Google News featured an article about how some critics of a recently published YA book are conflating the author with some of the characters in the book and their odious views and stereotypical portrayals.
They are very different things.
As authors we often choose to write characters who have obvious, sometimes downright evil, flaws, or are horrifically stereotypical, to act as either foils to our nuanced, sensitive MCs or as plot drivers. The "odious character" is a part of literature. Authors use them to highlight the ills and evils of the world and their MCs must overcome the garbage they spew and havoc they wreak. That's storytelling, or at least, one aspect of it. I do hope publishers continue to stand behind their authors and not cave to Twit mobs, many of whom have not read the works in question.
The last article points out the direction this movement is heading and the conclusion is both frightening and sad: "Taken to its logical conclusion, this approach to storytelling will set strict and claustrophobic limits on imagination, confining authors according to an ever-narrowing concept of which identities, settings, or narratives are their 'own.' "
It's no surprise that Twit mobs are focusing on authors. The TedTalk below shows how Twit mobs work and it is vicious.
