(this is not vagueposting about any current discourse or aimed at any specific story. I'm making up examples and not mentioning individual authors for a reason)
When assessing how successfully a subject is handled in fiction, whether the story approaches it literally or metaphorically is important. The creator is responsible for signaling this in some way; it'd be pretty disingenuous to write a straightforward heroic arc for a character depicted as an actual historical Nazi and then claim after the fact that it was a symbolic representation of some internal struggle, for example.
On the other end, everyone has seen the reviews/critiques that are like, "How Mystica Starlight Magical Adventures Fails to Grapple with the Real Horrors of War" as though abstraction is a fatal flaw and not a necessary tool when using recognizable conflict as a catalyst for characters' personal growth. It does actually trivialize real horrors to give them a protagonist, but stories transform the unfathomable into the personal. It is more respectful to draw clear lines between the play-pretend you are making up for your own entertainment and others' and things real people have suffered, even if your characters are experiencing realistic emotional fallout.
If you believe the purpose of fiction is to make persuasive statements about how real people should act and feel in the equivalent of real situations, then fantasy--or any kind of ambiguous, open-ended storytelling--is inherently suspect. I think media created to accommodate that during this period will seem judgmental, thoughtless, and even regressive in a few years---
Been thinking about this a lot in my month off of streaming and how, back when I made my post about 'it is time to turn your activism brain off, actually' I was getting closer to this exact topic because we have very much hit that point where in some cases creating content is insufferable because there is no room or space to let stories just be or breathe.
There is 100% this weird hyperfixation on people, especially marginalized people, to not just write stories that have to be the North Star of How to Activism, but to also maintain that energy in any and everything we consume. There was a mod I had at one point who was a perfect example of this.
They were very adamant about letting the world know that they will never play FFXIV.
Specifically they did not endorse the game because the story held a lot of problematic tropes, views, ideologies, the works. Now to be clear, they weren't wrong....but this became a problem because if you were in the community and you DID play FFXIV, boy howdy, were they more than happy to let you know that you were supporting fascist propaganda. That's not hyperbole, by the way. They called it fascist propaganda.
Long gone was the nuance that for fuck's sake most people are there for the comradery that was stripped on account of the pandemic taking over, ignore the part where some of us weren't even paying attention to the story, we were just there to throw hands (it's me, I was throwing hands), but more importantly?
A lot of people liked the story specifically because how the problem topics were handled. It's one of the biggest praises of the game. There were community people who called the three factions for what they were and kept playing not because they didn't care about the subject material, but because other factors significantly outweighed the need or desire to make a 45 page white paper called 'The Issues With Final Fantasy XIV and Why You Shouldn't Play It.' There is a metric truckload more to FFXIV than the story. And as the original post highlights, one of the most gratifying things of fiction is the ability to close it, log out of it, finish it entirely and still walk away saying 'oh right, that is a thing that isn't happening' because the suspension of belief is in the fact that while yes the factions endorse pretty shitty things, this is also a setting where you resolve your problems by punching a god of fire in his kneecaps for 10 minutes until he falls over, to then go high five your teammates that look like playboy bunnies and smurfs. The topic matter at the core is absolutely serious, however I am literally playing a cat girl that specializes in face to foot style. I do not need to be jacked in to the grueling and grotesque story that You Have Decided Is The Real Story For Everyone Else that is not here in this story, right now, as we speak. Those narratives do indeed have shitty connotations, but they are literally world building and the end point is not the one you have prescribed.
And I hate to break it to a lot of people, but if the plotline of the story is something like 'You save the world from a eugenics endorsing capitalist hellscape by dethroning and punching god' there is probably if not definitely a strong chance that eugenics and endorsed capitalism is going to come up. If it didn't, it would feel like the story wasn't fleshed out, and you can't ask for a deep, complex story and also demand that the story doesn't go further than 'yea so we won't tell you, you just have to believe that they are bad guys.'
