Media (ill)literacy.

I personally do not really like this focus on relatability. Mainly because it's not my primary concern in what fiction I enjoy. If everything had to be relatable to me, I would like very, very little fiction out there as I am an inherently weird person.

When I write, my primary concern is that the characters are interesting. Not that they are relatable.

This is why I feel so strongly about the novel Lolita. It was explicitly written to demonstrate that the main character is a creepy pedophile who ruins a young girl’s life by taking advantage of and raping her.

Yet everyone seems to think the book is some story about forbidden love between a middle aged man and a young girl. Both the pedophiles and the anti-pedophiles alike.

Yes! It is a media literacy issue (IMO).

This seems to be an issue on social media. Ive never run into this line of thinking writ large.

The self insert thing is something some authors do, especially early on. I found it easier to write me than other characters. But as a writer, as I improved, I started reaching for more.

Readers do the same. Its why a generation of young readers love Harry Potter. A student who becomes a wizard. But thats not all people read nor is that the gold standard of characters.

Glotka the inquisitor and torturer from Joe Abercrombie's fantasy series is not me. The anarchist scientist from Ursula le Guin's book The Dispossed is not me.  And thats a good thing. Seasoned readers are hungry for more beyond their own life.

Relatability problem again. I wonder if Im the only one who does NOT want a relatable MC, a MC that looks like me or identifies as me or has a similar personality or suffers a similar backstory (it's fine tho, first two I don't care, latter two are rather a turn-off). For me one of the best parts of engaging in a story is to put myself in the shoes of someone who is NOT me. The fun in trying to understand someone you cannot immediately relate to. The fun in exploring other lives, other perspectives, processing feelings you've never had (maybe never will) and exploring obstacles you won't get a chance to face. If the character is literally me then what fun are they to watch/read/play? I've got myself for that and one me is more than enough.

This trend of people wanting characters to be like them and relate to them, could it be telling something about us as people today? Not that it's good or bad (it's up to everyone to decide for themselves), it just looks like people's needs have shifted towards character relatability for a reason. Maybe it became harder to find irl people one can relate to, maybe it's a thing about processing feelings, who knows.

The impression I get of the Booktok world is that the biggest content creators there seem to have started reading books during the COVID pandemic. As a result, you get reviews based on how much they liked the characters, whether a novel had their favorite tropes, and reader inserts all over the place. I'm not hating because I want more people to read books, but it's a bit silly sometimes.

I hate this. We can't have good fiction anymore 

This is part of why so many of my MCs are absolutely non-human. There is no easy path to 'oh, that is me!' for most people. That doesn't mean they shouldn't feel empathy toward/with the characters, but it's definitely not 'you'.

And frankly, empathy appears to be a vanishing skill. "I didn't understand why this was a problem until it happened to me!" seems to be everywhere.

I often see people freaking out over "what if creepy people are getting off to this?" - so what? Who cares? It's not gonna make them more or less creepy either way.

The normalisation of soulless corporately sanitised slop in cinema has killed media literacy

This leads to the problem where an author can’t include tough topics like racism or sexism because the media illiterate on TikTok believe that means the author is racist or sexist. It seems to be an issue exclusively aimed at female authors, so we have come full circle to where women need to write with a male pen name to avoid the TikTok media illiterate.

I absolutely hate when people judge a fiction book as if it’s perpetuating some evil in the world. Idc if it’s “relatable” or a completely unrelateable POV. I want to read interesting books. People are racist, sexists, whatever “ist” you can think of and I want to read about it. Real characters are going to mirror people in the real world.

There are people out there who think if authors stop writing“ist” characters into their novels, people of that nature will stop existing in the real world.

Theres also this weird refusal to engage with fiction? Like i keep getting into debates with people a out ficti9n, mentioning character x or story theme y as a point for whatever reason, and being told "i dont care about the characters or dtory" like ok then why are you here?

This is just one of many things wrong with modern media production. Its one of the reasons why I go with self published indie authors on Amazon a lot. The stories and characters are more realistic, less sterile and 2 dimensional.

Here's the reality. Good characters have flaws, scars, trauma, just like everyone else in the world. But in the last 20 years, media, and I am including movies and TV shows in that, have become so sanitized in the name of sensitivity, it's rendered them bland.

Don't believe me? Ask how classic Disney movies would be rated, like Bambi in todays modern media market. You can also take a look at why authors are being rejected by publishing houses and I promise you'll find a lot are rejected because of content, like a young man having to kill his dog because it was sick and dying.

