Written by Otaku Apologist
With so many progressive writers taking the helm of various media projects in the western marketplace, we are seeing an aggressive push of their ideas in popular fiction. Because I am strongly in favor of free speech, I have to celebrate this to a degree. Freedom is amazing, it keeps things fresh, as new ideas can be introduced to the public consciousness, while the value of old ideas can be rediscovered or discredited. Generally, diversity is enriching on all levels of society and nature.
The problem is, these progressive writers wore out the novelty factor of their works long ago. Now, you can literally cross boxes in a bingo card of overused tropes while watching a new series, movie, or game. The lack of original ideas and the overuse of common tropes coming from progressive fiction writers is leading to many unsuccessful shows.
And the liberal framework makes it far too easy to excuse bad writing. The blame is pinned on the audience, because we’re apparently all sexists and homophobes, and a litany of other labels, even those of us who literally produce gay and bi-fiction.
I watched the entire first season of Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop. It started out decently, but there were serious problems. Did nobody in the production dare say “STOP!”
This was a show predominantly for male audiences – period. It’s a show for men who want to see men kicking ass and taking names. Jill Valentine nagging at the dudes is just disrespectful. Yes, there is value in criticing other imperfect fellow human beings, and everything should be up for critique, so things can be improved. But you cannot accomplish this when you lack respect! This was not an opportunity for scenes of a woman changing a car tire, or having a lesbian one-night stand.
If you absolutely want to play the role of a nagging wife at your male audience, then deliver your points discreetly, over a long period of time. Make it a conversation, where your views are equally up for critique.
There is absolutely amazing feminist fiction out there that most people enjoy regardless of age, sex, race, or political alignment, like the first two Alien movies. There’s been cool female leads and villains in fiction for ages. Stop conveniently forgetting the accomplishments of past female thinkers and writers, just because you want to say “first female”!
The blatant lack of respect for source material is a grievous problem. If you’re taking somebody else’s intellectual property and turning it into a full-on re-interpretation, you do it with respect. You are limited by the established material. You lack the mandate to change everything you want changed, just to tell your story.
Why is this important? What’s the harm? Because you are breaking the cultural coding of your own society. Stories transfer values, attitudes, ideas, wisdom of past generations without which you risk becoming aimless, confused and depressed. You become blind to meaningful nuance and detail and make your readers equally blind. So many media commentators these days have to literally spell out every thing these writers are missing. It’s a problem.
You are not allowed to take bedtime stories that taught meaningful lessons, which have been told to kids for centuries by their parents. Remaking them into your political soap boxes is a red line.
If you are creating your own material from scratch, no rules apply. Do whatever the fuck you want, girl. But breaking the cultural coding when re-interpreting established material is a red line. Back off from the classics.
The intellectual property has an established fanbase, that alone should dissuade you from taking too many liberties – they will hate you. And when your media is financially unsuccessful, your reputation is tarnished, and your attempts at injecting novel ideas into the public consciousness will be rejected.
Writing is an exploration of ideas, you should not start a story with a foregone conclusion, because that’s wrong, it’s boring, over-simplifying of this complex reality and it produces bad fiction. Be a thinker, not a propagandist.
If you truly believe that your ideas are so good that everyone would benefit from adopting them, you have to be more subtle. You must engage in conversation, respectfully. Explore the flaws of your own ideas in tandem.
A thinker explores a range of ideas and only makes their case, if the story and characters arrive at that conclusion. You cannot force a conclusion, because your readers are also writing the story with you, and they will feel betrayed. If your story was leading in a different direction and you pulled the rug on them, that’s betrayal!
You must allow the story itself to be a living, breathing entity with a mind of its own that connects to other texts, past and present. You cannot disconnect from history and culture.
This is where it becomes clear that many progressives do not have families. There’s nobody in your lives that would force you to moderate your views – children and spouses and family do that. That’s real diversity, why do you rebel against that?
I personally create a ton of my own media in collaboration with artists and writers, and I am not forcing my vision but to a degree, because forcing a vision often makes production times longer and kills the fun. Better fiction is produced in collaboration, not by dominating others. You have to allow a healthy ratio of both freedom and structure, to reap the benefits of diversity.
