Anti: I can enjoy devilman while being critical of its problematic elements
Me, who has been trying to explain this concept to antis who want fanworks with problematic elements to not exist at all and harass their creators instead of accepting that adults are able to consume problematic work critically:
It’s almost like antis claim a ship is problematic purely because they don’t like it cause it interferes with a ship they do like or they don’t like one or more of the characters involved
Fiction can influence reality, in that real humans can use it to transmit ideas, but fiction does not createreality because humans have free will
Ex: If I write a book about a fictional Utopia and forced everyone to read it, the world will not necessarily turn into that Utopia
Similarly, representation can matter because it’s comforting and inspiring to envision a world where the heroes look like you – but “representation” still implies “a depiction” of a potential reality
Having fictional “possibility models” is important to many people who feel invisible in their society, but it still takes real-world behavior changes to fight racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, etc
In sum: representation matters AND fiction still does not directly control the real world, thank you for your time
