I mean, it’s possible to do both. You can create a story as a response/criticism of misogyny noir and lack of representation in sports fiction. If the issue is that bad, and nobody’s doing anything about it, sometimes the best recourse is to be the one to fix it. To provide what the genre lacks.

Well, if the book you want doesn’t exist, the best course of action is to write it.

So much of far right rhetoric is just blaming others for their own inability to get laid.

Me at my cat when he brings a live vole into my house

Babe wake up Dani drew a cute boy again

Fact is, analyzing and criticizing a character is fun. Even if you like a character, it’s good to look at them through a critical lens. It’s healthy to do. It helps you get a feel for media analysis and good character writing. It’s good to have discourse like this.

How precisely ARE we supposed to criticize them, if not as a human? Like an animal? Like something completely divorced from humanity?

Again, case-by-case. But if we’re talking about a character who does things like abuse, SA, genocide, etc, then a character absolutely SHOULD be criticized.

But in the context of fandom discourse, I find this stance to be very reductive and borderline anti-intellectual. I’ve seen statements like this before, and it honestly comes across almost like this person wants to shut down discourse that they specifically don’t agree with.

A character worth analyzing makes decisions worth analyzing. Worth criticizing as well, if necessary. How these decisions affect others. How they align with our morality. If they make sense in the context of the story or what they themselves believe. Again, it’s very much a case-by-case basis.

Characters ARE tools. But they’re tools strictly in the sense that they’re a component of a greater narrative. Some exist to represent certain themes or ideas, or have a certain role, but they are characters nonetheless. And a character needs depth for any analysis of them to be meaningful.

Furthermore, to reduce characters in to little more than simple tools means any deeper analysis or criticism of them is entirely redundant. It’s not an ideal way to write characters with depth or nuance. And if a character solely exists to be a tool, it often makes them shallow and bland.

The really confusing part is that this person seemingly doesn’t want characters criticized “as if they’re real people.” But at them same time, they also want them analyzed. The fact is, media/character analysis involves, and even necessitates, criticism. This includes a character’s actions.

Where the the monsters hidden don’t mark play nice