#thinking about media

[a-particular-quetzalcoatl]

Narrative Weight and Desensitization to Death

Thinking about the end of Destiny 2: Forsaken, and an interesting trend that I've noticed concerning the treatment of death in certain media.

What is it about certain games dancing around the concept of taking a life?

A problem with a lot of poor storytelling in games is the inability to give any serious narrative weight to character death, ESPECIALLY if the player character is indirectly or directly responsible. One of the things I'd like to argue in this little essay is how the mitigation of any responsibility is detrimental as a whole, and that the argument for the infantization of the playing audience is ultimately a weak one.

Warning: Discussion of serious topics including death, murder, and executions.

So let's talk about the ending of Destiny 2: Forsaken as an example. For those who don't know the plot of Forsaken, I will quickly review it with minimal spoilers.

Forsaken is a DLC of the mainline of Destiny 2 which follows the player (known as the Guardian), on a quest for revenge after a man by the name of Uldren Sov kills someone that the Guardian had gotten to know fairly well over the course of the game. Hunting down the forces that Uldren has accumulated around himself, you eventually come before the man himself, who reveals that he has been manipulated by an entity disguised as his assumed deceased sister. But he is still responsible for his actions, and as the entity is defeated, the Guardian goes to kill him with a single shot to the head.

Or at least, that's what you would think, right?

Instead, out of nowhere, an NPC that you have been speaking to for a majority of the questline appears out of thin air and essentially agrees to fire their gun at the same time as you. The question I have is: why?

Why was this considered necessary? To understand why this decision was made, we have to go to the mitigation of psychological trauma in firing squads. Or why firing squads exist in the first place on a psychological level.

Firing squads reduce the psychological trauma of each individual by dispersing responsibility. Essentially, by having every person fire at once, it is uncertain who was responsible for ending the life of the person on the other side. There are also cases of blanks being loaded into the majority of the guns to make it difficult to tell who is responsible. As an individual, you can delude yourself into believing you have no responsibility.

By providing the NPC at the end of Forsaken, Destiny attempts to protect the player from the actions of the story following through... which ultimately makes the ending of the story fall flat. Forsaken is a story of revenge, and I think ultimately its futility. Uldren is dead at the end of the day, but what does that really mean? People are still dead, and your mad crusade has not made them live again. It is your revenge, so it is—it should be—your responsibility to see it through. But with the ending as it is, you can ultimately dust your hands off of any responsibility, and thus the narrative weight of the character's decisions is barely felt.

We see this mitigation of any sort of responsibility everywhere. The refusal to have player characters be responsible for deaths, refusing to develop the person on the other end of a narratively heavy death, the lack of any real consequences for decisions... and that point is the most serious of all.

Lack of responsibility for your actions is not a trait you should foster, yet we see it everywhere. Writers choose to infantize their audiences by pulling punches as conceivably (and inconceivably) as possible, preferring to remove any narrative weight of death rather than shock the person on the other end of the controller. But as a result, this only worsens the desensitization to death by adding another layer of dispersed responsibility to the already existing disconnect between player and character.

This isn't always the case, of course. There are games that aren't attempting to tell a serious story, so they choose to keep it light-hearted. But for a game that is trying to tell a story with heavier topics, it's a cop-out to tell the audience that there are no consequences to their actions.

We have grown afraid of hurting our audience. But in telling a painful, sorrowful story, to reach a person's heart is often to hurt them. For if we can hurt them in this fictional moment, perhaps one day when the danger and pain is real they will know sorrow and know that they too can survive

#desensitization of death #critique #ramblings #thinking about media #destiny 2 #destiny the game #text post #dispersion of responsibility #...society? #writing in general #narrative weight #destiny 2 forsaken

[floorpancakes]

#thinking about media #idk what to tag this #romance #? #idk lol #gender stupid #imagining someone trying to do a non binary version of this trope is cracking me up #like ....idk fuck umm uwoh my pixie cut feels so choppy when im arnd uuuuu....my flat chest is as small as ur big shoulders uwu #even this is vastly inaccurate and too funny to work but it definitely feels like offensive stereotyping so its along the right lines #needs some more workshopping jk lol #anyway it stresses me tf out #anime #marvellong at someone becoming strong or having big shoulders or being cool or whatever OUTSIDE of this framework is fine obviously #but dammit its the framing love as an embrace of normative restrictive values that stresses me the fuck out #its like saying youre not in love with the person youre just paying a compliment to how well theyre fitting into a box thats not ... #also lets b real these descriptor tropes tend to lean rly hard on the man being macho and the woman being weak but we all saw that coming #anyway i love cheese gimme cheese but this isnt cheese this is dick cheese

