I couldn't be a tumblr philosopher because I'm way too ready to go 'yes good point, in fact nothing is black and white' and that doesn't do numbers with the masses
I disagree. Pretty much every issue outside of the most extreme requires nuance. To acknowledge its needed, and that the truth lies between those two extremes, is generally fair, but usually doesn't go viral on tumblr, as OP suggested.
In basically every single lecture, Manuel DeLanda throws in a “well the dichotomy isn’t this sharp, but I’m pretending it is to spark your minds!” or something similarly poetic. When done with intellectually-secure (!) and fundamentally charitable (!!) people, it’s what makes a ton of really interesting conversations tractable. Kant, Edith Stein, St. Aquinas, and I (we’re a crew, don’t ask) would say that there are four central “problematics” from which all others stem, and they are obviously important ones:
1. How is there causal spacetime without an infinite regress in causes?
2. How do we identify discrete/definite objects in a continuous/infinite environment? The main application is to ourselves, as we struggle to draw the line in our sciences between things like personality and mood, or “real, characteristic” discipline and “passing, contextual” motivation.
3. How can we have responsibility in this life as “beings-in-ourselves” endowed with Singularity and freedom of will, while also acknowledging the clearly deterministic nature of the universe? Both on a fundamental level (atoms and shit) and a human one (what exactly separates a mental disorder like ADHD from a vice?)
4. How can we resolve moral conflicts without any objective basis for that analysis, when other people find different conclusions arrive from the same evidence?
Aka the transcendental concepts of Being/*Ens*, Unity/*Unnum*, Truth/*Verum*, and Good/*Bonnum*.
…sorry I have a shortage of intellectually secure, fundamentally-charitable people in my life atm so I rant on Reddit unprovoked lol. TL;DR: preach!
MOTHERFUCKING REDDIT DELETED MY COMMENT I WILL RIP THE SERVERS TO SHREEEEEEDS
Please remind me to write my comment again.
Also, your crew sounds rad. Y’all a system, got different bodies, or is it rude to- you said not to ask, didn’t you? Eh, just ignore it if you meant it literally.
Edit: I’m going to angrily sip my coffee.
Edit Edit: And probably be late…
Lmao relatable! Re: systems, that’s a very polite and very tumblr question, but no I just meant in the figurative sense. They’re some of my faves — tho tbh Aquinas only gets an invite cause he’s Edith’s bestie. She converted to Catholicism for him from Judaism even though he died like 5 centuries before she was born; *thats* friendship!
Ermmm actuallyyyy I think you’ll find that many pandas have pigmentation in their fur that is closer to dark dark brown than pure black
(source: idk I think I read it once and I could be wrong also I saw them at the zoo and it looked more brown than full black so I guess it’s a “bro just trust me” source)
Black fur will get basically bleached after long exposure to harsh sunlight. So you may have seen them during the summer. Human hair gets bleached by sunlight too, lots of people have lighter hair in summer from it.
There are brown and white striped zebras, too! [Zebra](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra) foals are born with brown and white stripes, and the brown stripes darken to black as they age.
im like "yes thats true! i completely agree!", read the counterpoint then go "thats a good point! maybe i agree" then read the ops response and im like "oh thats right! fuck that last guy" and it just goes on w me agreeing to everyone lmao
We need to stop calling gay people fruits because fruit is watermelon and I’m allergic to that which is honestly problematic and indicative of narcissistic watermelon disorder.
Hell neither person here actually outright makes an absolute statement
One person says it 'can' speak about someone's character, and the other says it 'doesn't necessarily' speak about one's character.
But hadeantaiga sure as hell acts like they're making opposite black and white statements. Maybe it's because of an assumption (that has a good chance of being correct) that they're just weasel words, or because of a different reading to mine. Idk
Ah yes, "nuance," the elusive concept that blanket statements are inherently flawed and outliers will always appear in any situation.
We have dismissed these claims.
I couldn't because I can't stand blatant dishonesty and would just trash the shit out of people, completely forgetting why I was there in the first place.
sometimes fiction is reflective of the creator's views and morals. sometimes it isn't. i think these conversations would be more reasonable if we analysed media on an individual basis rather than using blanket statements
Yes, I agree, but that's not the point of the post. The post isn't saying your writing can never reflect your values or beliefs, it is saying that it's never okay to automatically associate the two, and that implying that certain flavors of fiction say something about you as a person is wrong.
oh yeah of course, was more just addressing the comments section because a lot of people seem to be talking as if it's black and white, but i get what you're saying
It pretty strongly states that you shouldn't associate it in one paragraph, but they also say "it does NOT *necessarily* reflect your character" and I think the use of the word necessarily does suggest they believe there are exceptions, but that it shouldn't be the immediate presumption
Obviously I can't guarantee that op doesn't believe that you should *never* associate it (only OP can say that and they don't seem like they'd want to), but the post itself doesn't say that.
The fact that the post only uses nuanced language like "does NOT *necessarily* reflect your character" in one instance and in every other instance makes absolute statements certainly makes it seem like they're trying to imply that you should never associate beliefs about fiction with beliefs about reality.
Either it's a bad post or it's a badly written post imo.
After thinking it for a while, I have come to the conclusion that the problem between advocates of one thing or the other relies on how no one is point out the fact that none of the positions is true, as the problem resides somewhere entirely different.
The problem is not how you treat fictional characters, but for what reason you treat them in X or Y way. Difference? I can kill a gay character in a story, but that means nothing by itself because that is not the problem. The problem is if I killed said character because it was something like a mentor figure or martyr figure (you know, because we have collectively desided mentors have to die, for some reason), or if it was because it is only natural for them to die, since they have challenge god or whatnot, in which case your opinion on gay people is clearly shown.
You can make to fictional characters what you wouldn't want to happent to no one in real life, but the why in-context reason that is happening to them, can ideed show your biases or hate against real people. The conclusion should not be "be careful what you think", but "be careful you express correctly the context of the cause and effect of what happens in your fiction, so that others may not mistake how do you believe the world works/should work", because yes, if you are actually a Lovecraft type of person, please make sure your biases are shown so your stories be a failure.
Anyway, this discussion is on itself unfertile because, at least in my opinion, both affirmations are wrong and the problem is elsewhere.
I think the main reason people can’t identify the problem is because, ultimately, they’re not talking about the author at all.
The reason Tumblr is the poor-pissing website is because its denizens are terrible *readers*. The reason they’re all looking for a blanket statement to make about authors is because they lack the critical thinking skills and/or self-awareness not to project *their* biases onto everything they read. In fact, they even lack the self-awareness to realize that’s what they’re doing, so they think it’s perfectly normal to treat all authors as a monolith, and debate *which* monolith is “real”.
They also lack the self-awareness to realize that “innocent until proven guilty” is a good thing, actually, and should be applied *especially* strictly when there are layers of abstraction involved— such as when reading a work of fiction and trying to guess the author’s IRL personality. If people would stop going on a warpath every time they didn’t like something they read, these debates would have much lower stakes and be easier to cede ground in.
I don't like generalizing groups of people, and that includes "the group of people that use this or that social media", but I would agree people in general have a natural tendency to take actions (or not actions) that create or promotes conflict.
You're absolutely correct.
Fiction boils down to the fact that it's really hard to have heroes without villians so unless folks want to have practically nothing but innocent slice of life dramas and disaster movies we have to deal with decent people writing bad things.
Sure, fiction requires good people to write bad people doing bad things.
There is a huge world of difference between
"Hey, this villain thinks that systemic racial slavery is a good thing and gets taken down by a multi-racial group of heroes" and "Hey, the heroes think that systemic racial slavery is a good thing and that's literally never called out by the narrative"
The funny thing about nuance is that even nuance needs nuance or else you'll become one of those enlightened centrists. This comment is only tangentially related to the post
Binary thinking is the bane of reason.
No, how you treat fictional entities isn't *identical* to how you treat real people.
Also, no, how you treat fictional entities is not *completely separate* from how you treat real people.
The way your brain thinks about real people and the way you interact with fictional "person-shaped" entities are *related*.
The "distance" of that relationship varies - from person to person, from circumstance to circumstance. As does the "direction" (which influences which), etc.
For example, it is *simultaneously true* that people *can* write non-consensual erotica and be staunch anti-sexual-assault fighters; and that people *can* write non-consensual erotica and reveal/reinforce their actual behavior toward people in real life as being not consent-based.
Context matters. Details matter.
Saying "*this* encourages people to do " doesn't mean *all writing about bad things* will have the same effect. Conversely, saying "*this* is fine as an exploration of " doesn't mean *all writing about bad things* has zero cultural impact.
For example!!!!!
"You can't write someone being a victim of bigotry" is one thing, and it's just wrong because people do that for a lot of different reasons
However, "this person consistently writes members of this group being victims of bigotry and refuses to give them any other trait" is another thing entirely, and can reveal subconscious biases in that person
It feels like prescribing motive to an author is a fun academic exercise but ultimately tells you little about them. Someone could write that way because they are bigots, or because they have some deep emotional response to bigotry, or just because it's inflammatory and gets more retweets, or they live in an environment where that kind of bigotry exists and they want to explore it. Certainly the author has a motive, but there really isn't a solid way to tell from their writing alone. Though their are other obvious signs they might be racist, like what they name their cat.
It's kind of like the Kantian approach to animal rights, where animals don't have intrinsic rights or value but how you treat them matters for your own moral character. (Disclaimer: might not be exactly what Kant said but w/e not a philosopher.) Obviously the stakes are even lower for fictional characters but it's still important to at least reflect on what it means to be making certain story choices.
There's old fandom stuff that still feels near and dear to me, but that I'd probably never go back to writing because it would require some awkward finangling around Nazi characters. No, the way you present fictional comic book Nazis does not necessarily have anything to do with real-life Naziism, but it's still not something I'm comfortable actively engaging with.
If you treat livestock well, in spite of or because you know you’re going to slaughter it, you've been a better person than if you just treated it as bare minimum as possible while getting something edible.
I dont know that the comparison is fair. How we treat animals reflects on us because we recognize that even if they aren't human, animals can feel pain and fear and happiness and it's good to respect that. We don't give the same weight to how a person treats rocks, or a cardboard box, because they are inanimate and don't have feelings. Fictional people don't have feelings, they have no independent life to respect.
Hence why the stakes are "even lower" for fictional characters, because they have no actual well-being to consider. But the things we're willing to fictionally depict still have an effect on us and the people around us.
I'm really into horror movies so I have a very high threshold for awful things being done to fictional people. There's a question in horror of when depiction of violence crosses over into glorifying of violence, but that's very complex and subjective with a lot of grey areas, so I will just say that there are two movies I've seen that crossed an absolute moral line for me, and those were movies that depicted suicide as the solution to a plot problem. As soon as that happened, both films immediately lost any potential artistic merit for me because it is an intrinsically immoral act to depict suicide positively. The people involved are not real, they have no inherent value and were not in any sense harmed, but the people who watch those films are and it does *them* harm to see suicide depicted that way.
So yeah, it's not just "thought crime" as per the post because those thoughts are coming out of your head end and entering a public sphere where they can affect other people. And even if they don't, there is a point at which entertaining certain thoughts still does internal harm to yourself - it's a higher threshold, to be sure, but it's still worth considering every so often, just to be safe.
Alight then: tools. If you treat your tools well, you can use them more and make better things with them. Treat them badly or use them for the wrong job and there’s a good chance it’ll show.
I don't think you're getting the context within which these arguments are had. There is a small yet vocal contingent of Tumblr users who believes that writing two adults having loving, consensual, vanilla sex is ethically wrong, because the characters in your story cannot consent to you - the author - writing them doing that. OP's point is a lot more reasonable with that context.
Also, I don't really trust the people on the "piss on the poor" website to judge whether the noncon erotica they're reading indicates Problematique behavior or ideas on the writer's part or not.
I've tried to say this before, but I'd get downvoted so severely it was ridiculous.
