World-Building Lessons #1: Making Something Illegal and Censorship

Greetings Travelers,
I thought I would make a post about world-building, and about censoring and criminalizing
something in your Fantasy world, Science Fiction, or dystopian world as this is an important issue in our own world, and it helps to think about the issue in as many ways as you can and not just black and white.

So let's begin:

**warning: spoilers ahead for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,  an episode from the TV series Star Trek: Voyager called "Random Thoughts," and an episode from the series Star Trek: Enterprise called "Stigma." If you haven't watched or read these, read the post with caution or go and read and watch them before continuing** 

One should keep in mind when criminalizing something in their fantasy world or science fiction world for that matter that no matter how hard your society tries to stop people from doing whatever they want them to stop doing, that they won't be able to get rid of it completely. As an example in All is Not Lost For All Will Begin Again, the country where my characters live and where their story starts has rules against modern medicine and tenchology hence why they have not developed as quickly as they could have. The reason for this is fear because something like what happened in the Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein happened causing fear and making people resort to using natural medicine and using mesmerism in place of drugs. And people have made sure that technology is safe before releasing it to the world. However, even if I like this form of censorship for my world (as a writer of it), I cannot say that everyone else in the world or that the people outside of my world who are reading my book will be okay with it. In fact I am sure there is a black market for different types of drugs in my world where people put new drugs that are potentially dangerous and untested there and models of the technology and the blueprints for the technology is also sold. The reason why this is all happening, though, is that if one makes something illegal, anything, people are likely to go and buy it or do the now-illegal practices that the government told them they couldn't do.

This in fact has happened many times in books, movies, and TV shows.
In Star Trek: Voyager there is an episode called "Random Thoughts" where to even think a bad thought is illegal because it will cause crime. The reason being the people of this planet are telepaths. They can read each other's thoughts and read non-telepath's thoughts. And to have a bad or violent thought in that world would affect people enough for them to kill someone or commit another crime. This seems like a reasonable law since we see the world represented as a safe haven, and a beautiful place. However, when B'Elanna gets wrongly accused for releasing a bad thought the punishment is a little severe. They say she must remove the thought from her mind, and they would do it in a way that could potentially damage her brain.

(image from wikia, https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Random_Thoughts_(episode)?file=Engramatic_purge.jpg) 

As the crew investigates we are led to find out that there is a black market where people sell bad and violent thoughts for the pure enjoyment of it, because "outlawing violent thought hasn't made it go away. All you've done is force people to share it in back alleys." (ep. "Random Thoughts") and the people who are doing it don't really care about the consequences of what they are doing. But they do it anyway because the government made it illegal, or just because they have an addiction to it or they want to, or they feel incredibly pressured by society and want some freedom to make mistakes. There could be a million reasons as to why one would do something illegal.

An addiction to the thing can also be a reason as to why someone would do something, even if it is something they themselves decided was prohibited. In The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jekyll did not want to go back to being Hyde, yet his body forced him to, because it was unbalanced after he had tried to separate the two sides of himself and also disrupted the Yin and Yang balance of his body and soul.

(Image from wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Jekyll_and_Mr._Hyde_(character)#/media/File:Jekyll-mansfield.jpg)

Around the time that Jekyll stopped taking the drug he looked sickly. Utterson came to see him and he had "his death-warrant written legibly upon his face. The rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly balder and older; and yet it was not so much, these tokens of a swift physical decay that arrested the lawyer's notice, as a look in the eye and quality of manner that seemed to testify to some deep-seated terror of the mind." (pg. 27-28) Jekyll's addiction to the drug forced him eventually to take it against his will, despite the fact that he set up a rule himself not to take it. When he felt an urge to do it, it was because he was "seized again with those indescribable sensations that heralded the change; and I had but the time to gain the shelter of my cabinet, before I was once again raging and freezing with the passions of Hyde. It took on this occasion a double dose to recall me to myself; and alas! Six hours after, as I sat looking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to be re-administered." (pg. 67) Either way, if something is outlawed by oneself or by a society, it doesn't mean the addiction, the need, or something else along these lines will not come in and break the rules that have been set up.

