Unfortunately, we now live in a time when our democracy and basic freedoms are under assault from all sides. No single person can stop this, but everyone can help, and storytellers don’t need to be on the sidelines. The most important thing to remember is not capitulating in advance. Fascists and authoritarians want us to make it easy for them, but we don’t have to do that. If enough of us write stories that drive them up the wall, we might make a difference.
Transcript
Generously transcribed by Sofia. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.
Chris: You’re listening to the Mythcreant podcast with your hosts Oren Ashkenazi, Chris Winkle, and Bunny.
[intro music]Chris: Welcome to the Mythcreant podcast. I’m Chris.
Oren: And I’m Oren.
Chris: So, I’m not gonna do any meta jokes this time. It doesn’t feel right for this topic that we’re gonna be covering this time.
Oren: Yeah, well sign of the times.
Chris: Sign of the times. I know.
So, yeah, just in case you’re not an American and you don’t follow American politics—which feels like everybody does, given that we’re a superpower. So yeah, we’re not in a good political situation right now. We’re in the middle of an attempted authoritarian takeover. And when I say attempted, I just mean we don’t know whether or not it will succeed.
Oren: Yeah. I would like to live in less interesting times if I had that option.
Chris: Yep, yep.
Oren: [snickers]
Chris: I feel like that scene in Lord of the Rings when Frodo was like, I wish Bilbo had never found the ring, and I wish I’d never had to take it. And Gandalf’s like, We don’t have that choice. We can only choose what to do with the time we have.
Oren: Yeah, I wish certain Lord of the Rings quotes were less relevant.
Chris: [laughs] Yep. But anyway, there is hope. There is! Cause we don’t know what’s gonna happen.
And our stories do matter. We may not have money, but we do have cultural influence, each one of us. And we know that our stories matter because there have been cultural forces and times in America’s history where people have aimed to stop storytellers from engaging in political expression. In particular the Cold War period when everybody was terrified that if writers talked about politics, we would all become communist. This was a real thing where apparently a lot of creative writing programs and universities were started to try to create writers that were American to counter Russian writers.
Oren: Well, Russia did have a bit of an early lead in the literary legacy department, so we needed to catch up.
Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So yeah, people think our stories matter because they do matter. But even with some of that resistance to adding politics to our stories, we have some great political stories.
I think Star Trek in particular is a notable beacon of political storytelling, especially since it was written for everyone. We also have some really heavy reads of dystopian literature, but I love it when stories that are really pulpy and engaging also talk about politics. Which is one of the cool things about Space Sweepers.
Oren: Before we get into the specifics of how you might write your story for a given effect, I do wanna say something that I think is the most important thing. If you’re trying to resist with your storytelling in any way, which is—if you don’t listen to anything else we say—is to not capitulate in advance.
If you were thinking of writing a gay character or a story where an evil dictator gets eaten by piranhas or something, and now you’re like, oh, I don’t know if I should do that in the current climate. The most valuable thing you can do is to do it anyway. And I’m not even saying you should do that, cause that’s not always safe for everybody. But if you’re trying to resist there is.
Chris: What we need the most right now is to normalize resistance and courage and to persist in using the freedoms that they want to take away from us. And then encourage everybody else to do the same.
So, we don’t even need to change minds. We just need to bolster the courage of those who already know and care about what is right.
Oren: Yeah, and that is the other thing, right? People are always wondering, what story can I tell that will convince people that fascism and bigotry are wrong? I’m not gonna say you can’t do that, but I will also say that it is just as if not more important for stories to energize people who already think those things are wrong.
Your story might not change anyone’s mind. It’s very hard to change people’s minds. But it might make people who already feel that way more likely to do something or normalize the idea that they might do something. Stuff like that.
Chris: Yeah. As they say: fear is contagious, but courage is contagious too.
So that said, let’s talk about, what can you do? There’s lots of different things you can do. And you can do whatever fits you, whatever fits your story, because there’s tons of ways to resist.
So, you don’t have to go immediately to writing about fascism. If you are really passionate about history, and knowledgeable about history, and that’s something that you’re really interested in doing, that’s fine. But that’s also something that is very intense. It takes more knowledge. It’s gonna be trickier. Don’t think that if you want to write something in resistance to fascism, then you have to depict fascism. You don’t need to.
