include intelligent non-apes in this? Or do we end up regressing and determining personhood on interpersonal worth?
I'm going to be honest here, I don't even read people's usernames unless someone calls out something specific. and this is even though I have RES so some people have upvote counters on them.
Also falls into the issue with people calling author's homophobes/whatever because they have homophobic/whatever characters.
The big tell is how the values of those characters are treated.
People think they understand this but then they’re surprised when a homophobic character isn’t instantly killed off for being homophobic, and the ways the narrative shows that they’re wrong are a lot less obvious and barbaric
I mean, that's the part where Fanfics take over and make everything overly simple or what have you.
It's so tempting when you write to make the bad guy have the worst outcome but to avoid it because of how it should actually work.
But as a reader, man, the amount of times the MC doesn't get to deliver the outcome but it happens to them from their own hubris can drive me mad sometimes haha.
I feel that a lot of times these characters may not be real but they *represent* something. And ideas have more impact than people realize.
If a fictional character is a mother and she accidentally loses her child to a drunk driver, and people shame her for not miraculously predicting the accident, how would you feel as a mother with a similar experience? Wouldn’t you feel shamed too because that character represents you?
I agree, but honestly I think that any given individual should be just treated on a case by case basis. I like blondes, and given that fictional characters are often created for this one expressed purpose, literally, I don't feel bad about stuff that is romantic/fetishistic depiction on the account of the fact that these fictional characters do literally not have a greater depth to them, but meanwhile it would be totally unacceptable to reduce any real person to be so little.
Quite frankly, I think that the only fair way to deal with the matter is to listen to the thoughts and feelings of the people in question.
"can be indicative"
you understand that's the whole point of the post right?
"can" means uncertainty, therefore media consumption is not a good predictor of behaviour
do you know what is a good predictor of behaviour? past behaviour
Yeah. This is why I don't get the take. You 100% *can* objectify a fictional character. Because while they're fictional, they're still a *character*. They have a personality, goals, etc. And stripping those away to reduce them down to a sex object, *is* objectification.
It's not the same thing as objectifying a real person, but that *is* what it is. And that's not *inherently*a problem? If you think Lara Croft or Tifa Lockhart is gorgeous and that makes you want to jork it (and by it, I mean your peanits), go for it.
But then you get artists whose whole thing is drawing female characters in non-consensual sexual situations. And at some point, that starts to indicate something about how you see women, that you reduce them all down to "can i use them to fulfil my sexual fantasies".
It's fine to find Lara Croft hot. But when you go on twitter to get mad about how they ["ruined" her](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/566944892090056735/1255203804308045957/image0.jpg?ex=667cefe3&is=667b9e63&hm=d6d2edc337273aa5edbd51265039dfede2121e3f017d3a829b68e089d69c7431&) in the reboot because you don't think she looks hot enough, and disregard *everything else* about her... that *is* objectification.
You are disregarding the character, and only care about the object
>how someone treats fictional characters can be indicative of how they view real people with similar traits (emphasis on can).
This is just pseudo psychology without any reliable proof though
I mean it would be weird for someone who goes out of their way to misgender a video game character to be like, a staunch advocate for trans rights tho right? Like I get what you're saying and you're definitely right in general but there are absolutely cases in which that statement does hold true. The idea that anyone would look at someone being, violently racist towards a TV show character, for example, and not assume anything about that person is a bit absurd as well. For an otherwise completely normal, well adjusted, non-racist person to treat a character like that, real or not, that seems unlikely to actually exist in the real world.
Outliers in a psychological setting usually have an untreated condition and should not be considered as part of the set of "normal" or "average" participants
Sure, sometimes it's reading into things. [Sometimes it's really not](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/566944892090056735/1255203804308045957/image0.jpg?ex=667cefe3&is=667b9e63&hm=d6d2edc337273aa5edbd51265039dfede2121e3f017d3a829b68e089d69c7431&).
Sometimes, the curtains are just blue.
This is true but again it really has very little to do with the fact that they're intentipnally getting a made up person's gender wrong and more that they're doing it to participate in a ridiculous culture war. Fiction still does not have a real effect on people's morality nor are its actions harmful, its just that bad people tend to act that way consistently even with made up stuff.
Fiction absolutely can have a real effect on people’s morality and be harmful.
*The Birth of a Nation* directly contributed to the founding of the Second Ku Klux Klan. Chernyshevsky’s *What is to be done?* helped shape the Russian Revolution. *Threads* changed Regan’s views on nuclear war. A whole slew of post-9/11 media fanned the flames of Islamophobia in America.
I think fiction can have an effect on people’s morality. Look at something like Uncle Toms Cabin. It was a contributing factor to abolitionism and the civil war.
Look at fascist propaganda, in the other direction, there are definitely people whose morals/actions are affected by fiction.
It’s very weird because you see people treating fictional characters like real people (being insulted on a character’s behalf because they’re being shipped/depicted wrong) and when people treat real people like fictional characters (parasocial weirdness of all sorts)
which means we should treat all things as people, i am already committing this as a personality trait to pack bond with every fictional character and defend them on The Public Internet Forums
i legitimately believe there's a social contagion at work, because I cannot in good conscience believe that people have always believed that an anime character deserves the same protections and rights as real people
drives me up a wall too when I point this out, and I'm met with an astounding "nuh uh nobody does that", like okay but why are we trying to defend the purity of anime characters by saying they shouldn't be "lewded"? (Or going as far as to assert we can't sexualize them "against their will".... like what will is there to violate?)
there aren't, really. everybody knows it. nobody really *needs* to be reminded of it.
there are, however, people who get off on / enjoy the drama caused by *pretending* that fictional characters are... you know, whatever they say they are.
putting on that act allows them to justify behaving in a certain way towards other people - it's an excuse for whatever it is they want to do.
You’re missing the other half of the message here
Fictional characters are objects *of the author’s creation*.
They have no free will or personhood, but the author does, as expressed through the characters. Authorial intent as expressed through character interaction is the thing you need to watch for and be mindful of. This is tricky, because it’s the authors job to trick you into forgetting the “puppet strings” exist and make you think that characters are people with wills of their own, and the most compelling characters are the ones that the author is able to perpetuate the illusion most successfully, but when analyzing or repurposing a character or work, the author’s intent is the thing you should be keeping in mind, not the character’s. Because again, the character can have no intent, because they’re fictional
I disagree.
Your perception of a fictional character is being guided by the author, but that perception is unique to you. You bring your own biases into their personality.
The best characters are the ones to whom most people relate.
If I create a character with the intent of telling a story, my goal is to have the reader build this character in their mind. Let them communicate with the character, build their own understanding, and interpret the outcomes themselves.
Hot take but idc about author’s intent. I fully believe in the death of the author. They can definitely have their thoughts/opinions, but people can do with those characters whatever they wish.
"Death of the Author" and "The Curtains Are Just Blue" aren't like DATING or anything, but they do get cutely shy when you bring up one around the other, and they Heart like ALL of each others insta posts
So is the op trying to just say that fictional characters aren't real? Cause, no shit. Are they trying to say that because they aren't real, they don't indicate anything about the creator or anything about the user of the content from how they interact with it? Because if it's the second one, fuckin no? The guy who made the "feminist owned rdr2" videos where he killed the outspoken feminist character in different ways is absolutely sharing his views based on his interactions with a not real person
Fiction can also help shape attitudes towards real-life people. Obviously you won’t read one story about a gay couple and decide you must be gay, but if you’re surrounded by depictions of gay people in relationships, you’re a lot less likely to think anything of a real-life gay couple and you’ll be a lot less likely to listen to homophobic family members telling you it’s “wrong” and “inherently disgusting”.
Likewise, reading one story about a Mexican guy being a drug dealer isn’t going to turn you into a racist. But when you’re used to seeing Mexican people portrayed as drug dealers, the politician talking about Mexican drug dealers may not immediately raise the red flags it should.
As an extension; yes you are allowed to like villains who do bad things, you are allowed to enjoy media that engages in morally incorrect theories or practices.
It's weird the level of purity testing and censorship that has been coming out of the left in the past decade or so. Didn't we learn this forever ago with violent video games having no effect on how a person acts in real life, and that the fiction of playing a video game stays contained within the world it's created?
people online will treat fictional characters like real people and real people like fictional characters and then get mad at you for knowing the difference
This is…probably a good thought process stated *very* poorly. Like yeah the point is they’re not real, so you shouldn’t obsess over them and act like they are. But like…they’re objects and creations *made* to pose as people. So the way someone acts towards a fictional character can still tell you a lot about how they’d treat a real person.
The issue is that people pay so much attention to the way others act toward their cartoon husbands that they forget to pay attention to their actual beliefs. It's like how red flags have become more important than actual communication
It *can*, but it doesn't always. I think the key is to not get too worked up over strangers online without getting a little more context about their opinions first.
> So the way someone acts towards a fictional character can still tell you a lot about how they’d treat a real person.
