Comic Strips

I really want a world where we can safely set up characters for moments of failure, evil, etc, without large crowds either feeling offended, feigning offense, or worse, taking it as validation of their bigotry.

It's a real Heads-I-Win / Tails-You-Lose game, because the White Male Anti-Hero gets the exact opposite treatment. If you make a Sopranos or a Wolf of Wall Street or a Fight Club, the very obviously corrupt and villainous lead character somehow ends up being this celebrity icon for reactionaries.

The same people complaining that John Boyega and Daisy Ridley ruined Star Wars will come out cheering for Adam Driver while claiming Imperialism is cool now.

Anything that makes a story exciting or different - the ups and downs of the story arc, characters with personal flaws or quirks, foreign settings and distinct cultures, non-English languages, non-CisHet romances - become at once implicit indictments of the out groups and charming complements toward the in-groups.

And a lot of that just boils down to the critics themselves. Far-right media amplifying its megaphone year after year, until we're deaf from their screamed opinions. There's no right answer for a film maker or story writer when the designated state-sanctioned censors and corporate flaks are all patriarchal white nationalists.