And in many ways it’s better to start with the positive.
Oren: That’s the Star Trek way of doing it, right? It’s like, Hey, instead of having an episode where Uhura has to overcome racism to become an officer on the bridge, we’re just gonna show that she’s an officer on the bridge. No big deal. That’s just how it is.
That was a pretty powerful act in the sixties. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal that was at the time, and to a certain extent how big a deal that is now.
Because what’s the funniest thing to me about right-wing reactionaries is they get so much angrier about a visible black person than they do about a story straight up telling them they are evil. It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.
The amount of rage of something like the Acolyte, which to be fair did turn out to be bad, but there was rage about it way before that, right? Just because there was a trailer where there was a visible black woman that drove them into a froth compared to Andor which is a story about how they are the bad guys and how they’re evil. And they actually like Andor. Not universally, but in right-wing spaces, Andor is pretty popular. It’s wild to me that that’s how the dynamic seems to work.
Chris: Yeah. It is interesting that many people in the alt-right have sort of embraced this idea of evil trolls as part of their identity. It is weird, right? You would think that nobody would wanna identify as evil. And I’m not saying that all fascists think that they are evil, but at some level they’ve chosen to embrace that.
And this is why, when you do depict fascists, one of the tricks is, you don’t wanna make them look cool. A lot of times we like to have cool villains, but when it gets a little too close to home, then we just don’t want them to look cool anymore.
Oren: yeah
Chris: Which complicates this picture. But I mean, at least now we have an example since the fascists here are all a bunch of clowns.
Oren: They are really bad at everything.
Chris: [laughs] They’re really bad at everything. I’ve been fascinated by how that is a built-in part of this.
That whenever somebody demands personal loyalty, all of the actual competent people don’t wanna work for that person anymore. And then they end up with a bunch of people who are just super bad at their jobs, but are selected because of their loyalty. So those things are very much connected.
So going back to representation: Huge yes to representation. Just remember, Trump is trying to punish institutions for having diversity initiatives. So, we need diverse stories now more than ever. A big step that you can take is just diversifying your characters.
And I know sometimes it is intimidating to represent somebody from a group you are not part of. But there are some simple things you can do.
My general process for this is: Start by trying to match the roles in your story with a marginalized trait that makes it so that you’re avoiding stereotypes. And if you don’t know—let’s say you’re thinking about adding a black person or disabled person or queer person, and you don’t know what kind of stereotypes affect them—a lot of times you can just do internet searches on like racist movies, for instance.
And just start reading what people say about stories that are problematic and you’ll start to see patterns, and things to avoid there. You’ll start to see people talk about stereotypes. That can be really a formative way to start if you feel like you don’t know anything.
Oren: There is one thing about this that is kind of interesting to me—and I don’t wanna say it’s a good thing cause there’s nothing good about what’s happening now—but there is an interesting phenomenon that is less tenable now than it used to be.
When there’s some modicum of progress, a bunch of the worst people you know will be like, okay, well there was a small amount of progress. That means progress is now the status quo, so I can rebel against it by being anti-progressive. And that’s just much harder to sell than it used to be.
There was a period where it was like, diverse stories are the norm, so I’m gonna be cool and edgy by not doing that. Now the actual president is saying no more diversity. So, unless you love to lick boots, you’d better be punk and diverse is the message of that.
Chris: Yeah, I get to be a cool rebel!
You don’t wanna pick groups because you feel they fit the role. That can be actually a troubling sign. So, if you have nature people in your story, you don’t wanna pick Native Americans for that. Because if you try to like, oh yeah, that seems like it fits this marginalized trait, but a lot of times that means you are actively cultivating a stereotype. So you just try to, try to avoid that. Don’t put your lesbian couple in a role where they’re gonna die.
So it’s a first, just trying to match the story role with the character of the right trait so that you’re not playing into those kinds of stereotypes and tropes that are problematic.
And then making them feel like they are part of their group. It’s not about the big stuff, it’s about the little things. In this case, consultants don’t have to be expensive. You can find somebody who is knowledgeable to talk to you about your character and ask them questions. But it’s about little subtle things that are part of their daily life that kind of make them feel like they’re more part of their group.
Having representation is better than no representation. If you feel like you’re not doing enough to make a black character feel black, or queer character feel queer, usually it’s better to still have them in your story.
