The most dangerous thing in novels?

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by Wujigege, Oct 7, 2021.

  1. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    Humans are impressionable.
    You have to be an idiot to deny this.
    The bobo doll experiment explains this.
    Monkey see monkey do.

    Novels influence us. It is not a choice. It is natural.
    The only thing we can do is choose what to consume.

    To me the most dangerous is Rape as punishment.

    It is usually very clear when a rape crime happens in real life and you see one of two responses.
    1 Guys who find it amusing and say things like she is so hot. I would rape her too
    2 General public who act indifferent.

    So much self righteous talk about punishing the attacker but not enough focus on the challenges of the victim.
    The young girls don't even get their identity protected but underaged attackers are usually masked

    So what is something you find dangerous in novels
     
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2021
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  2. MinUp

    MinUp Maidenless, yet Homiefull

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    Racism and unhealthy amounts of "nationalism"
     
  3. OhCmmon

    OhCmmon Well-Known Member

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    Fang Yuan from Reverend Insanity is the only character I deem worthy of studying from (no it doesn't mean that I will go on a killing spree).
    Perseverance, the will to advance, and indifference to public opinions are qualities I admire and wish to obtain.
    Having all of that, I think I will be content even if I end up miserable.
     
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  4. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    I get manly tears in my eyes when he recites the poem and creates Perseverance Gu in Reverse Flow River.

    How he gets blamed for the death of Ma Hongyun is a wonderful reminder of how the strong will never keep their promises to a weaker person
     
  5. moneng85

    moneng85 Well-Known Member

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    The most dangerous to me is the content itself
    from how it can be written by humans, all sort of things from good to bad can be done by anyone, and thus the horror of thinking it have been done somewhere in this world or even sometime in the future
    i think there must be a cult killing babies for their faith, people scamming other people to death just for the fun of it, people who can do bad things because its normal for them, and people who never realise they are wrong

    By 3rd person perspective the world we are living in is a dystopia with hypocrites ruling the world, no one villain or genius mastermind, but everything is declining
    not like civilizations that have reached their peak and declining into nothingness
    its just horrific
     
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  6. Greater thunder

    Greater thunder Well-Known Member

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    Lust for money. For those in charge, no amount of suffering is enough if they happen to think of a new vice to be fulfilled through wantonly causing regular people to be miserable to gather necessary resources for whatever new debauchery is cooked up or continue something already 9ld and fucked up held together by "interests".

    And it all costs money, influence and shit so money and authority to pull atrocity after atrocity, so money and leading power become tools of every asshole who has what it takes to climb up socially or has their hands on money and they continue their predecessors streak.

    On novel content, I find it disgusting how easily creativity can be killed. How a good idea or few good works get buried under mountains of shit copcycats only ever spatout on keyboards to spread propaganda and collect some cash.

    Reverend Insanity got squashed hard. Author now writes Infinity Bloodstone (or Bloodcore) and looking at the first 60ish chapters its disappointing. I dropped it due to pace of tling combined with having no idea when that insufferable arc would end (magic biology weapons research island, restrictions conveniently on anything that would help characters- their hard earned qi and magic, alchemy resources, food,.....), the MC is half vegetable (some pragmatism in him, sadly offset by amnesia and him clinging to some knight code he only knows because his father sent him off to train for a knight order from empire which conquered them) and seriously, if the book is just gonna be nonstop trials, good for people who like that. I don't.

    The idea of Terror Infinity that a machine so well made it was godlike and was mistaken for god would employ humans running around and provide them benefits if they can not only do their tasks, but improve independently from it like their precursor ancestors (no level system, no cultivation and young masters(well, cultivation can be done its just one of many paths, but still no young master and jade beauty turd)) got twisted by thousands of hacks into, you guessed it, young master and jade beauties crap with established clans somehow surviving an idea made from combining gu pot legend with generic fantasy kitchen sink crossover fanfics setting. How does nepotism survive a near omnipotent and emotionless being enforcing meritocracy on weaklings? It doesn't, but it doesn't stop mororns writing that kind of nonsense anyway.

    Because like the isekai genre someone will write good shit and it will get mutilated by a bunch of "writers" who can't execute a mosquito trying their hand at being creative with idiocy like - killed and sent off blessed to near godhood to another world, but with -insert smartphone or something here-.

    Best damn game based isekai is still Grimgar. Because without impatience born of countless 2 minute movie montages, that's how a game/story goes. You grind, make decisions which don't always lead to power proportionate to your effort, problems pop up and you continue anyway and a lot of time passes after the initial leveling rush.