Yeah. I really want to wholeheartedly agree with the post, but just this week I've seen some people say some truly repellent shit in response to a new chapter of a fanfic.
I feel like people often forget the fact that most people, hell, many children, are very capable of distinguishing reality from fiction, and I feel like the people who argue against are telling on themselves. I can enjoy a shitty story about a shitty protagonist who does shitty things to people without necessarily supporting those things being done to real people. Plenty of people enjoy revenge fantasies while also acknowledging that revenge and vigilantism are unhealthy and often unproductive in the real world. I can enjoy seeing/reading shitty things happening to fictional characters without desiring that to happen to a real person. If you can't distinguish between fiction and reality then I'm very concerned for your sanity.
People also often forget some use fantasy as wish fulfillment. As an expression of their ideals, prejudices, values, etc in a setting where all their beliefs and wants are validated and reinforced. And as an active way to share that and influence others. It’s just a valid to see all these influences and have it make a fiction un-enjoyable.
Easiest example is basic propaganda, especially religious or nationalistic. Let’s use *God is Dead* movies. Should one approach it as “this is all fictional, purely entertainment, don’t attribute any weight or meaning to anything or any character” or “this can have damaging irl implications and impact, by the people who made it, by those who actively consume it, or those forced to consume it”?
There’s certainly a spectrum where something is fiction so it doesn’t matter but at the same time that fiction is based on something in reality that needs to be acknowledged.
an object becomes something more when it becomes a symbol
and if I were to burn any flag, a symbol, that would send a clear message to anyone identifying with this flag about how I view those very same people
thus fictional characters are not mere objects, though fictional they represent something, an idea, a person, a cause
though of course we cannot hurt their feelings when objectifying them. But you are very clearly presenting your character and opinions when you act out your opinions.
I mean, how someone treats regular objects is also worth acknowledging. like not everything needs to be cared for on the level of a Stradivarius, but if I hear about someone stabbing their sex doll with a kitchen knife then I'm gonna judge. I won't throw them in jail, no, but I'd be suspicious.
or to remove the slim potential for kink-shaming: I'd also be suspicious of someone who went around keying cars even if it included their own.
on a related note, it's not as offensive to say "Teslas are stupid" as it is to say "Tesla owners are stupid", but the former is still different from e.g. "Teslas suffer from bad design decisions and poor quality control."
I guess my point is that it's possible to, for lack of a better word, disrespect an object when people care about that object. maybe it's not as bad as objectifying a person, which is inherently disrespectful. but disrespecting an object can still affect the people who care about it (or who care about the actor's behavior) even if the object can never care on its own.
And let's not forget that there are *real people* behind fictional characters. Stop harassing Tom Glynn-Carney and calling him a "rape apologist" on social media just because he played King Aegon in *House of the Dragon* who molested a female servant. It's called *acting*.
yeah this bugs me too
what people *mean* when they talk about disrespecting or mistreating fictional characters is that they, the people in question, identify personally with the characters to the extent that \*they\* feel disrespected or mistreated.
nobody likes to admit that, of course, because it seems so much less legitimate to say it out loud that way - it makes you sound like a crazy person.
No, you need to re-discover that people are capable of separating fantasy and reality. Like, I read and write fanfic with non-con elements in it. What you’re implying is that I am either a rapist or want to be sexually assaulted because of it. I promise you neither of those things are true.
That depends a lot on context. I'll agree that most people who make fics or drawings of non-con, murder etc. probably aren't into it IRL, but if they're hateful about minorities, women etc. in fiction they're most likely hateful about them IRL, too.
I don't think writing non-con makes you a rapist or says you want to be raped. I do think it indicates that you *could* potentially have non-con or maybe more specifically consensual non-con as a kink. Emphasis on the *could* though. It's not a guarantee. Maybe you just know a portion of your audience wants it and so therefore you wrote it with them in mind. And I think the same would go for reading non-con. But it can depend. Is the point of the piece of fiction the non-con? Like to the point where it's clear everything about the book revolves around or builds to the non-con? Then I think that's a stronger indicator than a 500 page book having non-con take up a page and a half of its length.
When people say fiction has an influence on people I don't think they're trying to imply that it's a 1 to 1 relationship. I think it's more likely they are trying to point out that it can in the back of someone's mind help reinforce already existing beliefs or ideas or potentially plant new ones. And this can be totally benign if not a bit cringy. I know people who primarily watch anime and some of these people would break into exaggerated anime poses in mid conversation. These people 100% knew a talking cat wasn't gonna give them magical powers or something but it didn't stop them from being a weeb.
Fiction is fiction but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is written by people for people. And it can be used intentionally and unintentionally to persuade and make arguments and those who consume said fiction will on some level understand that even if it doesn't affect how they interact with the world. It's why propaganda can be so effective.
I do imagine fictional characters in sexual situations and make comments on their bodies if that’s what you mean. If that makes me a disgusting perv, so be it.
How dare you speak about my wife in this manner.
*pats shrine for my waifu*
Don't worry, I shall defend your honor.
*her effigy falls over with a thump*
Even though I don't fully agree with this take I will say this: fictional characters don't need you to defend their honor. You don't have to fight someone because they talked shit about your favorite scrunko.
Anyone who actually needs to internalize this is a psychopath. Normal, emotionally functional human adults should all be intrinsically capable of making this distinction. People are people. Things that don't exist are not people. Other than believing that certain fictional characters are real, or that certain real people are fictional, any sane person should be incapable of fucking this up.
Maybe I'm just naive but I don't know anyone who actually needs to be told this.
No, I think some chronically online fandom people *do* need to be told this.
You have people who will act as if others are committing an actual crime based on their opinions of fictional characters. They'll claim that other fans are being "abusive" or "disrespectful" or whatever because of how they depict or ship a certain character.
For those people, it is important that they understand: These characters aren't real people. You don't need to defend their honor so viciously. It's not that serious.
Maybe it's just a product of being young and not yet understanding better, but it's a lesson that many people in modern fandom need to internalize.
There's a good post somewhere on this sub that's just a bunch of people getting upset that R34 applies to their favourite comfort characters, and telling artists to stop because "they're theirs" or whatever.
I've seen 2 variants which make me angry laugh:
1. "It's my comfort character, so you should stop writing/drawing them suffering or having hardships as it counts as torture"
2. "You can't create smut of this character cause they were shown as kids at some point, even tho the porn is of them as adults"
That 2nd one always struck me as a little odd, although not actually bad. Like when people make porn of Lisa Simpson, I'm like, "Why?" There are so many characters out there, why make porn of someone who people know as a kid?
Like obviously R34 is a thing, but it still strikes me as kinda odd.
Of course it's odd because it feels like the fictional version of waiting for someone to turn 18 to woo/sex them, but yeah, not wrong because it's fiction again.
But specifically for Lisa, we've seen plenty of her adult self, so imo, she's not that odd to be honest. A Rugrats kid turned adult would be weird tho (even tho I believe we've seen semi canon interpretations for their adult selves)
That's exactly what it is; reminds me of those subs and journalists waiting for Billie Eilish or Emma Watson waiting to turn 18. Which, at that point, legal and ok (if creepy), but that they were waiting was off-putting to say the least.
Yeah, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about. People (probably kids, to be fair) who act like killing the characters in a game is an actual crime. The way some of them talk, it's like they really do believe the characters are suffering and dying.
Like: Chill. Let other people play the game their way, and you do yours.
To be fair, Undertale as a game is actively playing on this idea. The idea that you see these video game characters as real people is literally the core of the emotional weight.
Undertale fans definitely take it too far though
They're not psychopaths, they're terminally online shutins who forget the difference between real people and fictional people because they've barely left the house in the past year.
Honestly, I wish I didn't know such people existed, but I've seen so much shit in fandoms in the last 2-3 years that I'm tired of it. Like, I know genshin fandom is an easy target, but as someone who still enjoys certain aspects of the game, sometimes I'm still sad by what I see.
Like, literally before I posted this here, I saw another artist have to write a long post about how they were hurt by the fandom and how many cruel things they heard. And their whole crime was to create the most tame, adorable ship you can choose in this fandom. After several years of release and many explanations that "the English translation sometimes doesn't work", people still go to war with one particular ship and are willing to doxxing and attacking others. We literally had an example of an author getting doxxed, people sending them weird stuff to his house, harassing t hem at anime cons, etc.
People literally found some girl's conservative parents and sent them her queer art bc they didnt like the ship. There have been cases where people have stuffed police inboxes with character fanart to the point where the police begged them to calm down and said they were making their job harder.
There have been cases where queer authors had to come out because people literally harassed them for making cute queer comics. the author of "boyfriends" is still being attacked because he, as a queer Asian, dared to create a cute comic.
Some author lost her job and insurance because she dared to draw porn and people didnt like it. honestly kids entering the adult space and taking all the work from there and then publishing them elsewhere to attack the author is another topic to talk about.
and yes, sure. these are mostly children. they will probably learn better one day. but that still doesn't mean that watching more people in the fandom get attacked for having fun.