Oren: At least where we are now.
Chris: If we had more representation all the time, that was great. That threshold might change. But right now, I would just err on the side of having that representation.
But then you can look, it’s like, okay, this group of queer people, what are their favorite musicians? And have that person listen to some of those musicians. Those small touches are the things that you want to go for.
As opposed to generally making the plot all about their marginalized trait, getting really personal about it, that you are getting into a little bit more sensitive territory and you don’t need it. So just go for little bits of flavor and you’ll be okay.
Oren: Alternatively, and again, I find this morbidly amusing, is you can sometimes achieve the same effect just by giving your cool white dude lead some traits that the right-wing doesn’t like.
To compare Superman to Andor. Both of them are at least somewhat political, like overtly. They have overtly political stories, but Andor is so much more political than Superman.
Superman—mild spoilers—has a storyline about how it’s bad when US-allied nations murder civilians. That’s a good message. And obviously the right-wingers got upset about that. But Andor has several times that. It’s got the anti-prison system and anti-right-wing misinformation and anti-police state.
And I can’t prove this, this is pure hypothesizing and speculation, but it really feels like the reason Superman set everyone off was that Superman is shown to be nice and kind of sweet and a little soft, which they’re like, Ew, girly. Whereas Andor is extremely grim and everyone’s hard and jaded and so there’s no fear of that in Andor.
I’m not saying this to knock Andor. Andor is a good show. It’s just pretty obvious to me now what it is that upsets the right wing and what doesn’t.
Just making your straight white male lead a nice supportive guy can be enough sometimes. [laughs]
Chris: I mean, I really do think there’s so much we can do with men and masculinity that makes a huge difference.
Authoritarian culture is about the belief that there’s some alpha male, who is inherently superior to others will swoop in, and take care of all of your problems for you. And you just have to be loyal to him. And that’s really what they believe and they find comforting, but that’s obviously extremely problematic and antithetical to democracy.
But it’s scary to me that I can recognize this specific alpha male from our stories. All these stories where we have this super powerful male character that has to be the best, has to be the most powerful, more than any other man—and also women, but the emphasis is that he’s a lot more powerful than other men. Always knows what’s best and makes decisions for everybody else.
That is authoritarianism as a cultural trait right there.
Oren: And he is eight feet tall and three refrigerators wide. And eats 5 billion eggs.
Chris: [Batman voice] And he talks like this.
Oren: Oh man, I love it when we switch over to a male voice actor at the end of a romantasy novel, and you get to hear what the male lead is supposed to sound like.
Chris: [laughs]
Oren: It’s like, okay man, are you speaking through a subwoofer over there? What’s going on? [laughs]
Chris: But again, just allowing men to not be larger than life, perfect caricatures.
Oren: Hang on, I’m gonna have to stop you at allow Men. I don’t think we should allow men. No more, no more allowing that! It’s done. We had our run. It’s over now.
Chris: [laughs] A lot of fascism, a whole segment of it, is about making men manly again and being strong. And a lot of times nationalistic authoritarian cultures in general put a lot of emphasis on masculinity. Because that feeds into being militant. And that’s what they want.
And so having men and glorifying men who are actually sweet and sensitive, and need support sometimes, and don’t have to be perfect, and are not there to just dick measure with every other guy in the story, that’s huge. That is a huge difference.
Even if it seems strange, that does make a big difference.
Oren: Yeah. If nothing else, it’ll make your story stand out these days.
Chris: Did the Superman story put emphasis on Superman being an immigrant?
Oren: A little bit.
Chris: A little bit?
Oren: Not a ton. I honestly think James Gunn made a bigger deal about that than it is in the movie. There’s a whole thing about how he’s not from here. Again, mild spoiler. Lex Luthor runs a troll farm that is clearly doing some rip from the headline stuff about how right-wing trolls operate. So again, there’s a little bit of that, sure.
Chris: And I do think that some of the difference between Andor and Superman is just when it’s abstract ideas that people are looking at, it’s easy for them to have that cognitive dissonance, to detach. And just not think about what it means or assume that the despotic empire is the libs. [laughs] Even if it’s obviously not the libs.
