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.
That's interesting. I can't imagine being on that side of animal care like for a farm and then just eating steak. It's not surprising though because in the world, veterinary care is literally made into a business under capitalism. It's easy to eat commodities.
Well generally people only like cute looking animals, like kittens, dogs, rabbits, and turtles sometimes
They couldn't care less about cows or pigs
counterpoint: plenty of people find cows and pigs cute yet still eat them. they'll still get distressed when they see animal cruelty toward living animals and actively choose to avoid anything that reminds them that what they're eating was once cute.
I once watched the Hormel Farms meat cutting promotional documentary from the 50's with a friend and they were grossed and horrified up until the exact moment the meat was sliced into bacon strips and the reaction went instantly to "ooh I'd eat that"