HypnoNerd

Fire Lord Ozai from Avatar. Genocidal colonizing scumbag, depicted as such. The culture that led to someone like him existing is explored, and you get to understand his mindset, but the fact that he's a genocidal colonizing scumbag is clear. The story isn't making excuses and portraying him as a good guy.

Portraying him as "actually his war on the world is GOOD actually cause he's bringing the fire nation's advanced tech to the uncivilized other kingdoms. And Aang should switch sides and help him do that" would be gross.

In your examples, the gang rape victim doing a murder to defend herself is different cause the story is saying the fact she was gang-raped is bad, not the self defense. If the story glossed over her side and focused on the tragedy of this gang-rapist being "unfairly" cut down, then there's an issue because then it IS treating her self defense killing as VILE AWFUL MURDER and ignoring the fact that it was self defense. That sends a message that she was wrong to do that, and that's a problem!

The context and overall message is important. Especially around sensitive topics. You can portray bad people doing bad things, or good people doing "bad" things with good justification, or bad people doing good things because it fits some moral code they have. Or good people doing bad things that maybe aren't justified!

But if your story is gonna be framed in a way that says things like genocide, rape, mass murder, etc... are good things and try to defend them. Then your story is gonna be scrutinized by people who do not agree that those things are good. And it's your right to write that story anyway, but you also should expect that there's gonna be pushback.

All stories send a message, intentional or otherwise. Portray whatever the fuck you want. Write the most scummy irredeemable piece of shit characters your heart desires. But always bear in mind what the story as a whole says.

Robin hood commits crimes, the story sends the messages of compassion and condemns greed

Avatar shows how a colonial mindset can form, but shows the harms it causes and why it should be opposed. (gross oversimplification I know, it's Avatar, there's a ton to unpack there)

Our theoretical gang rape story contains a murder, but condemns the circumstances that led to it not the murder itself.

Do stories of Robin Hood portray stealing as good act in some circumstances and is that a 'good message' to share with people, especially children?

And since you wrote so much on rape victim:

For both of these stories, my personal opinions on if stealing from the rich should be encouraged, or if forgiveness or revenge is the way to go, aren't really what matter. I personally think that the message of taking from those who hoard wealth is fine to expose children to, but that's just my opinion based on my lived experiences/political views/etc... And other people think the opposite and that these messages shouldn't be shared with children, and that's fine. That's not really what this is about.w

The real question is what message you're sending as an author. If you write a movie like I spit on your grave, then you are putting the message out into the world, with your name attached to it, that revenge is the way to go. And if that's your belief and that's the takeaway you want people to have? Then go right ahead! That is your right as a creator to write whatever story you want and send out whatever message you believe in.

But you have to be conscious that you are, in fact, sending a message out into the world. If you're writing Robin Hood, you are sending the message that stealing is sometimes ok. If you write I spit on your grave, you are sending the message that you don't need to forgive and can instead seek revenge.

Stories are art, and art carries messages into the world. As a creator, is is your responsibility to be conscious and deliberate about what messages those are.

So if you write a true bastard of a character, and your story ends up glorifying them, you might send out a message you don't want to. You can absolutely send a good message with a true bastard character though. I'm sure both of us can think up some examples of that happening. Those stories made an evil bastard and used them deliberately, with intention, and the story crafted around them uses them to highlight the message it wants to send... often some flavor of "see that guy? DON'T be that guy. That guy sucks."

There's also examples out there though, of the opposite happening. Where a true bastard is portrayed as the hero unironically. Where the whole story is just some bigot's wet dream of how they wish they could treat minorities. Or the story portrays someone with irrational hatred of a group of people and then the story shows that hatred was justified all along. And so on.

I'm using more extreme topics as examples naturally, because that best illustrates the overall point. The impact of art on culture and real life is a rabbit hole you can just dive into endlessly, there's historians who do whole studies on the impact of art on culture and so on.

my personal opinions on if stealing from the rich should be encouraged

Fire Lord Ozai from Avatar. Genocidal colonizing scumbag, depicted as such. The culture that led to someone like him existing is explored, and you get to understand his mindset, but the fact that he's a genocidal colonizing scumbag is clear. The story isn't making excuses and portraying him as a good guy.

Portraying him as "actually his war on the world is GOOD actually cause he's bringing the fire nation's advanced tech to the uncivilized other kingdoms. And Aang should switch sides and help him do that" would be gross.

