#and how dystopian it feels

[lichtecht]

every day i am thankful for being blissfully unaware of what is going on with tiktok

[kyngsnake]

Over the years the Fallout fandom definitely has slowly crept further into a “moral high ground over suspension of disbelief” space. I see a lot of people discussing their opinions of Fallout through the lens of their own personal morals that they’d apply to their own life, which is… Strange to me. I feel like dystopian media especially is not the sort of thing you should be judging by your own real life standards. Most things in Fallout are extreme. Most of the factions do extreme things. A lot of the things people do in Fallout would be considered inhumane, cruel or uncanny by modern standards. Because it’s a post-apocalyptic dystopia.

This isn’t me saying “everyone in Fallout is evil, stop expecting otherwise,” because I don’t believe that to be the case. Even good-willed people in Fallout do shit that would be considered extreme by modern standards. I just see a lot of people shying away from discussing the “grittier” aspects of the franchise because it might for whatever reason imply you condone those things in real life.

[om0000]

mfs will make one of the most interesting n nuanced characters uve ever spun in ur brain just to stuff them into a kids media n make them look like this:

[metanarrates]

you got that genre and gender essay for us 👀

i might talk about gender in the hunger games a different time but right now im ready to talk about genre in it (FINALLY. sorry gamers ive been in the sludge for a while)

so one of the things that really struck me about the hunger games while reading is that it did not function strictly as an action genre story during the games themselves. the genre it actually seemed to be dipping into a lot of the time is wilderness survival. this is weird, for a couple of reasons.

for anyone unfamiliar with the wilderness survival genre, the underlying conflict tends to be rather slow-movingly paced. this isn't always the case - some wilderness survival stories do have limitations that force the plot to speed up - but in the vast majority of works I've seen, the main force the main character is working against is the slow-moving course of nature. there is a lot of time spent hunting, crafting, building shelters, tending to injuries. occasionally there are bursts of action, but the story is much more concerned with the daily work of solving more longterm survival problems than it is with more temporary threats. it's typically a story about endurance rather than urgency.

now, I like the genre just fine. I would even say suzanne collins does it decently well. the problem is that it doesn't actually suit the premise of the hunger games.

the hunger games is, on premise, a death game. for at least the first two books, the main setpiece of the story is the promise of the arena. it is a televised match where children have to kill each other for the entertainment of a crowd. this isn't a crazy uncommon subgenre or even main genre for action stories - there's a lot of story potential in forcing combatants to battle to the death against their will. my favorite novel, omniscient reader's viewpoint, has death game elements. when done well, it is tense, exciting, and asks questions about the culpability of both viewer and participants. oftentimes, the story's major theme is forcing the audience think about the way they may treat violence as spectacle. this is certainly something the hunger games also wants to do.

this premise carries a lot of intrinsic tensions. in a story where people are hunting one another in order to survive, the protagonist almost always is under threat, or nearly under threat, of being attacked. the tension of potentially having to kill adds another layer of tension. the demands of audience, in a story about violence as spectacle, serves to add another layer. the protagonist always has to look over their shoulder, to make sure that their audience can't hurt them if they become dissatisfied with the protagonist, and to be sure that they can fend off attackers at any given moment. to do otherwise, at least without justifying it, would be to undermine the logical stakes the premise introduces.

the end result, when done well, is a fast-paced action story with consistently heightened tension. you'll notice that this doesn't blend well with a slow-paced genre with a consistently low but omnipresent baseline tension.

through both games, again to collins' credit, there are a lot of high-tension action sequences. katniss does spend a good deal of time fighting, running, tensely hiding out, and dealing with high-octane environmental factors. however, I was consistently a little disappointed by how quickly a lot of these sequences ended. more importantly, I was confused by how often it would lead back into katniss skirting around the woods. she spends a ton of time fishing, hunting, chatting with allied tributes, scouting, and waiting around in a cave for peetas injuries to heal. the threat of the other tributes finding and killing her slips into the background. the audience in the capitol only matters occasionally. the minuitiae of surviving in a wilderness takes up major screentime. the threats intrinsic to the actiony premise stop being an immediate concern.