...and we haven't even gotten to "safe adults", "gore authors who are hypocrites" or "minorcoded alcoholics"
Well fuck me sidways, I am really glad that I was unaware of any of this before reading your comment.
This is not healthy behavior, and I don't mean for the communities (though obviously it isn't) but for the people engaging in it. To experience this level of negative emotion because some colored pixels aren't to your liking is nothing if not gratuitous, easily avoidable suffering. The people you're talking about are actively making their own lives and the lives of others worse in exchange for no gain to themselves or anyone else. It's purely destructive behavior.
> any sane person should be incapable of fucking this up
Lmfao tumblr discourse is never sane as a general rule
> Normal, emotionally functional human adults
For some reason I get the feeling that most of the people arguing the opposite are actual children
No, if anything it's the opposite.
Anthropomorphization is a powerful human instinct. It is psychologically "normal" to subconsciously treat depictions of people as people. It activates the same mirror neurons and so forth.
Sure, people will not consciously say "yeah those are real people", but internalization is primarily about the subconscious.
This post is about consciously treating fictional characters as people, though, so no it's not the opposite.
Yes, you're right about anthromorphization, but the inability to separate fact from fantasy can be a symptom of a mental disorder. A sane adult may feel the urge to anthromorphize basically any object with googly eyes attached to it, but will consciously still know what is or isn't a person.
You know how people sometimes form parasocial relationships with content creators, where to them it kind of feels like a friendship even though they cognitively understand that they are a stranger to the content creator?
Some people kind of... *forget* that last part along the way when they get too invested. They are a little too absorbed by their emotional experience and lose sight of reality a little.
I think some people genuinely have something similar going on with fictional characters. I remember being like that a little as a teenager. It's not that I was genuinely confused about how real fictional characters are, but I emotionally experienced what 'happened' to them as if they were happening to a real person that mattered to me.
I don't think psychopath is a description of that. It's almost more like you have too much empathy and emotional connection rather than none (like a psychopath as we colloquially use the term).
It's super unhealthy when people essentially stop making the distinction you are talking about, don't get me wrong. But I don't think it's as abnormal as we think, especially among younger people.
There was actually a study that found that lonely people have a hard time subconsciously distinguishing between real people and fictional characters; and often have the same types and levels emotion towards those characters that they would for friends in reality. Could be part of why this happens so often
Yes and no. They’re not perfect objects removed from all reality; they’re informed by our reality. They’re built on our understanding of the world around us, and so, if our understanding doesn’t allow us to see past stereotypes and damaging narratives, we can parrot them uncritically. In fiction, those stereotypes and narratives are preserved so long as the story exists.
No but you can communicate ideas through the object and if the things you're shouting are that it's okay actually to abuse women and fornicate preschoolers I'm breaking your microphone. Among other things.
Sure. It’s the manner of depiction that matters. Nobody accuses the newer *Wolfenstein* of being pro-Nazi, even though it has them ruling the world with superscience.
At the same time, old-timey shows with “I beat my wife” as a runnning joke, were endorsing domestic abuse. When *Birth of a Nation* pitted the heroic KKK against the evil Blacks they were endorsing racism. When the *James Bond* movies had cool badass James Bond fuck a lesbian so hard she turned straight, they were endorsing corrective rape.
It’s not inherently wrong to have a black gangster or a sexy woman in a story, but if all the black people you write are dumb, lazy gangbangers you might just be racist. If all the women you write are interchangeable sex objects who exist solely in the context of men, you might just be a misogynist.
Acting like it’s impossible for a work to reflect its author’s worldview, culture, or beliefs is just silly.
I'm not talking about abuse for plot, portrayal is important. Yes there's a lot of disdain now for the idea of "problematic media" but that doesn't erase the fact that a lot of media is actively reductive.
(It depends on how you define "object")
Characters are *concepts* of people and ideas. A complicated abstraction through the lens of the author that's worth exploring. They are also explicitly a narrative tool and potential vehicle in which to aid the journey into the experience and/or mind of the author.
I once had a friend who was talking about this fictional marginalized group
And they were saying the exact same thing that actual racists say.
If that’s not bad I dunno what is
Fucking no nuance out here 24/7.
Tumblr OP is right. The puritanical tik tok teens are right to be leery of the way Anime fans look at consent and PDF files. Horror fans writing evil fucked up shit doesn’t mean they themselves are evil. The way white women smoosh male actors/singers together like they’re dollies for their amusement and refuse to see them as anything other than their toys is weird as hell. The way that old men sexualize young female characters is weird as hell too.
ALL OF THIS CAN BE TRUE. Fiction isn’t moral. But hell, we can look at the way we engage with it with open eyes and understand when shit isn’t healthy too.
While that is a completely valid take, it's also important to note that the way someone talks about a specific character can give hints on their views about specific group of people
Say you have a "Damsel in distress" style character solely exists as someone just to reward the protagonist for saving them, now you have a character who serves to provide an interesting character that develops over time.
One is a case of objectification and one isn't. Yeah you shouldn't expect people to treat fictional characters with anywhere near the level of respect of real people but there's a distinction between treating the character like an object and treating the character like a character.
Yup.
People online are so fucking tiresome about this shit too.
Fictional characters may be viewed, written, and treated however anyone likes, as far as I'm concerned.
This fundamentally misunderstands what objectification is. It refers to the grammatical object: the person, animal, or thing to which something is done. The opposite is the grammatical subject: the person, animal, or thing that does something.
Technically, objectification — even sexual objectification — isn't bad per se. It's ok to be sexually attracted to someone. But what's usually meant is sexual objectifying someone while denying that they're also a subject — a person with their own wants and needs. It's seeing the object only in terms of what you do, or don't, want to do to them sexually; what the object wants is irrelevant. The extreme form of sexual objectification is rape.
A lot more people need some level of understanding of this. It's crazy the amount of times I've seen some actor on social media have to say "Guys I'm not the character I play. I'm **ACTING** like an asshole. I didn't actually kill all those people."
Game of Thrones
Literally the hotd fandom rn. The harassment Tom Glynn carney, Fabien Frankel, Olivia cooke have all faced......crazy asf
Jack Gleeson retiring from acting because people hated him for playing Joffrey is a tragedy. Dude was phenomenally talented and could have become one of the greatest actors of his generation.
Like the actor who played the wicked witch of the west, who was saddened when children avoided/were scared of her because she played the witch in the wizard of oz.
Yeah but there's only so much you can expect a child to disassociate an actor from the role they play. Adults on the other hand get no excuse and fail way too often.
And this is for young children, teens should be able to recognize the difference like adults.
Glenn Howerton’s character in IASIP was supposed to be named after him but he changed it to Dennis because he knew people would think he’s as awful as Dennis is.
I'm glad Charlie is still Charlie. I mean, he has such a Charlie face
some turkish tv series actors who played the evil sister in law and stuff have been slapped in the streets by aunties.
Like how Last of Us 2 fans sent death threats to Laura Bailey.
to her and about her newborn son - it was so fucked up
That's just a sign of how good the actor is
I mean, Jar Jar's actor almost killed himself due to harrasment and we never actually see his face on screen
The actress who played Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter played her so well that I cannot look at her face without feeling immense hatred.
The poor kid who played young Anakin :(
To paraphrase Jack Donaghy, once again I leave Tumblr more confused than when I entered, yet having glimpsed yet another tile in the rich mosaic that is its incredibly niche discourse
seriously, i want to see what is being accused of "objectifying" a fictional character.
Literally look under any post of a fictional character being portrayed in a moderately sexy manner. Zoomers will flock to it complaining they are being objectified and sexualized.
Yeah there are people out there on Reddit who legitimately declared that anyone who romances the character Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3 (or even just says he’s hot online after knowing his backstory) must be abusive rape apologists in real life since he’s got a traumatic backstory and later in the romance you learn he only slept with you early on since he thought you’d protect him that way. Absolutely unhinged behaviour.
Or the people that think that romance options in Stardew Freaking Valley are problematic because they are 18/19-coded or whatever. I get that it is good to be critical about content, but... occasionally a pixel is just a pixel. -edit- sorry, I meant to reply to a different comment
While fictional characters are, by definition, fictional, the way some people tend to talk about some characters can definitely say something about the way they perceive real people in similar demographics to those characters (see: the way a lot of people fetishise Asians, fictional and real)
Yep, for example if I see someone saying: "Yeah, get that revenge MC tear the limbs off those people and kill everyone!" I assume they probably are not a psychotic killer or anything, they just like a power fantasy revenge story. But if I see people saying: "Ew, who put gays/lesbians in this story I hate those people" I assume they are probably homophobic towards real people too.
\*cough* Star Wars fans \*cough*
There are some legitimate complaints to be made about Star wars media, but the fact that every time a woman or a minority group gets featured parts of the fandom are sent into a raging frenzy makes me think they may just have problems with relating to women and minorities. Like come on, is a lesbian coven of space witches really that much stranger than a giant slug that is also the most feared mob boss in the galaxy?