In your examples, the gang rape victim doing a murder to defend herself is different cause the story is saying the fact she was gang-raped is bad, not the self defense. If the story glossed over her side and focused on the tragedy of this gang-rapist being "unfairly" cut down, then there's an issue because then it IS treating her self defense killing as VILE AWFUL MURDER and ignoring the fact that it was self defense. That sends a message that she was wrong to do that, and that's a problem!

The context and overall message is important. Especially around sensitive topics. You can portray bad people doing bad things, or good people doing "bad" things with good justification, or bad people doing good things because it fits some moral code they have. Or good people doing bad things that maybe aren't justified!

But if your story is gonna be framed in a way that says things like genocide, rape, mass murder, etc... are good things and try to defend them. Then your story is gonna be scrutinized by people who do not agree that those things are good. And it's your right to write that story anyway, but you also should expect that there's gonna be pushback.

All stories send a message, intentional or otherwise. Portray whatever the fuck you want. Write the most scummy irredeemable piece of shit characters your heart desires. But always bear in mind what the story as a whole says.

Robin hood commits crimes, the story sends the messages of compassion and condemns greed

Avatar shows how a colonial mindset can form, but shows the harms it causes and why it should be opposed. (gross oversimplification I know, it's Avatar, there's a ton to unpack there)

Our theoretical gang rape story contains a murder, but condemns the circumstances that led to it not the murder itself.

Like, as an example, just because it is the first thing that comes to mind. In my last novel the main character is a torturer and an assassin. She burns people. Has burned lots of people on purpose. She is not a good person. However, I as her author love her. There will be lots of people who do not, but I hope there are also people who do. She is the main character and has a character arc just like every protagonist must. She is an exciting character I loved writing.

But make no mistake, she does burn people all the time. Sometimes she even enjoys it. Most of the time she is pretty indifferent to it.

The context matters, you don't neccesarily have to go out of your way to make your villains be villainized. And I think for a lot of topics there's really not a whole lot of risk of accidentally sending out a bad message.

It's when you get into the more touchy subjects that caution is needed. Like, infamously, a trope in isekai anime is the MC buying slaves, but it gets hand waved as "oh well he treats them well and they're happy being his slaves so it's ok" and that's deeply problematic.

Topics like a character being a torturer or killer are pretty safe because I think pretty much everyone is in agreement on the morality of those things. And there's no marginalized groups that are potentially harmed by these topics being portrayed in an MC or a villain. But if your MC was killing people solely because of the color of their skin, or was extra cruel to minorities, or using slurs... well now we're getting into territory where as an author, you have to be a lot more careful. That doesn't mean the MC can't have those traits, but if you're not careful and it turns out her hatred of thse minorities is justified somehow and the story portrays her vendetta against them as a good thing... well now we've got a story saying that hunting and killing minorities is justified. And I think we can agree that that's not the kind of message we wanna be putting out there.

The concern I'm trying to express is that fictional stories can cause real harm. Downplaying the suffering of real people, or perpetuating a harmful narrative like imperialism or slavery being good, or associating certain minority groups with villainy.

History is full of examples of how fictional media impacts culture and how groups of people are treated. Often it's in hindsight where we see these trends. Like the prevalent trend of villains being given stereotypically lgbt traits which has thankfully fallen out of fashion. I don't think every author writing these stories was really thinking about the trend and cultural impact they were contributing to. Maybe some of them just wanted a easy way to make their villain "wrong" and "weird" and didn't even realize that by making the signifiers of that wrongness be the traits of a group of people, they were doing harm to those people

Or more recently, how there's just countless examples of games/movies/tv shows where the villains were dark-skinned foreign terrorists. Did those things directly create the beliefs of USA voters that led to everything going on in this administration? No, not by themselves. But every one of those reinforced a narrative and shaped culture to view the "other" as a threat. And I really doubt that each individual creator did this with malicious intent. They just wanted an easy group to source antagonists for their action flick or heist or *insert plot here* and dark-skinned foreinger became the default.

So it's a lot less about individual characters having bad traits, and more the impact the story as a whole will have. So when the writing advice of "write awful/evil characters" goes around, it's important to temper that with a bit of caution. Be aware of the overall message that might be sent, what trends it contributes to, what narratives is reinforces.

