“There is no general link between depicting something in fiction and encouraging it in real life. Stories have contained murder, war, betrayal, manipulation, and other harmful things for centuries. Most readers understand that a story can portray something without endorsing it. Depiction is not the same as approval.”
This is all true, yes, but it makes no sense under the context you gave it. You made this statement in reply to the sentence “Some fictional content normalizes harmful ideas.” The key there is “some”. Not “All”. You took a statement talking about a subset of fiction and made it about all fiction, which means you’re not actually replying to the statement. There IS, at times, a link between depiction and approval! That is just a fact! Famously, characters like Jim Crow were used to normalize racism in the United States, leading to Jim Crow laws, and books like Mein Kampf were used to encourage antisemitism (I do consider that fiction because if you actually read the book, almost everything in it is completely made up). These are cases of fictional content being used to promote real-world harm, and acting like saying that = saying it about all fiction is wrong
I don't disagree that some media can be created with the goal of promoting an ideology. Propaganda exists. Racist caricatures, political propaganda, and ideological literature are real examples of media being used to persuade people.
The examples you gave were created specifically to persuade audiences toward particular political beliefs. That's different from a fanfic writer exploring a dark relationship, a horror author writing disturbing content, or someone shipping fictional characters.
The question is "Does the existence of controversial fictional content automatically mean it normalizes or promotes the behavior it depicts?"
If we assume depiction alone equals normalization, then every story containing murder normalizes murder, every tragedy normalizes suffering, and every villain normalizes villainy. Most people would agree that's not how fiction works.
For me, intent, context, presentation, and audience interpretation matter. A work that explicitly argues "this belief is correct and you should adopt it" is fundamentally different from a work that merely depicts something, even sympathetically, within a fictional narrative.
