Unfortunate Implications/Literature: Difference between revisions

* A good argument can be made that [[HP Lovecraft]]'s entire body of work can be traced back to a combined fear of sex, foreigners, and [[Arson Murder and Jaywalking|seafood]]. All this made doubly ironic by the fact that his wife was ''Jewish''. His later work tones down the racism, and now our "genetically inferior" villains are just deformed or inbred.

** Also (giving the benefit of the doubt) Unfortunate: a Sword of Truth novel centres on a society in which there is a fair-haired phenotype of people who are treated as second class by the [[Space Jews|dark-haired overclass]]. The fair-haired ones accept their subjugation as atonement for the guilt of their ancestors for having committed horrible atrocities on a genocidal scale on the ancestors of the current overclass. It's later revealed to be [[Based On a Great Big Lie|a big lie]].

* ''[[The Legend of Rah and The Muggles (Literature)|The Legend of Rah and The Muggles]]''. Not only does the intro casually drop the phrase "ethnically impure" in a book [[What Do You Mean Its for Kids|intended to be read by six-year-olds]], but the stunted, deformed eponymous creatures are supposed to have [[Hollywood Evolution|evolved]] from the various "ethnically impure" people left behind [[After the End]]. Not to mention the barely touched-upon [[After the End|inferred nuclear apocalypse]].

*** Most female Voyagers [[Never a Self Made Woman|exist primarily as love interests for the male ones]]. While this doesn't stop them from actually doing constructive things, they feel incomplete without a man in the picture somewhere. Balanced only by the men feeling the same way about themselves. Liquidon is so reluctant to commit to a relationship [[Atonement Detective|because he fears he doesn't deserve one]].

*** A lot of female characters have had family members brutally murdered in front of them. Some were even forced to watch. Men in the Voyager program typically enter because their families reject them for either [[Why Couldn't You Be Different|not being able to fit more mundane roles]] or for [[Have You Tried Not Being a Monster|getting turned into things against their will]]. So women are primarily motivated by deprivation and men are primarily motivated by rejection.

*** This series attempts to reconstruct the [[Depraved Homosexual]] and [[Depraved Bisexual]] tropes, accepting a lot of the criticisms those tropes have received. However, since the Crooked Rainbow are a bunch of [[World of Ham|rabid]] [[Always Chaotic Evil]] mobs who want to [[Disproportionate Retribution|kill the Voyagers]] just for [[Arson Murder and Jaywalking|refusing to endorse gay marriage]], it takes a lot of [[Fox News Liberal|Fox News Gays]] to keep the arguments balanced.

** '''Race''': Mantithians are only fully compatible with Mantithians sexually. Mosquatlons have dated them, but most attempts to have interspecies children end in failure. Whiteouts are likewise only compatible with other Whiteouts. Ooze Pens with Ooze Pens, etc. Meaning that sometimes, [[Family Unfriendly Aesop|segregation is good]]! Although, Pens and Pencils of varying subspecies can interbreed, with mixed results.

* S.L. Viehl's [[Proud Warrior Race Guy|Jorenians]] are [[Mindlink Mates|monogamous]] (and invariably heterosexual) enough to make the [[Moral Guardians]] weep with shame. {{spoiler|In the second book of the ''[[Stardoc]]'' series, the vengeful Ktarka -- who's not allowed to marry, because she proposed to someone who turned out to already be engaged -- is [[Psycho Lesbian|making advances on the heroine]] in between attempts to destroy her.}} Another Jorenian character seems nearly as shocked at the fact that {{spoiler|Ktarka was putting the moves on another woman}} as at {{spoiler|the fact that she had ''already'' killed several characters and was ''planning'' on killing at least three more, one of them a ''[[Would Hurt a Child|little kid]]''}}. (Someone must have called Viehl on it: Later in the series, she {{spoiler|paired up the gay secondary character Hawk with a male Jorenian... and}} tossed in an [[Anvilicious]] [[Author Tract|message about how same-sex marriage is okay]].) And that's not even taking [[Rape Is Love|Duncan's]] [[Its Not Rape If You Enjoyed It|behavior]]—the [[Aliens Made Them Do It|various]] [[Raised By Orcs|karmic]] "[[Freudian Excuse|outs]]" he's [[Karma Houdini|given]] aside—into account.

* In ''[[Invisible Man (Literature)|Invisible Man]]'' by Ralph Ellison, ''everything'' is a [[Does This Remind You of Anything|symbol relating to an overall point about race relations]]. More than once a character who expresses a view different from Ellison's is revealed to be blind -- because they don't see the truth, get it? One can't help but wonder whether the book's ever been printed in Braille...

* ''[[Literature/Fat White Vampire Blues|Fat White Vampire Blues]]'' has its share of this. The main premise of the first book appears to be that black vampires (whose very ''existence'' is treated as a bad thing; the fact that they're eeeevil drug dealers is secondary) are muscling in on the lily-white New Orleans vampire community. Nearly all of the (white) main characters (with whom we're presumably supposed to sympathize) come off as at least borderline racist (the eponymous [[Jerkass|protagonist]], who's essentially a less-articulate, bloodsucking [[A Confederacy of Dunces|Ignatius J. Reilly]], is not above [[What the Hell Hero|attempting to "recruit" white supremacists for a vampire army]]). And ''every'' black character is a [[Jive Turkey]] stereotype. It gains points back for the fact that the most sympathetic character in the book is a [[Wholesome Crossdresser|cross-dressing vampire]] who's opposed to the plan with the white supremacists {{spoiler|(he ends up thwarting it)}} and couldn't give two shits about whether or not there ''are'' black vampires, and then flipped on its head when {{spoiler|that the black woman that the protagonist killed for her blood at the beginning of the book was characterized as pretty much [[The Messiah]] later in the book, and finding this out prompts a [[My God What Have I Done]] from the protagonist, leading him to try and find a way to sustain himself without killing people.}} And the main villain is not so much evil because of his race as because of his [[Disproportionate Retribution]] against the main character for percieved racism.

* William Golding, the author of ''[[Lord of the Flies]]'' didn't include female characters on the island, and explained this as being because he believed that women would have exerted a civilizing influence and prevented the boys' society from collapsing. Coupled with the book's [[Family Unfriendly Aesop|Family Unfriendly Aesops]] [[Hobbes Was Right|on the]] [[Humans Are Bastards|nature of humanity]], the book is saying that if women don't posses any political power, those evil and stupid men will ultimately destroy themselves, and their society. He also didn't include any adults for this reason except for the Navy ship that shows up at the end. ''[[The Simpsons]]'' episode "Das Bus" shows that the story can be easily adapted to include female characters, as well as being a case of [[Society Marches On]].

* ''[[The Kane Chronicles]]'' has two protagonists. A [[Brother Sister Team]] who discover that the Egyptians myths are true. The US covers show both siblings in an appropriate environment. The UK covers show the male protagonist fighting a monster while his sister is completely absent from the cover.