[shadow-and-purgatory]

This obviously depends on the TYPE of bad, but it’s my personal opinion that a piece of media thats disappointing is actually worse than one that’s just Bad

#this is abt vld #ramblimgs #late night ramblimgs #listen I have thoughts #thinking about media #and like. what is Good vs Enjoyable vs Bad vs Disappointing

[badolmen]

People against piracy fail to realize that no, I can’t just ‘buy it.’ They stopped making DVDs and Blu-Rays. They’re barely offering digital copies for download. I am not spending money I could use for food or bills to pay for a subscription service just so I can always have access to a beloved piece of media. Especially not when the service will remove media on a whim without concern for how the loss of access to that piece will make its artistic conservation nigh impossible.

For example, I recently learned that Disney+ had an original film called Crater. It’s scifi, family friendly, and seems cool - I would love to buy it as a holiday gift for my little brother! But: it’s exclusive to D+ and THEY REMOVED IT LITERALLY MONTHS AFTER ITS RELEASE.

The ONLY way I can directly access this film is through piracy. The ONLY available ‘copies’ of this film are hosted on piracy websites. Disney will NEVER release it in theaters, or as something to buy, and it may NEVER return to the streaming service. It will be LOST because we aren’t allowed to purchase it for personal viewing. If I can’t pay to own it, I won’t pay for the privilege of losing it when corporate decides to put it in a vault.

So yes, I’m going to pirate and support piracy.

#ra speaks #piracy #media piracy #pirate to make hondo ohnaka proud #obligatory ‘don’t fucking pirate small authors/artists works wtf dude’ statement. #anyone who’s seen my media bitching before knows I’m a hype man for indie films this ain’t about them #this is about corporate streaming services killing physical media bc sales numbers are less impressive than number of streams #edit: USAmericans stop telling me to buy DVDs and blurays at Walmart. think outside your borders for a hot sec. fun thought exercise. #your experiences are not universal #edit: WHO GOT THIS TO 100k. I JUST WANT TO TALK (this post is my second to hit 100k woahg.) #in other news: fix your fucking posture. drink some fucking water. and go the fuck to bed if it’s late bc it’s for me rn. peace and light.

[lackadaisycal-art]

I'm getting so sick of major female characters in historical media being incredibly feisty, outspoken and public defenders of women's rights with little to no realistic repercussions. Yes it feels like pandering, yes it's unrealistic and takes me out of the story, yes the dialogue almost always rings false - but beyond all that I think it does such a disservice to the women who lived during those periods. I'm not embarrassed of the women in history who didn't use every chance they had to Stick It To The Man. I'm not ashamed of women who were resigned to or enjoyed their lot in life. They weren't letting the side down by not having and representing modern gender ideals. It says a lot about how you view average ordinary women if the idea of one of your main characters behaving like one makes them seem lame and uninteresting to you.

#feminism #media criticism #this doesn't apply to media with large casts of female characters where one or the other is uncommonly outspoken or ahead of her time #and it is dealt with realistically in the setting #im not saying women in the past couldnt be wild and headtsrong and revolutionary #i just think treating it as an essential whenever a female love interest gets added to a historical story about some man is wearing

[foundfamilywhump]

the question, you see, is not ‘is it too ooc for this character to cry’ but rather ‘what circumstances would push this character to cry’

this is the whump wisdom, go forth and make that character cry

#gav gab #‘it’s sooooooo ooc to make that character cry’ no you see I think it is ooc #to put this character through absolute unimaginable hell physically and emotionally #and NOT let them cry about it #sometimes canon framing and media format and genre #limit the ability to let a character emotionally Feel all the insanely traumatic shit that’s happened to them #that doesn’t mean that in a different medium or genre exploring these things #it would be ooc for them to do so #send tweet. let those characters feel and emote. it’s not ooc or cringe and anyone who tells you it is is a reductive dick

[secondbeatsongs]

