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Dark Souls I hear has a lot of neat social critique, as does Bloodborne; I'm unaware if Sekiro's story has wider cultural ramifications though but that's probably because as a westerner I'm not going to immediately grasp the themes being conveyed.
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Nov 2, 2021 22:59
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RBA Starblade posted:Armored Core has more immediately obvious themes. 4 and For Answer basically beat you over the head with what it's saying about corporations and climate change. DS1 and 2 have on their face something to say about kings and "chosen ones", 3 is strictly specifically about how much the devs want to not make Dark Souls anymore and almost nothing else. I don't think how obvious the themes are makes them better at exploring those things. The atmosphere of the souls games I feel capture well the feeling of being grinded to dust beneath the gears of an immoral system of perpetual (and cyclical) oppression. And if its something the souls games do well its atmosphere; sometimes storytelling in this fashion is not only non-obvious its also non-linear; it's environmental. If you want a game that's good at beating you over the head with its themes and are also well realized games in pursuit of those themes that's Final Fantasy 7 for you, but I'm not really suggesting games with the idea being they're the best at telling a certain kind of story. I think whats "on their face" about any game, isn't entirely relevant to acknowledging their themes or exploring deeper readings of the texts. On its "face" most games are just running around and doing things and I think that's an uncharitable way of reading the themes and storytelling; like that one DS2 reviewer who called the fateweaver "some old lady" and glossed over the cinematic language DS2 was using to tell its narrative. The "plot" involving things like being the Chosen Undead and your various quests are the plot but they aren't the whole sum of the story which likewise isn't the entirety of the narrative. Consider the way the games tell you one thing, you need to light the fire to extend the age of fire; but the of fire as we've seen has been burning up its fuel and has been running on fumes, on the sacrifices of heroes over and over again for who knows how long and for what? An age that has long since been hollowed (heh) out and is the shadow of what it once was, no one remembers anything, everyone is suffering. Then you got people telling you the age of Dark, that will follow the age of fire is well, dark and scary so don't do it! Anything but that! There's an very simple analogy there perhaps between people who argue for the status quo over more drastic changes despite how long everything has ceased to be functioning for so long; and then the games cleverly still give you the choice as to what to do and every bit of research and lore introspection just makes the hole deeper in terms of what's there to explore about the ramifications of these choices. Then there's I think the idea that maybe the age of fire and the age of dark have been trading places forever and ever, just switching one horrible status quo with another; that's powerful, I don't have the literary context to properly process it, but there's something there and its subtle and you got to figure it out for yourself.
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Nov 3, 2021 01:17
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I think allegorical social critiques; meta-interpretations and so forth are pretty neat; there's even a thread over here by another goon in the LP forums that's likewise pretty neat as it does a lot of meta interpretations from the various Soulsborne games and its absolutely my jam. I'm kinda just confused by your last sentence, like I wouldn't be surprised that mythology would contain themes or readings that are widely applicable or are clearer in conveying a given message but I'm not sure how it quite relates to what I was talking about; like I agree and find it interesting to bring up buddhism to contextualize the narrative in DS2; but I'm not sure what it means for those themes to exist as a cursory reading somewhere else. Beyond being a many-thousands of years old philosophical tradition in use by millions of people; I don't think its meanings are more important than the reading in another different work that happen to share cursory readings? The bible and Tolkien's stuff share lots of stuff but I'm not picking up a bible for it; I'm picking up the Silmilirion. If I wanted to find the oldest, or most well known origin of certain themes, tropes, etc I think that would make sense to start with Buddhism, or the Epic of Gilgamesh etc but I don't think that's what I was aiming for? Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Nov 3, 2021 |
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Nov 3, 2021 02:02
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fool of sound posted:My point is that dark souls as a series don't really spend much time portraying a society or even interpersonal relations, I feel based off of my memories of DS1 and then extensive LP watch-alongs that this isn't right; there's a lot of side quests and NPC conversations and I do think the Souls series does a lot of world building and does spend time establishing a lot of this; its just a lot of it is also in item descriptions and the environment. fool of sound posted:and as such any ideological messaging is going to be several steps removed from the text. In dark souls 2's case, the main character's journey is fundamentally personal journey to escape their personal samsara. I only have some memory of it but large sections of DS2 involves things like exploring the conquest and enslavement/extermination of the Giants; the personal journey of the main character is in conjunction with the events of the story which explores the political circumstances and past decisions of the kingdom, like its even in the map, the way various locations are just built layered on top of each other which is clearly a metaphor for something involving the way Empires are just built atop of the graveyards of past Empires and so on. The political is the personal and this is more so since your characters questline is all about becoming the next King and part of your journey is to wonder if this realm is even worth saving given the amount of blood its built on top of. Hbomberguy has a whole video about Dark Souls 2 and why he thinks its a very underrated game and he explores some of these arguments more. fool of sound posted:There's some tidbits of social commentary here and there but it's not really a focus of the narrative. But why? I feel like we're talking past each other here; I don't think something has to be the focus for it to be interesting and worth discussing. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I find it offputting to be told the Simpsons did it first in response to bringing up something I found interesting on its own merits.
