Unfortunate Implications / Literature

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• Blah Story Blah Blah Circumstance Blah Blah Implication Blah. Example Website

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Keep in mind that Unfortunate Implications are unintentional. An intended offensive message (for example, a piece of Axis propaganda about Jews) does not belong here, nor does natter about the author's true intentions.

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• Adam by Ariel Schrag is a novel (and later also a movie) that was intended to defend LGBT rights. However, as discussed in this article from The Mary Sue, the story is about a cisgender boy pretending to be a trans man to seduce to a lesbian woman, and he lies about his age pretending to be 21 when he is actually 17, among many other problematic elements. The film also counts as transgender extras who were hired for the film were allegedly deceived about the film they were going to participate in, and treated in a disrespectful and transphobic way.
• Anna Todd's After series has copped a lot of criticism for condoning abusive relationships and Hardin’s possessive behaviour towards Tessa.
• It's been noted that Edgar Rice Burroughs' eugenics views were so extreme, they're quite similar to the Nazis. Lost on Venus, one book where he positively depicts a eugenicist society that kills all its "unfit" people, in fact was released the same year the Nazis took power (1933).
• The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, partly due to its prominence as required reading in schools as a means to introduce The Holocaust to younger readers, has gained criticism for perpetuating harmful views on the Holocaust. A lot of the criticism being that the central narrative of the novel perpetuates the myth of the average German being completely ignorant of the Nazis' persecution of the Jews ^note  Bruno, being a school-aged boy and the son of an SS Officer, would have been well aware of the Jews and the antisemitism of the Nazi party through exposure at his German school and his mandatory attendance of the Hitler Youth , combined with the ending misdirecting the tragedy of the story from the victims of the Holocaust:
  "Because the focus of the story remains on Bruno’s family, the book does not engage with the main tragedy of the Holocaust: that none of the people in the gas chamber should have been there. Due to the way in which Shmuel’s character is portrayed in the novel, his character doesn’t engage the reader’s sympathy in the way that Bruno does. Shmuel represents the 1.5 million children murdered by the Nazi regime in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in the death camps of occupied Europe and in the killing fields where millions of civilians were shot into mass graves, yet the reader’s sympathy is directed towards a Nazi concentration camp commandant and his family."
• While the author of Chronicles of Blood and Stone has stated it wasn't his intention, several readers have pointed out that the way women are portrayed in the trilogy as a whole, and particularly in The Fifth Sorceress, comes across as sexist or outright misogynistic at times. Indeed, this is one of the things the trilogy is most criticised for besides questionable prose. Namely, that all the good women are largely defined by their relationships to men (wife, mother, sister, etc), have little agency, and are frequently Damsels in Distress needing to be rescued by men, while the villainous women are all portrayed as power-hungry and promiscuous (yet they're the only women who have agency and characterization not solely tied to a man); the sorceresses' bisexuality is also treated as a by-product of them being corrupted by magic and linked with moral depravity.
• The Chronicles of Narnia
  • The nation of Calormen, the bitterest enemy of the titular country and a major source of controversy among readers. Calormen is a sort of Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Ottoman Turkey and similar Muslim empires; its people are described as dark-skinned (with the real-world slur "darkies" used to describe them at one point), and while their culture embraces a polytheistic Religion of Evil that is not really very close to Islam, in the Grand Finale, their chief god is revealed to actually be The 'Verse's equivalent of Satan. The real-world connotations of the country's portrayal are much-discussed; Wikipedia has more info.^note It's worth noting that the first book that introduces Calormen also features a sympathetic protagonist in Aravis, and the final book praises Calormenes who serve their god Tash by doing good things (though Aslan is quick to claim they're serving him and to wash his paws of evil done in his own name), making this a case of Values Dissonance.
  • The books have also been criticized as sexist according to some interpretations, including notably His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman. The argument largely depends on how you interpret a line about Susan gaining an interest in "nylons, lipstick and invitations" over Narnia and her possibly only temporary exclusion from the Narnian heaven, though there are a few other questionable elements; the White Witch, Jadis in the first book is said to be a descendant of Lilith, who in folklore (but not in The Bible) is the first wife of Adam that was cast out of Eden and replaced by Eve because she would not be subservient to him, although a later book in the series would give her a different backstory.