I feel like it starts falling into the territory of policing fellow marginalized people for not being Enough of An Ally, the grounds of which is made by folding a praxis in on itself ouroboros style-except growth and change isn't actually occurring. It's perpetually trapped in this state of needing to make sure that every single thing in the story is either as historically accurate as possible or as overly safe as possible. We saw this a little tonight with one of my other mods playing Legend of the Dragoon, and the big spoiler hits that ( A HEADS UP I DO NOT KNOW IF THE MARKDOWN FOR THIS IS WORKING SO IF YOU SEE THE SPOILER I AM SO FUCKING SORRY OH MY GOD)
! Rose is the Black Monster, she was responsible for destroying the entire town of Neet, she was Dart's father's betrothed, and she 100% tried to kill Shana because she's the Moon Child, whiffed, and nuked her entire family instead. This was not just 'a thing she did'-this was something entire cities supported specifically because the Moon Child was the only thing keeping the God of Destruction from being born-so Rose was literally trying to protect the planet. Upon learning this, she offers her life to Dart and he declines, saying 'The Black Monster is long dead. Who stands in front of me is someone who shares the same walking path and is my ally." !<
Someone in chat watched this entire scene and followed up with 'so did Rose ever apologize for her actions?' and like.....insert Nick Young gif here
I'm just unsure what you want more from that scene.
From a game that was made and thus, written, in 1999. 24 years ago.
What else was Rose supposed to do? Fall on her sword? Beg Dart to kill her? Go around asking every party member until someone agreed TO kill her? And it, as expected, locked stream into a forced discourse of Let's Discuss Why This Story is Bad, Actually.
Characters do not gain growth, maturity, awareness, or dare I say change when the world around them is always as safe as possible or is forcibly insulated through a lens of 'this is 100% how it should go and if you don't write it that way it makes you a bad writer and a bad person.' Sometimes they gotta say the gross bits out loud to be like 'yep, I did that and I suck for it' and it stays just...right there.
By the by, to add some context: I was 13 in 1999. 13yr old me and 37yr old me very much view the world differently and are very different people. Trying to pretend a lot of things didn't change in that time frame is.....odd.
So yea, gods, do I agree with the repost so fucking heavy.
And I feel for a lot of the literature and storytelling that went down in the 90s to early 2000s because those stories are going to continue to be targeted for being The Worst Things Ever by a generation of people who I honestly think have good intentions in trying to point out where there are some shortcomings but their focus is so enamored on trying to say 'writing bad' that they forget that it's a story with an endpoint that is based in a fictional universe at the end of the day (and oftentimes these stories refuse to enter a conversation or dialogue to push that the bad thing that is happening is good/ideal, it is quite literally a piece that is being set up to be knocked down).
It's not to say do not be critical of the things you are consuming.
And don't get me wrong: sometimes you get to into a book or series and it's just tropey predictable ass that flirts with issues but doesn't do anything of value with them or resolves them in a way that just feels flimsy, wishy washy, or irresponsible. I can bitch about that all day. And there is still plenty of conversation to be had about how and why writing is bad-for example, having white authors write Black people with no Black people involved. Or crafting a narrative involving disability yet involving no disabled people. Trying to force a story that 'the Nazis were right actually.' That is a wholly different issue, however.
But maybe let's not with the thing where every piece of fiction HAS to be up to snuff with 2023 activism 'standards' regardless of the intention of it, when it was written, the audience it is intended, or why those 'problem points' are included in the story at all.
online, blocking is sufficient. morality-based consumption is an understandable but fatally flawed way to cope with the Horrors™️ and can only come about if you truly identify with your consumption- consider the connection between these behaviors in their most mature modern form and the common notion that all x fans constitute an x community
someone who likes something wrong is not just some annoying stranger you move on from. it becomes para-antisocial. this person shipped the wrong characters in my favorite show gets dressed up as "you are a subversive and degenerate moral threat to the community"
it is inevitable that all such situations online devolve into a nightmarish sousveillance psuedostate, with well meaning "community" members deputizing themselves, awaiting the first leader charismatic enough to focus them to a killing edge, and make no mistake that this strategy of interacting with the world has a body count. sometimes, perhaps more often than you would like to believe, fandom and morality become another set of borders to throw conscripts at.
abandon unproductive judgement. nobody is doing anything to you by using public spaces in ways you can opt out of. at best you are fighting to produce only fictional change in the world. at worst, you are burning down queer artists in a way that the fascists would love you for, if you too were not also a degenerate waiting for merciful death.
in all cases you are being a huge asshole knock it the fuck off.
FOR YOUR OWN WELL BEING-
FOR A BRIGHTER TOMORROW-
FOR THE VICTORY OF LIFE OVER FASCISM-
block and move the fuck on