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Nov 3, 2021 02:47
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fool of sound posted:I think if you want to make an argument about the social commentary you should probably make it, rather than largely just alluding to them. Noting that a theme exists is not, itself, commentary. What specific bits of social commentary do you think the Dark Souls games are making and why are they interesting? Seems like maybe I erroneously assumed it would be fine to point out works that appear to be the focus of a lot of analysis? So that being said I did write the post prior to this current post where I point out a couple of things. I also linked to Sibyl Disobedience's LP thread which delves into a meta-contextual LP and meta-analysis of the Soulsborne games as a whole. And here's a link to Hbomberguy's video that I alluded to; I don't have timestamps as to when and where discusses the themes of DS2 but the whole video is fun. There's also Steph Sterling of the Jimquisition as a video about the (politics) in Dark Souls, its a little tongue-in-cheek but I think its perfectly valid interpretation on its face that's worth taking seriously. For bloodborne I found SolePorpoise's video(s) to be interesting, especially one of his claims that Bloodborne basically improves on H.P Lovecraft's writings because through the mechanics also in this video I think?. Sole also puts a decent amount of thought into describing Dark Souls as being written and meant to be read as a myth as according to the writings of Joseph Cambell. I'm no expert but I find the video to be interesting and informs how I generally contextualize the Souls games and how I go about designing games. I also think that we can all look at a work and know, just know by looking at it, that something meaningful and deep is occurring here, but I/we just lack the requisite knowledge and context to process that meaning and intelligibly describe it but as you alluded to if all stories have commonality and kinda borrow from or reflect other older stories, folklore and myth than we're naturally since we're as human being intensely optimized for pattern recognition can tell that meaning is there the same way we can know that something is a bird and not a rock; we/I may not be able to identify the specific birb or describe why the beauty of the birb in flight is soothing, but that feeling definitely exists and is informed by substance. e: fool of sound posted:I admit that the connections between Dark Souls 1 and 3 are kind of lost on me, because I played DS1 a very long time ago and never revisited it because I didn't really enjoy it the way I did later games, so I'll tkae your word on the narrative here but I have to ask: what is the commentary here? That the powerful will sacrifice themselves and others to maintain their grip on power? Sure, but is that particularly interesting commentary? That's why I said the games have tidbits of social commentary; those themes are referred to in the worldbuilding but not really examined, again to my memory. As an aside, Hbomberguy I think in his bloodborne video describes a very interesting phenomena where people who went and played bloodborne, went back to DS1 and had more fun playing it in a more aggressive style of play with habits they learned/acquired from playing Bloodborne. So you might have fun going back and revisiting it. I ironically tricked myself into having a blast by playing a strategy I thought wouldn't at all work and would just be a gimmick but turns out to be the most fun way of playing the game, dual wielding swords and not using a shield at all. e2: Also gunna throw Jacob Geller's videos here too: Dark Souls 3 is Thinking of Ending Things and The Seductive Nightmare of Bloodborne's Chalice Dungeons I particularly love this one comment: Even when we have discovered all there is to be discovered, the abyss calls out endlessly and we will find more regardless of whether or not there is any more. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Nov 3, 2021 |
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Nov 3, 2021 03:44