• It's noted that A Court of Thorns and Roses excuses or downplays abusive behaviour in romantic relationships and normalizes male dominance over women (given Sarah J. Maas' attempt to have Feyre be an empowered female protagonist and the emphasis on Rhysand being a superior love interest because he ostensibly treats Feyre as an equal, this was almost certainly unintentional). Several male characters demonstrate possessive, controlling and sexually aggressive behavior towards their female love interests; Rhysand's behaviour towards Feyre in the first book is straight-up sexual assault and objectification (e.g. kissing, licking and groping her against her will, drugging her, forcing her to give him lap dances and subjecting her to Go-Go Enslavement). It's often played off as flirting or instinctive behaviour; in Rhysand's case, it's explained away as a ploy for the greater good, which he never properly apologises for (his apology mostly consists of him justifying his actions and making self-pitying remarks). Men being jealous and overprotective of women also tends to be dismissed or presented as desirable. Strangely, Tamlin's controlling behaviour and emotional abuse of Feyre is eventually condemned in the story and used to make him unsympathetic, but other characters like Rhysand who engage in similar behaviour get Easily Forgiven, arguably giving the impression that being abusive and manipulative is fine as long it's for the 'right' reasons. It's also pointed out that Rhysand supposedly being an amazingly progressive ally to women just because he 'lets Feyre have choices' is setting the bar pretty low, along with some of his other actions contradicting this.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time has garnered a lot of backlash for the stereotypical portrayal of autism and the fact that all the abuse Christopher endures is normalized, especially the fact that he is blamed for all the events that happen in the book.
• The works of Roald Dahl:
  • Originally, the Oompa-Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were an undiscovered tribe of pygmies from Darkest Africa whom Wonka had secretly hired and transported to his factory. Roald Dahl said he intended them to be a positive portrayal—contrasting the helpful and well-behaved Oompa-Loompas with the bratty and demanding white kids. However, groups like the NAACP said that Wonka shipping an African tribe to work in his factory had overtones of slavery, a view that Dahl eventually came to sympathize with. In 1972, following on from the alternative visual depiction of the 1971 film adaptation Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (orange-skinned, green-haired elves, created specifically to address this issue), the book was revised to give the Oompa-Loompas white skin and change their homeland to the Fictional Country of Loompaland.
  • The Witches has come under controversy for the portrayal of the eponymous witches having anti-Semitic undertones. Their true forms have similarities with Jewish caricatures, they are described as monsters hiding in plain sight with unlimited monetary power, and their entire race is evil and are the book's villains (one witch in the 1990 film does perform a Heel–Face Turn, but nothing of the sort happens in the book). Their fate is to all be turned into mice by their own potion and exterminated, an uncomfortable parallel to Nazi propaganda describing Jews as vermin. The fact that Dahl himself was open and unapologetic about having anti-Semitic beliefs does not help matters at all.
• Dracula: Many analysts noted antisemitic and xenophobic undertones in the book's portrayal of the titular vampire. A 1997 article by Michael Kane connects the book to the wider trend of "invasion literature" in which white British society is colonized by malevolent foreigners (Dracula himself being a central-eastern European who arrives in London to literally prey on Britons), while Jules Zanger draws parallels between Dracula's move to London and Britain's contemporary influx of Jewish immigrants fleeing from persecution in continental Europe. Additionally, Jack Halberstam notes how Dracula embodies stereotypes of Jews as fabulously wealthy and voluntarily stateless parasites and how his physical appearance aligns with contemporary depictions of Jewish villains as beastly, particularly singling out his claw-like nails.
• Dreamspeaker: This reviewer felt that Peter's and He Who Would Sing's idea to kill themselves, and how that resulted in them being reunited with the shaman in some sort of idealized afterlife sends the message that committing suicide is an excellent way to solve one's real-world problems.
• Fifty Shades of Grey:
  • The notion that Christian Grey is into BDSM due to his traumatic and abusive childhood and the psychological issues resulting from that. Both real-world practitioners of BDSM and psychiatrists disagree that there is any correlation between mental health problems and having an interest in the fetish. The way other characters into BDSM are depicted further unintentionally suggests a link between BDSM and mental instability and/or harmful behavior; Leila is depicted as a deranged stalker who self-harms and possibly intended to hurt the protagonists, while Elena is a serial cheater and sexual predator who committed statutory rape against a troubled fifteen-year-old.
  • Many, many people have gone into depth about Christian's behavior towards Ana coming off as textbook emotional abuse and sexual coercion, which the narrative either downplays as him being emotionally damaged and just needing Ana's love to fix him, or outright romanticizing / fetishizing it. It's been particularly pointed out that conflating Christian's toxic behavior with BDSM and/or using the fetish to justify his treatment of Ana is an inaccurate and misleading portrayal of BDSM (especially given that a huge part of the subculture is the Safe, Sane, and Consensual mantra, which the sex scenes in Fifty Shades dubiously follow at best). This Unfortunate Implication is considered especially serious given its link to the rise of the so-called "50 Shades defense", also known as the "rough sex defense", in which defendants try to excuse or downplay inflicting serious or fatal injuries to intimate partners as being consensual BDSM gone wrong (with Fifty Shades of Grey sometimes even being cited by name in trials). ^note This particular defence predates Fifty Shades of Grey's publication, but it came to increased prominence in the 2010s after the books became bestsellers Anti-domestic violence campaigners and experts (particularly We Can't Consent to This) have noted that this defense often employs victim-blaming tactics; the defense was outright banned in the UK under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.
