op, sarcastically: After all, there’s never been an instance of fiction affecting reality, and don't say
- or how people view schizophrenia
- or how people view disabled people in general

also included in their list was the superstition around black cats, and how columbus 'found' america

if anything, those are all instances of real-life prejudices affecting fiction??

the scary plural trope didn't invent ableism

if anything it's our shitty school system that taught us about Columbus

i sure didnt' learn that from fanfic

in fact i think i learned it from an 'educational' movie shown to children

he had a magical talking termite that taught him the world was round, or something

and the superstition around black cats goes back centuries

yeah, it's just..... why are you people this stupid

WHERE DO YOU THINK THE THINGS IN FICTION CAME FROM

there's also a difference between intentional propaganda and, you know, escapist fiction/fanfic

Columbus is. Not fiction affecting reality, it is people FICTIONALIZING HISTORY

The whole problem there is that it was NOT presented as fiction

Also, like...superstition and folklore aren't exactly what any normal person would define as fiction, any more than one would call rumors or anecdotes fiction

I don't. Actually think this person knows what fiction is????

it is technically fiction as in the definition meaning 'something that is invented or untrue'

but it's not fanfic

ALSO WHAT DOES ABLEISM HAVE TO DO WITH FICTION, DO THEY THINK ABLEISM HAPPENED BECAUSE PEOPLE WROTE BAD FICTIONAL DEPICTIONS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA AND DISABILITY RATER THAN PEOPLE WRITING BAD FICTIONAL DEPICTIONS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA AND DISABILITY BECAUSE ABLEISM ALREADY FUCKING EXISTED AND THAT WAS AN EXPRESSION OF IT?

you can't just point at the dictionary and say 'this is fiction because the dictionary says it counts' you need to take context into consideration

chocoballs: Yeah, granted, I mean, it's not non-fiction, but it's also pretty much not what ANYONE is talking about when they refer to fiction

ableism happens in reality, this is what we call 'art imitating life'

this would be like me taking a word like, idk, mortification and saying it means you're scared because it sounds like death oh wait that's already happening

I think this person is genuinely trying to say that ableism exists because people took their attitudes from bad fictional depictions of mentally ill/disabled people, and not that, y'know, people with ableist attitudes WROTE THOSE STORIES BECAUSE THEY ALREADY HAD ABLEIST MINDSETS

the current thing i am annoyed about in a certain fanfic circle i'm reading in is the people who insist on using potions and spells to remove glasses, which is something that is so baked into our culture from movies and stuff acting like wearing glasses is somehow bad

so that's not fanfic, that's just the culture we grew up in

Bitch, we have a real world spell for that

I cast Lasik as a 4th level spell

but see it annoys me because i'm someone who wants to keep my glasses. i like them. so to me, this feels like an ableist thing, do you see? my point is that we live in an ableist world

fanfic didn't do much to make it any more ableist

Oh yeah, I'm following you, it's just...really silly people go out of their way to find fantastical ways to fix 'disabilities' that we have mundane treatments for already, so I feel like I need to point out the absurdity

But I'm another glasses-wearer that has no interest in not wearing glasses

well it is Harry Potter so lol

you can't be having muggle surgeries that would be silly

So yeah, the idea that wearing glasses is some terrible thing that needs a magical cure is like...actually it's not that big of a deal, why are we even focusing on this

to be fair. if I WANTED to remove my need for glasses, I would also prefer to drink a potion than to get my eyeballs cut into

I mean, as another glasses-wearer who's fine with my glasses I would probably get my eyes repaired with magic if there weren't any negative side effects, but I'd also get crazy-ass cybernetic eyes.

it's a fairly harmless ableist thing that still drives the point home

(I don't want to remove the need, I like my glasses just fine)

Also, dollars to donuts says that this person literally has NEVER seen an example of fictional ableism that could potentially feed into real world prejudices that wasn't 100% mainstream

Just alter my body to my specifications basically because I can.

I would challenge them to name one fucking fic they have read that grossly mischaracterized schizophrenia

They are making up examples of shit they have only seen in mainstream media as examples of things that that are somehow a fanfic problem.

(Mind you, I expect in some specific fandoms this might be easy to do)

(But like...in the bulk of fandoms I'm pretty sure schizophrenia comes up in like...0.3% of all fic for that fandom, maybe)

getting away from the glasses argument, i would say that if anything disabled people are held in a better light in fanfic

and what i mean by that is, if a person chooses to write about a disabled person at all it's usually a pet cause of theirs and they will write them very well because they want the reader to like this person

Exactly - a far greater percentage of people who write fanfic are disabled than those who work in mainstream media

So there's actually a much higher ratio of both education and sensitivity for mental health/disabled issues in the fanfic sphere than most, I think

It's by no means perfect, but the idea that fanfic has any noticeable effect in actually driving real world ableism is pants-pissingly stupid

Like, tell me you don't know the first thing about ANY of the subjects you're discussing without telling me you don't know the first thing about any of the subjects you're discussing

looks away, looks back, fifty responses in plurk all of the sudden

James you know we always have a lot to groan about whenever you share with us the fandomentalism asshattery

step one of media literacy is determining author intent
they have failed step one

the purpose of every piece of media isn't to educate the viewer, this is not a PBS Kids lineup

god. i'm still not over this.

"fiction affects reality! that definitely has something to do with columbus"

there is a discussion to be had about the history of education and children's books being used to further racist ideas, but I doubt these guys know enough about that or the history of Columbus day to have anything of use to say about it

on a related note, for those who actually want to learn more about these things, I've been reading "Reclaiming the Multicultural Roots of US Curriculum" by Au, Brown, and Calderon, it' not a long read, only 150 pages, and it has some good info about the history of racism in US schools,

with most of a chapter about how black activists and educators fought to get textbooks and children's books changed

it's not an EASY read if you have empathy for other human beings and especially children, but is is something you don't really need a graduate degree in education or social justice to understand