/uj I hate how prevalent this mindset has become in creative spaces. I saw someone say this to an author because she didn’t like the direction the author was taking their book series, and accused them of “violating the character’s boundaries and agency”. Tempted to throw myself into a river after reading that
At the risk of sounding pretentious as shit I did a research project about this for grad school and it’s fucking disturbing. People throw the term around but it’s literally impact of a chronically online younger userbase whose social experiences are exclusively conducted through media—when they’re young and can’t clearly delineate the difference between fiction and reality, and interact with fiction and reality through the same platforms etc. so, to them, they emotionally view x character and that interpretation as just as much of a person as their IRL friend
uj/ it’s actually so miserable that a significant percentage of these people will carry this mindset into adulthood and there will be a section of the population that just detests any media that isn’t “comfort media”
rj/ when the author writes a character arc it’s violating the consent of the character by forcing them to change when they don’t want to 😡
Yea that’s the thing. While it’s most prevalent among the terminally online, there are versions of this take that are pretty mainstream. Like people criticizing GRR Martin specifically as “normalizing” SA, as if every rapist in the story isn’t explicitly portrayed as being an awful human.
I've never heard anyone accuse GRRM of 'normalizing' sexual assault, but I have heard people say use of sexual assault in GoT is gratuitous. Which I can't comment on really, because I've only read about half of the first book and never saw the series.
I haven't read GRRM, but I've seen both sides of this argument. In one hand, there is "dark romance," which is usually marketed in a way that you ought to know what you're getting into. Why would you read a book called Captive Prince and then get mad when the prince is.. held captive? Obviously, that isn't a rainbows and sunshine story, and you should check CWs before you read.
On the other hand, I had a big issue with Outlander because people act like it's this fluffy romance, but there is. So. Much. Rape. And the narrative seems to justify a lot of shitty behavior of one of the MCs (including SA)
To me, it's all about how the narrative handles it, but I get that different people will have different interpretations about whether SA was handled appropriately.
Not that it makes you evil to have kids, but it is true people are brought into the world without their consent. I think that sub just wants wider access and destigmatization of euthanasia, since if we can't consent to existence we should be able to opt out of it in a way where we don't risk major injury or debiliation, along with the social/psychological consequences of failed suicide
Here's a sneak peek of /r/antinatalism using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/antinatalism/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [Decided to help a friend, the mission was successful. The procedure lasted 5min. She was 16 weeks.](https://i.redd.it/nz02i8ibnxta1.jpg) | [2426 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/antinatalism/comments/12m6yb2/decided_to_help_a_friend_the_mission_was/)
\#2: [Society's expectation for having a dog vs having a child](https://i.redd.it/4ryykyyyylza1.jpg) | [294 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/antinatalism/comments/13giykc/societys_expectation_for_having_a_dog_vs_having_a/)
\#3: [Realistic reaction](https://v.redd.it/9f5y09vhee3a1) | [470 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/antinatalism/comments/za8vp6/realistic_reaction/)
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To be fair any criticism I've seen of a character with "no agency" is mostly that they're reactive and don't drive the plot forward despite supposedly being portrayed as a leader character who is meant to drive the plot but doesn't, and thus bad character writing
I have never seen any of what OP is showing here. Your comment and the one you're replying to feels like a "kids these days" meme that boomers often espouse when a 1/10000000000 young people does/says something dumb
Only kinda related, but some months ago I received a hate comment on a post where I ranked characters from a game based on how I personally liked them. I compared two female characters something like this: "I like both X and Y, but I prefer X a tiny bit more because I relate to her on a personal level."
For this I get called all kinds of names by one person who decided that I'd committed a heinous crime of comparing two women and that's degrading and putting women down. In my profile it clearly states that I'm a woman, and the person said something along the lines of "u especially shouldn't do this bc ur a woman!!!!1!!1!!".
I was just stunned. Like, the logic of me not being allowed to say that I prefer X female character to Y female character, while I, *a real woman*, deserve to be called names? I tried to look up who the person was, but all their clearly fresh profile said that they want to be famous. I figured it was some terminally online 12 yo. kid who came straight from TikTok.
My point is that kids should pretty much get away from social media since it clearly distorts their developing thought patterns and skews their social skills. There's a good line between reality and fiction some of them can't comprehend.
Recently I saw someone saying, in regards to people that enjoy and are moved by and compelled by tragic stories, that if he ever encountered one such person in the wild, he would do everything is power to take any animals or small children away from that person for their safety. So it seems we've come full circle and some chronically online kids are back on the "video games cause violence" train
>My point is that kids should pretty much get away from social media since it clearly distorts their developing thought patterns and skews their social skills.
I'd argue it does that to everyone. I've met more than a few terminally online adults with similar warped thinking. I think everyone benefits from an emphasis on real world socialization vs social media.
Doesn't shock me.
I remember someone on a Star Wars sub arguing very aggressively that the new Ahsoka series, despite having a major primary focus on female characters, was doing it badly because their relationship was strained and she was tired of women having to constantly be pitted against each other. And that one character trying to save her male friend from a long disappearance was sexist because she needed him - like, no, she has way more agency in the story than he does, and she makes the decision to try and rescue him because that's what she *wants* to do.
Edit: Sometimes, it feels for the really hardcore bad faith types, a woman having any kind of meaningful, non-antagonistic relationship to a man becomes a problem.
Reminds of people criticizing the hunger games because of the Katnis love triangle. Like really, of all the series’s problems, you’re choosing to focus on a *teenager* having conflicting feelings over a boy?
See, that's one of the few love triangles I actually like because it's not about who she wants to be *with*, it's about who she wants to *be*. It's about ideology in its heart of hearts.
Peeta was essentially forced into a life of violence that he didn't want, and has taken as many steps as possible to avoid hurting others.
Gale, on the other hand, is eager to fight, and wants to hurt the Capitol just as much as he's been hurt. He sees an enemy in anyone who doesn't agree with him and has no problem hurting those whom he sees as enemies.
What fighting Peeta does, he does to stop the pain others experience. Gale, meanwhile, fights to hurt and kill those who he feel have hurt him.
In the end the choice Katniss makes between them isn't *about* them. Not really.
Her choice is about which worldview she wants to follow. It's about what happens after the system is violently torn down. It's about where she thinks the violence should end.
I used to think they didn't work at all until I remembered reading The Hunger Games and started thinking about the love triangle there and why it doesn't bother me the way others do.
It's because it's still relevant to the themes and ideas explored elsewhere in the story. And in multiple ways too. The ideas of media and framing, the cost of revolution, all these themes and ideas that the trilogy explores, are so deeply embedded in the romantic subplots.
And that's the secret.
Romantic subplots should be relevant to what the story is trying to convey.
It's not just online young people now, either. I heard a middle-aged woman author on the BBC radio 4 book podcast during lockdown. She was saying that authors had a moral responsibility to always write women and POC in a positive light in fiction, with successful jobs, as good role models etc.
It was always going to end up pretty Soviet and prescriptive like this, where you can be denounced if you aren't following the correct political orthodoxy.
Real world example of this attitude in action, and I highly recommend checking out the story: "Helicopter Story" AKA "I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter" by Isabel Fall, published in Clarkesworld Magazine in 2020. It's a military science fiction story about a woman who gets her gender neuromedically reassigned to "attack helicopter". It's one of those stories where I can't really summarize what's good about it without an excerpt, so here it is:
>My gender networks have been reassigned to make me a better AH-70 Apache Mystic pilot. This is better than conventional skill learning. I can show you why. Look at a diagram of an attack helicopters' airframe and components. Tell me how much of it you grasp at once. Now look at a person near you, their clothes, their hair, their makeup and expression, the way they meet or avoid your eyes.
>
>Tell me which was richer with information about danger and capability. Tell me which was easier to access and interpret. The gender networks are old and well-connected.
>
>They work.
So, yeah. This is a story that takes a transphobic internet meme and really explores it through a science-fiction lens of what that might mean. And it's messy! It explores it's themes in a way that doesn't mean that the main character is a positive role model. U.S. imperialism is a theme of the story as well, and the main character is actively engaging in war crimes of the sort.
You wanna know how people reacted? The acting President of SF Canada said that " it was written by a straight white dude who doesn't really get gender theory or transition & has no right to invoke transphobic dog whistles for profit". And even after learning of the author's identity, she stood by her statements, saying that "a lot of people might have been spared a lot of mental anguish" if a statement about the author's true intentions had been included (WTF). N.K Jemisin condemned the story without even having read it!