• Kate Breslin's inspirational romance novel For Such a Time got some good publicity and was nominated for two 2015 Romance Writers of America awards — whereupon people not in its target audience of conservative Christians found out about it. A Whole-Plot Reference to the Book of Esther, it recasts the story's events as a romance between a Jewish concentration camp prisoner and a Nazi commandant, the latter of whom is redeemed by The Power of Love and God's grace. There's a lot written about it online, but this joint discussion and the comments below it sum up the major criticisms well: the extremely offensive and mostly intentional use of Artistic License – History throughout, without which the story couldn't end on Happily Ever After; the Stockholm Syndrome nature of their relationship; and the Jewish characters not acting authentically Jewish, to the point that a common misconception is that by the end the heroine has converted to Christianity. Thus, the book distorts and exploits both a horrific chapter of Jewish (and 20th century) history and a beloved Old Testament story (which is not even a romantic one—in the Jewish tradition, it's a comedy) solely for the benefit of Christian readers.
• Green Eggs and Ham: Some Jewish and Muslim leaders have pointed out that a story about a person being pressured into eating ham can come across as intolerant to those who believe in keeping kosher or halal, who have sometimes been mocked or persecuted for their religious exception to eating pork. Notably, the Hebrew translation was given the Completely Different Title "Not Hungry, Don’t Love It", with the meal in question never being identified.
• Harry Potter:
  • Rowling's Word of Gay regarding Dumbledore has a few unfortunate implications. The fact that it was never stated in the books and only announced ex post can give it a "cheap PR stunt" flavor, especially given that Rowling is now following in the footsteps of George Lucas. In one critic's words, "in an imagined world in which the supernatural is possible and the limitations of reality are few... it speaks volumes that a gay relationship cannot be represented to the degree where it is discernable".
  • The series has attracted fire regarding classism, the Happiness in Slavery of the house-elves, and disdain by wizards for non-wizards, and the fact that nothing fundamentally changes about the wizarding world as a result of the war with Voldemort (e.g. Hermione's activism regarding the house-elves being largely brushed off as a youthful phase).
  • The writing of the House-elves in particular can be looked at very unpleasantly through the lens of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Douglass, who escaped from Maryland to Pennsylvania in 1838, recalls slaves from different plantations comparing and contrasting their masters and arguing about who had it worse, as well as having a tendency to sympathize with their masters, much as House-elves do in the novels. He himself had no thought that it wasn't his natural state to be enslaved (like the House-elves) until his master's new wife briefly started teaching him to read and write—and then was stopped by her husband and became just as abusive as the rest of them, much as even the Muggle-raised wizard characters assimilate into the Wizarding World's racial hierarchy (itself illustrated by the Fountain of Magical Brethren, which draws equally unpleasant comparisons to the Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt).
  • A number of fans have noted that the series tends to portray traditionally feminine girls in an overly negative light, with Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown often described as annoying, over-emotional, and not particularly smart, while Umbridge is intended to be repellent in part due to her exaggeratedly feminine persona, which Rowling admitted was inspired by a teacher whom she loathed for the same reason.
  • Remus Lupin was read by some fans as Ambiguously Gay (social outcast, strongest bond is with another unmarried man, has a condition analogous to AIDS) and Tonks was similarly read as having an Ambiguous Gender Identity or being a Butch Lesbian (tomboyish and punky, a Voluntary Shapeshifter so gender identity is flexible, favors her neutral surname over her outrageously girly given name). Then the sixth book and its follow-ups have them get together, has Tonks become considerably less gender-ambiguous, and then they have a kid, all with almost no development. As one Vox article put it, "many fans believed Rowling had taken the two queerest characters in the series, de-gayed them, and stuck them together in a child-producing heteronormative union." Then she capped it off by killing them both off in the final battle, hitting another negative queer trope.
  • The fact that there is another werewolf, Fenrir Greyback, in the series who's actively out to spread the curse draws further parallels to damaging stereotypes about people with HIV as discussed by this article. The fact that he's the only named werewolf besides Remus Lupin doesn't help matters.
  • It has been observed that the goblins of the Harry Potter universe have hooked noses and control all the wizarding world's banks, resembling some deeply anti-Semitic Greedy Jew stereotypes. They get their gold by robbing tombs according to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and initially side with Voldemort against mainstream wizarding society on top of it, linking them to stereotypes of Jews being disloyal and disrespectful of other cultures and religions that go all the way back to pre-Christian Rome. This controversy was reignited in 2022 when the prequel video game adaptation Hogwarts Legacy was set to have "rebelling" goblins as a primary antagonist, using tropes suspiciously similar to the classical "blood libel".