this inability to follow through on the established stakes totally kills my suspension of disbelief in the gamemakers as threats. very few people would be actually interested in continuously watching days-long, unedited livestreams of teenagers hunting and fishing and occasionally kissing. it doesn't make sense as a story about entertainment, because the events on screen would simply not be logically all that entertaining. the only reason the gamemakers don't act to force katniss towards more action is that collins plainly does not seem as interested in writing action. and that's really the root of the first two books' weird genre problem.

since collins seems to want to focus on wilderness survival rather than action, neither genre can properly shine. as a reader, i'm always feeling antsy whenever katniss takes a break to nap for a day, and I'm always frustrated whenever an an action scene is cut short instead of staying excitingly tense. the action stakes never feel believable to me because it seems like they only exist when the plot remembers they should. the survival stakes just feel like a tiresome chore in a story that should have much more urgent concerns. it's just a really weird choice. why write a death game story if you're often disinterested in the stuff the premise demands?

I also don't think that the rebellion/war story is done well in book 3, for similar pacing and tension issues (that book DRAGS in ways that actively undermine what it seems to be trying to do.) but this little essay has run on long enough. this has been a really longwinded way of saying "these books struggle a lot with tension and pacing and it makes them feel weird in how they play to their supposed premises," but I did want to approach it from a genre angle because that's what I was thinking about while reading. what is genre, after all, but a shorthand to communicate expected aspects of setting, focus, mechanical structure of a story?

[puppyeared]

i have to say its a strange experience taking classes on branding and marketing while being vehemently anticapitalist and scorning the economic system

[luneariann]

Kinda fucked up how normalized not sleeping for college/university is

[elminsters]

i love coming on here and finding out everyone lost their damn mind while i slept

[heystephen]

i know i should unpause my queue but i just don’t know when im going feel like. resuming my normal blogging

[syoddeye]

wip wednesday

snippet of a submission for the upcoming ghost challenge! i rolled d100s and got the following prompts: omegaverse + brother's best friend (which i've twisted) + caught in the rain. no warnings necessary for this snippet.

~~

As far as you know, the various blood work and lineage reports come back satisfactory. However, their contents are a mystery, as you’re not allowed to request copies without his permission, and you’re not about to ask. You don’t even know how to reach him. He said a dozen words to you at the house, then vanished after speaking to your aunt.

The following week, you nearly wear a track on the floor with your pacing. No announcement regarding your impending bonding appears in the paper. It isn’t required, but it isn’t out of fashion. You suppose more modern rituals are exclusive to immediate family nowadays, without the need for public acknowledgment. You shudder at the thought. If you’re to be humiliated, you’d rather as few people witness it as possible.

Another week passes. You start to receive letters and packages in his name, ‘S. Riley’. Then, a deposit appears in the account Johnny opened for you. You don’t touch it. You won’t legitimize a thing if you can help it.

You return to work. Everyone expresses their sympathies, and you meet with the omega representative in human resources to apprise them of your status. Their smile is tight when you dodge their questions and simply update the paperwork from ‘J. MacTavish’ to ‘S. Riley’. Every day when you arrive home, you wonder if you’ll find him sitting in Johnny’s chair. It sets your teeth on edge. Alphas and their mind games.

By the time a month turns over, you wonder if you’re stuck in limbo. That you’re the one who died, now cursed to languish where you only glimpse your brother in the periphery.

Simon reappears thirty-three days after he buys your life out from under you.

