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Q&A What do you do when your message could be dangerous?

From my POV, if I strive to make myself clear and unambiguous, and people take that the wrong way, that's on them. Not me. Virtually every revolution for the good has involved "illegal" acts, incl...

posted 6y ago by Amadeus‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-19T22:13:29Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37588
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T09:22:14Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37588
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T09:22:14Z (over 4 years ago)
From my POV, if I strive to make myself clear and unambiguous, and people take that the wrong way, that's on them. Not me.

Virtually every revolution for the good has involved "illegal" acts, including lethal violence, in one way or another. The founding fathers of the USA fired upon the duly constituted authority of the Crown, killing people. Real revolutionary rebels are always outlaws, otherwise there is no revolution. The French Revolution was a bloody mess.

If you are advocating for something that would change the world for the better, be assured there are many powerful and rich people benefiting from the current world order that are willing to corrupt government (probably already have) to use their force to outlaw it, prevent it, and keep the subjugated, _subjugated._

So my advice is to do your best, put your idea out there in fiction, and see what happens. IRL one must always weigh the cost of change against the benefit of change; when talking politics that includes, for example, the price of change is often grief and lives and fortunes lost, but this must be weighed against the lives **_saved_** and grief **_prevented_** by making the change anyway.

There is always the risk of unintended consequences; you are not guilty of creating them by telling a fictional story. There will always be readers that just cannot tell the difference between reality and a fiction with an engineered outcome, because the author _always_ has a thumb on the scale and _always_ cannot anticipate _every_ real-life response to various character actions (or did but chose an alternative more conducive to the plot).

Catering to the mentally ill is a recipe for never publishing anything, because we cannot anticipate **_complete insanity._**

Write for reasonable people that use fiction to escape the real world, but still know the difference between fiction and the real world. If you have a good idea, write it. Make it clear. Make it exciting, even if that takes violence. Darth Vader destroyed the planet Alderaan, killing two billion people! It would be silly to accuse George Lucas of advocating for genocide.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-07-12T15:42:38Z (almost 6 years ago)
Original score: 13