  • Rowling has also, unfortunately, angered many in the disabled community with her implications of disabled children not attending Hogwarts because "they have their disabilities fixed by magic," which insinuates that disabled people aren't living fulfilling lives because of their disabilities and only able-bodied people are worth talking about. (It also comes off as a flimsy after-the-fact justification, given that if magical society routinely enables paraplegics to walk and makes neurodiverse people neurotypical, why doesn't it fix Harry's eyesight?)
  • The series has also received criticisms of fatphobia, with several Jerkass or outright villainous characters being depicted as fat in such a way that's framed as part of their villainy. Even the more heroic fat characters, such as Hagrid and Molly Weasley, still fall into some negative stereotypes. This video talks about the subject, with a focus on Dudley Dursley in particular, and how, despite Dudley being depicted as a violent bully, in reality, fat children are often the targets of bullying. Here are some articles that further discuss the issue.
  • Big Bad Tom Marvolo "Voldemort" Riddle was canonically conceived by means of his obsessed mother drugging his father with a love potion; he left them when she stopped dosing him, and Voldemort grew up congenitally incapable of love. This has nasty implications for real-life children conceived by rape.
• The House of Night:
  • The series has been accused of being misogynistic in its portrayal of women and how it approaches sexual assault.
    • Zoey (also the narrator) constantly refers to other women as sluts, skanks, hoes, etc., and judges them based on their appearance and intimate relationships. In one instance, the plot almost derails so Zoey can talk about how all oral sex is demeaning to women, and women who partake in oral sex are either evil sluts or idiots who don't realize they're being 'used'. Overall, Zoey's attitude towards women comes across as highly demeaning and condescending, but she's never really called out or questioned about it. She also tends to be presented as morally and intellectually superior to the women she denigrates (even though she sometimes engages in the same behavior she condemns them for).
    • Vampyre society is depicted as being more enlightened than human societies because it's matriarchal, but some readers have pointed out that it still tends to impose and reinforce strict gender roles and stereotypes (e.g. women are prophets and healers, men are warriors who must protect women) among other issues, which is never commented on or critiqued. It can feel less like a feminist utopia with true equality between the sexes and more like a glorified Persecution Flip.
    • Some readers have taken issue with how Stark and especially Kalona are Easily Forgiven and how the protagonists go out of their way to 'redeem' them despite knowing they're perpetrators of sexual violence; Kalona in particular is a Serial Rapist with potentially hundreds of victims. This approach can make it seem that sexual assault isn't that big a deal (e.g. Stark's history of preying on girls is treated more like some embarrassing habit he grew out of) and there's more focus on the perpetrators' tragic backstories than on the crimes they've committed and the impact on the victims. There's also a bit of a double standard given that the protagonists never consider trying to redeem Neferet and she's dismissed as being just evil despite also having a tragic past; to make matters worse, part of Neferet's Start of Darkness is that she was a victim of sexual abuse.
    • A student named Becca is nearly raped twice but the protagonists show little sympathy for her, mostly because her attackers were men Zoey is romantically interested in. Becca is generally dismissed as "mean" and "desperate"; in the second incident, she even gets partly blamed for what happened because she initiated sexual contact with the man in question, only to change her mind and reject him. In the first incident, she also was being brainwashed into feeling attraction for her attacker but the protagonists still act like she was coming onto him. Overall, rape victims (especially women) tend to be treated with little sympathy by the narrative and protagonists, while the perpetrators (who are often men) get treated with far more sympathy and leniency.
  • It's been pointed out that despite trying to condemn homophobia, the books can come across as perpetuating stereotypes about gay people and presenting homosexuality in a problematic way:
    • Damien and Jack are the two most prominent gay characters^note the handful of other gay characters have minor roles at best and have little characterization outside of being gay and in a relationship with each other; the only significant thing Jack does is die to advance the plot (and he's not the only gay character this happens to either). Jack also comes across as an extremely stereotypical Camp Gay (he even dies singing theatre songs). Damien's character is less stereotypical but has other issues; he's said to be a rare case of a male vampyre who can control the element of air (traditionally associated with women) and he's not expected to be a warrior like other (straight) male characters, which carries the suggestion that because he's gay he's not seen as a 'real' man. Even his friends - who are all girls - state he doesn't really "count" as a boy simply because he isn't attracted to women, nor is he stereotypically masculine.