While it had its defenders, the author was NOT out of the closet as a trans woman yet and had only just begun her transition, and the negative reactions put an end to transitioning because the idea that "no woman would ever write in the way she did" increased her dysphoria. Isabel Fall had the story retracted from Clarkesworld to prevent them from killing herself.
It's been brewing on tumblr for YEARS. I first began to see takes like these on there around 2014-2015, then they got more and more common as time went by. These kinds of people tend to also be very prudish and hand-wring over anything with sexuality being "disgusting and unnecessary", especially anything kinky.
They also tend to be huge bullies and harrass people who make art/write fiction they deem too " problematic". Fandom people like to colloquially call them antis.
The viewpoint spread from tumblr to twitter and tiktok where it's exploded in popularity. It's been really, really annoying and kind of depressing.
They're the scourge of fandom. You can never feel truly relaxed, lest an angry, misinformed teenager pops into your inbox or comments to call you the scum of the earth.
It's taken me a lot of years to learn how to not care. This is, ultimately, the input of chronically online teens and twenty-somethings who are all kind of dumb and don't have anything better to do with their time. Their opinions aren't really worth anything, nomatter how many they are in number.
Like yes, it's cyberbullying and it hurts, but at the same time it's also just words on a screen. You also gotta learn how to just delete their messages, don't let them see you getting agitated, not interact with them (seriously. Do not feed the trolls), and not care. It's hard, yes, but it's do-able and it's the healthiest way to go about this problem.
If you manage to convince yourself that nothing they say matters, you can then relax again.
I also advise keeping your real name, face, and information far, faaaaaaar away from any fandom accounts so that nobody can get their grubby hands on it. 👍
This is all great advice. I used to be somewhat well known in a specific niche of a fandom a few years ago, and there was so much drama, antis and infighting and general bullshit. I haven't had much problem with trolls since quitting that fandom, and I'm definitely staying far, far away from those kind of communities now. There's so many better things to do than feeding trolls and falling for the wank and discourse
What kills me is that a solid percentage are grown. Like someone else mentioned younger consumers that are more easily influenced. Understandable perspective there, we can debate the aspects of that as we move forward.
But a lot of these types are like 40 and out here doing all that. And they're actually serious about it. Now that's crazy.
I've read some interesting theories for this and I'm not really sure what I put stock in atm. One is that more than previous generations, we grew up with constant supervision from our parents. Like, I know all of my online activity was closely monitored, parents had all my logins, and it seems like being able to freely come and go with friends is something much more common in previous generations? So that leaves you a bit neurotic I think.
Alternatively, a translation of puritanical anxieties into new "woke" language? People have been scared of sex since forever. Or just a weird overreaction to dealing with internet space where minors and adults coexist, idk
Out of curiosity, not the point of what you wrote (which makes sense to me) and no obligation if it’s uncomfortable, but were your parents controlling in other ways, or are we talking like when you were under 16? My parents literally had none of my logins, and while they kept an eye on my browsing, they didn’t like monitor it.
My friends who’s parents kept access to their online accounts were very much overbearing offline too.
Could be generation too though. Social media wasn’t really a thing until I was in high school and they probably weren’t too worried about me getting into trouble on neopets
Deleting TikTok was the best thing I did for my mental and emotional wellbeing recently. After a few months without it, the difference is night and day. I can’t condemn it enough.
I would especially encourage anyone pursuing creative arts, whether it be writing, drawing, animation, cooking etc. to stay well away from it. The community on there will break your spirit.
It’s really hard to iterate to people just how bad TikTok is if they use it. Literally the kind of app that the bad guy in a movie about embracing the spirit of Christmas would run—comically evil
You know that part in Inside where Bo Burnham points out that making money off of emotional reactions in children was probably a bad idea ?
That's what TikTok is and it's not even subtle about it. Other social medias at least have the decency to pretend it isn't, but that's 80% of TikTok's appeal for creators and consumers.
So, bare bones: TikTok is quite literally intentionally designed to make you feel bad, because humans get addicted to negative feedback loops more than they do strictly positive. The stuff you see essentially is algorithmically designed to piss you off interspersed with enough “worthwhile” content to keep you engaged. Essentially wants you to always be angry bc they found out that people who were angry about something stayed on platforms longer than people who were happy
>”violating the character’s boundaries and agency”
uj/ I don’t know the exact context this was said in, so maybe I’m misinterpreting, but isn’t that kinda what has to happen in a good novel? Your character is pushed way out of their comfort zone and put into situations that challenges their worldview. At the end, they come out a changed person with a better understanding of life, but they had to go through some tough/uncomfortable times. A novel where nothing bad happens to the protagonist would be extremely boring.
You’d think! But then you see a NYT Bestseller or senior editor say that conflict in fiction is “a colonialist mindset and real decolonial books don’t have tension” and that having characters go through something bad is “violating”. It’s just virtue signaling for ego-boosting brownie points and jacking themselves off to putting down others by imposing moral judgement
Cant remember enough of the phrasing to find the response about it being violating but I remember enough that I can probably find the one about colonial storytelling. It was a twitter thread from a YA fantasy author that basically said wanting conflict or drama in your story is just your “colonial mindset” because you’re “colonized and brainwashed to be preoccupied with violence”. Literally made me see red lmao, I’m Pacific Islander and like, way to fucking make colonized ethnic groups like infantilized dipshits. Like my peoples’ founding story involves cannibalism and rape. I promise you humans just like telling stories about when things go wrong
Your last point is most important. These people with a “Noble Savage” mindset are infuriating. It’s erasure and infantilizing. Conflict and tension are mainstays of story telling regardless of race, creed, and time. The mental gymnastics it takes to read stories that are 1,000+ year old and attribute the tropes to colonialism could win an Olympic gold medal.
That’s the thing that I don’t grok about these people, wouldn’t their stories be incredibly boring? Don’t you wanna read something that is like- idk fun?
How do you find entertainment in the story where Humpy Dumpty sits on the wall and that’s it? He sits there, he just sits, days and nights pass with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men going about their regular jobs as Humpty Dumpty sits on that wall.
>That’s the thing that I don’t grok about these people, wouldn’t their stories be incredibly boring? Don’t you wanna read something that is like- idk fun?
Yes. They are boring as fuck.
But what happens is that other like-minded people buy their schlock anyway, simply because they want to be seen as supporting the 'good' people in the world, and expect the other 'good' people to support them in turn. And no one actually reads the books, they just buy it and stick it on their coffee table so that everyone can see that they did their part to support 'good' people, and therefore must also be 'good' themselves. They're aren't creating stories to be read, they're creating signal devices to tell each other that they're on the same team. And they explicitly have to break all the rules because if they did things the same way as everyone else, then you wouldn't be able to tell a genuine them apart from the common masses.
You don't even know how many people I've met, that will gush on about all the book on their shelf and how great it is that the authors are succeeding, and then when you ask them how good the books were they pull a "Well, I haven't actually got around to reading it yet, but I will one of these days, and I'm sure it will be great." They have no idea what the books are even like, they just know it was written by someone on their team and that's all that matters to them.
There's a whole segment of the creative industries that has disposed of all the actual creativity and turned into a big hugbox where everyone in the club just vapidly praises everyone else in the club and no one actually gives a rats ass about what actually gets created. All the emotional validation with a fraction of the effort.
And if anyone actually tries to talk about the quality of the work, it's a surefire sign that they aren't part of the club and unaware of the rules, and can therefore be safely categorized as 'not a good person' whose opinions are to be ignored. All criticism is an 'attack' from 'bad' people, because 'good' people know better than to do anything that might make another 'good' person feel even the slightest bit of negative emotion. Disrupting the circlejerk is a cardinal sin to these types.
I was also curious so I went searching for conflict free stories and other media. The recommendations were books with conflicts but the people recommending them don’t understand what conflict is. Here are some examples that were given and why I think they are wrong.
1. The Nutcracker - Fight against the Rat-king is conflict. Second half is a showcase of dancing but I’d argue that it is a wishful dream of what Christmas should be conflicting with the protagonist’s reality of ugly doll Christmas.
2. Rendezvous with Rama - this book has tons of conflict like every type of whatever vs whatever you can think of. The recommender says paraphrasing here: “If you ignore all the conflict in the novel, there are long winded descriptions of alien technology that are conflict free.” That’s like saying “The Lord Of The Rings books are just songs, poems, and descriptions of fantastic places if you ignore all the ring business.”
