Oh this takes me back. We used to play everyday before school. Its a classic
Oh this takes me back. We used to play everyday before school. Its a classic
Welcome to the world of having studied film and other narrative-driven art forms…only, without having the media literacy and technical knowledge to make the tradeoff worthwhile. At best, it sounds like false knowledge based on elements, such as surface trope patterns. On the one hand, I kinda feel for them because it’s a legit industry hazard…on the other, they brought it on themselves.
No DEI in games is how you get unmodded Rome 2. I ain’t going back to that!
;)
In addition to what others have said, liability is also a factor. If you don’t work out, it’s because you somehow lied about being able to do the job and not that their training was inadequate or that they failed to prepare/equip you. Additionally, less training is required theoretically, which means less cost on the investment of a new employee. Less risk overall for presumably better results.
Lack of experience also means they have deniability not to hire someone. I’ve had interviews go south immediately when the interviewer realized I was LGBTQ+ (stealth fail), but their stated reason was that I didn’t have enough experience with MacOS. I’ve done volunteer work in my field for the UN using MacOS, but alas, I was “too inexperienced”. The higher the requirements, the safer those sorts of dismissals are for them to make.
It’s a fun ride, for sure. I would love to see slower pacing like many others, but then again, a lot of the world exploration has been handed over to its sister show so I’m not sure how much slower pace they can actually do. Helluva Boss still has more of my heart due to its wonderful cast of characters (My SO and I even did our own sort of ‘his-and-hers’ Moxxie and Millie t-shirts), but the character cast of Hazbin is growing on me pretty quickly.
Isn’t this the plot of A CHRISTMAS CAROL?
It’s not weird at all. In fact, I’d argue it is very healthy.
Stories are our way of transferring human experience from one to another. Our brains intentionally blur fiction and reality to facilitate this transfer regularly. While not a positive example, you can see it in action when fictional representations of, say, trans people are only informed by the media consumed due to the lack of other experiences to draw on. Once an experience/story is no longer relevant or helpful, we forget it. When you read a forgettable story, that’s exactly what happened.
To categorize them in the way of the Ancient Greeks, Tragedies are cautionary tales, and Dramas are explorative/navigational—meaning they primarily help us navigate the comprehensive options of situations.
Looking at the stories themselves, we can see their structure parallels that of proper arguments.
One-act stories are a thesis—they answer a single question Three-act stories are a thesis, countered by an antithesis, and then the synthesis/conclusion. Five-act stories are more based on Marxist thought—a thesis that examines the contrast, contradiction, and possibly the negation of the negative before forming its synthesis.
Long story short, what is a story beat but elaborate dressing for points A, B, and C, leading us to the next logical point and its reasoning? It’s an illusion and allegory of crashing emotions, symbols, and situations for our subconscious to process the same way it does all our experiences. Memory itself is a story we are retelling ourselves.
And that’s underlying all stories that at least have some structure holding them up. Of course, it’s going to affect you. And it should.
I’ve taken a morbid interest in watching the drama of the Kaldorei/Night Elves story unfold and the drama erupting from it. For some in the Imperial core, it’s the first thought they’ve ever given thought to the complications and effects of colonization and genocide on a people. Is it anywhere near enough? Oh, hell no. But the capitalists’ need to sell [edgy] stories at least is breaking the veneer of silence civility of not talking about hard issues. And they’ll keep having to push that line to make money. And as they do, more voices that generally get glossed over will slip through in the trend-chasing. And now and again, we might get a comrade’s allegorical voice (see some of the classics like A CHRISTMAS STORY). Contradictions exist in storytelling, too, and it plays out the same way as it does in other areas. It will affect you like everyone else because you are digesting it like everyone else. We communists, arguably more so because we can see most of it as the junk food it is—and trying to enjoy the odd bit of nutrients that slip through capitalism/liberalism’s processing. But these imagined yet shared common experiences are also what will provide us with the common ground needed to reach others here and there.
My personal goal is to launch a webcomic/graphic novel project I’ve been contemplating for a while. A fun adventure story that isn’t infested with liberal ideology subtext for comrades to enjoy, but also is subtle enough that one can also show it to liberal friends and introduce them to some basic theory in the process.
I will second Brecht’s ON THEATRE. There’s some good gems in there.
Of a strictly ML nature, not many immediately come to mind. We have the Socialist Realism movement, but it is often examined through a western lens, which loses much of its nuance unless the audience is well-versed in art history. A few speeches by important figures touch on art and it’s purpose, but rarely in a way that would help us construct better, more engaging stories. But all this was also the problem identified. We don’t have a strong tradition to compete with capitalist media and their methods of confining stories to mere, and often shallow, entertainment. And what examples I have stumbled across, such as Han Qixiang, I’m not fluent enough in the language or culture to delve into their work as much as I’d want for contextual analysis to really comment or advocate from. And Western works, usually more hidden in history (pockets of French and German expression), such as Walter Benjamin’s DER ERZAHLER, I should probably re-visit before fully recommending since the last time I read through it I was only a baby commie.
There have been a couple of times my worldview has collapsed, and I took better/more accurate positions afterward.
The ruling class try to not only rule altogether but to convince the masses of their legitimacy.
It might come from Engels, but I remember reading this line is straight out of the beginning of Lenin’s STATE AND REVOLUTION recently.
In addition to the other responses, we don’t have much nuance in our political conversations. Partially because we hear the same thing repeatedly but also because other views don’t break into our bubble that often. It ends up framing everything much more like a script to be followed. If you’re challenging the “left-wing” candidate, you must be doing so from the stance of someone who supports the right-wing candidate. That’s the script. And very often, those roles come with baggage (eg, ‘trump supporter’, ‘misogynist’, etc.). So because you have put yourself in one of those roles/boxes, the script in their mind is being followed, and you’ve taken on that baggage.
You can see this in our media discussions as well. Who likes what movies, franchises, why, etc. Many people are unaware that they are acting this prescriptively, so we often talk past each other and rarely act in as good of faith as we think we are engaging in. Neo-liberalism is built on flexible word choices, slogans, and terms without meaning. This results in a lot of reverse terminology, empty words, and a clinging of identity and labels around more solid terms. The latter has the effect of simplifying people and positions into boxes that result in script-like behavior due to regurgitating known responses and interactions with people in that label over there. The implication that you might not fit that label demands an immediate and intense examination of the subject matter in a few seconds or risk not appearing smart/moral/etc. So not only is that a threat to their image, but it’s a lot of internal pressure in a short time—hince the response you got from them was very reflexive and combative.