    • Then there's Stevie Rae and Aphrodite's blood bond; when the girls develop a psychic bond by drinking each other's blood, they strongly emphasise their bond isn't sexual/romantic in any way (which was the case with earlier examples of blood bonds between a man and woman, e.g. Zoey and Heath). While there's nothing inherently wrong with this, they express outright disgust at the thought of being attracted to each other (at this stage they're friends, so it's not based on mutual dislike either). People also make jokes about it to the girls, as if the very idea of women being intimate is funny, and they even refer to Aphrodite as "Aphrodike" (presumably referencing the homophobic slur "dyke").
  • The books have been criticized for how they depict people of color. Shaunee comes across as a stereotypical Sassy Black Woman; beyond that and being Zoey's friend, she has little personality or importance to the story (she's not even that distinguishable from her white best friend Erin). Black characters are often described in ways that emphasize their 'exoticness' and also get described with the old food-comparison cliches (white characters generally aren't similarly described). The two thugs who harass Zoey and get run over with a truck in Chosen are strongly implied to be black and are depicted as stereotypical gangbangers (they're also so unimportant Zoey herself doesn't even mention them again). Main protagonist Zoey is one-quarter Cherokee and considers it a big part of her identity, but this portrayal has drawn criticisms for indulging in the Magical Native American trope: Zoey's indigenous heritage only becomes relevant when discussing her powers and magic in the setting, with it being stated the reason Zoey is special and naturally talented at magic is because she's Native American and therefore 'closer to the earth'. Zoey's full-Cherokee grandmother comes off as a cliched shaman-type character who exists to impart words of wisdom. As with the Quileute in The Twilight Saga, the Cherokee in House of Night also have parts of their history and legends drastically altered or completely made-up by the author (namely the stuff regarding Aya and Kalona).
• An early Imaro story, "Slaves of the Giant-Kings", had Imaro enslaved by Fantasy Counterpart Culture versions of the Tutsis and Hutus, ending with Imaro leading the Hutu stand-ins in a gory revolution against the Tutsi stand-ins based on the Rwandan Revolution. Long after the story was written, the actual Hutus began a genocide against the Tutsis. When Imaro creator Charles Saunders decided to reprint his stories, he was so sickened by the parallels between "Slaves of the Giant-Kings" and the Rwandan Genocide that he refused to ever print it again, writing a new adventure to replace it, because he thought that reprinting it might look like he thought the genocide was justified.
• In the first edition of the novel Leia, Princess of Alderaan, and in the audiobook, Leia quotes an Alderaanian philosopher who said, "Strength through joy". Strength Through Joy was a state-operated organization in Nazi Germany that subsidized leisure and vacations for certain types of German citizens, to keep them content with their situation and aid in propaganda. In a Tweet (now deleted) Claudia Gray apologized for using this slogan in ignorance of its history. Later editions changed the quote to "Joy drives out fear".
  • In some ways the original quote was oddly appropriate. Leia says it as her boyfriend, Kier, is persuading her that it's okay for her to put herself first sometimes, to have fun and a personal life in the midst of galactic suffering and unrest, instead of dedicating her every moment to finding ways to thwart the Empire. This same boyfriend is so afraid of Imperial reprisals - which fall very broadly and unfairly - that he thinks resisting it is foolish and tries to turn in Bail and Breha Organa. Kier would have been much happier if Leia refocused on enjoying herself, and her rejection of his goals can read as a rejection of favoring one's own pleasure over the lives of others - but that's clearly not how Gray meant it, and it's pretty terrible to accidentally have Leia say a Nazi slogan in an intrigued tone.
• The Lunar Chronicles: Some view the series as racist since it homogenizes Asia, has a racially ambiguous main character, misuse of honorifics, cliche Asian names such as "Peony", a Japanese family ruling Asia^*(this is in particularly poor taste due to Japan's history with imperialism), and other forms of Orientalism.
• The Mists of Avalon is intended to be a feminist retelling of the Arthurian Legend that criticises oppressive, patriarchal theocracies (particularly medieval Christianity), but it's been noted that the novel itself has some unfortunate and troubling messages, especially regarding women and sex:
  • The entire book can be interpreted as an Author Tract excusing or even extolling the "virtues" of rape and incest, which are never portrayed as anything but something that powerful, "enlightened" people have the right to commit over the objections of small-minded bigots (even when the victim is a child), or as necessary acts for the greater good. Some have even speculated this might not be unintentional, considering it later came to light that the author was a child abuser. It's also jarringly queerphobic for something that supposedly shows queerness in a positive light: every bisexual woman's true love is male, and every man attracted to other men is treated like garbage and dismissed as a genetic dead-end.