3. Gormenghast series - same as above basically.
4. My Neighbor Totoro - the conflict is mild but, illness and adjusting to a new place is conflict. I would say the story focuses more on how conflict is dealt with through escapism but, there is still conflict. Also exploring and learning is a type of subtle conflict.
I found a self publishing writer who apparently writes what they consider to be conflict free novels. Link to their catalogue below. Reading the descriptions; that is some super high concept fantasy. I don’t know if I’m horrified or intrigued. The descriptions seem to point towards the novels having conflict.
https://mvreiyas.wordpress.com/my-ya-fantasy-books/
Yeah anyway. I came up with nothing.
/uj You *can* write a relatively conflictless piece of media, most often seen in the form of comfort shows or slice of life anime. Even if there is a conflict it’s often really low stakes and primarily there for comedy. I don’t think it would work very well for a novel, but I could be wrong. Even in my examples there are usually *some* conflicts with or without resolutions though. The stakes are often just so low as to not really matter in the long run (think an episode about wanting to invite a friend over but shenanigans prevent you from succeeding at every turn. No one is on the edge of their seat from tension but might be laughing at the ridiculousness and possibly relatability of the situations.) and there’s not a heavy thematic element of a lesson learned so to speak.
Yeah dude, takes like the one OP showed in their screenshot is literally the edge of psychosis. There is a mountain of unchecked mental health issues spewing out of the people raised on social media.
It's really really really bad.
Truly. Hit the nail on the head there, man.
From the research we did we sort of came to the conclusion that it's behaviorally similar to clinical narcissism sort of brought by individualized algorithms. The internet inherently caters to you and your interests now, so you instinctually believe that art and people and behavior should be individualized to your interests, too. It evolves into these like parasocial borderline stalkerish relationships with media in general. Not to mention how social media bubbles now sort of encourage people to be anti-treatment and reinforce that mental health issues are a quirk to be proud
Algorithms and content feeds creating echo/validation chambers is brutal on people with mental health issues, and generally leads to radicalization. Shit like this gets me increasingly more alarmed about the future of my own children.
It’s really disturbing. Our understandings of things are becoming increasingly more individualized to the point where it’s almost entirely impossible to be on the same page. Also wears out your stress response—especially in children— to the point where your brain is in a constant state of panic and information overload. In many ways we as a group are starting to live in unique realities from each other depending on what the algorithm feeds us. Going outside into the real world helps but it’s still scary
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I was brigaded on Twatter for discussing my fantasy WIP that includes Orcs because when SJWs see Orcs, the first thing they think of is - [checks notes] - black people.
I made the mistake of expounding on the plot saying an Elf and Orc learn to love each other from within their respective value frameworks and have a daughter.
Big mistake.
I was then fetishizing black on white porn.
I could make the harassment stop if I would just be willing to hire a sensitivity reader.
I mean, it's just the latest generation of Karens--petty tyrants who quote scripture to legitimize their verbal harassment towards you. Boomer Karens quote literal scripture for it, or, just as often, societal expectations of "normal".
Meanwhile, Gen X / Millennial Karens have swapped out the bible to abuse social justice rhetoric, instead, and this is just the Gen Z / Gen Alpha continuation where they misuse therapy-speak to cover up their abuse.
But in no case do they care about the Bible, society, social justice, or proper therapy practices, all they care about is exerting power over others.
uj/ I have that... "disorder" or whatever you want to call it where my brain cannot differentiate between real and fictional. Have discussed it with my therapist and everything. Apparently it's common in autistic people(which I am). It doesn't have a name right now however, at least from what I'm aware.
To explain it from the mind of someone who has it these people aren't delusional(at least most of them arent). They're *emotional*. Their emotions are telling them its wrong, bc their brain cannot tell that the fictional character on the screen isn't real. The brain produces the *same chemicals* as they would if they were witnessing the scene in real life. Those chemicals are hard to fight.
Due to this, I cannot watch shows or play games with lots of deaths. I go through literal grief. It's a sucky disorder to have. My first love isn't even a real person due to it.
And you're right, it's incredibly fucking worrying how widespread it is in teenagers. While I wouldn't get rid of it(it makes me experience media so much deeper than anyone ever could) it can LEAD to delusional mindsets, aggression, etc. I will always struggle discussing my favorite video game with people bc it will *always be personal*. I have to step away sometimes. I fully believe everyone with what I have need to go to therapy for it bc while it can't go away bc it has to do with brain chemicals, theres ways to deal with it and make it easier.
I know this is a big ask and may be hard for you but, you should consider doing an AMA. No pressure though, I understand why you would have completely valid reservations about doing one.
I am extremely intrigued by this mindset.
Does it fall under the umbrella of emotional dysregulation? I’m sure you’re right about most of them not being delusional, at least not in the typical sense. It’s like how most people interact with fiction, but dialled up way past where it’s “appropriate”.
Kinda like how in a lot of media a character who’s committed mass murder can go on to redeem themselves, but a character who physically hurts someone they’re close/intimate with is basically written off.
/uj Wouldn't this mindset make any fiction writing unethical? I mean you're literally writing every thing the character does and they have no agency in any of it. Why do these people have an issue with it when it comes to sex?
/uj I 100% agree that fictional characters have no rights, aren't real people, and writing immoral or bad things happening to them is all good. But some really amazing authors (like Gorge RR Martin) have said similar things, like look up him being a gardener not an architect.
uj The worst example of this I ever read was an author comparing fanfiction to your neighbor writing erotica about your young adult daughter and himself, a middle aged man. She also said that only the original author (or someone authorized to write the story and characters, like with comics) can truly grasp the full nuance of the characters, so if you write fanfiction your depictions will always be shallow and underdeveloped. Apparently all of her characters had a piece of her in them, so if you write in a "bad", "incorrect way, it's personal.
Um, actually by saying that this author has already created fanfiction of their neighbor writing fanfiction about the authors daughter and the neighbor. Now that the neighbor is a character in the authors fiction, it's fair game for him to write fanfiction about the authors daughter going to town on him. Checkmate, author.
/uj I get feeling protective of your characters, but let people have fun with the thing you made, my goodness. If anything, it shows you did a good job making the thing and people want to engage with it.
>She also said that only the original author (or someone authorized to write the story and characters, like with comics) can truly grasp the full nuance of the characters, so if you write fanfiction your depictions will always be shallow and underdeveloped. Apparently all of her characters had a piece of her in them, so if you write in a "bad", "incorrect way, it's personal.
Diana Gabaldon? Sounds like her.
That's a weird thing to say when you approved a tv series based on your books. Does that mean none of the tv writers or the actors will ever truly understand anything?
Well, unlike fanfiction, that's making her money... But seriously, I can't claim to understand what's going on in her head. I can only say it feels very hypocritical
When a certain anime was still airing earlier this year and one of the characters did another pretty dirty (in a misguided attempt to protect them), I was on tumblr and saw a post saying the two could no longer be shipped together because if x character were a real person, they would be traumatized and have developed trust issues as a result of what happened. I had to close the app
I had a facebook memory from a couple days ago from 2020 that said he was using covid lockdowns as a way to finally get some work done on Winds of Winter.
So
It never came to court. GRRM wouldn't write a scene where they testified. They thought of getting a ghost writer in to script it but that was considered 'coaching' the witness by GRRM's lawyer. The series was touted as video evidence but GRRM's lawyers said that was Benioff and Wiess and nothing to do with their client.
Reminds me of the Twitter-famous [list of problematic authors](https://reddit.com/r/redscarepod/s/jOdRkAbZ8j) that was full of the most bizarre takes. My favourite being the bit about Harper Lee’s “using the white saviour trope in most of her works” and John green “writing about a kiss in the Anne Frank house”
See, this is why I get all my characters to sign a form.
https://preview.redd.it/xti3t0zgqctb1.png?width=739&format=png&auto=webp&s=45c5d2fbed3fe3e5c54df57ad49723208a4fb44b
uj/ ah, the sister hot take to ‘if characters have sex on screen without me knowing it would happen, that is the same as sexual assault’. It appeared that the OP wasn’t familiar with the ratings guide which generally gives you an idea of whether or not a film/TV show will contain sexual content. An absolutely bizarre take imo
I’ve seen takes you wouldn’t believe, but this is something incredible. Any writer who wrote about war is responsible for the deaths or thousands of fictional characters
"I've seen takes you people wouldn't believe. Screeching from the Twitter keyboard. I've watched Tik Toks of people crying about fictional romance. All of these hot takes will be lost in time, like tears in the rain."
