Self censorship

[Lensing]

I do write romance, erotic stories and other genres and so there is a lot of self censorship going on.
I don´t write action or violent stories and that´s genres which get censored a lot too.
I just watched some Quentin Tarantino interviews about the violence topic

[darthmongoose]

You gave that example of the boy in class, what about nowadays, do you have moments where youwant to write something but then don´t because you self censor it?

My approach is always to ask myself:

"Is this thing I want to put in my story honestly so interesting, funny or plot-essential, that I really can't leave it out or replace it with something else?"

In the vast majority of cases, the answer is "NO."

Like suppose a character just did something very silly indeed. And my immediate thought is "Haha, it would be funny if somebody said "Woah, he's crazy!", and then I might stop and go "Hm, actually, people don't really like the word 'crazy' these days, I don't want to be seen as stigmatising mental illness..." It's really not that hard to simply decide to have the character responding to the odd behaviour say something else, and the thing I come up with might be funnier. "Yeah! live your dreams!" or "I'm not with him!" or even just stunned silence might all be funnier responses than "Woah, he's crazy!"

Or let's say, I need a character who is a fashion designer, and I also feel like it'd be nice to have a gay man in my story to reflect real world diversity. Well, yes, I could have the fashion designer be a catty camp gay man who is always screaming hysterically at his poor downtrodden female assistant... but come on... let's put in some effort! So! The fashion designer is a messy, anxious straight woman who hates dealing with people, and then she has a gay man who is her assistant who is say... a friendly, chubby guy with a beard who projects a zen-like calm, but has the capability for deep, unrelenting fury if you upset his boss.
So now instead of some really dull, stereotypical characters, I have a pair of actually pretty interesting and fleshed out feeling characters who aren't just stereotypes.

Like yes, it may sometimes require a little extra effort, like googling things, or asking some friends from a marginalised group about words or stereotypes, or spending a little extra brainpower when drawing minor characters like "does this doctor in the background need to be a white dude? Why not a lady in a hijab, that'd be cool." But it adds so much texture and often really makes somebody's day so... I'm perfectly happy to do it!

And bonus question, do you think creators should censor themselves more?I just watched some Quentin Tarantino movies, I enjoyed Pulp Fiction but some of hislater work is too violent for my taste and I also don´t feel good in a cinema with peoplelaughing about a scene where a person gets shot in the face because they talk too much.I think violence is glorified in most movies. It´s always hard to draw a line

I actually quite like the work of Tarantino, and I feel like his violence is so over the top and ridiculous, it never really feels like it makes violent actions look fun. Killing people in a Tarantino movie is nasty, dirty work that leaves you exhausted and probably hurt. I think that's in some ways quite a responsible approach compared to something like old Bond films where bond effortlessly shoots bad guys, adjusts his pristine tux and strolls into a party for a martini.

[Lensing]

Thanks for the answer.

I do like some of his work too, he has bad ass female characters which I really like,
great soundtracks and dialogues.
I guess I would also see the movies differently if I hadn´t seen Jackie Brown in the
cinema + the reaction of the other people in the cinema

[thepenmonster]

Not wanting to be an asshole is actually an admirable trait.

But if you're worried you'll look like you're in support of something reprehensible rewrite it until you don't. Atwood did what she could to make sure she was condemning Gilead. It's not her fault some people see it as an instruction manual.

[Lensing]

Not wanting to be an asshole is a constant struggle for every human

I do enjoy some asshole literature and I´m glad they wrote down unfiltered uglyness

[TheLemmaLlama]

I think self expression is important. And so is not being an asshole and giving enough of a crap about how you might be hurting other people to avoid it when it doesn't cost you much to do so.

Luckily, there's a middle ground between self-censorship and indiscriminately saying whatever the heck you want and not caring who hears! Namely, content warnings! Give people a heads up about what you're gonna talk about, and if they're actually trying to avoid being hurt instead of looking for things to be angry about, then they'll just move on and not read your thing.

I myself try to change offensive things if they don't add much to my work (purely to maximize accessibility, not because I think it's morally wrong to include those things), but if they do add a lot to my work, I will not self-censor. I think my responsibility as a creator extends to attaching a content warning to stuff I know can be harmful (including stigmatizing stereotypes etc), but that's where my responsibility ends.

I also think that only you as a creator get to decide how much 'value' something adds to your work. I might not understand why you wrote that offensive thing, but to you it might have some deep personal significance and so who am I to deny you that self-expression as long as you label that shit so people who don't want to see it can avoid it?

For example, I hate it when people say certain topics in dark humor are 'never funny'. Who's to decide what's funny or not? If you want to argue that springing a joke like that out of the blue can harm people and trigger a serious breakdown, that's one thing, but you do not get to dictate how everyone should universally experience a piece of stimulus. (Just for the record, I've been triggered by dark humor myself, and am kind of ambivalent about how to handle dark humor since the whole point of jokes is you don't expect the punchline so content warnings would kind of ruin them XD)

(I admit I'm also kind of salty about this since I've been pressured by a 'friend' to take down a screenshot containing stuff he considered bigoted because to quote: "those analogies aren't accurate, sensical or interesting". But I and many others found the analogies interesting - I'll listen to his arguments that they're inaccurate, nonsensical or harmful, but there are ways to fix that without deleting the whole discussion. But he doesn't want the discussion to even exist.)

