And I thought @BootlegGirl's observation - that the game doesn't actually give you a choice, and that its success comes from having established the character so well that there's only one possible course of action for the person he is - says a lot about what makes for good drama.
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Replying to @NussbaumAbigail @arthur_affect
I also think it's undeniable that trolly problem storytelling has very large failure points, and that they often take the form of refusing to take a side, merely posing the question for the sake of the appearance of complexity.
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Replying to @NussbaumAbigail @arthur_affect
Last night I watched the penultimate episode of Stargirl, where the heroes discover that the bad guys' evil plan is to use mind control to create a socialist utopia with universal healthcare and renewable energy source. That's not complex or dramatic. It's braindead.
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Replying to @NussbaumAbigail @arthur_affect
And just in case the audience is still conflicted, it turns out the bad guys' method of brain control has a 25% mortality rate. So we're not even being invited to consider the question. We're just plopped right back at "nothing to be done, the status quo is best".
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Replying to @NussbaumAbigail @arthur_affect
can i like this fifty times? it's an extremely specific peeve but there's a familiar trope in genre stories where doing anything to upset the system always turns out to have apocalyptic consequences and the Real Lesson is, like, "be kind but don't rock the boat" and i HATE IT.
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the one book i ever considered destroying in a rage was THE PHILOSOPHER'S APPRENTICE, which goes out of its way to show you the most awful, hideous comeuppance descend upon the one character who actually tries to make the world a better place just fucking gruesome
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then it ends with her sister skiing in the alps thinking about joining the board of a ~~Philanthropic Nonprofit~~ and this is portrayed as the decent ~~middle way~~ between nihilism and zealotry
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Replying to @perdricof @NussbaumAbigail
I liked Sneakers taking the piss out of this kind of ending, like after Robert Redford tells Ben Kingsley he will not allow him to use the Black Box to roll the dice on collapsing all power structures and gives it back to the proper authorities... it turns out he actually kept it
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Replying to @arthur_affect @NussbaumAbigail
you see, this is the kind of moral question i actually give a shit about--between accelerationists and incrementalists, say pressing and difficult questions of tactics between similarly-oriented people, not the choice between "do nothing" and "EEEEVIL!"
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Replying to @perdricof @NussbaumAbigail
That's the funny thing, they actually fooled you for a sec into thinking they were gonna go full on "Accept the status quo and just be kind" No one can be trusted with the Black Box so all they can do is hope the current hegemonic power will lock it up to preserve the status quo
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James Earl Jones will never actually use the box because the risk of its existence becoming known will threaten his power and that's the best we can hope for, like the balance of power with nukes And then the swerve
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Replying to @arthur_affect @NussbaumAbigail
damnit arthur now i want to go watch SNEAKERS again because that movie remains a banger
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Replying to @perdricof @NussbaumAbigail
The funny thing is this is very close to my current political beliefs I would be quite happy to accept a world where things stay *mostly* the same except the Republican Party ceases to exist completely, forever To me, that's the compromise, that's the modest request
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