How does depicting them as monsters achieve that...?
Especially as it is, I daresay, not accurate, and thus makes for a weaker message I would argue.
My Games and Asset PacksThat... doesn't really answer my question, or give counterpoint to my argument, that I see...
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Sep 6th 2023 at 8:09:20 PM
My Games and Asset PacksIt's not really about whether or not they're tragic or sympathetic; they should just be written like actual human beings whose flaws lead them naturally into doing bad things. Making them cartoonish hurts the message because it turns them into strawmen, and implies that real-life conservative types wouldn't have similar issues because they aren't as extreme as the characters in the story.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall![]()
Pretty much: you're conjuring up a bogeyman version of conservatives that—outside maybe of a very small minority doesn't exist.
I daresay that conservatives love their children, and help their neighbours, and donate to causes.
Not to mention that "conservative" is itself a spectrum—even in America, I imagine—with some members who may be less conservative that one might think.
You say that you want to show how conservative ideals lead to hypocrisy and self-destruction. In that case, there should be no call for demonisation, as it should be possible to show the actual path (even if within a speculative-fiction framework) from ideal to ill.
Put it this way, to take an example from elsewhere:
If one wants to show how technological progress can endanger people, one needn't make the characters championing it into For Science! maniacs who enjoy the suffering of live test subjects and specifically design their advances to make lives worse.
One can just show them having a cool idea, and not realising some harm that it might produce—either due to not looking ahead at likely consequences, or due to those consequences being non-obvious.
And conversely, as WarJay says, to portray conservatives by-and-large as monsters suggests that actual conservative ideals may be harmless.
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Sep 6th 2023 at 10:33:10 AM
My Games and Asset PacksSomething to keep in mind is the old saying that everyone is the hero of their own story, and this is true. Very few people IRL note do things with the intention of being horrible monsters. People are by and large just doing what they have convinced themselves are right, and conservatives are no different; most of them genuinely believe they're on the right side because of the way they see the world.
So, if you want a realistic portrayal of how conservative ideologies can lead to destruction and harm, you should consider how conservatives IRL think and act, and then consider the logical damage such beliefs can cause.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallDo you think it would be fair if I wrote American conservatives as Neutral Evil homicidal hedonists with little to no redeeming qualities or there should be nuance in how they should be portrayed?
I asked because of the huge amount of controversy and hypocrisy involving them.]
I may be incredibly political and have a lot of strong, complex positions... and be highly educated, with lots of steelmanning the opposition and digging up what facts or details they lean on...
But
I do not believe it's my training as an educator that makes me highly suspect that most voters basically all want the same end-stage or at least want to address most of the same problems.
The issue is they can't agree to the solutions to the problems. They also can't agree what is or isn't "free market capitalism"/socialism/communism, and if either one has been tried before or not. If a problem happened or was solved in the past, people can't agree what caused the problem or what solved it.
As a person who is aware how politics actually work in the US, and having lived in a Purple state for 17 years in a row, and with a large family and lots of talking to people...
This is completely off.
For ONE: most Conservatives are some flavor of "Moralists" and many religiously motivated ones. This means they're more likely to ban hedonism or anything that looks like it, then to endorse it.
In simple speak, they're quicker to ban every single drug or non-vanilla sex act, than to engage in it.
For Second: If a person is not motivated by tradition or religion, they are not conservative. You're likely thinking of libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, which exist in the US, but not in great numbers.
Third: Neither group is Neutral. One wants to have no state or a "Watchman" state at best, and the other wants a large police force and military. One wants to allow a bunch of stuff, the other wants to ban it.
So you have people who are either Lawful or you have Chaotic.
Fourth: One group lives in small communities and is fairly nationalistic, skeptical of outsiders... Not in a huge rush to risk their life helping people they don't know. This describes Chaotic Neutral in at least one of the editions of D&D.
Then write a parody and take notes from the Colbert Report, or look to the Greeks with how they exaggerated things they lampooned. If something was dumb in their eyes, they would exaggerate it and then continue it's train of logic to some silly endstate.
Also, that's not American Conservatives. That's extremists/radicals/alt-right people.
If you want to prove that Reactionaries are self-destructive... You can just play footage from "Education for Death"
American Conservatives have been populist for a decade at least and they are fairly skeptical of educated people.
So they aren't exactly elitist. If they have a flaw, it's the opposite of elitism.
