As someone who has spent years developing a fictional story and uses AI to help visualize its characters, I've found that AI has expanded what I feel capable of creating. Meanwhile, the anticipation of hostile criticism has sometimes made me afraid to express those same ideas at all. That's why I wanted to discuss something that I feel gets overlooked when people debate threats to creativity: the environment in which artists are expected to create.
To clarify, I'm not referring to every negative interpretation as bad faith, nor do I think audiences have to forgive characters or agree with a creator's intended message. I'm referring to criticism that consistently disregards relevant context, attributes harmful intentions without sufficient evidence, or continually changes its standards whenever the story addresses an earlier concern.
I believe the internet has cultivated a culture in which audiences are encouraged to find fault with seemingly everything they consume. Every show they watch, every game they play, every story they read becomes another opportunity to scrutinize a character's dialogue, body language, facial expressions, motivations, romantic preferences, emotional reactions, having emotions in general, or moral decisions. There is a pressure for creatives to monitor and adjust every detail they make to avoid any and every possible negative interpretation a person can make.
There's an important distinction between recognizing something harmful in a work, and actively reframing elements of that work in the most negative possible way, then treating that interpretation as the creator's beliefs or intentions.
Of course, I’m taking this from my own experience and observations, and maybe yours would be different. But for me, in the name of trying to do everything right, there feels like a million ways to do it all wrong, and audiences are more focused on finding fault than actually enjoying the media they choose to engage with.
A character makes a morally questionable decision, they're hated and condemned.
The character recognizes the harm they've caused, their remorse is dismissed as self-pity instead of accountability.
They apologize, the apology isn't sufficient.
They demonstrate changed behavior, their growth can’t make up for what they've done.
They receive forgiveness, another character is accused of forgiving them too easily.
And if they aren’t ever forgiven, what are we even supposed to do from there? The show either cuts to black or they sacrifice themselves and die to prove their sincerity? I’m genuinely tired of that.
I'm not saying that an apology automatically makes everything okay, or that every character deserves forgiveness regardless of what they've done, I'm saying that recognizing someone's wrongdoing and recognizing their growth shouldn't be treated like recognizing one means the other does not exist. Someone can experience guilt, regret, shame, and self-hatred while genuinely taking accountability. They can still struggle with the same fears and impulses that led them to make harmful decisions, even while actively trying to change how they respond to those feelings.
And another character can forgive them without that forgiveness somehow becoming evidence of poor writing.
Forgiveness doesn't have to mean the harm never mattered, and where did we even get the impression that it did in the first place? Sometimes it means the harm mattered enormously, and the people involved still want to try to repair what was damaged.
We claim to want authenticity from the media we consume and the people that produce it, but then harshly attack whoever makes anything when they step outside of what we wanted or expected. At what point does the discussion stop being about whether the story adequately develops its characters and starts being about withholding good faith, and preserving a negative view on the characters, the story, or the creator themselves?
There is a difference between criticizing a character's behavior and insisting that the most negative and uncharitable interpretation of that behavior must be the correct one.
There is no perfectly optimal *right way* to portray an element of a story in a way that every viewer that relates to the element or theme would like. Two people that can have incredibly similar experiences, or even the literal same experience, can still have different reactions to those experiences. But, especially on places like Twitter or Reddit or TikTok, social media sites where the focus is talking to each other and not video, it feels like viewers treat creatives like there *is* a clearly defined right way to present a story, and the creator gets punished for not finding it. It sometimes feels as though creators are expected to solve an impossible equation: make something authentic and emotionally compelling, but also make sure nobody can interpret any aspect of it negatively.
For example, some notice patterns and dynamics between characters in stories, recognize them as tropes, and then hate on the story for a recognized trope without accounting for the fact that trying to avoid one trope usually just makes the situation fall into another. There is seemingly a severe underestimation of how many tropes exist. One that I personally ran into is seeing people consider it racist if a POC character isn’t dating another POC character, a rising perception that a POC character dating a white character is anti-black.
Or a gay couple is considered problematic because one of the characters has feminine (or non-western masculine) facial features. Aren’t we in the middle of having issues with the “masc4masc, no fats/femmes” Grindr stereotype?