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

#the truman show #sbs rambles #I keep thinking about how children on popular youtube channels should probably have laws to protect them #social workers assigned to them maybe #I dunno #they did not sign up to have their lives sold for profit #but here we are #tho #I guess none of us signed up for it #and our data is harvested more than ever #god #high-tech capitalism sucks turns out #OH WAIT because tumblr is bad at getting context sometimes #let me specify: #I am not saying that the movie The Truman Show is bad or that it normalizes this #like all good sci-fi (because it is kind of sci-fi) it's there to warn us of what the future could hold #and it did that in a very good way - it's a beautiful movie #I could see someone with a bad faith take assuming I meant that it was part of the problem #it absolutely wasn't. it didn't normalize this; we did #youtube did and social media #it's us that's the problem #or more specifically: big corporations and a lack of regulation #that's the origin of most modern problems

[andiaquarium-moved]

ohhg my gohd

#aaand post #thinking about media

[bruciemilf]

“Bruce is emotionally incompetent and can’t step outside his own morality” yeah it’s a character flaw.

“Dick is extremely stubborn and thinks he’s right all the time” yeah it’s a character flaw.

“Jason has hypocritical tendencies” yeah it’s a character flaw.

“ Tim is entitled and doesn’t think about people when seeking results, and often acts uncaring” yeah it’s a character flaw.

“Damian is rude and bratty” yeah, it’s a character flaw.

Also, some people may not even regard everything listed above as flaws.

Having negative traits allows incredible flexibility within your characters, what makes them intriguing, what makes them easy to relate to. If you want to write people, then write people. But they can’t be good and clean all the time.

#bruce wayne #dc comics #dc #batman #jason todd #dick grayson #tim drake #I’m really glad we’re growing out of the ‘my favorite is flawless because they’re a good person who has done both wrong ever’ phase #you can absolutely enjoy media that has imperfections and blemishes. these characters should be flawed. they should get to be shitty people #sometimes. they should get a chance to grow and extend and evolve as individuals. because I think that’s what we need to see more #it’s not about being a shitty person. it’s about STAYING a shitty person #text #meta #batfamily

[stil-lindigo]

an ex-zionist jewish man recently went a bit viral on tiktok for sharing exactly how he sees zionism tie israel to the jewish identity and his personal experience with breaking away from it - I think it’s a really great watch.

He also made a follow up talking specifically about how he learned to humanise Palestinians, and a really integral part of it was his school, which would often bring in Palestinian speakers who’d share their perspective (here’s a link to it).

#tiktok against all odds inspires a lot of hope in me bc of how prevalent palestinian support is over there #so much of the younger generation is so media literate and articulate about standing up to oppression #and getting perspectives like this I think is really beneficial when it comes to understanding where Zionist talking points come from #I don’t particularly think right now our priority should be reaching out to zionists or anything #it should always be Palestinians at the forefront of activism our activism #but this is educational. Zionism is not Judaism and this proves that. #it’s never too late to turn away from oppressive propaganda and have empathy for your fellow man #palestine #israel #free palestine #from the river to the sea

[goodluckdetective]

Look, this is what moral OCD is like for me:

I walk past a piece of paper. I don’t pick it up because I had a long day at work and it’s very cold outside. This then becomes my internal monologue:

I didn’t pick up that piece of paper, I should have. Don’t I care about the environment? It’s not my trash, I shouldn’t have to pick it up. But also that’s how these things happen right? We place the blame on others as our environment degrades. It was just a piece of paper, it’s not like it can do that much damage. But also how do I know: I’m not an environmental expert. Maybe stray paper scraps are killing the frogs. You’re literally killing the frogs. You should look up how many frogs die a year so you know how shitty you are-No stop it.

I care about the environment, and I recycle and I joined green activism movements but is that enough? I could be doing more. I should be doing more. I should donate my entire check to charity. But isn’t it self serving to think that my one check could help that much? Do I really think I’m that important, how self entitled and-no stop it, reset! You are obsessing and if you fall for it, you will not eat dinner. Let it go.

Okay it’s just a piece of paper. It’s okay you skipped it this once: it could have had something dangerous on it. Yeah that makes sense. But also, that means I’m putting my own safety over trying to help the environment, which is very selfish of me. I’m just one shitty person: god how could I be so self absorbed. I should have picked up the piece of paper. I’m so selfish, and shitty and-no, no, stop it! This is not helpful. It’s fine.