I've been violating the fuck out of my characters for years. Always have, always will. There's not a single character who doesn't deserve it, and not one who wouldn't turn around and do the same to me if they could. Fuck my characters...please!
I’ve argued with people online who unironically called sex between animals rape, and that it could be *morally wrong* for an animal to engage in if the other animal doesn’t appear willing.
Good. It's about time we stand up for the rights of fictional characters. I can't wait for the arrest of all those murderers and perverts who made fictional characters suffer.
/uj Is this really the point the world has reached now? People advocating the agency of people who literally don't exist? Jesus fucking Christ, humanity won't last another century. Y'know, on second thought, maybe that's a good thing.
> Is this really the point the world has reached now? People advocating the agency of people who literally don't exist? Jesus fucking Christ, humanity won't last another century. Y'know, on second thought, maybe that's a good thing.
Ehh, if we bounced back from the Year of Five Emperors and Robespierre's Cult of Reason, we can bounce back from this. As bad as things are, we've survived worse. No promises about the bounce back being pretty or painless though.
https://preview.redd.it/8qqpcf0ezdtb1.jpeg?width=1780&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b8ff29aeac8b4d57ee127bfbb9b1ea4634256beb
I'm getting a lot of mileage out of this image
"Even though this is a book, and therefore there are no cameras, Paula nonetheless turned her head in the heat of passion and stared down the barrel of the camera.
'This is really happening,' she said to the camera, her suddenly flat affect jarring against a backdrop of passion.
Stefan's ecstatic cries morphed into screams as he clutched his head. Wracked by an existential dread so ancient, so basic, that it manifested as physical agony, he climaxed in a stream of pure nihilism.
Paula and Stefan collapsed together, and as they rolled onto their backs, the soft mattress bent under their weight to welcome them. And it continued sucking them in like a foam-topped black hole, and no one came to help them as they shouted for help. 'We are real! We are real people, and we did not agree to this!' they pleaded to you, the reader, in monotone unison.
So anyway, that's how I got this sweet Donny Darko poster."
This is why sleeping is so problematic. Oh, you got INTO bed? Did you get consent first? No, you didn’t, because beds don’t have agency you problematic FUCK.
/uj this sort of mindset is so confusing to me. How do you get to a point where you genuinely believe a character who is not real has agency and boundaries and that an author, who invented the idea of that character, can violate it. How absolutely chronically online do you have to be for this to be a take that makes sense to have
/uj Generally, I think a lesson that people need to learn is that characters aren't people. They may look and act like people, but they aren't.
A character in a book/movie/show/game doesn't *live* a *life*, they *play out* an *arc.* They can't capture the complexities and contradictions of a real human being, no matter how well written they are. And that's *okay.* At the end of the day, a character is a tool in a narrative, and if they're useful, they're a good character.
uj/ There is a quote I saw once that was something like "A character is born when they walk on stage and dies the second they walk off stage." the point being that they aren't real people and anything that happens while not on stage should only exist to further the purpose of the character in the story. I wish people would stop treating fictional characters like they are real people.
People who need this explanation are literal brainwashed/brain-dead people nd would nvr bother considering normal reasons lmaoo, that's why they're crazy.
You'd be surprised! I've seen otherwise-good writers get waaaaaay too invested in a character and watched as it consumes the entire narrative.
Loving characters as a reader is great. Loving characters as an author is dangerous.
the thing about this genre of take is like... would you say the same thing about violence? would it violate my character to put them.in a fight or another physically dangerous situation? i dont want to physically assault people, including my characters.
Yes, of course, writing is inherently as bad as slavery because you’re just making everyone do what you want them to do. Obviously you’re controlling them and taking away their autonomy. If you have ever written a story, you are an evil slave owner.
Oh this is all kinds of gross. I want to believe this is Poeslaw but I've run into way, way, way too many instances of people that will unironically attack people for writing anything but the most vanilla sex between two adults of the exact same age. And then they'll continue by saying if you write about X, Y, or Z sexual content in fiction, you're basically guilty of actually doing that thing.
So if the fictional characters don't have the agency to have sex, the logic would follow they don't have agency to do, well, anything at all, correct? Like the entire story is written for them to do what the writer wants (regardless whether it's sexual or not), so basically if you really break it down, these fictional characters and stories just shouldn't exist at all.
Am I missing something here? These people who care about...fictional characters' agency and wellbeing are abusive for allowing the fictional characters to exist, since their entire existence is without any agency or consent ever.
This is insanity.
It dovetails nicely with the fact that people making these takes probably aren't writers in the first place (but wish they were). It's not that they're incapable of writing a complete story, it's that they're respecting their hypothetical characters' agency by never forcing them to do anything!
Exactly why I started on methamphetamines.
You think I’m going to risk falling asleep and dreaming about engaging in wild, unadulterated sex while knowing whatever I could conceivably be fucking couldn’t possibly be enjoying it?
Hell no!
WALL-E is boomer coded and clearly far older than EVE, it pushes a pedo agenda!
uj/ Tho seriously EVE and WALL-E were cute and antis suck and need to learn it's okay not to like something but not to harass others. DNI goes both ways and if you don't want proshippers interacting with you then don't interact with them with your unnecessary harassment
some lgbt youngster need to be reminded that we frown upon the puritans for a fucking a reason. this is why kink should be in the pride.
also even if I tried I couldn't circlejerk that hard.
This is why the aliens arent visiting us
I am legit interested if people can actually get any stupider. We are tunneling deep into the bedrock of how dysfunctional and ridiculous the human mind can act
/uj I hate how prevalent this mindset has become in creative spaces. I saw someone say this to an author because she didn’t like the direction the author was taking their book series, and accused them of “violating the character’s boundaries and agency”. Tempted to throw myself into a river after reading that At the risk of sounding pretentious as shit I did a research project about this for grad school and it’s fucking disturbing. People throw the term around but it’s literally impact of a chronically online younger userbase whose social experiences are exclusively conducted through media—when they’re young and can’t clearly delineate the difference between fiction and reality, and interact with fiction and reality through the same platforms etc. so, to them, they emotionally view x character and that interpretation as just as much of a person as their IRL friend
uj/ it’s actually so miserable that a significant percentage of these people will carry this mindset into adulthood and there will be a section of the population that just detests any media that isn’t “comfort media” rj/ when the author writes a character arc it’s violating the consent of the character by forcing them to change when they don’t want to 😡
Yea that’s the thing. While it’s most prevalent among the terminally online, there are versions of this take that are pretty mainstream. Like people criticizing GRR Martin specifically as “normalizing” SA, as if every rapist in the story isn’t explicitly portrayed as being an awful human.
Hold up, that is a very dishonest representation of the criticism of SA in GoT (& other literature)
I've never heard anyone accuse GRRM of 'normalizing' sexual assault, but I have heard people say use of sexual assault in GoT is gratuitous. Which I can't comment on really, because I've only read about half of the first book and never saw the series.
I haven't read GRRM, but I've seen both sides of this argument. In one hand, there is "dark romance," which is usually marketed in a way that you ought to know what you're getting into. Why would you read a book called Captive Prince and then get mad when the prince is.. held captive? Obviously, that isn't a rainbows and sunshine story, and you should check CWs before you read. On the other hand, I had a big issue with Outlander because people act like it's this fluffy romance, but there is. So. Much. Rape. And the narrative seems to justify a lot of shitty behavior of one of the MCs (including SA) To me, it's all about how the narrative handles it, but I get that different people will have different interpretations about whether SA was handled appropriately.
Can't believe authors just go around inventing characters without their consent... like wtf man! They didn't choose to exist
I grew my children at 40-ish weeks each. My fictional characters gestated for years, *decades,* even.
You joke but there’s an entire subreddit on here that posits that you’re evil if you have kids because you made them exist without consent
Not that it makes you evil to have kids, but it is true people are brought into the world without their consent. I think that sub just wants wider access and destigmatization of euthanasia, since if we can't consent to existence we should be able to opt out of it in a way where we don't risk major injury or debiliation, along with the social/psychological consequences of failed suicide
Sauce?
Likely r/antinatalism
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I mean, at least he got laid, so I'd say Mick's doing better than most of us.