This is genuinely something I find myself struggling with time to time as a writer because I worry about 'is this too much will readers revolt' and it's frustrating.

Personally, I always thought these arguments (the one being made by you and the OOPs, not the people y'all are talking about, though I guess them too, but you're the one I'm talking to, not them) were kinda strawman-y. Like yes some people are stupid. I don't deny that. But it's not a rampant problem. Most people get it. So a vocal minority hardly deserves the attention they are getting. Moral outrage over the content of a book has always existed after all. This is just a reframing of the content to facilitate outrage. But 99% of the people decrying books in this manner... they don't read. So why are we supposed to take seriously what they have to say about our writing?

It’s true that depiction doesn’t always equate endorsement. However, I feel that critique of what is being depicted, or how it is being done, from a storytelling angle can have merit.

I agree. And a lot of this mindset has also contributed to people expecting actual self insert books (or even like the Twilight Saga where the protagonist is subtly a self insert by giving the least possible characterization) to be reflective of their irl life, and then reject books for not being that. Even though it’s impossible to write a self insert character that accurately reflects every possible background and lifestyle since that’d just be a blank face statue with no agency

I had someone try to argue with me about Harry Potter's worldbuilding: "why would you write a fictional world and put racism into it? Why would you just not include that? If you get to make up a new world, why make it racist?" As if this made the core themes of the story pro-racist.

Like I don't know, wasn't that the point? The racists were the evil guys and their ideology was destructive? I know HP and Jk has its issues but that's lunacy to try to argue that point.

I've seen this argument in online "tumblr-esque" type spaces and I think my friend (who never read HP) just aped it from those sources without critical thought.

I mean it's not an issue for those with media literacy higher than a goldfish. Maybe it's the social media creators lacking, or maybe it's the consumers. I've seen just as many nuanced takes get reactions like there was zero nuance as I've seen completely incorrect takes from creators.

It's like people don't realize that someone can write something without every character being a self insert or something kind of power fantasy, especially if they do something "bad".

It gets really bad in some fantasy stories where you have a character using a sword to defeat enemies in a giant battle and yet not only did they manage to not kill anyone but no one died at all.

I’ve been reading black leopard, red wolf by Marlon James and just found some old post about all these people being like, “it’s all the trigger warnings!!” “I DNFednkt because it was too much!” Etc. and sure that’s fair but I think that a common thing the major black fantasy writers that is poignant is that sometime really fucked up horrible stuff just happens to characters. Really awful horrible things that they never really recover from. It’s in butler, Jemisin, and James.

This is a window as a privileged white person, into what it is like to be an oppressed minority.

Idk man, I just saw all this fucking whining and pussing out and felt like, welp, this is why everything that makes money is Sanderson, cottagecore, and Romantasy because at our core, the fantasy audience are milquetoast white people who can’t stomach seeing what it’s like to be at the bottom. 

Average reading level continues to drop, and a huge number of ignorant people believe that anything you put into your book, you agree with / it represents your beliefs or desires.

So between not understanding deeper messages, and assuming anything you put in a book represents you, you get a huge number of people saying "really bad stuff should never be in fiction!!!!!11"

I usually see it alongside such brilliant takes as "this villain murders, I can enjoy him. This villain rapes, you're a bad evil author and no one can like anything about them"

To an extent, I agree, but there's some work out there where I read it and think the author needs help. I just don't understand why a middle aged dude needs to write about certain things happening to women, when they don't really have anything meaningful to add to the conversation about that.

I am going to sound extremely arrogant by saying this, but the inability to understand a person's view unless they are relatable or a stand in for themselves is just an indicator of intellectual laziness. It takes a intelligence and effort to try and put yourself in the mindset of a totally different person, and a lot of people just don't want to put in that sort of effort into things.

That said, these sorts of stories have been around for a long time; it is the entire point of escapist fantasy literature. People really aren't getting any worse in this respect; most likely, social media just allows us to hear stupid opinions that we wouldn't have had access to twenty years ago.

I think the rise of modern fandom culture is a part of it as well. No examinations of characters, just coffee shop AU's. No reflections on grief and loss, just fix-it fics.

The problem these days is that media literacy is dying, and younger generations are "triggered" by absolutely everything that makes them even remotely uncomfortable. Had to hang out with my 13-year-old niece over the holidays and experience first hand how "oh X is triggering to me because it makes me uncomfortable to think about." I hate this constant need for comfort in media these days. As if engaging with a thought provoking text were an issue. Honestly, critical thinking seems to be a dying art.

I would say that both sides are half right.