    Or a parody of the genre. Like Isekaied Uncle back from another world manga. We see his journey as magic holo flashbacks played for his nephew and it still paints a compelling story despite using titles (poor elf san) for people.

    It really boils down to simple state of things in either real life or fiction. People(collectively) are far from noble and self sacrificing and even write off welfare of others pretty easy so we get much shit on both sides, which makes the few treasures produced all the more awe inspiring.
     
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  7. Lissi

    Lissi 『Queen of Lissidom』『Holy Chibi』『Western Birdy』『⚓』

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    Novels where killing people left and right by the MC is justified... or the ones where the MCs do bad things while saying "it can't be helped" (*cough looking at you, JP protag*) because it can, dude
     
  8. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    I am curious about your reading list.

    It is true that just because an author wrote one great novel, it doesn't mean his other works are readable.

    Sword Dynasty was great but the other works make me wonder if he got hit in the head when he wrote them lol
     
  9. seemanta

    seemanta ţɦɛ ʏօʊռɢɛsţ ɮʀѧţ ɨռ ţɦɛ ɦօʊsɛ

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    The thing about drugging and rape happening so frequently in CN novels scares me. It's really not something that should be happening to people just because of the so called karma or revenge or whatever.

    There's also the fact that MCs kill people left and right like it's nothing. If the story is about a psycho, it's ok. But, a murderer giving out hypocritical reasons like "It was for righteous revenge", "They desrved it, who told them to cross me?" etc. and being revered as a hero is not. That's just disgusting. I'm not saying characters shouldn't kill people. It's a story, they can do it. But killing shouldn't be the best solution to every single problem they face.
    I've seen people comment stuff like "MC should've just killed XX", "MC should've raped XX", "MC is a chicken for not doing it" and it's awful. I know people joke like this, I do too, but some people are serious when they say it and I'm honestly scared and worried about them.

    There's also an unhealthy amount of nationalism, racism, sexism or homophobia in some novels. I usually drop books like these cause they make me feel really uncomfortable.

    I also don't like how some authors write about stuffs (for example, mental diseases, LGBTQ+, foreign cultures) without proper research. Stuffs like these should be properly researched before writing to avoid giving out wrong or offensive impressions.
    Idk if it's dangerous but one of my pet peeves is how BL or GL novels has a wife and a husband in a couple. I don't mind top or bottom cause that's just the character's preferred sexual habit but the husband and wife thingy irks me. It also gives a wrong impression about gay/lesbian marriages or relationships. When I first started reading CN BL novels, I legit thought there was a "wife" positon in gay marriages. It felt weird so I looked it up and only after researching did I know there wasn't.
     
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2021
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  10. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    A protagonist in a novel entrapped someone who offended him and got him arrested.
    You have comments complaining that the protagonist hasn't killed anyone so I am dropping this.

    I don't read BL so I can't say much on it but abusive relationships in general are romanticized so it's dangerous.
     
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  11. Kaylee

    Kaylee Well-Known Member

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    Start to think that the stuff happens in novel might be and might not be too real.
    We often say, it's a fiction, it's written by someone, dont take it too serious, it's not real in real life. But we wont know whether it's real representation of what's there or only what's real from the author personal thought with their own subjectivity that influence by their own life situation.
    I'm afraid, subconsciously I will put in my brain to digest and might affect my judgement.
     
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  12. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    Teens are being groomed to see abusive relationships as normal or even cute.
     
  13. enklaires

    enklaires Well-Known Member

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    For my case, there's one or two things that somehow has a huge impact on younger readers: marriage with a r*pist and romanticizing abusive relationship. My friend is a middle school teacher, she noticed on how some of her students like to fantasize about getting r*ped by a cool bad guy or getting big belly before graduate, it really scared her. The impact of those kind of novels really beyond our imagination. Reading novel is just passing time for me, but I realized that it's not always the case for everyone else
     
  14. Fluffums

    Fluffums 【R-18 Researcher】【Seeker of Moe】

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    Overstated.

    While it's true that humans are impressionable, what we see as part of the plot of a story won't affect us in novel form. It's possible to some extent in games and audiovisual media (depending what type of learning you're good at), but when it comes from a novel there are several more layers of insulation. We understand, at some level, that fiction is fiction if we're translating words on a page into a story in our minds. At least by the time we realize Santa Cl- nevermind.

    Revisionist history and fake "facts" are dangerous, though, especially if multiple people take it for granted and they otherwise seem knowledgeable. People talk about Chinese novels and their overt racism/nationalism, but I've read plenty of American and British novels that just pretend certain events never happened, or happened in a completely different way.

