#i love me some sanity in the morning
fiction is made up and not real. if you read fiction in which terrible things happen, and people are murdered and killed and ripped limb from limb and the main character says “I love this I’m gonna keep doing it” and then he gets rich and famous and is widely adored and at the end of the work the author says “author’s note: I’m writing this book because I love it when people are ripped limb from limb and killed and chopped up in real life, and I encourage you, the reader, to do just that immediately”, do you know what happens?
nothing!
that’s right: you, the reader, a presumably responsible adult, are able to make use of your own damn moral compass and conclude “even though the main character of this book killed people and maimed them, and the author said I should do that too, I’m not going to because that would be bad” and then you can go to bed and not fucking worry about it! it’s that damn easy!
even if you liked the book! even if you really enjoyed all the parts where the main character kills people and tears them apart and says “I sure do love murder and violence”.
you can just, not do that stuff in real life and never fucking worry about it again!
this has been “how to enjoy problematic media”.