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IIRC I think what made Civil War interesting was that I largely agreed with Stark that regulation was necessary; I just didn't trust the US post-Hydra to be in that role. I think I'm not alone that a lot of the audience probably would sort themselves whichever way because it did provide a reasonable ideological conflict between Stark and Cap. I don't think the MCU in general takes a particular side, SWORD creating Not!Vision in WandaVision was bad not because they wanted to have a card up their sleeve in general; but because the commanding officer recklessly pursued that course of action despite the subject matter experts wanting more time for a peaceful resolution. In the first Avengers film with Loki I don't think it was particularly at the time revelatory that Shield was looking into making use of the Tesseract, some of the characters reacted that way for reasonable in universe reasons but everyone was under the influence of the scepter and our audience perspective was being deliberately warped by its effects. Fill Baptismal posted:I would probably be pretty ok with that! There is I feel, some nuance to this though. If its like My Hero Academia where to make use of your powers yeah you should probably be regulated and your powers acting in the interest of the public good; but if in practice it ended up just simply being oppressive beyond reason I think there's a line there, free willed sentient beings even if potentially dangerous through inherent metahuman abilities shouldn't have less rights. Like where do you draw the line? Consider Fantasy worlds where Magic exists and other sentient beings exist alongside regular humans. Jaxyon posted:As I've not read the series, it sounds like the Paul/Paul's son is a despot in order to force the galaxy to rise against him/them. So like the ultimate white saviorism. Which doesn't make it right. Counterpoint: Suppose you have a large multinational empire with a powerful aristocracy. You ascend the throne and want to make the nation a better place; but you have 100% certainty that none of your reforms will outlast you because the powerful interests of the aristocracy, capital, and the military-industrial complex will conspire to smother your reforms in their crib. There's basically kinda only one other option in such circumstances and that seems to be to me based on what I'm reading here, what Dune is about. What if the Russian Imperial family were good people with the ability to predict the future. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Nov 4, 2021 |
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Nov 4, 2021 02:43
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Jaxyon posted:Here's a link to the comics Civil War rundown The MCU Civil War isn't the Comics version of Civil War I think. fool of sound posted:I'm not super into either comic books or the MCU so I might be missing some context but I think the basic structure of Civil War is pretty interesting, the movie makes a bunch of noise about Cap's dedication to freedom and non-intrusion and whatever, but I think the more interesting reading is that the former weapons contractor of course has no issue throwing the power of Avengers behind a national interest, while the former soldier does. Despite his origin story, Stark is and has always been insulated from the effects of the American foreign policy apparatus and war machine, while Captain America deliberately bore the brunt of it out of nationalistic pride and is cost him everything, and that directly informs their worldviews. I feel like fairness demands that we don't so easily set aside Stark's origin story; he clearly saw how his weapons were being used to harm people, Americans and non-Americans and decided the only way to morally move forward was for Stark Industries to entirely stop producing weapons and then personally attended to destroying his weapons that ended up in the hands of terrorists like the Fake 10 Rings. That also isn't quite the plot of Civil War; the Sokovia Accords are a UN/Multinational Treaty signed by every nation to put the Avengers and all Metahumans under oversight and supervision. He isn't going into Civil War fighting his friends because he wants the Avengers to act according to US interests; the Avengers post-Winter Soldier were largely operating on their own as a vigilante force separate from the US government (and this is reinforced in Falcon where he specifically outlines how the Avengers do business to Bad Guy Captain America). He wants the Avengers to abide by the Accords and whatever exceptions were carved out for specifically them so they can continue to do what they do but under international oversight. Thunderbolt Ross is their liason as he's currently the Secretary of State which affirms to me that this is more of a international framework. International treaties have the force of Law in the US so from the US point of view the Accords feel like the US doing stuff but its just the USA implementing the terms of the treaty.
