• Flower [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    53·
    2 years ago

    Political illiteracy is required to enjoy MGR:R if you are anything right of anti-capitalist.

    The games end theme of non interventionist foreign policy, anti-imperialism, anti-corruption and America being so unhinged they’ll take children’s brains to turn into soldiers to benefit the war economy were what… side plot?

    In fact the overt references to American imperialism and cruel foreign policy and anti-humanism are actually just one writers artistic licence and not the games inherent message /s.

    The game is in fact a right wing carrion call for further military action /s.

    Anyone who thinks this is a right wing game also thinks covid vaccines turns you gay.

    It’s neoliberal af but can’t we just have a treat once in a while without angry cis het virgins crying about how HoI4 wasn’t turned into a Netflix original?

  • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]@hexbear.netEnglish
    31·
    2 years ago

    it kind of sounds like he understands but doesn’t care. and i think a leftist could thereby conclude that it was a bad depiction of the right if rightists can get some enjoyment out of it, but i would argue – without totally endorsing the game as a profound political text – that it rightly understands that fascism is a cult of rightful strength frustrated (betrayed, in their telling). given this, there’s no way it wouldn’t appeal to them, unless it told a left triumphalist narrative in which the right is weak, removed, easily defeated, and only propped up by means of deception and schemes, that is, if it told a rightist narrative for leftist ends. Gary the Cryptofascist needs a story where his guy is the strongest, coolest motherfucker on the planet but he still loses, because that’s the only way he can understand his own circumstances.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      12·
      2 years ago

      For the highest profit they need to appeal to all the audiences. For profit writing will always choose to make the bad guys as strong and as cool as possible in order to offset the fact that framing them as the bad guys has potential to alienate a part of the potential audience who finds themselves on that side.

      You could make them snivelling weasels nobody would like quite easily. But it would be less appealing to part of the audience. The choice to write them as strong and cool is a profit driven one.

      • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        11·
        2 years ago

        I think you would still have strong and cool villains, yes even fascist ones, without profit motive because strong and cool villains are just fun to write. If every villain was a sniveling weasel media wouldn’t be very much fun. I like a good charismatic villain.

        And I mean, its also reflective of reality. Some real world “villains” ARE strong/coolaesthetically/charming/charismatic/interesting/complicated/(initially has good motives but goes off the rails with their methods)/havegoodqualitiesaswell ect ect. Its good to have a variety.

      • TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        8·
        2 years ago

        You could make them snivelling weasels nobody would like quite easily. But it would be less appealing to part of the audience. The choice to write them as strong and cool is a profit driven one.

        Hence why Tolkien wins (in this very narrow thing, the rest is a bit cringe ) Grima Wormtongue is an absolutely detestable low-level villain that nobody thinks is cool, but he’s also the reason Saruman, one of the “cooler” villains, dies, both in the book and in the movies.

        • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          6·
          2 years ago

          Gotta throw down a mostly unrelated fact cause I saw Wormtongue mentioned. I’ve seen meme being like "Tolkien, master of language, names a traitorous dude Wormtongue. And yeah, the rohirrim speak ango saxon and worm comes from warm as in dragon and tongue from tong as in sword. He’s Grima dragonsword in universe. The Rohirrim literally speak Anglo Saxon

  • combat_brandonism [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    27·
    2 years ago

    zizek-theory
    sniff Zhe downfall of irony ish that itsh humor comesh from maintaining a dishtance from that which it critiquesh, a dishtance sniff which makesh it eashy to co-opt. Think of conshervatives watching zhe Colbert Report thinking it’sh their version of the daily show and sho-on and sho-forth. sniff Only that art which over-identifiesh with itsh target and embracesh those worst esshential ashpects of it, like zhe polish punk band that dresshesh up in nazi regalia, can avoid such co-optshion.

    thonk-trans
    O wise, learned anti-Tito anti-Yugo scholar, wouldn’t that make the art indistinguishable from that which it critiques?

    zizek-fuck

  • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    18·
    2 years ago

    I’ve noticed that when leftists see a sympathetic villain who’s also cartoonishly evil for the sake of plot, the villain will be critiqued to death and ultimately, there’s either critical support or no support for dumb writing.

    But conservatives will see a caricature of themselves and have zero reflection and become jealous that there’s no one as evil as that villain in real life for them to support. Like, I know a lot of people on here who enjoyed Death of Stalin despite its liberalism, but I can only imagine conservatives threatening to kill the director of Death of Trump and following through

  • GarfieldYaoi [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    2 years ago

    Where’s that Green text about people being idiots who will blindly agree with even the most absurd villains so long as they’re charismatic enough? Ironically, specifically about Armstrong?