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Notes -
I think a huge issue here is that there are so few who understand narratives and the ideas of metaphors and allegorical language well enough to get it. Most of the media critics I’ve read seem to take everything they see and read absolutely literally— orcs have dreadlocks and are therefore a stereotype of black people and therefore racist. If you don’t present your story literally and bop them over the head with it, they can’t see aliens as stand ins for earthbound culture topics. I got nearly banned from a subreddit defending a nazi planet trek episode that pretty much is anti Nazi in every conceivable way and taken down in short order (by two characters played by Jews no less). They couldn’t get that a story needs a beginning and an answer to the question of why the situation exists in the first place. In the case the alien Nazis were started by a rogue star fleet captain. The people I was talking to just couldn’t quite grasp that characters in a story can do things that the author doesn’t agree with. I don’t know how to create a story with deeper meanings for people who can’t grasp very basic ideas about fiction and storytelling.
So I don’t think it’s the toolkit, the issue is that at the moment there’s a good number of people who just aren’t literate enough to allow anything other than a literal version of the story they want to hear. And I suspect that this is why movies and tv are so bad. You cannot do anything but the literal without toddlers toss their toys out of their playpens in protest. So writers for mainstream content are stuck writing (to quote Critical Drinker) “wonderfully diverse female space Jesus” — a woman who can do nothing wrong and always saves the day. If that woman is ever shown weak, or needing to learn, or needing help, or some mere man saves the day, the literalists in the audience will call the writers sexist.
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