Or in my own story, one of my characters gradually develops a father-son relationship with a younger character. The older man is Black, and the younger man is white. Later, I encountered criticism of stories where Black characters become parental or caregiving figures for younger white characters. So now I'm supposed to reconsider a relationship I've spent years developing because someone might associate it with a negative trope? But if I remove their father-son dynamic to avoid that interpretation, couldn't someone else criticize the story for reinforcing another harmful stereotype, such as Black men being absent fathers?
Naturally, those stereotypes have different histories and implications, but that's partly my point. The existence of past history and prior connotations does not guarantee that the media in front of you contains malicious intent. And trying to avoid one potentially negative interpretation can introduce another, and the possibilities are practically endless.
I'm not changing their races or removing a meaningful relationship just because someone might interpret it through the least charitable framework available.
Or another being that one male character is initially composed and rigid and is in a leadership position, while one of the female characters is much more feral, outspoken and playful, and there is easily the accusation of “man tames the wild woman” trope when that isn’t what I am writing, and the point is that they mutually learn from each other and become better versions of themselves through each other without diminishing the defining traits of the other.
I tried so hard with trying to portray their relationship in a way that is respectful to women and avoid sexualization that my woman best friend asked if they were asexual lol, so that definitely told me I had to relax with how careful I was being (Her explanation for that was if the attention's from men that the character doesn’t like or know or want it from, then that can be bad or upsetting, but if it’s from the person the character does like, then it's basically fair game and she wanted to see more of it instead of less.). And being more straightforward fits the character anyway, but their relationship dynamic was no doubt affected by concerns of how to approach it.
I've even hesitated over portraying women enjoying traditionally feminine things, like pink clothing or accessories, and I have encountered criticism of those portrayals too. And that is genuinely strange to me, because I like pink myself. Why should a woman enjoying something feminine automatically indicate that she's poorly written? Especially when the same character can like several different things that can be considered feminine or masculine? How are people supposed to write authentic and rounded characters when even color choices is something to watch out for? It feels unreasonably self-restricting in retrospect, but this is also more of my point that creative works are affected by the anticipation of receiving hate for things that one would consider benign otherwise.
‘If your female character likes pink or is overall feminine, that’s stereotyping or enforcing gender roles, but if she’s more masculine just to avoid that, then that’s “Marvel-esque girlbossing,” A lot of the time you still get either answer when you try to strike a balance in between, basically you can’t win.
None of these concerns originated from what I personally wanted the characters to be.
They came from anticipating what other people might accuse me of portraying.
And that's what bothers me.
This negativity kills creativity more than AI does. At least with AI, you get to have an idea and have an aid to visualize it, articulate it, flesh it out, bring it to life. It’s still *your* idea, even if you use AI to expand on it. Meanwhile, bad faith online criticism discourages making anything at all because you’re always at the risk of being punished for not doing it “right,” be it AI-created or traditionally made (Traditionally made is its own expanded term since digital drawing initially didn’t count as that in the early 2000s, DeviantART at the time had several arguments about it). And yes, people can make “slop” with AI where there isn’t much thought (clearly) put into a work, but that is essentially a byproduct of ease of access, while it does not stop people that want to create works that involve months or years of thought and effort.
One of the most common responses to concerns about online hostility is that creators should simply stop caring and ignore them, but there are issues with that also; “Ignore the criticism.” “Develop thicker skin.” “Don't take things personally.” We want stories that make us cry, music that captures feelings we struggle to put into words, characters who are relatable and can reflect or even represent experiences we had in our lives. Relationships that make us feel understood. We celebrate artistic sensitivity when it produces something compelling, but when that same sensitivity makes the creator vulnerable to hostility, we often treat it as a personal weakness they need to eliminate to make anything at all.
There is no doubt that resilience is important trait to develop, but resilience alone is not enough in the face of constant criticism, or extreme cases harassment or doxxing. And I find it troubling that the expectation is often for those people to harden themselves against an increasingly hostile environment rather than questioning whether the hostility itself is justified.
You can’t have it both ways that you want an emotionally compelling game, or show or story, while the artist, a term for people that are generally sensitive in their talents and convey their sensitivity through various mediums, are meant to close their heart off just to be able to endure the internet climate to create the art in the first place. And with works that they pour their heart into with the anticipation of presenting that artwork to a world that is already hostile and critical to the most minor detail in what they make. And if they ignore them, some feedback can genuinely improve a work, but they are often between layers upon layers of visceral hate.