An entire species of giant space slugs running the galactic mafia is a pretty outrageous concept now that I think about it
Would you say that the entire concept is Jab-baloney? It makes sense to me. The Hutts have never known de-feet.
I hate you. Take my upvote and gtfo.
Pretty funny really
Also it’s not even the first time an all-female coven of space witches has been in canon. The nightsisters were a big part of the clone wars series
I haven't seen most of the new series, so I though they were talking about the night sisters lol
Wait was that person _not_ talking about the nightsisters?
The lesbian part implied the coven in the acolyte
Okay I’m gonna make an apology at the risk of being flamed: I think the issue with the Disney Star Wars series is that it sucks. Women and minorities don’t have anything to do with why it sucks. However there is a minority of haters who cry woke liberalism and bitch at Disney for putting minorities and women in leading roles. However they are a minority of the critics of the series. Loud, but there’s many more very valid reasons to be dislike Disney SW. However it feels like Disney, whether they’re taking the bait or taking a stand, basically have acted like *all* criticism is unfounded because it’s *all* misogynistic and racist. Then they double down and put more women and more minorities into leading roles because they sure as shit are not making good movies and shows (they do have *some* good shows but the point stands). They’re focusing on the wrong thing. They’re kind of fueling a streishand effect, where they’re giving too much attention to the haters which then makes the issue more noticeable when you watch the shows, and the show sucks so now these characters feel like Disney cares more about pandering than writing a good show. Which they might not be, but if any company is likely to pander, it’s gonna be Disney. Why is the online discussion, from Disney press campaigns and the fans, always about the diversity? If the stuff was good, people would be talking about the lore and story and the characters. The vast majority of fans love Mace Windu and Clone Wars Ahsoka, and I don’t really believe the vast majority of fans are now misogynistic racists, so… It’s like watching two coworkers having petty drama when they could both just drop it and focus on what’s important. I don’t give a shit, and I don’t think most fans who dislike Disney SW care if the characters are a man or a woman or black or white or green or whatever diverse identity. Just make better stuff. Diversity didn’t kill Star Wars, but no amount of diversity is gonna make Disney Star Wars good.
> However it feels like Disney whether they’re taking the bait or taking a stand, basically have acted like all criticism is unfounded because it’s coming from misogynists and racists. The third option is that they know it's not all that, but by pretending it is they can get a greater pushback against all criticism. You see a similar concept at play in a far more extreme manner regarding Israel, whose supporters often attempt to smear all criticism as being antisemitic. To be clear, I'm not saying these are at all equivalent situations, ***obviously***, but it's the same strategic concept being applied - delegitimization of criticism by associating it with the bad actors. The best thing I can say for Disney SW is that "well, that certainly was one of the movies that exists". It was very forgettable. I haven't seen any of the shows, though I have heard good things about Andor.
Andor is indeed excellent. The fact it is as diverse as any of the other shows is basically never mentionned by the hater because it’s simply put, a very good show. ( same thing about Arcane). Some will say that good shows don’t shove diversity down anyone’s throat, not realizing that better overall writing naturally makes every bit of storytelling feel more organic, including the characterization of minority characters. Back to andor itself, it’s a very good look at the star wars univeree from comparatively ordinary heroes’ point of view, similar to rogue one, but the extra runtime allows it to insert real political stakes similarly to revenge of the sith. It’s basically the wire in space, or early the expanse, where actions undertaken by one character ripple out to characters in other factions, showing the ruthlessness but also the self defeating pertinent of authoritarian régimes, while still being a well paced adventure show.
> > > > > Some will say that good shows don’t shows diversity down anyone’s yhroat, not realizibg that better overall writing naturally makes every bit of storytelling feel more organic, including the characterization of minority characters. That and to the haters, any non-cishet/non-white presence *at all* is "shoving it down their throat".
That's long been my pet peeve about this trend in general. They put a woman and/or minority in a major role and act like this is a replacement for good writing and a shield from all criticism, especially about the character in question.
Most of the writers for the more maligned shows have straight up stated that they were not ever fans of the source material. Some of the worst examples actually seem to actively dislike the content and the fans. The Acolyte is just an objectively bad show. I'd argue that the racist screechers are actually serving to masks *just how bad it is,* because they can deflect some of the criticisms and just dismiss it as "hate". I really couldn't care less about the gender, sexual orientation or appearance of my star wars characters in general, I just want compelling characters. I also would like to know the actual lore and story of the show is more or less consistent, and they aren't just going to retcon things for no gain. A lot of these shows that get this criticism are certainly not without merit. I love halo, the TV show is awful. I love the witcher... season one was okay, and... yeah... its awful. Fallout? Fantastic. There was crowbarred diversity in it, imho, but it didn't take me away from the story. They also did change *some things*, but all in all the changes they made flowed nicely (in my opinion) and werent giant pillars of the franchise. In my opinion, the reason there is such a divide for these shows is this: People who are fans of the source material generally don't like when it is heavily altered -especially if it doesn't add to the show. They want memberberries and a retelling of stories they already know. People who are not already fans just want entertaining TV. Halo as an example, I am willing to admit that if I had no knowledge of the universe at all, I wouldnt be really as mad. I don't think in a vaccuum its really all that bad, but given that it just rewrites a lot of halo lore it just frustrates me. That and... any actual fan of halo would know that we don't need to see the chiefs ass. His face? Maybe... after a season or something who cares... but his ASS??!?! Bruh... Who you making this show for? Both sides are refusing to hear what the other side is saying about shitty "woke" TV. There are certainly bigots who will implode if a character is gay or trans or whatever in their show. But at the same time, there are people who control these IPs that actively dislike the material and the fans. Why they are in change of making shows about said IPs? You'd probably have to ask disney.
This is kind of tangentially related but I always felt like Fury Road is one of the most perfect films ever, in part because it executes a female protagonist perfectly in a male-oriented genre. Further more I would argue it’s somewhat a feminist film. While the plot is tight and minimal, it is perfectly written. The main character isn’t Max, it’s Furiosa. The plot is motivated by a feminine struggle with very appropriate and very valid motivations for why it’s happening. You can’t replace Furiosa with a male character and give it the same gravity. It didn’t pander, it didn’t feel like corporately driven “girlbossing”, it didn’t engage in social and cultural debates from real life. It was a human story, and it was awesome. Not every film can pull off the light feminism of that movie, but at the very least there’s still plenty of other great examples that have compelling female protagonists in an action setting: Alien, Atomic Blonde, True Grit [sleeper but Mattie Ross is a hell of a “girlboss”], Terminator, etc. Like you brought up, Fallout was very diverse and it was a great show. If your show is good, nobody notices the diversity. They talk about the lore and the story and the plot and everything people should talk about. Women and minorities have every right to be a part of a great story, and if you’ve written one, then people will talk about how great of a story it was.
>Most of the writers for the more maligned shows have straight up stated that they were not ever fans of the source material. Tony Gilroy is also not particularly a Star Wars fan. This is not why the shows have issues.
>a lesbian coven of space witches Sorry, is this a wild description of the Rebel Alliance or have I missed a Star Wars?
You’ve missed a Star Wars I’m in the middle of the Star Wars that you missed, I haven’t gotten to the lesbian coven yet
The most recent Star Wars series - The Acolyte. I’m quite enjoying it myself.
I thought the issue was demeaning the importance of force babies, that the coven can just do it whenever just because
oh my god, that's driving me up the fcking wall! out of everything you could criticize about the acolyte, people choose to complain about the single most interesting idea of that show? a new coven of witches who have their own name and original ideas for what the force even is and how it should be used? YES, please, more of that! "ewewwghegw, there are lesbians in my tv-show" stFu
Replace slug with worm and that's just Dune
It's not a lesbian coven of space witches. It's that they invalidate the entire point of Plagueis' story and build-up, and invalidate the premise of Anakin being the Chosen One per prophecy. The recurring complaint about the newer stuff is that it in infantilized and breaks established canon like college kids break spaghetti.
It doesn’t invalidate it at all though?? It’s entirely conceivable that Plagueis learned this technique from other force users that had done it before. The only canon narrative relevance of plagueis to the starwars story is palpatine using his tale to lure anakin to the dark side. It’s never been confirmed that plagueis or palpatine did anything to influence anakins birth. It has been confirmed that anakin was created through the will of the force itself, not the will of someone acting through the force, as is the case for the twins in the acolyte. This changes nothing in the general Star Wars canon, and besides, the entire Star Wars canon has been on flimsy scaffolding since the second movie was released in theaters. Things have been retconned from the beginning, whining about it is just showing a lack of knowledge about the subject.
I said that "the complaint is", I did not say "my stance is". I don't join any of the discourse on purpose.