It's not necessarily that you have to be able to project yourself into a character's shoes, but being able to sympathise or otherwise relate to a character is a vital part of getting the audience to stay. If the audience feels apathetic to your characters, they're going to DNF the book

No I don't really see the problem. The premise is just plain false. There is nothing new about this. Like take the satanic panic. Devils and demons were the obvious bad guys in dnd, but apparently slaying them was a big no no for the devout of Christ.

This is lamenting a problem that basically doesn’t exist.

Publishers aren’t refusing to publish good material because the POV characters aren’t enough like the majority of readers. Most traditionally published books do not attempt to make their characters exactly like their target audience. This supposed dumbing-down of readers is just not happening. The real problem is that not enough people actually read much at all.

Also, brainrot is not a new phenomenon. It was around when I was a kid, and I’m almost thirty now. People are just perennially pessimistic about the state of the youth. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of serious concerns facing young people today that weren’t there a decade ago. But this isn’t one of them.

There are so many big problems in the world to worry about. There is no reason to make up ones that aren’t real in any significant way.

What makes the Black Company so much fun is that there are no “good guys;” there’s only “my side” and “your side.”

Yes, of course. The average American reading level is 6th grade. That is obviously higher in book readers, and not everyone is American, but still. It's the current zeitgeist. People like things very obvious and chewed out for them. No room for interpretation

Cause we are all the main characters in our story and now that’s bleeding in to everything. That’s why writing can be a skid more fulfilling exercise than reading. By writing I am forcing myself to make decisions and then view how I made that decision based on the character and not what I would do. I wouldn’t do most of the things I’ve written about; like setting off on a perilous journey, completely unprepared, and with some random stranger who blew threw town

I thought these people didn't exist up until this chrismas where my step sister gabe her heated opinion on how cinderella's family is so mean

There's been a growing trend in these spaces of people seemingly struggling with the notion of fiction, portayal alone is presented as endorsement, the chief directive while writing should be to be as unproblematic as possible, which predictably can only lead to the most bland stuff imaginable.

I've always heard that statistic about the average American reading at a 7th grade level, but I recently saw a video that explained what all the reading levels actually meant. The higher ones began to deal with reading between the lines and interpreting various meanings by factoring in different perspectives and biases. Basically, most people read things at its most literal face value.

With what I'm hearing from teachers nowadays, I expect that reading level to go down with newer generations...kids aren't applying themselves with all the new tech at their fingertips to do things for them and parents aren't holding them accountable for their laziness either, oftentimes protecting them from in-school consequences that are meant to help them grow.

It's a mess out here 🙃

The relatability thing is always brought up whenever I bring up how annoying it is that non-humans rarely get to be main characters, or how they're often reduced to set dressing while the humans get treated like they're the default species.

This is an argument I have with so many people. Yes, X character is a bad person. Even as a POV, they're a bad person. No, this book or piece of media SHOWING A NEGATIVE THING is not glorifying it, or celebrating it, or championing it. It is making you aware, however uncomfortably, that it exists and is a reality for some people.

This is also seen in the people who refuse to read 3rd person POV, even though a lot of stories just straight up don’t work in 1st person

This is a natural side effect of societies push of hyper-individualist ideology, selfishness and a general vibe of solipsism. 

Isolated, confused, constantly aspiring individuals are far easier to control, but will also lead to all fiction being about self-inserts.

Ugh this has ruined good media. Everything has to be so correct these days, people don't even know how to enjoy it anymore! I remember having to explain to someone why I loved Serena Joy as a character and not a person, bc they couldnt fathom the idea of appreciating a well written character, not that I actually identify with her.

god forbid the protagonist be a bad person. that just makes the work immoral and evil! except breaking bad, that's the only time it's okay.

Stories do not have to be realistic. Stories do not have to be relatable. Stories do not need to be moral. Stories do not need to have consistent logic.

The only thing a story needs to do is be interesting. Everything else is just gravy.

You see this so often with horror writers.

Just rewatched Back to the Future, and the scene where Biff tries to assault Marty's mom would 100% not be in a family movie today...

Except, that scene describes how SA happens most of the time: someone you know, someone who can plausibly spin it as 'you wanted it,' someone people will shrug and say 'boys will be boys'. And that scene is portrayed as an act of evil perpetrated by the villain.

How much better to see that scene as a kid, boy or girl, and understand 'this is something bad guys do.'

Seems like a platform problem. Adjust your algorithm and the voices go away.