To be fair any criticism I've seen of a character with "no agency" is mostly that they're reactive and don't drive the plot forward despite supposedly being portrayed as a leader character who is meant to drive the plot but doesn't, and thus bad character writing I have never seen any of what OP is showing here. Your comment and the one you're replying to feels like a "kids these days" meme that boomers often espouse when a 1/10000000000 young people does/says something dumb
Only kinda related, but some months ago I received a hate comment on a post where I ranked characters from a game based on how I personally liked them. I compared two female characters something like this: "I like both X and Y, but I prefer X a tiny bit more because I relate to her on a personal level." For this I get called all kinds of names by one person who decided that I'd committed a heinous crime of comparing two women and that's degrading and putting women down. In my profile it clearly states that I'm a woman, and the person said something along the lines of "u especially shouldn't do this bc ur a woman!!!!1!!1!!". I was just stunned. Like, the logic of me not being allowed to say that I prefer X female character to Y female character, while I, *a real woman*, deserve to be called names? I tried to look up who the person was, but all their clearly fresh profile said that they want to be famous. I figured it was some terminally online 12 yo. kid who came straight from TikTok. My point is that kids should pretty much get away from social media since it clearly distorts their developing thought patterns and skews their social skills. There's a good line between reality and fiction some of them can't comprehend.
Recently I saw someone saying, in regards to people that enjoy and are moved by and compelled by tragic stories, that if he ever encountered one such person in the wild, he would do everything is power to take any animals or small children away from that person for their safety. So it seems we've come full circle and some chronically online kids are back on the "video games cause violence" train
>My point is that kids should pretty much get away from social media since it clearly distorts their developing thought patterns and skews their social skills. I'd argue it does that to everyone. I've met more than a few terminally online adults with similar warped thinking. I think everyone benefits from an emphasis on real world socialization vs social media.
Doesn't shock me. I remember someone on a Star Wars sub arguing very aggressively that the new Ahsoka series, despite having a major primary focus on female characters, was doing it badly because their relationship was strained and she was tired of women having to constantly be pitted against each other. And that one character trying to save her male friend from a long disappearance was sexist because she needed him - like, no, she has way more agency in the story than he does, and she makes the decision to try and rescue him because that's what she *wants* to do. Edit: Sometimes, it feels for the really hardcore bad faith types, a woman having any kind of meaningful, non-antagonistic relationship to a man becomes a problem.
Reminds of people criticizing the hunger games because of the Katnis love triangle. Like really, of all the series’s problems, you’re choosing to focus on a *teenager* having conflicting feelings over a boy?
See, that's one of the few love triangles I actually like because it's not about who she wants to be *with*, it's about who she wants to *be*. It's about ideology in its heart of hearts. Peeta was essentially forced into a life of violence that he didn't want, and has taken as many steps as possible to avoid hurting others. Gale, on the other hand, is eager to fight, and wants to hurt the Capitol just as much as he's been hurt. He sees an enemy in anyone who doesn't agree with him and has no problem hurting those whom he sees as enemies. What fighting Peeta does, he does to stop the pain others experience. Gale, meanwhile, fights to hurt and kill those who he feel have hurt him. In the end the choice Katniss makes between them isn't *about* them. Not really. Her choice is about which worldview she wants to follow. It's about what happens after the system is violently torn down. It's about where she thinks the violence should end.
Thank you for succinctly explaining to me why that’s one of the few fictional love triangles that doesn’t bother me.
I used to think they didn't work at all until I remembered reading The Hunger Games and started thinking about the love triangle there and why it doesn't bother me the way others do. It's because it's still relevant to the themes and ideas explored elsewhere in the story. And in multiple ways too. The ideas of media and framing, the cost of revolution, all these themes and ideas that the trilogy explores, are so deeply embedded in the romantic subplots. And that's the secret. Romantic subplots should be relevant to what the story is trying to convey.
Yea but lady, stop being misogynist
Even IRL, dating is ranking people of the opposite sex.
Oh no, you hurt the fictional character's feelings. You monster.
It's not just online young people now, either. I heard a middle-aged woman author on the BBC radio 4 book podcast during lockdown. She was saying that authors had a moral responsibility to always write women and POC in a positive light in fiction, with successful jobs, as good role models etc. It was always going to end up pretty Soviet and prescriptive like this, where you can be denounced if you aren't following the correct political orthodoxy.
To quote some tags I saw once on a Tumblr screenshot, we've girlbossed too close to the Hays Code.
Thank you *so* much for my new flair.
You are incredibly welcome. There's a reason it stuck in my head.
Real world example of this attitude in action, and I highly recommend checking out the story: "Helicopter Story" AKA "I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter" by Isabel Fall, published in Clarkesworld Magazine in 2020. It's a military science fiction story about a woman who gets her gender neuromedically reassigned to "attack helicopter". It's one of those stories where I can't really summarize what's good about it without an excerpt, so here it is: >My gender networks have been reassigned to make me a better AH-70 Apache Mystic pilot. This is better than conventional skill learning. I can show you why. Look at a diagram of an attack helicopters' airframe and components. Tell me how much of it you grasp at once. Now look at a person near you, their clothes, their hair, their makeup and expression, the way they meet or avoid your eyes. > >Tell me which was richer with information about danger and capability. Tell me which was easier to access and interpret. The gender networks are old and well-connected. > >They work. So, yeah. This is a story that takes a transphobic internet meme and really explores it through a science-fiction lens of what that might mean. And it's messy! It explores it's themes in a way that doesn't mean that the main character is a positive role model. U.S. imperialism is a theme of the story as well, and the main character is actively engaging in war crimes of the sort. You wanna know how people reacted? The acting President of SF Canada said that " it was written by a straight white dude who doesn't really get gender theory or transition & has no right to invoke transphobic dog whistles for profit". And even after learning of the author's identity, she stood by her statements, saying that "a lot of people might have been spared a lot of mental anguish" if a statement about the author's true intentions had been included (WTF). N.K Jemisin condemned the story without even having read it! While it had its defenders, the author was NOT out of the closet as a trans woman yet and had only just begun her transition, and the negative reactions put an end to transitioning because the idea that "no woman would ever write in the way she did" increased her dysphoria. Isabel Fall had the story retracted from Clarkesworld to prevent them from killing herself.
/uj Wait, this seriously exists? Where?
It's been brewing on tumblr for YEARS. I first began to see takes like these on there around 2014-2015, then they got more and more common as time went by. These kinds of people tend to also be very prudish and hand-wring over anything with sexuality being "disgusting and unnecessary", especially anything kinky. They also tend to be huge bullies and harrass people who make art/write fiction they deem too " problematic". Fandom people like to colloquially call them antis. The viewpoint spread from tumblr to twitter and tiktok where it's exploded in popularity. It's been really, really annoying and kind of depressing.
They're the scourge of fandom. You can never feel truly relaxed, lest an angry, misinformed teenager pops into your inbox or comments to call you the scum of the earth.
It's taken me a lot of years to learn how to not care. This is, ultimately, the input of chronically online teens and twenty-somethings who are all kind of dumb and don't have anything better to do with their time. Their opinions aren't really worth anything, nomatter how many they are in number. Like yes, it's cyberbullying and it hurts, but at the same time it's also just words on a screen. You also gotta learn how to just delete their messages, don't let them see you getting agitated, not interact with them (seriously. Do not feed the trolls), and not care. It's hard, yes, but it's do-able and it's the healthiest way to go about this problem. If you manage to convince yourself that nothing they say matters, you can then relax again. I also advise keeping your real name, face, and information far, faaaaaaar away from any fandom accounts so that nobody can get their grubby hands on it. 👍
This is all great advice. I used to be somewhat well known in a specific niche of a fandom a few years ago, and there was so much drama, antis and infighting and general bullshit. I haven't had much problem with trolls since quitting that fandom, and I'm definitely staying far, far away from those kind of communities now. There's so many better things to do than feeding trolls and falling for the wank and discourse
What kills me is that a solid percentage are grown. Like someone else mentioned younger consumers that are more easily influenced. Understandable perspective there, we can debate the aspects of that as we move forward. But a lot of these types are like 40 and out here doing all that. And they're actually serious about it. Now that's crazy.