  • Some would argue that The Mists of Avalon barely even qualifies as feminist at all (particularly by the 21st century) due to its treatment of women; while a few women are depicted as having power and agency, they tend to use it to control and abuse other women rather than support or uplift them, women are frequently depicted as jealous or hateful towards other women (particularly when it comes to men) and Avalon's so-called sexual liberation of women largely comes off as an Informed Attribute given most women are only depicted having sex when and with whom the priesthood commands, and largely for purposes of political or ideological advancement as opposed to simply wanting sex; this includes Igraine getting passed around to powerful men like a broodmare by Avalon (including being married off to the abusive Gorlois when she was just 14), 13-year-old Morgause getting slut-shamed and married off for 'tempting' adult men (with her own sister believing she's after her husband) and Viviane telling a distressed Morgaine that her feelings are unimportant following the Beltane ritual (where Morgaine was tricked into having sex with her half-brother to conceive an heir), with Morgaine later deciding Viviane had some good points.
• The Phantom Project, an effort to review every adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera, gave the unofficial sequel The Phantom of Manhattan a D- for its big twist, namely that Erik had raped Christine Daae during the time he had kidnapped her and fathered her son Pierre, who believes Raoul de Chagny is his father. Not only did the reviewer find this gratuitous, but even after this revelation, Erik is treated as the hero, with Pierre, after he learns, choosing to live with him simply due to him being the biological father. The reviewer commented that the only reason the book didn't deserve an F for this is that it contained some rather interesting digressions on the history of New York City.
• Ready Player One:
  • Beth Elderkin of Gizmodo accuses the novel of sexism towards the female toon and player Art3mis, pointing out the purported Romance Arc with the White Male Lead consists entirely of her regarding him as a Stalker with a Crush and rebuffing his advances because she isn't interested... until finally he meets her in real life and it turns out she was just ashamed of a minor physical flaw on her body.
  • A section of the book that suggests women who underwent sex reassignment aren't real women received negative responses from transgender rights advocates.
• Ready Player Two, the sequel to Ready Player One, attempted to rectify the Unfortunate Implications about transgender people, but didn't quite manage it. As pointed out by a few articles, the passage where Wade finds out that L0hengrin is a transgender woman is entirely overshadowed by how he doesn't mind because he himself has had sex with a wide range of genders in the OASIS. While it's intended to be a message of acceptance, it tries to present fetishisation as legitimate support of trans and nonbinary people. Wade's nonchalance about invading her privacy is also completely overlooked.
• Remake Our Life!: The protagonist's adult mind is transferred back into his body 10 years earlier and he chooses to go to art school instead of business school. With his knowledge of the future, he realizes that his dorm-mates are members of a renowned artistic group called the Platinum Generation. Each of them was able to overcome their issues and become renowned creators without his help in his original timeline. However, in his eagerness to help them overcome their issues, he effectively steals their achievements from them and gives those achievements back to them as his own ideas. Instead of allowing them to grow as artists on their own, he stifles their creativity and causes them to lose their passion which influenced several of them to drop out of their various fields to live obscure lives.
  • Bokutachi_no_Remake (Remake Our Life!) Reviews: The majority of mixed reception reviews reference this unfortunate implication.
  • The Dark Side of Remake Our Life!
• The young adult book series Save the Pearls has had controversy surrounding its treatment of racism. The plot revolves around a post-apocalyptic scenario where white people ("Pearls") are the minority, and black people ("Coals") are the majority and the more "privileged". (Even though coals as objects are generally considered less pretty and valuable than pearls.) As part of this, the main "Pearl" character essentially wears Black Face as an attempt to pass and generally ends up indulging in stereotypes about African-Americans. This is a book with an anti-racism aesop.
• As touched upon in this article, The Secret (both the book and the film) fail to take things such as economic inequality, racial oppression, and privilege into consideration, making it seem like it is victim blaming people for whom no amount of positive thought is going to help. For example, if you are obese or contract a deadly ailment such as cancer, it's your own negative thoughts that caused it. Take historical events such as slavery and genocides into account, and the implications are even worse. It also ignores those with clinical depression whose brain chemistry prevents them from thinking positively. In short, the Law of Attraction seems to work a lot better if you're also rich, mentally healthy, white, and male, curiously. Rhonda Byrne even once said when questioned on the 2004 tsunami (which happened about when the book was released) that the victims "must have been thinking about waves". Victim-Blaming to the extreme, that.
• Sixth Column, which describes the United States under occupation by Pan-Asians (real-world mutual enemies Japan and China), also has some issues. The heroes save the day by creating a race-selective weapon that kills all yellow people. However, that story idea was from John W. Campbell, and Heinlein supposedly tried to tone down the racism. He was still unhappy with the lingering racist themes.