I think if the focus isnt on relatability and includes dark material, there should be a seriousness to how that material is explored. Interview With a Vampire is a good example imo. Very triggering show for me because it includes domestic violence and explicitly the connection between trauma and memory - all things I struggld with but can enjoy a serious engagement with. But people talk about that show (partially to the writers credit) as toxic yaoi with a bunch of hot gay sex and abusive behaviors to a degree that I think it loses the ability to express things on those themes coherently. I love vampires but I don't need to relate to every vampire; however, I can't vibe with the trauma for the sake of drama.

If you want to see yourself reflected in every piece of art you encounter--then you may need a mirror instead.

I think "relatability" is a literary cudgel used to bash people's ability to imagine anything beyond their own experience into dust. If a book can't surprise you, if it can't show you worlds beyond (people, ideas, actions, arcs)...then there's little point in the book existing at all.

Remember when a character was allowed to just be evil? Darth Vader was just evil. No explanation. No tragic backstory. He was just an evil that needed to be fought.

Can't do that anymore.

I swear, if Hitler were a fictional character, writers would be bending over backwards to make him sympathetic. "He's evil, sure, but he has his reasons!"

A decade or two ago, people treating fiction like reality was treated as a sign of some sort of mental disturbance, now people in the west are absolutely treating every fictional character and story as if it was real and honestly it scares me.

If everyone reads a "relatable" character, what does that say about the...odd proclivities of MCs in stories such as Morning Glory Milking Farm?

I would say people acting like a thing happening in fiction is an endorsement has been an issue forever.

This must be another instance of me not being exposed to the common discourse on an issue, so when I come across somebody criticizing that discourse, it sounds like they're jousting at windmills. I just haven't heard the kind of posts they're complaining about, so I can't speak to how accurate they are or not.

I mean, what immediately comes to mind is the disturbing number of books that depict predatory relationships, but there are no themes of how horrible it is that that's happening. Books where the narrative seems to unironically think the dynamic is healthy and desirable. I don't even need to say the title, we're all thinking of a few of them.

But because those titles are so prominent, it makes it hard to guess what books this post is referring to as not being like that.

At my university I’d originally wanted to get a degree in creative writing, and so at one point I took a speculative fiction class as an elective. I found myself kinda disillusioned with the course and my classmates and I left- the professor was alright, but there was just something I didn’t like about my peers that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and this is definitely it- they all seemed only interested in writing fantasy/sci-fi for this purpose, to “put YOU in their cool fantasy world” rather than explore concepts that came about from how their fantasy/sci-fi worlds were arranged.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a place for that kind of story, but it just wasn’t what I was interested in, and I had a hard time explaining the issue I had with the class to my peers/parents, but this post sums it up perfectly

Relatability in fiction is something you shouldn’t be going for unless it’s part of the narrative.

It’s fiction, it should feel not relatable and shouldn’t need to bastardise the authorial and artistic vision just because the viewer can’t suspend their disbelief and get lost in the fictitious Milieu.

Of course fictional stories can be told where the audience is meant to relate and draw parallels between their life and the story but that should never be prioritised or worse awkwardly crammed into a narrative it doesn’t belong in.

Reminiscent of when people forgot that Darth Vader is a villain and freaked out about how him killing a clingy female who was obsessed with him in a comic panel is actually sexist and glorifying violence against women

This actually puts me off books. Firstly, I hate second person perspective and secondly, it makes any book with any element of romance just a hard no: I'm romance repulsed so long as I'm involved. If it's fiction and not me, it's okay.

I wonder if there is an issue on display here that readers are only interested in self-inserting themselves and dont seem as interested in empathising or sympathising with characters.

What platform was this discussion on? The OP may be related to me 🙃

I took a playwriting class last year, and the teacher gave several pieces of good advice, but I think one of the best I got was him saying "trying to make your mc a good person is leaving a lot on the table"

And I think there's a lot of truth to that, like a complicated and flawed mc is interesting. And there can be interest in a genuinely good person having that goodness challenged, I think Superman (2025) is a really good example. But dismissing a bad or grey person as an mc out of hand just wastes a lot of good potential

I watched a whole hour-and-a-half long video the other day about this very issue. The writer who made the video blamed it on fan fiction, said that FF exists primarily to put the writer into the story, whether explicitly or implicitly, and that it has led to a new generation of writers and readers who expect the same in "literary" writing. Self-insert, self-gratification. While I didn't agree with some of the things she said (I have written fanfic before), I could see where she was coming from. Fanfic is the world many writers, especially young ones, came from, and the same with young readers (this is a gross generalization), therefore more and more readers want fiction with similar content (the similar types of gratification, rather than exploring themes and characters, etc.), and that leads to more and more publishing houses wanting that kind of content.

