Building on what you said about it being “only a game” - I’m shocked sometimes by how often people are able to decouple fictional experiences with their real life… for example, one of the core messages of Subnautica is working with the environment rather than bending it to your will, and that was extremely impactful for me. Playing that game made me think so much about our own environment and my place in it (and still does). But my friend played it and his takeaway was “fun fish game” and nothing else.
Or like how right-wingers love Superman for some reason.
I don’t know how we combat this. Fiction and other mediums like art, aesthetic, style, etc offer an easy gateway into the world of solar punk, but how do we encourage people to actually… move through that gateway instead of just staying at the entrance?
I think it’s easy to forget that we are all biased and when jumping to one conclusion is easy for us, another may be easy for someone else.
My 2.5 year old sometimes watches this kid show “Bing”, and it really just spells out the moral of the story at the end, maybe “grown up” media should do that more too? Don’t expect your audience to just know what comes naturally to you, tell them.
I know this goes against the core “show, don’t tell” principle of writing a good story, but maybe we can do show and tell?
(And I say we collectively while I’ve never created anything with a message 😅)
Honestly, I’ve been thinking about this… I’m an indie author and I’ve thought sometimes that maybe I should finish my books with a little author’s note about my intention? “Thank you for reading my book about people working to save dragons from environmental devastation. The dragons are a metaphor for all species on Earth and we should save them from real life environmental devastation.” Which sounds silly, but like… there’s definitely a way to do it that isn’t too on the nose, y’know, maybe for this example talk about all the research on real life species I did for the book, or how I hope readers will take this as inspiration to save the “dragons” of the world…
Or maybe it should be even more on the nose and go straight for “Donald Trump wants whales to die, don’t let him”
I think taking an author’s page for going more in-depth on your metaphors and opinions is a great way!
That said, if the protagonist literally says “I think we should save the dragons from our man-made pollution” or similar, I don’t think that’s too on the nose, though with flawed characters that’s a risk of getting lumped in with the flaws. You’d still need the author’s note.
“Donald Trump wants whales to die, don’t let him”
The worst part is that’s not even true, they just don’t care. And Trump is just a symptom, try to avoid blaming just him as if he wasn’t elected a second time, and as if getting rid of him would magically solve things. Big structural change is needed I’m afraid.
Tbh I don’t think having the protag say something like that would be enough these days… definitely combine it with the author’s note XD Let people who get it automatically complain that it’s too on the nose or something if they want to.
You’re so right about Trump being a symptom. All of these things were devastatingly huge problems under Biden, under Obama, going back literally to Washington. Thinking we just need to get rid of One Bad Guy is why we got a Biden presidency and then many people stopped being activists - status quo was never a good thing. I think hypothetically I would give some specific calls to action + a little bit of anarchist theory in the author’s note to nudge people in the right direction? Maybe some people would say that I should let fiction be fiction, but it’s my book ¯_(ツ)_/¯ And I’m thinking if I can catch people at their most open and thoughtful, ie right after that final page, maybe they’ll intake the moral message a little more?
An interesting philosophical insight is that we do not live inside reality, we live in the model of reality we create with our senses, our mind and… our culture, which video games are part of.
The bleu qualia of the sky is a construction of your mind. The Earth as a planet is something you know but you did not experience directly. Same for the pain of others or neurodiversity. Countries you have never been to occupy a similar place as fictional places in your mind. Normal people sort these things well into “existing” and “fiction” but similar mechanisms exist.
Fill this place of examples of criminality and self-centered egoism, and it brings a vision of the world. Fill it with benevolence and empathy and you get a different one.
It leads to very concrete consequences, like the strategy people would choose in a blind prisoner’s dilemma game.
but how do we encourage people to actually… move through that gateway instead of just staying at the entrance?
You empower them with tools. When I gave someone a cheap servo, a reaction I got was “Hey, it sounds like the robot in that movie”. And there, you realize that the components in that box can be robots.