[Lensing]

Thanks for the answer and I think that this is a question with no simple answer and this is a good thing

[BOMB]

I think it's important to draw a line between censorship and filtering. Filtering may not even be the best word for it, but bare with me.

I don't think creators should censor their work. There will always be a group of people out there who don't like what you have to say or how you say it. Yes, we want people to enjoy our work but I believe we have to first tell our stories for ourselves. Censoring our work, in my opinion, waters it down and dilutes it from the heart of thoughts were probably trying to paint.

That being said, we as creative also need filters. We need to know how far is far enough, not because someone else will be offended, but because at a certain point we start to become counter productive. We have to know what is necessary. And that's not censorship.

Censorship is like throwing away ingredients. Filtering is like having ingredients but choosing what to use and how much of it to use so your recipe turns out right, and sometimes that means very little or not at all.

I think our responsibility is to tell an honest story and introduce new ideas. And we can do that with tactic without censorship.

Now, will people be happy? Will everyone agree? Probably not. But every story isn't for everyone. Every idea doesn't need to cater to the masses. It's better to be bold and authentic and hated than it is to be watered down bland and possibly liked...in my opinion anyway.

[Lensing]

Wow that´s an impressing and well thought out answer. Thank you

[JaveCraze]

Yes. I certainly do. There are some topics that are too difficult for me to tackle in some stupid webcomic, and parts of life that I just don't want to put into my fiction because they're too depressing/real.. So I guess I censor myself out of fantasy and not being a skilled enough writer to tackle "serious" topics.

[Azifri]

I don't make a living out of my writing so everything I write is for myself and as such I never censor it. That being said, I like to read the room, so to say, before I share a story with a specific group of people or on a specific website, because I couldn't care less about people complaining about the story not being their thing. I'd rather have them enjoy the story and focus on the story itself.

[N1ghtm4r3]

i only censor, or rather filter myself some all because of what age group i made it for , as it is 14 and up i can do a fair amount ,personally i think here in the west its too "safe" ,as most kids are not idiots and they see far worse on the morning news and can find on the internet ,

[TheBalladofBill]

I intentionally go for what is called 'clean comedy', so I don't swear or joke about things that are considered to be too blue. Aside from that, I don't censor myself in any way. In fact, the second episode of my series is called Deadname the Pirate. Censorship seeks only to erase progress in the name of some phony nonsense about not hurting people's feelings. Well, here's some news, life isn't a liberal arts college campus. Life sucks. Life hurts. Think of everything horrible that you've ever heard of. All of those things exist exclusively in life. Part of what makes it tolerable is cold-hearted (and warm-hearted) comedy. It's just the nature of the beast. Stab it with your steely knives all you want, she ain't going anywhere and it's certainly not getting any better because some dink thinks that you shouldn't use certain words because they're going to get their feelings hurt, whether or not that's even true. It's all or nothing.

[DualDragons]

I'd probably only censor my work because I am posting on sites like tapas and webtoon. But I could care less if someone gets offended over a bad word. After all I make my comic for myself too. If my heart isn't in it then why should other people put theirs in it?

I do things my way, and if people like it then they can come along the journey. If they don't... well there are lots of other comics around

[Freemints30]

On that question. Not really, mostly cus I'm not making cash and it's not like i have a big Audience so my writing is self indulgent normally.

I'm a huge fan of highly violent splatterpunk gore so if I can I include alot, mostly cus that's what enjoy and I know there would be an Audience for it and that's the audience I want. People who could cheer, laugh, be in awe and gawk at fictional gore. ( Im a softie with irl violence thou. cant with even stand watching a real punch without panicing).

Same with sex cus I know my tastes are kinda trashy at the end of the day so might as well acceot lol . As said before best use content warnings cus really that's what you can do.

I guess there's times I hace to mostly in regards to writing a game I wanted to be 15+ so yeah held myself back. As well as certain subject matter mostly cus of the plateform.

If I was making games on itch.io or like a book for kindle I would go much futher cus I know the Audience is there. But not on tapas.

There were some moments I rewrote that was a bit of self censorship but it was less that and more... it would make the story flow much better and honestly there's one moment that I haven't upload yet that I'm wondering if I should still keep a certain line. But we'll see.

At the end of the day the quest to please everyone pleases no one

Fanfiction is a diffrent story though. I just write whatever gross stuff I want under an anonymous account and go full steam head .

Only like a handful reads it any way.

Theres this one idea I had that I know wouldnt fly here. But I really really like it. Most likely I would do it eventually and switch plateform but for now it's in my head to develop

[BoomerZ]

I truly believe if it's part of the story, anything is fair game. Apart from keeping it to the rating of the site you need to publish on (their guidelines), nothing is off limits. Racism, sexism, murder, rape, everything can be show to fit the rating. All those things also happen in the real world so if it helps you tell your story, I see no reason not to put it in the story. I personally know the story I'm telling and know what I need to show to tell that story. Some times you have to be creative to put in the story, but most of the time you can. Hurting other feelings should not be a consideration. Fantastic movies have been made about absolutely horrible situations.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

A cute one ️

For a more proper answer, I personally don't think my story has something worthy of warning, at least for the published chapter. However, it might change in the future.