I'm not a "literary" writer, but I do enjoy exploring themes, characters and their arcs, the deep ideas of what it is to be human, to be sentient, to be in community (or not), in relationships with other beings (or to be a loner), what trauma can do to a good person, etc. I enjoy the craft of writing, of digging out these themes, of discovering who my characters really are. And while I do write "inclusively" (for me that's mainly me as a chronic illness sufferer who is also AuDHD writing about people with chronic illnesses or disabilities or neurodivergent), I'm not doing it just for me, I'm writing these stories for other people like me to see themselves accurately portrayed in fiction, someone they can relate to -- *without* self-indulgence and self-gratification, but rather with the very real struggles of living this life.

Anyway, yeah, I lament that this is what "popular writing" has come to. I don't think one has to be a "literary" writer to explore deep themes, etc. But I do think it's important that we get enough "deep stuff" in our reading diets (and therefore our writing diets) to keep us from becoming shallow, or staying shallow.

It’s actually also a tool of authoritarian control, eliminate everything that might make people uncomfortable enough to think and question things. To the authoritarian the purpose of art is to manipulate the audience and control their view, any art that doesn’t serve the Regime is not true art.

Very rarely would a book I read have anything to do with me. That’s the whole idea!

I agree heavily that this is a problem. Quite frightening how fast it’s snowballed to be honest 

I agree with all of these, I heard them a lot of times. But can anyone give me examples of it happening

Just yesterday I've seen a post of someone complaining about people who excuse villains with tragic backstories.

But here it's the opposite complaint? People can't like fictional characters if they are too different from them? Seems like a contradiction...

I agree that depiction isn't endorsement, but we should still be able to criticize said depiction.

Look at the movie Cuties for instance. The director made it abundantly clear that she intended the film to be a criticism of the sexualisation of young girls. Its reputation online? That the movie is condoning pedophilia, so now this movie is used as the prime example that "critics aren't reliable". So either the audience is dumb, or the director poorly conveyed her message. This can also happen.

DILLIGAF => be the counter to popular culture 

The trope of relatable guy in big wide fantasy world started with Tolkein

I mean yeah, poor media literacy is not good, but I feel like it’s one of those “nothing new under the sun” things, like some people have been media illiterate forever, right? But storytellers just keep telling good stories anyway. There will always be those people, and there will always be strong storytellers.

I suspect it’s because of the avalanche of reality TV and user-created content has stunted people’s ability to suspend disbelief.

That's one of the reasons I like fantasy anime more then fantasy in western media.

I heard some online writing website (Royal Road iirc) made a tag for local protagonists. People are looking to avoid isekai now because they're fed up with it.

I'm still happily reading my transmigration and isekai stories because most of the time the characters come from elsewhere or are quite strange~ I enjoy a good "transmigrator went to a magical world and is now sent back to our normal world and havoc ensues" plot.

Related: misuse of POV

Fantasy is not escapism at its core. It's the exploration of the human experience and higher concepts that can only be expressed through analogies and hypotheticals. Often, it's ideas that can only be described through these niche parallels.

Relatable? Not needed, bonus if some people finds the protagonist relatable. Believable is needed however. You can write a very odd protagonist and it'll work if you make it believable, human somewhat. I know it's harder than just saying "do this instead" but I don't have the skills to analyse deeply enough, beside flaws and qualities.

I have this problem when talking about "Lolita" and why it is a fantastic book and of tremendous importance. People think it is weird or creepy or disgusting and won't read it because it gives them the ick. Well yea, it is suppose to. That's the fucking point, evil with a silver tongue.

we are reinventing isekai anime

Is this really a problem? It stimulates discussion and controversy. I would hope people would find my writing inflammatory enough to talk about it like this.

People have been taking things way too literally and personally for like at least the last decade. It's so cringe.

This is part of the reason I stopped reading webcomics as frequently as I used to. I'm willing to let the whole story unfold and see how the characters grow and face their flaws, but not everyone is as patient which I'm sure is very discouraging to some authors.

Conversely though, it's equally frustrating when a very obvious character flaw is glossed over or even ignored just because they're sexy and in love so we should just pretend they're not awful.

If you’re looking for something that’s not like that at all, check out The Code of Civil Procedure on WP or inkitt. It’s exactly the opposite

I think this is wrong. The main problem is between people who actually read the books and the once who only read the summary of someone who failed their basic reading ability check. You then get a lot of people angry over a book they have never read.

Then add on top of that the Internet and you have people constantly loudly complaining about problematic stuff in books taht isn't really problematic.