[ SECRET POST #6571 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6571 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.



__________________________________________________



02.



__________________________________________________



03.



__________________________________________________



04.



__________________________________________________



05.



__________________________________________________



06.

















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 12 secrets from Secret Submission Post #939.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

04. https://i.imgur.com/SqMMJMN.png

[(Anonymous)]

Who does make the rules?

[(Anonymous)]

Have you ever heard anyone say "sorry, I don't make the rules" that wasn't in fact trying to make the rules?

Most don't succeed, though.

[(Anonymous)]

General Melchet makes the rules, Captain Darling just has an enormous amount of fun enforcing them.

[(Anonymous)]

That's a bit of a stretch. Plenty of people can read something and not know about the author's ideology. Plus not everyone is going to be deeply analytical about everything they read and do background checks on every author.

I suppose if you're terminally online and are always 'in the know' than sure - but that's not everyone.

[(Anonymous)]

You had me until the last part, not gonna lie.

[(Anonymous)]

If you like Dr. Seuss, you're:
- a staunchly anti-fascist liberal
- probably pro-life
- also in favor of Japanese internment camps!

...right?

[greghousesgf]

oh, god. I'm suddenly remembering a Dr. Seuss animated cartoon on TV when I was a kid involving an unborn person filling out some sort of form....

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think that's always true. Rurouni Kenshin is an amazing manga with some wonderful themes, but nothing in it hints to the fact that the mangaka is a piece of shit.

[(Anonymous)]

As a former fan that watched the anime adaption on Toonami, Kenshin and Kaoru's relationship is bonus uncomfy to me now. But I agree with you otherwise.

[philstar22]

Honestly I think it is more down to writing quality. A good writer doesn't preach. And a bad writer often does. And even if I agree with the author's POV, I hate preaching. Just tell the story. You can weave your worldview into the world you are creating, sure. But when your story becomes more message than story, you are a bad writer.

[(Anonymous)]

In fact.

[(Anonymous)]

No, anon. Those are, in fact, your rules. And others are under no obligation to find them sensible, let alone to follow them.

[(Anonymous)]

da

And we don't.

[(Anonymous)]

This is just "if you write about it in fiction you support it in real life" dressed up with a little bit more of a spin to disguise its simplistic and flawed nature. Like so:

"A character who is a good person had bad things happen to them and that means the author hates good people."

vs.

"A character who is a good person had bad things happen to them and it was supported by the narrative and that means the author hates good people."

And that's why I no longer trust the phrase "supported/condoned by the narrative." You can turn the reading around in your head to make the narrative support or condemn anything your knowledge of the author tells you they support or condemn, or that you simply want to believe they do because you don't like them.

[(Anonymous)]

*world's slowest eyeroll*

[(Anonymous)]

Here's the thing: it's true that the author's worldview is inevitably going to have a profound effect on the book. It's NOT true that

1) that effect will be interpreted """correctly""" by readers coming in with different viewpoints and cultural contexts. As an example, tons and tons and tons of people, including William Blake, were completely convinced that John Milton must have been secretly anti-god, because they brought their own revolutionary and anti-church sentiments to the work. Only for some of Milton's personal notes on bible translation to be found in a drawer 300 odd years after his death proving conclusively that he was genuinely an extremely devout Christian.

2) that enjoyment of a work shaped by a worldview is necessarily in a spirit of agreement with that worldview. I personally genuinely love reading Lovecraft, and I would never say you can separate the art from the artist. His quivering racist terror at the hint of the idea that a white man might NOT be the center of the universe is the seed from which all of cosmic horror is grown. However, as someone who is Italian and loves tentacles and Deep Time and the wonderful smallness of humanity in a vast and uncaring universe, to me Lovecraft reads like cozy comedy. Not "Oh No What Is This Mysterious Horrifying Thing Beyond My Ken" but "ooooooh when's this dipshit gonna realize it's fish people /munches popcorn"

TLDR: artists do impact the art, and it can be especially apparent in books, but the experience of enjoying a book is way, way too nuanced for your dipshit take to handle

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't read the examples but I agree. I personally don't "separate the art from the artist", if anything when I learn of the artist's politics and worldviews I integrate that into my understanding of the work. For example I found out weeks ago that one of my favorite TV shows was made by someone who leaned pretty conservative, and while the show doesn't really preach anything it made me go "oh, huh. I can see it." But my experience with the work itself is kind of its own thing, you know?

[philstar22]

Yup. Especially to the first one. Just speaking from personal experience in the Tolkien fandom, a vast majority of the readers don't agree with Tolkien's worldview, at least not fully. There are lots of fascinating discussions exploring the world from all sorts of different perspectives. Middle Earth speaks to a lot of people from a lot of different worldviews.

[(Anonymous)]

Thinking on it more, a couple of points I'd like to make:

First, passable writers are capable of portraying worldviews that they disagree with. While the shine is off of the Stormlight Archive for me, it contains a great example of this principle: Jasnah is a fantastic atheist character, who generally comes out looking better on both a moral and intellectual level than the religious people around her. The author, however, is a devout Mormon.

Second, one does not need to agree with a worldview in order to get something out of its portrayal. Fiction is at its best when it helps us to understand and/or empathize with those who think and behave differently from us. And it is only when we understand a point of view, and understand why someone might hold it, that we are able to argue persuasively against it.

[(Anonymous)]

It really sounds like you do make the rules, those ones anyway. By your logic, does it not then follow that disliking a work by a writer who has good opinions means that the reader does not share those good opinions?

But let's suppose that every writer's views is present in their work in a way that cannot be missed or misapprehended (big assumption, given the myriad of levels of writing skill and reading comprehension, plus the huge variation of perspectives of both writers and readers), why do you think a reader has to agree with those views to enjoy the work?

Though the two are often conflated, taste does not equal value judgment.

[(Anonymous)]

I can't separate art from the artist because I feel the money I use to buy their product will go to funding/lobbying their shitty beliefs.

Blah blah blah "BuT ThEn YoU cAnT eNjoY aNyThInG" and "ShE SaYs FrOm A dEvIcE mAdE WiTh SlAvE LaBoR LOL"

We all have our personal lines in the sand. Lucky for me the worst people I was ever a fan of was The Rick & Morty guy and the Ren & Stimpy Guy, which were easy to give up.

[(Anonymous)]

You're right, you are lucky. I hope you never have to find out something hard for you to give up was made by a shitty person. But judging from your use of the alternating caps meme to argue with a strawman that nobody uses anymore, you'd probably find a way to justify yourself if you did.

[philstar22]

This is my take. When it comes to things I find abhorrent, I just can't personally support the creators/artists/authors. If they are dead, I'm less uncomfortable. But I don't want to give money to people who are actively promoting awful things.

[(Anonymous)]

When I see secrets that basically amount to "I really need to announce to the entire community that someone doing an entirely harmless thing is being severely judged by me, and incite everyone else to join in!!" I figure the OP's mental illness escaped containment.