Im dryin up faster than lake mead just thinking about it
What is even the point of that?
not to get too pretentious and discourseâ˘ď¸about it (who am i kidding that's exactly what i'm about to do), but also i have thoughts because i actually really like stories that have explicit consent, mature grounded characters, and equal power dynamics. those things in and of themselves aren't what make something boring or unsexy, nor do they make something inherently "ethical." and i actually hate that we're at a point where we're flattening things to such an extent. what's boring is when storytellers decide that in order to have those qualities the characters/relationships have to be entirely frictionless, that a conflict-less dynamic is a "green flag" relationship, or that in order to be marketable/palatable to the masses it has to be [performatively] "ethical" and inoffensive. there's also the obviously problematic premise that stories with dubious consent/immature characters/unequal power dynamics, and by extension the consumers of those stories, are inherently unethical.
i feel compelled to mention that there is nothing wrong with enjoying cozy/low stakes stories. i enjoy those on occasion myself but we have got to stop with this notion that the content of the media a person consumes is some sort of moral indicator. that's part of why i started doing the is he a green flag posts, because the online attitude of "if i like this character or enjoy this drama i have to find a way to make it morally good or else i'm a bad person" is so bonkers and unhealthy that i couldn't not make fun of it.
umm so anyway for me the debate isn't whether green flag is boring/unsexy and red flag is interesting/hot stuff, it's about the moral valuation of it and the push to make media as inoffensive to as many people as possible.
No I was flippant, very good stories can have these things, but to label them as "ethical" makes me feel like they were explicitly written to be inoffensive and that makes me cringe.
My other major fandom is Jane Austen and those books hardly contain anything problematic, except period normal patriarchy and some age gaps. They are awesome, I find them very interesting, but it's not like Jane Austen would have ever sought out to be on this list or called her novels ethical or moral. She was very against writing moral novels. So I have nothing against less dramatic plots however as you say, trying to make things inoffensive...
It's the labeling that really irks me and I just want to mock it.
Also the idea you can avoid any ick is absurd. Everyone has different icks and some of them are pretty hard to predict.
âthe idea you can avoid any ick is absurdâ <- this!!! as if you can write any kind of story about anything without some rando finding something to be upset about. thatâs the issue, not that dark/gritty stories cause harm and cozy stories donât ever because thatâs not how fiction works!
i mean you could write a story about a grandma knitting sweaters and people will get mad about her using wool yarn because itâs animal abuse or something.
the good news is that there was apparently so much immediate backlash for these exact reasons that ala took the list down within just a few hours lol. there is hope for us!