It’s been a long day and I’m cold, that’s not a crime- no that’s being selfish again, you’re making excuses. You’re just a lazy piece of shit who doesn’t care about others, and selfish and God the fact you’re thinking this much about one piece of paper shows how selfish you are, you care more about if you’re a good person than anything else, you’re a piece of shit, you’re a piece of shit, YOU’RE A PIECE OF SHIT.

I get home and open up Tumblr. The first post I see says “if you don’t reblog this post about the environment you’re as complicit as an oil billionaire.” I close my computer and resign myself to looking up the state frog populations until I go to bed.

I don’t eat dinner.

The amount of frogs that die a year is somewhere from 200 million to over 1 billion.

#moral ocd #ocd #scrupulosity #Iz rambles #this is okay to reblog I think people really don’t get it #mental illness #the issue with the social media post is not that it exists or that OP even feels about this issue: the issue is it validates my ocd #I don’t obsess about frogs but that is a bummer stat I do rather like them #obsessive compulsive disorder

[appalachianapologies]

There are many new friends on the archive, and many are young and have only known social media, which is why I wanted to say something!

Ao3 does not have an algorithm! It isn't a social media site, it's an archive.

Posting fics on Tumblr isn't the same as posting fics on Ao3

Ao3 is like a giant virtual bookshelf, and everyone is able to add their own stories to the bookshelf, all stored with different tags and different fandoms. Works are automatically sorted by newest to oldest, but filters, looking at bookmarks, and using the search function can change that.

Certain works are not pushed to the top like social media posts. More kudos and reads don't push a single work to more viewers by some algorithm. Unless otherwise filtered, works will be at the top of the page based on how recent it was posted.

Smaller fandoms get less views, less kudos, less bookmarks, and larger fandoms get more simply because of the number of people inside the fandom.

Ao3 is a giant virtual bookshelf- there is no algorithm, and there is no man behind the shelf pushing certain books forward.

Happy reading, and if you'd like to have more people notice a fic, why not share it with them! Send a dm to a fandom friend and it might turn into one of their favorite fics!

#ao3 #archive of our own #organization for transformative works #i have admittedly only been a member of the committee for a couple of years BUT ive been a member on ao3 since i was much younger #and it took me a hot second to understand how ao3 works; so i wanted to write a lil post about it after seeing this comment #no shade or blame to the person who wrote this by the way! #after being on social media so much it's a completely understandable mistake and i totally get it #and in fandoms populated by younger ppl typically it's even more understandable! #so absolutely no hate no shade no passive aggressiveness #but i do think it is important to learn how the archive works #so if you'd like to share this it would be greatly appreciated! <3 #okay have a good day sorry this post/tags became so long haha

[redysetdare]

enough stories about how someone learns to truely be happy through love. i want a story where someone is desperately seeking out love thinking it's the only way to be happy only for them to learn by the end that happiness is what they make of it and they don't need love at all to make it.

#aro #aromantic #ace #asexual #aroace #loveless aro #loveless #non-partnering #nonpartnering #non partnering #nonamorous #aplatonic #enough of amatonormative tropes in media!!! enough 'you're miserable without love' stories!!! #less “you're too focused on ambitions to make you happy that you dont let yourself fall in love” #more “you're too focused on finding love to make you happy that you wont let yourself live” #more “there is so much more to life than love and so much more that can bring your happiness if you just let yourself experience it.” #maybe I should write this story #and when i say love i mean all love. not just romantic love. #which is why i tagged aplatonic too #while i mostly see this trope in terms of romantic love i think there's something to be said about #telling stories where people are perfectly content alone too #it doesn't have to be sad or pathetic to not have friends by choice. they dont have to be a miserable person to not have friends #i think we need more variety in stories where it shows people just content in their lack of love or relationships in all shapes #not everyone wants a family not everyone wants friends not everyone wants a partner not everyone wants love #some of us are content without. that should be explored without the need to fix it.

[cemeterything]

i'm such a huge fucking fan of having and using magic requiring effort. whether mental, physical, or both. i'm so fond of magic systems that make you sweat, bleed, cry and get your hands dirty when you use them. i love it when powers are earned, not inherent, through years of study and/or exercizing them like a muscle. and i love it when a seemingly effortless display of power is terrifying because of this.