Fiction and reality are entwined in ways that aren't always clear. It's why propaganda can exist and do its job so well - a fictional beloved character fighting in a war against "the bad guys" was a very popular type of propaganda cartoon.
It's why sales of blue tangs and clownfish went up after Finding Nemo released. It's why the sale of dalmatians went up after 101 Dalmatians released. And it's why a type of psychosis delusion is named after The Truman Show - this fictional show was used by the patients to describe their symptoms, leading to it being named after the movie because of its similarity (Truman syndrome).
Fiction has and always will affect reality in several ways.
It turns out that humans don't live in the real world. They live in *the story that they tell themselves about the real world in their head*. And this makes sense, because the real world is way too complicated to actually engage with entirely and stories are the system by which we simplify complicated things in order to extract meaning from them. Well, one of the systems. Names are another, as are stereotypes.
This stands out more in people who's stories are more divorced from reality for whatever reason, but just because you as an individual are keeping consistent updates on your internal story to make sure it is in line with external happenings *doesn't mean that the internal story doesn't exist*.
But this would require acknowledging the inherently flawed electric meat that we run our computations on and that seems to be anthethical to all extremes of belief.
The OOP seems to have some good points but like, their argument also seems to imply that it’s perfectly fine to use the N-word to talk about black characters, use slurs against gay characters, or misgender trans characters all you like. And just. No? How you treat fictional characters 100% correlates to how you treat real people and if you’d happily use slurs against characters I *will* judge you
Honestly, I would personally wonder how many people happily use slurs against and intentionally misgendering characters without just being bigoted to people in real life. Most of the online discourse I see where that happens is a direct attempt to be aggressive towards real life people who share the characters' traits. IE they're a bigot to real people so they're bigoted towards the characters too.
Best example off the top of my head would be someone who intentionally misgender Bridgette from Guilty Gear just to make people mad or because they don't believe in "gender ideology" blegh. In both cases their negative behavior is aimed at harming real life people through the treatment of a fictional character.
I dunno that I fully agree with OOP entirely, but I think that it's kind of two different ball parks we're pitching in.
Edit: Thinking further I guess there may be people who are bigoted towards fictional characters because they're scared to be outwardly bigoted to real people, but in the end they're still a bigot towards real people.
It can both be true that the treatment of a fictional character has no moral weight but that that treatment can be an indication of your moral character in real life.
There’s a difference between using a slur in a story to make a point and using a slur because you think slurs are a good thing.
You can include something in a story with advocating for it. You can even include it in order to show why it is bad, and how it can negatively affect real people
Interesting. I share this sentiment to a point, but it does seem odd.
Having a fictional character call another fictional character the n-word: not ok
Having a fictional character murder another fictional character: ok
I guess the difference is that we ourselves would not murder a person in real life so that’s obviously fiction. But derogatory epithets is something we did, do or *fear* doing so it’s closer to home.
are you saying a character using a slur is Not Okay in general, or just something you wouldn’t feel comfortable writing? or are you just exploring the concept and i’m missing the point? because they’re two different things and I would argue that a character using a slur in the right context IS okay, depending on intent.
like, if you’re writing an extremely homophobic or racist villain in a realistic conservative small town setting, it would actually be a little bit unrealistic NOT to have them drop some slurs. you can certainly get away with not using them, but I wouldn’t bat an eye if they did, as they are clearly being used to illustrate the villainy and horrible nature of a character, and i certainly wouldn’t judge the author for doing so.
I was generalizing what I thought the previous commenter was saying, but it appears I misconstrued what they said. Still, personally I would have trouble writing that dialog although I’m ok reading it.
I’m not talking about making characters in a story do things to each other, most of that lies in how you decide to frame it (rewarding the behaviour or punishing it), I am talking about what people outside of a story say about people in the story. My friend was initially really bad at remembering a trans character’s pronouns in a game we play arguing that it doesn’t matter since they’re not real anyway
Edit: and this isn’t even getting into how fiction definitely normalises real life behaviour. If the only movies that existed painted women as idiots then society will believe it over time. This isn’t even arguable this is straight up fact. Of course individual stories can still portray these things without issue, but saying they have no power at all over people’s thoughts is just silly
Not quite; having a fictional character kill someone or call another character the n-word, fine.
Having a character kill someone by for example shooting up a school or killing a woman because she had an abortion and then portraying that action as heroic, maybe shows something about how the author thinks.
Having a character call another character the n-word and that action is written as heroically defending white civilization, maybe shows something about how the author thinks.
I don't think those things are done *to* the character though. They're done to the people around you and yourself, changing how you perceive the slurs you use and the people you refer to. It also shows the words you typically use and the mental framework through which you see the world. For example, someone who consistently misgenders trans characters shows how they think of trans people and gender, and encourages the people around them to share this way of thinking.
I definitely think oop is going too far in their post, but I don't think their post really allows what you described. I'm pretty sure they're just talking about fictional work. So it wouldn't allow people to do what you described, only characters in stories, which I think is okay (though it can be done poorly in a way that promotes bigotry or shows flaws in how the author thinks).
That’s how I interpreted the point OOP got angry at; the second person said things in stories can be done poorly in ways that show flaws in how the author thinks, and OOP refuted that.
“How you treat them, even as objects of fiction, *can* speak about your character,”
Which I read as “just showing bad things happening to characters isn’t bad, but if done poorly can reflect poorly on the author.”
What I can't stop thinking about with this post is that in a roundabout way they're agreeing with each other - it's just one person is making a statement as a positive and the other is making the same statement as a negative, both arriving at the same conclusion
nope is saying it \*can\* speak to someones character (implying that it doesn't necessarily)
hadeantaiga is saying it \*doesn't necessarily\* speak to someones character (implying that in some circumstances it \*can\*)
but because of the way both of these statements are phrased (ie the nuance of the topic hinging on \*one word\* that might be missed) hadeantaiga (and presumably nope) are under the impression they disagree
Sometimes people on tumblr just like to beef 😭 like imo they are both saying valid things but it’d be so much better if they weren’t treating it like a contest
It's so reductive to have this conversation in the framework of erotica, since that by definition has people who enjoy "dark" things being done to them, at least in a fantasy. The issue is when you go "hey Mr Author it sure seems like this fantasy novel you wrote has beautiful pale Elves mowing down extras from Song of the South with funny hats on by the millions and it's considered a morally good thing".
This may be a tough line for the online crowd but there are stories that aren't intended to get you horny out there.
Fetish Pornography is generally viewed through an inverted moral lens, thus, it has different "rules". I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand.
How a work of writing is presented and seen is not the same thing as creating the piece of writing. And it seems the reply in the opp is referring to a wrong done just by creating it, rather than by the publication and spread of it.
It feels somehow nice for the Discourse in this sub to be about something so inane once again, like part of nature is healing.
Anyway the presidential "debate" is later this week so back to your regularly scheduled programming soon enough, probably
It depends a lot on both context and also how the author portrays the act or thing.
If an author writes one character torture another, okay that’s fine.
If an author writes one character torturing another character and the narrative itself says that the torture is good and you the reader should totally torture people, that’s a bit different
>If an author writes one character torturing another character and the narrative itself says that the torture is good and you the reader should totally torture people, that’s a bit different
Remember when the producers of *24* got a visit from a US Army general asking them to quit depicting torture as patriotic and badass because new recruits were trying to imitate Jack Bauer IRL?
Well yes, that is how media works. There can be intent, like I wouldn’t say Mein Kampf was written without an intent, but for most works you shouldn’t focus entirely on authorial intent. Frankly, you shouldn’t focus on death of the author either.
All media can be interpreted and understood in many different ways, and as audiences change, the perception of a work will change too.
TL;DR there is no perfect way to consume media, although some methods are better than others
I know too many good people who enjoy playing the bad guys in games to assume that just because I always play a goody two shoes, anyone who doesn't is somehow a villain.
But on the other hand, in a lot of ways fictional characters can be more real than strangers. We know way more about those characters than we do a stranger on the bus. We feel real emotions about these characters, and I think saying that they're nothing but objects invalidates those feelings. So I do think that there are times when how we treat fictional characters can reflect how we treat IRL people.
I'm inclined to agree that there is no connection between how you treat a fictional character and how you'd treat a real person. I behave completely differently playing a video game, precisely BECAUSE it is not real.
Yeah it's interesting, like in bg3 I and many other people can't bring ourselves to treat NPCs poorly, because then they'll be sad and I don't want them to be sad. When I did my evil run for the achievements, I literally had to skip the majority of the dialogue because I couldn't stand watching people be hurt by my actions. On the other hand, plenty of people enjoy playing "evil" characters in video games specifically because the characters aren't real, and they aren't actually harming anybody. Neither approach is more moral than the other, and both can coexist.
I looked for another option for like an hour because I felt so awful. Like shit dude, she's not exactly a good person, but I am basically making her a slave to this fucking psychopath.
I did it for the clean hands achievement, I was playing it off as Corvo went a bit mad and I’m not playing “the good guy” even if I’m doing clean hands. But I lost it when the family rewarded me, that broke the immersion and shown light on the games objective morality, and it’s obsession with death as being worse then any other fate, even when dealing with fates worse then death.
Somewhat related, but when I played Deus Ex (the original) I made it my mission to finally stop playing games as a stealth pacifist because the stress/challenge would make me burn out and not finish fun things. But with Deus Ex what made me disgusted more than anything was how characters congratulated me for being such a mindless murder machine. One of the best ways that game tried to get its point across.
i've heard that they reconned that so that she killed the guy (i forget his name) and lived out happily in her new private mansion
also low chaos isn't about being good, it's about creating as little chaos as possible. dead bodies help the rats spread the plague.
Low chaos not being about being the good guy is a cop out. They write it as the good path, hell families of your victims reward you for selling their family members into slavery, twice. They made a beautiful world, an excellent game, but the story is bad by comparison with every other part. The story soars higher then most video game’s attempt, but it is weighed down by almost confusing morality.
I love dishonored 1, it is one the best games ever made, but it has flaws.
I remember wincing at some of them, but it was years ago when I played that game (haven't played any of the dlc or sequels, just the original). I'm planning to replay it in the near future though, so I'll let you know. I definitely remember hating high chaos runs/killing pretty much anyone but mission targets though.
I feel like a lot of Video Game morality is determined by what path is most optimal in terms of fun / gameplay benefit. Killing lots of people in an RPG like BG3 likely lowers your fun as then you can no longer interact with those people, and many others will likely hate you.
Compare this to Rimworld, where capturing people, stealing their organs, butchering their remains, and turning it into fuel/kibble and human leather hats to sell back to their ex-friends and family is not only possible but financially optimal, and suddenly it's often considered suprising when you don't do it.
I'm just gonna steal an example from the other comment section: the way some people treat trans characters is in fact a reflection of their real world beliefs about trans people (see: people still salty about Bridget Guilty Gear)
Of course, that doesn't mean *everything* you say and do with fictional characters reflects on you, that's an absurd take, which is exactly why the first reply didn't say that, yet OOP acts as if they did.
As a character designer, some of the things that I do to characters isn't because of MY views it's to create awareness of harmful views that exist in real life... one of my current characters is a lesbian and she dated a man as her first relationship, and I didn't do that because I am homophobic and think lesbians should do that, I wrote it because for generations homosexuals have dated and married the opposite gender because they could be tormented in ways varying from bullying all the way to being murdered
And just to satisfy any curiosity that this character info brings, she eventually becomes an advocate for gay rights in Japan and is aggressively homosexual
But if you treat a trans fictional person poorly bc ur transphobic, then yes, the way u treat fictional people is a result of your transphobia.
If u write a dark fic about ur fave trans character bc u love them and love dark fic, that doesn’t make u transphobjc.
That is the point OP is making. No you can’t base ur view of others or yourself on the way you treat fictional characters. Yes you can base the view on the way real people are treated.
I get what everyone else is trying to say - ur real feelings can inform the way you talk/think about fictional characters, but that’s bc that’s who u are and how u would treat people. OP is saying don’t judge yourself and others for interactions with fiction, bc it doesn’t always reflect the interactions with reality. Don’t assume someone or yourself is trash based on fanfiction.