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Nov 4, 2021 03:15
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DarklyDreaming posted:I feel like Injustice's problem in general was that the writers didn't sit down and ask themselves "Who would willingly join evil Superman's regime and why?" when they really should have. Admittedly philosophizing on the nature of authoritarian regimes might have been beyond the scope of "Mortal Kombat with superheroes" I find the DC movies can sometimes be surprising subversive. Like in Red Son you have Soviet Supes killing Stalin to end the gulags; this presents interesting questions and implications about the main timeline Supes and the US prison system. Then you have the recent Injustice movie where supes forcefully stops the War on Terror and forces Israel and Palestine to agree to a proper settlement. When the DCAU swings it swings pretty hard. Sanguinia posted:To be fair, Steve's most explicit objection to the accords is specifically his worry about governmental interests binding the Avengers to act, or not act, against the objective good. It being the US or the UN doesn't really matter for the point. Steve's feelings about this are certainly informed by the revelations about Hydra controlling SHIELD and through it the US government, to the point that they almost enacted a plan to take over the world with those Insight Helicarriers. He's lost the ability to trust higher authorities and sees it as an abrogation of his personal responsibility to use the power he has for good ends. Completely agreed.
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Nov 4, 2021 04:18
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Sanguinia posted:At the risk of inviting ire for invoking the name of Moviebob, his video essay series on Batman v Superman's failures is particularly harsh on the movie for acting like it was going to go in this direction and cowarding out incredibly hard. In the time since Man of Steel, Superman has become a borderline messianic figure for the poor and downtrodden in many nations, saving them from natural disasters and the like without asking anything in return. Then he intervenes in an African conflict zone to rescue Lois and just leaves without thought for the fallout of his actions. A woman testifies before the US Congress about the atrocities done by the militants in reprisal for his actions. "I ask, how does he decide who to save? He answers to no one, not even I think to God." No worries, its a pretty good essay and as I'm sure you know I'm the last person to bother you about it.  I think that analysis hits it on the head where the movie seems to have no idea what kind of Superman he is; so instead of setting up an interesting ideological conflict that Batman and Superman need to resolve by punching each other it instead feels more like a contrived mess. When I look at the animated movies and say "When they take a swing and they swing hard" its more that, "Oh this scene is spicy", although I find Red Son asks a lot of questions but very indirectly and that makes it interesting to me. Like you have Lex Luthor who single handedly saves America from collapse by acting as Liberal democratic capitalism's cheat code in response to Superman being Communism's cheatcode and I end up feeling that the movie as a result basically says nothing about the respective systems and instead I suppose maybe says that regardless of system it shouldn't be up to gods walking among men forcing it to work. Which is also interesting because its almost kinda taking a swing at its own universe/franchise.
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Nov 4, 2021 14:36
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Main Paineframe posted:The problem is that even though the Marvel universe is supposed to have plenty of these mutants who don't really have any meaningful powers at all, X-Men as a whole is about people who do have these world-shaking powers getting into fights over the fate of the world. The stories are never about the people who don't really have powers. They're background characters to give a selfless heroic cause to the adventures of a squad of people who could fight tanks and win. I feel like this gets into the weeds, the broader question I think was nailed earlier; does actually having those kinds of powers justify depriving them of their human rights. I feel that in of itself is probably a whole topic without an easy answer. Because it isn't hard to adjust the lens and consider similar topics; what about people with really enhanced cybernetics that basically give them superhuman abilities; or genetic engineering to be stronger, faster, smarter; not as much as in comics but what about 30% better in all categories. Or aliens who might have abilities and adaptations that make them appear to be superhuman in some respects, but in all of the above there is a group of people who potentially are a risk. I think from the categorical imperative I feel if there's even 1 scenario where the answer is clearly and emphatically no we can't take away their rights, then we can't do it to any of them.
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Nov 5, 2021 05:48
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goethe.cx posted:I think that while many have interpreted Animal Farm and 1984 as critiques of the Soviet Union, Orwell really meant to praise the Soviet Union and critique the freaking liberals. Uh, I am pretty sure people mistakingly think Animal Farm is a critique of socialism, which is incorrect as Orwell was an English Socialist, but is is a critique of Stalin/the USSR, as Orwell fought in the Lincoln brigades and would've seen first hand the Stalinists kneecapping the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.