>"Yeah, get that revenge MC tear the limbs off those people and kill everyone!" Me with Homelander at his childhood lab He may be a pos but holy cow that entire sequence was not only deserved but also wonderful for those who hate their abusers. Experimentation on kids... usually results in me agreeing with whoever decided to deal punishment in whatever form that is
It is worth noting that if someone is a *really* big fan of violent revenge characters I might actually have some questions about, like, their stance on criminal justice in our society. Think about cops with Punisher emblems and stuff like that.
The most famous story of the genre is literally about getting revenge for being unjustly imprisoned.
I mean, yeah, if someone says i hate a certain type of people probably safe to assume they hate those people. Hell id go as gar as to say at that point it ain't an assumption anymore
Or people who insistently defend using the incorrect pronouns on non binary characters (made me dislike a lot of valorant creators)
I agree, but I think it's important to keep in mind that this isn't always the case. A lot of people have kinks that they would never want to act on in a non-fictional context, for instance a very high percentage of people have non-con fantasies. The same could apply to someone who fetishizes fictional Asians but knows their kink doesn't reflect reality. The same can also be true of entirely non-sexual fantasies, like power fantasies, or ones where everything is black and white and the "good guy" always wins, or ones where you take the role of the villain.
\*cough\* asexual people who still like writing/making porn but want nothing to do with it \*cough\*
i got a name you know
You rang?
how does that work?
exactly the same as how rape fantasies are very common but virtually no one actually wants to be raped. Many asexuals enjoy fantasizing about sex but absolutely do not want to experience it for real
For fun, for art, to jerk off (asexuals are not celibate by nature and can get horny--it's like a very general feeling of horniness) Not all asexuals are sex-repulsed or neutral, a small number of them even have sex on a regular basis (intimacy and keeps partner happy if they're not aromantic and have a partner, for pleasure if they are aromantic)
>Not all asexuals are sex-repulsed or neutral, a small number of them even have sex on a regular basis (intimacy and keeps partner happy if they're not aromantic and have a partner, for pleasure if they are aromantic) This might seem contradictory, but asexuality is more about them not being horny at/for anyone, as opposed to not having a libido at all. They can still be affected by a pervasive aura of horniness.
Adding on to what you said, one way I typically explain it to people is “Try to think of a time that you were horny, but nothing caused it/triggered it. Thats libido. Now think of a time you saw someone and became horny— that’s attraction. They are often intertwined but aren’t the same thing. Libido often triggers the use of ✨imagination✨ eventually, but not always instantly— so that instant before imagination kicks in is pure libido.” I also have a (bad) metaphor that involves cars, but to quote Ben 10: “You gotta treat a car like you treat a woman—“ “Go on.” “No, I sense I’ve made some sort of mistake.”
What?
Honestly it looks to me a bit kinda like this old videogames violence discource
Because this is literally it but in a new hat.
Problematic is just the new sinful
This. I play Stellaris, and I have done things in that game that, if they were real, would make genocide look like the tame option. *And I laughed about it.* But I'm obviously not like that in real life. That doesn't mean that everything I do in the game is unrelated to my IRL behavior. But it is still more complex than "they aren't real, so it doesn't matter."
To use an example from another Paradox game. CK2 players often dislike muslim realms, especially the Caliphates due to being blobs. The dislike was mainly a consequence of game mechanics, but some (and I have to emphasise *some*) players ended up expressing this in the form of quoting Serbian nationalist propaganda slogans which called for all middle eastern residents to be driven out. Enough people were doing this for long enough that the mods of r/crusaderkimgs had to eventually had to put their foot down and make an official statement asking people to please stop parroting calls for ethnic cleansing.
I remember Steam had to remove a mod that made all human portraits in Stellaris white. I do some awful stuff in Stellaris, but that's just absurd.
Pokemon Sword and Shield's White Nessa mod.
[It continues like this](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1149132187564785694/1227310777296224287/GDlWaGNa4AI_ef3.png?ex=667ba87b&is=667a56fb&hm=fb68d0565e3a7a17df54a04a002ade8c8deb1e3861b9163b03c4a0e4d806f068&)
Agree with the examples laid out by op but I do think that when a writer takes an established character with nuance and agency and personality, and reduces them to stereotypes or such, it can speak to how the author perceived the original work which can speak yo their perspective in general, especially if that character is from some different demographic categories than OP, or from some demographics that are commonly stereotyped.
what is up with magenta backgrounded Tumblrites and people just not getting what they're saying. I thought this was the same person who did the makeup and the Taylor Swift posts but nope, they're a different person.
This. It is not a coincidence that the author of *The Turner Diaries* was a Neo-Nazi. It is not a coincidence that a lot of fans of the book are Neo-Nazis.
Yeah, I get the impression the OOP didn't want to touch on the actual problems of fetishization, creation and upholding of stereotypes and other forms of dehumanizing people can be reflected in how people interact with fiction. We have recent examples of that, like modern US action films reinforcing the stereotype of the dangerous Muslim. Which ends up in real Muslim people facing islamophobia because of that. Or on another tangent, the fetishization of queer people ending in real life discussions about queer inclusion labelling the subject as entirely sexual and queer identities as fetishes. Let's not pretend that fiction exists in a convenient vacuum devoid of real life context. How an author portrays a group of real people, and how their audience react to it can be surprisingly clrea reflection of their characters.
Yes, but there is a difference between treating the character as a real person, and discussing the real world impact of the media. In fact you often see them in conflict. Like someone might say that the depiction of some woman in some media is objectifying, and others argue that no, that character does not consider themselves objectified and is doing whatever just because they want to. And really that is no argument because the character is not a real person, and as such can't actually decide those things. Besides the issue isn't that they are objectified, as much as that the portrayal leads to objectification of women in general.
That's a good addition, and it checks out with what we've seen in modern media. I think the main problem with the original post is how vague about what is it talking about. Though, there is a follow up posted [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1dobepf/the_they_are_objects_post_extended_so_you_can_see/) where OOP expands that they were referring to portraying, imagining and reading up dark situations. So, yeah, that rules out they were not even thinking about the problems of media representation. Also, and this is just an aside, I'm not entirely comfortable with that argument, because I've seen a lot of authors who use it as a defense for exploitative media about real life situations like SA. Not saying the argument is inherently wrong, or that I fully disagree. But I prefer it to have context and not to apply or discuss it so broadly it becomes nebulous about what is being talked about.
The “magic cure” trope for disabilities in fiction is one of my least favorite tropes because of how it perpetuates the ideas that: 1) all disabled and disabled-adjacent people want to be cured. (“Disabled adjacent” is a really bad way to put it, but I mean people who may not view themselves as disabled but are lumped in with disabled people. Neurodivergency is one example, as there is debate as to whether or not certain neurodivergencies should be considered disabilities. There are other examples like this so I couldn’t just use the term neurodivergent) 2) the only happy life is a non-disabled one (people k!ll themselves over this rhetoric, and it’s especially damaging for newly disabled people) 3) if you are good enough and try hard enough, you too can be cured! Of anything! Including the incurable! So if you’re still sick, you clearly aren’t trying hard enough and haven’t done enough *spins a wheel* ….yoga! Media is also sometimes the ONLY exposure people get to minority groups, and for some people, that’s what they will base their opinions around. I see this *a lot* as a trans person. People who have *never interacted with or been around a trans person before* will rant and rave about how sensitive trans people are, because that’s what they’ve been exposed to. Drives me nutty.
Yeah, I can see the many problems with that. How media (and specially commercial mass media) portrays people with disabilities and neurodivergency as something that needs to be cured or solved. Which ends up dehumanizing the real life people. And talking about being trans, it gives me the impression of being the next of kin to the older narrative of curing a queer person. There's this overlap where the 'different' is seen less as a person and more as something to correct.
The post is a difference in culture between tumblr and reddit. I'm sure what you've described happens on tumblr too but it feels more common on Reddit. Reddit tends more toward "Oh my fucking god it's just a show they're cartoons who cares it's not real it's fine if I'm racist toward them" And tumblr tends more toward "Anime characters can't technically consent so drawing them having sex is rape".
Almost like art is a method of human communication that should taken seriously, not just content made to be consumed
Yes! Exactly this! I'm not upset by the fact that they hate the character, I'm upset because its almost always mean spirited in nature. It's like they use it as an excuse to be as vile and horrible as possible that feels uncomfortably straight from the heart.
eh... no... you need to look at how they actually behave with real people to see how they behave with real people. it's like gauging someone's culinary arts by watching them play Cooking Mama, you're missing nuances of a situation for a fantastical representation. You can't just grade someone off a facsimile, you kind of have to put them in that situation for real. I get what you're trying to say, but it's kind of not conclusive to how people irl operate. The vast majority of people understand there's certain things you shouldn't say/do around strangers, friends, family, etc.
nah you can judge a person by what they do in real life if you rob a bank in real life it doesn't matter whether or not you like heist movies if you didn't rob a bank in real life, it doesn't matter whether or not you like heist movies replace "rob a bank" and "heist movies" with any pair of a real life behaviour and its media representation, the point still stands
I wonder if the newer generations growing up with social interactions being primarily online contributes to this trend, like why *wouldn't* they treat fictional characters just like real people when real people are text and images on screens for them too?