[karouvas]

I feel like I’m in a headspace where I really am in the mood to read urban fantasy more than anything else, part of me wants to start the Lynburn Legacy reread I’ve been wanting to start for a while and apparently unspoken is quite cheap on iBooks so that’s doable but I’m already doing my in depth trc reread buddy read with notes + rereading other things more casually. If I do the TLL reread I’ll definitely liveblog it because I want to propagandize it to my followers who are here for other modern or urban fantasy I talk about lol. Maybe I should read a Sarah Rees Brennan book I haven’t read yet? I also have been wanting to start reading the Vampire Chronicles but I think I should leave that for when I have more concentration to give over to it / my brain is processing new content better. The TVD books are another possibility, if nothing else I think that could be really funny. There are other possible candidates but if someone wants to recommend me a thing now is your chance

[winterf4iryy]

[college-knockout]

“All of this is your fault!”

Sploodge pins Strong Bad to the floor.

“You made me this way! You did this!”

(@pizzdotbiz)

that last chapter. MMM. here. have an angy sploodge

[nominalnebula]

when I say I listened to the new starset song literally all afternoon

like I cannot get over the direction starset's sound is evolving, it's so fucking textured between the new harder metal elements and the symphonic elements it's like a fucking physical sensation not to mention the contrast between dustin's singing and his screams and the last spoken line during the bridge - fucking! texture!

[mangoofthesea]

How many things do you think need to be set on fire to disrupt capitalism enough to create a livable society? Asking for a friend

[gemkun]

anonymous said : Ratio, do you have any thoughts on how the IPC handled the Avgin-Katican extinction event?

      ⸻       the   initial   silence   is   all   —   encompassing   ,   as   if   his   answer   were   written   in   the   absence   of   sound.   quietude   is   not   necessarily   without   weight   ,   for   his   demeanour   and   his   stance   ,   speak   volumes.   though   ,   perhaps   it   is   out   of   respect   ,   for   the   dreadful   event   that   had   occurred.   coordinated   under   meticulous   operations.

  ❝   when   the   ipc   wants   something   swept   under   the   rug   ,   their   enterprise   is   inexorable.   ❞   he   states   it   ,   matter   —   of   —   factly   ,   retaining   that   unyielding   neutrality   of   his.   if   not   for   alabaster   ,   dawn   might   exhibit   defeat   ,   were   he   to   linger   on   the   workings   any   longer.   ❝   scarce   and   limited   are   the   resources   surrounding   this   travesty.   even   the   intelligentsia   guild   ,   with   its   abundance   of   resources   and   papers   ,   has   a   conveniently   lacking   amount   of   information   regarding   the   avgin   —   katican   extinction   event.   ❞

  he   recalls   ,   those   moments   when   he   had   sought   reports   out   of   personal   interest   —   to   fulfil   that   insatiable   urge   of   contributing   to   his   wealth   of   knowledge.   how   disappointing   to   have   been   met   with   clearly   biased   and   tampered   accounts   ,   illustrating   blatantly   ,   calculated   approaches.   with   a   flagrant   dearth   that   outlined   a   single   perspective.

  but   the   ipc   are   skilled   in   holding   tongues   ,   including   his.   for   now.

  ❝   what   i   have   gathered   ,   well   ,   regrettably   ,   i   am   not   authorised   to   comment   on   the   specifics   of   the   carnage   ,   however   ,   it   is   no   mystery   that   it   was   managed   poorly.   unfortunately   ,   reading   the   fine   print   of   the   sigonian   sovereignty   was   never   in   the   cards   for   the   avgins.   ❞   as   broadcasts   and   journalistic   endeavours   had   undertaken   ,   this   was   apparent.   thus   ,   an   announcement   without   consequence.   ❝   i   will   say   in   hindsight   ,   an   operation   led   by   someone   as   contemptuous   as   oswaldo   schneider   ,   was   expected   to   produce   this   tragic   outcome.   he   possesses   great   notoriety   ,   among   even   the   genius’   ,   for   his   turbulence   and   volatility.   ❞

[twopenguinsinabox]

Quietly thinking about how Wizarding Britain is a straight-up dystopia tn. Like, even in the "good" years prior to Voldemort's resurrection, it would be such a nightmarish and fucked-up place to actually live that I feel like every time I read a fanfic where the characters conclude "hey, maybe we should just move back to the Muggle world which has neat things like rule of law and sexual consent" I feel like I want to applaud.