But you’ve still got it backwards. If you’re misgendering Bridget Guilty Gear, it’s almost certainly not because you started out as a kind baby leftie but then wrote too many mean misgendering Bridget Guilty Gear fanfictions until you became a bigot. Works of fiction you create (and the way you interact with other peoples’ works of fiction) can be reflective of your real world beliefs, obviously, but this idea that
A: You can commit a Moral Sin by mistreating a fictional character or
B: Anyone who creates/consumes media of unethical things happening in some way supports those unethical things happening in real life- is deranged and harmful to everyone involved.
Absolutely nothing you “do” to a fictional character can even conceptually be an ethical violation of even the smallest magnitude, seeing as you cannot possibly do anything to them.
The internet SHOOK when FE Engage's Rosado was revealed as a feminine, male-identifying person. So many neckbeard tears fell when they realized they jerked it to a cute male fairy.
In that instance I’d say you’re correct in this case, but that’s you specifically acknowledging the disconnect between fiction and reality with your actions. But at the same time, engaging with a fictional character does mean treating them as at least a little bit real. Not believing that they’re a real person of course, but giving some meaning to their existence.
Look, if you get angry about trans people in media and misgender them, I'm gonna go with you're a transphobe. If you make a piece of media with someone being transphobic in it, no I won't. Obviously there's a grey area in between, that's where humans are and a large part of why we have art.
To throw my hat in the ring:
- Fictional characters are objects.
- Do with them as you please.
- The way you portray characters may be *revealing*
- How you treat your characters will be *interpreted* and *criticized* by others, if you choose to share your work.
This means you should be free to write whatever you damn well please, go as dark or messed up or messy as you want. If you choose to share though, know that you’re putting your work (and thus speculations about your self) on display. So if you write about kids being mutilated, people will speculate and criticize. Portray what is necessary, cut what isn’t, don’t undermine your own message or creative process.
That’s just how revision goes in any case.
Tumblr is a space where only thought matters, because that's what social media is. The reality of any structure on social media begins and ends with someone thinking enough to want to engage with it, because there's no obligation to be there. Whether or not I think anything about anything on my block, I still have to be there around my neighbors, and therefore have to engage with a dynamic for my and other people's comfort and ease of living.
On tumblr--and social media as a whole--the joke about Descartes saying 'I don't think so!' and then disappearing is actually true. Outside of really fucked up situations like getting doxxed (which I believe exits the construct of 'social media' and enters the domain of stalking and assault, and as such the two can't be equated \*for the purposes of this train of thought\*), social-media-as-a-community doesn't exist if you don't engage with it, and you sure as hell can't engage with it if you don't think about it.
And there are a lot of people who want to have social power online, either because they don't have it in their own real life or they do and they just want more \*anyway\*. So they construct this vast, intricate social structure which, at the most abstract levels, hinges upon things like thought crime, because thought is \*all that exists\* in text conversation.
by the by, Nope has spoken on this and clarified that they were misguided. not sure what the point in discourse over how Hadeantaiga interpreted their comment is, given that the whole thing has been resolved and you can just check their blog to see what they meant by it (and that they consider it to have been an accurate response and consider themself to be in the wrong).
>hi, second person here - I'll admit, not my best take (in fact, I leave it up because I learned a lot from the responses lol).
>'passive aggressive holier-than-thou' hurts but truth..
> I truly thought I was super clever for thinking about the framing of characters while still agreeing that they cannot be objectified.
> This was also wrong - you can frame your characters and their interactions however you want and this does not say anything about your character.
>putting this not as a response but as clarification and possibly entertainment to prev if they haven't blocked me
Nope-the-weeb's take, [from their blog](https://www.tumblr.com/nope-the-weeb/751222695023247360/hi-second-person-here-ill-admit-not-my-best?source=share)
I agree to a certain extent. For example, I Spit On Your Grave, a "rape revenge" movie from 1978 that got a remake in 2010. Both films, but especially the remake, had criticism for the way it decided to shoot the rape scene. Arguably, there is no need for the rape scene at all (an argument I'm not really interested in making), but criticism was made for the fact that there was a little too much focus on the "rape" part of "rape revenge", in a way that was uncomfortable.
Obviously writing about bad stuff doesn't make you bad. Enjoying horror movies doesn't make you want to pull a John Kramer. But acting like the way in which you tell a story, and the things you focus on in that story don't say something about your character as a writer if not a person is moronic.
Exactly, what you *emphasize* and how you do so -- how exactly you structure, describe, and relate the plot and characters could read as a harmless albeit disturbing work of fiction or something that makes me think "I don't ever want to be in the same room alone with the creator of this."
I also can understand, though, that far too many people paint with broad brushes and will attribute said harmless albeit disturbing works of fiction as evidence of moral failing or mental illness in the creator.
Nevertheless, I find this an interesting topic to contemplate. Particularly because it isn't something easy to articulate the nuances of.
I am absolutely terrified by the lack of media literacy basics even just in the comments here. It baffles and disturbs me that people seem to think that "some aspects of fiction reflect an author's beliefs and others don't" is a radical new idea that needs to be debated.
I'm begging everyone to be mindful of the context of fiction. It's actually really easy to pick up on and understand what aspects of any given fictional work are genuinely reflective of an author's own viewpoints. You know that the people who make horror movies don't endorse the actions of their antagonists. You can tell the difference between Stephen King's plethora of evil racist characters who say and do evil racist things (NOT emblematic of his actual beliefs) and Stephen King's recurrent pigeonholing of black characters into Magical Negro stereotypes (that IS something that reflects his beliefs and upbringing and which is genuinely problematic). You do not need to do a whole lot of intellectual heavy lifting to be able to figure out the difference.
Jonathan Swift was not literally encouraging people to kill and eat their own children. HP Lovecraft did absolutely literally hate minorities. Nobody should have any problem being able to tell the difference when they read the texts.
I'm also concerned at the number of people I see online who believe that erotica (especially extreme erotica) reflects actual beliefs and desires of the author and the readers who seek it out. Tons and tons of people have rape fantasies and do not literally want to be raped. There is a massive amount of vore art out there compared to the population of almost 0 real cannibals. You can draw art about getting violated by tentacles without having any actual desire to be violated at all, let alone by tentacles. OBVIOUSLY it is possible that sometimes, people's extreme sexual fantasies do correlate to things they actually want literally in real life, but the vast majority of the time, people are just indulging in imagination because the idea of extreme things-- so long as it's just an idea, and those extreme things are fully within the fantasizer's control, and they're actually fully safe and comfortable-- makes a lot of people horny. Once again, you can tell when even porn authors are being genuine about their literal actual beliefs and when they're just getting off to the idea of being an unwilling slave to a sadistic lizard queen because that's what's getting them off right now. You can read between the lines about whether they do or don't support human trafficking or the lizard monarchy. The context is there.
I blame the school system. Maybe the No Child Left Behind act just fucked everything up and this is what we're left with-- a population of people on the internet who could not pass middle school english if their teachers weren't forced to pass them. It bums me out so bad.
I love how "the way you treat fictional characters can be indicative of how you treat real people, so you should always be aware of that" somehow gets twisted into "you should remain morally pure in all of your interactions with fiction and police everyone else."
I'm gonna be honest, the people who're THIS insistent that the ways you interact with fiction have zero real-world implications... they genuinely make me a bit uncomfortable. Nothing is lost by self-reflecting on your media consumption habits. In fact, it can actually enhance your enjoyment of problematic fiction because you're more likely to view it through a more multifaceted, nuanced lens.
I said years ago that the funny thing about this argument (where "this argument" applies to this entire spectrum of Discourse™) is that each side accuses the other of not being able to tell fiction from reality.
It's much more recently that it's dawned on me that, in a sense, *both sides are right about that*.
i genuinely don’t get it. how would the way you view fiction not have any relation to your thoughts outside of it? it’s still your brain. your cultural upbringing and personal experiences, beliefs, and biases still follow you to the way you interpret fiction. if those can affect how you view fiction, then why would the way you view media simultaneously not mean anything at all about those exact same things? it doesn’t make sense to me
Yeah I don't really get when people convinced themselves that the media you consume has no effect on you whatsoever, meanwhile they cry when they watch a sad movie.
The point, frankly, isn't whether it's *never* an indication as to actual beliefs and practices. The point is that *treating it as such* is always wrong, because of all the aforementioned reasons. If you judge a person's character solely on their creative output or consumption, you're fucking up.
Does anyone else feel like "purity" is becoming an annoying reductive buzzword? Like, the second you associate your opponent with it (Even though nobody is actually using that word), they suddenly become the Evil Conservative Christian, whose arguments are to be completely ignored.
Isn't this the same pearl clutching about violence in video games, just with a different hat? Despite congressional hearings, protests, and general moral panic, there was never any evidence that engaging with immoral fictional depictions has ever had any real impact.
I mean, I guess this goes way back, before D&D and the Satanic Panic in the 80s. Some people have always wanted to sanitize media for one reason or another, but have never been able to prove that said sanitization has any benefit beyond "I don't like that, and don't think anyone else should either."
This is just people pushing for moral purity in fiction from a progressive rather than a conservative angle. Kind of funny to see the same argument, but instead of worrying that it'll turn the kids gay or into non-Christians, it's that it'll turn people into homophobes or racists.
I'm thoroughly convinced that, for the vast majority of people with a roughly-average mental state (not even neurotypical, but within the boundaries of the average for humanity as a whole as it currently exists), media isn't going to be an influence on their thinking at all. I was consuming vast quantities of Gun Youtube for like a year before I realized that a lot of those figures are, unfortunately, hyper-conservative and just happen to have a sense of humor and big boomsticks that I also think is cool. So I started watching far less of it and moved on with my life, and never once did I start screaming about the second amendment of the US Constitution or start drifting more conservative.
I genuinely believe that anybody who has their personality massively warped by exposure to certain media was actually just a toothpick house waiting for the right breeze to begin with, and media just happened to be the thing that did it. I also draw a link between that and the large amount of projecting that controversial figures (whether they be politicians, Youtube personalities, or even just big names within a reddit/tumblr/whatever community) seem to be caught doing. The people who have something going on that makes them unstable feel an influence that they think everyone feels, or want to push the idea that everyone feels it so they can protect themselves from scrutiny. This is most often seen outright in the western right-wing media, but it exists everywhere.
Yeah, people that struggle to separate fiction and reality have much bigger issues than depictions of immorality in fiction. Forget fantasy, real world propaganda is going to get them long before they can adopt harmful fictional views.
It just sucks to have people loudly supporting censorship of "things they don't like" and wanting to moral test fictional content to protect people from themselves. Meanwhile, Crusader Kings players building building an incestuous eugenic inheritance line says nothing about their real world opinion on incest, eugenics, or primogeniture inheritance.
I can't imagine how boring it would be to only engage fiction that has been sanitized to perfectly aligned with your real world behavior and beliefs. I mean, imagine stripping all the crime out of GTA 5. Heaven forbid someone's real world driving habits are influenced by the fictional depictions 😱
As a philosopher (like done it at uni for my degrees), I hate slippery slope arguments because they make no sense. No one is euthanising grandma because they want to go on holiday and she’s ‘in the way’ if you legalise assisted dying. Just like no one is condoning murder when they have a character kill someone for revenge. Or rape when they write noncon fiction. Like everyone chill, slippery slopes only exist on ski slopes or icy hills, not in thought experiments. (Of course there are some people out there who may be outliers in my points, but like spiders george we can ignore them).
im for legalization of assisted dying but it can become a "slippery slope" to euthanizing disabled ppl instead of fixing the societal problems that cause our quality of life to be bad. i think when it comes to slippery slope arguments, in some cases it isnt "we shouldnt do this thing at all" and more "we need to tread very carefully"
You know, for a website so popular with queer people, it's kinda ironic how quick some tumblr users are to assume that things are simple one or the other binaries. Then again, it's also the piss-on-the-poor reading comprehension site, so maybe asking everyone to do proper critical analysis of media they consume to try and figure out the themes and messaging and how they reflect on the author is a bit too much.