And there's not a hard and fast "rule" of how to do this. It's not like I can whip up a checklist and be like "ok you hit 3 out of 4 boxes for problematic character traits you need to dial it back" or anything. And I think anyone who tries to constrain something like writing with hard rules or checklists or anything is not approaching the art form correctly. Every story is different, every rule you can make has exceptions. Every checklist will run into stories that defy categorization. It's art, not science.

But art is powerful, it can move minds and hearts for good or for ill. As artists, we have to be aware of that and make sure we don't accidentally do harm. That our art doesn't become propaganda for causes we don't support, or justification for beliefs that domino effect into tragedy.

There is a difference between reblogging a post and making my own though. My blog isn't really a writing blog. It's a kink blog that occasionally dips into other topics as I come across them. Reblogging an existing post from other blogs that are actually for a topic lets me chime in my thoughts without making a whole blog about writing and art and stuff.

Fire Lord Ozai from Avatar. Genocidal colonizing scumbag, depicted as such. The culture that led to someone like him existing is explored, and you get to understand his mindset, but the fact that he's a genocidal colonizing scumbag is clear. The story isn't making excuses and portraying him as a good guy.

Portraying him as "actually his war on the world is GOOD actually cause he's bringing the fire nation's advanced tech to the uncivilized other kingdoms. And Aang should switch sides and help him do that" would be gross.

In your examples, the gang rape victim doing a murder to defend herself is different cause the story is saying the fact she was gang-raped is bad, not the self defense. If the story glossed over her side and focused on the tragedy of this gang-rapist being "unfairly" cut down, then there's an issue because then it IS treating her self defense killing as VILE AWFUL MURDER and ignoring the fact that it was self defense. That sends a message that she was wrong to do that, and that's a problem!

The context and overall message is important. Especially around sensitive topics. You can portray bad people doing bad things, or good people doing "bad" things with good justification, or bad people doing good things because it fits some moral code they have. Or good people doing bad things that maybe aren't justified!

But if your story is gonna be framed in a way that says things like genocide, rape, mass murder, etc... are good things and try to defend them. Then your story is gonna be scrutinized by people who do not agree that those things are good. And it's your right to write that story anyway, but you also should expect that there's gonna be pushback.

All stories send a message, intentional or otherwise. Portray whatever the fuck you want. Write the most scummy irredeemable piece of shit characters your heart desires. But always bear in mind what the story as a whole says.

Robin hood commits crimes, the story sends the messages of compassion and condemns greed

Avatar shows how a colonial mindset can form, but shows the harms it causes and why it should be opposed. (gross oversimplification I know, it's Avatar, there's a ton to unpack there)

Our theoretical gang rape story contains a murder, but condemns the circumstances that led to it not the murder itself.

Do stories of Robin Hood portray stealing as good act in some circumstances and is that a 'good message' to share with people, especially children?

And since you wrote so much on rape victim:

For both of these stories, my personal opinions on if stealing from the rich should be encouraged, or if forgiveness or revenge is the way to go, aren't really what matter. I personally think that the message of taking from those who hoard wealth is fine to expose children to, but that's just my opinion based on my lived experiences/political views/etc... And other people think the opposite and that these messages shouldn't be shared with children, and that's fine. That's not really what this is about.w

The real question is what message you're sending as an author. If you write a movie like I spit on your grave, then you are putting the message out into the world, with your name attached to it, that revenge is the way to go. And if that's your belief and that's the takeaway you want people to have? Then go right ahead! That is your right as a creator to write whatever story you want and send out whatever message you believe in.

But you have to be conscious that you are, in fact, sending a message out into the world. If you're writing Robin Hood, you are sending the message that stealing is sometimes ok. If you write I spit on your grave, you are sending the message that you don't need to forgive and can instead seek revenge.

Stories are art, and art carries messages into the world. As a creator, is is your responsibility to be conscious and deliberate about what messages those are.

So if you write a true bastard of a character, and your story ends up glorifying them, you might send out a message you don't want to. You can absolutely send a good message with a true bastard character though. I'm sure both of us can think up some examples of that happening. Those stories made an evil bastard and used them deliberately, with intention, and the story crafted around them uses them to highlight the message it wants to send... often some flavor of "see that guy? DON'T be that guy. That guy sucks."

There's also examples out there though, of the opposite happening. Where a true bastard is portrayed as the hero unironically. Where the whole story is just some bigot's wet dream of how they wish they could treat minorities. Or the story portrays someone with irrational hatred of a group of people and then the story shows that hatred was justified all along. And so on.

