So some of you claim that mafia stories are pure FICTION it’s not reality. If your not a fan of dora the explorer or nemo you will not write a story about that right? If your a fan of werewolf and vamps you will write stories related to it. So if you claim that you do not want to date a mafia in real life and will avoid them as they are dangerous why would you write a story about them then if your not a fan of the real mafia 
I’m pretty sure this was directed at me so here’s my point
If you watched a documentary about murder because you’re interested in finding out how someone died or what the killer intentions were, does that mean you want to murder someone or get murdered?
It’s the same, just because I enjoy reading mafia stories doesn’t mean in real life I want to get kidnapped and work in the mafia and kill people.
And also I love Dora and Nemo 
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THiS.
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Well, if I may. The difference is that documentaries are realistic and true to the topic, with reliable sources of information that if you want you can consult. I highly doubt it’s the same for mafia stories.
Fanfictions about Nemo and Dora are based on stories, cartoons, therefore fiction that’s based on other fiction. Mafia stories aren’t based on any fictional story (also because, ffs aren’t allowed), they take inspiration from the real world, which ends up badly distorted in the final product.
If you wrote a story that sexualizes black characters simply because they’re black you’ll get tons of backlash. If you found a person irl that only dates black people as if blackness is their only personality trait, they’ll get called out and people will steer clear of them.
That atrocious 365 movie that came out, do you think it got praised because it was just a story? No, it got called out. I don’t doubt that it’s someone’s guilty pleasure, but everything about it sucks 
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nah they’re all same and just weird
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Totally agree. You watch a documentary about murder in hopes to solve it and apprehend the murderer this means you are against crime and wanna reduce crime
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They are the worst.
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Awful, awful, awful. I hate all of them.
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People taking notes of who they should stay away from because they like mafia be like:
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So, the short answer is: no.
The long answer involves some nuance around why falsely equating mafia stories to fantasy creatures or saying people should be writing G rated stories is disingenuous.
I think the important thing to note is that it’s a lot more complex than “young girls will go out and try to find a gang leader” because that’s actually not the point. They may not seek out a gang leader, but they absolutely will be exposed to men (or people in general, but the gendered dynamic here does matter) who weaponise their position of power and experience over young women, who exploit trust to mold younger women into who they think women should be, who accuse the women in their life of prying or being obsessive when they don’t want to be lied to, who ignore their boundaries and call it love, etc. Those traits are not only in mafia boss LIs, but the mafia LIs have a large appeal because the idea is you take this violent criminal who cares for no one and change him. But if you look at the way events unfold, it’s really that the MC changes her whole life to fit into this life of crime that the LI apparently can’t get out of.
The other thing is not all crime is created equal or even necessarily bad. The law isn’t synonymous with morality. But the large scale operations of organized crime that mafias are involved in is way worse than the pickpockets they beat up for robbing some random woman in an alley. But they have the power so they get to decide who’s the good guys and the bad guys even. This is totally different than the suspension of disbelief that comes from reading a fantasy story. Plus, it still matters how you portray things in a fantasy story since no one can write a story that isn’t informed by the larger context of the culture around them. If you write a fantasy story where all the vampires are pale and aristocratic and have subjugated the werewolves, who all happen to be ~wild~ and people of color, then you know, you’re sending a certain kind of message.
Romanticization does not have to be intentional. By writing the mafia boss as the LI, you’re setting him up as a character you want the reader to sympathize with and root for. If you want to have this archetype as an LI a way to do it is to start with a character who is already ambivalent to (or feels antagonistic towards) his position in the mafia and has meaningful relationships with other characters where he’s not demeaning other people. Setting his arc to be his developing relationship with the MC being the push he needs not just to exit the mafia but to work on dismantling it (or that particular branch, I guess) gives you an entirely different story. Maybe not one I personally would want to read, but it does highlight the difference between romanticization and portrayal. So having a character who is violent, who doesn’t see the humanity in others, who uses loyalty to the mafia or whatever as an excuse to not respect others’ agency until the very end of the story, regardless of intention, sends a message that these are appropriate and desirable ways of handling relationships because the end of the story always ends up with them being together and the MC just ~taking everything in stride.
There’s this idea that love is and should be this wild, unpredictable, and often violent force in order to be real and that’s just not true.
Asking people to be more mindful of how they portray certain topics or dynamics doesnt mean every story needs to be ~haha sunshine and rainbows and written for 5 year olds~ and saying that quite intentionally misses the point. It’s not as if Episode or its authors are solely responsible for harmful portrayal of these kinds of things, since they’re products of culture as well, but because of Episode’s interactivity it is important to think about what messages you want your story to send. And all stories send messages because all media does.
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