GamerBraves Newsletter vol. 75 – Political Fantasy: How Steering Into Real Life Improves Your Stories

In some corners of the internet, the word Political is so sensitive you’d swear it was a landmine. Everywhere, people fear the dreaded P-word. They long for the good ol’ days when stories weren’t pushing some sort of ‘woke agenda’ and were just about normal fun action, like Captain America decking Hitler.

In truth though, what a lot of people claim to be “political” is often just the whining of fanboys upset that roles aren’t just going to straight, white men anymore. And this feature won’t be going into that, either. Instead, I wanted to talk with you guys about what actual political storytelling is.

An important part of this discussion is the admission that, yes, all stories are inherently political. Whether you want to or not, anything you create will inadvertently reveal how you see the world- which is what political values are. Even the MCU, as tastelessly bland as it is, is on some level, political. The first Iron Man has Tony Stark question the ethics of selling weapons in the Middle East, while the less-than-stellar Iron Man 2 almost puts together a rational thought about private ownership vs federalization of Tony Stark’s walking war crime machines. Whether they meant to or not, you can deduce what a movie thinks a good person looks like, and what their ideals are.

For every “when you think about it…” movie, there is it’s louder, much more upfront counterpart. Kamen Rider Black Sun is hilariously overt in its political views, almost to a fault. Its message isn’t that far off from many other minority rights stories- the downtrodden Kaijin deserve to be treated like people and prejudice is stupid. Want to know more about political fantasy? You can find out more by subscribing to our newsletter. You can read the full article for free just by putting your email address in the box below:

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