Games like minecraft or Stardew Valley give a notion of how you can change a place. Or destroy a biome.
Building on what you said about it being “only a game” - I’m shocked sometimes by how often people are able to decouple fictional experiences with their real life… for example, one of the core messages of Subnautica is working with the environment rather than bending it to your will, and that was extremely impactful for me. Playing that game made me think so much about our own environment and my place in it (and still does). But my friend played it and his takeaway was “fun fish game” and nothing else.
Or like how right-wingers love Superman for some reason.
I don’t know how we combat this. Fiction and other mediums like art, aesthetic, style, etc offer an easy gateway into the world of solar punk, but how do we encourage people to actually… move through that gateway instead of just staying at the entrance?
I think it’s easy to forget that we are all biased and when jumping to one conclusion is easy for us, another may be easy for someone else.
My 2.5 year old sometimes watches this kid show “Bing”, and it really just spells out the moral of the story at the end, maybe “grown up” media should do that more too? Don’t expect your audience to just know what comes naturally to you, tell them.
I know this goes against the core “show, don’t tell” principle of writing a good story, but maybe we can do show and tell?
(And I say we collectively while I’ve never created anything with a message 😅)
Honestly, I’ve been thinking about this… I’m an indie author and I’ve thought sometimes that maybe I should finish my books with a little author’s note about my intention? “Thank you for reading my book about people working to save dragons from environmental devastation. The dragons are a metaphor for all species on Earth and we should save them from real life environmental devastation.” Which sounds silly, but like… there’s definitely a way to do it that isn’t too on the nose, y’know, maybe for this example talk about all the research on real life species I did for the book, or how I hope readers will take this as inspiration to save the “dragons” of the world…
Or maybe it should be even more on the nose and go straight for “Donald Trump wants whales to die, don’t let him”
I think taking an author’s page for going more in-depth on your metaphors and opinions is a great way!
That said, if the protagonist literally says “I think we should save the dragons from our man-made pollution” or similar, I don’t think that’s too on the nose, though with flawed characters that’s a risk of getting lumped in with the flaws. You’d still need the author’s note.
The worst part is that’s not even true, they just don’t care. And Trump is just a symptom, try to avoid blaming just him as if he wasn’t elected a second time, and as if getting rid of him would magically solve things. Big structural change is needed I’m afraid.
Tbh I don’t think having the protag say something like that would be enough these days… definitely combine it with the author’s note XD Let people who get it automatically complain that it’s too on the nose or something if they want to.
You’re so right about Trump being a symptom. All of these things were devastatingly huge problems under Biden, under Obama, going back literally to Washington. Thinking we just need to get rid of One Bad Guy is why we got a Biden presidency and then many people stopped being activists - status quo was never a good thing. I think hypothetically I would give some specific calls to action + a little bit of anarchist theory in the author’s note to nudge people in the right direction? Maybe some people would say that I should let fiction be fiction, but it’s my book ¯_(ツ)_/¯ And I’m thinking if I can catch people at their most open and thoughtful, ie right after that final page, maybe they’ll intake the moral message a little more?
An interesting philosophical insight is that we do not live inside reality, we live in the model of reality we create with our senses, our mind and… our culture, which video games are part of.
The bleu qualia of the sky is a construction of your mind. The Earth as a planet is something you know but you did not experience directly. Same for the pain of others or neurodiversity. Countries you have never been to occupy a similar place as fictional places in your mind. Normal people sort these things well into “existing” and “fiction” but similar mechanisms exist.
Fill this place of examples of criminality and self-centered egoism, and it brings a vision of the world. Fill it with benevolence and empathy and you get a different one.
It leads to very concrete consequences, like the strategy people would choose in a blind prisoner’s dilemma game.
You empower them with tools. When I gave someone a cheap servo, a reaction I got was “Hey, it sounds like the robot in that movie”. And there, you realize that the components in that box can be robots.
Games like minecraft or Stardew Valley give a notion of how you can change a place. Or destroy a biome.