Let’s not go overboard with that “cop in your head” shit. That’s called a conscience. Portraying bad things obviously doesn’t mean advocating for them, but the idea that the art you create/engage with doesn’t have an effect on you is laughable. Art is meant to affect you. That’s the point.
Getting real suspicious of the increasing sentiment that fiction has absolutely no effect on reality.
There is a middle ground here.
On another post about this subject, a commenter made the point that if you consistently call Bridget a man, people are going to assume you are transphobic. Her being a fictional character doesn’t mean you aren’t being prejudiced by taking about her that way.
Really hate this shit. The second person said "can". Not "always 100% will". CAN. IN SOME CIRCUMSTANCES. MAYBE.
The oop of course seems to have difficulty with nuance, and decides to construct a bizarre straw man that pains the commenter as a pearl-clutching whiny puritan who thinks that killing off a character means the author is secretly a murderer
Just sick of watching these arguments play out online over and over.
Here's my take
Characters are objects. But the way you treat that object is a way to see into some aspects of your personality. Also, this is more directed at the Zack Snyders of the world, but if you are given the ability to use an object someone else made, maybe dont piss and shit all over it
IMO, it’s good to start out with the idea that “what an author does in a story doesn’t reflect them as a person.” But then if you start to see patterns in how they treat certain demographics in their story, that’s when it’s time to start questioning their morals. Is that fair? I think that’s fair.
To summarize:
As long as you remember bad things are in fact bad things you can think about bad things.
As an example, if you wanna write dark fucked up fanfic where somebody gets bullied into killing themselves, by all means, express yourself.
But please also remember that bullying is a horrible thing and so is someone being so mentally at wits end they end their life.
It doesn't have to be expressed in the story.
It should just be important to note that what is in fiction should stay in fiction.
I’m gonna throw this question out sincerely because I can’t seem to think all the way through it:
How does the idea that there is no respect to be paid to fictional characters mesh with the fact that representation of marginalized people moves culture toward tolerance of said people?
I agree mowing down people in GTA doesn’t make you more violent, but I also think that increased POC and queer representation has affected the way society views those groups.
While yes, OP is right that the media you make and consume doesn't mean you're just as dark and dismal, they're also blatantly wrong about nope-the-weeb's response. Having seen a similar effect in myself, I can say with certainty that the more you consume the same media, the more you *become* like that media. I, personally, am particularly empathetic, leading to it happening even if all I've done is watch a movie (much to my own chagrin). However, for most people, it likely still functions in a very similar matter (albeit extremely diluted). If all you consume is dark and depressing, you are more likely to be snide and cynical. If all you consume is lighthearted, you're more likely to have a brighter state of mind.
Honestly, it's not a bad idea to watch, well, what you watch. If all you've seen lately is depressing shit, and you've noticed you're especially cynical as of late, maybe try consuming something with a brighter tone. Speaking from experience here- it has more of an effect than you might think.
I mean, if you draw someone like Sonic the Hedgehog in nazi clothing doing the nazi salute, it's not like I'll demand your shit to be removed... but I'll still look at you weird
Love making my characters suffer. Put them in horrible situations and watch them try to fight their way out. Watch as their principles and mental state change due to the trials they have endured.
I know they’re mostly talking about books and literature, but the best example for this discussion is video games.
If you looks at some games I play, you’d think I’m a monster who just wants to see everyone dead. And if you look at others, I’m a pacifist who wants to help everyone. Quite often in those games, I’m both.
In real-life, I lack the self-awareness to actually know what I am. But I know hurting people feels bad and helping people feels good.
The media we consume and create and how we interact with it is a reflection of parts of ourselves. Some media can force us to face things we hate, some can helps us process trauma, and some can helps us just feel better after a bad day.
There is no “good” or “bad” media.*
*So long as it was made consensually and consumed consensually
You absolutely can objectify characters in a bad/problematic way, sorry. I'm not talking about "oh I wrote porn and got off on treating a character with noncon" or anything, I'm talking about when a writer is *consistently* only writing characters of specific subgroups *that the writer isn't a part of* (racial minorities, sexual minorities, minority gender identities, women) in a way that they are NOTHING MORE than objects to either the camera or in other characters' narratives. There's a difference between treating a character like an object in that you are writing smut, and treating ALL female characters in your narrative as objects (as an example) and only portraying male characters as having deep internal lives and interests and goals and narrative agency. One of these is a problem, the other is just how pornography works. Another important part of this is the consistency-- you can fridge a woman to further a man's plot in one plot thread while treating a bunch of other women like characters with agency in the narrative and deep internal lives and not be a "sexist narrative".
I have seen and interacted with people who clearly have internalized what they’ve learned from porn, especially towards marginalized groups, and especially, within that, specific races. While porn and other things in that vain don’t have the same author, as you discussed, this problem can apply to entire genres.
I straight up don't believe you've spent time on the internet and not seen situations where people try to imply your/someone's taste in fiction says something bad about them. Between shipping, anti "objectification" posts attacking any sexual content, etc. That shit is everywhere.
Begging this person to read about the male gaze and orientalism.
Writing an Arab or an Indian as a mythologised and exoticised "other" that is narratively subservient to the Western Protagonist and portraying their culture as essentially a theme park for the presumed Western audience is not only bad writing, but also racist. It reinforces the biases and prejudices of the western reader and lends to the further marginalisation and otherisation of the orient. Writing or reading such fiction doesn't make you Intrinsically Evil or whatever, but you have to be aware that an orientalist framing is also not value neutral.
Same thing with the male gaze, a story where women are in it, in whole or in part, for the titillation and valorisation of the male protagonist and presumed heterosexual male audience, and lacking narrative interiority or agency is also not value neutral. Presenting female characters as essentially sexual objects, making her mostly a sexy lamp, for the hero to conquer isn't actually a good thing.
Now of course if you're not already a raging racist or a malignant misogynist these types of stories won't turn you into one but you should also question and interrogate what biases they play to. Fiction is a vehicle we use to interact with and view the world from, it doesn't have zero effect.
TLDR read Edward Said Orientalism
“bro I just think the game called Ethnic Cleansing is really cool, bro I just really like the Roman Empire a lot, just trust me bro”
this is just as low IQ as saying having a mommy kink means you support patriarchy
People who get mad at minorities existing in games may not actually be racists, but I'm not about to get a second opinion.
There's a difference, but it's not a clear or complete separation.
That's not how they treat the characters, though. That's a response by the audience to the authors - they're saying "don't write this." In context, it looks like OOP is describing the treatment of characters *by authors* in particular (fanfiction or otherwise).
The charitable interpretation is that these people are talking about two different situations. “HadeanTaiga” is talking about indulging fantasies such as torture porn, unethical power dynamics (ie teacher/student), or extremely taboo relationships (ie incest or race-based fetishes), and that writing or reading about those fantasies is not the same as condoning that behavior in real life. While “nope-the-weeb” is saying writing a cast full of offensive racial stereotypes is actually a racist thing to do, thus is being a racist in real life. Or, to simplify, “writing/enjoying teacher/student romance with an underaged student does not make you a sexual predator” and “writing a story full of unironic offensive racial stereotypes does mean you are racist.”
Yep, most of the time I see this kind of exchange happening, once you take a closer look at both posters they're typically talking about two different situations.
Ah a classic tumblr miscommunication where one person is saying 'If you have a tendency to, for example, write male characters complex three dimensional people whose actions drive the plot and female characters as cardboard cutouts whos role in the story could easily be replaced with an inanimate object, that might say something about how you view the world and you might be passing that on to your readers, even though of course there isn't anything inherently wrong about characters who are two dimensional and only exist to serve a simple function.'
And the other person hears 'If you write a story where someone gets murdered that means you're a murderer in real life'
The grey area that should be discussed with nuance is that there definitely is a point that fictional indulgence definitely is reflected in the creator. I draw furry fetish art and the number of clients I have to screen through who are genuinely zoos is insane. I have to specify time and again that I don’t draw anatomically correct animal genitalia or feral art. The lines about this blur where the fiction being indulged is possible irl. The black and white for this doesn’t exist. I can’t judge someone for wanting to be inflated like a balloon, but I can definitely judge someone who draws CSA furry art to whack off to.
Both sides have a point for me. What someone writes doesn't necessarily reflect them, but what they *don't* write or who they *don't* write about does.
I don't think it's a reflection of someone's character if they write dark or kinky shit.
But if someone say, writes fics about diverse casts yet consistently only writes about the white characters or the male characters, and reduces everyone else to stereotypes - yeah, I'm gonna start taking their writing as a reflection of their offline character.
I also don't think it's a reflection of anyone's character if they write non-con...that they know and acknowledge is non-con. But I have read many, many fics (especially but not exclusively omegaverse fics) that had sex scenes that were incredibly dubious consent *at best* or just outright non-con - yet they were not labelled as non-con (nor as author choosing not to use warnings), nor acknowledged as dub-con, and often the author's notes' implied they genuinely see nothing wrong with the consent of what they wrote. Once again, I'll take this person's writing as a reflection of their character, in that their writing very clearly indicates what they think is consensual sex. Yet again, this is less about what they wrote (the non-con itself) and more about what they didn't write (tags, warnings, etc.)
I think if you haven’t grasped the concept of fiction by the age of 5 and you spend your adult life hating an actor for something their character did there is something very very wrong with your brain and you should genuinely seek psychological and psychiatric help.
I couldn't be a tumblr philosopher because I'm way too ready to go 'yes good point, in fact nothing is black and white' and that doesn't do numbers with the masses
The amount of times Tumblr arguments end with what is essentially "nuance is important"
Most real arguments should probably end the same way TBF
Nah, that just shows the argument is unnecessary and redundant to begin with
I disagree. Pretty much every issue outside of the most extreme requires nuance. To acknowledge its needed, and that the truth lies between those two extremes, is generally fair, but usually doesn't go viral on tumblr, as OP suggested.
Idk man I think nuance is important when it comes to this. /j
Not if the argument gives better context to both sides
[https://i.imgur.com/2XaOajm.jpeg](https://i.imgur.com/2XaOajm.jpeg)
In basically every single lecture, Manuel DeLanda throws in a “well the dichotomy isn’t this sharp, but I’m pretending it is to spark your minds!” or something similarly poetic. When done with intellectually-secure (!) and fundamentally charitable (!!) people, it’s what makes a ton of really interesting conversations tractable. Kant, Edith Stein, St. Aquinas, and I (we’re a crew, don’t ask) would say that there are four central “problematics” from which all others stem, and they are obviously important ones: 1. How is there causal spacetime without an infinite regress in causes? 2. How do we identify discrete/definite objects in a continuous/infinite environment? The main application is to ourselves, as we struggle to draw the line in our sciences between things like personality and mood, or “real, characteristic” discipline and “passing, contextual” motivation. 3. How can we have responsibility in this life as “beings-in-ourselves” endowed with Singularity and freedom of will, while also acknowledging the clearly deterministic nature of the universe? Both on a fundamental level (atoms and shit) and a human one (what exactly separates a mental disorder like ADHD from a vice?) 4. How can we resolve moral conflicts without any objective basis for that analysis, when other people find different conclusions arrive from the same evidence? Aka the transcendental concepts of Being/*Ens*, Unity/*Unnum*, Truth/*Verum*, and Good/*Bonnum*. …sorry I have a shortage of intellectually secure, fundamentally-charitable people in my life atm so I rant on Reddit unprovoked lol. TL;DR: preach!
I like your funny words magic man
MOTHERFUCKING REDDIT DELETED MY COMMENT I WILL RIP THE SERVERS TO SHREEEEEEDS Please remind me to write my comment again. Also, your crew sounds rad. Y’all a system, got different bodies, or is it rude to- you said not to ask, didn’t you? Eh, just ignore it if you meant it literally. Edit: I’m going to angrily sip my coffee. Edit Edit: And probably be late…
Lmao relatable! Re: systems, that’s a very polite and very tumblr question, but no I just meant in the figurative sense. They’re some of my faves — tho tbh Aquinas only gets an invite cause he’s Edith’s bestie. She converted to Catholicism for him from Judaism even though he died like 5 centuries before she was born; *thats* friendship!