However this issue isn't black and white at all, and no one should view it that way, because it has happened throughout history as well as happening in TV shows, books, and movies.
 Outlawing something, whether it be a religion, medicine, books, etc. has happened many times throughout... The Nazis outlawed books that they disagreed with and deeply censored them, even burning them as well as deeply hurting and killing people who were Jewish. The British in the 18th century censored Americans' letters to one another which caused the Americans to create their own postal service. King Henry VIII caused Catholics to have to hide their religious beliefs and some were forced to create a safe haven in their home so that when people came looking the people who were of that religion would not be noticed. Recently the book, Harry Potter, was almost taken off the shelves (and some people have succeeded in getting it removed) because some people were scared of the ideas that the book presented. Not every time that something is censored means the thing itself is evil, or that the people who are doing the now illegal thing are evil. It is often the censors that are evil.

We should also keep in mind that censorship can be really hurtful to people because it can also be used as discrimination against people they don't agree with, which is seen in history, but also represented quite well in another Star Trek episode...

When T'Pol from Star Trek: Enterprise in the episode "Stigma" unwillingly participated in a mind-meld which was illegal (and considered dangerous in her time-line), the Vulcans were not willing to give her a cure or a treatment for it and looked down on her because of it. It was illegal in their minds, and also uncivil. T'Pol even comments in the episode about how unfair the discrimination is by saying "There are no rules telling you to oppress minorities" (Ep. "Stigma")

The problem about taking censorship or criminalizing something lightly in your stories is that you can really hurt people who have indeed gone through similar things and felt discrimination because of it, so you do have to also keep in mind the hardships of it and how it may force people to hide who they are.

In any case no one should take censorship lightly. As a creative artist you have to be wary of that because people like us have been censored throughout history. And one day it could be our own writing that is censored, which is a scary thought, but you have to keep it in mind when writing a story involving censorship.

As for writing about censorship in your story, you probably want to bear these thoughts in mind..

1. Is the world censoring something potentially good? and why?

2. Do I view the thing that the world sees as potentially bad as bad as well? And why? 

3. How does it affect the world now since the thing is censored? and why?

4. Does it affect a minority or a majority? and why?

5.  Does the censoring of the thing, hurt a group of people's belief systems in any way? and why?

6. Does the censorship support another group of people's belief systems? and why? How and why did the thing get censored or turned illegal? And why? 

7. What happens if the thing gets uncensored or becomes legal? 

8. What happened to get the thing to be censored or to become illegal to begin with? 

9. Are a majority of people going to be upset at all if the thing is uncensored or decriminalized? 

10. Was the thing harmful in any way? Or was it something people deeply cared about? 

11. What happens if someone breaks the law? Is it a harsh or more gentle punishment? 

12. Does this censorship or criminalization remind you of any historical events or event? 

13. Does society hurt or make fun of the people who do the censored or illegal thing? Are the people who do the thing a minority? 

14. How do people hide that they do the thing? And is it possible to hide?

15. if people are banished for doing it? What stops other people from protesting? 

16. if people get killed for doing it? What stops protests from happening? And does the fear of getting killed motivate people to continue doing it? 

17. Do any of your characters do the illegal thing? And why do they do the illegal thing? 

18. if your character doesn't do the illegal thing is it because of religious beliefs or something else? 

I hope these world building questions are useful. Feel free to copy and paste them into whatever you are using and answer them. Last time I made character developing questions I realized there weren't enough for myself or for an another person to think deeply enough about it, so I added more this time for world-building. Enjoy! 

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How does your Fantasy or Science Fiction world's censorship affect the world? And what is the censorship exactly, what is the government censoring? 

-Quinley