I'm using more extreme topics as examples naturally, because that best illustrates the overall point. The impact of art on culture and real life is a rabbit hole you can just dive into endlessly, there's historians who do whole studies on the impact of art on culture and so on.

Fire Lord Ozai from Avatar. Genocidal colonizing scumbag, depicted as such. The culture that led to someone like him existing is explored, and you get to understand his mindset, but the fact that he's a genocidal colonizing scumbag is clear. The story isn't making excuses and portraying him as a good guy.

Portraying him as "actually his war on the world is GOOD actually cause he's bringing the fire nation's advanced tech to the uncivilized other kingdoms. And Aang should switch sides and help him do that" would be gross.

In your examples, the gang rape victim doing a murder to defend herself is different cause the story is saying the fact she was gang-raped is bad, not the self defense. If the story glossed over her side and focused on the tragedy of this gang-rapist being "unfairly" cut down, then there's an issue because then it IS treating her self defense killing as VILE AWFUL MURDER and ignoring the fact that it was self defense. That sends a message that she was wrong to do that, and that's a problem!

The context and overall message is important. Especially around sensitive topics. You can portray bad people doing bad things, or good people doing "bad" things with good justification, or bad people doing good things because it fits some moral code they have. Or good people doing bad things that maybe aren't justified!

But if your story is gonna be framed in a way that says things like genocide, rape, mass murder, etc... are good things and try to defend them. Then your story is gonna be scrutinized by people who do not agree that those things are good. And it's your right to write that story anyway, but you also should expect that there's gonna be pushback.

All stories send a message, intentional or otherwise. Portray whatever the fuck you want. Write the most scummy irredeemable piece of shit characters your heart desires. But always bear in mind what the story as a whole says.

Robin hood commits crimes, the story sends the messages of compassion and condemns greed

Avatar shows how a colonial mindset can form, but shows the harms it causes and why it should be opposed. (gross oversimplification I know, it's Avatar, there's a ton to unpack there)

Our theoretical gang rape story contains a murder, but condemns the circumstances that led to it not the murder itself.

Like, as an example, just because it is the first thing that comes to mind. In my last novel the main character is a torturer and an assassin. She burns people. Has burned lots of people on purpose. She is not a good person. However, I as her author love her. There will be lots of people who do not, but I hope there are also people who do. She is the main character and has a character arc just like every protagonist must. She is an exciting character I loved writing.

But make no mistake, she does burn people all the time. Sometimes she even enjoys it. Most of the time she is pretty indifferent to it.

The context matters, you don't neccesarily have to go out of your way to make your villains be villainized. And I think for a lot of topics there's really not a whole lot of risk of accidentally sending out a bad message.

It's when you get into the more touchy subjects that caution is needed. Like, infamously, a trope in isekai anime is the MC buying slaves, but it gets hand waved as "oh well he treats them well and they're happy being his slaves so it's ok" and that's deeply problematic.

Topics like a character being a torturer or killer are pretty safe because I think pretty much everyone is in agreement on the morality of those things. And there's no marginalized groups that are potentially harmed by these topics being portrayed in an MC or a villain. But if your MC was killing people solely because of the color of their skin, or was extra cruel to minorities, or using slurs... well now we're getting into territory where as an author, you have to be a lot more careful. That doesn't mean the MC can't have those traits, but if you're not careful and it turns out her hatred of thse minorities is justified somehow and the story portrays her vendetta against them as a good thing... well now we've got a story saying that hunting and killing minorities is justified. And I think we can agree that that's not the kind of message we wanna be putting out there.

The concern I'm trying to express is that fictional stories can cause real harm. Downplaying the suffering of real people, or perpetuating a harmful narrative like imperialism or slavery being good, or associating certain minority groups with villainy.

History is full of examples of how fictional media impacts culture and how groups of people are treated. Often it's in hindsight where we see these trends. Like the prevalent trend of villains being given stereotypically lgbt traits which has thankfully fallen out of fashion. I don't think every author writing these stories was really thinking about the trend and cultural impact they were contributing to. Maybe some of them just wanted a easy way to make their villain "wrong" and "weird" and didn't even realize that by making the signifiers of that wrongness be the traits of a group of people, they were doing harm to those people

Or more recently, how there's just countless examples of games/movies/tv shows where the villains were dark-skinned foreign terrorists. Did those things directly create the beliefs of USA voters that led to everything going on in this administration? No, not by themselves. But every one of those reinforced a narrative and shaped culture to view the "other" as a threat. And I really doubt that each individual creator did this with malicious intent. They just wanted an easy group to source antagonists for their action flick or heist or *insert plot here* and dark-skinned foreinger became the default.

