Putting this in writing because, at heart, this is a writing issue for me.
I'm reading a story about a man who's portrayed as this super compassionate person when he nurses a goat back to health and in between chapters he's hungrily eating lamb stew. Like do you know where that comes from?
It's really annoying because it's just so jarring. I'm not saying that you can't be a good person while eating meat, but I wish it wasn't that thoughtles. It's a trope that's frustratingly common.
One of the most famous examples is Steven Universe. I try to go easy on the character, given his youth and upbringing, but the writers should have addressed it. I won't expect veganism right off the bat, but it felt strange that his thoughts on eating meat didn't come up any time he ate meat. And eating meat shows up in several plot-intensive scenes. It's a shame too because he's a half human and half alien that doesn't need to eat. And the plot features themes of oppression and imperialism.
I just wish character writing wasn't so bad sometimes. Just give your main character a different trait if you want to describe eating meat. It's not that hard, is it?
-edit: I'm not trying to spark another struggle session, I just hate seeing character disconnects like that where it's not even brought up. It's legit just bad writing. You can have a protagonist eat meat and still have a good person.
The particular story I was reading featured a contemporary adult temporarily living at a farm. He cares about particular animals there but the author makes a fumble by not even drawing a connection between the goat he befriends and the ones he eats. If his personality wasn't such a Mary Sue, and the author didn't mention it every five pages, I could've ignored the dissonance.
The only time I’ve seen the “loves animals but eats them” character done well was a chefs table episode about this Italian butcher. My wife met him while studying abroad there and said he’s a wonderful guy with a huge personality. The mini doc goes into how he loves animals and wanted to be a vet at first but had to take over the family butcher shop when his dad fell ill to support his family. It’s a very conflicting portrayal because he simultaneously is very proud of his work as a butcher/chef, but also loves his animals and at one point he actually tears up while talking about the butchering process. Really interesting watch. I’ll see if I can find the name of the episode
S6E2 Dario Cecchini
Thanks! That sounds interesting. I didn't mean it to sound like you can't eat meat to love animals or be a good person. I was just speaking to a particular trope where the character motivations are out of sync with their other actions while not reflecting on it at all.
Capitalism puts a lot of pressure on compassionate people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do or like. It sucks because so many parts of society have exploitation deeply entrenched.