I’m joking with the meme, but it’s an interesting how plot armor unintentionally places value on people’s lives in fiction.

It’s telling that censorship laws decide who it is and isn’t acceptable to kill. Just thinking about violence against sentient robots and how that’s normalized in things like Samurai Jack.

Like we know the robot has thoughts and feelings, like they’ll try to run to save themselves or plead for mercy, but a character can still heroic after essentially killing a non-human who’s acting like how we understand humans.

I feel like there’s something dangerous in how easily we can depict appropriate targets of violence. Not just robots, but anybody deemed as less than human are allowed to be more put at risk.

us-foreign-policy

Unnamed people are killed in superhero fights all the time. But unless they are of a class of characters like protagonists, they are collateral damage at best.

I think Plot Armor as a trope needs more class consciousness and awareness around how deciding who gets to be protected is often an unconscious political belief.

What about you though? Any tropes in media you’d like to see explored more or written with a leftist understanding?

  • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    I don’t ever need to read another story where the protagonist is seemingly of humble origins but is secretly a VERY SPECIAL person, perhaps even the one FORETOLD BY PROPHECY

    If it wasn’t a compelling basis for a story, it wouldn’t be used so much. But after the first thousand stories like that it’s enough already

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      It’d be neat for a humble origins character to survive and endure with the help of friends and a little luck. Maybe not as superficially “special” for it, but grounded enough where their survival and success might actually be compelling to read about.

    • TheDialectic [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      You know why the people who have inherrited the status and power to greenlight stories do so for stories about nepotism babies saving the world? It is kinda sad really.

      • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        Hella spoilers for the original Mistborn trilogy:

        spoiler

        The Hero of Ages never got the chance to fulfill his prophecy, because the local guide with him killed him and replaced him and ends up becoming the Big Bad of the first novel. It’s later revealed he was preventing an even Bigger Bad from breaking out in between all the evil, selfish empire bullshit he got up to.