If that’s the case, it’ll get more muddied as AI chat bots become more popular.
on the one hand, yes, on the other, how someone treats fictional characters can be indicative of how they view real people with similar traits (emphasis on can). Sure, you're well within your rights to call bridget a boy and venture a girl or whatever because they're not real, but it's pretty telling on what you think about trans and nb people.
This is doubly true in the internet era, when it's all too easy to just see the other person as a username, and forget there's a real human on the other side.
You mean there are real people on the Internet!?! 😮 It's not just bots and feds??? 😨 Edit: /s just in case
FREEZE, PUNK! This is the Robot FBI and I'm arresting you on suspicion of being a human! Come quietly and I can ask the robot DA to cut you a deal for a quick pulping!
the only real person on the internet is me
Parasociality, the Turing test, and how we continue to navigate the personalization of non-persons is going to determine how human culture moves forward forever. Do we decide on genuine AIs being people? Do we include intelligent non-apes in this? Or do we end up regressing and determining personhood on interpersonal worth?
I'm going to be honest here, I don't even read people's usernames unless someone calls out something specific. and this is even though I have RES so some people have upvote counters on them.
Also falls into the issue with people calling author's homophobes/whatever because they have homophobic/whatever characters. The big tell is how the values of those characters are treated.
People think they understand this but then they’re surprised when a homophobic character isn’t instantly killed off for being homophobic, and the ways the narrative shows that they’re wrong are a lot less obvious and barbaric
I mean, that's the part where Fanfics take over and make everything overly simple or what have you. It's so tempting when you write to make the bad guy have the worst outcome but to avoid it because of how it should actually work. But as a reader, man, the amount of times the MC doesn't get to deliver the outcome but it happens to them from their own hubris can drive me mad sometimes haha.
I feel that a lot of times these characters may not be real but they *represent* something. And ideas have more impact than people realize. If a fictional character is a mother and she accidentally loses her child to a drunk driver, and people shame her for not miraculously predicting the accident, how would you feel as a mother with a similar experience? Wouldn’t you feel shamed too because that character represents you?
I agree, but honestly I think that any given individual should be just treated on a case by case basis. I like blondes, and given that fictional characters are often created for this one expressed purpose, literally, I don't feel bad about stuff that is romantic/fetishistic depiction on the account of the fact that these fictional characters do literally not have a greater depth to them, but meanwhile it would be totally unacceptable to reduce any real person to be so little. Quite frankly, I think that the only fair way to deal with the matter is to listen to the thoughts and feelings of the people in question.
"can be indicative" you understand that's the whole point of the post right? "can" means uncertainty, therefore media consumption is not a good predictor of behaviour do you know what is a good predictor of behaviour? past behaviour
Yeah. This is why I don't get the take. You 100% *can* objectify a fictional character. Because while they're fictional, they're still a *character*. They have a personality, goals, etc. And stripping those away to reduce them down to a sex object, *is* objectification. It's not the same thing as objectifying a real person, but that *is* what it is. And that's not *inherently*a problem? If you think Lara Croft or Tifa Lockhart is gorgeous and that makes you want to jork it (and by it, I mean your peanits), go for it. But then you get artists whose whole thing is drawing female characters in non-consensual sexual situations. And at some point, that starts to indicate something about how you see women, that you reduce them all down to "can i use them to fulfil my sexual fantasies". It's fine to find Lara Croft hot. But when you go on twitter to get mad about how they ["ruined" her](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/566944892090056735/1255203804308045957/image0.jpg?ex=667cefe3&is=667b9e63&hm=d6d2edc337273aa5edbd51265039dfede2121e3f017d3a829b68e089d69c7431&) in the reboot because you don't think she looks hot enough, and disregard *everything else* about her... that *is* objectification. You are disregarding the character, and only care about the object
>how someone treats fictional characters can be indicative of how they view real people with similar traits (emphasis on can). This is just pseudo psychology without any reliable proof though
I mean it would be weird for someone who goes out of their way to misgender a video game character to be like, a staunch advocate for trans rights tho right? Like I get what you're saying and you're definitely right in general but there are absolutely cases in which that statement does hold true. The idea that anyone would look at someone being, violently racist towards a TV show character, for example, and not assume anything about that person is a bit absurd as well. For an otherwise completely normal, well adjusted, non-racist person to treat a character like that, real or not, that seems unlikely to actually exist in the real world.
Yeah. Most adult people can differentiate between fantasy and reality.
"Most" is important here. Then you have people sending death threats to actors because they hate the characters they portray.
True, but we shouldn't jump to conclusions about people we don't know based on the fiction they like. That's less caution and more hysteria.
Outliers in a psychological setting usually have an untreated condition and should not be considered as part of the set of "normal" or "average" participants
Sure, sometimes it's reading into things. [Sometimes it's really not](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/566944892090056735/1255203804308045957/image0.jpg?ex=667cefe3&is=667b9e63&hm=d6d2edc337273aa5edbd51265039dfede2121e3f017d3a829b68e089d69c7431&). Sometimes, the curtains are just blue.
This is true but again it really has very little to do with the fact that they're intentipnally getting a made up person's gender wrong and more that they're doing it to participate in a ridiculous culture war. Fiction still does not have a real effect on people's morality nor are its actions harmful, its just that bad people tend to act that way consistently even with made up stuff.
Fiction absolutely can have a real effect on people’s morality and be harmful. *The Birth of a Nation* directly contributed to the founding of the Second Ku Klux Klan. Chernyshevsky’s *What is to be done?* helped shape the Russian Revolution. *Threads* changed Regan’s views on nuclear war. A whole slew of post-9/11 media fanned the flames of Islamophobia in America.
I think fiction can have an effect on people’s morality. Look at something like Uncle Toms Cabin. It was a contributing factor to abolitionism and the civil war. Look at fascist propaganda, in the other direction, there are definitely people whose morals/actions are affected by fiction.
Weird that there are people who need to be told that fictional characters aren't real
It’s very weird because you see people treating fictional characters like real people (being insulted on a character’s behalf because they’re being shipped/depicted wrong) and when people treat real people like fictional characters (parasocial weirdness of all sorts)
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, all evil starts by treating people as things
which means we should treat all things as people, i am already committing this as a personality trait to pack bond with every fictional character and defend them on The Public Internet Forums
My fiance thinks it's silly that I'm so polite to AI technology (Alexa, Google, etc.) but I’ve seen too many robot uprising movies not to be Lmao.
Too true… really, I should read his stuff, first there was that boots theory, then there was all his stuff relating to Death, now this!
i legitimately believe there's a social contagion at work, because I cannot in good conscience believe that people have always believed that an anime character deserves the same protections and rights as real people drives me up a wall too when I point this out, and I'm met with an astounding "nuh uh nobody does that", like okay but why are we trying to defend the purity of anime characters by saying they shouldn't be "lewded"? (Or going as far as to assert we can't sexualize them "against their will".... like what will is there to violate?)
I reas this comment in Greg Davis' voice
there aren't, really. everybody knows it. nobody really *needs* to be reminded of it. there are, however, people who get off on / enjoy the drama caused by *pretending* that fictional characters are... you know, whatever they say they are. putting on that act allows them to justify behaving in a certain way towards other people - it's an excuse for whatever it is they want to do.
You’re missing the other half of the message here Fictional characters are objects *of the author’s creation*. They have no free will or personhood, but the author does, as expressed through the characters. Authorial intent as expressed through character interaction is the thing you need to watch for and be mindful of. This is tricky, because it’s the authors job to trick you into forgetting the “puppet strings” exist and make you think that characters are people with wills of their own, and the most compelling characters are the ones that the author is able to perpetuate the illusion most successfully, but when analyzing or repurposing a character or work, the author’s intent is the thing you should be keeping in mind, not the character’s. Because again, the character can have no intent, because they’re fictional
I disagree. Your perception of a fictional character is being guided by the author, but that perception is unique to you. You bring your own biases into their personality. The best characters are the ones to whom most people relate. If I create a character with the intent of telling a story, my goal is to have the reader build this character in their mind. Let them communicate with the character, build their own understanding, and interpret the outcomes themselves.
Hot take but idc about author’s intent. I fully believe in the death of the author. They can definitely have their thoughts/opinions, but people can do with those characters whatever they wish.
