beta
here we go again with people invoking the hot-button issue of censorship and the boogeyman that is "cancel culture" to try to give more weight to being upset that other people had the audacity and temerity to criticize and have negative reactions to something, and - the horror!!! - had those criticisms and reactions taken seriously.
censorship doesn't apply here because there was nothing stopping the creator or publisher from conceiving of the story, producing, and distributing the first chapter, and no state or state-affiliated authority ordering its discontinuation.
"cancel culture" as used by people complaining about it is a scaremongering boogeyman of a concept conflating boycotting and social censure with harassment and cyberbullying in order to vilify the notion of people having negative reactions or judgements of public figures. if you want to talk about harassment and cyberbullying, just say that! instead of whining about how people choosing not to engage with something or someone and talking about why they're doing that is some kind of excessive reaction. in the end, people crying about "cancel culture" have more ire for regular-degular people with their limited funds and attention who sometimes harness their power to do things en masse than the real power players (executives, stock/shareholders, producers) who actually control the resources and funding for the entertainment media that gets made and also have their own ideologies, agendas, and desires to make money.
where's the smoke for the publishing companies who actually determine the creator's contract and compensation for their work?
the creator and the publisher sought to make money off this series, and it was feedback from potential customers that indicated that there would be problems monetizing a series like this. if this story was something the creator felt passionate about the world seeing, they could release it for free. otherwise, they currently have the opportunity to rework it/do something new, and make a better release., because unlike what the people crying "cancel culture" like to make it seem, a cancellation isn't necessarily the end of a creative career (and they happen all the time! usually because a series isn't making enough money for the publisher, like this one had the warning signs for). either the creator learns, grows, and adapts with their next work, or they find out that they don't have the chops for the industry and present market.
if you're serious about protecting series from backlash like this, whether it's actual censorship or simply audience reaction, a.k.a. "cancel culture" (neither of which are at play here), you'd better get to work on efforts to dismantle capitalism, because the major factor deciding whether or not things get censored and pulled from the market in this day and age is their impact on the producer's ability to profit from them. money talks.
a flag is a communication tool. a basic and common function is signalling if a path is clear (green) or obstructed/hazardous (red).
imo, many people are using "flags" weirdly because it makes more sense to apply it to behaviors and attitudes rather than to a person or character as whole. that's how I saw the concept used, initially, anyways. so this is in terms of attitudes, behaviors and actions
green flags: emotional intelligence (being able to know/identify one's own feelings and recognize them in others), respect for boundaries, willingness to share, communication skills, anything that facilitates a functional relationship
red flags: being controlling, ignoring and violating boundaries, undermining the autonomy of others, superiority complexes, being invested in hierarchies, self-sacrificing or guilt-tripping, anything that leads to an abusive relationship
stuff like that
you can have conflict in a story, even a romantic one, without resorting to abuse and so-called red/black flag characters. it's as simple as characters having different needs and wants in life, or pressure from external forces. but that kind of thing takes actual writing skills and capacity for complex reasoning.
(there's a question about flags that I'm responding to, but it looks like I'm blocked by the op of that)
Its honestly overused to simplify a complex action, decision, character, development and dumbs down the person assigning it cos they cant comprehend that people (even greatly written characters) are black and white (or green or red for this matter)
Are not* black and white
great point! it oversimplifies things to talk about characters like that! if you've ever seen people bring up "yellow flag", I feel like that's an attempt by people using flags that way at reintroducing the nuance that got lost by reducing characters to red or green.
after thinking about it some more, a point I forgot to mention is that some traits or qualities can be green flags/positive in some contexts or situations, while red/negative in others. is someone ambitious, or a social climbing user? is a person pragmatic, or cynical? are they easygoing, or lacking drive? even the negative interpretations of those traits could potentially work in a relationship with someone on the same wavelength or just drive conflict in a story in a way that's not merely abusive.
Yea, that just shows that different people interprets some actions differently. The key word is “tolerance”, how much a person tolerates the character’s bs and affections. This is why i think many readers may find a character/ action “red flag” only because they dont have personal affections to the person doing it. Meaning, that affection increases a person’s tolerance to bullshits, making some actions acceptable to the person involve. This supports your conclusion of it working in a relationship or driving the conflict. This is also where perspective also comes into play. Different perspectives have different access to information of why and how is an action performed to be labeled as a flag. To anyone reading just one side of the story, it may be a “red flag” but after knowing the whys and hows, it challenges a person’s judgement to adjust, essentially claiming “yellow flag” to redeem themselves and compromise.
