Be free, and truthful

If there is a truth, speak the truth. If you as an author decide what the truth is in your fictional world, then, again, speak it. You should only be worried about a lie: if it can be verified, you may be liable, if it is a lie to your artwork, your readers will notice and judge you for it.

The losing game (trigger warning: mildly strong language)

I find it preposterous to adapt artwork, or even place warnings for telling verifiable facts. It is a game where the most restrictive view wins, with utter disregard for the broader position. At the very end of this game there is no conflict, because someone is sensitive to conflict; there are no stakes because they require conflict and danger; and there is no diversity, because you can't acknowledge it. It is a losing game that restricts the infinite potential of art, for the sake of perpetuating a patriarchal stereotype that someone can decide what is proper and decent. Should writing reduce its scope to the sensitivity of unknown, potential, perhaps even future, yet unborn, readers?

Why writing then? Or why reading, if going out of the comfort zone is not a learning experience but the occasion for feeling offended?

Trigger warning: strong language

As a reader I have the choice to start and to continue reading. As a writer I have the choice of what to write and how to write it. Just as I may decide to remove racial discrimination in high fantasy, I may decide to create a contemporary world completely based on it. If the reader feels something when reading it, then I've succeeded at creating a work of art. If they feel offended they can take the occasion to explore the nature of their disagreement and kindly refrain to push their bigotry on the rest of us.

posted about 5 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

_X_‭

420 reputation 20 121 65 1

The problem isn't offense, the problem is harm

Words have power. The more people that your words reach, the more power they have. So it becomes important to consider the harm they can do.

Perpetuating stereotypes (particularly negative ones), normalizing violent or abusive behaviors, spreading falsehoods as if they are facts all have the power to cause harm.

There is no such thing as a harmful topic - there are only harmful treatments of particular topics. The trick is that it is rarely obvious to an outsider where the harm lies, which is why it is so important to listen to others (through research or beta readers) when they tell you that you were inadvertently causing harm.

There are people who generate outrage about things that are not actually causing harm (or at least are doing more good than harm). These people can safely be ignored - but be careful in your identification! Just because a grievance seems minuscule does not necessarily mean that it is misplaced! A large collection of small hurts can be just as harmful as a single large offense.

Treat all your subject matter as complex reality, and listen critically when people tell you that you've accidentally caused harm, and you'll be fine.

posted about 5 years ago

CC BY-SA 3.0

Arcanist Lupus‭

145 reputation 0 24 29 0

No, offend alway. If every artist asked this question art would not exist. You are bound to use cliches and tropes. All cliches and tropes are based on real life stereotypes. All stereotypes are offensive to that group. Even positive stereotypes. Don’t worry about it.

posted about 5 years ago

CC BY-SA 3.0

user40477‭

5 reputation 0 1 1 0

Trying to not offend in general, as a goal in and of itself, is automatically a losing proposition. Posed as an optimization problem, it resolves to saying nothing and reaching no one.

You cannot please everyone. Every choice attracts some potential readers and alienates others. This is normal.

There cannot be a universal list of permissible victim groups. The borders of said groups are always drawn by the attacker, who is at will to assign any and all "naughty" labels to predetermined targets.

You should excel at your craft and perfect your vision. This means if you set out to write a book promoting concept P, you should ensure that it indeed promotes P, as an obligation to your craft and vision. This has nothing to do with "political correctness".

There's only one group of people you need to avoid offending -- your audience. And the audience is retroactively defined as "the people who like the book". You respect the audience by refining your craft and vision. Throwing out a plot point because you realized it's bad is a normal part of writing. Sometimes the realization is prompted by reader feedback, other times you notice it yourself. Only laziness is objectively bad.

Suppose you're writing a fictionalized biography of a living person in collaboration with the subject. Sometimes, the subject would tell you, "No, this isn't something I'd say. And that isn't something I'd do." What do you do?

Well, at least you have one authoritative source in that scenario. Now imagine you're writing a book about a community, and each community member has different ideas on how everyone should and should not act in your book. Who do you listen to?

For a book in general, especially for a fiction book, the audience (in the artistic sense) isn't something that can be measured beforehand. Often, it's the writer who notices a pattern or a thought and crystallizes it into words for other people to find and express themselves with. It's that pattern and those people who you need to be faithful to, not the perpetually offended "influencers" who, what with all the things to be offended about, have no time to read.