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Nov 18, 2021 22:28
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I don't believe Asimov was particularly a "cold warrior"; a lot of his writings/interviews emphasized the need for the US to cooperate with the USSR and was critical of a lot of US foreign policy esp. regarding Korea, Vietnam, etc. Just because someone wrote most of their work during the cold war I don't think makes them a cold war warrior assuming that's what you meant. e to add: As much as I respect and admire Asimov I am perplexed that someone as smart as him seems to not consider the writings of a novel as being metaphorical or figurative/thematic, and seems to be entirely hinging how he qualifies the writings of 1984 on the basis of how realistic or plausible it is. When nothing about the book is about predicting literally what will happen, but about trying to get across ideas. It's a bit of a case of narrative tunnel vision tbh. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Nov 19, 2021 |
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Nov 19, 2021 03:09
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Epic High Five posted:He was an odd bird in this sense, especially compared to a lot of his (insanely psychotic) contemporaries...but I'll reiterate that he gained absolutely nothing by taking Orwell to task in the face of a domestic machine that was determined to valorize his works. Okay so you agree he's no Tom Clancy then? Because that's what comes to mind when someone says "Cold War Warrior" to me; someone whose world view is reflecting in their writings as being about the confrontation between "East and West" which is nothing like Asimov. Asimov's writings even tend to buck this by having stories where a Soviet and American scientist need to cooperate to save the world etc. And yeah, Asimov is/was a member of the Humanist Society, and is my primary personal sociopolitical influence, so of course his works largely reflect an optimistic ideal of where scientific advancement should be for the betterment of all mankind which is a goal I can also get behind. I think Asimov is remembered for a little bit more than just getting one or two things right! He was the most prolific scifi writer of the 20th century with the Foundation series and I, Robot being basically the most famous and this on top of a massive catalogue of popular science articles/books. The 1980's sequels that tie I, Robot and Foundation together were fine; a bit of a twist but fine. Extra Credits has a series on Asimov and a lot of other scifi writers Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Nov 19, 2021 |
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Nov 19, 2021 03:33
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A Buttery Pastry posted:I haven't read the book, but isn't the eugenics program extremely long-running? That it produced someone capable of affecting great change could just as well be random chance, rather than a thousand years of effort actually succeeding. Not sure how you'd even show great man theory working. Like, the existence of individuals with what appears to be a massive impact on the course of history isn't proof of the theory in reality, so how do you "prove" it in fiction? IIRC from various clips doesn't it involve genetic engineering and spice? Like the Guild Navigators are people who accelerated their evolution by consuming vast amounts of spice. It's a little odd to be concerned about the moral implications of something "working" because of space magic?
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Nov 22, 2021 17:39
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I'm reminded of how in the Dune RTS you also had House Ordos throwing done in Dune and suddenly the Guild's quiet simmering rage at the Emperor's incompetence makes a lot more sense. The current discussion about the Heroes Journey also reminds of an interesting video by SolePorpoise about how Bloodborne subverts the Heroes Journey; primarily how the transition from gothic to cosmic horror basically shocks the player, the realization that they've been inconsequential bit players on a cosmic stage deeply disturbs the player, and everything suddenly feels wrong. e: to bring this back to Dune, I was looking into whether a Villainous version of the Heroes Journey exists, and it doesn't really seem there is one, which implies that the journey of a Hero or a Villain are the same with different destinations? Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Nov 28, 2021 |
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Nov 28, 2021 03:07
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Smeef posted:I've read an argument somewhere that the villain's journey is the same as the hero's, except the villain never changes. Even the tragic heroes who don't realize their mistake or whatever until the last moment still have that transformation. Hrm, I think Villains can change, just not always for the better, and there's probably at least some such examples of characters who become their true selves as a villain after reaching some sort of apotheosis.
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Nov 30, 2021 14:56
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I don't think most of that is right; he only was killed in the original timeline after enacting his plan with the stones which literally did eliminate half of all life. And he did the snap immediately after being wounded by Thor happened way after his talk with Dr. Strange. His encounters with the various Avengers/Guardians of the Galaxy/etc didn't change his mind in regards to his plan (but perhaps strengthened his conviction that only he is right). His new plan in the new timeline after seeing the Avengers undo his work is to hard reset everything. His plan was always eliminate half of all life, I'm not sure where you get the idea that he changed it during Infinity War. The idea of using the stones long term was never realistically going to be Thanos's plan because the radiation they emit will kill their user; its why in the MCU anyways Thanos has the Dwarves make the Gauntlet, to act as a safer way to use the stones long enough to do the Snap and then destroy them when done. If Thanos had the endurance to use the stones in perpetuity then he'd have had no reason to do the Snap as it is, he could just use the completed Gauntlet to force Thor away and then transport himself away to undo the damage with the Time stone but he couldn't because the moment he placed the Power stone in the gauntlet his life had a time limit because it was slowly killing him the whole movie.