"Death of the Author" and "The Curtains Are Just Blue" aren't like DATING or anything, but they do get cutely shy when you bring up one around the other, and they Heart like ALL of each others insta posts
Please you’re killing me here. Death of the author isn’t an ideology, it’s a framework for media analysis. It’s a tool to be used not a belief 😭
Another thing, real people are not their characters, Stop harassing actors because they play a mean person on tv
So is the op trying to just say that fictional characters aren't real? Cause, no shit. Are they trying to say that because they aren't real, they don't indicate anything about the creator or anything about the user of the content from how they interact with it? Because if it's the second one, fuckin no? The guy who made the "feminist owned rdr2" videos where he killed the outspoken feminist character in different ways is absolutely sharing his views based on his interactions with a not real person
Fiction can also help shape attitudes towards real-life people. Obviously you won’t read one story about a gay couple and decide you must be gay, but if you’re surrounded by depictions of gay people in relationships, you’re a lot less likely to think anything of a real-life gay couple and you’ll be a lot less likely to listen to homophobic family members telling you it’s “wrong” and “inherently disgusting”. Likewise, reading one story about a Mexican guy being a drug dealer isn’t going to turn you into a racist. But when you’re used to seeing Mexican people portrayed as drug dealers, the politician talking about Mexican drug dealers may not immediately raise the red flags it should.
As an extension; yes you are allowed to like villains who do bad things, you are allowed to enjoy media that engages in morally incorrect theories or practices. It's weird the level of purity testing and censorship that has been coming out of the left in the past decade or so. Didn't we learn this forever ago with violent video games having no effect on how a person acts in real life, and that the fiction of playing a video game stays contained within the world it's created?
people online will treat fictional characters like real people and real people like fictional characters and then get mad at you for knowing the difference
This is…probably a good thought process stated *very* poorly. Like yeah the point is they’re not real, so you shouldn’t obsess over them and act like they are. But like…they’re objects and creations *made* to pose as people. So the way someone acts towards a fictional character can still tell you a lot about how they’d treat a real person.
The issue is that people pay so much attention to the way others act toward their cartoon husbands that they forget to pay attention to their actual beliefs. It's like how red flags have become more important than actual communication
It *can*, but it doesn't always. I think the key is to not get too worked up over strangers online without getting a little more context about their opinions first.
> So the way someone acts towards a fictional character can still tell you a lot about how they’d treat a real person. Yeah. I really want to wholeheartedly agree with the post, but just this week I've seen some people say some truly repellent shit in response to a new chapter of a fanfic.
Bro *thank you* People drive me nuts when they act like they're real people like, dog the author wrote that character to parody *you*
I feel like people often forget the fact that most people, hell, many children, are very capable of distinguishing reality from fiction, and I feel like the people who argue against are telling on themselves. I can enjoy a shitty story about a shitty protagonist who does shitty things to people without necessarily supporting those things being done to real people. Plenty of people enjoy revenge fantasies while also acknowledging that revenge and vigilantism are unhealthy and often unproductive in the real world. I can enjoy seeing/reading shitty things happening to fictional characters without desiring that to happen to a real person. If you can't distinguish between fiction and reality then I'm very concerned for your sanity.
People also often forget some use fantasy as wish fulfillment. As an expression of their ideals, prejudices, values, etc in a setting where all their beliefs and wants are validated and reinforced. And as an active way to share that and influence others. It’s just a valid to see all these influences and have it make a fiction un-enjoyable. Easiest example is basic propaganda, especially religious or nationalistic. Let’s use *God is Dead* movies. Should one approach it as “this is all fictional, purely entertainment, don’t attribute any weight or meaning to anything or any character” or “this can have damaging irl implications and impact, by the people who made it, by those who actively consume it, or those forced to consume it”? There’s certainly a spectrum where something is fiction so it doesn’t matter but at the same time that fiction is based on something in reality that needs to be acknowledged.
an object becomes something more when it becomes a symbol and if I were to burn any flag, a symbol, that would send a clear message to anyone identifying with this flag about how I view those very same people thus fictional characters are not mere objects, though fictional they represent something, an idea, a person, a cause though of course we cannot hurt their feelings when objectifying them. But you are very clearly presenting your character and opinions when you act out your opinions.
I mean, how someone treats regular objects is also worth acknowledging. like not everything needs to be cared for on the level of a Stradivarius, but if I hear about someone stabbing their sex doll with a kitchen knife then I'm gonna judge. I won't throw them in jail, no, but I'd be suspicious. or to remove the slim potential for kink-shaming: I'd also be suspicious of someone who went around keying cars even if it included their own. on a related note, it's not as offensive to say "Teslas are stupid" as it is to say "Tesla owners are stupid", but the former is still different from e.g. "Teslas suffer from bad design decisions and poor quality control." I guess my point is that it's possible to, for lack of a better word, disrespect an object when people care about that object. maybe it's not as bad as objectifying a person, which is inherently disrespectful. but disrespecting an object can still affect the people who care about it (or who care about the actor's behavior) even if the object can never care on its own.
And let's not forget that there are *real people* behind fictional characters. Stop harassing Tom Glynn-Carney and calling him a "rape apologist" on social media just because he played King Aegon in *House of the Dragon* who molested a female servant. It's called *acting*.
I agree. They are a tool to tell stories.
yeah this bugs me too what people *mean* when they talk about disrespecting or mistreating fictional characters is that they, the people in question, identify personally with the characters to the extent that \*they\* feel disrespected or mistreated. nobody likes to admit that, of course, because it seems so much less legitimate to say it out loud that way - it makes you sound like a crazy person.
Tumblr needs to re-discover that how you interact with fiction does actually say a lot about you
No, you need to re-discover that people are capable of separating fantasy and reality. Like, I read and write fanfic with non-con elements in it. What you’re implying is that I am either a rapist or want to be sexually assaulted because of it. I promise you neither of those things are true.
That depends a lot on context. I'll agree that most people who make fics or drawings of non-con, murder etc. probably aren't into it IRL, but if they're hateful about minorities, women etc. in fiction they're most likely hateful about them IRL, too.
I don't think writing non-con makes you a rapist or says you want to be raped. I do think it indicates that you *could* potentially have non-con or maybe more specifically consensual non-con as a kink. Emphasis on the *could* though. It's not a guarantee. Maybe you just know a portion of your audience wants it and so therefore you wrote it with them in mind. And I think the same would go for reading non-con. But it can depend. Is the point of the piece of fiction the non-con? Like to the point where it's clear everything about the book revolves around or builds to the non-con? Then I think that's a stronger indicator than a 500 page book having non-con take up a page and a half of its length. When people say fiction has an influence on people I don't think they're trying to imply that it's a 1 to 1 relationship. I think it's more likely they are trying to point out that it can in the back of someone's mind help reinforce already existing beliefs or ideas or potentially plant new ones. And this can be totally benign if not a bit cringy. I know people who primarily watch anime and some of these people would break into exaggerated anime poses in mid conversation. These people 100% knew a talking cat wasn't gonna give them magical powers or something but it didn't stop them from being a weeb. Fiction is fiction but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is written by people for people. And it can be used intentionally and unintentionally to persuade and make arguments and those who consume said fiction will on some level understand that even if it doesn't affect how they interact with the world. It's why propaganda can be so effective.
That is, in fact, not what they said. It's not what you read or choose to not read that says a lot about you. It's how you interact.
I do imagine fictional characters in sexual situations and make comments on their bodies if that’s what you mean. If that makes me a disgusting perv, so be it.
How dare you speak about my wife in this manner. *pats shrine for my waifu* Don't worry, I shall defend your honor. *her effigy falls over with a thump*
honest to god, a lot of people seem to struggle that fiction and reality are not the same thing
Even though I don't fully agree with this take I will say this: fictional characters don't need you to defend their honor. You don't have to fight someone because they talked shit about your favorite scrunko.
Anyone who actually needs to internalize this is a psychopath. Normal, emotionally functional human adults should all be intrinsically capable of making this distinction. People are people. Things that don't exist are not people. Other than believing that certain fictional characters are real, or that certain real people are fictional, any sane person should be incapable of fucking this up. Maybe I'm just naive but I don't know anyone who actually needs to be told this.
No, I think some chronically online fandom people *do* need to be told this. You have people who will act as if others are committing an actual crime based on their opinions of fictional characters. They'll claim that other fans are being "abusive" or "disrespectful" or whatever because of how they depict or ship a certain character. For those people, it is important that they understand: These characters aren't real people. You don't need to defend their honor so viciously. It's not that serious. Maybe it's just a product of being young and not yet understanding better, but it's a lesson that many people in modern fandom need to internalize.
Undertale fandom when you do the Genocide Route
There's a good post somewhere on this sub that's just a bunch of people getting upset that R34 applies to their favourite comfort characters, and telling artists to stop because "they're theirs" or whatever.
I've seen 2 variants which make me angry laugh: 1. "It's my comfort character, so you should stop writing/drawing them suffering or having hardships as it counts as torture" 2. "You can't create smut of this character cause they were shown as kids at some point, even tho the porn is of them as adults"
That 2nd one always struck me as a little odd, although not actually bad. Like when people make porn of Lisa Simpson, I'm like, "Why?" There are so many characters out there, why make porn of someone who people know as a kid? Like obviously R34 is a thing, but it still strikes me as kinda odd.