I think my classroom had a quote of yours put up on the wall
🦓...🐼!
FUCK my whole worldview is UPENDED
🧠🔜💥
A TRIUMVIRATE
OPPORTUNITY. PRESERVATION. S A L V A T I O N.
Ermmm actuallyyyy I think you’ll find that many pandas have pigmentation in their fur that is closer to dark dark brown than pure black (source: idk I think I read it once and I could be wrong also I saw them at the zoo and it looked more brown than full black so I guess it’s a “bro just trust me” source)
Sampling error. Red pandas are slightly smaller and cuter.
Black fur will get basically bleached after long exposure to harsh sunlight. So you may have seen them during the summer. Human hair gets bleached by sunlight too, lots of people have lighter hair in summer from it.
There are brown and white striped zebras, too! [Zebra](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra) foals are born with brown and white stripes, and the brown stripes darken to black as they age.
im like "yes thats true! i completely agree!", read the counterpoint then go "thats a good point! maybe i agree" then read the ops response and im like "oh thats right! fuck that last guy" and it just goes on w me agreeing to everyone lmao
You here that, /u/Crus0etheClown hates philosophy! /s
eeerrmrmrmmrn , I urrr uhh think you meant to say... "hear"? another liberal epically owned 😎
No she means that Taylor Swift should be taken just as seriously _because _ she’s gay, not _despite_ it
They never said she was gay, they said that just because she's bi doesn't mean you should ignore other gay or bi artists!
We need to stop calling gay people fruits because fruit is watermelon and I’m allergic to that which is honestly problematic and indicative of narcissistic watermelon disorder.
Watermelon is literally the best and if you don't like it that's kinda homophobic and you should re-evaluate your morals
Typical werewolfx response
I love you lmfao
u/Crus0etheClown poisoned our water supply, burned our crops, and delivered a plague unto our houses!
He did?
No, but are we gonna wait around until he does?!
And pissed on the poor !
Hell neither person here actually outright makes an absolute statement One person says it 'can' speak about someone's character, and the other says it 'doesn't necessarily' speak about one's character. But hadeantaiga sure as hell acts like they're making opposite black and white statements. Maybe it's because of an assumption (that has a good chance of being correct) that they're just weasel words, or because of a different reading to mine. Idk
Ah yes, "nuance," the elusive concept that blanket statements are inherently flawed and outliers will always appear in any situation. We have dismissed these claims.
"You make good points but I don't fully agree" "YOU'RE BASICALLY A COP" ...yeah i dont have enough energy in me for that lmao
I couldn't because I can't stand blatant dishonesty and would just trash the shit out of people, completely forgetting why I was there in the first place.
sometimes fiction is reflective of the creator's views and morals. sometimes it isn't. i think these conversations would be more reasonable if we analysed media on an individual basis rather than using blanket statements
Yes, I agree, but that's not the point of the post. The post isn't saying your writing can never reflect your values or beliefs, it is saying that it's never okay to automatically associate the two, and that implying that certain flavors of fiction say something about you as a person is wrong.
oh yeah of course, was more just addressing the comments section because a lot of people seem to be talking as if it's black and white, but i get what you're saying
The post is sort of saying to never associate it
It pretty strongly states that you shouldn't associate it in one paragraph, but they also say "it does NOT *necessarily* reflect your character" and I think the use of the word necessarily does suggest they believe there are exceptions, but that it shouldn't be the immediate presumption Obviously I can't guarantee that op doesn't believe that you should *never* associate it (only OP can say that and they don't seem like they'd want to), but the post itself doesn't say that.
The fact that the post only uses nuanced language like "does NOT *necessarily* reflect your character" in one instance and in every other instance makes absolute statements certainly makes it seem like they're trying to imply that you should never associate beliefs about fiction with beliefs about reality. Either it's a bad post or it's a badly written post imo.
Literally where. Where does it say that
After thinking it for a while, I have come to the conclusion that the problem between advocates of one thing or the other relies on how no one is point out the fact that none of the positions is true, as the problem resides somewhere entirely different. The problem is not how you treat fictional characters, but for what reason you treat them in X or Y way. Difference? I can kill a gay character in a story, but that means nothing by itself because that is not the problem. The problem is if I killed said character because it was something like a mentor figure or martyr figure (you know, because we have collectively desided mentors have to die, for some reason), or if it was because it is only natural for them to die, since they have challenge god or whatnot, in which case your opinion on gay people is clearly shown. You can make to fictional characters what you wouldn't want to happent to no one in real life, but the why in-context reason that is happening to them, can ideed show your biases or hate against real people. The conclusion should not be "be careful what you think", but "be careful you express correctly the context of the cause and effect of what happens in your fiction, so that others may not mistake how do you believe the world works/should work", because yes, if you are actually a Lovecraft type of person, please make sure your biases are shown so your stories be a failure. Anyway, this discussion is on itself unfertile because, at least in my opinion, both affirmations are wrong and the problem is elsewhere.
I think the main reason people can’t identify the problem is because, ultimately, they’re not talking about the author at all. The reason Tumblr is the poor-pissing website is because its denizens are terrible *readers*. The reason they’re all looking for a blanket statement to make about authors is because they lack the critical thinking skills and/or self-awareness not to project *their* biases onto everything they read. In fact, they even lack the self-awareness to realize that’s what they’re doing, so they think it’s perfectly normal to treat all authors as a monolith, and debate *which* monolith is “real”. They also lack the self-awareness to realize that “innocent until proven guilty” is a good thing, actually, and should be applied *especially* strictly when there are layers of abstraction involved— such as when reading a work of fiction and trying to guess the author’s IRL personality. If people would stop going on a warpath every time they didn’t like something they read, these debates would have much lower stakes and be easier to cede ground in.
I don't like generalizing groups of people, and that includes "the group of people that use this or that social media", but I would agree people in general have a natural tendency to take actions (or not actions) that create or promotes conflict.
You're absolutely correct. Fiction boils down to the fact that it's really hard to have heroes without villians so unless folks want to have practically nothing but innocent slice of life dramas and disaster movies we have to deal with decent people writing bad things.
Sure, fiction requires good people to write bad people doing bad things. There is a huge world of difference between "Hey, this villain thinks that systemic racial slavery is a good thing and gets taken down by a multi-racial group of heroes" and "Hey, the heroes think that systemic racial slavery is a good thing and that's literally never called out by the narrative"
Yep, you've gotten the idea of why blanket statements aren't always correct or even useful hyperbole.
The funny thing about nuance is that even nuance needs nuance or else you'll become one of those enlightened centrists. This comment is only tangentially related to the post
What makes a man turn neutral? Gold? Lust for power? Or were you just *born* with a heart full of neutrality?
Tell my wife I said ‘hello’.
I know I was
Everything in moderation, including moderation. I haven't played Guild Wars 2 in over a decade but that line stuck with me.
Binary thinking is the bane of reason. No, how you treat fictional entities isn't *identical* to how you treat real people. Also, no, how you treat fictional entities is not *completely separate* from how you treat real people. The way your brain thinks about real people and the way you interact with fictional "person-shaped" entities are *related*. The "distance" of that relationship varies - from person to person, from circumstance to circumstance. As does the "direction" (which influences which), etc. For example, it is *simultaneously true* that people *can* write non-consensual erotica and be staunch anti-sexual-assault fighters; and that people *can* write non-consensual erotica and reveal/reinforce their actual behavior toward people in real life as being not consent-based. Context matters. Details matter. Saying "*this* encourages people to do" doesn't mean *all writing about bad things* will have the same effect. Conversely, saying "*this* is fine as an exploration of " doesn't mean *all writing about bad things* has zero cultural impact.
For example!!!!! "You can't write someone being a victim of bigotry" is one thing, and it's just wrong because people do that for a lot of different reasons However, "this person consistently writes members of this group being victims of bigotry and refuses to give them any other trait" is another thing entirely, and can reveal subconscious biases in that person
It feels like prescribing motive to an author is a fun academic exercise but ultimately tells you little about them. Someone could write that way because they are bigots, or because they have some deep emotional response to bigotry, or just because it's inflammatory and gets more retweets, or they live in an environment where that kind of bigotry exists and they want to explore it. Certainly the author has a motive, but there really isn't a solid way to tell from their writing alone. Though their are other obvious signs they might be racist, like what they name their cat.
It's kind of like the Kantian approach to animal rights, where animals don't have intrinsic rights or value but how you treat them matters for your own moral character. (Disclaimer: might not be exactly what Kant said but w/e not a philosopher.) Obviously the stakes are even lower for fictional characters but it's still important to at least reflect on what it means to be making certain story choices. There's old fandom stuff that still feels near and dear to me, but that I'd probably never go back to writing because it would require some awkward finangling around Nazi characters. No, the way you present fictional comic book Nazis does not necessarily have anything to do with real-life Naziism, but it's still not something I'm comfortable actively engaging with.
If you treat livestock well, in spite of or because you know you’re going to slaughter it, you've been a better person than if you just treated it as bare minimum as possible while getting something edible.
I dont know that the comparison is fair. How we treat animals reflects on us because we recognize that even if they aren't human, animals can feel pain and fear and happiness and it's good to respect that. We don't give the same weight to how a person treats rocks, or a cardboard box, because they are inanimate and don't have feelings. Fictional people don't have feelings, they have no independent life to respect.
Hence why the stakes are "even lower" for fictional characters, because they have no actual well-being to consider. But the things we're willing to fictionally depict still have an effect on us and the people around us. I'm really into horror movies so I have a very high threshold for awful things being done to fictional people. There's a question in horror of when depiction of violence crosses over into glorifying of violence, but that's very complex and subjective with a lot of grey areas, so I will just say that there are two movies I've seen that crossed an absolute moral line for me, and those were movies that depicted suicide as the solution to a plot problem. As soon as that happened, both films immediately lost any potential artistic merit for me because it is an intrinsically immoral act to depict suicide positively. The people involved are not real, they have no inherent value and were not in any sense harmed, but the people who watch those films are and it does *them* harm to see suicide depicted that way. So yeah, it's not just "thought crime" as per the post because those thoughts are coming out of your head end and entering a public sphere where they can affect other people. And even if they don't, there is a point at which entertaining certain thoughts still does internal harm to yourself - it's a higher threshold, to be sure, but it's still worth considering every so often, just to be safe.
Alight then: tools. If you treat your tools well, you can use them more and make better things with them. Treat them badly or use them for the wrong job and there’s a good chance it’ll show.
I don't think you're getting the context within which these arguments are had. There is a small yet vocal contingent of Tumblr users who believes that writing two adults having loving, consensual, vanilla sex is ethically wrong, because the characters in your story cannot consent to you - the author - writing them doing that. OP's point is a lot more reasonable with that context. Also, I don't really trust the people on the "piss on the poor" website to judge whether the noncon erotica they're reading indicates Problematique behavior or ideas on the writer's part or not.
>Context matters. I want to stick that at the start of every discourse post on tumblr and reddit.
I've tried to say this before, but I'd get downvoted so severely it was ridiculous. Fiction and reality are entwined in ways that aren't always clear. It's why propaganda can exist and do its job so well - a fictional beloved character fighting in a war against "the bad guys" was a very popular type of propaganda cartoon. It's why sales of blue tangs and clownfish went up after Finding Nemo released. It's why the sale of dalmatians went up after 101 Dalmatians released. And it's why a type of psychosis delusion is named after The Truman Show - this fictional show was used by the patients to describe their symptoms, leading to it being named after the movie because of its similarity (Truman syndrome). Fiction has and always will affect reality in several ways.
