But fair
I donât know Lilith well enough to agree or disagree so therefore
Nya~
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well yes but what would the categories be
everybody knows me well. or no one. either way youre on even ground
is the reason u talk so much crap here to make up for you being selectively mute irl
insane for you to say i talk so much crap here
you have like 2000 posts in this thread across your accounts
text is my main form of social interaction quite honestly. even with my family i will often go for body language or just like. at my best grunting. i dont do words well outside of specific circumstances
this isnt talking crap im chatty
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The Last of Us & Last of Us 2 spoilers
Summary
TLoU 1 & 2 are games that lean extremely hard into the direction of âthe player is a spectatorâ.
Some people may disagree with the analysis of TLoU 1 that Iâm going with here and I believe itâs the intended interpretation, but ymmv. Anyway, you control Joel and over the course of the game you kill a lot of zombies, and a lot of people. Players normally donât think about the killing in video games, and we donât think about that as saying anything about us or the characters weâre controlling. It doesnât matter when gun guy puts up video games numbers on people because itâs a video game, and thatâs how video games go. When the gameplay doesnât align with the narrative, itâs called ludo-narrative dissonance, and we think nothing of it. We donât think any about the people Joel are killing, we donât think of Joel differently. We passively kill. During the last level, Joel is setting out to stop Ellie from dying, and is determined to kill anyone who gets in his way. He kills the Fireflies, the group thatâs been described as the good guys the entire game, and shown to be good people or people who are trying the best they can in a fucked up world. Joel kills them the same way he killed every other person leading up to this moment, with neither remorse nor hesitation.
When he gets to the surgery suite, the doctor who has been described as the single best chance at finding a vaccine for the cordyceps turning humanity into zombies draws a scalpel on Joel. It doesnât matter what you do here because Joel pulls the trigger either way. Doesnât hesitate to kill the man who he knows is humanityâs best shot at getting out of hell because he just does not give a shit. This is the moment when the player is supposed to realize that the fucking trail of bodies Joel has been leaving across the US is not ludo-narrative dissonance, it is not something we can say has no bearing on Joelâs character, but instead we realize that weâve been controlling a broken and violent man the entire time that kills anyone that stands in his way without thinking not because a player is pressing buttons, but because he really just does not or cannot give a shit. Itâs just the convenient way forward.
TLoU 2 canât use the same twist, but it uses the same trick. You control Ellie this time, but the enemies have names. They cry out for each other when they see a friend get hurt. They beg Ellie for mercy, not you because you donât have a choice in the matter as a player. You must press the button to kill them to continue the story. You do this over and over again as the game increasingly tells you that this is going to end badly for Ellie. Ellie is chasing Abby on a quest for revenge for killing Joel, and before it resolve, we switch perspectives. We see Abbyâs side of things, we see why she killed Joel, and her relationship with her friends that we know Ellie is gonna kill in a few hours or days. Joel kills the doctor (Abbyâs dad), so Abby kills Joel, but then Ellie sets out to kill Abby. Itâs tragic and we know itâs tragic and we donât want them to kill each other anymore. We just want them to stop, but they will not stop and we cannot stop them because weâre merely a spectator.
Thereâs a theater in the game thatâs an important location, and the last play shown there before the world ended was Cassandra. Cassandra is a play about a woman, the eponymous Cassandra, who can see the future, but no one listens to her prophecies and sheâs forced to witness the tragedy she saw coming, but was powerless to prevent. In TLoU 2, we, the player, are Cassandra. We know this ends in tragedy, and yet despite having our hands on the literal controls, we are just as powerless to stop it. The tragedy will unfold and we must bear witness or put the game down and leave the tragedy looming just over the horizon, but if we do not we must bear witness. We must watch as these people make the wrong decisions every time, but the game makes us feel the weight of the wrong decisions because weâre the ones pressing the Do the Wrong Thing button. It was genuinely so insane to experience and be aware of whatâs going on, and just shouting at my TV to please let me fucking stop. Just let me stop because that means Ellie and Abby stop, and donât have to lose anymore because theyâve lost so much.
So yeah I think trying to make the character a player avatar is fine, but it sucks if you donât commit to the bit and use that to say something. Taking away my agency as a player doesnât diminish your game at all if your story has something worthwhile to say.
oh yeah i didnt mean actually talking shit
just shitposts
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autistic people are so interesting
you ever play smash online with the 4 preselected messages you can send. i have those picked out. i look at my mom and shift my eyes a direction and she knows im asking her a specific question most of the time
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or like. pointing out a cool dog
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I went to a party once where I didnât know anybody and literally just walked around for like an hour desperately wanting to leave and then finally doing so. Perhaps this isnât just a neurodivergent thing, but it was a harrowing experience for me. My dad thought this was a good idea for me though and told me to go thinking I might make friends which makes me think that it might be a neurodivergent thing though.
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i feel like an explorer from 200 years ago discovering the wildlife of africa and documenting the behaviours of the animals
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this could easily just be being introverted lol i donât think i would have a good time at a party with zero people i knew
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i could pull this off
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maybe if there are other people like you there, but not a huge chance of that happening
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i need one other person who has no idea what theyre doing there
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