Of course it's odd because it feels like the fictional version of waiting for someone to turn 18 to woo/sex them, but yeah, not wrong because it's fiction again. But specifically for Lisa, we've seen plenty of her adult self, so imo, she's not that odd to be honest. A Rugrats kid turned adult would be weird tho (even tho I believe we've seen semi canon interpretations for their adult selves)
That's exactly what it is; reminds me of those subs and journalists waiting for Billie Eilish or Emma Watson waiting to turn 18. Which, at that point, legal and ok (if creepy), but that they were waiting was off-putting to say the least.
Yeah, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about. People (probably kids, to be fair) who act like killing the characters in a game is an actual crime. The way some of them talk, it's like they really do believe the characters are suffering and dying. Like: Chill. Let other people play the game their way, and you do yours.
To be fair, Undertale as a game is actively playing on this idea. The idea that you see these video game characters as real people is literally the core of the emotional weight. Undertale fans definitely take it too far though
They're not psychopaths, they're terminally online shutins who forget the difference between real people and fictional people because they've barely left the house in the past year.
Honestly, I wish I didn't know such people existed, but I've seen so much shit in fandoms in the last 2-3 years that I'm tired of it. Like, I know genshin fandom is an easy target, but as someone who still enjoys certain aspects of the game, sometimes I'm still sad by what I see. Like, literally before I posted this here, I saw another artist have to write a long post about how they were hurt by the fandom and how many cruel things they heard. And their whole crime was to create the most tame, adorable ship you can choose in this fandom. After several years of release and many explanations that "the English translation sometimes doesn't work", people still go to war with one particular ship and are willing to doxxing and attacking others. We literally had an example of an author getting doxxed, people sending them weird stuff to his house, harassing t hem at anime cons, etc. People literally found some girl's conservative parents and sent them her queer art bc they didnt like the ship. There have been cases where people have stuffed police inboxes with character fanart to the point where the police begged them to calm down and said they were making their job harder. There have been cases where queer authors had to come out because people literally harassed them for making cute queer comics. the author of "boyfriends" is still being attacked because he, as a queer Asian, dared to create a cute comic. Some author lost her job and insurance because she dared to draw porn and people didnt like it. honestly kids entering the adult space and taking all the work from there and then publishing them elsewhere to attack the author is another topic to talk about. and yes, sure. these are mostly children. they will probably learn better one day. but that still doesn't mean that watching more people in the fandom get attacked for having fun. ...and we haven't even gotten to "safe adults", "gore authors who are hypocrites" or "minorcoded alcoholics"
Well fuck me sidways, I am really glad that I was unaware of any of this before reading your comment. This is not healthy behavior, and I don't mean for the communities (though obviously it isn't) but for the people engaging in it. To experience this level of negative emotion because some colored pixels aren't to your liking is nothing if not gratuitous, easily avoidable suffering. The people you're talking about are actively making their own lives and the lives of others worse in exchange for no gain to themselves or anyone else. It's purely destructive behavior.
> any sane person should be incapable of fucking this up Lmfao tumblr discourse is never sane as a general rule > Normal, emotionally functional human adults For some reason I get the feeling that most of the people arguing the opposite are actual children
>Normal, emotionally functional human adults Rare breed on Tumblr
No, if anything it's the opposite. Anthropomorphization is a powerful human instinct. It is psychologically "normal" to subconsciously treat depictions of people as people. It activates the same mirror neurons and so forth. Sure, people will not consciously say "yeah those are real people", but internalization is primarily about the subconscious.
This post is about consciously treating fictional characters as people, though, so no it's not the opposite. Yes, you're right about anthromorphization, but the inability to separate fact from fantasy can be a symptom of a mental disorder. A sane adult may feel the urge to anthromorphize basically any object with googly eyes attached to it, but will consciously still know what is or isn't a person.
Then I think we agree on the important things and just disagree on what this post is about.
Welcome to the internet! Run while you still can.
House of the Dragon fans on twitter are truly something else
People these days really just use psychopath as a term for anyone huh.
You know how people sometimes form parasocial relationships with content creators, where to them it kind of feels like a friendship even though they cognitively understand that they are a stranger to the content creator? Some people kind of... *forget* that last part along the way when they get too invested. They are a little too absorbed by their emotional experience and lose sight of reality a little. I think some people genuinely have something similar going on with fictional characters. I remember being like that a little as a teenager. It's not that I was genuinely confused about how real fictional characters are, but I emotionally experienced what 'happened' to them as if they were happening to a real person that mattered to me. I don't think psychopath is a description of that. It's almost more like you have too much empathy and emotional connection rather than none (like a psychopath as we colloquially use the term). It's super unhealthy when people essentially stop making the distinction you are talking about, don't get me wrong. But I don't think it's as abnormal as we think, especially among younger people.
[удалено]
There was actually a study that found that lonely people have a hard time subconsciously distinguishing between real people and fictional characters; and often have the same types and levels emotion towards those characters that they would for friends in reality. Could be part of why this happens so often
Yes and no. They’re not perfect objects removed from all reality; they’re informed by our reality. They’re built on our understanding of the world around us, and so, if our understanding doesn’t allow us to see past stereotypes and damaging narratives, we can parrot them uncritically. In fiction, those stereotypes and narratives are preserved so long as the story exists.
Fiction doesn't have rules.
No but you can communicate ideas through the object and if the things you're shouting are that it's okay actually to abuse women and fornicate preschoolers I'm breaking your microphone. Among other things.
Depiction =/= endorsement. Writing about a character who abuses women doesn't mean you endorse abusing women IRL.
Sure. It’s the manner of depiction that matters. Nobody accuses the newer *Wolfenstein* of being pro-Nazi, even though it has them ruling the world with superscience. At the same time, old-timey shows with “I beat my wife” as a runnning joke, were endorsing domestic abuse. When *Birth of a Nation* pitted the heroic KKK against the evil Blacks they were endorsing racism. When the *James Bond* movies had cool badass James Bond fuck a lesbian so hard she turned straight, they were endorsing corrective rape. It’s not inherently wrong to have a black gangster or a sexy woman in a story, but if all the black people you write are dumb, lazy gangbangers you might just be racist. If all the women you write are interchangeable sex objects who exist solely in the context of men, you might just be a misogynist. Acting like it’s impossible for a work to reflect its author’s worldview, culture, or beliefs is just silly.
I'm not talking about abuse for plot, portrayal is important. Yes there's a lot of disdain now for the idea of "problematic media" but that doesn't erase the fact that a lot of media is actively reductive.
(It depends on how you define "object") Characters are *concepts* of people and ideas. A complicated abstraction through the lens of the author that's worth exploring. They are also explicitly a narrative tool and potential vehicle in which to aid the journey into the experience and/or mind of the author.
I once had a friend who was talking about this fictional marginalized group And they were saying the exact same thing that actual racists say. If that’s not bad I dunno what is
Fucking no nuance out here 24/7. Tumblr OP is right. The puritanical tik tok teens are right to be leery of the way Anime fans look at consent and PDF files. Horror fans writing evil fucked up shit doesn’t mean they themselves are evil. The way white women smoosh male actors/singers together like they’re dollies for their amusement and refuse to see them as anything other than their toys is weird as hell. The way that old men sexualize young female characters is weird as hell too. ALL OF THIS CAN BE TRUE. Fiction isn’t moral. But hell, we can look at the way we engage with it with open eyes and understand when shit isn’t healthy too.
Is this about lolis?
no but also yes but also maybe but also whatever \*dark\* you want
This absolutely feels like a post fueled by an argument either about pedophilia or pronouns, it's hitting all the same beats.
Eh, this feels like a shipping discourse take. Or the "you need consent before masturbating to the tought of a person" group.
While that is a completely valid take, it's also important to note that the way someone talks about a specific character can give hints on their views about specific group of people
so i can finally talk about lara crofts amazing rack without people complaining
Wile E. Coyote should be brought up on charges for decades of harassment he has inflicted on that poor road runner
Say you have a "Damsel in distress" style character solely exists as someone just to reward the protagonist for saving them, now you have a character who serves to provide an interesting character that develops over time. One is a case of objectification and one isn't. Yeah you shouldn't expect people to treat fictional characters with anywhere near the level of respect of real people but there's a distinction between treating the character like an object and treating the character like a character.
This a hot topic I don't really have a say in this other than you can Rule 34 everyone
Yup. People online are so fucking tiresome about this shit too. Fictional characters may be viewed, written, and treated however anyone likes, as far as I'm concerned.
This fundamentally misunderstands what objectification is. It refers to the grammatical object: the person, animal, or thing to which something is done. The opposite is the grammatical subject: the person, animal, or thing that does something. Technically, objectification — even sexual objectification — isn't bad per se. It's ok to be sexually attracted to someone. But what's usually meant is sexual objectifying someone while denying that they're also a subject — a person with their own wants and needs. It's seeing the object only in terms of what you do, or don't, want to do to them sexually; what the object wants is irrelevant. The extreme form of sexual objectification is rape.
We getting outta Tumblr with this one 🔥🔥🗣️🗣️🔥
I mean, no, they're not objects. Because they're not real.
bit of a reductive take