Ive actually seen this in Solo for two. It was interesting seeing the different reactions of the readers in real time as they try to label the complex characters. Many have debated where the destructive and clumsy love of the main characters are red flag or not. Watching and entering the debate as people try to label the main character in “flags” summarizes to me that altho these labels are a widely accepted basic descriptive analogies of a person’ character, we cant essentially use it to describe anyone as a whole, especially for humans and humanly written characters. Cos if we do, everyone is a red flag, since human mature is very selfish and self serving. But its also not a red flag. (Btw im anti flags in the debate in this story, the characters are very human to just label them red green yellow)
who do you wish got more screentime, better development, a whole spinoff...?
mine is the blink-and-you'll-miss-it hint of the relationship between the MC's sunbae/former crush and the ml's ex-lover in love for sale. still hoping they'll get their spin-off eventually! it didn't seem completely off the table for the creator...
someone asked this earlier and I would have replied but I seem to be blocked (not mad about it, but why?)
cant rem the name of the manhwa rn but it was the mcs landlord x tall alien and the bottom just wanted to remain attached to the alien like always in his lap it was so cute
Love in Orbit yes i’m still waiting for the side stories too please author nim
ummm for me i feel like there’s a lot but one i remember a lot is the words in your snare second couple it was not fair they only got 2 side stories and just called it a day author should've explored it more hell it should gotten spin off like bad apple from red candy matter of fact in both those stories red candy and and twiys i didn’t like the main couples they were boring and dragged way too much so it was easy to be distracted by the other side characters
"it was only one chapter, it could have been good!"
based on what? does anyone saying that care to explain why they think so aside from just calling anyone who criticized this oversensitive, censorious, or throwing around racially coded dogwhistles? (as if oversensitivity isn't a natural response to pain and hurt, or simple vigilance after having been hurt or wronged) what's wrong with being sensitive, as opposed to being callous or numb?
the people who were concerned based on what was shown in that one chapter explained the potential for this to go wrong(er than just its conception in the first place) in multiple ways and brought it up to the creator and platform/publisher. and evidently the creator recognized the limitations to their preparedness and/or ability to execute the story in a way that satisfactorily addressed those concerns, and discontinued the series.
and that's not a bad thing!
now instead of sinking time and energy into the quagmire this would have been, they can make something else with better return on investment, and take more measured risks with that.
i have said in other replies that i don't think the topic of war, post-war conditions, slavery, and all sorts of sensitive topics are untouchable in fiction. but that doesn't mean that anyone can do anything any which way they want without reaction or criticism.
ideally, someone who has done the research, is aware of the racial dynamics, and has the skills for it could pull off a story in this setting. i think it would have to depart from many typical BL conventions to be good and worth doing, though.
I can believe that the premise and execution of song of the wasteland didn't originate from malice, but ignorance doesn't get a free pass either. and that's why people talked about it even from the just the first chapter, because none of that originated in a vacuum, and none of that was free from the biases, assumptions, and narratives surrounding race and history that prioritizes the interests of white people at the expense of just about everybody else. that's why the post-civil war setting is so noteworthy and egregious, because the failures of Reconstruction, lack of reparations, and subsequent efforts to subjugate and exploit former slaves after the war are foundational to present-day problems, same with land theft and everything leading to reservations on the Native/indigenous side. and that's not even getting into how race and racism were codified into the social and political fabric of the country in ways that are consequential even now and would definitely impact any potential interracial coupling of any sort at the time.
if any of the above reads as blah-blah nonsense to you, then on what basis would you even be able to judge how well a series like this would have handled the hard, serious, and contentious topics that it brought up? and if it doesn't matter how historically accurate the story was or how it approached those topics, why bother including any of those elements in the first place?
why should anyone be able to make stories based on painful real life history without any dedication to accuracy or sensitivity to the topics involved and make money off of it without any feedback or response?
i personally wasn't calling for the series to be dropped, and was willing to see where it would go even though i had serious misgivings and wariness about the creator's knowledge and capacity to handle all of that as someone presumably without any personal or cultural connection to any of that history. i could give it a chance, but the risks were sky-high. that's why i'm glad the creator either took the criticisms to heart, or more likely simply recognized that a controversial story like this wouldn't necessarily generate the profits the creator and the publisher wanted, and dropped the story.
people can and should be free to create whatever they want, but that doesn't make their creations free from criticism or pushback from other people, especially when the profit motive is involved. artists taking creative risks need to have conviction in their work and be prepared for negative feedback. this one couldn't or didn't want to take the heat, so they got out of the kitchen. i don't see a problem with artists thinking twice about approaching certain topics because some things are better left alone if not approached with the right level of care.
they won’t reply to this tho ( ج_ج )