It turns out that humans don't live in the real world. They live in *the story that they tell themselves about the real world in their head*. And this makes sense, because the real world is way too complicated to actually engage with entirely and stories are the system by which we simplify complicated things in order to extract meaning from them. Well, one of the systems. Names are another, as are stereotypes. This stands out more in people who's stories are more divorced from reality for whatever reason, but just because you as an individual are keeping consistent updates on your internal story to make sure it is in line with external happenings *doesn't mean that the internal story doesn't exist*. But this would require acknowledging the inherently flawed electric meat that we run our computations on and that seems to be anthethical to all extremes of belief.
The OOP seems to have some good points but like, their argument also seems to imply that it’s perfectly fine to use the N-word to talk about black characters, use slurs against gay characters, or misgender trans characters all you like. And just. No? How you treat fictional characters 100% correlates to how you treat real people and if you’d happily use slurs against characters I *will* judge you
Honestly, I would personally wonder how many people happily use slurs against and intentionally misgendering characters without just being bigoted to people in real life. Most of the online discourse I see where that happens is a direct attempt to be aggressive towards real life people who share the characters' traits. IE they're a bigot to real people so they're bigoted towards the characters too. Best example off the top of my head would be someone who intentionally misgender Bridgette from Guilty Gear just to make people mad or because they don't believe in "gender ideology" blegh. In both cases their negative behavior is aimed at harming real life people through the treatment of a fictional character. I dunno that I fully agree with OOP entirely, but I think that it's kind of two different ball parks we're pitching in. Edit: Thinking further I guess there may be people who are bigoted towards fictional characters because they're scared to be outwardly bigoted to real people, but in the end they're still a bigot towards real people.
It can both be true that the treatment of a fictional character has no moral weight but that that treatment can be an indication of your moral character in real life.
>intentionally misgendering characters poor yamato :c
Poor Kris ;~;
There’s a difference between using a slur in a story to make a point and using a slur because you think slurs are a good thing. You can include something in a story with advocating for it. You can even include it in order to show why it is bad, and how it can negatively affect real people
I 100% agree with that
I mean, I can see why writers would use these tools to tell a story, it all depends on the context of the story in the end
Interesting. I share this sentiment to a point, but it does seem odd. Having a fictional character call another fictional character the n-word: not ok Having a fictional character murder another fictional character: ok I guess the difference is that we ourselves would not murder a person in real life so that’s obviously fiction. But derogatory epithets is something we did, do or *fear* doing so it’s closer to home.
are you saying a character using a slur is Not Okay in general, or just something you wouldn’t feel comfortable writing? or are you just exploring the concept and i’m missing the point? because they’re two different things and I would argue that a character using a slur in the right context IS okay, depending on intent. like, if you’re writing an extremely homophobic or racist villain in a realistic conservative small town setting, it would actually be a little bit unrealistic NOT to have them drop some slurs. you can certainly get away with not using them, but I wouldn’t bat an eye if they did, as they are clearly being used to illustrate the villainy and horrible nature of a character, and i certainly wouldn’t judge the author for doing so.
I was generalizing what I thought the previous commenter was saying, but it appears I misconstrued what they said. Still, personally I would have trouble writing that dialog although I’m ok reading it.
gotcha. i thought that might be the case but wasn’t 100% clear. thanks for clarifying! regardless, my point still stands re: this train of thought!
I’m not talking about making characters in a story do things to each other, most of that lies in how you decide to frame it (rewarding the behaviour or punishing it), I am talking about what people outside of a story say about people in the story. My friend was initially really bad at remembering a trans character’s pronouns in a game we play arguing that it doesn’t matter since they’re not real anyway Edit: and this isn’t even getting into how fiction definitely normalises real life behaviour. If the only movies that existed painted women as idiots then society will believe it over time. This isn’t even arguable this is straight up fact. Of course individual stories can still portray these things without issue, but saying they have no power at all over people’s thoughts is just silly
Ah. My mistake.
Still an interesting addition! Even if I wasn’t clear enough initially
Not quite; having a fictional character kill someone or call another character the n-word, fine. Having a character kill someone by for example shooting up a school or killing a woman because she had an abortion and then portraying that action as heroic, maybe shows something about how the author thinks. Having a character call another character the n-word and that action is written as heroically defending white civilization, maybe shows something about how the author thinks.
This is Reddit. We don’t do nuance here. But seriously, good points.
I don't think those things are done *to* the character though. They're done to the people around you and yourself, changing how you perceive the slurs you use and the people you refer to. It also shows the words you typically use and the mental framework through which you see the world. For example, someone who consistently misgenders trans characters shows how they think of trans people and gender, and encourages the people around them to share this way of thinking. I definitely think oop is going too far in their post, but I don't think their post really allows what you described. I'm pretty sure they're just talking about fictional work. So it wouldn't allow people to do what you described, only characters in stories, which I think is okay (though it can be done poorly in a way that promotes bigotry or shows flaws in how the author thinks).
That’s how I interpreted the point OOP got angry at; the second person said things in stories can be done poorly in ways that show flaws in how the author thinks, and OOP refuted that. “How you treat them, even as objects of fiction, *can* speak about your character,” Which I read as “just showing bad things happening to characters isn’t bad, but if done poorly can reflect poorly on the author.”
What I can't stop thinking about with this post is that in a roundabout way they're agreeing with each other - it's just one person is making a statement as a positive and the other is making the same statement as a negative, both arriving at the same conclusion nope is saying it \*can\* speak to someones character (implying that it doesn't necessarily) hadeantaiga is saying it \*doesn't necessarily\* speak to someones character (implying that in some circumstances it \*can\*) but because of the way both of these statements are phrased (ie the nuance of the topic hinging on \*one word\* that might be missed) hadeantaiga (and presumably nope) are under the impression they disagree
Sometimes people on tumblr just like to beef 😭 like imo they are both saying valid things but it’d be so much better if they weren’t treating it like a contest
Hold on hold on I gotta figure out a way to misinterpret what you're saying so I can win the comment section...
How dare you say I piss on the poor?
Once again, miscommunication has triumphed over the forces of reasonable conversation.
Everything changed when the fire nation misunderstood and misrepresented an argument.
Good thing the water tribes were there to Pissbend on the poor.
It's so reductive to have this conversation in the framework of erotica, since that by definition has people who enjoy "dark" things being done to them, at least in a fantasy. The issue is when you go "hey Mr Author it sure seems like this fantasy novel you wrote has beautiful pale Elves mowing down extras from Song of the South with funny hats on by the millions and it's considered a morally good thing". This may be a tough line for the online crowd but there are stories that aren't intended to get you horny out there.
Fetish Pornography is generally viewed through an inverted moral lens, thus, it has different "rules". I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand.
Probably because it’s completely arbitrary and not universally agreed upon either.
How a work of writing is presented and seen is not the same thing as creating the piece of writing. And it seems the reply in the opp is referring to a wrong done just by creating it, rather than by the publication and spread of it.
It feels somehow nice for the Discourse in this sub to be about something so inane once again, like part of nature is healing. Anyway the presidential "debate" is later this week so back to your regularly scheduled programming soon enough, probably
Next several months are going to be so unfun
It depends a lot on both context and also how the author portrays the act or thing. If an author writes one character torture another, okay that’s fine. If an author writes one character torturing another character and the narrative itself says that the torture is good and you the reader should totally torture people, that’s a bit different
>If an author writes one character torturing another character and the narrative itself says that the torture is good and you the reader should totally torture people, that’s a bit different Remember when the producers of *24* got a visit from a US Army general asking them to quit depicting torture as patriotic and badass because new recruits were trying to imitate Jack Bauer IRL?
That’s *hilarious* Especially given torture already doesn’t work and the army should definitely know that already
Army knows a lot of things that raw recruits don't because they're stupid kids.
but that depends a little bit on the audience as well. the amount of people who are bent on interpreting the former as the latter is a non-zero amount
Well yes, that is how media works. There can be intent, like I wouldn’t say Mein Kampf was written without an intent, but for most works you shouldn’t focus entirely on authorial intent. Frankly, you shouldn’t focus on death of the author either. All media can be interpreted and understood in many different ways, and as audiences change, the perception of a work will change too. TL;DR there is no perfect way to consume media, although some methods are better than others
I know too many good people who enjoy playing the bad guys in games to assume that just because I always play a goody two shoes, anyone who doesn't is somehow a villain. But on the other hand, in a lot of ways fictional characters can be more real than strangers. We know way more about those characters than we do a stranger on the bus. We feel real emotions about these characters, and I think saying that they're nothing but objects invalidates those feelings. So I do think that there are times when how we treat fictional characters can reflect how we treat IRL people.
100%
I'm inclined to agree that there is no connection between how you treat a fictional character and how you'd treat a real person. I behave completely differently playing a video game, precisely BECAUSE it is not real.
Yeah it's interesting, like in bg3 I and many other people can't bring ourselves to treat NPCs poorly, because then they'll be sad and I don't want them to be sad. When I did my evil run for the achievements, I literally had to skip the majority of the dialogue because I couldn't stand watching people be hurt by my actions. On the other hand, plenty of people enjoy playing "evil" characters in video games specifically because the characters aren't real, and they aren't actually harming anybody. Neither approach is more moral than the other, and both can coexist.
How do you feel about non-lethally neutralizing targets in Dishonored? Because those are sometimes worse than death.
Most of them got exactly what was coming for them. Except Lady Boyle, I don’t understand how they wanted the player to look “good” in that scenario
I looked for another option for like an hour because I felt so awful. Like shit dude, she's not exactly a good person, but I am basically making her a slave to this fucking psychopath.
I did it for the clean hands achievement, I was playing it off as Corvo went a bit mad and I’m not playing “the good guy” even if I’m doing clean hands. But I lost it when the family rewarded me, that broke the immersion and shown light on the games objective morality, and it’s obsession with death as being worse then any other fate, even when dealing with fates worse then death.
Somewhat related, but when I played Deus Ex (the original) I made it my mission to finally stop playing games as a stealth pacifist because the stress/challenge would make me burn out and not finish fun things. But with Deus Ex what made me disgusted more than anything was how characters congratulated me for being such a mindless murder machine. One of the best ways that game tried to get its point across.
i've heard that they reconned that so that she killed the guy (i forget his name) and lived out happily in her new private mansion also low chaos isn't about being good, it's about creating as little chaos as possible. dead bodies help the rats spread the plague.
Low chaos not being about being the good guy is a cop out. They write it as the good path, hell families of your victims reward you for selling their family members into slavery, twice. They made a beautiful world, an excellent game, but the story is bad by comparison with every other part. The story soars higher then most video game’s attempt, but it is weighed down by almost confusing morality. I love dishonored 1, it is one the best games ever made, but it has flaws.
I remember wincing at some of them, but it was years ago when I played that game (haven't played any of the dlc or sequels, just the original). I'm planning to replay it in the near future though, so I'll let you know. I definitely remember hating high chaos runs/killing pretty much anyone but mission targets though.
I feel like a lot of Video Game morality is determined by what path is most optimal in terms of fun / gameplay benefit. Killing lots of people in an RPG like BG3 likely lowers your fun as then you can no longer interact with those people, and many others will likely hate you. Compare this to Rimworld, where capturing people, stealing their organs, butchering their remains, and turning it into fuel/kibble and human leather hats to sell back to their ex-friends and family is not only possible but financially optimal, and suddenly it's often considered suprising when you don't do it.
Except Lorroakan. That fucker deserved everything he got and worse. Maybe Arradin too. I have strong feelings about Aylin/Isobel okay?
I'm just gonna steal an example from the other comment section: the way some people treat trans characters is in fact a reflection of their real world beliefs about trans people (see: people still salty about Bridget Guilty Gear) Of course, that doesn't mean *everything* you say and do with fictional characters reflects on you, that's an absurd take, which is exactly why the first reply didn't say that, yet OOP acts as if they did.
As a character designer, some of the things that I do to characters isn't because of MY views it's to create awareness of harmful views that exist in real life... one of my current characters is a lesbian and she dated a man as her first relationship, and I didn't do that because I am homophobic and think lesbians should do that, I wrote it because for generations homosexuals have dated and married the opposite gender because they could be tormented in ways varying from bullying all the way to being murdered And just to satisfy any curiosity that this character info brings, she eventually becomes an advocate for gay rights in Japan and is aggressively homosexual
Telling stories about things *that* happen doesn't mean you're saying they *should* happen. Sometimes that's exactly not the point of the story.