• The first of the The Ship Who... short stories starts with the rather horrific statement that due to her birth defects Helva was born a "thing" and her parents are presented with the choice of euthanasia or, because her brain was scanned and found to be useful, to surrender her to be encapsulated in a shell and used as a Wetware CPU. Anne McCaffrey's original story was published in 1961 and were compiled in that decade, but it was revisited and new books in the setting were published in the 90s. Although the 90s authors reframe shells as assistive technology to soften the concept, said concept has a lot of ableism inherent, as people like Helva are essentially Saved to Enslave, dehumanized and saddled with massive debt they usually need decades to work off.
  • The villains of The City Who Fought are literally a race of black men there to steal, murder, and rape. The Kolnari are also hyperfertile, physically adept and cunning but without wisdom, are obsessed with sex especially with fragile pale women they despise, become adults at the age of eight, and have raised keloid scars. One character refers to them as "cockroaches". When some are killed in The Ship Who Returned, Helva blithely says they don't have souls. The Kolnari are heavily coded to appeal to evoke fears of urban black men branded "superpredators" by 90s media, which themselves draw on older tropes applied to black people by fearful whites dehumanizing them.
• Several readers have found that the Something Dark and Holy trilogy has some unfortunate antisemitic undertones. Namely, the country of Tranavia is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Poland, where the people turned their backs on the religion of the neighbouring country, Kalyazin (based upon Russia), practice Blood Magic (including Human Sacrifice) and society is secretly controlled by a shadowy group of villains who are described as being half-human and half-monster with dark hair, dark eyes and claws, which is all arguably reminiscent of highly negative stereotypes and falsehoods about Jewish people (such as blood libel, among others). It really doesn't help that the religion of Kalyazin draws upon Rodnovery (Slavic neopaganism) which has been adopted by far-right extremists and white supremist groups in Eastern Europe (many of whom are virulently antisemitic). The author, Emily A. Duncan, acknowledged that she was aware of the potential Unfortunate Implications while doing research for the first book, but believed she would be able to avoid them or handle them sensitively, though she ultimately felt she "fell short" in this regard.
• Sword Art Online gets this a lot regarding its use of Rape as Drama.
  • Mother's Basement had some choice words about Asuna's two sexual assaults, calling them unnecessary in the context of the plot and pointing out how uncomfortable it was to play her Attempted Rape for Fanservice.
  • Megan Peters has also criticized the series’ repeated use of Attempted Rape of female characters by the villains as a plot device to motivate the male heroes, saying that the women are "[left] to suffer for misogynistic silence". The article features snippets of an interview with series creator Reki Kawahara, who agrees with the criticism and admits that he only used this trope because it was fairly common in light novels at the time he wrote the story. He felt that a certain scene in Alicization was far more unpleasant to watch in animated form as a result, and apologized to everyone (directors, animators, & voice actresses) involved for having to do something so demeaning.
• Sword of Truth has been criticised as sexist for its portrayal of women and insensitive in its depiction of sexual violence. Women who have power and agency are frequently abused, traumatised and/or stripped of their power, often so they can be rescued by men; this even applies to the ostensibly strong female leads Kahlan and Nicci (it's noted the former is often relegated to being Richard's subordinate despite being more experienced and knowledgeable and generally becomes much less competent around Richard, while the latter's motives and actions end up revolving around her love for Richard). Even with 'strong' women, there's a tendency to focus on their physical beauty and sex appeal. Men relying on anger and logic to use magic while women rely on compassion and gentler emotions also arguably reinforces narrow, outdated gender stereotypes; the series often villainises or criticises women who aren't traditionally feminine. Many find the sexual violence to be needlessly graphic, excessive and occasionally written in a way that appears to fetishize it; almost every woman in the series has been raped or threatened with rape at least once, and other violence inflicted on women often has a sexual slant to it (men don't have it much better in the series, but it's particularly prevalent with women).
• Throne of Glass:
  • Some readers have criticized the way people of color are depicted, with it being argued that POC characters are either barely-existent or treated as disposable compared to the white characters (who make up the vast majority of the cast). One of the few prominent POC characters is Princess Nehemia of Eyllwe, a black woman who mostly exists to support the white lead Celaena and gets brutally murdered in the second book to provide angst and motivation for Celaena; she actually orchestrated her own murder for this purpose, considering it necessary to save her people, which some readers feel gives Celaena's character Mighty Whitey implications. Sorscha is implied to be biracial (it's mentioned her facial features and skin tone are reminiscent of people from Eyllwe) and her primary role is serving as white protagonist Dorian's love interest and getting murdered to cause him angst. It's also noted that when a villain attacks several villages in Eyllwe and frames Celaena for it, the focus is more on how it affects Celaena as opposed to the people directly impacted. The last two books do make some improvements in this area; Tower of Dawn includes a lot more POC characters due to the Southern Continent setting and it also makes biracial Yrene a prominent character, who avoids some of the problems of Nehemia and Sorscha's portrayals^note she has more characterization and a story arc independent of being Chaol's girlfriend, plays an integral role in defeating the Big Bad and gets a happy ending. Prior to this, people of color tended to be flat side characters at best.