So it's a lot less about individual characters having bad traits, and more the impact the story as a whole will have. So when the writing advice of "write awful/evil characters" goes around, it's important to temper that with a bit of caution. Be aware of the overall message that might be sent, what trends it contributes to, what narratives is reinforces.

And there's not a hard and fast "rule" of how to do this. It's not like I can whip up a checklist and be like "ok you hit 3 out of 4 boxes for problematic character traits you need to dial it back" or anything. And I think anyone who tries to constrain something like writing with hard rules or checklists or anything is not approaching the art form correctly. Every story is different, every rule you can make has exceptions. Every checklist will run into stories that defy categorization. It's art, not science.

But art is powerful, it can move minds and hearts for good or for ill. As artists, we have to be aware of that and make sure we don't accidentally do harm. That our art doesn't become propaganda for causes we don't support, or justification for beliefs that domino effect into tragedy.

Fire Lord Ozai from Avatar. Genocidal colonizing scumbag, depicted as such. The culture that led to someone like him existing is explored, and you get to understand his mindset, but the fact that he's a genocidal colonizing scumbag is clear. The story isn't making excuses and portraying him as a good guy.

Portraying him as "actually his war on the world is GOOD actually cause he's bringing the fire nation's advanced tech to the uncivilized other kingdoms. And Aang should switch sides and help him do that" would be gross.

In your examples, the gang rape victim doing a murder to defend herself is different cause the story is saying the fact she was gang-raped is bad, not the self defense. If the story glossed over her side and focused on the tragedy of this gang-rapist being "unfairly" cut down, then there's an issue because then it IS treating her self defense killing as VILE AWFUL MURDER and ignoring the fact that it was self defense. That sends a message that she was wrong to do that, and that's a problem!

The context and overall message is important. Especially around sensitive topics. You can portray bad people doing bad things, or good people doing "bad" things with good justification, or bad people doing good things because it fits some moral code they have. Or good people doing bad things that maybe aren't justified!

But if your story is gonna be framed in a way that says things like genocide, rape, mass murder, etc... are good things and try to defend them. Then your story is gonna be scrutinized by people who do not agree that those things are good. And it's your right to write that story anyway, but you also should expect that there's gonna be pushback.

All stories send a message, intentional or otherwise. Portray whatever the fuck you want. Write the most scummy irredeemable piece of shit characters your heart desires. But always bear in mind what the story as a whole says.

Robin hood commits crimes, the story sends the messages of compassion and condemns greed

Avatar shows how a colonial mindset can form, but shows the harms it causes and why it should be opposed. (gross oversimplification I know, it's Avatar, there's a ton to unpack there)

Our theoretical gang rape story contains a murder, but condemns the circumstances that led to it not the murder itself.

Female, 24

Come on. My opinion on brain rot is that it’s brain rot.

And I’m aware of the irony of me being the one to say this. I run a blog about brainwashing and conditioning and turning people into obedient little fuck toys. I’m also saying this on social media, which is its own unique form of brain rot. So yes, this is society as it’s currently constructed and I’m a victim of it as much as anyone else, but setting aside all the caveats, there’s a difference between what happens here and what happens when you spend six hours humping a body pillow and talking to an AI, and the difference is that I’m a real person who actually gives a shit whether you’re okay afterward.

These platforms don’t care about you. Structurally, by design, as a matter of how the business works, they don’t. Sexy porn bot was built on a platform whose only metric is how long they can keep you on the app. If they had to choose between you having one good hour and logging off feeling satisfied, or you having five anxious overstimulated hours, they pick the five hours every single time. You’re a session duration to them. The longer they keep you on, the more data they have on you, and the more money they’ll eventually make.

helpful partners always love to lend a hand 🤚 🌀

based on an old post from hypnoticdom1 because it’s hot af and I can’t get it out of my head 🥵

One of my faves

ICE driving behind you? Forget where you're going and Just ... sit through a green light. Don't have to keep doing it, or get caught ... just PERFORM YOUR TASKS POORLY.

Drop a wrench and say 'oops'.

I love your bangs, boobies, booty, and bush. And brain (:

bangs ✅

boobs ✅

booty ✅

bush ✅

REBLOG IF YOUR ACCOUNT IS A TRANSFEM SAFE SPACE.