#🐉 #thinking about eragon. locked tomb. fullmetal alchemist. #all media where the magic system relies on you to identify and make your strengths work for you

[hamletthedane]

Love that Oppenheimer is a deeply disturbing horror movie about a man forced to accept that he is, in a person, the representative manifestation of mankind’s evil in committing one of the greatest horrors of human history - LITERALLY acting as the modern Prometheus, tormented by his sins for the remainder of time. Knowing that he will never be pitied and his actions will forever be utterly unforgivable because the blood of genocide and the potential of total human annihilation will eternally drip from his hands.

But also the simultaneous indictment by the film that to blame a single person for the Manhattan Project is to refuse to accept your own capacity for great evil if the ends ever seem to justify the means, and the culpability of every member of a species that lets itself create something so unspeakably terrible.

Hate that twitter’s take on such a nuanced and brilliantly handled examination of those issues is “movie bad because protagonist not evil enough.”

#what’s that quote about the problem with othering the enemy in media is that we can no longer see our own reflection in their eyes #oppenheimer’s motivations WERE sympathetic that’s the POINT #we SHOULD feel uncomfortable with our sympathy for him - the film goes out of its way to make us feel uncomfortable about it #we should be uncomfortable with the fact that we might have made the same decisions as him in his place #yes he’s evil but his evilness represents the evil that we might all accept in ourselves #twitter simply cannot handle nuanced takes on things ig (tumblr does though - the posts on here have been surprisingly excellent) #oppenheimer #(tldr - look if you walk out of Oppenheimer thinking it somehow celebrates the man then you may need to retake 9th grade Literature srry) #films

[horse-head-farms]

🪼slime-kisser Follow

all these posts like “don’t shop at boatem they support cannibalism” “the evil empire is a crypto scam” “don’t buy at octagon they’re trying to destroy the fabric of the universe” where the FUCK else am I supposed to shop????

🐠xbcrafted Follow

may i recommend horse head farms? we sell a variety items for agreeable prices and have alternate payment plans which mean you don’t have to spend a single diamond! you can find us via the nether hub <3

🪲yeswingsforlife Follow

do NOT shop at Horse Head Farms! Their items are incredibly overpriced (you can find grass, logs, etc for better prices) and this “alternative payment scheme” is actually signing an IOU. If you don’t know what that is, IOU stands for “I Owe You” and is a legal document that, when possessed, someone can force you to do anything. Literally anything. LegalKnight does a great video going into detail about it. According to this article, Horse Head Farms have just invested in building an auction house, possibly to sell off the IOUs they’ve acquired, so scummy CEOs could force you to work at their companies. Not to mention, their owners are incredibly sketchy, xBCrafted regularly tweets conspiracy theories and Hypnotizd invests in crypto

😵‍💫hypnotizd Follow

youre wrong actually, i have had nothing but brilliant service at Horse Head Farms. IOUs arent sketchy theyre normal pieces of paper. #shoptoday

🪲yeswingsforlife Follow

… you’re literally one of the owners

🐸cottagecoreliving Follow

to answer the original question, here’s a list of more reputable businesses that you can support instead!

Tays Trees

HIVE-DR8

Joe Hills’ Flower Stalls

Big Eyes

🥚dragon-tegg Follow

hey not to derail this post or anything but is anyone going to mention how OP literally fetishises slime hybrids???

( 7,067 notes )

🌃elytramoments Follow

hate when i crashland in the lava biome

🐶renrobert Follow

you mean the nether

🌃elytramoments Follow

i do not

#i think it’s a national park or something #idk its like this for miles #its near boatem

( 15.4k notes )

👁️big-eyes Follow

This weekend at Big Eyes we are having a #SALE of up to 99% OFF! EVERY item has a discount! Don’t waste your diamonds, shop at Big Eyes!

😍sexy-papa-k Follow

sweetfaces! we are going into debt! please buy ❤️❤️💕❤️🍆😭😭😭❤️ -papa k

👁️big-eyes Follow

kerlais why woudl you reblog on that account

😍sexy-papa-k Follow

we need all the reach we can get bubbles! ❤️😝❤️❤️🍆💕 -papa k

( 14 notes )

#always love stuff where it shows what social media is like in a fictional universe #anyways i headcanon season 8 had normal people going around and shopping in those shops. its so funny to think about #i’ve seen posts like these before and thought i’d have a go at them! #tbh i don’t think c!hypno would have a tumblr but for the purposes of this. its funny #fake post #unreality #<- i think i tag that for this? #hermitcraft #hermitblr #hermitcraft season 8 #hermitcraft s8 #hhf