    TV/movies/video games are definitely bad influences, but 24-hour news and talk shows are the worst (not naming anyone specifically, they're all bad to some degree).
     
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  15. Kaylee

    Kaylee Well-Known Member

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    True.
    I did find romance in manga between high school/even younger and older men were normal, hot, cute and worth reading. But now, I wanna throw a brick to the author eveerytime I see such idea.

    So, is it only with the passing of time that will get them to escape from their imagination or stop normalizing stuff they read in novel or what?
    But then, there are older people who will agree and some will say all of those above are normal, it happens.
    For exmple, if we're talking abt a 20yo girl marries with 40year old man, most will say No. But what happens if one of the commenter says 'my parents are like that, it's normal here. It's nothing wrong. Two people in love, blablablabla'. I lost.
     
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2021
  16. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    Hahaha, I did say they influence us. I didn't say they turn an unassuming dude into a serial killer.
    I am talking along the lines of how they desensitize us.

    The word I was looking for was glamorize. Fiction glamorizes violence especially abusive relationships.
    This comes to mind:
    https://www.getgalatea.com/blog/why-women-are-obsessed-with-bad-boys-in-books
     
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  17. moneng85

    moneng85 Well-Known Member

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    I read a comment once that the 'wuxia' genre or 'martial arts world' in chinese novels differs from region to region
    from what i remembered, the comment compares taiwan, hongkong and mainland china series where in china it was about main characters going strong, taiwan fighting against the rightous sect(gocenrment) and hong kong fighting with the demonic cult or something like that

    i think novels are also an interpretation of the thoughts of an area and era
    Japanese push the idea to forget their evil past in WW2 that they publish lots of magazine saying males are 'herbivorous', the culture teach them that and now adays most of the novels we read are beta MC, wimp MC, and dense MC.
    And also the reason why NTR hentai is popular, the thoughts of the era is changing towards passive males and NTR reflect the thoughts of japanese man in the betrayed man's shoes
    and also bulling problems where it shows up in every protagonist being the victim of them

    Korean novel push the problem of poor, hard to live, diehard for money, chaebols doing bad stuff and building their empire while exploiting others
    interestingly there are lost of articles about chaebol and wealth division in korea

    another thing why we should be concerned about nationalism, racism, and rape, because teaching children, be ruthless to enemies, always go to competitions, remember the hatred of your ancestors is the face, education and the culture of a particular country now
     
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  18. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    This song is painfully honest. He apologizes at first, promises to change and then his tune changes towards the end

    I don't know if I ever listened to the part 2 but since I don't recall it , it must have been forgettable. I will give it a try
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_the_Way_You_Lie_(Part_II)
     
  19. aShinyVaporeon

    aShinyVaporeon Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, there are some things in the kind of (not exactly high quality) web novels we read that don't really preach a good ideal. That's why it's pretty important to have a healthy sense of what's real, what's not, and a good solid idea of what you think is right.

    There's nothing wrong with reading about Fang Yuan torturing innocents or whatever he does in RI and liking it, so long as it's not also projected into real life. The amount of aphrodisiac r*pe, trigger-happy MCs ready to kill if someone looks at them wrong, sexual harassment as punishment, etc. in the xianxia genre worries me more than its lack of creativity, but as long as everyone reading it keeps their morals about them it doesn't harm anyone. The main problem is that no one can guarantee that the readers won't follow the MC's example, though.

    I actually dislike the ~it's ok if the leading love interest is overly controlling, possessive, violent, harasses, or r*pes the other lead, they love each other!~ far more than the murderhobo xianxia MC, because the media pretends it's all fine, especially because it's "true love".

    I would argue that the results of the Bobo doll experiment would be a bit hard to generalize to grown adults reading web novels, though. I'm pretty sure most people know that web novels are not good examples of behavior, unlike children at daycares. But I do agree that a lot of the web novel readers are mentally quite immature *cough*
     
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  20. gyan7

    gyan7 Well-Known Member

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    Indifference. Lots of MC's who are indifferent to whatever happens around them. And readers pick that up thinking that its cool. But they forget that the MC chosen is just one person. Out of billions there is only one person who can protect himself and those that he *may* choose to protect.

    You are most likely not that lucky person. So rooting for someone like that and ignoring the plight of others can be dangerous. Because karma goes around in circles and if you really ignore everyone else around then what happens when you are the victim!

    This is esp. true in novels where they have the 'end of the World' themes.
     
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