[Boomer Humor ] "Lady Red" The r*pe joke comic from Akira Toriyama that causes seethe to this day

Critique of all types of media has devolved into this weird results based analysis which treats all works like morality plays (note the emphasis on "The Message"). Good things happen to good characters. Bad things happen to bad characters. A bad thing happening to a good character means the author believes the character to be inferior and deserving of the bad outcome. The author is morally obligated to avoid writing bad outcomes for minority or woman characters because uh... they don't have much representation and that makes potential self-inserters feel bad sends a message to minorities and women that they are inferior.

If you follow the logic it essentially asserts that "good character writing" means that the character succeeds and has good outcomes in the story. Which is essentially a massive regression when you consider the past 100+ years of writing that was spent desperately tried to escape this low-brow morality play mentality, but in the current era where so many don't read and the ones that do read focus on comic books or YA novels I guess it shouldn't be surprising.

!bookworms critique has fallen, billions must read actual literature