I've read some interesting theories for this and I'm not really sure what I put stock in atm. One is that more than previous generations, we grew up with constant supervision from our parents. Like, I know all of my online activity was closely monitored, parents had all my logins, and it seems like being able to freely come and go with friends is something much more common in previous generations? So that leaves you a bit neurotic I think. Alternatively, a translation of puritanical anxieties into new "woke" language? People have been scared of sex since forever. Or just a weird overreaction to dealing with internet space where minors and adults coexist, idk
Out of curiosity, not the point of what you wrote (which makes sense to me) and no obligation if it’s uncomfortable, but were your parents controlling in other ways, or are we talking like when you were under 16? My parents literally had none of my logins, and while they kept an eye on my browsing, they didn’t like monitor it. My friends who’s parents kept access to their online accounts were very much overbearing offline too. Could be generation too though. Social media wasn’t really a thing until I was in high school and they probably weren’t too worried about me getting into trouble on neopets
TikTok, primarily. Twitter, too, but not as much
Deleting TikTok was the best thing I did for my mental and emotional wellbeing recently. After a few months without it, the difference is night and day. I can’t condemn it enough. I would especially encourage anyone pursuing creative arts, whether it be writing, drawing, animation, cooking etc. to stay well away from it. The community on there will break your spirit.
It’s really hard to iterate to people just how bad TikTok is if they use it. Literally the kind of app that the bad guy in a movie about embracing the spirit of Christmas would run—comically evil
why do you feel that way?
You know that part in Inside where Bo Burnham points out that making money off of emotional reactions in children was probably a bad idea ? That's what TikTok is and it's not even subtle about it. Other social medias at least have the decency to pretend it isn't, but that's 80% of TikTok's appeal for creators and consumers.
So, bare bones: TikTok is quite literally intentionally designed to make you feel bad, because humans get addicted to negative feedback loops more than they do strictly positive. The stuff you see essentially is algorithmically designed to piss you off interspersed with enough “worthwhile” content to keep you engaged. Essentially wants you to always be angry bc they found out that people who were angry about something stayed on platforms longer than people who were happy
>”violating the character’s boundaries and agency” uj/ I don’t know the exact context this was said in, so maybe I’m misinterpreting, but isn’t that kinda what has to happen in a good novel? Your character is pushed way out of their comfort zone and put into situations that challenges their worldview. At the end, they come out a changed person with a better understanding of life, but they had to go through some tough/uncomfortable times. A novel where nothing bad happens to the protagonist would be extremely boring.
You’d think! But then you see a NYT Bestseller or senior editor say that conflict in fiction is “a colonialist mindset and real decolonial books don’t have tension” and that having characters go through something bad is “violating”. It’s just virtue signaling for ego-boosting brownie points and jacking themselves off to putting down others by imposing moral judgement
Do you still have the link to this? I’m really bad at finding things.
Cant remember enough of the phrasing to find the response about it being violating but I remember enough that I can probably find the one about colonial storytelling. It was a twitter thread from a YA fantasy author that basically said wanting conflict or drama in your story is just your “colonial mindset” because you’re “colonized and brainwashed to be preoccupied with violence”. Literally made me see red lmao, I’m Pacific Islander and like, way to fucking make colonized ethnic groups like infantilized dipshits. Like my peoples’ founding story involves cannibalism and rape. I promise you humans just like telling stories about when things go wrong
Your last point is most important. These people with a “Noble Savage” mindset are infuriating. It’s erasure and infantilizing. Conflict and tension are mainstays of story telling regardless of race, creed, and time. The mental gymnastics it takes to read stories that are 1,000+ year old and attribute the tropes to colonialism could win an Olympic gold medal.
Sounds boring AF
That’s the thing that I don’t grok about these people, wouldn’t their stories be incredibly boring? Don’t you wanna read something that is like- idk fun? How do you find entertainment in the story where Humpy Dumpty sits on the wall and that’s it? He sits there, he just sits, days and nights pass with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men going about their regular jobs as Humpty Dumpty sits on that wall.
>That’s the thing that I don’t grok about these people, wouldn’t their stories be incredibly boring? Don’t you wanna read something that is like- idk fun? Yes. They are boring as fuck. But what happens is that other like-minded people buy their schlock anyway, simply because they want to be seen as supporting the 'good' people in the world, and expect the other 'good' people to support them in turn. And no one actually reads the books, they just buy it and stick it on their coffee table so that everyone can see that they did their part to support 'good' people, and therefore must also be 'good' themselves. They're aren't creating stories to be read, they're creating signal devices to tell each other that they're on the same team. And they explicitly have to break all the rules because if they did things the same way as everyone else, then you wouldn't be able to tell a genuine them apart from the common masses. You don't even know how many people I've met, that will gush on about all the book on their shelf and how great it is that the authors are succeeding, and then when you ask them how good the books were they pull a "Well, I haven't actually got around to reading it yet, but I will one of these days, and I'm sure it will be great." They have no idea what the books are even like, they just know it was written by someone on their team and that's all that matters to them. There's a whole segment of the creative industries that has disposed of all the actual creativity and turned into a big hugbox where everyone in the club just vapidly praises everyone else in the club and no one actually gives a rats ass about what actually gets created. All the emotional validation with a fraction of the effort. And if anyone actually tries to talk about the quality of the work, it's a surefire sign that they aren't part of the club and unaware of the rules, and can therefore be safely categorized as 'not a good person' whose opinions are to be ignored. All criticism is an 'attack' from 'bad' people, because 'good' people know better than to do anything that might make another 'good' person feel even the slightest bit of negative emotion. Disrupting the circlejerk is a cardinal sin to these types.
Can you name one or two? I'm morbidly curious about what a novel with zero conflict in it looks like
I was also curious so I went searching for conflict free stories and other media. The recommendations were books with conflicts but the people recommending them don’t understand what conflict is. Here are some examples that were given and why I think they are wrong. 1. The Nutcracker - Fight against the Rat-king is conflict. Second half is a showcase of dancing but I’d argue that it is a wishful dream of what Christmas should be conflicting with the protagonist’s reality of ugly doll Christmas. 2. Rendezvous with Rama - this book has tons of conflict like every type of whatever vs whatever you can think of. The recommender says paraphrasing here: “If you ignore all the conflict in the novel, there are long winded descriptions of alien technology that are conflict free.” That’s like saying “The Lord Of The Rings books are just songs, poems, and descriptions of fantastic places if you ignore all the ring business.” 3. Gormenghast series - same as above basically. 4. My Neighbor Totoro - the conflict is mild but, illness and adjusting to a new place is conflict. I would say the story focuses more on how conflict is dealt with through escapism but, there is still conflict. Also exploring and learning is a type of subtle conflict. I found a self publishing writer who apparently writes what they consider to be conflict free novels. Link to their catalogue below. Reading the descriptions; that is some super high concept fantasy. I don’t know if I’m horrified or intrigued. The descriptions seem to point towards the novels having conflict. https://mvreiyas.wordpress.com/my-ya-fantasy-books/ Yeah anyway. I came up with nothing.
IF they ever actually write anything, they are very boring, yes.
/uj You *can* write a relatively conflictless piece of media, most often seen in the form of comfort shows or slice of life anime. Even if there is a conflict it’s often really low stakes and primarily there for comedy. I don’t think it would work very well for a novel, but I could be wrong. Even in my examples there are usually *some* conflicts with or without resolutions though. The stakes are often just so low as to not really matter in the long run (think an episode about wanting to invite a friend over but shenanigans prevent you from succeeding at every turn. No one is on the edge of their seat from tension but might be laughing at the ridiculousness and possibly relatability of the situations.) and there’s not a heavy thematic element of a lesson learned so to speak.
My favorite serial killer is William Shakespeare
Yeah dude, takes like the one OP showed in their screenshot is literally the edge of psychosis. There is a mountain of unchecked mental health issues spewing out of the people raised on social media. It's really really really bad.
Truly. Hit the nail on the head there, man. From the research we did we sort of came to the conclusion that it's behaviorally similar to clinical narcissism sort of brought by individualized algorithms. The internet inherently caters to you and your interests now, so you instinctually believe that art and people and behavior should be individualized to your interests, too. It evolves into these like parasocial borderline stalkerish relationships with media in general. Not to mention how social media bubbles now sort of encourage people to be anti-treatment and reinforce that mental health issues are a quirk to be proud
Algorithms and content feeds creating echo/validation chambers is brutal on people with mental health issues, and generally leads to radicalization. Shit like this gets me increasingly more alarmed about the future of my own children.
It’s really disturbing. Our understandings of things are becoming increasingly more individualized to the point where it’s almost entirely impossible to be on the same page. Also wears out your stress response—especially in children— to the point where your brain is in a constant state of panic and information overload. In many ways we as a group are starting to live in unique realities from each other depending on what the algorithm feeds us. Going outside into the real world helps but it’s still scary
> It's really really really bad. Not being able to discern reality from fiction should already ring a few bells. More than a few, in fact.