From what I learnt is you can't please everyone even if you try your best. As this is something rather personal, I try to please myself and could not care less about other people

[aqua03]

I honestly think it’s a combination between you being responsible and the reader’s responsibility as well. This is something I’ve been struggling with a lot as I’ve been thinking over my relationship with writing abd my creative works in general and confronting my anxiety regarding it. There’s only one thing you can 100% control and that is yourself. Everything else is up to the others response wise if that makes sense. So I feel that even though you should be responsible and say if you’re writing a horror story with cute characters to let people know in advance that it’s not for kids abd someone’s kid does read it abd get scared despite your warmings, then that’s on the parent abd kid if that makes sense because you already did all you could to warn people about the contents of your story.

[powerplantanimations]

I restrict myself; but for family reasons. Y'know I could have great great great great great grandchildren and see what type of person I was. One trick I do is I restrain myself depending on what my brother, sister, mother, and father think. Which is fine. I use these limitations to think creatively and come up with better jokes. Whenever I do something potentially edgy in my stories I'm like "What would my family think?". I get my best jokes with this method since they have a little more bite. The only thing I refuse to do is blasphemy for religion in general. In fact, I'll probably edit That Stick Figure Isekai if I do something a trusted priest thinks is wrong.

I think the stuff I'm lax on is violence.... despite me having a strong no swear rule (I'm officially stopping after Season 2). Another thing I do is I have no problem making people from every group (including ones I'm included in) as flawed or horrible people. I think this mindset came from the fact that I was seen as an outcast in one of the most diverse schools in the most diverse city in the United States (I just saw the worst out of everyone including myself, it was a SUPER complicated time lmao). As a result my brain just goes autopilot when I'm picking the identity of a character because that's how it is in real life. Circumstance.

End of the day, always find that middle ground without being a jerk.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

I think I engage in self-censorship a lot, and often at its most basic level: removing curse words. ^^;

I actually use a lot of profanity in my head, and a little bit of it comes out when I'm typing stuff on the internet, but just like I can't bring myself to say those things IRL, I can't bring myself to write them coming out of a character's mouth. Even when said character is an adult and it might be more realistic...;_;

And I think part of that is because of my usual intended audience: I still think of myself as writing primarily for older kids and pre-teens. And it's not that I think an audience of that age can't handle profanity or that they won't understand it...the true question is, if I decide to write in a character cursing a blue streak, will they (and/or their loved ones) still think this story is 'for them'? Am I creating a story environment that's welcoming to the demographic it's actually meant for?

This is why I think the point @TheLemmaLlama made about accessibility is actually the simplest way to look at the issue. Forget morals, forget societal norms; push all that to the side for a second: the essential question is, how will these creative decisions affect the intended audience of the story? If you're trying to teach them something, are you teaching them? If you're trying to make them feel better about something, are you actually making them feel better? If you're trying to help them, are you actually helping??

And I think the reason a lot of discussions about subject matter and censorship can get so heated is because either (a) people aren't actually considering these questions, or (b) people have incongruent answers about them. Especially in the case of (b): just try to have any kind of meaningful critical discussion about media when you can't even agree on who the intended audience is. ^^;

(a), on the other hand, is primarily the creators' responsibility: you have to consider those questions, because if you don't your viewers will consider them for you...and that's when things tend to get ugly.

For one thing, I think more creators need to start admitting that their intended audience is simpler than they want to think it is. Pretending you have a larger, philosophical goal when you actually don't will do more harm than good to EVERYONE involved, particularly by inviting deep criticism that you probably don't actually want and aren't prepared for.
It makes sense not to bother with self-censorship when you create a story for 'people who like to look at violence'. It makes less sense when you create a story for 'victims of violence seeking closure and understanding for their trauma'. Being honest with yourself and your audience will be better for you in the long run than maintaining some nebulous 'moral high ground'; I guarantee it.

Now, for another thing, I think even more creators need to realize that failing to reach your target audience is a normal occurrence that can happen to anyone: i.e. you're not 'above' offending people or disappointing them. No one is; that's not how it works. ^^;
Those essential questions I proposed like "if you're trying to help, are you actually helping" are just meant to get a creator to consider how their work will affect others, and put in the effort to get those effects to align as closely to their actual goals as possible. That's when self-censorship is at its most valuable, I think: when you don't see it as a way to prevent future criticism or controversy, but as a way to keep your work focused on doing what it's supposed to do and saying what it's supposed to say. It's really just a form of editing.

And on that note, I think it's a little silly to take pride in refusing to self-censor; to me that sounds like refusing to spell-check. ^^; There's nothing really wrong with it, as long as you (a) realize that if you do make a mistake, someone else is probably gonna catch it eventually, and (b) don't give in to that pride and start getting belligerent if someone decides to point that mistake out to you. When you decide not to double-check things or consider the unexpected, you leave yourself open to those outcomes, and the least you can do is own up to them.