Nothing to see here :) (lying)

I ... basically just don't worry about this. Like, I really liked The Talented Mr. Ripley, which I read as a teenager, and there was not even a fraction of a second during which I had any thoughts of "perhaps i should murder my friends to steal their stuff, since this published author portrayed it", because... like I just never actually think anyone gave me the idea that books were supposed to be showing things that were good. They were supposed to be telling interesting stories, and those are often stories in which people behave badly.

I think it's possible for me to imagine a piece which I'd regard as genuinely harmful propaganda, but even then, I just... I mean, I might object to it or say "hey watch out for this", but I wouldn't want it banned, that just seems insane.

I think the big thing that a lot of this discourse misses is that people don't necessarily jump from a fictional depiction to "therefore this is okay". Sometimes they jump from a fictional depiction to "holy shit this is fucked up, and it's been happening to me for years but I never questioned it because life has just been like that".

Representation matters in bulk. One presentation of a black starship captain isn't going to single handedly end racism. Fiction tends to reflect the times more than shape it. This is absolutely true of professionally published works that make money, as well.

When stories about handsome men ravishing the book's heroine were all the rage in romance novels, it was not that writing those normalized rape. It's that rape was normalized, so no one thought, "huh, this is skeevy." It took a decade of women pushing back against rape culture via second wave feminism before those stories stopped being quite so prevalent. Likewise, it's a societal problem that many people didn't get the point of Lolita and thought it was a love story, not a horror story, but that is not the fault of the book.

Now, there are nonfiction books I kind of think should be banned. Like "To Train Up A Child" by the Pearls, which is a child abuse how-to manual masquerading as a child rearing manual for Christians. That book has caused deaths. At the very least I feel the publisher should be required to put a warning on it like the kind we see on cigarettes. "The American Pediatrics Association has found that this book has been associated with many cases of child abuse, including some that resulted in the child's death."

But as Alara said, it informs in bulk.

I like to use a specific episode of Supernatural as an example. They shot the show in Canada, but this episode allegedly took place just outside of New Orleans.

There was one named Black character, who was found dead. There was one singular black extra in the background, existing for maybe 5 to 10 seconds.

Everyone else was white, even the nonspeaking extras.

That's incredibly... Not Louisiana as a whole, let alone the New Orleans area in particular. But this one episode was just the one episode, right?

Except that there are hundreds of episodes of various shows filmed in very white places with little to no Black representation, and claiming to take place within the New Orleans area.

If you saw all of those, you'd subconsciously, maybe, wonder if New Orleans wasn't as Black as you thought, or if perhaps there was a lot of White gentrification going on (which, there is, but there's still a ton of Black people just, you know... Existing) - especially if you don't know the reality behind filming locations and such.

When we consume media for learning's sake - from the news, textbooks, etc. - we are looking for inconsistencies and lies. We have our bullshit filter up.

Buuuuut when we consume media for entertainment, that bullshit filter is borderline nonexistent! So if you see the same message repeated over and over and over again, it might begin to inform some of your subconscious biases.

There are certain things the brain looks for to differentiate between the two, as well, which has been studied at length. A lot of News Organizations use shady tactics to trick your brain into relaxing into Entertainment Mode, like having Loud Correspondants, emotional stories that feel like fiction, et cetera. Fox News is infamous for it, and it's why so many Fox viewers fall for shit - because they are being tricked into lowering that Bullshit Filter. Ancient Aliens does this kind of thing too... A lot of documentaries do. Super Size Me is one. It's... Bad.

Anyway. One episode or one movie or one book or one fanfic featuring a problematic trope isn't going to change the world.

But if it's one out of thousands, or even millions, that's when we, as writers and artists, owe it to ourselves to stop and ponder where that trope came from and why we're leaning on it so much, and if maybe we have some biases to work through.

We also owe it to the marginalized people in our lives to present them better to the world. Fanfic starts trends in writing, and I've been doing fanfic for 30 years so I can say that with relative certainty. If making something popular in fanfic happens, it starts to pop up in books, TV shows, etc.

So no, like. One instance isn't gonna be a huge issue.

It's if your instance is one of thousands or millions. And really, you owe yourself and those around you better than that. Not from a writing standpoint, go ahead and publish whatever (personally, I like to try and make the text point out, in some way, that what happened was Not Okay, even if it's just an idle thought a character has. Just so the cycle of bullshit gets interrupted a little).

But from a growing up and doing better standpoint.

Do better.

Part 5/10+???????

Co-written with @scrtkpr! It was a lot of fun writing this part together <3

You might be making assumptions you don’t realize you’re making about what another party knows, remembers, or understands. Saying “obvious” things helps clear some of these up. Of course even while making an effort to do this you still might not notice things you’re assuming go without saying; don’t beat yourself up when you discover one of these, discovering it means you’re improving! It’s like playing Zelda: the more you uncover the more you get a sense for where and how to look for things. (Disclaimer: I’ve never played Zelda.)

You can take breaks. I’m thinking of personal relationships here but there’s probably a way to apply a similar concept to other relationships. You can say talking more is too much right now, that you’re tired, that you need to process, that you won’t be at your best if you keep going. One thing that can be really great in a personal relationship is asking if the other person is up for hitting pause and doing something you enjoy together for a while (they might not be up for it, be prepared). You can also hit pause and take some time to yourself.

Communication isn’t just for problems! Tell people when you like and appreciate what they’re doing!

Okay this one is probably as useless or at least almost as “communicate” but: contextualize but don’t over-contextualize. I have made people think something is a bigger or more urgent deal than it is by not starting with “overall this is fine/I like X/whatever” and I have had people entirely mentally reverse my point because I spent longer on the disclaimer than the point.