Several months ago, I was scrolling booktok/Instagram and stumbled across an account that was railing against what they called “ableist language” in fantasy novels, specifically around the complexity of vocabulary. I was taken aback by the tone of the post and the implied resentment toward books and authors that use descriptive, expansive language. Just as troubling was the growing list of books they dismissed as unreadable because the main character fell outside their very specific sociodemographic background.
As an avid reader who grew up devouring all my dad’s favorite science fiction and fantasy novels from yesteryear (books that often featured rough and ready male POV characters), I found this jarring. The idea that a protagonist had to meet an egregiously specific litany of shared traits with the reader in order to be deemed acceptable or worthwhile was distressing, not to mention deeply limiting.
And the number of people jumping on the proverbial bandwagon was disheartening.
Social media has conditioned us to make snap moral judgments.
Literature asks almost the opposite.
A good novel invites us to suspend judgment long enough to understand before we evaluate. It asks us to distinguish between a character’s beliefs and our beliefs, to inhabit perspectives we don’t share, and to wrestle with people who are flawed, selfish, noble, frightened, contradictory, or even reprehensible.
That process requires both empathy and perspective-taking (the ability to hold an idea or worldview that isn’t your own without immediately interpreting it as an endorsement or attack).
Readers don’t have to like every character or every book. In fact, some of the most worthwhile POV characters make us uncomfortable. They challenge our assumptions, stretch our vocabulary, complicate our thinking, and force us to ask why or how someone believes what they do before deciding whether we agree.
What worries me is a growing expectation that literature should provide continual reassurance, that protagonists should reflect our values, unfamiliar words should be simplified, and difficult ideas should be softened rather than explored.
Literature is one of the few places where we can safely practice curiosity, intellectual humility, and empathy toward lives we haven’t lived. When we reduce it to a vehicle for validation, we lose the opportunity to practice engaging with disagreement, or to recognize that a story, idea, or person can offer something worthwhile without aligning with us on every point.
If every story only ever confirms what we already believe, we’re no longer reading to grow. We’re reading to have our existing worldview validated. And that, friends, is a path that leads to stagnation and decline.