Oren: People are really, really good at rationalizing away messages that they don’t like in stories that they enjoy. And this isn’t just a right-wing thing, leftists do it too. I’ve seen so many essays from at least left-of-center people, trying to convince me that Tolkien’s not a monarchist. Cause they like Lord of the Rings.
And it’s like, no, it’s okay. You can still like Lord of the Rings, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.
Chris: Or like Dune. Isn’t there a lot of leftists who like Dune?
Oren: I’ll give them that one a little bit. There’s a little bit more in Dune than there is in Lord of the Rings, but yes. There is that too.
But with Andor, I made a habit of looking in on right-wing spaces to see what they were saying about Andor, and there was some understanding that Andor was talking about them. But most of it was rationalizing. Like no, the Ghorman protests can’t be anything like real life protests because they aren’t waving Mexican flags.
Here I found a tissue, I can put the tissue over the metaphor and now it’s not real and it can’t hurt me anymore.
Chris: So that’s the thing about those metaphors and analogies: if it’s an abstract concept, it’s much easier for people to ignore it. But when you have a black person on screen, now it becomes very clear what you stand for.
Oren: Andor is so fascinating because you would’ve expected it to make them mad because you’ve got Diego Luna there who is a Latino with an obvious accent. But no, apparently that doesn’t do it. While committing horrible acts on many groups of Latinos, they’re also willing to be like, ah, maybe this one’s okay. It’s a window into the right-wing mindset. [laughs]
Chris: Yeah. It’s strange. He is a gritty anti-hero, right?
Oren: Right. I think that’s what ended up mattering. Is that he was super gritty and everything’s gritty. And I think they liked that. Again, I’m not saying that’s bad. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do that or that your gritty story is inherently right-wing. I’m just describing the reactions that I see.
Chris: So, what we’re saying is that fluffy bunnies are praxis.
Oren: Yeah, exactly. Actually you should go and everyone go write cozies now! Cause cozies are the only way to resist! You heard that here on the Mythcreants Podcast!
Chris: [laughs]
Oren: See how many panic pieces about cozies we can generate.
Chris: More ideas: Stories that are about valuing things that are being harmed. Like immigration. Stories about immigrants. And immigrants are not in one shape or size. There are all kinds of immigrants.
The value of public services, obviously that’s a big deal right now.
Value of free speech rights, and specifically free speech is such a weird thing because they’re always claiming that they want their free speech while trying to suppress our free speech.
Oren: That’s easier to reconcile once you remember that they are liars and they lie constantly.
Chris: I think it’s easy for people who are rationalizing things away, to rationalize freedom is us getting our way and you not getting your way. Freedom for them means imposing their will on somebody else instead of them, because again, it’s a zero-sum. Instead of their enemies imposing their will on them or something like that.
Oren: Right, exactly. That is freedom in my mind when I get all of the cookies, the cookies are finally free.
Chris: [laughs] But in this case, specifically the ability to criticize an authority figure is what I would go for in this free speech category. That’s important, the value of democracy and equality, which democracy depends on. And I think this is really key because we’re talking about things like the rise of fascism and authoritarianism.
The thing that’s going on here is that democracy inherently is tied to equality because democracy is based on the idea that we are all equal, and that’s why we should all get a vote.
And it’s easy because classism, even if it’s bad today, it is much better than it used to be. And so, it’s easy to forget how things were, and that people believed that God chose who was poor and who was rich and those were just at your inherent traits.
Even when America started, only people who own property could vote. Only white men who own property could vote. But to make our democracy better, in order to justify where everybody should vote, instead of a king should rule, we value equality. And so those two concepts are just inherently tied together.
And that is why the right is abandoning democracy to some extent. At least some of them have come to realize that. They really don’t want equality, and so they’re turning against democracy.
Oren: And this is also what they have all of the lies to rationalize it. Like, the illegal immigrants are voting, so actually we have to destroy democracy to save it! That sort of thing, right? They build elaborate head canons to justify all of it.
Chris: Yeah. There is a lot of rationalization from some of them, but others absolutely know this and are deliberately trying to abandon democracy.
Oren: This is true. So what I’m saying is that you should write a story about murdering Aragorn. You gotta do it.
Chris: Speaking of that, because—what was it? The Thorn and… what was the Kingfisher story that got a Hugo award?
Oren: Nettle & Bone.
Chris: Nettle & Bone, right.