That's like asking if my mom who stans over Bill Clinton is the same person as Karl Marx or Mao.
My mom is a capitalist, maybe at best she supports unions, but she's not a social democrat or anything like that. She doesn't believe in civilians owning firearms, last I checked.
Mao and Karl Marx were very socially traditional, I have a they/them sibling and my mother / siblings stand by our ... sister? IDK, my sibling is keeping her/their name the same.
My point is that people on the "Left" are very very different from each other.
Reactionaries and Fascists are very middle of the road in terms of socialism/capitalism, or they want the super old, terrible capitalism of like 300 years ago.
They also rarely are actually religious or pious.
Conservatives are very pro Israel, they support Taiwan a lot too. Fascists, for obvious reasons, are not.
Edited by WorkingOnBeingGood on Sep 6th 2023 at 6:09:26 AM
IDK if there's actually a difference I use them pretty interchangeably
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallI think that theoretically "Writer's Block Daily" is supposed to be for updates about one's own work or experience as a writer, while "General Writer's Block" is supposed to be for questions or issues or musings that don't fit elsewhere.
Or something like that.
As to the specific question here, I suppose that depends on what you want from the conversation:
- If you have a short, specific, concrete question about the idea, you could perhaps ask it in the "Random Questions" thread
- If you have a less-concrete question, or want to share some insight drawn from it, you could perhaps place it in the "General Writer's Block" thread
- If you have a long, in-depth question, or want to do some brainstorming around the idea, or even just want to go into the idea at length, you could start a new thread for it.
- And if you just want to share it in brief, or talk about how it impacts on your journey as a writer, you could post that in the "Writer's Block Daily" thread.
At least, those are my suggestions—note that I am not a mod and have no authority here!
My Games and Asset PacksWould it be incredibly dumb to have a psych evaluation for a character in Chapter 6 and then black out the "Psychopathy" section so the reader can't tell if it's too high or too low? I'm also thinking to have it be about a year earlier and have the psych evaluation kinda not match the person that the reader has seen so far.
I had some locomotion ideas for my hypothetical creatures.
- Ground-moving
- Rolling
- I don't think it could make actual anatomical sense for a creature to have wheels that are actually a part of its body (or even the His Dark Materials example, which depends on an external object)?
- But curling up and rolling around, it has some basis. How could they move in a direction other than downhill?
- Etc?
- Rolling
- Flying
- Jet propulsion
- Would propably demand insane amounts of energy and a small size? So propably unworkable?
- Floating
- Easy propably, just gas bag(s) somewhere, but how to steer or possibly propel in some direction when there's no wind? How could it get up and down?
- Jet propulsion
Edited by Nukeli on Sep 11th 2023 at 3:24:20 PM
~*bleh*~Hey, I am creating a Wild West Armadillo character but I need some help. Which of the Appropriate Animal Attire Amount Tropes should I use? Just to note, he's a Civilized Animal as well.
Hi, I'm a guy who loves a bunch of random stuff.
Whatever amount is appropriate to the character, the setting, and the style of the work; different characters wear different amounts of clothes.
That is: I don't think that there is a set amount of clothes that such a character should wear.
@WorkingOnBeingGood: I suppose that my question is: from an in-universe perspective, why is the section blacked out?
If there's a plausible reason for it (other than "the author didn't want the reader to know"), then I imagine that it's workable.
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Sep 11th 2023 at 5:45:03 PM
My Games and Asset PacksHow is it, when I finally bother writing an outline for the chapter in the hopes of helping me finish it but I still can't finish the damn chapter?
I have a very clear vision of how the story goes but for some fucking reason I can't get the words out
Edited by Cutegirl920fire on Sep 11th 2023 at 11:51:19 AM
CG for short![]()
That's fair!
And I'd encourage you to play around with different looks for him—see what seems right!
Might it help to take some time away for the work, to reduce pressure—and to allow the chapter to simmer in the back of your mind for a while?
One way or another, you have my sympathy—that's a really frustrating thing to deal with, I daresay! :(
My Games and Asset Packs
I haven't touched the story in weeks but IK I must get back to it eventually. It doesn't help that I already published the first chapter on AO3 and have tagged stuff that hasn't appeared in the fic yet. I don't want to come off as misleading.
Edited by Cutegirl920fire on Sep 11th 2023 at 2:54:29 AM
CG for short

To show how the ideals the extreme conservatives expose would lead up to self-destruction and hypocrisy.
"Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try."