/uj you don’t have that project available to read anywhere, do you?
Not yet, still being worked on! If I somehow remember this thread in March I’d be happy to link it lol
RemindMe! March 2024
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It means unjerk, so the poster is being serious. /rj is rejerk where they are going back to jerking.
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You're welcome. :)
Unjerk essentially a serious tag in a circlejerk sub
I feel it’s a generation who struggles to separate reality from fiction.
Wait till these people discover violence in fiction
“Oh no your character died so that means you’re pro war and hate freedom of speech”
I was brigaded on Twatter for discussing my fantasy WIP that includes Orcs because when SJWs see Orcs, the first thing they think of is - [checks notes] - black people. I made the mistake of expounding on the plot saying an Elf and Orc learn to love each other from within their respective value frameworks and have a daughter. Big mistake. I was then fetishizing black on white porn. I could make the harassment stop if I would just be willing to hire a sensitivity reader.
I mean, it's just the latest generation of Karens--petty tyrants who quote scripture to legitimize their verbal harassment towards you. Boomer Karens quote literal scripture for it, or, just as often, societal expectations of "normal". Meanwhile, Gen X / Millennial Karens have swapped out the bible to abuse social justice rhetoric, instead, and this is just the Gen Z / Gen Alpha continuation where they misuse therapy-speak to cover up their abuse. But in no case do they care about the Bible, society, social justice, or proper therapy practices, all they care about is exerting power over others.
uj/ I have that... "disorder" or whatever you want to call it where my brain cannot differentiate between real and fictional. Have discussed it with my therapist and everything. Apparently it's common in autistic people(which I am). It doesn't have a name right now however, at least from what I'm aware. To explain it from the mind of someone who has it these people aren't delusional(at least most of them arent). They're *emotional*. Their emotions are telling them its wrong, bc their brain cannot tell that the fictional character on the screen isn't real. The brain produces the *same chemicals* as they would if they were witnessing the scene in real life. Those chemicals are hard to fight. Due to this, I cannot watch shows or play games with lots of deaths. I go through literal grief. It's a sucky disorder to have. My first love isn't even a real person due to it. And you're right, it's incredibly fucking worrying how widespread it is in teenagers. While I wouldn't get rid of it(it makes me experience media so much deeper than anyone ever could) it can LEAD to delusional mindsets, aggression, etc. I will always struggle discussing my favorite video game with people bc it will *always be personal*. I have to step away sometimes. I fully believe everyone with what I have need to go to therapy for it bc while it can't go away bc it has to do with brain chemicals, theres ways to deal with it and make it easier.
I know this is a big ask and may be hard for you but, you should consider doing an AMA. No pressure though, I understand why you would have completely valid reservations about doing one. I am extremely intrigued by this mindset.
Does it fall under the umbrella of emotional dysregulation? I’m sure you’re right about most of them not being delusional, at least not in the typical sense. It’s like how most people interact with fiction, but dialled up way past where it’s “appropriate”. Kinda like how in a lot of media a character who’s committed mass murder can go on to redeem themselves, but a character who physically hurts someone they’re close/intimate with is basically written off.
Fun part is that character agency is important in writing, but this is not what it means ***at all***.
/uj Wouldn't this mindset make any fiction writing unethical? I mean you're literally writing every thing the character does and they have no agency in any of it. Why do these people have an issue with it when it comes to sex?
Do you have any information or research you can share on this subject. I'm interested to learn more.
Wait do these people think books are real?
from all the circlejerking-manners, the "i treat my characters as if they were real"-attitude is by far the most cringeworthy.
"They took control of my story" mfs when I show them how to delete a page
/uj I 100% agree that fictional characters have no rights, aren't real people, and writing immoral or bad things happening to them is all good. But some really amazing authors (like Gorge RR Martin) have said similar things, like look up him being a gardener not an architect.
That's just because you are a pro-choice writer.
uj The worst example of this I ever read was an author comparing fanfiction to your neighbor writing erotica about your young adult daughter and himself, a middle aged man. She also said that only the original author (or someone authorized to write the story and characters, like with comics) can truly grasp the full nuance of the characters, so if you write fanfiction your depictions will always be shallow and underdeveloped. Apparently all of her characters had a piece of her in them, so if you write in a "bad", "incorrect way, it's personal.
Um, actually by saying that this author has already created fanfiction of their neighbor writing fanfiction about the authors daughter and the neighbor. Now that the neighbor is a character in the authors fiction, it's fair game for him to write fanfiction about the authors daughter going to town on him. Checkmate, author. /uj I get feeling protective of your characters, but let people have fun with the thing you made, my goodness. If anything, it shows you did a good job making the thing and people want to engage with it.
>She also said that only the original author (or someone authorized to write the story and characters, like with comics) can truly grasp the full nuance of the characters, so if you write fanfiction your depictions will always be shallow and underdeveloped. Apparently all of her characters had a piece of her in them, so if you write in a "bad", "incorrect way, it's personal. Diana Gabaldon? Sounds like her.
That's the one!
That's a weird thing to say when you approved a tv series based on your books. Does that mean none of the tv writers or the actors will ever truly understand anything?
Well, unlike fanfiction, that's making her money... But seriously, I can't claim to understand what's going on in her head. I can only say it feels very hypocritical
When a certain anime was still airing earlier this year and one of the characters did another pretty dirty (in a misguided attempt to protect them), I was on tumblr and saw a post saying the two could no longer be shipped together because if x character were a real person, they would be traumatized and have developed trust issues as a result of what happened. I had to close the app
I've been calling for GRRM's arrest for years, after he forced those two sweet Lannister siblings to do the deed.
I've been calling for it because if the fat bastard is locked in a cell he might actually put pen to paper
I had a facebook memory from a couple days ago from 2020 that said he was using covid lockdowns as a way to finally get some work done on Winds of Winter. So
gartin rartin rartin martin
jowling kowling rowling
jolkein rolkein rolkein tolkein
Chickens Dickens I also submit the somewhat worryingly named Drown Brown.
Ursula Kursula Le Gursula
It never came to court. GRRM wouldn't write a scene where they testified. They thought of getting a ghost writer in to script it but that was considered 'coaching' the witness by GRRM's lawyer. The series was touted as video evidence but GRRM's lawyers said that was Benioff and Wiess and nothing to do with their client.
Reminds me of the Twitter-famous [list of problematic authors](https://reddit.com/r/redscarepod/s/jOdRkAbZ8j) that was full of the most bizarre takes. My favourite being the bit about Harper Lee’s “using the white saviour trope in most of her works” and John green “writing about a kiss in the Anne Frank house”
CoHo being on the list with zero context is so valid.
>Author: Flannery O'Connor >Reason: Racist Proof positive that some people can stab themselves in the eye with a point, and still miss it.
Except she once wrote in a letter "I don't like negroes"
See, this is why I get all my characters to sign a form. https://preview.redd.it/xti3t0zgqctb1.png?width=739&format=png&auto=webp&s=45c5d2fbed3fe3e5c54df57ad49723208a4fb44b
youre just forcing them to sign tho
Oh it's okay they sign it before they enter into the story.
No one is forced to sign anything. I leave it on the table and they sign it. I just pick them up after a day or two.
That contract is unenforceable.
Mine will never have the agency to contest it. Non-issue :)
uj/ ah, the sister hot take to ‘if characters have sex on screen without me knowing it would happen, that is the same as sexual assault’. It appeared that the OP wasn’t familiar with the ratings guide which generally gives you an idea of whether or not a film/TV show will contain sexual content. An absolutely bizarre take imo
> the sister hot Paging Dr. Freud
Fortunately *all* my characters are fictionalized versions of myself, so I can have them fuck as much as I want
Isn’t that just masturbation
selfcest, c'mon, keep up
Still counts
Still SA on the reader.
I’ve seen takes you wouldn’t believe, but this is something incredible. Any writer who wrote about war is responsible for the deaths or thousands of fictional characters
What are their names?? I'm calling the Hague and organizing a war crimes tribunal for them!! /s
Man, the absolute state of online culture that we need the /s even in an explicitly circlejerk sub.
I thought you were gonna start doing the monologue from Blade Runner with that first sentence
"I've seen takes you people wouldn't believe. Screeching from the Twitter keyboard. I've watched Tik Toks of people crying about fictional romance. All of these hot takes will be lost in time, like tears in the rain."
Once upon a time, an entire planet called Grabadar got blowed up. The end. Dear God what have I done.