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Nov 30, 2021 16:52
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I think the idea is once half of life is gone the remainder will gain a new sense of respect for the limited resources of the universe; and of what they now have and will work better to better conserve the (allegedly) limited resources going forward; which is what I think is what Thanos alludes to when he says that he will be able to "finally rest, and watch the sun rise on a grateful universe".
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Nov 30, 2021 19:07
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Hunt11 posted:The issue with Ultron is that he tried pulling the same poo poo again but this time it was somehow the right thing to do. To be fair, Tony had a lot of trust in Jarvis and they needed to do something with the casket to stop Ultron from using it; and they were losing at the time and needed an ace up their sleeve. Lib and let die posted:That is, forgive me, insanely stupid. Does Thanos think that every reproduction is planned based on the material situation of the parents? What part of the snap makes practicing to reproduce less fun/enticing? I think its less the specific number of people only that at least on Titan were already at the precipice and needed to do something drastic immediately. If we assume that Thanos felt that this was the same elsewhere, that galactic civilization was nearing the tipping point of self-destruction; the issue isn't people having too many children, its the socio-economic decisions made up until that tipping point and with a hard reset people can make better decisions so when the population regrows back it is done so sustainably. Epic High Five posted:Thanos is basically just Mitt Romney or the New Democrats' agenda on a grander scale, the end result of the total expunging of all materialist thought from all facets of economics and culture. A villainous scheme premised on the destruction of half the productive capacity of a planet being a magical panacea coming out right before a pandemic killed off like half a percent of the population focused hardest on the "non-productive" and precarious underclasses created a staffing catastrophe is just the darkly humorous icing on the cake. I think there's a lot that's objectionable here but I'm not sure where to start.
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Nov 30, 2021 19:38
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Lib and let die posted:Right, but socioeconomic decisions/circumstances don't always reflect on whether or not a pair of mates reproduces. If you consider the idea that there are various galactic civilizations across various stages of evolutionary/societal development, a planetary society that gets its, Neanderthal-level population numbers wiped out by half isn't necessarily going to see the error of their ways that they...haven't committed yet. A theoretical low-development planetary species without some sort of effective birth control is still going to reproduce at whatever rate it was before the snap. The more and more you "zoom out" on Thanos' big picture, the less and less it makes sense. It doesn't seem like an uninsurmountable leap of the imagination to me. Simply put the most advanced civilizations that got snapped presumably all recover first; and if Thanos is right then they all engage in more responsible conservation and stewardship of their resources and then as part of their new duty will the moment a newcomer civilization arrives on the scene that hasn't internalized those lessons will go and apply peer pressure on the late comers to develop sustainably. Like it is flawed but not in the way you think it is, its flawed in the way that any rationalization of a narcissistic form of the sunken cost fallacy is; it isn't hard to from that point of view to think of ways in which everything will work out; and also ultimately I think we're supposed to assume that Thanos knew it was a desperate gamble to begin with, it's just the least-worst option he can think of. golden bubble posted:This is also why one of the more popular theories of why Dr. Strange needed to look through so many potential timelines to get the actual outcome of the movies was to look for a timeline where both Thanos and Tony Stark die and stay dead. If he just wanted to stop Thanos, finding any way to distract Star Lord for 15 seconds would be enough. But that wouldn't end the threat of Tony Stark loving around with the Infinity Gauntlet. Its a good theory but I think any what if that involves stopping Star Lord from loving up just results in someone loving up. For example Star Lord tries to use the Gauntlet to bring Gamora back, which forces him to go Revenge of the Sith and bring it to Thanos etc. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Nov 30, 2021 |
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Nov 30, 2021 20:13
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Lib and let die posted:What kind of peer pressure? How would you resolve the inherent class struggle of "those elitist ayliums from omicron persei 8 have flying sun powered cars but they're telling us we're not allowed to burn our dead dinosaurs so we can move food from the field to the market!"? Whedon didn't direct Infinity War, and I'm not sure what point you're making here; why does class struggle have to do with anything? You're not making a consistent argument here; no one is saying Thanos's argument is logically sound, only that it can make sense from a certain point of view. The whole point if you can't make a counter argument to it, that couldn't with enough effort be handwaved or atlas shrugged away.
