Eddie the head said:
I tend to shake my head when I hear anyone taking Metal groups or subgenres seriously. There's always been slip-ups or cases of a few musicians going off their rocker (see Varg Vikrenes and his church-burning spree for an example), but you'd have to pay me a fortune to consider that George Fisher is serious while he's screaming about Z-grade Gore Flick clich?s. I'm a big Cradle of Filth fan, and know pretty well that once the Byronic keyboard solos and death growls are taken out of the picture, you're left with a bunch of friendly Brits that just happen to have a huge fanboy crush on Doug Bradley of Hellraiser fame.
As to what I can't personally take seriously, I'd have to say Concern Trolls are up there.
See, friends of mine are into fanfics. I'm more of a novella writer, myself. Nothing published as of yet, but I'm working on it. Lots of fanfic writers like to follow specific guidelines to avoid offending people. "Your kink is not my kink", "ship and let it sail" and other such axioms. As for me, I understand that good stories need opposing forces. You're going to want to figure out how to write convincing jerks or assholes at some point in your career.
In other words, I have to figure out how to portray someone who may or may not be a misogynist, a sexist, an abelist or anyone who could disparage on non-heteronormative folks, in whatever shape or form they might take. It's an author's job to explore stuff that's dicey or difficult to tackle, because it makes the medium progress and allows for deeper insight into those very same problematic things.
But not according to some concern trolls online, unfortunately. Ever since the PC Police seriously took off on Tumblr, I've been seeing kids attack writers verbally for even daring to include transphobic, cissexist or, heck, whatever other kind of antagonistic behavior you could imagine, in their works.
"Take it out, it's disgusting!" they say, which maks me roll my eyes. It's SUPPOSED to be disgusting, and you're INTENDED to react to it. If literature is supposed to find content in everyday life, isn't it natural to want to use these reprehensive attitudes to better a narrative, if and when it's suitable?
There's a clique of youngsters who seem to think we shouldn't be allowed to explore difficult content for fear of offending anyone. Don't talk about triggers, don't talk about dicey social issues, don't even dare to look at them, because doing so is disparaging them!
I sometimes want to single out one of these moral crusaders on some blogging platform and just point out that there's a specific political term for people who want to censor anything that's remotely problematic out of so-called concerns of moral decency.
That term is "fascist".