Avoiding or inviting controversy are marketing strategies. It follows from Weierstrass's theorem that for every book, there's an optimal amount of controversy it has to generate to maximize the chance of landing a movie deal. But it's not a moral consideration.

posted about 5 years ago

CC BY-SA 3.0

aniline‭

30 reputation 0 4 6 0

First, I would argue for the right to make mistakes

It's not unheard of, surely, inadvertently saying something wrong? That's what "I'm sorry" is for? Our starting point is "normally people do not seek to offend". Well, why shouldn't it be enough? G.R.R. Martin made a similar comment in an interview: "I'm an old white man, there are things I don't see. If you think something should be written differently, go ahead and write your stories - we should have more voices writing." (Not an exact quote - I can't find that interview now.)

Second, I would argue against self-censure and thought policing

Any time a writer thinks "I want to write this, but maybe I shouldn't", it frightens me. I value very highly the freedom a writer possesses to voice any opinion, to criticise anything - to think and share his thoughts. Censure is bad. Censure reeks of dictatorships, and I don't care if it's the "good guys" who do the censoring. Maybe I'm biased because samizdat was such an important part of my parents' youth, but I value this freedom above offended feelings.

I believe that opinions, ideas, should be expressed. Yes, even the offensive ones. Definitely the ones I disagree with. I believe the way to fight those ideas is to write more, write my ideas, write them well and let them do battle with the other ideas. I do not believe silencing ideas I disagree with is right.

I look at Charlie Hebdo as an example, any issue of that paper really. It's offensive, it's shocking, and I don't think it's very smart, to be honest. But being shocked is part of democratic discourse. Imagine a world where Charlie Hebdo went "this cartoon might offend someone, we shouldn't publish it".

So, to sum up, I do not think a writer should be afraid to give offense inadvertently, and I do not think a writer should change story elements rather than give offense.

posted about 5 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Galastel‭

1885 reputation 81 551 319 3

I don't think it is possible to avoid giving offense unintentionally, obviously (to me) that is possible even if you think hard about not giving offense.

I also don't think it is reasonable to demand we give no offense to anybody: My daughter was offended, in Django Unchained, that one of the characters intentionally shot and killed an innocent (and healthy) horse. Of course no animal was harmed in the movie, it was a special effect. And she wasn't upset about the hundred humans "killed" in the movie. Just the horse.

Well, sorry kid, the plot demanded it. And it is true the plot could change to not demand it, but that would probably have taken more screen time, shooting the horse was quick and expedient.

A similar argument, I think, applies to pedophiliacs, rapists, serial killers, terrorists, sex slavers, White Supremacists, Nazis and brutally violent criminals, Mafia, hit men, drug lords and gang members.

All these people exist IRL, and have victimized and killed innocents, including children. It is pretty much the nature of fiction that such monsters are shown being successful, and getting away with their crimes, even laughing at the pain and suffering they have caused, or as they cause it. That may offend people that have suffered their predation, or have lost people to such predations.

But fiction isn't compelling if their callousness and crimes are not shown, fiction needs bad guys the audience hates, the bad guy can't always be a businessman that threw his half-eaten sandwich into the "plastics only" recycle bin.

(Sorry if that horrified anyone; proper recycling is an important responsibility.)

That's what I think you can't control. However, I think most of us can recognize superfluous offense, and eliminate it. If the racism, bigotry, prejudice, misogyny, homophobia, anti-semitic rants and other fictional slandering doesn't serve any real plot purpose (or some plot point is shoe-horned in to justify it, and could easily be done some other way) then it can be eliminated, and should be eliminated.

I think, as a writer, we should look for ways in which we may give offense, and educate ourselves in ways we may give offense, and decide if our story needs that, or if we are just stupidly perpetuating some deep prejudice learned when we were younger and dumber, when our culture was younger and dumber.

Sometimes offense components are necessary to tell a good story, make a good villain, or even make a good hero that can change for the better, or be redeemed. But that doesn't give us license to offend at will for no good reason.

posted about 5 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Amadeus‭

3156 reputation 2 1399 613 37