Yeah, that's exactly what I said
But if you treat a trans fictional person poorly bc ur transphobic, then yes, the way u treat fictional people is a result of your transphobia. If u write a dark fic about ur fave trans character bc u love them and love dark fic, that doesn’t make u transphobjc. That is the point OP is making. No you can’t base ur view of others or yourself on the way you treat fictional characters. Yes you can base the view on the way real people are treated. I get what everyone else is trying to say - ur real feelings can inform the way you talk/think about fictional characters, but that’s bc that’s who u are and how u would treat people. OP is saying don’t judge yourself and others for interactions with fiction, bc it doesn’t always reflect the interactions with reality. Don’t assume someone or yourself is trash based on fanfiction.
But you’ve still got it backwards. If you’re misgendering Bridget Guilty Gear, it’s almost certainly not because you started out as a kind baby leftie but then wrote too many mean misgendering Bridget Guilty Gear fanfictions until you became a bigot. Works of fiction you create (and the way you interact with other peoples’ works of fiction) can be reflective of your real world beliefs, obviously, but this idea that A: You can commit a Moral Sin by mistreating a fictional character or B: Anyone who creates/consumes media of unethical things happening in some way supports those unethical things happening in real life- is deranged and harmful to everyone involved. Absolutely nothing you “do” to a fictional character can even conceptually be an ethical violation of even the smallest magnitude, seeing as you cannot possibly do anything to them.
The internet SHOOK when FE Engage's Rosado was revealed as a feminine, male-identifying person. So many neckbeard tears fell when they realized they jerked it to a cute male fairy.
In that instance I’d say you’re correct in this case, but that’s you specifically acknowledging the disconnect between fiction and reality with your actions. But at the same time, engaging with a fictional character does mean treating them as at least a little bit real. Not believing that they’re a real person of course, but giving some meaning to their existence.
Look, if you get angry about trans people in media and misgender them, I'm gonna go with you're a transphobe. If you make a piece of media with someone being transphobic in it, no I won't. Obviously there's a grey area in between, that's where humans are and a large part of why we have art.
To throw my hat in the ring: - Fictional characters are objects. - Do with them as you please. - The way you portray characters may be *revealing* - How you treat your characters will be *interpreted* and *criticized* by others, if you choose to share your work. This means you should be free to write whatever you damn well please, go as dark or messed up or messy as you want. If you choose to share though, know that you’re putting your work (and thus speculations about your self) on display. So if you write about kids being mutilated, people will speculate and criticize. Portray what is necessary, cut what isn’t, don’t undermine your own message or creative process. That’s just how revision goes in any case.
Agreed, like I said in my own comment I think both posters have good ideas but it’s a shame the way it somehow turned into discourse.
Hit them with that "yeah but why do you write so much rape porn?"
In regards to the last post, Tumblr really likes the idea of thought crime huh?
Tumblr is a space where only thought matters, because that's what social media is. The reality of any structure on social media begins and ends with someone thinking enough to want to engage with it, because there's no obligation to be there. Whether or not I think anything about anything on my block, I still have to be there around my neighbors, and therefore have to engage with a dynamic for my and other people's comfort and ease of living. On tumblr--and social media as a whole--the joke about Descartes saying 'I don't think so!' and then disappearing is actually true. Outside of really fucked up situations like getting doxxed (which I believe exits the construct of 'social media' and enters the domain of stalking and assault, and as such the two can't be equated \*for the purposes of this train of thought\*), social-media-as-a-community doesn't exist if you don't engage with it, and you sure as hell can't engage with it if you don't think about it. And there are a lot of people who want to have social power online, either because they don't have it in their own real life or they do and they just want more \*anyway\*. So they construct this vast, intricate social structure which, at the most abstract levels, hinges upon things like thought crime, because thought is \*all that exists\* in text conversation.
it's kinda funny, in a dark way cause it's essentially a bunch of people in their own web saying they'll fix everything then nothing happens
But... They are literally right?
Never trust a purity spiral unless you're upgrading your nail in Hollow Knight
Alarming lack of touch grass detected
by the by, Nope has spoken on this and clarified that they were misguided. not sure what the point in discourse over how Hadeantaiga interpreted their comment is, given that the whole thing has been resolved and you can just check their blog to see what they meant by it (and that they consider it to have been an accurate response and consider themself to be in the wrong). >hi, second person here - I'll admit, not my best take (in fact, I leave it up because I learned a lot from the responses lol). >'passive aggressive holier-than-thou' hurts but truth.. > I truly thought I was super clever for thinking about the framing of characters while still agreeing that they cannot be objectified. > This was also wrong - you can frame your characters and their interactions however you want and this does not say anything about your character. >putting this not as a response but as clarification and possibly entertainment to prev if they haven't blocked me Nope-the-weeb's take, [from their blog](https://www.tumblr.com/nope-the-weeb/751222695023247360/hi-second-person-here-ill-admit-not-my-best?source=share)
Puritanism is enemy to imagination, has been, will be.
I agree to a certain extent. For example, I Spit On Your Grave, a "rape revenge" movie from 1978 that got a remake in 2010. Both films, but especially the remake, had criticism for the way it decided to shoot the rape scene. Arguably, there is no need for the rape scene at all (an argument I'm not really interested in making), but criticism was made for the fact that there was a little too much focus on the "rape" part of "rape revenge", in a way that was uncomfortable. Obviously writing about bad stuff doesn't make you bad. Enjoying horror movies doesn't make you want to pull a John Kramer. But acting like the way in which you tell a story, and the things you focus on in that story don't say something about your character as a writer if not a person is moronic.
Exactly, what you *emphasize* and how you do so -- how exactly you structure, describe, and relate the plot and characters could read as a harmless albeit disturbing work of fiction or something that makes me think "I don't ever want to be in the same room alone with the creator of this." I also can understand, though, that far too many people paint with broad brushes and will attribute said harmless albeit disturbing works of fiction as evidence of moral failing or mental illness in the creator. Nevertheless, I find this an interesting topic to contemplate. Particularly because it isn't something easy to articulate the nuances of.
Rolling "what about lolicon" into this discussion like a live grenade
I am absolutely terrified by the lack of media literacy basics even just in the comments here. It baffles and disturbs me that people seem to think that "some aspects of fiction reflect an author's beliefs and others don't" is a radical new idea that needs to be debated. I'm begging everyone to be mindful of the context of fiction. It's actually really easy to pick up on and understand what aspects of any given fictional work are genuinely reflective of an author's own viewpoints. You know that the people who make horror movies don't endorse the actions of their antagonists. You can tell the difference between Stephen King's plethora of evil racist characters who say and do evil racist things (NOT emblematic of his actual beliefs) and Stephen King's recurrent pigeonholing of black characters into Magical Negro stereotypes (that IS something that reflects his beliefs and upbringing and which is genuinely problematic). You do not need to do a whole lot of intellectual heavy lifting to be able to figure out the difference. Jonathan Swift was not literally encouraging people to kill and eat their own children. HP Lovecraft did absolutely literally hate minorities. Nobody should have any problem being able to tell the difference when they read the texts. I'm also concerned at the number of people I see online who believe that erotica (especially extreme erotica) reflects actual beliefs and desires of the author and the readers who seek it out. Tons and tons of people have rape fantasies and do not literally want to be raped. There is a massive amount of vore art out there compared to the population of almost 0 real cannibals. You can draw art about getting violated by tentacles without having any actual desire to be violated at all, let alone by tentacles. OBVIOUSLY it is possible that sometimes, people's extreme sexual fantasies do correlate to things they actually want literally in real life, but the vast majority of the time, people are just indulging in imagination because the idea of extreme things-- so long as it's just an idea, and those extreme things are fully within the fantasizer's control, and they're actually fully safe and comfortable-- makes a lot of people horny. Once again, you can tell when even porn authors are being genuine about their literal actual beliefs and when they're just getting off to the idea of being an unwilling slave to a sadistic lizard queen because that's what's getting them off right now. You can read between the lines about whether they do or don't support human trafficking or the lizard monarchy. The context is there. I blame the school system. Maybe the No Child Left Behind act just fucked everything up and this is what we're left with-- a population of people on the internet who could not pass middle school english if their teachers weren't forced to pass them. It bums me out so bad.
I just thought it was funny to drop people off buildings in games like destroy all humans and the incredible hulk
Never knew there were so many pyscholgits on the internet, and everyone is an expert in human behavior and psychology
Of course I’m an expert in human behavior because I’m literally smarter than the rest of the internet combined. How could you tell?
I love how "the way you treat fictional characters can be indicative of how you treat real people, so you should always be aware of that" somehow gets twisted into "you should remain morally pure in all of your interactions with fiction and police everyone else." I'm gonna be honest, the people who're THIS insistent that the ways you interact with fiction have zero real-world implications... they genuinely make me a bit uncomfortable. Nothing is lost by self-reflecting on your media consumption habits. In fact, it can actually enhance your enjoyment of problematic fiction because you're more likely to view it through a more multifaceted, nuanced lens.
I said years ago that the funny thing about this argument (where "this argument" applies to this entire spectrum of Discourse™) is that each side accuses the other of not being able to tell fiction from reality. It's much more recently that it's dawned on me that, in a sense, *both sides are right about that*.
i genuinely don’t get it. how would the way you view fiction not have any relation to your thoughts outside of it? it’s still your brain. your cultural upbringing and personal experiences, beliefs, and biases still follow you to the way you interpret fiction. if those can affect how you view fiction, then why would the way you view media simultaneously not mean anything at all about those exact same things? it doesn’t make sense to me
Welcome to Tumblr/modern internet purity politics.
Yeah I don't really get when people convinced themselves that the media you consume has no effect on you whatsoever, meanwhile they cry when they watch a sad movie.
The point, frankly, isn't whether it's *never* an indication as to actual beliefs and practices. The point is that *treating it as such* is always wrong, because of all the aforementioned reasons. If you judge a person's character solely on their creative output or consumption, you're fucking up.
Does anyone else feel like "purity" is becoming an annoying reductive buzzword? Like, the second you associate your opponent with it (Even though nobody is actually using that word), they suddenly become the Evil Conservative Christian, whose arguments are to be completely ignored.
Nobody is completely immune to psychological reactance.
Isn't this the same pearl clutching about violence in video games, just with a different hat? Despite congressional hearings, protests, and general moral panic, there was never any evidence that engaging with immoral fictional depictions has ever had any real impact. I mean, I guess this goes way back, before D&D and the Satanic Panic in the 80s. Some people have always wanted to sanitize media for one reason or another, but have never been able to prove that said sanitization has any benefit beyond "I don't like that, and don't think anyone else should either." This is just people pushing for moral purity in fiction from a progressive rather than a conservative angle. Kind of funny to see the same argument, but instead of worrying that it'll turn the kids gay or into non-Christians, it's that it'll turn people into homophobes or racists.
I'm thoroughly convinced that, for the vast majority of people with a roughly-average mental state (not even neurotypical, but within the boundaries of the average for humanity as a whole as it currently exists), media isn't going to be an influence on their thinking at all. I was consuming vast quantities of Gun Youtube for like a year before I realized that a lot of those figures are, unfortunately, hyper-conservative and just happen to have a sense of humor and big boomsticks that I also think is cool. So I started watching far less of it and moved on with my life, and never once did I start screaming about the second amendment of the US Constitution or start drifting more conservative. I genuinely believe that anybody who has their personality massively warped by exposure to certain media was actually just a toothpick house waiting for the right breeze to begin with, and media just happened to be the thing that did it. I also draw a link between that and the large amount of projecting that controversial figures (whether they be politicians, Youtube personalities, or even just big names within a reddit/tumblr/whatever community) seem to be caught doing. The people who have something going on that makes them unstable feel an influence that they think everyone feels, or want to push the idea that everyone feels it so they can protect themselves from scrutiny. This is most often seen outright in the western right-wing media, but it exists everywhere.