  • Some readers also criticized the jacket art for one edition of Kingdom of Ash for suggesting Manon was intended to be East Asian, pointing out that it was never once stated or implied in the books themselves that Manon was East Asian (or the fantasy equivalent). The vast majority of readers understandably interpret Manon as white / European-coded^note her first and last names are both from European languages, she's described as pale-skinned with white-blonde hair, and her homeland comes off as a Medieval European Fantasy setting and Manon has been previously depicted as white in other official artwork; even the jacket artist for Kingdom of Ash had done earlier artwork depicting her as white. Seeing as Manon first appeared in the third book and then was only suggested to be Asian on a cover of the final book, some readers felt it came off as a clumsy last-minute retcon rather than a genuine attempt at diversity.
• Tolkien's Legendarium: In The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author once compared his Dwarves to Jews — "at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue." In a radio interview, he said the Dwarf language was modeled to resemble Semitic. Though he was speaking in specific terms, as a Jewish Journal article has noted, Unfortunate Implications are there for those who want to see them. The Dwarves are created by the smith-god of Tolkien's universe and thus have an affinity for mining and crafting with metals and jewels, similar to the original Norse dwarfs. Later, the Dark Lord Sauron tries to corrupt the Dwarf-kings with magic rings which give them explicit gold-lust, multiplying their treasure hoards. But it's noted that this was all the rings did, instead of turning them evil and slaves to Sauron's will, as planned.
• Troubled Blood has been heavily criticized for playing the Creepy Crossdresser trope straight — not helped by the fact that its author (J. K. Rowling under a Moustache de Plume) had been coming under fire around the time it was released for making offensive remarks about transgender people on Twitter.
• The Twilight Saga:
  • This article examines some of Twilight's unfortunate implications: specifically, how interracial relationships never work out, how Bella is essentially marrying an old man who doesn't want sex but always wants to boss her around, how Bella, who wants sex, goes after the painfully prudish Edward instead of the man who wants it as much as she does, and how in the end, Bella essentially chooses not to choose.
  • Edward's behavior is that of an emotionally abusive boyfriend, and he has all the personality of a cardboard box. Bella uses excuses that real-life abused women use to justify his behavior, such as that Edward acts this way because he really loves her.
  • Bella's behavior is just as vile. This review takes Dr. Hare's twenty traits of sociopathy and applies every single one to something Bella has done or thought in New Moon.
  • Much hay has been made of the way in which Edward and Bella's relationship (and at times, Jacob and Bella's as well) has often been perceived by critics and audiences as having majorly uncomfortably undertones of Romanticized Abuse, with some believing that the book can be used as an educational tool to teach younger audiences what unhealthy relationships look like, while others go as far as to claim the work outright teaches women to become victims of abuse.
  • The book has been criticized by many for its handling of race issues. Some examples include the story's Monochrome Casting and its tendency to treat what few black characters it has as stereotypical, as well as practices like lightening the skin of black actors. In addition, the story links whiteness with positive qualities like goodness and beauty, with several passages stating that all vampires have pale skin regardless of ethnicity, and that it is the sparkly, pale appearance of the vampires that make them universally beautiful.
  • A related source of controversy is the books/films' portrayal of the Native American Quileute tribe as heavily fictionalized Hollywood Natives, despite being a group who exist in real life and who have called the book out on its stereotyping. Roger Ebert pointed out that its portrayal of the Native Americans as werewolves who don't wear clothes has further Savage Indian undertones. The tribe has received not a single royalty despite Meyer's appropriation and shameless violation of their culture and oral traditions, plus the filmmakers copying, copyrighting and then marketing their traditional artwork, and the books are now part of the extensive list of Mormon works considered to advocate genocide against indigenous cultures.
• When you think about it, Philip José Farmer's Wold-Newton Family, by saying that all great heroes and many villains of modern literature were descended from the fourteen people present at the Wold-Newton meteor landing, is also saying that any of those characters who aren't of English origin only achieved what they did because they had some English blood. Modern Newtonians have noticed this and identified other meteor crashes that could have had similar effects.
• The Warrior Cats series has been accused of having anti-Indigenous themes throughout the series. Specifically, it cites the Tribe of Rushing Water as a racist stereotype, as they are presented as weaker and backwards compared to the more modern Clans, as well as having to be saved by the Clans from external threats, making the latter come off as white saviors. The character of Brook is accused of being a "Indian Princess" stereotype, due to being described as lithe and beautiful with a strange accent as well as being a Love Interest for Stormfur, who barely considers her feelings throughout the series. The essay also accuses the series of cultural appropriation, specifically regarding the Medicine Cats' role and terminology.

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