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Nov 30, 2021 20:44
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Epic High Five posted:Why would it be assumed that much larger and more complicated civilizations would recover from a collapse the quickest? Seems like the opposite would be the case, not least of all because half of the people who created the crisis of that moment would still be around and in much better starting positions than their similarly wiped out opponents. That's even before getting into how much more dependent they are on complex systems that would be shattered by the sudden loss of half of those tasked with maintaining them. First, it isn't us assuming that, it's Thanos assuming that; but on screen in the MCU Earth didn't collapse; and based on what we can infer in Endgame, while there were problems the rest of the galaxy didn't collapse either. We've also (in real life) never seen a technologically advanced society completely collapse; the closest example is the USSR and they still maintained the basic fundamentals of a civil service and its technological base. Sure an argument can be made that there would simply be a NeoBronze Age collapse situation where losing half your population results in a domino effect of irreplaceable complex systems collapsing as one domino knocks out another; but its a theory with limited evidence, its a good argument and I like it a lot but we can't just automatically assume some theory or another is clearly correct when analyzing film. In Endgame its even directly stated that half of humanity going away actually allowed for many ecosystems to actually recover from Humanities industrialization; so on the whole narratively speaking we're supposed to see that Thanos "has a point" with the setting basically bearing partially him out, otherwise it would be a completely uninteresting conflict if Thanos was entirely in the wrong. I don't think that's the writers "deciding" something, I think that's how storytelling works. The mindset in which to approach this isn't going to be well served entirely assuming a completely realistic and grounded assumptions, but also consider the narrative weight of the actions on screen. The whole point of this discussion was someone basically saying that Thanos's motivation made no sense and the comics version would have been better, and I disagree; I think it does make some sort of sense but you have to get into the right mindset for it. Something can make sense and be internally consistent and be flawed. Basically to put it into terms I think you'd better appreciate, imagine if instead of half of all life literally; since its a film and nothing is literal in fiction; its metaphorical allusion to something else; and that something else is probably some combination of capitalism, climate change and the existing entrenched status quo power structures that refuse to see reason everything lines from there up for me. Thanos is a Che Guevera like revolutionary seeking to upend the existing order fighting a successful guerrilla campaign but doesn't think he can reach his goals in his lifetime without nuclear weapons to terrorize the world into correcting itself; which has real life precedent with Mao during the Cuban Missile crisis. Lib and let die posted:I'm just trying to workshop how the lesser-developed society might react to a more advanced society's missives about how to develop The Right Way. Does the further advanced society just hand over the most cutting edge technology, or are there important societal lessons to be learned culturally as a society evolves technologically? The simplest answer is they either threaten them into confirming and adopting a different form of society that can develop "the right way" or they move in militarily to force it. Lots of history of this sort of nation building for centuries for us to draw on. If we assume an ideologically changed galactic society along the lines of thinking that Thanos would have wanted that would entirely be in keeping with his aims and methods. Hunt11 posted:At least when Fate Zero pulled the hard men doing hard things poo poo the ending had the wish granting device basically laugh at the character for being such a loving dumbass.  Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Nov 30, 2021 |
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Nov 30, 2021 21:12
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Lib and let die posted:This is sort of where I'm coming at it from, too, sort of from the perspective of say, someone from Asgard showed up and started yelling at us that like, our use of radio broadcast waves is actually contributing to the acceleration of the heat death of the universe or something, and trying to figure out how your average rural Trump voter might accept or refuse the missive. I like how close this is to like, several other combined movies or tv shows/anime. 
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Nov 30, 2021 21:50
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