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.
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?
“Alright, so uh, it looks like maybe it was space global warming? Like the evil bad robot gods are trying to stop the literal end of this galaxy while still leaving life alone while it’s not actively destroying the literal stars?”
“Well, uh, no, actually. We talked to their devs and uh, it turns out they’re just really fucking stupid.”
“What?”
“Yeah they just suck a lot, that’s their whole thing. The robots are really fucking stupid and they’re doing the dumbest thing they could and they’re so fucking stupid that even though they know they shouldn’t be doing this they don’t have an off switch so they just keep doing it.”
“What?”
“Yeah…”