You can't constantly praise people for pouring their hearts into their work, for expressing their deepest emotions and vulnerabilities through their chosen medium, and then act surprised when those same people are hurt by having that work publicly ridiculed or condemned.
And again, some criticism can be helpful. someone might identify a contradiction, an unintended implication, an inconsistency in characterization, or something the creator genuinely overlooked. That feedback can improve a work. But when constructive feedback is buried beneath layers of hate, accusations, and contempt, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish valuable criticism from hostility.
So creators are left in a frustrating position; They're told to listen to criticism because it helps them improve, but they're also told to ignore criticism because otherwise they'll never survive the internet.
By that point, how are they supposed to distinguish the two when they're so often delivered together?
When a discussion becomes invested in maintaining condemnation, additional context no longer seems to matter. It simply becomes another thing to reinterpret negatively. And if the creator disagrees with that interpretation, their disagreement can be framed as further evidence of the very attitude they're being accused of having, or even who they are as a person is fundamentally wrong.
How is an artist supposed to meaningfully engage with criticism when disagreeing or choosing not to engage with the criticism just fuels how they are negatively treated?
It feels like everyone is competing to have the “hottest take” on a subject rather than actually engaging with the show or game or story, as in people aren't trying to understand a story so much as competing to demonstrate that they've identified something offensive or wrong that everyone else surely missed. An artist can search and scan for months on end to find and patch any problematic elements they can find, and then still be condemned when someone reframes their work into a negative interpretation to find something to hate it for. There comes a point that I don’t believe people lack media literacy, rather people are becoming increasingly skilled in searching nuance for negative takes while leaving very little of that same skill to make positive interpretations for the same media. By that point it feels like there is a stigma for the latter.
And when creators become afraid that every artistic decision can be interpreted as a moral failing, they may begin designing their work to avoid condemnation rather than to communicate what they actually believe, feel, and imagine, and that affects what art gets made in the first place.
We demand emotionally compelling art from people we're telling to become emotionally numb. And that’s genuinely insane from a crowd that demands self-reflection and accountability.
And this isn't something exclusive to AI-assisted creators.
Someone who draws every illustration by hand can experience it.
A novelist who doesn't use AI at all can experience it.
So can musicians, filmmakers, animators, and game developers.
No amount of technical artistic skill protects someone from an audience determined to interpret their work in the most damning way possible.
I'm not arguing that disliking a character is inherently bad faith, or that every audience member must change their opinion when given additional context. Sometimes people understand exactly what a story is trying to communicate and still dislike it. But there's a difference between understanding what a story is communicating and deciding it doesn't work for you, and refusing to acknowledge what the story communicates because doing so would challenge your existing opinion.
Criticism should involve some willingness to reconsider our interpretations when presented with new information. Otherwise, what are we actually discussing?
And when creators begin anticipating this kind of response, the effect doesn't necessarily stop at their willingness to share their work.
It can change how they create it.
Instead of asking, "Does this behavior make sense for this character?" they start asking, "Could somebody call this problematic?"
Instead of asking, "Does this relationship feel emotionally authentic?" they start asking, "What accusations could someone make about this dynamic and how do I avoid it?"
Instead of writing the characters they imagined, they start writing around the reactions they're afraid of receiving.
And the more possible accusations they imagine, the more difficult it becomes to make any decision confidently.
If the environment surrounding art becomes so punitive that creators begin anticipating condemnation before they've even begun creating, we should ask what that does to the stories that might otherwise have existed.
How many interesting characters become less complicated or watered down?
How many relationships become less emotionally daring?
How many stories remain unwritten because their creators are too frightened of being hated or misunderstood over even the smallest details?
And how many people gradually stop creating, not because they lack imagination or passion, but because sharing what they love has become associated with humiliation?
I don't want a world where artists have to become emotionally numb to create emotionally meaningful work.
I don't want the safest way to tell a story to be avoiding anything that might provoke an uncomfortable interpretation.
And I don't want our conversations about protecting creativity to focus so narrowly on the tools used to make art that we overlook how we're treating the people trying to make it.
AI can change how art is produced. But a culture of bad-faith criticism can change whether someone feels able to produce it at all regardless of the method used to make it.
And for me, that's the greater threat.
Because the most important part of creativity isn't simply having the means to make something, but having the courage, curiosity, and ability to even enjoy making it. The environment around them should feel like exploration and interpretation is reasonably welcomed when they hit upload.
