I'm joking with the meme, but it's an interesting how plot armor unintentionally places value on people's lives in fiction.
It's telling that censorship laws decide who it is and isn't acceptable to kill. Just thinking about violence against sentient robots and how that's normalized in things like Samurai Jack.
Like we know the robot has thoughts and feelings, like they'll try to run to save themselves or plead for mercy, but a character can still heroic after essentially killing a non-human who's acting like how we understand humans.
I feel like there's something dangerous in how easily we can depict appropriate targets of violence. Not just robots, but anybody deemed as less than human are allowed to be more put at risk.
Unnamed people are killed in superhero fights all the time. But unless they are of a class of characters like protagonists, they are collateral damage at best.
I think Plot Armor as a trope needs more class consciousness and awareness around how deciding who gets to be protected is often an unconscious political belief.
What about you though? Any tropes in media you'd like to see explored more or written with a leftist understanding?
Super villian bad guys could program the protagonist to do bad things but couldn't figure out how to get the protagonist to off themself after doing the villian's dirty work... which winds up with the villian(s) getting thwarted by the protagonist... (Lookin at you Bioshock)
Honorable mention... Everybody who matters knows what the control words are but weren't smart enough to say something like, "Would you kindly, stop breathing", and instead hands you a golf club and says, "Would you kindly, beat me to death".
Bonus one... (its got to have been mentioned by now)... Nobody ever learns anything from the last crisis. I really got into The Expanse, but holy
did the constant repeat of "nobody learning from the things that happened last week" start to get exhausting.
Andrew Ryan ordering you to beat him to death was his way of dying with dignity, of choosing his manner of death and robbing you of choice in the same moment.
In other words, he was a fucking idiot. You can also uncover this fact by learning that he is an Objectivist.
Fair.