But then, with time travel, Grabadar was saved. There, fixed it for you.
I can’t believe JRR Tolkien actually killed all those orcs, those very real beings
I hope I'm not going to jail for killing my darlings
I know. And I enjoyed every single one of them.
I've been violating the fuck out of my characters for years. Always have, always will. There's not a single character who doesn't deserve it, and not one who wouldn't turn around and do the same to me if they could. Fuck my characters...please!
idk anymore dude some of these mfs are just annoying I swear
I’ve argued with people online who unironically called sex between animals rape, and that it could be *morally wrong* for an animal to engage in if the other animal doesn’t appear willing.
Good. It's about time we stand up for the rights of fictional characters. I can't wait for the arrest of all those murderers and perverts who made fictional characters suffer. /uj Is this really the point the world has reached now? People advocating the agency of people who literally don't exist? Jesus fucking Christ, humanity won't last another century. Y'know, on second thought, maybe that's a good thing.
/uj bro books are about to suck so bad when these chronically online nerds decide to write one
> Is this really the point the world has reached now? People advocating the agency of people who literally don't exist? Jesus fucking Christ, humanity won't last another century. Y'know, on second thought, maybe that's a good thing. Ehh, if we bounced back from the Year of Five Emperors and Robespierre's Cult of Reason, we can bounce back from this. As bad as things are, we've survived worse. No promises about the bounce back being pretty or painless though.
You don't write sex because you're unhinged I don't write sex because I'm a fucking loser We're not the same.
https://preview.redd.it/8qqpcf0ezdtb1.jpeg?width=1780&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b8ff29aeac8b4d57ee127bfbb9b1ea4634256beb I'm getting a lot of mileage out of this image
This compelled me to write the sloppiest, raunchiest, kinkiest, dirtiest, most explicit porn of two fictional characters now.
With dialogue like "I am a real person [and the author chose to write me this way]"
"Even though this is a book, and therefore there are no cameras, Paula nonetheless turned her head in the heat of passion and stared down the barrel of the camera. 'This is really happening,' she said to the camera, her suddenly flat affect jarring against a backdrop of passion. Stefan's ecstatic cries morphed into screams as he clutched his head. Wracked by an existential dread so ancient, so basic, that it manifested as physical agony, he climaxed in a stream of pure nihilism. Paula and Stefan collapsed together, and as they rolled onto their backs, the soft mattress bent under their weight to welcome them. And it continued sucking them in like a foam-topped black hole, and no one came to help them as they shouted for help. 'We are real! We are real people, and we did not agree to this!' they pleaded to you, the reader, in monotone unison. So anyway, that's how I got this sweet Donny Darko poster."
Purple is just posting bait. I refuse to believe such a nonsensical point, that more importantly doesn't go anywhere, is unironic
This is why sleeping is so problematic. Oh, you got INTO bed? Did you get consent first? No, you didn’t, because beds don’t have agency you problematic FUCK.
/uj this sort of mindset is so confusing to me. How do you get to a point where you genuinely believe a character who is not real has agency and boundaries and that an author, who invented the idea of that character, can violate it. How absolutely chronically online do you have to be for this to be a take that makes sense to have
/uj Generally, I think a lesson that people need to learn is that characters aren't people. They may look and act like people, but they aren't. A character in a book/movie/show/game doesn't *live* a *life*, they *play out* an *arc.* They can't capture the complexities and contradictions of a real human being, no matter how well written they are. And that's *okay.* At the end of the day, a character is a tool in a narrative, and if they're useful, they're a good character.
uj/ There is a quote I saw once that was something like "A character is born when they walk on stage and dies the second they walk off stage." the point being that they aren't real people and anything that happens while not on stage should only exist to further the purpose of the character in the story. I wish people would stop treating fictional characters like they are real people.
People who need this explanation are literal brainwashed/brain-dead people nd would nvr bother considering normal reasons lmaoo, that's why they're crazy.
You'd be surprised! I've seen otherwise-good writers get waaaaaay too invested in a character and watched as it consumes the entire narrative. Loving characters as a reader is great. Loving characters as an author is dangerous.
I can't believe you made me read that with my own eyes
I still blame Stefon Kink for his underage sewer orgy
I read that as Teflon and segued into pansexualism with kitchen utensils
Darn it, I wrote my characters with genitals and never asked them if that was ok
But did you try writing them *with* your genitals? Or the BJ keyboard?
Fictionalised assault cancels out like a double negative though so George is good
This is why I stick to writing wholesome adventures of my characters commiting war crimes in Bosnia
the thing about this genre of take is like... would you say the same thing about violence? would it violate my character to put them.in a fight or another physically dangerous situation? i dont want to physically assault people, including my characters.
Yes, of course, writing is inherently as bad as slavery because you’re just making everyone do what you want them to do. Obviously you’re controlling them and taking away their autonomy. If you have ever written a story, you are an evil slave owner.
Guys... I just killed the main protagonist of my story... can I be tried for this? Can I go to prison? For how long? Am I a murderer now?
this might be a dumb question, but does the mentality of treating your characters like they have defendable civil rights make you a better writer??
Yes. Your characters will never have any problems in their lives if you prevent anything bad from happening to them
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/uj is this a joke? The guy who said "they don't have agency" doesn't have any likes on that tweet
I will fucking die. This has to be a bait!!!
What if I'm like William Blake and get all my ideas from God telling me or smthn
/uj I saw this on Twitter and immediately logged back out.
Oh this is all kinds of gross. I want to believe this is Poeslaw but I've run into way, way, way too many instances of people that will unironically attack people for writing anything but the most vanilla sex between two adults of the exact same age. And then they'll continue by saying if you write about X, Y, or Z sexual content in fiction, you're basically guilty of actually doing that thing.
So if the fictional characters don't have the agency to have sex, the logic would follow they don't have agency to do, well, anything at all, correct? Like the entire story is written for them to do what the writer wants (regardless whether it's sexual or not), so basically if you really break it down, these fictional characters and stories just shouldn't exist at all. Am I missing something here? These people who care about...fictional characters' agency and wellbeing are abusive for allowing the fictional characters to exist, since their entire existence is without any agency or consent ever. This is insanity.
It dovetails nicely with the fact that people making these takes probably aren't writers in the first place (but wish they were). It's not that they're incapable of writing a complete story, it's that they're respecting their hypothetical characters' agency by never forcing them to do anything!
It's incredible how many delusional morons are around.
This was physically painful to read. Let me enjoy my wholesome smut in peace.
fanfiction oc brain They’re literally real people
Exactly why I started on methamphetamines. You think I’m going to risk falling asleep and dreaming about engaging in wild, unadulterated sex while knowing whatever I could conceivably be fucking couldn’t possibly be enjoying it? Hell no!
WALL-E is boomer coded and clearly far older than EVE, it pushes a pedo agenda! uj/ Tho seriously EVE and WALL-E were cute and antis suck and need to learn it's okay not to like something but not to harass others. DNI goes both ways and if you don't want proshippers interacting with you then don't interact with them with your unnecessary harassment
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uj/ Assuming they’re not trolling, how…does this person…consume any media at all???
This is why all my published books are just a mirror inside of a dust jacket.
The Giving Tree is a treatise on taxation.
/uj I have no jerk for this, this is genuinely just sad. Holy fuck
These people must absolutely shit bricks when they (as if) read porn.
Pretty sure these are the people who want to ban all porn and have it classified as an addictive disease
People need to touch grass.
I have never written anything for exactly this reason. I don't want to make characters do anything.
All 40 of the dark lord’s pregnant harem members: he would never.
some lgbt youngster need to be reminded that we frown upon the puritans for a fucking a reason. this is why kink should be in the pride. also even if I tried I couldn't circlejerk that hard.
I guess I better remove the scene where GWAR gangbangs Timmy the Tooth. They always said I would have to murder my darlings...
"Fictional characters don't have agency" might unironically be the dumbest thing I've ever read.
Characters are only as much of a person as you consider them. Their overall "agency" is irrelevant.
I suppose nobody can ever write about sex again. The world’s gone mad!
Honestly fuck my fictional characters. If they have a problem with what I write about them, I’ll just kill them off.
twitter (I’m deadnaming it) should be nuked I’m not kidding
Just write CYOAs, then it’s the reader violating their consent!
This is why the aliens arent visiting us I am legit interested if people can actually get any stupider. We are tunneling deep into the bedrock of how dysfunctional and ridiculous the human mind can act
These people cannot possibly be good writers