So, here’s the thing. I have the Kennedy and Daisy story planned out. Not every step, mind you, but the important beats, the main conflict, and the finale have all been in the works for months.
but there’s one big problem: one of the main characters does hold views that are antagonistic towards one of the boxes later down the line.
now, this is a tricky needle to thread. because, as fiction doesn’t exist in a vacuum, authors will often use their characters to be a mouthpiece for their own ideologies. I’m not immune to this. I’m not some ascended being who never falls into easily avoidable writing traps. I’m just a gal writing about fluffies.
this isn’t inherently bad, mind, but it is bad in my case, as I want to draw a clear line between my own views and the character’s views without doing the obvious and making them a villain. that’s boring and too easy. I want to basically say to the audience, “hey! this character feels this way, but I don’t.”
which brings me to my question: when YOU read a story and a character believes something strongly, do you see this as the character’s views, or the author’s views? what tips you off that it’s one or the other?
Always characters’ views as their own unless stated otherwise. And if you want to make it clear, just put a foreword or something of that nature and state that these views don’t represent that of the writer’s.
it all depends on the context really, like, if a villain or antagonist have a specific kinda view then you can assume that is not the authors view. That could go for the hero too if he starts with a viewpoint but changes as the story goes along.
Like, i feel theres a clear divide from fiction and reality, is why people are able to write about awfull things without believeing in them.
that’s the tricky part here. the story presents the character as being in the right, but it’s purely because it makes sense for the narrative, not because i feel that way
You’re correct that you can never fully divorce yourself from what you’re writing. I love Lovecraft; his prose is exquisite, his brand of horror is right up my alley, and he (usually) doesn’t suffer from his stories feeling like they overstay their welcome. However, he would despise me, personally, for several reasons. Once you have an idea of how someone thinks outside of what they write in fiction - letters, emails, journals, etc. - it becomes much harder to divorce yourself from thinking about their beliefs outside of the context you first encountered them in. In a sense, ignorance is bliss; you can ignore elements you find distasteful prior to learning what someone really thinks about [X] because there is at least a kind of gray zone filled with reasonable doubt that maybe you’re just misinterpreting what you’ve looked at.
That said, personally, I always try to look at the characters as themselves first and foremost, even if I’m aware that the creator behind them might be a shit head. If they’re good at what they do, they’re an entertainer before anything else, no matter what other hackneyed ideas they have. Otherwise, you end up with the absurd situation where villains - or even people within the universe the story is set in general - can only fit into a narrow definition of what is moral when it was written. No one can escape the presentism bias which underlies their work at any given time.
When the character preaches about there views being an absolute fact and the story doing nothing but reinforcing the predetermined facts whit out any opposing views
That’s… a tough question. I guess it depends. Usually I don’t directly connect characters’ views with the author’s, but sometimes, people write things in a way that clearly makes fun of the other side. That, however, is an extreme case, where showing contempt is the main goal. When the whole story revolves around the idea of “this box is wrong and everything related to it is stupid”, then you can clearly say that the author is projecting their views.
If it fits into the main narrative and idea without being the only important part of it, I don’t assume that’s what the author thinks. If authors could only create characters in their image, stories would be exceptionally boring. In other words, the author doesn’t have to identiffy with their characters to write them. Which is why I believe that a character’s views don’t automatically equal the author’s.
when the beliefs are presented as the only right option, and everything else is absolutely horrible in comparison, it’s just the author talking. when the story recognizes the upsides and downsides of both beliefs of the protagonist and the antagonist, it’s storytelling
If the character despises abuse, that’s pretty much a no brainer. You can’t have a functioning and/or sane person who enjoys doing abuse (emphasis on doing, not writing/draw about it). So if the character’s view is that they hate other humans in their world who do so, it’s simply logical. If it makes you feel safer, just put a small foreword.
Well, you really can’t defend animal abuse IRL, so it’s perfectly normal for a fictional human who cares about fluffies to hate those who abuse them in their world.
If said character openly hated abuse writing people on fictional website Cluffyfommunity then well, I can see it being a bit… specific.
That is an option, but an option I personally don’t like. It feels restricting when people have to put these disclaimers all over their works like they are being policed.
one word
overpopulation. governments start hunting seasons for a reason, and in the case of fluffies, it never ends because of how fast they multiply. abusers reduce their numbers, and if you enforce some laws, they will even put the body in a trash can, making them a great help to the exterminators. that’s an upside. they often resort to torture and usually are not as effective as specialized exterminator teams. that’s a downside
Maybe not by law, but by definition they are, unless it turns out theyre actually a highly advanced colony of nanomachines (son)
Besides, you completely missed my point on exterminating animals that are hugely overpopulated isnt abuse. Culling numbers isnt abuse.
yes, it isn’t
which doesn’t mean abuse is not culling the numbers. the government needs fluffies gone from the streets, and if the price for that is some people being a bit too rough then they are smashing bio-robots, so be it
besides, what’s the point of abuse in storytelling if there is no downside?
I think you misunderstand. A-s said that theres no defending irl animal abuse, and you offered exterminators and hunting as a counterpoint. I was saying that that doesnt count as animal abuse, at least not irl