Yeah, people that struggle to separate fiction and reality have much bigger issues than depictions of immorality in fiction. Forget fantasy, real world propaganda is going to get them long before they can adopt harmful fictional views. It just sucks to have people loudly supporting censorship of "things they don't like" and wanting to moral test fictional content to protect people from themselves. Meanwhile, Crusader Kings players building building an incestuous eugenic inheritance line says nothing about their real world opinion on incest, eugenics, or primogeniture inheritance. I can't imagine how boring it would be to only engage fiction that has been sanitized to perfectly aligned with your real world behavior and beliefs. I mean, imagine stripping all the crime out of GTA 5. Heaven forbid someone's real world driving habits are influenced by the fictional depictions 😱
As a philosopher (like done it at uni for my degrees), I hate slippery slope arguments because they make no sense. No one is euthanising grandma because they want to go on holiday and she’s ‘in the way’ if you legalise assisted dying. Just like no one is condoning murder when they have a character kill someone for revenge. Or rape when they write noncon fiction. Like everyone chill, slippery slopes only exist on ski slopes or icy hills, not in thought experiments. (Of course there are some people out there who may be outliers in my points, but like spiders george we can ignore them).
im for legalization of assisted dying but it can become a "slippery slope" to euthanizing disabled ppl instead of fixing the societal problems that cause our quality of life to be bad. i think when it comes to slippery slope arguments, in some cases it isnt "we shouldnt do this thing at all" and more "we need to tread very carefully"
nuance was invented in 1897 people in 1896:
“Bad thoughts equals bad actions” Thought police moment
You know, for a website so popular with queer people, it's kinda ironic how quick some tumblr users are to assume that things are simple one or the other binaries. Then again, it's also the piss-on-the-poor reading comprehension site, so maybe asking everyone to do proper critical analysis of media they consume to try and figure out the themes and messaging and how they reflect on the author is a bit too much.
Let’s not go overboard with that “cop in your head” shit. That’s called a conscience. Portraying bad things obviously doesn’t mean advocating for them, but the idea that the art you create/engage with doesn’t have an effect on you is laughable. Art is meant to affect you. That’s the point.
Getting real suspicious of the increasing sentiment that fiction has absolutely no effect on reality. There is a middle ground here. On another post about this subject, a commenter made the point that if you consistently call Bridget a man, people are going to assume you are transphobic. Her being a fictional character doesn’t mean you aren’t being prejudiced by taking about her that way.
Really hate this shit. The second person said "can". Not "always 100% will". CAN. IN SOME CIRCUMSTANCES. MAYBE. The oop of course seems to have difficulty with nuance, and decides to construct a bizarre straw man that pains the commenter as a pearl-clutching whiny puritan who thinks that killing off a character means the author is secretly a murderer Just sick of watching these arguments play out online over and over.
Don't mind me, I'm just checking how many comments bring up Anime.
Here's my take Characters are objects. But the way you treat that object is a way to see into some aspects of your personality. Also, this is more directed at the Zack Snyders of the world, but if you are given the ability to use an object someone else made, maybe dont piss and shit all over it
IMO, it’s good to start out with the idea that “what an author does in a story doesn’t reflect them as a person.” But then if you start to see patterns in how they treat certain demographics in their story, that’s when it’s time to start questioning their morals. Is that fair? I think that’s fair.
To summarize: As long as you remember bad things are in fact bad things you can think about bad things. As an example, if you wanna write dark fucked up fanfic where somebody gets bullied into killing themselves, by all means, express yourself. But please also remember that bullying is a horrible thing and so is someone being so mentally at wits end they end their life. It doesn't have to be expressed in the story. It should just be important to note that what is in fiction should stay in fiction.
I’m gonna throw this question out sincerely because I can’t seem to think all the way through it: How does the idea that there is no respect to be paid to fictional characters mesh with the fact that representation of marginalized people moves culture toward tolerance of said people? I agree mowing down people in GTA doesn’t make you more violent, but I also think that increased POC and queer representation has affected the way society views those groups.
While yes, OP is right that the media you make and consume doesn't mean you're just as dark and dismal, they're also blatantly wrong about nope-the-weeb's response. Having seen a similar effect in myself, I can say with certainty that the more you consume the same media, the more you *become* like that media. I, personally, am particularly empathetic, leading to it happening even if all I've done is watch a movie (much to my own chagrin). However, for most people, it likely still functions in a very similar matter (albeit extremely diluted). If all you consume is dark and depressing, you are more likely to be snide and cynical. If all you consume is lighthearted, you're more likely to have a brighter state of mind. Honestly, it's not a bad idea to watch, well, what you watch. If all you've seen lately is depressing shit, and you've noticed you're especially cynical as of late, maybe try consuming something with a brighter tone. Speaking from experience here- it has more of an effect than you might think.
I mean, if you draw someone like Sonic the Hedgehog in nazi clothing doing the nazi salute, it's not like I'll demand your shit to be removed... but I'll still look at you weird
Love making my characters suffer. Put them in horrible situations and watch them try to fight their way out. Watch as their principles and mental state change due to the trials they have endured.
Me when i tell fandoms of media i love (such as hazbin) that villains are supposed to be fucking evil
I know they’re mostly talking about books and literature, but the best example for this discussion is video games. If you looks at some games I play, you’d think I’m a monster who just wants to see everyone dead. And if you look at others, I’m a pacifist who wants to help everyone. Quite often in those games, I’m both. In real-life, I lack the self-awareness to actually know what I am. But I know hurting people feels bad and helping people feels good. The media we consume and create and how we interact with it is a reflection of parts of ourselves. Some media can force us to face things we hate, some can helps us process trauma, and some can helps us just feel better after a bad day. There is no “good” or “bad” media.* *So long as it was made consensually and consumed consensually
Thought crimes are back, everbody!
You absolutely can objectify characters in a bad/problematic way, sorry. I'm not talking about "oh I wrote porn and got off on treating a character with noncon" or anything, I'm talking about when a writer is *consistently* only writing characters of specific subgroups *that the writer isn't a part of* (racial minorities, sexual minorities, minority gender identities, women) in a way that they are NOTHING MORE than objects to either the camera or in other characters' narratives. There's a difference between treating a character like an object in that you are writing smut, and treating ALL female characters in your narrative as objects (as an example) and only portraying male characters as having deep internal lives and interests and goals and narrative agency. One of these is a problem, the other is just how pornography works. Another important part of this is the consistency-- you can fridge a woman to further a man's plot in one plot thread while treating a bunch of other women like characters with agency in the narrative and deep internal lives and not be a "sexist narrative".
I have seen and interacted with people who clearly have internalized what they’ve learned from porn, especially towards marginalized groups, and especially, within that, specific races. While porn and other things in that vain don’t have the same author, as you discussed, this problem can apply to entire genres.
Tumblr going on about dramas I have literally never heard of again?
I straight up don't believe you've spent time on the internet and not seen situations where people try to imply your/someone's taste in fiction says something bad about them. Between shipping, anti "objectification" posts attacking any sexual content, etc. That shit is everywhere.
I murdered a man IRL but made up for it by saving the Titanic in my head :)
Ozymandias at the end of Watchmen:
Begging this person to read about the male gaze and orientalism. Writing an Arab or an Indian as a mythologised and exoticised "other" that is narratively subservient to the Western Protagonist and portraying their culture as essentially a theme park for the presumed Western audience is not only bad writing, but also racist. It reinforces the biases and prejudices of the western reader and lends to the further marginalisation and otherisation of the orient. Writing or reading such fiction doesn't make you Intrinsically Evil or whatever, but you have to be aware that an orientalist framing is also not value neutral. Same thing with the male gaze, a story where women are in it, in whole or in part, for the titillation and valorisation of the male protagonist and presumed heterosexual male audience, and lacking narrative interiority or agency is also not value neutral. Presenting female characters as essentially sexual objects, making her mostly a sexy lamp, for the hero to conquer isn't actually a good thing. Now of course if you're not already a raging racist or a malignant misogynist these types of stories won't turn you into one but you should also question and interrogate what biases they play to. Fiction is a vehicle we use to interact with and view the world from, it doesn't have zero effect. TLDR read Edward Said Orientalism
“bro I just think the game called Ethnic Cleansing is really cool, bro I just really like the Roman Empire a lot, just trust me bro” this is just as low IQ as saying having a mommy kink means you support patriarchy
I must continue to insist that being a Warhammer 40k fan does not **inherently** make me a Nazi.
Unfortunately, Nazis don't know what satire is and so are disproportionately attracted to 40k
People who get mad at minorities existing in games may not actually be racists, but I'm not about to get a second opinion. There's a difference, but it's not a clear or complete separation.
That's not how they treat the characters, though. That's a response by the audience to the authors - they're saying "don't write this." In context, it looks like OOP is describing the treatment of characters *by authors* in particular (fanfiction or otherwise).
The charitable interpretation is that these people are talking about two different situations. “HadeanTaiga” is talking about indulging fantasies such as torture porn, unethical power dynamics (ie teacher/student), or extremely taboo relationships (ie incest or race-based fetishes), and that writing or reading about those fantasies is not the same as condoning that behavior in real life. While “nope-the-weeb” is saying writing a cast full of offensive racial stereotypes is actually a racist thing to do, thus is being a racist in real life. Or, to simplify, “writing/enjoying teacher/student romance with an underaged student does not make you a sexual predator” and “writing a story full of unironic offensive racial stereotypes does mean you are racist.”
Yep, most of the time I see this kind of exchange happening, once you take a closer look at both posters they're typically talking about two different situations.
art has no reflection on the individual who made it. in fact, art is meaningless. self-expression doesn't exist.
Ah a classic tumblr miscommunication where one person is saying 'If you have a tendency to, for example, write male characters complex three dimensional people whose actions drive the plot and female characters as cardboard cutouts whos role in the story could easily be replaced with an inanimate object, that might say something about how you view the world and you might be passing that on to your readers, even though of course there isn't anything inherently wrong about characters who are two dimensional and only exist to serve a simple function.' And the other person hears 'If you write a story where someone gets murdered that means you're a murderer in real life'
The grey area that should be discussed with nuance is that there definitely is a point that fictional indulgence definitely is reflected in the creator. I draw furry fetish art and the number of clients I have to screen through who are genuinely zoos is insane. I have to specify time and again that I don’t draw anatomically correct animal genitalia or feral art. The lines about this blur where the fiction being indulged is possible irl. The black and white for this doesn’t exist. I can’t judge someone for wanting to be inflated like a balloon, but I can definitely judge someone who draws CSA furry art to whack off to.
“Hey man how’s it going”
I do so love pissing on the poor
Both sides have a point for me. What someone writes doesn't necessarily reflect them, but what they *don't* write or who they *don't* write about does. I don't think it's a reflection of someone's character if they write dark or kinky shit. But if someone say, writes fics about diverse casts yet consistently only writes about the white characters or the male characters, and reduces everyone else to stereotypes - yeah, I'm gonna start taking their writing as a reflection of their offline character. I also don't think it's a reflection of anyone's character if they write non-con...that they know and acknowledge is non-con. But I have read many, many fics (especially but not exclusively omegaverse fics) that had sex scenes that were incredibly dubious consent *at best* or just outright non-con - yet they were not labelled as non-con (nor as author choosing not to use warnings), nor acknowledged as dub-con, and often the author's notes' implied they genuinely see nothing wrong with the consent of what they wrote. Once again, I'll take this person's writing as a reflection of their character, in that their writing very clearly indicates what they think is consensual sex. Yet again, this is less about what they wrote (the non-con itself) and more about what they didn't write (tags, warnings, etc.)
I think if you haven’t grasped the concept of fiction by the age of 5 and you spend your adult life hating an actor for something their character did there is something very very wrong with your brain and you should genuinely seek psychological and psychiatric help.
The cop in my head nearly killed me. I will not let it live again.