Nettle & Bone is kind of like that. In Nettle & Bone—I think this is one of the reasons that it got a Hugo and was popular—is about how the main character wants to kill the prince that her sister is married to. Because she got married to the prince, but the prince was actually evil and not good. And now she wants to end him. And that is what the story is about.
Oren: Very sympathetic premise.
Chris: When we talk about monarchy and fantasy. I understand the pull towards monarchy in fantasy. I absolutely do. It’s nice wish fulfillment and also you have a character that automatically has the power to do things in your plot, which is also convenient.
Oren: It is handy.
Chris: But the romanticization of monarchy in fantasy is a bit dangerous and I think we should—I don’t wanna shame anybody for writing about things that bring them joy. My goal is to raise awareness about the implications of those things, so that everybody can choose to take whatever is the next step for them.
Whether it’s writing a monarch character that has to fight other monarchs that are bad, instead of just being like, all monarchs are good. If that’s your baby step, that’s the next step for you, then good. Take the next step, right?
I think that we should always embrace enjoyment and not shame people for enjoyment. But the more we understand about some of these patterns.
Like the alpha male. Obviously, there are a lot of romantics right now that have these alpha male characters because some women love them. And I do feel like some of that comes from patriarchal propaganda. But again, the goal is not to shame anybody for what they enjoy.
The goal is just to be more aware so that everybody can take whatever is their natural next step for them and do what they feel comfortable doing.
Oren: There is some funny cognitive dissonance though when I’m reading some of these romantics where the author clearly wants to be progressive in some ways and it’s like, yeah, this is a world where gay romance is common and it’s not discriminated against. This character is non-binary. Anyway, here’s my love interest: Eight feet tall, three refrigerators wide, the biggest [duck quacking sound] in the land! And I’m like, Alright. Okay. Interesting that this is what’s happening now.
Chris: [laughs]
Oren: I do hope that when they convert some of these romantasies into movies—We’re really overdue for that. It’s weird that it’s only just starting to happen—I really hope that, however they cast the love interest, that they are accurate to the way they’re described in the book.
Because then you would immediately realize that’s not really very attractive. [laugh]
Chris: [laughs]
Oren: This wall of flesh walks on screen and it’s like, hello, I’m Zaden.
Chris: I mean, we talked about the fact that when men are described as buff—male love interests—that that can mislead you into thinking that women like guys to be buffered than they actually like. Generally, that bodybuilder shape with every little muscle popping out is not attractive. But the way that people describe love interests always emphasizing their muscles.
The reader imagines what they want. The purpose of description is just to evoke the imagination. So it’s not always perfectly accurate.
Oren: Well, it’s gonna be! When I adapt Shield of sparrows, don’t you worry! You’ll see!
Chris: Oh gosh.
And one other thing: I have an article on this, on portraying collective action and this in particular has come up because there are some people who are like, No, you shouldn’t have a single hero because in real life, we gotta work together to solve our problems.
I can absolutely get that, and there’s definitely a place for stories about collective action, and I think that’s important too. Stories are inherently weighted towards having a single hero, but there are some ways to include collective action in your story and I have an article that lists some ideas for doing that.
And it can be baby steps. Like you just have a hero that knows an activist group and works with them occasionally during the story, to your story is about the activist group or what happened.
Oren: Or they can all be joined together in an unholy experiment.And now the collective is all one character. It’s good. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.
Chris: Yeah. No, you can have a hive mind. Why not?
Oren: Yeah. All right. Well, now that we’ve suggested all protagonists should be replaced with hive minds because that is…
Chris: Now my anti-authoritarian story has gotta be about the Borg trying to get that queen to go away.
Oren: Yeah. Oh, that would’ve been great. A Borg revolution. I’d watch that.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
Oren: All right. Well, I think with that, now that we’ve come up with the coolest Star Trek idea, we’re gonna go ahead and call this episode to a close.
Chris: If you found this episode useful, consider supporting us on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/mythcreants.
Oren: And I do want to thank our existing patrons because stuff’s hard and we appreciate the support. Specifically, Ayman Jaber, who’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. And also Kathy Ferguson who’s a professor of political theory in Star Trek.
And we will talk to you next week.
[Outro Music]This has been the Mythcreants Podcast. Opening and closing theme: The Princess Who Saved Herself, by Jonathan Coulton.