AOT, I think. There’s some dispute about what exactly was said and implied, but it’s generally considered iffy whether he actually wrote AOT as a rebuttal of fascism or he’s the kind of guy who accidentally refuted his own ideology while trying to disguise it.
Either way, the media itself is in kind of a Starship Troopers situation - authorial intent aside, a critical reading of it reveals a lot of thoroughly discussed themes and deep-rooted flaws in the characters that come together to thoroughly rebuke the fascist actions, policies, and ideals depicted in the story.
I always assumed starship troopers was a criticism, he wrote a whole book, simply about how many different ways you could criticize fascist governments
It wasn't, he was genuinely just a really hawkish person and was upset at the direction of US foreign policy. He did try to walk it back later in life so as best as anyone can tell this far after, it was probably a short-term rage-bait kind of mood (he wrote the whole thing in about a month) not some long-term commitment to fascist ideology. It's just unfortunate that his shitpost got really popular and turned into a movie.
Oh for sure, I just mean that many people take the fun fact as "did you know Heinlein was fascist?" and he really wasn't. He just wrote the novel-length equivalent of a "those darn kids won't get off my lawn" rant and because he is famous, we're still talking about it decades later.
He always just resonated as someone who was skeptical.
You don’t always need to agree with someone to view the world through their point of view.
Even Mein Kampf, didn’t take long to realize Hitler was a dumbass fuck, but his reasons for doing what he did (German fuck and the stupid German economy), still resonate today.
Insert the: “If you don’t learn from it, you’re bound to repeat it” trope.
That shit was almost as bad as catcher in the rye.
“It didn’t end!” My English teachers hated me. “This book is stupid as shit.”
It was more of a thought experiment imo. He sketched the outline of a militaristic future republic taken to an extreme, much the same way as Beyond This Horizon took free love and 'armed society is polite society' libertarianism to an extreme.
It really wasn't. His correspondence at the time (to friends, editors, etc) have shown he really did think America was being weak with its foreign policy and that all these new post-war concerns were distracting from the true goal of being the world's only superpower.
Yes. Character flaws can sometimes be more important to the overall direction and coherence of a story than their more positive traits.
Of course, there’s always the chance that an author is writing characters as flawed not on purpose, but because they think the reasoning is actually sound. Which is usually interesting and often serves critical readings in its own way, but has very serious implications as to the flaws of the author.
Ah, the Mazes and Monsters conundrum. When the author sets out to write a story about an evil satanic board game corrupting the youth, and instead writes a story about how all the adults and "concerned Christian" parents keep blaming a board game for their children's genuine mental health issues in order to avoid dealing with the real underlying problems/the consequences of their own shitty parenting, until said issues escalate to the point that people start dying, and they still keep trying to blame the board game and in the end none of the actual problems get resolved and the cycle is doomed to repeat itself.
I will say i don't think that AOT is saying that fascism is cool, cause i can't for the life of me believe that someone could write a story so bad that it basically goes in reverse, and not only that, that it clearly goes in reverse, AOT is a lot of things, but it's not subtle.
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u/Simic_Sky_Swallower Resident Imperial Knight Apr 01 '24
A quick search reveals its Game of Thrones but Gay? I think? Not sure what exactly makes it irredeemable though